St. Michael

''"Ah, my son. Always the unruly one. Did you think you could truly defy your fate? I chose you. I made you. Your fate is to ascend, and your mind is mine!" - St. Michael, addressing Samson in a dreamscape.''

"PEE IS IS STORED IN THE BALLS" - St. Michael, teaching his disciple St. Luke.

St. Michael was the High Priest of the Cult of the Immortal Womb, whose aim was to create new gods for the people of Elderain to worship as the old ones fell to the Godslayer. While his motives started out noble, he was a highly unstable individual, who conducted countless horrifying experiments to achieve his goal. He was eventually defeated by the player characters, imprisoned in an unreachable future by Samson's godly powers.

Backstory
By all accounts, Saint Andre Wolfric Michael was an anomaly since birth. Even as the midwife first looked upon his infantile face was his nature made apparent; his mouth, which should still barely be able to utter much beyond screams, muttered resonant chants in a language that felt ancient beyond recognition. It was to be a permanent trait of his that he could not stop mumbling these eldritch nonsenses, earning him the village title ‘Messiah’, as he spake the fabric of the universe in a tongue not even he himself could comprehend.

Throughout his childhood, he grew in mind many leaps and bounds faster than in body, memorizing holy texts before he could walk and leading sermons before striking puberty. He developed an incredible passion for theology and the divine; his knowledge was revered among the village, and he was taken under the wing of many a priest who graced the local churches. He grew passionate about Lathander, yearning for the care of such a loving god and his understanding church. The church quickly accepted him, and he soared to their highest ranks in the blink of an eye, finding solace in an unforgiving world for many years to come.

Some who heard his incredible sermons took his nickname literally, and began to secretly idolize his words, forming quasi-cults without his knowing that transcribed his every word. This was a defining aspect of his childhood, giving him a great deal of paranoia and distrust as he constantly looked over his shoulder to ensure no one was listening. While he had few friends before, this ensured he now had none.

It was not long before a number of these unwelcome followers made themselves known to Andre. Upon a solitary walk did the young teenager happen across four young men, falling to his knees and begging for his guidance. An unfair request, by all accounts - no mere child could bear this responsibility, but certainly none could refuse such earnest admiration. Ecstatic to follow their newfound master, the four men would spend many years by Andre's side, transcribing his dark utterances and passionately debating their ultimate meaning. Andre always hated this and harbored a resentment towards his Disciples forever after, demanding they keep out of his church as he vainly sang of Lathander's glory.

One day, the disciple Luke had a brilliant breakthrough, finally unraveling the meaning of the divine whispers Andre had carried on his lips for his whole life. It was a horrible day when Andre realized what Luke had learned. That these words were of a mighty being with no face, who had mumbled a horrible truth under his nose since the day he was born.

He laid awake at night, listening to his own tales of Nothing. Of death. Of the end of all things.

It is a true tragedy that such a paranoid child should succumb to such a terrible condition.

The Four Disciples coaxed Andre into action, asking what should be done about his horrible predictions. After many weeks of isolated panic and despair, a surge of inspiration would finally reach the now 20-year-old priest.

Perhaps what will be destroyed... can be rebuilt.

What will die can be reborn.

What will end can begin anew.

Andre emerged from meditation to his Disciples, all eagerly awaiting the Messiah's command. By his decree, the quest to build a new world began.

A Dying World
Andre would begin a passionate side project for the rest of his life, researching endlessly into how to salvage a destroyed world. A religious man at heart, the priest fixated on the death of gods as a central issue. What world could exist without a pantheon to rule it? To Andre, a world without its gods would be naught but ash. Thus, a fixation on resurrecting and creating gods began.

In secret, Andre came into contact with many powerful wizards, necromancers, scholars and somewhat malleable nobles, all of whom fell to the prodigious public speaker's gifts for persuasion. A complex network of collaborations between the greatest minds of Elderain began under the noses of every authority in the land. They called themselves 'Womb', as by their efforts would the universe be reborn.

The association was largely harmless for the first few decades of their existence, largely consisting of many hidden experiments and a great deal of theological research. Many members joined only for the thrill of the project or the vast funding available through the deep-pocketed nobles Andre had coerced to his side; the goals of Womb were splintered at best, some simply wishing to know if a god could be created, and others genuinely wanting one created for innumerable reasons. Members joined and left, but a few trusted confidants stayed forever.

It was perhaps unsurprising how the Disciples maintained a level of passion and ingenuity beyond almost any other member of the association - translating Andre's own tongue stood testament to a brilliance that few could hope to challenge. They and their master immersed themselves in the literature made available to Womb by many an elderly wizard, gaining an unsurpassed knowledge of the divine and ancient magics few even knew existed. It was in this time of research that Andre found true comradery with his students, and accepted that their ambitions were his own.

With such great research came great secrecy. Andre would quickly realize how furious the Church of Lathander would be should they have discovered he was unsatisfied with Lathander's love because of a baseless prophecy. Terrified to lose his home in religion, Andre chose to keep Womb hidden from the world, leading prayers across Elderain while writing encrypted letters detailing another godly blueprint. As his obsession grew worse, so did his paranoia that he would be discovered. Throughout all his obsessive research, only Lathander's love offered him peace of mind. To lose this would be to lose himself.

The Monk
This hectic and obsessive time was soon interrupted when the priest met an older man meditating by the riverside. The man was calm and kind, understanding Andre's somewhat alien mind with far greater ease than any had before and offering a compassionate warmth he was unused to. Andre’s knowledge captivated the man, and the man’s insight intrigued Andre, finding wise and introspective connections between holy verses that revealed a great deal about him to himself. Andre, excited to probe this man's wisdom further, asked for his name. Grandmaster Zhang and Andre became fast friends.

Andre became a regular visitor to the House of the Golden Dragon, obsessively poring over ancient religious texts and tailing Zhang with questions as the Grandmaster tended to his garden. Many a monk at the temple knew him by a first name basis; ask of Andre and you will be met with many a nostalgic chuckle, and light-hearted tales of a youthful scholar with curiosity in place of tact. Andre was considered a disciple of the temple in his own unusual way.

Of course, Andre, being the curious man he was and with the secret goals he had, would ask continuously about the Tattoo Scrolls Zhang had once made the fatal error of mentioning to him. Every day he was present, Andre would produce new reasons to read them, or questions about their contents. To every request, Zhang would smile and shake his head. Andre was not to read them. He was not ready.

Regardless, Zhang accepted Andre as an informal student and sought to give the deeply unsettled man the emotional peace he deserved. Zhang would often dismantle Andre’s rants about religion with an almost stupidly simple question about himself; a simple “How do you feel?” or “How was your day?” was enough to trip up Andre completely, leading to introspective discussions that revealed to Zhang how fearful Andre truly was. Andre often spoke of a primal fear he dared not elaborate upon further, a feeling as though something loomed nearby worthy of terror. Zhang took pity on Andre, and offered him his formal training at the Temple to resolve this sourceless trauma once and for all.

The First Heresy
It is unfortunate that this was not to last. As Andre ascended to a high-ranking position in the Church of Lathander, his reclusive behavior lead many in the Church to distrust him deeply. His church had become more and more layered and exclusive, religion having seeped its way into Womb and contaminating the minds of its members. Private sects and circles appeared in Andre's church, high-ranking Womb members meeting secretly after sermons and Sunday readings starting to include new apocalyptic prophecies. An escaped experiment of horrific nature was the final straw; appalled and enraged, the high priests of Lathander stripped Andre of his authority and denounced his beloved church as heretical.

Losing his last connection to normal life, Andre's research doomed him to absolute paranoia and distrust, believing all living beings were plotting his demise. The trees had eyes and followed his every move. Every basement housed horrible sacrifices. The mountains were temples to a plane-spanning demon. Even Zhang himself was an envoy of dark forces, sent to corrupt Andre’s mind with false musings and skew how he interpreted the holy texts he so deeply loved. As he grew more fearful, Womb grew more bold, encouraged by his terror and began to step far beyond the boundaries of ethics. Soon, Andre could handle the world no longer and locked himself in his basement, refusing to leave.

This was a poor time for Zhang to arrive, but fate is a fickle beast. The Grandmaster himself had been visited by visions of a faceless man, a demonic being who foretold of the Death of Everything, and had taken to a pilgrimage across Elderain to reconcile his now-lost inner peace. On his travels, he stopped by his old friend’s home, worried about how Andre had not visited the House in recent times.

Andre opened his door tentatively to the shaken monk. It took only a few minutes of conversation to realize Zhang’s vision foretold the same prophecy as Andre’s murmurs.

In the night, as Zhang slept in Andre’s house, Andre leapt upon his horse and raced to the Temple. He broke into the now ill-protected building and quickly found the Unnamed Scroll, a literary abomination detailing Zhang’s vision in its entirety. Andre was unprepared to read nor learn the horrendous writings the scroll had to offer him; a torrent of agonizing fear and revelation tore Andre’s mind asunder, bringing a transformation no mortal should endure. The youthful Andre died that night. In his place soon stood the self-anointed St. Michael, baptized in esoteric enlightenment. The prophet of the End Times.

Armed with his horrible new knowledge, St. Michael left the Temple with Zhang’s scroll and ran into the night, a vision imprinted deep into his mind.

Four children.

Four divine beings, to rise above all others.

They would be his Pantheon. And tall they would stand atop the ashes of the old world.

The Cult of the Immortal Womb
As he had been enlightened, so too were the Disciples of St. Michael upon reading the scroll themselves. What was once an eclectic research project now became truly religious, and the association was reborn as the Cult of the Immortal Womb.

While some left the Cult in fear of their newly enlightened master, many would join anew. For the Faceless Man that had visited Zhang’s own dreams had taken His cruel toll upon the people of Elderain, spawning cults of those poor souls driven insane by His image in repugnant nightmares. St. Michael’s own passion and charisma easily swayed a great number to his cause, forming an armada of members from his old Church paranoid their now-silent god is dead, mighty wizards lost to fear, and passionate conspiracy theorists living in the cracks of a collapsing civilization. The Cult was powerful, and their divine goal was in arm's reach.

The Cult set to work, retreating to a remote hideout and conducting a cavalcade of horrific experiments to achieve their goal. Resources were plentiful from mighty wizards and nobles drawn to the Cult, and the obsessive research of Womb had made available innumerable new magics and technologies.

Unfortunately, these were almost all doomed to fail. Time after time, a horrible monstrosity from another dud experiment would either be executed by the Cult’s mages or escape captivity, rushing into the wild and tearing apart hapless villages with thousands of hands before being killed by brave adventurers. Injecting gallons of divine blood into bloated human bodies, growing a million braindead children to worship an extracted and mindwiped soul, grafting ten thousand brains together and forcing the demented super-mind to recite artificial holy scripture - the Cult’s experiments knew no bounds in creativity nor depravity, yet all were bitter failures.

During this time, many prominent members of the Cult, including St. Michael himself, would later see themselves placed on the operating table, deciding to use themselves to conduct experiments in moments of absolute desperation. A number of mutations were destined to follow; all were soon barely human. St. Michael’s hair became tentacles, his skin pale and scarred, and his voice unnatural and resonant beyond that of a mere man. It was all in the name of progress.

It was not until after years of obsessive research, and a brief career as a hentai porn star, that St. Michael would be allowed a glimmer of success.

Ten thousand fetuses, grown in vats of fluids distilled from godly blood. The finest chosen and disassembled into a million tissues and organs, all inscribed with paragraphs of prophetic text and enchanted with mighty runes. Thirteen new divine organs, designed and harvested from specially grown flesh demons. A skeleton, bones carved from the ground of an unknowable elemental plane, engraved with miles of false biblical texts and imbued with magical programming that would oblige the growth of godly flesh. An immense and immortal soul harvested from the sacrifice of a hundred devotees, purified and transmuted by ancient arts from before magic. A body, reassembled. Celestial blood, imbued with the mighty soul. Veins, pumped full of life-blood.

A child, awakening.

It was this very method, and years of further ritual and augmentation, that would bring St. Michael the divine creations he coveted so deeply. This would see the creation of three beings, each specially crafted to fulfill a different domain of reality: time, space, and life. The three children were named Samson, Dante and Peter, and would fulfill St. Michael’s ultimate goal to create a new world safe from the horrible End of All Things he continued to mutter beyond his control.

Soon after, St. Michael would create a fourth to complete the pantheon. He would dub this new addition Nathalie, built in much the same fashion as the previous three, but improved upon by what St. Michael had learned from his prior attempts. For where Peter gave Life, this child would give Dreams, giving sentience where before there was mere bestial survival. This final creation completed the Four St. Michael needed to finish his mission.

Unfortunately, fate again reared its ugly head. Samson, Dante and Peter loathed and feared their creator, having been subjected to innumerable and horrendous rituals and experiments to bring them closer to godhood. St. Michael treated them coldly, viewing them more as works of craftsmanship than as people. His disciples were even more cruel, often abusive in their commands to the children and forcing them to engage in what can only be described as torture. The children had had enough, and one day managed to escape captivity, fleeing into a world their windowless home had never let them see. Henceforth began St. Michael’s undying mission to find and capture his perfect experiments - for them to not ascend to godhood would be nothing short of heresy.

Physical Profile
St. Michael appeared as a short, very elderly man, who seemed so weak he could be toppled with a feather. In part, this was due to the many experiments he had performed on his own body, but it was also testament to his paranoia; he was a great deal stronger than his physique would imply, a farce designed to fool headstrong assassins. Disciples have spoken of him tearing the heads off of treacherous members with only one hand. Whether this was merely rumor or not, his followers learned it unsafe to discount such unbelievable tales completely.

His hair had long gone, replaced with black tendrils constantly snaking around his head, seeming to smell the air with their tips. Long agonizing scars coated his face, falling in and out of endless wrinkly crevices on their paths. With naught but skin and bones, his eyes remained his only feature that seemed to carry life - innocent blue spheres had been long replaced with a piercing bright yellow, seeming to pry open your very soul and know everything about you.

A great number of deformities likely resided below the prophet’s simple black robes, as strange shapes seemed to form and vanish if one looked long enough. However, all that could be truly observed beneath were his unpleasant hands and pitiful limp. Scars had torn asunder the skin on his hands similarly to his face; however, a great deal of augmentation seemed to have taken place on these appendages in particular. Each possessed an extra sixth finger made of pure bone, and his knuckles were replaced with exposed purple gemstones of unknown arcane purpose. The intrigue only continued as has palms were revealed, having been carved with ancient holy passages that seemed to change each time they were observed. Again, their purpose could only be postulated.

Another oddity of St. Michael was his throat. If observed, one may have seen two Adam’s Apples atop each other, and black veins pumping arcane ichor into unnatural organs. This was the result of yet another experiment, an attempt to create a voicebox that may speak the ancient tongues of the Old Gods. His voice now seemed to resonate throughout rooms and shake the psyche of the ill-prepared, much like Samson or his other creations. Despite this, St. Michael’s voice remained raspy and venerable, though contrasted at times with his habit of mumbling in ancient tongues with a distinctly deep voice, as he had done since birth.

Closer to the time of his demise, a painful illness had grasped St. Michael’s unnatural body, a secret he has revealed only to his most trusted devotees. His energy had hence begun to dwindle; a small number of priests constantly followed him, giving him treatments and aid as though he was on life support. Now, tubes poked out of his wrists and entered his nostrils, pumping his black blood through some vile assortment of tubes and brass mechanisms which would let him live until his quest was complete.

Personality
St. Michael was the embodiment of obsessive paranoia. His mission was absolute, and all forces of the world conspired to stop him. He truly trusted no one, even seeing his disciples as mere pawns and his creations as tools to fulfill his chosen destiny.

To this end, St. Michael desired absolute control over all variables, believing anything unknown was an enemy. In the beginning, he would oversee every experiment conducted directly, micromanaging every detail he could. However, as his energy had failed, he had begun to allow his disciples to perform experiments in his stead, requiring them to report back all results immediately. He kept tabs on every individual member, resource and location; should someone fail in a task, he would know often before even those superiors responsible for dealing with it.

To St. Michael, knowledge was the greatest wealth, and its distribution was the greatest poverty. Secrecy abounded in the Cult, with teams conducting experiments not fully knowing the experiment’s purpose, or even the motives of their fellow disciples. Only the Disciples and St. Michael himself knew the full plans of the Cult at any given time, each devotee knowing only their personal mission and that their Master’s word was unquestioned. To this end, St. Michael had become somewhat of a cryptographer, encrypting many of his writings and plans in a variety of ludicrous ways. (His disciples, without his direct guidance, lost his sense of paranoia and failed to do this themselves.)

As his work continued, St. Michael found it prudent to learn the arts of manipulation. Years of practice both in Lathander’s church and his own gave him immense skill with speeches and mass sermons, able to seduce large crowds into zealous devotion and convince even the most moral of communities to hang their children in the name of a higher power. However, this charisma was mostly limited to the stage; one-on-one, St. Michael was cold and calculating, brutally objective and antisocial to the extreme. He refused conversation unless necessary, demanding information without tact and exploiting weaknesses openly to ensure your behavior was at least predictable. He cared little for people, and was mostly apathetic to both their joy and suffering. They were tools and nothing more.