Character:Robespierre

[Lion at the End]

Profile

• Fallen Name: Ethan Lim Bo Seng
• Age:
• Virtue: Fortitude
• Vice: Lust
• Path: Mastigos
• Order: Mysterium

Attributes

Mental

• Intelligence: 3
• Wits: 2
• Resolve: 5

Social

• Presence: 1
• Manipulation: 1
• Composure: 4

Physical

• Strength: 1
• Dexterity: 2
• Stamina: 4

Skills

Social

• Expression 4
• Subterfuge 3

Mental

• Academics 1
• Computer 1
• Investigate 4 (+1 Rote Specialty)
• Occult 4 (+1 Rote Specialty)
• Science 1

Physical

• Athletics 1
• Firearms 1
• Survival 1 (+1 Rote Specialty)
• Weaponry 1

Merits

• High Holy Speech
• Extemporaneous Affinity III (6)
• Hallow 1 (1)

Arcana

• Mind 3
• Space 2
• Time 1

Legacy

Name

First Attunement

• Attune Prerequisites:
• How the character gained it
• Description of the Attunement

Rotes

• When You See It (Mysterium Psychic Assault Rote: Resolve + Occult + Mind) (3)

The mage draws upon occult principles, such as those the Lovecraftian mythos were based on, and projects them onto the minds of his victims, resulting in instant catatonia and psychosomatic injury from the sheer insult to the fabric of their psyches.

• Knowing The Rhythm Of The Heart (Mysterium Emotional Urging Rote: Resolve + Investigation + Mind) (2)

Armoring his soul against the infiltrating influence of another mind, the magus discerns the threads of emotional resonance within a soul and plays on them to produce any desired feeling within his victim.

• Stitch In Time (Mysterium Perfect Timing Rote: Resolve + Composure + Time) (1)

Typically used to augment his mundane capabilities, this rote simultaneously steels the magus' mind and stills his heart, allowing him to perceive the most perfect time to act and take advantage of it without hesitation.

Background

For the most part, Ethan Lim was a normal boy. He led a normal life in a normal household and went to a normal school and was eventually conscripted, like all Singaporean males. He was posted to a normal unit and became a normal infantryman and served his two and a half years of National Service like everyone else.

Then, on the day when he had completed his term of active duty, as he was crossing the street to get to his apartment on the other side, a car swerved out of control and struck him, sending him flying a good twenty meters down the road. Though he survived (but was left comatose for a good six months) by some miracle, but the real wonder is what happened to him in that hospital bed. During his time, he underwent a Harrowing, and at the end, he reached the Watchtower and awoke Awakened. His body had deteriorated during his months of convalescence, and his medical treatment had been ruinously expensive, but for better or worse, he was alive and well... and capable of working his will on the world. His beginning manipulations were crude things, compelling the prettier nurses to sponge-bathe him more than was necessary, but then he remembered the Path of Scourging that he had walked to the Iron Tower, and purged himself of such childish weaknesses. Even the physiotherapists commented that he showed a remarkable resilience to pain, though in truth Ethan felt the agony as keenly as anyone else; he simply didn't find mere pain worth making noise about.

His place in the Biological Science course at NTU was still reserved for him... but before the term started, he was approached by a representative of the local Mysterium, who had sensed the emergence of a new comrade in the Art, and offered him a place in their Order. Though Ethan was initially suspicious, he soon resolved that just as the Mysterium used him, he would use them in return.

And so, our hero enters university, and a new stage of his life...

Awakening

I wake, to cold, hard, damp and mossy stone below me, and a shaft of wan light shining down upon my head. The walls are run-down, covered in lichen and badly discolored. The sturdy bars before me are pitted with rust, and though they look like they can be broken through, I know better.

How many times have I been through this now? A hundred times? A thousand times? Ten thousand times? Does it matter? Ah, a shadow across the light. A shadow, overhead, the shape of a man. As always, he drops the key to the gate before me. With that in hand, I free myself from myself, pausing only to pick up my weapon.It's more of a sliver of metal, really, a jagged, long and thin iron shard, usable as a knife if you wrap the less-sharp end in leather. I don't have leather, so I grip it, and the edges cut into my hand and the blood flows around the shard. It hurt at first, and it still hurts now, but I take the pain in silence. Crying and moaning won't help me. Nothing will help me.

Only I can help myself.

I walk down the run-down passage, seeing the corpses and skeletons lining it and the half-dead wretches, hollows of their former selves, throwing themselves at me with mad fervor. I tried to fight them off at first, but then more of them just came and swarmed me, and I died. And then I woke up in my cell again, intact, in pain, but wiser. Now I do not fight them. I avoid them. They are my inmates. They were like me, and I could end up like them, caught in a trap without end. I will not be caught in a trap. I know where I must go. I must leave this place. But to do it I cannot be weak. I will kill my weakness. Already, as the blood drips down my hand, I feel the weakness leaving my body. I feel pain, but it does not rule me. I rule it. I see the hordes of hollow inmates lunging at me, but I am unmoved. They are mad, deranged, and I am sane, intelligent. The focused mind is the most powerful weapon a man can wield. I wield it. I see the path between them, the chaotic mass of writhing and screaming limbs. I see it, and I act, dashing between them, heedless to the sharp rocks cutting my feet. Once, I would have cried out. I would have slowed. And the pack would have caught me. The pack would have killed me. They did kill me. I died.

No, I did not die. What died was my weakness. And I have killed it. There is nothing left in me which is weak.

I see the ladder. I have climbed it before. The ladder leads me to the courtyard, where the bonfire burns. I ignore it. It is a trap without end. If I touch it, I will be bound to it, and will never leave. I will leave this place. Instead, I push my way through the great double doors. And as before, the great demon flies down, wielding a massive axe. This demon has killed me countless times before. But I remember all these times, and I have learned from them. I have my dagger in my hands, and my will in my my mind.

The demon swings down at me. I sprint into the blow, ignoring my fear. If I were afraid, I would have run to the sides, or ducked back. And then I would be dead, for the demon can kill me no matter where I flee. I learned that after fifteen deaths and fifteen stratagems. So I meet him head on. What worse can he do, kill me again?

I sprint into and under the blow, and I live. I gouge its knees in passing, and I live. It turns to strike me, and I dash past the stroke, and I live. I slash at its knee again, and I live. I keep behind it, tearing and cutting and flensing, like this place has done to me, purging me of all weakness and hesitation.

I return the favor. I relieve the demon of the weakness called life. It falters, and goes to one knee, and for a moment, I am caught unawares. This is new; I have never wounded it like this before. It could be a trap. The demon can feign weakness, inviting me to forsake my defense of mobility, before crushing me with its mighty axe. Well then, let it crush me. I will die. I will suffer. I will endure. I will struggle.

I will live.

I plunge my shard into its eye, the sharp hilt cutting me as much as I harm it. But pain is distant from me. All I feel is the edge working deeper and deeper...

...and then the demon roars one last time, and falls dead. Behind it, the great doors leading outside of the asylum silently swing open, and I know I must go through. I leave the corpse of the demon behind me, and walk through...

...to behold a great obelisk of metal, covered in scratches and random, undecipherable inscriptions. As I approach, the shard I hold heats up to the point of burning my flesh. Yet still I hold fast, for I can feel the same heat radiating off the obelisk before me. The shard glows red hot in my hand, but I do not feel it. Instead, my eyes survey its surface, before they land on a red-hot patch on the obelisk's surface.

I feel compelled to do something here. But what? Then I remember the arcade games I played in my youth; after the games ended, the machine would display a high score with your initials on them. It was so everyone who passed by would know that you, E.L, had beaten the game so well that you were among the top ten to have ever played that machine.

Well, I've died hundreds, if not thousands of times in that asylum-prison. Everyone should know it. So I carve my name with my burning shard-dagger... and as I do, the obelisk lights up from base to tip, and I follow the spreading surge of red heat up its length until I see the sky... and my name, etched in burning letters across the night sky, even as I have carved it into the obelisk.
And then I realise, it's not an obelisk, but a Watchtower. Not a monument, but a beacon. And then it's as though a door's opened in my mind, and staring into the sky, I realize the truth; not in the form of a concrete statement, but a torrent of universal realization, surging and flowing into me like a river that knows no end.

If I were afraid, I would have run, or ducked back. But that is a sign of weakness, and I have killed my weakness. Instead, I embrace it, I run into the flow... and in so doing, I Awaken...

...to a hospital bed, the feeling of an IV needle in my arm and the ache of muscles long-unused being taxed. It is then I remember; I was in an accident; I had just finished my National Service; I had almost reached home. How long have I been out? Time didn't pass properly in the nightmare of my coma. I feel like I've been doing it for years.

"It was just a dream," I shake my head. And then the familiar prick in my hand snaps me out of the illusion.

Within my hand is the sliver of iron that has been my companion through my coma...

Miscellaneous

• Dedicated Magical Tool:
• Nimbus:
• Gnosis: 2; 1 Paradox die; 3hr/roll extended casting
• Wisdom: 5
• Willpower: 9/9
• Mana 7/11; 2/turn

• Health 9
• Defence 2
• Initiative 6
• Size 5
• Speed 8
• Armour (usually) 2

XP

Arcane

• Gained: 3
• Spent: 0

Mundane

• Gained: 8
• Spent: 0