Redmund
From Egs Mayhem
- Name: (True Name kept secret to avoid having to serve some wizard or other) Goes by "Redmund", though his friends call 'im "Red."
- Age, Actual: Ten thousand yearsish.
- Age, Apparent: Depends on current form and current host. Presently occupying a thirty year old female schoolteacher (Morgan Lavender) .
- Gender: Male (though see "apparent age")
- Race: Unholy God, retired
- Place of Birth: A volcanic eruption in the eye of a hurricane during a solar eclipse and a profane ritual...on an island off the coast of what is now Hawaii.
- Occupation: Schoolteacher (Unholy God, retired)
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Physical Description:
Redmund has several Aspects he can take up, left over from his days as a deity. He usually appears as either a three-foot tall black stone statue of a fat man with glowing red and orange cracks, a stunning and statuesque black man with flaming red hair (whether it's flaming in a figurative or a literal sense is entirely up to his mood, and he can spontaneously develop fiery wings if he wants), a black giant with a massive flaming red beard, or a cloud of amorphous black smoke which smells strongly of brine and sulfur at the same time. He can also assume the form of any normal animal, but whatever he is he's always black with red fur/feathers/eyes/what-have-you. His TRUE form is visible at all times through his apparent form to other dieties and to powerful demons/devils/angelic figures/those with the Sight or the proper detection spells.
Brief History:
Redmund lived the first century or three of his life as an evil demigod of fiery immolation, tropical storms, and human sacrifice. He was worshipped by a few hundred dedicated cultists, and was a member of the small pantheon watching over his island. The volcano he lived and recieved his stake-tied virgins in was not very active, and he was persuaded by frequent placations not to make the storms too horrible. He was quite happy with this stable arrangement, until one generation the leaders of his cult began to get ambitious, and to plot ways to steal power from the temples of the other local deities. Eventually they convinced their god to rise up against the other gods, certain that he could defeat the local Patriarchal figure and become leader of the pantheon. Unfortunately, as it turned out, the other gods and godesses of the island were no match for gouts of hellfire and torrential rain and winds applied at the same time (they were mostly involved with helping fruit harvests, building canoes, and offering free health coverage and birth control to the inhabitants of the island, not very warlike deities). Having overestimated his opposition's ability to play defense, Redmund managed to sink his own island, killing everyone on it with the exception of his high priest, who he promptly inhabited the willing body of and rode to the nearest land mass in. Since then he has operated in the same way most evil gods who've fallen out of favor do: he got a job workin' for gods who hadn't fallen yet. He spent a bit of time as a giant helping fight the Asgardians, picked up a taste for alchohol and busty blondes, and had a great time working for them (and occasionally for the Roman and Greek pantheons when their bastard sons needed monsters to defeat) until the Christians came and ruined everything. Their Hell wasn't a very fun place to hang out, so Redmund decided to retire, and he's been occupying the bodies of various occultists who accidentally summoned up more than they could handle for the past few hundred years. He came to the New World over the Pacific from India (after spending two and a half centuries imprisoned in a lamp in what is now Yemen, but he doesn't like to talk about that), and he ended up in New Amsterdam several years ago because he noticed a burgeoning population of supernatural entities, several of whom knew ways of finding burnt offerings that smelled ALMOST like home.
Abilities:
As a former god, Redmund's not as powerful as he ONCE was, but he still has a great deal of mastery over the things he ruled on his island. He can assume each of the forms above, first off, and can freely possess the body of anyone who burns a sacred, holy, or otherwise revered object with or without their consent. He can also possess without consent anyone who is wearing a piece of jewelry made from obsidian or some other lava rock. Possessing anyone else is trickier, he has to either trick them into agreeing or into burning or wearing such an object. The normal methods of detection will reveal that an evil spirit is occupying the involved person, the normal methods will drive him out of it. He sometimes likes to make his hosts glow a deep red on the inside, if he doesn't have to be secretive.
Redmund can't do any of the BIG things he used to do (spontaneously raise a higly active volcano, whip up a hurricane, throw tidal waves around, convince the local godess of poetry that she should spend a tempestuous night in the volcano), but he still has a semblage of his former storm/volcano god's might. He can control any fires he happens to find, and he can belch forth blasts of red-hot ash from the mouths of any forms he occupies. He can also command the winds, to a degree, changing their directions in a several-mile area but not increasing or decreasing their strength. He can send forth (also from the mouth of any of his forms, his original worshippers viewed the volcano as his gaping maw) a blast of wet, hurricane-force wind, but this wind peters out about fifty or sixty feet from his person. Any of his winged forms can fly, and he can do the good ol' fashioned arabic demon's "stomp foot, sink into ground" trick. Most minor air and fire spirits will still obey him, but the more potent ones he has to persuade or pay for their services. His humanoid forms are incredibly strong for their size, and his giant form was strong enough to be persuasive when he was fighting Asgard.
Weaknesses:
Redmund's island viewed birds as sacred servants of his pantheon's head (the god of favorable winds and good fishing, and dancing happily under a full moon), and they still hold power against him. If presented with a bird (ESPECIALLY a tropical bird) or a symbolic representation of a bird, he reacts in a vaguely Dracula-esque manner, and cannot approach or attack the one holder of the bird/symbol. This leaves him on poor footing when dealing with the angelic entities currently in power, as he can't do a THING to them, at least directly. Other holy symbols of various dieties will protect you from the manifestations of his power and from possession (his fires won't burn you, his winds won't knock you down, and his singing...well, that'll still hurt), but only if presented with strong faith in the symbol, and he can still interact by attacking you with whatever physical form he's in. He is deeply attached to the "good ol' days", and if you present him with a virgin in a grass skirt he'll do whatever you ask for a taste. Unfortunately for him, if you find out his True Name and do the proper demon/devil summoning/binding rituals, he'll ALSO have to drop whatever he's doing, appear in a flash of flame, and do whatever you ask in exchange for his freedom (which ALWAYS seems to happen to him RIGHT as he's getting in the bath or taking a girl out for the first time).
