Totems

Blessed Animal Saints

 

Corporeal Forces: 2  Strength: 4                 Agility: 4

Ethereal Forces: 2     Intelligence: 4           Precision: 4

Celestial Forces: 3    Will: 6                        Perception: 6

 

Skills: Detect Lies/3, Dodge/4, Fighting/4, Move Silently/3, Tactics/1, Tracking/3

 

Attunements: Blessed, Totem (see below)

 

Totem: The blessed soul may possess living animals of the same species as it was in life.  The procedure itself is automatic, but the animal must be ritually prepared beforehand (takes a day and a successful Knowledge (Shamanism) roll).  Duration is indefinite: the animal will not age while possessed.  The Forces of the animal stack with the Forces of the Totem (no Forces of a particular type past 5).  Treat the host body as having a vessel level equal to its Corporeal Forces for the purposes of calculating Body Hits.  Treat this otherwise as granting the equivalent of a human Saint, including issues involving disturbance.

This Attunement may not be given out to human beings, celestials or ethereals. 

 

The animals of Heaven largely do nothing in particular with eternity.  The vast majority of them exist in peace and serenity on Jordi's endless Savannah, engaging in whatever suits their purposes and generally ignoring the rest of the universe.  However, 'a vast majority' is not the same as 'all of them'; the occasional animal soul will find itself engaged in personal development, which means that it will eventually achieve human levels of intelligence.  There was some debate among Animal's Servitors when the first case of this appeared: roughly half wanted to encourage this sort of development and the other half wanted to discourage it.  No final decision has been made, one way or the other - but Jordi has a use for any animal that wishes to further his Word.

 

Totems generally act as support elements for Servitors of Animals, particularly in situations where a human Soldier would not be effective.  Domestic animals are the favored choice: demons generally check household pets for vessels and/or Kyriotate possession, not Soldiers.  Because a careful Totem can keep itself hidden for quite some time, Laurence has been known to request their services for specific tasks; as times goes on, Jordi has been more willing to provide them.

 

Despite their human-level intelligence, Totems remain animals, and act accordingly.  Even dog and cat Totems will only understand corporeal society imperfectly, and with odd biases.  When it comes to Totems from non-domesticated species, servants of other words are generally advised to take St. Clive's quote about tame lions to heart.  Nonetheless, Totems are probably the most likely of Jordi's servants to be well-disposed towards human beings, if only because the Archangel is aware of the political dangers of letting one that wasn't back on Earth.

 

 

 

Back to Mortals

Back to In Nomine