Shalgiel
Impudite Knight of the Dead
Ethereal Forces: 4 Intelligence:
7 Precision: 9
Celestial Forces: 6 Will:
12 Perception: 12
Word-Forces: 6
Vessel/2 (small man, Charisma -1)
Skills: Dodge/3, Fighting/3, Knowledge
(Meteorology/6, Psychology/3), Survival (Forest/2, Mountains/2, Arctic/6)
Songs: Blood (Ethereal/3, Celestial/1), Entropy
(Ethereal/4), Form (Corporeal/3, Ethereal/3), Ice (Corporeal/2, Ethereal/2,
Celestial/6), Motion (All/3), Sleep (Ethereal/6), Shields (All/3), Storms
(All/6, Virtuoso), Tongues (Ethereal/6)
Attunements: Balseraph of Death (special: see
below), Calabite of Death, Impudite of Death, Zombi, Vampiric Kiss, Demon of
Snow
Demon of Snow: Shalgiel adds his Corporeal Forces to
the target number when singing any of the Songs of Storms. Also, replace the phrase 'kill a human with
their own bare hands' in Shalgiel's personal Balseraph of Death Attunement with
'kill a human with summoned snow and/or ice' when determining Disturbance.
Rites:
Kill someone with snow (useable twice per day).
There's at least one reason why it's such a tragedy
on how the mighty have fallen: they completely obscure the plight of the
not-so-mighty. That's Shalgiel's
opinion, and he does seem to have a point.
He once was doing pretty well for himself, you
see. Snow may have not been the biggest
Word in Hell, but it held its own.
There never were any issues about Shalgiel and his body count: he kept
racking up the corpses in a steady, reliable fashion. He killed humans through exposure, he killed them through lack of
food, he even killed them through cabin fever - Saminga always liked to see
those; it showed some artistry - and the Impudite never let it go to his
head. Snow had a certain reputation as
a serious and reliable player in the game of homicide, and Shalgiel was
determined to keep it that way.
Then those two new Princes had to show up and wreck
everything - the funny part is, neither really meant to. It was a completely unexpected (and mostly
unnoticed) side effect. That just makes it worse, somehow.
Vapula did the most obvious damage. Say what you like about the
Lightning/Technology struggle, it's done wonders for encouraging the talking
monkeys to fiddle with things. Things
like thermal underwear and canned goods and portable heaters and ski masks and
waterproof gloves and stoves that won't asphyxiate you and decent insulation
and you get the idea, right? Used to
be, if somebody knew a blizzard was coming - no, wait, nobody would know,
in those magical days before satellite forecasts - anyway, they'd be afraid,
for good reason. Nowadays, it's just an
excuse to call out of work. Hell, in
most of the Western world snow's considered to be fun. This is not good news to a Servitor of
Death.
But that's just the physical aspect. Nybbas is really starting to do equally bad
things to the psychological part, too.
Twenty billion television channels!
Broadband Internet access!
Mindless entertainment to keep your mind sedated until spring! Forget about your homicidal brooding while
you watch some porn! Don't kill
anything, because it'd interfere with your couch potato exercises! In other words, ignore snow unless it's on
the screen!
Is this any way to treat a hard worker who doesn't
make waves?
As you can tell, Shalgiel is - well, Servitors of
Death are not known for niceness but are known for histrionics, and he's
not going to explode either stereotype anytime soon. Snow still kills people every winter - but not even close to the
way it used to, and Saminga isn't the sort to accept excuses, no matter how
logical they are. The Impudite is also
well aware of the fact that he suddenly has enemies coming out of the woodwork:
there's no rational reason why, considering his history, but in Hell you don't need
reasons to stick the knife in. All in
all, Shalgiel needs to find a way to kill a lot of people via snowfall,
quickly.
What makes this so worrisome is that that parvenu Demon of Nuclear Winter is apparently in a similar sort of fix...