Saint of War
Corporeal Forces: 3 Strength:
5 Agility: 7
Ethereal Forces: 3 Intelligence:
6 Precision: 6
Celestial Forces: 4 Will:
10 Perception:
6
Skills: Artistry/2 (poetry), Dodge/6, Driving/4, Emote/3, Fighting/4, Knowledge (History/3, Military History/6, Strategy/6), Languages (French/4, the usual plethora/3), Large Weapons (axe/4, saber/5), Ranged Weapons (revolver/4, rifle/4, tank gun/4), Riding/6 (horse), Savoir-Faire/3, Small Weapon/3 (Knife), Tactics/6
Songs: Battle (All/3), Shields (All/3), Tongues
(Ethereal/4, Celestial/3), War (All/4)
Attunements: Blessed, Proficiency (saber), All of
Michael's Servitor Attunements
Oh, like this is a surprise, or something.
I mean, he practically came out and admitted
it, the last time that he was on Earth.
Let's look at the evidence, shall we?
Pious, profane (often at the same time), open about his past lives,
absolutely fearless, anachronistic in his personal sense of honor, insanely
good at his chosen profession, an utter inability to suffer any kind of coward
or fool, openly in love with the very idea of honest warfare - gee, that sounds
really, really diagnostic. How Hell
missed this one for so long is a mystery: probably a combination of internecine
fighting and the logical enough belief that not even Michael would put someone this
obvious into play.
To be fair, Patton doesn't get to play on Earth
often - and he's gotten fewer chances to do so in the last few centuries. The fact that he got repeat tours of duty on
the corporeal plane in the first place was due primarily to the above skill set
and personality profile: Michael has long established that the Saint was, frankly,
too damn good to be kept on the shelf for too long. Unfortunately, there's that minor little problem with not
suffering fools gladly: while this is not necessarily considered to be a
problem by the Archangel of War (how could it be a problem? Michael's just the same way, after all), not
everybody agrees - and some of those disagreeing are quite powerful
indeed. Patton thus does not get out of
Heaven nearly as much as he'd like to.
So, why does he get out at all? Simple: Michael sometimes gets a funny
little feeling that something big that involves his Word will go down fairly
soon, and when that happens Michael absolutely hates not being able to
stack the deck beforehand. When that
happens, out go the Saints - and it's positively amazing how many of them 'grow
up' just in time to affect major battles, campaigns or wars. Check out Patton's World War II campaigns
for some stellar examples of what form that influence takes (and even more
stellar examples of what kind of trouble he routinely gets himself into
lately).
Since that campaign, Patton has stayed in Heaven: somebody's
got to help train Michael's armored divisions, after all. Every attempt of his to get into corporeal
combat again has been squelched, much to his extreme annoyance: as just one
example, during the Yom Kippur War the Saint had to be physically restrained
from 'requisitioning' a tank from the motor pool and driving it through the
closest Tether to Israel. He still
fumes about that. It's only recently
that Patton's even remotely settled down about the subject, and that's only
because Michael himself personally promised the Saint that he'll get at least one
more extended mission.
So, if celestials encounter him on Earth, it might
just be because the Archangel of War is certain this time that the Big One's
coming up...