| Mastema | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Robert Mason (Mastema) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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A Distant demon that sees humanity as a resource to be used for his own gains. As he possessed the body of a gang member Robert Mason he also inherited Mason's optimism and need for redemption. These two opposite viewpoints are in constant conflict within him.
Special Skills
- Salesmanship
- Psychological Manipulation
- Profiling
Special Abilities
All of his abilities require faith from mortals, in order to gain faith he has to form a pact with a mortal. The mortal receives aid from Mastema in exchange for the faith they provide. In additions Mastema currently suffers from high torment from his time in hell and his sins. His high torment means that he is takes damage from prayers and blessed items used against him. This also means that he cannot enter holy or otherwise sanctified areas. He used to have the power to grant wishes by taking time off from the date of a person's fated death until his power was sealed from a prayer directed at him.
Lore of Portals (portals means any built entrance i.e. doors, windows, etc.)
- Open/Close Portals: Can open or close any physical portal, no matter how it is sealed. High-Torment: He opens the portal with such vicious force that it may become damaged.
- Create Ward: Can seal an area against intrusion by warding all its wall, windows and doors. High-Torment: Rather than just preventing entry, the ward will inflict damage upon those who cross it.
- Co-Locate: Can link two similar portals so that others may teleport using them. High-Torment: The journey between them becomes terrifying and may cause insanity.
Lore of Light
- Light: Can create a soft, silvery light, or a brief, bright flash that blinds and stuns onlookers. High-Torment: The light is instead a darkness that blinds those around them.
- Bend Light: By bending the light around themselves, Mastema can create camouflage akin to a chameleon. High-Torment: Instead of blending in, distracting patterns are created.
- Illusion: Can make solid, realistic-looking illusions that last for a short time. High-Torment: The illusions are dark and disturbing.
- Coherent Light: Can give substance to his illusions, allowing them to be touched. High-Torment: The illusions act on their own, attacking any nearby.
Lore of Patterns
- Foresee: Can read fate and predict the outcome of an event about to occur.
- Causal Influence: Can read events several days in advance and know which parts to affect to change the future as desired. High-Torment: The same, but they can only use these to inflict violence on another.
- Twist Time: Can alter the flow of time in their immediate surroundings. High-Torment: This ability can cause permanent derangements in others.
Lore of Humanity
- Insinuate: Can make mortals feel they can trust them. High-Torment: Instead, they may create feelings of suspicion and hostility.
- Fade: Can may make people ignore them, moving through crowds or entering places unnoticed. High-Torment: Psychopathically inclined people can still perceive him and are actually drawn to them.
Lore of the Fundament
- Manipulate Gravity: Can leap tremendous distances, hover, or fall without harm. High-Torment: Identical, but gravity fluctuates wildly around him.
- Manipulate Adhesion: Can walk up walls or along ceilings, or cling to objects. High-Torment: His touch will also partially melt surfaces and make them hot to the touch.
- Manipulate Inertia: Can throw objects over tremendous distances, or simply stop attacks dead. High-Torment: Makes a thrown object become temporarily unstable and fragile.
- Manipulate Acceleration: Can move blindingly fast and pour their momentum into devastating close-combat attacks. High-Torment: He also drags a wake of superheated air that may cause burns in bystanders.
- Manipulate Cohesion: Can alter the density of matter, allowing them to walk on water or evaporate stone or even flesh. High-Torment: The affected material's aggregate state will fluctuate randomly for some time.
Visage
Apocalyptic Form, or Visage, is the empowered form of Mastema and is the reflection or shadow of both his true form as well as his purpose in Creation. While in this form Mastema becomes covered in intricate patterns and symbols older than recorded history, the patterns appear to alter themselves over time. His body displays perfect symmetry in all aspects even the patters and symbols. He grows two pairs of wings and another pair of arms while in this form that disappear in his mortal form. His eyes, the symbols and the patterns are pitch black while his skin becomes light blue. While in this form he appears distant and unfocused on the world around him. His Visage grants several abilities:
- He becomes resistant to lethal damage. As long as he is in his mortal forms, he is only as resilient as a normal mortal.
- A mortal witness may be overwhelmed by the presence of a His Apocalyptic Form. Depending on whether the He has high- or low-Torment, the mortal may either flee in terror or fall to their knees to pray to a divine agent. Most people tend to forget their encounter, but strong-willed individuals are less affected.
Background
Mastema was part of the House of the Indigo Night, a band of angels created by god with the order to set creation in motion. They would dictate the orbits of the planets and stars, time was entirely their creation. Mastema was happy to do his part in putting in motion the grand artwork the other houses had built. When the other houses finished making the rest of creation he was proud to work alongside them though like other angels he had his reservations about the reapers, angels of death from the House of Falling Night. He worked hard when god announced his greatest creation, man. Man was to be different from the angels in that they were made in god’s image, but not physically. Humans were granted the ability to create in much the same way as god can.
In a twist of events he found himself befriending Masit a reaper. Though Masit was always busy with his job in the time between one death and the next they found the time to chat. Masit was happy to make a friend from one of the other houses and Mastema was happy to learn that the reapers took care to preserve in memory what they killed. He like many other angels was under the impression that reapers did not respect their work.
Despite the celebration and expectations of greatness humans acted as nothing more than animals. Mastema like many other angels was growing worried with this and compounding it was god’s order for angels to not directly interact with humans. Soon a rebellion grew within the ranks of the angels led by Lucifer. Mastema hurt by his inability to grant humans his knowledge joined the rebellion. Things went slowly for awhile and mostly consisted of the rebels finding enough support to begin their plan. He tried to way his friend to their side but he wouldn’t budge, this was something that still haunts him. He was still sulking when part of the reapers allied with Lucifer and the War in Heaven began. All of a sudden he was thrust into battle and given command of a war host of his own. All he was asked to do was to predict the future of the battle and give commands to counter the enemy before they could properly act.
As the war ramped up every battle became a tense affair and the possibility of failure always loomed over his shoulder. Things only became worse when humans not only became susceptible to aging but also when the first murder happened. All of a sudden the death of a single person could change the course of the war and the reapers seemingly disappeared from the battlefield. Using his powers he found out why, the city of the dead built by the rebel reapers was under attack. He wanted to help but two things stopped him he was responsible for those under him and his friend Masit was among the loyalist forces. He cursed the situation he was in as a result of his choices. As the war got farther along a terrible order would come down the chain of command. Victory seemed far and they were ordered to eat their enemies in an attempt to bolster their own forces while permanently decreasing the power of their enemies.
He hesitated to relay that order but did not want to come into conflict with the others. Even with the new order the war continued going poorly and to make things worse the constant use of divination had altered the future so much that the angels of the fourth house could no longer predict the future accurately. After that things degraded quickly and he was also forced into battle. He was competent but relied too much on his divination something that was still almost as good as before. In a twist of fate during his last battle he was pushed to his limit and finally resorted to eating those he had slain. He entered into a battle frenzy where he killed and consumed as many angels as he could and too late he realized that the last one he consumed was his friend Masit. It was at this moment that the rebellion also ended in failure and god banished the rebels to an eternity in hell. Within the void of hell he stewed in his own thoughts guilt and shame slowly eating away at his sanity. As all of the fallen in hell he eventually went completely insane.
After a few hundred thousand years of solitary confinement the barriers that kept them in hell began to crack and it allowed the weakest of them to slip through into the mortal world. He also slipped through and arrived on earth in the 1950’s. He began hatching a plot to get revenge on his cruel creator. After a while and a small rampage he learned that to challenge god directly was suicide and decided to torture his creations instead. In order to achieve this he needed to become more stable mentally so he won't scare the mortals away.
To regain a modicum of sanity he pushed away most of his power and memories into an entity separate from him. He shaped it into the form of a kriegsmesser, similar to the sword he used during the war. He placed it into a pocket dimension he had found before the fall so it would not bring back his memories and with it his insanity. With his chaotic nature tamed he set about finding a way to trick humans into allowing him to torture them. During this time he discovered that he had the power to take life from mortals something he must have gained from the consumption of his friend.
The taken life boosted his powers to a level somewhat approaching what he had before the fall. Finding this to be good he set his mind on tricking mortals into giving up their life in exchange for granting a wish. He took to copying the dress style of a man in the era he was in, the 1950’s. He practiced this nonstop for many years and around the 90’s he had become extremely good at it. He began to increase his influence on other fallen as his power grew. This was a fragile power dependant on him not using his abilities too much lest he slip back to insanity. Even so he continued his plan. Along with his plan he explored creation for a place to hide into should things take a turn for the worst. He was traversing one of his portals when he spliced in.
Time in Blazing Umbra Station
Mastema only stayed within the station for a relatively short time, about two months. During his time he mostly kept to himself and interacted very little with others. The most notable events he participated in were the rescue of Vlad from Arcadia and the Rescue of Flask who was in another universe from an anomalous splice. His time at the station came to an end when he murdered a personnel of Solas Tempus and attack another splicee Vin. He was apprehended and confined to a cell during which paperwork was filed to exile the demon as he had become a danger to the station. Two judges were sent from ST to interview Mastema where the demon pleaded guilty. The judges gave the go ahead to exile him and Janus gate was notified to search for his home universe. After about a week his home universe was found and Mastema was taken aboard the Lilith to be delivered there. As luck would have it the gate had a slight malfunction and the universe he was sent back to was not his home universe but in fact the universe of Angelic Sins.
Second Fall
Mastema was left in a dark alley within Chicago. He was found by a group of ruffians who mugged him. During the robbery one of them lost his nerve and killed Mastema's body. He found another body a to possess a few days later and found that it belonged to the man that killed him, Robert Mason.