Pancia
Cherub Vassal of
Trade
Corporeal Forces: 4 Strength:
8 Agility:
8
Ethereal Forces: 4 Intelligence:
7 Precision: 9
Celestial Forces: 6 Will:
12 Perception: 12
Vessel: human male/4
Skills: Computer Operation/2, Detect Lies/3, Dodge/4,
Driving/2, Electronics/1, Emote/3, Fast-Talk/2, Fighting/4, Forgery/2, Language
(Battle/2, Spanish/3), Lying/4, Knowledge (American History/4, American Law/3,
American Politics/3, Human Psychology/1, Role-Maintenance/6, Site Security/2), Medicine/3,
Move Silently/6, Ranged Weapon (pistol/5, rifle/6), Scrounging/2, Small
Weapon/3 (Knife), Savoir-Faire/2, Survival (Arctic/2, Forest/2, Jungle/2,
Mountain/2, Urban/2), Tactics/3
Forgery (Precision) Default -2
In many ways,
this is the Artistry (Official Documents) skill. A successful roll (with the usual penalties
for inferior materials) will provide official-looking papers that will stand up
to a casual scrutiny. Actually having
those papers stand up to serious scrutiny requires a separate Computer
Operations roll (or a
This is a
field stripped and deliberately mutated variant of Angelic, enormously
simplified for human brains and tongues.
Scrounging (Perception) Default -0
This skill
handles the acquisition of supplies and materials through nonofficial channels:
the CD determines the degree of success - or, on a failure, the reaction
penalty from officials discovering the attempt.
Songs: Entropy (Ethereal/3), Healing (Corporeal/3),
Motion (Ethereal/3), Shields (Corporeal/3), Sleep (Corporeal/3)
Attunements: Cherub of Trade, Malakite of Trade,
Divine Contract, Variable Gravity Field, Vassal of Trade
Variable Gravity Field (the Wind / Stone / War / the
Sword / Divine Fire / Protection)
This Servitor
Attunement originated with the Wind, but certain other Archangels began
crafting their own versions, as well. It
was either that or watch their Servitors fall over themselves to do favors for
Janus.
Essentially,
the Attunement allows a person to treat gravity as a minor obstacle. The user may (at will) reduce his or her
weight, up to 1/10th of normal. This
will not allow actual flight, but someone with VGF can leap astounding
distances, walk on water, run up walls...
An Acrobatics
roll is needed to use this Attunement in combat: this will give a further +(CD)
to Dodge rolls but a -(CD/2) to damage done due to the lack of leverage. Prolonged use of VGF (over five minutes) will
also cause 2 points of Disturbance per further minute.
Role: "James K Polk" (Immortal President
and Legendary Assassin/6, Status/4)
Wheels within wheels within wheels, this one is -
although he isn't a Wheel himself.
Pancia would make that joke, though, if it occurred to him. The angel has a weakness for bad jokes.
Pancia enjoys a certain amount of renown: he is the most
recent celestial to have become an official head of state for a corporeal nation...
and, given the increased scrutiny that modern cultures inflict on politicians, he'll
probably hold that distinction for quite a while longer. He was, in fact, President Polk of the
The assassin thing just sort of happened,
though. Pancia had kept the vessel - no
real reason; he just never got around to trading it in - and about a decade
later he used it as part of a cleanup operation in
Pancia hardly needed to be told to take advantage of
his good fortune: a working Role is a working Role, and the sheer unlikelihood
of this one was actually good cover.
Neither side is usually this baroque, after all; deliberately trying to
set up such an absurd and difficult Role would be out of character for either
faction - which is why they usually don't.
But taking advantage of a lucky break is another story entirely, so the Cherub
stopped being one of Marc's political science technicians and started being one
of his direct action specialists.
Surprisingly, he's still at it today, and with the
same Role. The Symphony apparently
decided that it was not completely
outside the realm of possibility that the 'real' James Polk might have had a
high enough number of Forces to give him a shadow the extended lifespan that
Lilith apparently enjoyed; this is extremely low-probability, but Pancia is
absolutely meticulous about maintaining his Role, so perhaps it's just a matter
of metaphysical inertia. At any rate,
the Cherub is by now pretty good at killing bad people; his regular skills have
been enhanced by formal training at The School, and Pancia paid attention to
his lessons. As long as he's careful not
to go beyond the limits of his legend, he's fairly safe from Disturbance. His services are very much in demand, both by
those mundane organizations that can meet his (stringent) ethical standards and
his fellow angels.
Which may be a problem; the Cherub hardly minds
killing bad people, being an angel of the Lord and all that, but this wasn't
precisely the job that he was hired for originally. He was effectively a political science geek,
and it would be nice to get back to doing that.
He probably could without too many hassles - but the circumstances that
created his oh-so-useful Role were very, very
low-probability, and there's no assurance that Pancia could successfully
transfer it to somebody else. Everyone -
including the angel - agrees that losing the Role would be at least a minor
setback for Heaven, so Pancia has decided to grin and bear it for the moment.
He just wishes that he had known this was going to
happen before he set up the Role in the first place; he might have then picked
some less annoying behavior patterns for it.
Of course, after a couple of centuries, what behavior pattern isn't annoying?