Corporeal Forces: 5 Strength: 10 Agility: 10

Ethereal Forces: 3 Intelligence: 6 Precision: 6

Celestial Forces: 4 Will: 8 Perception: 8

Word Forces: 3

Vessel: human male/3

Skills: Dodge/3, Emote/1, Fighting/2, Large Weapon (long sword/4, Battle-Axe/2), Language/3 (Latin), Small Weapon (club/2, dagger/2, hatchet/2), Savoir-Faire/1, Seduction/1, Tactics/3, Throwing/2

Songs: Essence (All/3), Healing (Corporeal/3), Might (Corporeal/3), Shields (Corporeal/3, Celestial/2)

Attunements: Impudite of the War, Balseraph of the War, Art of Combat, Knight of the Black Order, Demon of Gladiators

Demon of Gladiators: once upon a time, Gaius could draw Essence directly from a watching crowd to power his abilities and Songs. These days, he's lucky to get a point of Essence by encouraging someone to read or watch something about gladiators: the more romanticized, the better.

You never know how good you had it, until you don't have it anymore.

Gaius got his start during the end of the Roman Republic, and loved it all: the crowds, the fighting, the blood. For three centuries, he lived the life of a successful gladiator. Actually, he lived the lives of several successful gladiators. He can still remember the heady feeling of Charming an entire crowd and literally bathing in their Essence as he messily dispatched some human. And then there were the feasts, and the assignations, and all that lovely Essence just begging to be Taken. Taken? The mobs would have given it to him freely, if they understood what Essence was, and how it allowed him to perform his acts of stunningly artistic violence.

And then there were the servants, both mortal and celestial, that flocked about Gaius to batten on the crusts that he couldn't finish. They would do anything for, to and with him, just so they could feast. It was truly a Golden Age: a centuries-old party that never seemed to run out of wine, blood and Essence.

Then those interfering bastards Uriel, Laurence and Dominic had to go and upset the apple cart.

Gaius can even pinpoint the exact moment when it all started to go wrong. He was in the arena, back at the end of the 4^th Century AD, when a smelly, fanatical human disrupted the fighting. This fool kept prating about how the Emperor had banned gladiatorial games over half a century ago. Well, of course he had: so what? Laws were no match for the excitement and pomp that could only be found in the arena where man met man and sought to slay one another. Gaius should have let the mortal go away, but he was so used to his unchecked power that any he took any attack on the games personally. He decided to take the dissonance and slay the prattling idiot.

How was he supposed to know that said prattling idiot was a Soldier of Judgement? Didn't Heaven teach their servants to wash?

Dominic gained a martyr for Catholic mythology from the incident … and the lever to close down the games in Rome. Gaius fought back for as long as he could, but eventually the games disappeared with the Western Empire and the Eastern Empire lost its taste for overt blood sports. This loss diminished Gaius as well: there were times when he was certain that his days were numbered.

The next millenium were harsh, harsh days for him: no matter how much he tried to promote blood sports, there was always some grinning celestial (usually Christian) there to foil him. He pushed for private combats between knights: they degenerated into tournaments and rationales for the tepid concepts of courtly love. He encouraged bare-knuckle fighting: that thrice-damned Marquis of Queensbury came up with his ridiculous rules. He helped foster a dozen martial arts in the West and the East: no sooner would one spring up then someone would hijack it and graft on unnatural philosophical principles and insipid moral restrictions. His violent encounters with his oppressors usually ended with him in extended Trauma. Why Baal let him continue to survive is a mystery: possibly the Prince of the War was as nostalgic as Gaius is for the Good Old Days.

These days, Gaius hangs around Gehenna, an instructor and general advisor. It's better than nothing, but he still dreams about the arena, and would do almost anything to get back that glory once again. Recently, he had a revelation along those lines. The Prince of the Media is always desperate for new, exciting forms of eye-candy, and what could be more riveting than the sight of two men (or women, or one of each) facing each other on the sands and cutting each other to ribbons? Granted, it would be illegal in most "civilized" countries, but that's never stopped Nybbas before. Gaius could even live with using modern weaponry, or mounting guns on vehicles, just so long as the idea remained pure.

Ironically, all of this would be right up Nybbas' alley. Unfortunately, he's not about to start up a new diversion that would directly benefit a Word under a hostile Prince, and Baal absolutely refuses to allow Gaius to break his contract. The thought of what happens to traitors has kept the Demon of Gladiators from just running away and seeking refuge with the Prince of the Media: Gaius also suspects that, under Nybbas, his Word would soon be cheapened and stripped of all majesty. It's not really a viable long-term option.

But still, to stand on the sand again and drink in the humans' roar as they watch murder, and cheer, and love the murderer with all their hearts.

To stand there again just once.