It is a Mystery.
Or it is a joke by God on the universe, or maybe a joke by the Universe
on God. It might even be just an
accident or coincidence, although that seems most unlikely. No matter what it is, it confuses both
Heaven and Hell mightily, which could very well be another explanation.
'It' is otherwise known as the fruitcake, an item of
supposed food that circulates its way around the corporeal plane, despite the
fact that not many ever eat it, fewer buy it and almost no one ever quite
remembers when or where he or she got rid of it. Fruitcake simply is, and thus passes through the Symphony
unnoticed. Except, of course, by
celestials, who tend to call it by the name popularized by Lightning (and later
taken up by corporeal researchers): 'dark matter'. Yes, indeed, the missing mass of the universe is chemically
identical to 'fruitcake', which is not precisely the material that the average
human thinks it is.
'Fruitcake' is actually a semi-organic material that
exists in a set of temporal dimensions that only roughly interact with those of
the corporeal plane - which is an ornate way of saying that the stuff travels
in time. There are no 'fruitcakes';
every fruitcake is simply one temporal snapshot of the Primal Fruitcake that
coalesced out of the Big Bang and will finally dissolve when the universe
contracts untold millions of years from now (assuming that God will permit the
corporeal plane to exist for that long, of course). This does indeed mean that all fruitcakes are essentially connected,
with several interesting implications.
The most obvious one is unfortunately the least
likely to work; it has proven impossible to convert fruitcake into a reliable
communications system. While all
fruitcakes are linked, the age of the universe and the endless ways that the
individual snapshot loops in and out of time make the 'distances' involved
impossible to resolve, at least between Servitor/Servitor. Servitor/Superior communication is somewhat
easier to resolve, as both fruitcake and Archangels/Demon Princes exist
partially outside of time as we know it.
A fruitcake may be thus used as a free +3 Invocation modifier
(completely outside of the regular modifiers) once per Superior, per
Servitor. The only exception is
Haagenti: the modifier in his case is +10, but no one using it has ever
survived the invocation long enough to enjoy the benefit.
The second, slightly less flashy use involves
resonance. Since all fruitcakes are
linked, it is possible to use them as a sort of metaphysical grid system. Therefore, Cherubim, Djinn, Lilim,
Mercurians and Ofanim may add +2 to their resonance rolls for every Essence
they spend, provided that they are in physical possession of at least one pound
of fruitcake and openly brandish it during their resonance use. It should be noted that unfavorable
Interventions while using a fruitcake in this way can be... unusually severe.
Lastly, the consumption of at least one pound of
fruitcake gives the eater a +3 to resist the Song of Possession (duration: 6
hours). Nobody knows why.