Meon, Desecration's Regal

Today I cleaned the shield of Nuri, a brash and noble Power, who found his own answer to the Windflower Law. Cutting forth his atman, he bound it into a shield, decorated with his love’s Design, as a gift for her. His body would forget her; his Estate would forget her; but he would be with her always. It hangs in Meon’s halls in Locus Entropy. I do not believe his Ramona ever learned of its existence. Such are the ways of life and love.

—from the Thought-Record of Martin Cravitt 

“My lord,” the Dominus said, “I have done no wrong. Driven no one mad. I was not present at the scene. I used no power.” 

Lord Entropy’s eyes narrowed. Two fngers moved slightly, against the stone. Meon lifted his eyes from Lord Entropy’s hand. “The Locust Court grants,” he said, “that it was not you but the portrait that broke the crowd; and in some sense the artist, who captured too truthfully your inner self.” He glanced back at Lord Entropy, but the fngers were silent. After a moment, Meon continued, 

“The Court recognizes the salience of your point. It should comfort you to know that the portrait and artist shall both share your fate.”

—from the Thought-Record of Hugh Rosewood

“Do you love me?” I asked, when our time was done.

Diamanta leaned her head back to look at me. “Is that why you think I come to you?” 

“Why do you, then?”  

She looked down. “I committed a sin I cannot bear,” she said. “Tis is my expia tion.”

—from the Tought-Record of Desecration’s-Regal Meon

Lord Entropy has many servants. He has three extremely competent Powers — Meon, who is the Power of Desecration; Baalhermon, Power of Destruction; and Joktan, Power of Scorn

Meon cannot possibly be as bad as people say, because if he was, then there would be nothing left for virtue in this world. There wouldn’t be any point in anything, in even trying, if Meon were as bad as people say. 

And I’ve never noted him explicitly as doing harm. I’ve never seen it, never heard of it, never obtained an authoritative documentary reference to any cruel and monstrous thing that he has done. He doesn’t even have his own wing of the palace; he isn’t part of the government of the evil world. He’s just there. 

But I’ve seen him. I’ve seen a photograph of him. I’ve seen his smile. So I know why people say what they say. I’ve seen his smile. He keeps all the worst things in the world in that smile, behind that smile, like he’s holding them all back. Like he’s holding back all the worst things that could ever happen, all the time.

Sometimes it seems that the thing Meon holds back behind his smile —the thing he is struggling so desperately to keep inside him, to keep from leaking out into the world — is the realization of Lord Entropy’s dreams and desires. Sometimes it seems he is not so much Lord Entropy’s Power as his jailor. When it most seems like that is so, Meon has unpleasant days in turn.

He could be that thing which makes things discordant with themselves and the entire world, the thing that rips and ruins, the thing that is the worst face of every monster in the world. He could be that. He maybe even might be that. But for right now, he holds it back. He holds it back, so maybe he’s fghting it. Maybe on some level he’s trying to do good. But I don’t think that’s why. 

Meon is the god of defilement; he is the Power of Desecration. 

And it seems to me that he is leashing himself because it is more pleasant to him that people desecrate themselves, and one another, and their own holy things. It seems to me that he is choosing not to be so very great an evil as he ought to be, as he could be, as people say he is, because he loves how very wicked people are, even without Meon. 

–Jenna Katerina Moran, “Nobilis — A Field Guide to Powers”

Estate of Desecration

-Desecration profanes the sacred
-Desecration seeks to despoil the beautiful
-Desecration is monstrous in the sight of God
-Desecration delights the wicked

Domain Miracles of Desecration

1. Summon an irritating imp. Crumple a religious symbol, ruin a religious book, damage the beauty of an attractive person (Surface wound)
2. Sense a religious or beautiful place or thing (awaiting for desecration). Sense virginity. Determine if something has been desecrated in the past.
3. Make a desecration especially appalling. Make your desecration lasting, so that it takes years to clean up. Make an act of desecration so deep that it becomes a thing sacred to Hell.
4. Drive away or wound angels (Divine wound). Instantly despoil a church, a woman, a work of art. Create an unholy monster from nothing.
5. Remove an act of desecration, restoring the sacredness of something. Restore someone’s virginity. Destroy an unholy monster (Divine wound). Restore ruined beauty. Help someone find redemption in the sight of God. In desecrating something, understand something more deeply about it. Know if a site will be desecrated in the future and under what circumstances. Use an act of desecration as a ritual to tell the future.
6. Make a desecration so deep that the site/person will never return to a state of grace. Shift a desecration through time or space (Shift the desecration of a nun to the desecration of a gang’s precious hide-out). Change how people will interact with a particular form of desecration and what it means to them (It’s till monstrous, but it may change why they find it monstrous, or what they do about it).
7. Force an angel to fall. Wound a piece of heaven. Summon a devil. Desecrate an ideal or a movement (change a pure, pristine love someone has for another into something monstrous in the eyes of God).
8. Restore a piece of hell to a state of grace. Help a devil become an angel again. Restore Chernobyl to a pristine and sacred state.
9. Change the course or actions of a monster. Determine how an act of desecration will change the entire world (making an act of desecration a ritual that has profound, almost cosmic power).

Persona Miracles of Desecration

1. Give someone fangs or claws or a wicked smile. Urge a pervert to indulge in a monstrous action with an innocent. Make someone problematic in church. Make someone a little appealing to wicked people
2. Be present at any act of Desecration.
3. Make yourself an unholy monster. Make yourself very appealing to wicked people. Make yourself something that wounds or damages sacred things.
4. Turn someone else into a full-blown unholy monster (a devil, a vampire, etc). Make someone very appealing to the wicked. Make someone a walking sin that damages the profane just by standing close to it (“A desecration wound”)
5. Remove the appeal something has to the wicked. Make something appealing in the sight of god. Make someone a protector of the beautiful, or a person or an act no longer able to harm the sacred.
6. Enchant someone so that acts of desecration brings them enlightenment or power. Become a towering hell-beast. Become a celebrity/messiah to every wicked man or monster on Earth, angelic and breathtaking in their sight.
7. Turn someone else into a towering hell-beast. Make someone else a celebrity messiah to all the wicked men of the earth. Change the meanint of an act so that doing or thinking it (“Do not bring a rubik’s cube into this sacred space!”) will forever ruin a place.
8. Make sure that an act or thing is never capable of profaning something again. Turn a devil into an angel (No longer monstrous in the sight of god).
9. Make an act of desecration something that gives people wondrous or divine powers.

The Camorra of Vancouver

Negotiate a Deal

0 or less: Walk away with something you didn’t want and a huge debt to the Camorra. Good job!
2: You negotiate a deal and you get something useful, but you’re not sure if it’s precisely what you wanted.
3: Maybe you didn’t get what you wanted, but the Camorra always like a sucker. You’ve made friends with them! Good job?
4: You negotiate a deal and get what you wanted, but it comes at a cost.
6: Your streetwise impresses the Camorra. They look forward to working with you again.
7: You negotiate a deal and get what you wanted, and you manage to outwit the Camorra enough that your payment seems minimal.

Troubles, Tools and Bonds

• The House Always Wins (Trouble -3): You must face this trouble if you attempt to out-negotiate the Camorra and gain some kind of benefit without any real payment. The Camorraalways wins in the end. This has the backing of Lord Entropy’s power, so the -3 also acts as an Auctoritas against miracles to get something form the Camorra for free.
• Anything for a Price (Tool +2): If you are willing to pay the Camorra’s price, they can definitely improve your chances of finding anything illegal or illicit to help any mundane effort you might have. They have girls, they have boys, they have blue-skinned space-princesses; they have guns, they have explosives, they have ritual blades; they have booze, they have drugs, they have doorways to lost dimensions. If you want it, if its forbidden, someone can work it out for you. The bonus doesn’t apply to negotiation, but to any other mundane effort

The Pop Opera

The Pop Opera is an up-scale nightclub in Vancouver that serves only the most exclusive clientele: the Nobilis of Vancouver. It also serves as the prime front of the Camorra, serving as the office of Coyote Jackson.

Properties of the Pop Opera

• Take it Outside (Auctoritas 2): Coyote Jackson took special precautions with the design of the Pop Opera, due to the unique needs of his preferred clientele: A circle of protection underpins its sacred architecture which acts as an Auctoritas of 2 on all miracles performed within, or against, the Pop Opera. This lingers on Camorra agents outside of the Pop Opera, provided they work for Coyote Jackson, but it diminishes to an Auctoritas of 1
• Private Entrance: Any Vancouver-connected Chancel can, for a nominal fee, connect up to the Pop Opera, so that Nobilis can simply enter and exit from their chancel at will.
• Coyote Jackson’s Chancel: The Pop Opera is a sort of psuedo-chancel, in which Coyote Jackson can create minor miracles, as though he were in a chancel.

Description Snippets

• The flash of dance-strobes that trap human silhouettes in the very moment of dancing. Blacklight suffuses everything with the unearthly glow so common to earthly clubs, but viewed from the Border Mythic, the human dancers blur together into a flowing painting of motion, casting uncertainty on their reality. An illusion for outsiders?
• The dim pulse of throbbing dance music on a lower floor that doesn’t quite reach the shadow-veiled cubicle, which offers just enough peace to allow an intimate conversation between two Powers who want to escape both the messy world of mortals and the abstract world of Gods.
• Shelves and shelves of high-class alcohol, from Japanese whiskey blends to import vodka to bottles of ruby port, all back-lit to give them an otherworldly glow. Of course, if you ask the smiling, warm-eyed bartender nicely, he might show you some of the stuff in that locked cabinet.
• Flashing advertisements offering gambling services and featuring scantily clad women that have mysterious glyphs flashing just behind the English text, typically offering subtle and legally questionable services from alien immigrants who have fallen in with the Camorra.

Coyote Jackson, Camorra Boss

Coyote Jackson owns the Pop Opera, a night club that serves only the most exclusive clientele of Vancouver: the Nobilis themselves. He also runs the Camorra in Vancouver and gets a cut of every favor, tithe or offering the Powers make to the Camorra in Vancouver.
He also knows everyone’s dirty secrets, because of who he is. Coyote sold his soul to Lord Entropy, and everything before that time has been expunged from history. He is a man with no past, with his nature shrouded in the obscuring taint of Lord Entropy’s touch. Nonetheless, rumors swirl the man:

• That he is a literal coyote given human form
• That he used to be a power, or something miraculous, who lost a bet and was soul-bound to Entropy
• That he was the sixth of the Jackson Six until Lord Entropy rewrote time, making it the Jackson five and driving his most beloved brother, the angelic Michael, crazy in the process.
• That he is Balthazar, one of the witnesses to the birth of Christ, who grew disenchanted after seeing the death of a God 30 years later, and used his magic to contact the God of This World, Lord Entropy
• That he is the secret twin of Haile Selassie, the divine King of Ethiopia and descendant of Solomon and the Djinn: Haile gained the divine heritage of the bloodline, while Coyote gained the damned heritage of the bloodline.
• He’s actually Lord Entropy in a suit, trying to hide who he actually is just so he can spy on the Powers of Vancouver

Coyote is the most powerful member of the Camorra in Vancouver. Whatever Entropy did to his soul, he has the ability to wield borrowed miraculous power, and one of the most common prices of his service are a single use of your estate. His primary service to powers, though, is information. He knows many of the secrets of the Powers of Vancouver, and he’s usually willing to trade, for another secret.

Traits and Gifts

Domain (Things of the Pop Opera) 0

Miracle Points: 3 DMP

Gifts: Mysterious, Elusive, Keen Sight

• Borrowed Power: Coyote Jackson can spend 1 DMP to make a single use of one lesser miracle of any estate that has been given to him by another power. You can think of this as a collection of lesser gifts that all cost 1 DMP.

Passions and Skills

Passion: “Nothing is for free” 2
Passion: “Nobody is innocent” 2
Skill: Investigation 3
Skill: Organizing Crime 4
Skill: Connoisseur 2
Cool 1

Bonds and Afflictions

Bond: I am soul-bound to Lord Entropy 5
Bond: I will find your dirty secrets 2
Bond: I am the Master of the Pop Opera 1
Bond: I rule Vancouver’s Camorra 1

Jack Whitechapel, Camorra Hitman

Jack saw boarding school as his opportunity to escape his dangerously eccentric family. There, he had his first brush with the divine in the form of Abigail Ng. She was not yet the semi-divine, but her destiny dazzled Jack, drew him into her web of fascination. When she suddenly left, he felt like the bottom of his world dropped out, and suddenly, Jack began to better understand the ways of his family. He sought that connection he’d felt, that spark of the divine that Abigail had left in his life, in dark alleys, strange books and in his heritage of madness. In a moment of enlightenment he shed the false world of the Real for the truth of the Evil World, transcending mortal morality and selling his soul to Lord Entropy. Like his precious Abigail, he too had become divine, after a fashion.

When he heard Abigail had gone to Vancouver, he was quick to follow her tracks, though he didn’t let her know of his presence, just kept a few photos of their school-day encounters, plus a new photos of her taken without her knowledge. There, he put himself in the service of Coyote, where he acts as his lieutenant, often negotiating in his boss’s stead, and their chief hitman, thanks to his ability to kill anything.

Traits and Gifts

Aspect (Pulp Hero) 2

Miracle Points: 3 AMP

Gifts: Durant

• Psycho Killer: This aspect 5 gift allows Jack to use the “Serial Killer” skill as though he had aspect five for the cost of 1 AMP.

Passions and Skills

Passion: “If you’re going to do something, at least be classy about it” 3
Passion: “Madness is just a different way of looking at the world” 1
Superior Quality: Serial Killer Charm 2
Skill: Murder 5
Cool 2
Shine 2

Bonds and Afflictions

Bond: I am soul-bound to Lord Entropy 5
Bond: If it bleeds, I can kill it 3
Bond: I fear my sister, Emma Elizabeth Whitechapel 1
Bond: I am a psycho serial killer 2

Stubbleworth, Camorra Fixer

Not every immigrant is caught up in the criminal underworld of the Vancouver Spirit World… but a shocking number do. Stubbleworth didn’t intend to start working for the Camorra, but when Coyote sought someone to keep his books, he found the gnome’s mastery of money to be exactly what he needed. At first, Stubbleworth turned a blind eye to his master’s true agenda, but he soon found himself caught up in Lord Entropy’s sinister web. As his sins spun out of control, he found himself exiled and reviled by his community, but at Budd’s insistence and with Coyote’s help, he began to pour his earnings and favors back into his community and regained their trust with his ill-gotten goods.

Stubbleworth has not just a knack for accounting, but also for finding or selling anything. He uses his connections with Budd to fence really strange goods to unusual worlds, meaning that the Vancouver Camorra can accept almost anything as payment and turn a profit on it.

Passions and Skills

Passion: “Bad things happen to good people” 1
Skill: Accounting 4
Skill: Fencing 3

Bonds and Afflictions

Bond: I am trapped in the Camorra 2
Bond: I can sell anything illegal 2
Bond: I can buy anything illegal 2
Affliction: Gnoooome 2

Sato Arisu, Camorra Hostess

The Windflower Law prevents the Nobilis from loving, but the Camorra allow one to circumvent laws. Thus, Jack came up with the ingenious idea of presenting an option to the Nobilis of safe, legal love for rent. After ensuring that his idea was as legal as he hoped (Meon heartily approved of the idea and assured Jude that it greatly advanced Lord Entropy’s interests), he commissioned a mannequin from Belphegor’s reincarnation engine and ensured that she was perfectly beautiful, innocent and loving. The result was Miss Sato Arisu.

Arisu generally works as a bartender or maid at the Pop Opera when she’s not busy tending to the romantic needs of Powers. Coyote also encourages Jack to mistreat Arisu in full view of Powers. Their righteous indignation usually only furthers their obsession with Arisu which, in turn, fuels Camorra profits.

Passions and Skills

Passion: “Sometimes, you need a woman’s touch” +2
Passion: “I want to be free” -1
Superior Quality: Waifu +1
Superior Quality: Mannequin Strength +2
Superior Quality: Mannequin Beauty +2
Skill: Hostess +1

Bonds and Afflictions

Bond: My love is for rent 3
Bond: I am innocent 1
Affliction: I am soul bound to the Camorra 5
Affliction: I seem human 1
Affliction: I’m not actually human 1