Traditional Haiku, Author – Raschagal

The wolf has cried out –

Does the pup dare to hunt yet?

Come then, boy, and learn.

The Response

Traditional Haiku, Author – The Voice

The Watchtower – Guardian of The Sleepers

In a hidden place somewhere on the corporeal plane, far from prying eyes, there is a place where the secrets to winning the final battle for humanity are kept, guarded by monks and priests devoted to their charge. Endlessly they pore over books of forgotten lore, hoping to find the keys to destroying the forces of oppression and evil. Stalwartly they toil on endlessly, praying that they will never be called upon to perform their sacred duty…

Somewhere else entirely, there’s the people of The Watch.

Many people still don’t quite understand what their problem is – there’s a war on, and Heaven is winning it. There’s no room for slackers, and every demon in Hell must give his or her all to pushing back the tide of The Host. There’s no room for people who won’t take the fight to the enemy in the Infernal ranks.

The Watch couldn’t agree more on that point. They just have slightly different priorities.

Ever since the fall, there have always been those who had the idea that Heaven really wasn’t the real problem – that it was the forces of Leviathan that were the true threat. For centuries, people who felt this way were obliged, and immediately sent to the border guard, where they enjoyed a very fulfilling, if very short career fighting them. The problem was one of organization, really – when dealing with the Outsiders, one person with a vision is a corpse, two are a group of corpses, but ten or so actually have a chance of being effective. With no way to coordinate attacks, it was hard to guarantee that you had accurate intelligence, much less a force that stood a chance of doing anything but die.

Then the rules of the game changed. Or, more precisely, someone from the Game changed the rules. One of Asmodeus’s investigators, an Impudite by the name of Raschagal, began to realize during the latter part of the 19^th century that the Outsiders just had to have weaknesses that could be exploited. If those could be identified, then the fight could be taken to their home ground, and territory could be taken back for the first time since the defection of Astaroth. Believing that the established military and intelligence communities would quietly dismiss his work and go back to doing business as usual, he began to quietly contact others that had fought against the Outsiders, interviewing them about their experiences. Noticing that there were certain patterns in their methods and the manners in which they were defeated, he started to track down those beasts that he could find and started testing his theories – with surprising results.

Rather than being smacked down, Raschagal caught the eye of Asmodeus, and was promoted to the position of Lead Investigator, and was set to the task that he had already begun – to find the weaknesses of the Outsiders and find possible ways to increase the combat efficiency of the Horde. Two things were becoming immediately clear to the Prince of The Game – first, that the Impudite, while being remarkably gentle with humans, to the point of pandering to them in some case, he showed a remarkable amount of ferocity when dealing with Celestial opponents. Second was that, while Raschagal seemed to have a… unique talent for finding people who typically despised the Game, and bringing them into his operations, usually to great success. While this disturbed Asmodeus a bit, what would happen next would disturb him much worse…

It came to the attention of the Council of Princes that there was a possibility that one of the Outsider princes had left the company of her allies, and was considering defection to the side of Hell. After much debate, it was decided that someone should go to negotiate with her. The question was – who to send? Many of the more diplomatic of the Horde could not be trusted with an operation of this magnitude. Moreover, the odds of this being a trap were well too high for one of the Princes to conduct this operation. Realizing that he had someone who was well versed in the Outsider methodologies and mentality, and who had a talent for, well… pulling off missions that even Asmodeus had concluded were impossible, the Prince of the Game suggested Raschagal be appointed as Hell’s official ambassador. No other nominations were put forward.

Now, when Asmodeus assigned Raschagal to this assignment, he had expected that Raschagal might not come back with all his forces intact. He had expected that Raschagal might actually return with a tentative agreement to meet for future negotiations. He had ever considered the possibility that he just might bring this Superior back with him to finalize negotiations… what he did not expect was for Raschagal to come back with more forces, a non-aggression pact between Hell and an Outsider prince, and a seemingly worthless word – The Watch - that had not been assigned to him by Lucifer. Curious as to where this would go, he decided not to remove Raschagal from existence and instead assigned him to his original duties fighting and identifying Outsiders. Right away, Asmodeus found that his noteworthy levels of aggression for Outsiders had intensified greatly, as had his abilities at detecting them. And that Raschagal, for some reason, felt… odd.

Rise of The Aralim

After a while, Asmodeus realized that something was wrong here. Raschagal was good, very good, but his results were simply too good to be true. After observing him on the corporeal plane during an operation, Asmodeus came to the conclusion that he wanted to call Raschagal down to Hell for a direct audience, away from prying eyes, so that he could get an answer as to how he was doing it.

When Raschagal came to Asmodeus, he came to the audience chamber wearing a cloak and with the cowl over his head. Initially, he thought little of it, although it was somewhat odd for him, and it also was an implied insult to not remove the hood during an audience. Then it struck him – Raschagal did not have a black halo – in fact, he didn’t have a halo at all. Struck by this, he ordered him to remove the cloak, and was astonished by what he saw. Standing in place of the once brash Impudite was a celestial with silver eyes, talons, silver feathered wings… no, silver blades in place of feathers. And he had a striking resemblance to what he knew to be impossible – a Malakite.

After much confusion and interrogation, Raschagal was found to have transmuted into a new band of Celestials, which he had no name for, as he was the only one that he knew of. It was soon discovered that his Resonance had shifted as well, now giving him the ability to actually see the corruption of the Outsiders, as well as an apparent immunity to it. Raschagal claimed that he could not say how his transformation had occurred, but that once he realized that he had this ability, he realized that he could really start taking the fight to the Outsiders like he’d always wanted to. Asmodeus, silently leaping with glee over the prospect of a new Band that was his quietly began slipping Raschagal into diplomatic and high level functions, using powerful wards to mask his true Celestial form. After verifying that his upper echelon people were free from corruption, Raschagal was set to destroying all the tainted celestials and humans he could find.

One day, however, Asmodeus decided to find Raschagal, and went to grab his heart to locate him, only to find that he could not locate it. In a near panic, he contacted Raschagal through a Celestial Tongues, only to find out that Raschagal was unaware of his Heart’s disappearance and was quite disturbed by its loss. After verifying the validity of his statements and confirming his loyalty, he attempted to recreate Raschagal’s Heart – and failed. After several attempts, Asmodeus assigned a Djinn to attune to him and keep an eye on him, and released him back to his duties. Raschagal, however, was not content to simply wait for Asmodeus to find his heart. Knowing that he had an extra vessel waiting for him, he committed suicide, and recoiled to his Heart. That was the idea, anyway – where he found himself was in a huge Cathedral buried underneath tons of ice. Uncertain of how this had happened, he began to explore the Cathedral, spending several days looking for his Heart. Finally, he came across a room with a large chair in it, with his sigil embossed into the floor. Above each of the doors entering this room was a sigil, the likes of which no one had ever seen before.

After a few moments, he began hearing footsteps echoing through the frigid air of the Cathedral. After steeling himself for what would probably be a slow and painful death at the hands of the owner of this place, he shouted out a challenge to whoever was coming. Rather than it being an Outsider as he had expected, he found himself facing Damon, Prince of The Wyrd - one of the less well-known Superiors, but one who had eluded Asmodeus's attempts to infiltrate his organization for centuries. According to Damon, there was a new faction in Hell that was forming - one that was still loyal to the Morningstar, but that shared Raschagal's priorities regarding the Outsiders. Damon was only one of a number of people who felt that way, only one of a number who had quietly been watching Raschagal's progress against the invaders. Now... Raschagal had a choice to make - in several hours time, he would be invested as a Prince. Did he want to stick with the Status Quo and fight a war against the Host which would benefit no one but the Outsiders, or did he want to side with those who really wanted to show everyone what a real fight was?

He hasn’t looked back since. There’s a war to win.