Race: Non-corporeal Entity (Appears Human)
Sex: Male
Real Name: Reginald
Nickname: Father Reggie, Brother Reginald, Reverend
Birth Date and Location: 2nd February 1077 - Spain
Position: N/A
Group Affiliation N/A
DESCRIPTION:
Reginald has become to a large extent a non-corporeal entity, who must ‘manifest’ as a physical entity in order to interact with the world. His nearest natural state has a white ‘mist’ appearance, which is really a collection of energy. His ‘manifested’ form is of a middle-aged man.
(Reginald is played by Jack Nicholson)
BACKGROUND:
Born in Spain in 1077, Reginald was the son of a powerful witch who moved there to avoid being hunted by Sindell and the Watchers, as well as the witch hunters. Raised with an education in magic, he initially followed in his mother’s footsteps, practising magic known then as the ‘black arts.’ More destructive spells, used for his own benefit.
At age 17, he committed one of his earlier atrocities, human sacrifice. The spell went awry, however, alerting the Church to his presence in Spain. His mother determined that the time had come to establish themselves as a power in the area, despite the fact that church hunters would now be coming. The pair ruled a small town as virtual dictators for three years, before the fight came.
Abbott Graves, from a nearby monastery, was a former practitioner who had converted after a religious experience. He became regarded as one of the Church’s foremost experts on the Black Arts, and in dealing with problem cases such as these. The Abbott, at this point a simple Friar, was dispatched to deal with the problem. Reginald met him in the town, and struck up an odd relationship with the Friar – believing Graves of no consequence to them, he saw no reason to eliminate the ‘meddlesome monk’ as he called him.
On May 1st of 1097, the confrontation finally occurred. Friar Graves arrived in person, armed only with his cross, to demand the pair make penance for their sins, ask the forgiveness of God, and swear fealty to the Church. They naturally refused to do this. Friar Graves left them alone, and they thought they had won. He went off to pray for strength and guidance, then returned the next day to confront them a second time. This time he warned that it was their ‘last chance for redemption.’ Reginald’s mother immediately attacked the Friar, beginning a battle of magic with him.
Reginald was stunned at the Friar’s command of occult forces he thought only those outside of the Church could have. His mother was almost victorious, and Friar Graves called out to God for forgiveness of his sins and to forgive the pair. Something about the holy man’s faith moved Reginald to turn on his mother at the last moment, turning his power on her. The shock and surprise, followed by joining with the Friar, enabled them to overcome her power. Filled now with remorse at his past actions, Reginald converted on the spot, and expressed a desire to join Graves’ Order. His conversion having been accepted, the next 20 years of his life were spent trying to do good deeds, studying scripture, and practicing mysticism to get closer to God. He accompanied Graves on two more missions before Graves became an Abbott.
In 1110 while meditating, Reginald had an extreme religious experience, in which he momentarily lost the sense of self and came into contact fully with the spiritual realm. He spent the next 7 years studying his magic again in secret, trying to find a way to more permanently come into contact with this higher realm again, to return to God.
It was the night of a full moon in 1117 when the new Friar put the ritual into action he had planned. The transformation was successful: Reginald lost his physical body, became one with the spiritual realm, before being tossed back to Earth, his soul not having developed enough in this life to be ready for it. The tossing back was imperfect: Reginald remained, to a large extent, non-corporeal, his mind snapping from the experience. Reginald came to believe almost immediately that he had ‘evolved’ into a higher spiritual being, the time at last come to lead the world to ‘enlightenment.’ His mission was to ‘bring them back to the world-soul’ whether they wanted to or not, by ‘evolving’ the world beyond its physical existence. On the same night, Abbott Graves arrived on scene to oppose him. The Abbott now opposed the man who had saved his life so earlier, sacrificing his life to contain Reginald within his cross. The cross had been handed down through the centuries, given to the leader of the Original order at first, then to trusted priests through the centuries.
Over time, the memories of Reginald and his insanity faded; the ‘demon’ imprisoned in the cross forgotten. A Priest in 2000, the owner of the cross, passed it on to a new convert – a student in the UCLA history department. The mystical energy released by the Cloch Cosan and his close proximity at last awakened Reginald; the passing of the cross, enabled him to at last escape from his prison.
Since then, he has been slowly taking in as much as he can about the New World. But millennia of imprisonment had weakened his powers considerable. Ironically, he managed to establish himself as a slightly off-centre nondenominational priest. They now generally regard him as ‘a mystic, a man of strong faith, and as such a slightly eccentric fellow – but overall a good guy.’
POWERS/ABILITIES/WEAKNESSES:
Non-corporeal~
Reginald is not strictly a physical creature, but a non-physical one. He must manifest himself as a physical creature to interact with the world. As such, he may transform into his non-physical form at will. While in the human form, he is rather difficult to kill – body parts can almost instantaneously grow back, though having to constantly regenerate his physical form is taxing. Enough physical damage can drain him to the point where he is temporarily unable to manifest himself; a magically enhanced physical weapon can ‘disperse’ his energies, causing him to take even longer to reform.
Consciousness~
His strongest power is the ability to act directly on the consciousness of another person. Reginald can ‘peel away’ the layers of consciousness, taking the life experience and knowledge of a person. This ripping is a fast, traumatic experience, resulting in death in all but the most resilient of individuals. He can more gently enter someone’s mind and do work that way, but this he only does when he sees a reason to do so – if he just wants your knowledge, and doesn’t need you still alive, he says ‘to hell with it’ and grabs it all at once.
Magic~
Magic is Reginald’s great strength… and weakness. His contact with the spiritual realm (where magic resides) allows him act with direct access to the area of magic, often needing no focus at all for his spells – be it in the form of ritual or even a simple incantation. Normally, it takes a gesture or a glance, though he still does have to focus his power internally. This also has the effect of making him immensely vulnerable to magicians. In other cases, the mystical energy manifests on the physical plane, and acts partly on the physical, partly on the mystical, thus diluting the effects. Spells cast on Reginald act on him directly. He can survive a nuclear explosion with ease, and just take a couple of years to coalesce again; a simple spell if successfully cast will cause him agony. A powerful enough spell can annihilate him. A binding spell can keep him in an area, or bound to reside within some physical object.
Reginald’s magic, using himself for a focus, has a kind of feedback effect on him. The most powerful spells can cause him to disrupt his own thought process, or to risk losing cohesion. One powerful healing spell to save a woman’s life after a vampire attack resulted in his going to ‘mist’ form and being unable to manifest for a day, as he lost the ‘focus’ needed to interact with the physical.
Insanity~
Reginald’s contact with the higher realm is both a strength and a weakness, since he remains in contact with to a large extent. He has some mild abilities in prescience (contact with the ‘logos’) and will have knowledge spontaneously form in him about people – sometimes true, sometimes false. Although the false beliefs are only false in the sense of ‘false in this world’ as they will generate from contact with a parallel world. This insanity also makes his mind wander at random. Often at inopportune times, Reginald becomes unable to focus on the issue at hand, or remember some crucial bit of knowledge he needs. It is totally random. He can be in the middle of a spell, and his mind will ‘jump tracks’ to some totally unrelated topic – for instance, he can be doing a healing spell, then immediately decide that now is a good time to discuss the curtains in your room. Or if in battle, will be ready to do a spell in combat then suddenly compliment a woman’s appearance or his opponent’s skills (effectively losing his focus). There is the possibility, as mentioned above, that he can even ‘forget’ that he needs to manifest himself physically.
Divine Mission~
Part of his insanity is the belief in his ‘divine mission’ to ‘liberate the world from the physical, to bring it back to the world-soul, the Universe, and God.’ It is the one thing which would allow him to focus through the insanity and use his powers to their full extent, but which at present lies somewhere at the back of his mind; and has, ever since being freed. He remembered it for a short time, but his desire to more carefully plan this time let his mind wander.
Reginald has yet to recall his ‘mission’ resulting in the rambling mind mentioned above. At times, he will temporarily recall the ‘mission’ and do more preparation work. At present, this has lasted no more than seconds or minutes. A more permanent catalyst could easily remind him, however. Present catalysts have included: meeting the Archbishop; seeing a murderer caught on television; reading Plotinus; a brown suit; the purple lipstick a girl dressed in goth style wore; a man dropping his wallet; and a dog wagging its tail (this last was counteracted by a cat meowing in his longest focus, of about 32 minutes).
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