Rikbah
Mercurian of
Lightning
Corporeal Forces: 3 Strength:
4 Agility:
8
Ethereal Forces: 6 Intelligence:
12 Precision: 12
Celestial Forces: 5 Will:
10 Perception: 6
Vessel: male/3, +1 Charisma
Skills: Artistry/3 (Writing), Computer
Programming/1, Chemistry/1, Emote/6, Fast-Talk/6, Knowledge (Archeology/1,
Conspiracy Theory/3, Logic/3, New Age UFOlogy/3, Occultism/3, Pseudoscience/3),
Language (Ancient Egyptian/1, French/1, Greek/1, Latin/1, Portuguese/1, Russian/1,
Spanish/1), Lying/6, Savior-Faire/1
Songs: Healing (Corporeal/3), Motion (Celestial/3),
Tongues (Ethereal/3)
Attunements: Mercurian of Lightning, Seraph of
Light, Generator, Friend of the Illuminated
Rikbah is necessary.
You see, the problem is this. Basic Darwinistic evolutionary theory is both
sound and essentially correct, but in the In Nomine universe it isn’t strictly
True, is it, now? Maybe in a universe where the Creator was one
of those Newtonian Clockmakers, with servants to match - but that’s not this
universe. This is the universe where
supernatural creatures - of which Jean himself is one, although he rarely
refers to himself that way - have been generally mucking about with Earth’s
natural development since the start.
Nothing too outrageous... except for the
OK, so it’s been outrageous.
Still, Darwinism works... as long as you don’t look
too closely at it, which people have been doing lately. Link that up with both reliable record
keeping techniques and universal literacy and you get the potential for
unfortunate revelations. Unfortunate
revelations tend to get in the way of Lightning’s core mission of keeping humanity
from doing anything really stupid with their tools; therefore, it behooves Jean
to set up a countermeasure like Rikbah.
Like any good Jeanite tool - and Jeanites do not
consider the word ‘tool’ to be an insult - Rikbah serves several purposes at
once. His major purpose is to come up
with and popularize internally-consistent and imaginative, yet ultimately
non-provable and highly improbable, explanations for anomalies in the
historical, archeological and scientific record. Needless to say, these explanations will be just
as far from the actual truth as they are from the scientific paradigm favored
by Lightning; there’d be precious little point, otherwise. The idea is to leave the orthodox types with
no viable alternative to the current scientific consensus and guide the
unorthodox into thinking patterns that are unlikely to affect the War. Besides, there’s nothing like pseudoscience
to attract a Vapulan, and every Servitor of Lightning knows this. Granted, all of this is harsh or even cynical
in a certain light - but Jean’s organization is not known for sentimentality
and is known for practicality, so
that particular observation would not be deemed to be especially persuasive
anyway.
Needless to say, Rikbah is both well-trained and
well-motivated (he still has the job, after all). Perhaps a touch too well-motivated, really;
his Choir keeps him from being actually harsh towards humanity, but Servitors
of Lightning tend not to be that impressed with human intelligence, and this
particular Mercurian is no exception. He
sees nothing unusual or noteworthy about the fact that his job is essentially
to get people to believe in lies; after all, most angels have more or less the
same duty. He just has it spelled out
for him, that’s all. Jean will no doubt
relieve him of his present duties if this current low regard becomes more
universal (and thus, more of a warning sign), which probably means that Rikbah
is safe from Falling any time soon - but he’s not as unlikely a prospect as
some.