Delim Arescotti

• The ladies
• Schmoozing
• Impressing people
• Partying

• Failure
• Commitment
• Admitting he's wrong
• The mortifying ordeal of being known

✦ Suzerainty

Delim’s powers evince the authority of the Throne and Castle over her subjects and Byhatzael’s themes of self-sabotage (though who the "self" is in this is up for debate). Delim’s powers are much stronger when used against someone below him in a formal hierarchy. This can be as loose as someone agreeing to work for him or as rigid and legalistic as people working in a company he owns with full contracts of employment. The consent to employment is the critical aspect of this, and someone cannot be mind-controlled or physically coerced into agreement.

✦ The Only Truth That Matters

When Delim pours the mana of deceit into his lies, he does so with the full authority of that which once was the Eternal Empress. No magical force can detect his lies, no matter how audacious or obviously false they may be. People may disprove his lies through mundane means, but even as they do, their better senses betray them and leave them with a gut feeling that they are making some miscalculation or mistake. If Delim tells someone the sky is purple, they will walk outside, look at a blue sky, and their first thought will be, “What is wrong with my eyes?”

When used against those below him in a hierarchy, even knowing the truth does not mean that someone can speak it. Subordinates subject to this power become utterly incapable of communicating any information that they would reasonably suspect might disprove the lie they were told to anyone that is not under Delim’s Suzerainty.

✦ Bloodthirst of the Secret-Hunting Third Eye

Opening the Third Eye of Byhatzael upon his forehead and repeating to himself a secret whispered to him by Medagilea, god of medicine, Delim perceives the location of vital organs (or closest equivalent structure) on a living target as glowing spots on their body.

✦ Sanction and Seizure

Delim brandishes a badge of brass stamped with the symbol of the Throne—a mark of his privileged position as the Great Demon Nation's foremost field agent serving at the dispensation of her son and spymaster. He has license to kill her subjects (read: anyone, everyone) as needed and to seize control of their assets, including property, family, titles, and even more abstract and numinous things.

In practice, this means he can take aspects of the lives of people he holds Suzerainty over and graft them onto his own existence. Thus does he leap between professions, families, nations, and friend groups. Always welcomed but never expected. Ever the familiar stranger.

✦ Many Layers of the Three-Eyed Mask

Byhatzael of Many Titles. Rider of Men’s Hearts. Betrayer of Multitudes. He Who Tap Dances Atop the Moon in Triumph Over Life. The Devil. Delim's progenitor has worn the bodies of untold millions of humans as clothing and spoken deceiving words with their tongues. For one whose soul burns with a spark of that enormous multifarity, changing one's face to something else is a thing of ease.

Delim can change his appearance to look like another adult human. He has very little control over what he looks like, and his appearance is drawn from victims of Byhatzael’s possession. First from those the demon is currently possessing (if any), then from ones he has once possessed.

Alternatively, Delim can deliberately assume the form of someone he holds Suzerainty over.

✦ Conspiracy of Silence Directive

Delim does not need to speak to give orders to those he holds Suzerainty over. His will is manifest and self-evident in gestures, small manners, the way his clothing sits on his frame, and indeed in his silence and absence. Those who have bound themselves to his service always have a vague sense of what they can do to further his goals. Some of them even do it. Sometimes.

✦ Esoteric Humors Master

A small power, but a noteworthy one. When Delim hears what could be characterized as an in-joke, he can expend mana to gain instinctual knowledge of why it is funny, enough that he himself will genuinely see the humor in the joke. This works on jokes specific to a culture, subculture, friend group, or even jokes thought to be shared as an intimate connection between two people. He knows why the term "Dopter Pepter" is funny. Do you? That’s what I thought. This is one of his many tools for quickly building unearned intimacy with others.

✦ Lead and Verdigris Meditation

What comfort does the past hold? None for the Throne and Castle, for each event of her past brought her to her current state, and she can only see them as a fatalistic road with one destination. By asking someone a question about the past, Delim can compel them to forget and never again recall all positive aspects from the event and remember only the worst possible interpretation of it. A mother will remember her child as fussy, disobedient, and lazy. A wife will look back on the day of her wedding and forget all of the love she felt and only remember the nervousness and feeling of obligation. Psychologically speaking, this is terrible for a person, though people react to it in different ways.

In addition to making people into the worst, most negative versions of themselves, leaving them hostile, distrustful of their closest friends, and desperate for something, anything, to make them feel better, scything away the positive aspects of memories releases mana of deceit for Delim to harvest. Performing this action on someone else gives him a noticeable boost to his mana. Performing it on himself gives an enormous boost to his mana.

Delim believes this to be one of Byhatzael’s powers. He is wrong and does not know whose power he has really begun to access.

Delim is also a Demon Prince; a human whose soul has, in a moment of profound mystical sympathy, irreversibly fused with a greater demon. His radiant, godly gestalt soul constantly endeavors to restore his body to peak condition, and he has accelerated healing, making him able to recover from injuries that would permanently maim, disable, or even kill normal humans. In addition, unlike mortals from Alaia, Demon Princes produce their own mana—the essential substance of the universe—and are able to channel it more effectively, allowing them to perform powerful magical effects. In particular, Delim resonates strongly with the mana of deceit.

Delim uses the ambient mana around him first for most of his magic, then begins drawing on his personal reserve. Though deep, it isn't endless, and if completely depleted, will leave Delim physically exhausted in addition to being unable to use his magic.

✦ Exorcist's Arsenal

Of all materials on Alaia, there are no gods who claim ownership of lead. It is because of this literal godlessness that lead bears a secret virtue and holds the potential to be anathema to those things that linger in the spirit world. While the presence of this virtue is faint and almost imperceptible, it may be coaxed into prominence through a seven-day-long ritual, repeated cleansings, and the ritual infusion of an exorcist's own blood. Thus does an exorcist become the god of his leaden weapons and bestow upon spirits the same inevitable mortality that is humanity's claim.

Delim has a ritual dagger prepared in this manner and fourteen bullets for his handgun.

✦ Custom ZM 18 Pistol: Her Majesty's Secret Service

Delim bears a cutting-edge, military-grade firearm. Guns are heavily controlled in the Zustanese Confederation of Enlightened Kings, and ownership of a weapon like this would be the privilege of either a military officer, a criminal, or a well-connected elite. To wear such a weapon visibly as Delim does announces to the world that its bearer is a man of both means and violence.

When emptied of bullets, this gun becomes even deadlier, discharging an unending supply of gouts of green fire. They are incredibly potent and, in addition to acting as bullets, are capable of burning through armor and igniting the vital fluids of a target into great and torturous conflagrations.

In terms of appearance, it resembles a Mauser C96 Broomhandle with a wooden detachable stock. The weapon itself is made of a dull brass, and the stock is engraved with a beautiful woman with only a cloth to protect her modesty.

✦ Regalia: Clad in Darkling Splendor

Delim is never seen without his black fur cape, and characters with magic senses find that it exudes every signal of being enchanted. For characters with especially detailed senses, blessings from a god of medicine and a god of wealth can be detected on the cloak.

During the protracted feud between the Greater Demon Marak’va and the Throne and Castle, Delim stalked through Marak’va’s court, bedeviling his schemes, corrupting his servants, and uncovering his secrets. When he returned, he bore a writhing satchel filled with Marak’va’s pets: demon hounds made of living shadow. He requested of the Throne’s scholar-son, Medagilea, to stitch their still-living forms together into a great, imperious cloak. Through these purloined spirits, he can summon beasts of living shadows to harry his foes or to fill the shadows around him with keen eyes, ears, and noses. By Medagilea’s magic, the life force of these hounds has been bound to Arescotti,Delim, and, as long as he is alive, the hounds will reform within the cloak after anywhere from seven hours to seven days.