Rhadamantus (WIP)

If your character's biography was moved here, chances are it needed some additional work. Place your own works in progress here for easier storage. Label them clearly with the W.I.P. acronym.
Post Reply
User avatar
IamLEAM1983
Site Admin
 

Posts: 3707
Joined: Tue Jan 08, 2013 4:54 am
Location: Quebec, Canada

Rhadamantus (WIP)

Post by IamLEAM1983 »

Name: Rhadamantus (Randolph Mantus)
Age:
Gender: male
Species: Animate, former Prosecutor demon

Strengths: the very best of a Mentalist's expected skills is his to wield, essentially gracing him with preternatural impartiality, as well as the ability to divorce himself from his emotional processes completely and entirely. The short of it is that Randolph is able to see all those he chooses to scrutinize for what and who they truly are. Goodness, self-serving streaks, righteousness or selfless implication, selfishness or well-hidden psychological traumas... He can divine these traits and much more thanks to a few moments spent with others, which makes him a flawless judge of character and a rather difficult man to tempt or corrupt out of his assumed course of action. Lies find no purchase in him and pretense annoys him to no end.

As the Inspector's former Prosecutor, his task was to ascertain the worth and lawful nature of all of his maker's collaborators and lackeys in the Pit, and to ensure that the goat's guidelines were strictly followed. Hell's ultimate victory being a shared project in Leonard's eyes, all of those Pitspawn who choose to collaborate with the Goat of Mendes are expected to lend a hand. Effective wickedness needs regulation, and his was the task of ensuring that the Pit's droves were committed to the cause. However, he was forced into applying the rule of law to the Pit, Randolph having more than a passing knowledge of Heaven and the mortal plane's own judicial systems, as well. Freed of his obligation and his cycle of death and rebirth, Mantus is now able to apply his impartiality to these spheres of Society which truly do matter to him.

However, as he still carries demonic roots, his activities as Hope's new courthouse judge are joined with an Eldritch twin: if Shield provides him with ample proof, his new status as a legislator appointed by the Infernal City allows him to banish those Infernal entities that would encroach upon the mortal plane with criminal intentions in mind. To put things simply, Randolph Mantus is a judge who isn't limited to the prescriptions of the American Penal and Criminal codes and to his own prowess as a mundane investigator – as he can place hexes and curses upon those he deems guilty. In essence, his verdicts are a bit like a Fel cousin to Fae Oaths, in that he can speak words that will drastically impact the accused's life on the arcane or supernatural scales.

Of course, being a judge means being able to piece evidence together on your own. He's a bit too old and frail to go about catching ne'er-do-wells with the kids, but his short time in the public sphere has already started to include “off the clock” work, wherein he is called to a crime scene and asked to take a look around.

Considering, his more active abilities don't include much in the way of offensive skills. Rhadamantus tends to ply Hellfire and Brimstone in largely defensive ways, as he personally abhors violence. Crude Brimstone shields or Hellfire barriers make up most of what he's likely to produce, as he prefers to leave the extent of his power for any supplemental verdicts to be issued in the courtroom.

Finally, his one sizable quirk might be the means by which he absorbs additional knowledge. As a leftover from his previously disposable days, he's retained the ability to absorb the knowledge imparted by documents he eats. All that cellulose and ink apparently doesn't stay in his stomach, disappearing as soon as it's swallowed and the knowledge that was contained on the chewed pages is gained. When cases require a considerable upgrade to his basic understanding of a new reality, he typically remedies this by finding rejects from bookbinding factories that fit the topic he needs to learn more of, and swallows entire crates of books in a few hours. The physical media not remaining within him for longer than he needs to mentally “digest” the book's contents in a few moments, he's been known to spend days gorging on paper, only to manifest the sort of basic hunger you'd expect after a decent day's work. No blockages or obstructions seem likely to occur, and the process which transfers printed words to his mind doesn't seem to emulate drowsiness or standard digestion side-effects.

Strangely enough, topics or literary genres seem to have definitive tastes, with insightful or entertaining “reads” leaving him as pleased or thoughtful as you'd expect a more traditional time spent turning pages to leave him. If he eats a poetry compilation, he'll remember and occasionally recite a few verses. If he eats a critically-acclaimed page-turner, he'll be able to produce a summary within moments of having ingested the last page.
Weaknesses: if he isn't allowed to reach a verdict, Rhadamantus can't be expected to wield much power. He might know a small cornucopia's worth of hexes or debilitating effects and may, alternatively, be able to lift curses or dispel most diseases if his verdict leaves someone innocent or in need of compensation, but due process needs to take place first. A case needs to be built, he needs to study the case or to have witnessed its development firsthand, sworn parties need to be involved, the defendant and plaintiff's counselors must be present if they won't represent themselves – an honest trial needs to take place. For this reason, Rhadamantus' seat of power is Hope's courthouse, and it's rather safe to say that he holds little or no power outside of it, or if no jury is present.

Meet each condition gradually, and you'll feel the judge's mantle of power grow, like a power line's low hum as its voltage increases. All things considered, he doesn't need too much to go from being almost mundane to being able to hold the lives of others in his hands – but the conditions must be met. He can't pass judgment on anyone without his supporting structure, even if Shield were to convince him of the accused's despicable nature. The most he can do without his court is declare it to be a sanctuary or asylum, as no violence can and should place in a court of law. In that one case, however, his word is final no matter where he happens to be. To harm a judge is to harm Justice, and Randolph isn't afraid of using that tiny bit of rhetoric to make weapon-bearing arms heavy and to turn guns into inert hunks of metal.

Otherwise, the expected faith-based weaknesses are present, but he tends to address them as being a “lack of spiritual impartiality”. He shoulders strong faiths well enough to only feel some discomfort, with his inner pain increasing the more unilateral the expressed faith is. An open-minded agnostic discussing theology won't so much as elicit a nervous tic out of him, while a hard-lining Born Again Christian couched in the fire-and-brimstone discourse of her church and the bigotry it carries will expose him to intense pain. It doesn't help that stupidity bores him intensely, either.

Appearance:
Behavior: Francis has taken to calling Randolph – or Judge Mantus, depending on who you ask – as “Mister Spock”. Rhadamantus was initially created with the perceived nobility and superiority of the Pit's droves in mind, and was made to affect a needed form of detachment, a sort of cool and collected mental slate that would allow him to travel the Pit, Bailiff in tow, and dispense the Inspector's justice without personal considerations. Knowing that his obfuscated origins would one day reassert themselves, the Goat opted to force his charge into a state of permanent “newness” or eternal detachment. Having spent hundreds of thousands of years re-living his first day in the Pit, always told of the pressing need that he avoid developing any attachments, Rhadamantus' emotional development has been stunted, while his intellectual processes have soared. Killed off and reborn after each and every case, the Prosecutor sees the world with a professional level of interest and a strong personal disinterest.

Some would say that exposing a mind like his to the complexities of the mortal plane would be too much, and they'd be right – at least in part. Randolph has taken refuge in his thousands of years of businesslike affectations, turning him into a pointedly intellectual fellow. The youngsters, considering, mistook his forced inability to connect for some kind of supernatural pall of boredom or fatigue. He does sleep a lot, but this could simply be a side-effect of his having essentially been born, as an animate. With his inset and half-lidded eyes and the drooping corners of his mouth, he does indeed look like nothing he could be exposed to would suffice in developing his interests. Being an old soul in the very literal sense, he isn't the type to take to the world's technical or scientific marvels or to welcome sunny days more than overcast ones. Instead, books tend to act as sanctuaries for him to visit: he likes to consume books first, and if they remain fresh in his mind or strike him as being significant, he'll then obtain a decent copy and savor it, re-reading it the old-fashioned way. It's more than likely through his growing library that he'll push out of his phlegm, although the creature that's being fed by law textbooks and literary classics still feels like it'll be a miser when it comes to smiles or displays of affection or friendship.

Little by little, his saviors and long-awaited enablers are likely to expose a more intellectual and private take on Shamus' literary love. It already feels as though he likes his friendships kept private and his moments of shared pleasure kept on the down-low. To Bucky's occasional peals of horse laughter, he's the type to oppose a smile and the shaking of his shoulders.

All of that translates into his physicality, obviously. His eight thick tentacles are rooted just below his waistline and seem tailor-made for keeping him standing straight. His gait is more stable than any standard bipedal creature's, and markedly more smooth. He glides up and down stairs and along corridors without the slightest bit of bobbing motion or shift in his gravity center. Randolph seems to be rather good at creeping up on people, even if he himself doesn't seem to notice it. Couple this with his detachment and how minimalistic his hand gestures seem to be, and you earn the kind of attitude that borders on being creepy. With his arms being almost continuously crossed high behind his back, the rare instance of his scaled and lightly clawed hands coming into view is usually significant. It also doesn't help that his lack of traditional legs makes it so he finds sitting or lying down to be uncomfortable. As far as Shield knows, Mantus has gone so far as to sleep while standing upright. All he does is lock the door and draw the blinds; his bed has never been disturbed since his arrival and dust has quite severely taken root on the covers.

Towards Aislinn and Tom, however, Mantus is slightly more demonstrative. It makes sense, seeing as the two mages are to be credited for his escape from the Pit and his introduction to Hope. Gratitude may be accelerating his personal adaptation to these two specific people, compared to how stolid he seems to be towards others. Picking up on an offhand joke spoken by Three, Randolph sometimes teases the both of them by addressing them as “Mother” or “Father”. They aren't, of course, having had no influence on his abilities since his being made corporeal, but that occasional poke seems to be the judge's way of acknowledging how important their contribution was.

Unlike Tom, his reaching the mortal plane was never part of his goals, initially. Kept from realizing who and what he was, he had no idea the mortal plane even existed. Considering, Hope isn't an end-all or a motivating factor, as far as he's concerned: it simply is the place of his birth.
Goals: to uphold justice, no matter the cost and with accordance to the rules of the land. With Leonard Ephesian's ghostly spirit and Randolph's own involvement, other practitioners and Infernalists in Hope have joked that a kind of “Shadow Court” is likely to take shape, and is a sign of Hope's decision to stand its ground in the face of the Others' depredations and the Pit's opportunistic meddling.

History:
Post Reply