Tom Magnus \ Thomas Quint

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IamLEAM1983
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Tom Magnus \ Thomas Quint

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Name: Tom Magnus, formerly Thomas Quint
Age: 53 years old
Gender: male
Species: anthro warthog, Infernalist and renegade Incubus

Strengths: Tom's infamous knack at communing with and commanding minor demons is still in effect, although he now plies it differently. Selecting the pick of the litter from his fellow disgruntled Damned, he tends to elect highly adaptable and surprisingly sociable Fiends, ensconcing them in vessels he recovers from the East Coast's human traffic operations. Even if he could prospectively use this ability to build a gang, if not some sort of private army, he seems to prefer to focus on his requirements as a newly-minted entertainer. While he hires the occasional mundane to avoid arousing suspicions, slotting a like-minded and cooperative demon in the body of a recently deceased Eastern European would-be model is more his speed. It grants him access to an easily adaptable workforce, with a little more zest than you'd get out of a Pandemonium resident and altogether much more developed social skills than the rest of the Pit's droves.

He also hasn't lost his technical skills as a former Arcane Forensics technician for the HPD, and can now supplement them with bonafide supernatural senses. Smelling out carefully concealed runes and wards, recognizing dangerous spells in the threads of an innocuous bit of embroidered fabric and sensing the perimeters of erected barriers or other magical gates was all typically part of his initial repertoire, but his growing feral tendencies eclipsed his more developed skills. Now, he seems to have largely rediscovered the keen eye that used to be his as a member of the force.

Being driven by the will of an incubus grants him additional abilities that go well beyond his initial set of skills and that transcend the seemingly grotesque appearance he is forced to live with. A supernaturally strong level of magnetism and charm is his to use as he sees fit, to the point where he seemingly has found ways to turn his almost pathetic appearance into an honestly desirable asset. Physically speaking, he hasn't changed at all. His bearing, self-control and levels of personal care are drastically improved, however, to the point where he's managed to unearth a core of raw appeal underneath his demonic mutations. Paired with his new husky tones and his languid, almost liquid motions, there's something about him that bypasses the conscious minds of many people – although not everyone – and immediately titillates their innermost desires.

To put it simply, Tom is now able to have anyone eventually come to crave his mere presence. The supernatural intelligence driving his mind could be considered to be the sum of all of the world's best and most proficient lovers in History. What seats that ability on solid ground is the fact that as an incubus, Tom is unable to fake his new and frankly pansexual nature. Constantly running on a current of lust, heated desire and all-encompassing love, he is, for all intents and purposes, continuously aroused.

Otherwise, the standard abilities afforded to careful demonic entities existing on Earth are his to enjoy. Death and decay will not naturally touch his body, while he is guaranteed superhuman levels of stamina. Being an incubus, however, he is more or less guaranteed to respect his potential partners' physical thresholds.

If he were a mainstream incubus, Tom would use his ability to engage in loveless, if extremely passionate relationships as a means to progressively damn mortal souls. His ministrations are addictive by design, even if he openly states that he is psychologically unable to form long-standing connections with anyone.
Weaknesses: the Infernalist supervillain-turned-entertainer loves all that he sees with the kind of passion few mortals could hope to match. Carrying an intense lust for all of the mortal plane's carnal and intellectual offerings, he would be able to momentarily swaddle single individuals in a pall of omnipresent desire. Even if he focuses on you for all of ten minutes, he's liable to find a way to make you fall head over heels for him. For ten minutes, he'll be madly in love with you – but his focus is doomed to inevitably shift. Tom's lust has a mind of its own, and going from heated liplocks to acting as if his lover of the moment no longer exists is a definite possibility for him. As everything that's even slightly evocative of mortal existence runs the risk of enthralling him, he'll desert more-than-adequate partners, only to become entranced by the walk of a passerby on the street, or the inflexions of a nearby speaker. As explained earlier, commitment is a Herculean feat for him to achieve. He can certainly assemble quite the laundry list of friends and can absolutely fall for someone's personality more than their prowess as a kisser or lover. If anything, while platonic friends remain a possibility, exclusive relationships are outside of his abilities.

Simply put, the curse of the Pit's lot of succubi and incubi is self-aware shallowness they all desperately seek to overcome, laden with an overpowering lust that is more of an obstacle than a serious boon. With their senses turned on Overdrive, he and his peers would like nothing more than to find a unique and significant other and settle down in peace. For all of their efforts and attempts, they cannot. Metaphorically, Thomas likes to say that his heart is missing a piece. He can like friendly people and he can certainly desire the exceptional ones; but he can never love the adequate person.

For mortals, this might seem like the ultimate hedonistic joyride. For one of the Damned who has been jumping from partner to partner since Civilization spread its roots, it's pure and simple torture.

Otherwise, being a rogue Pitspawn, Tom neither has Melmoth's or Leonard's backing. No outstanding power basin is his to tap into, and his only arcane proficiencies are those Thomas Quint exhibited in life. While he can hope to tap into the Pit's basin of like-minded Damned, all this gives him is a versatile tool set awaiting his claiming a decent position of power or control. Mistrusted by the Broker and marked for punishment by Leonard, the incubus took to Earth as a refuge and as the only place in all of Creation where his goals might be fulfilled. Paired with his standard weakness to objects and people of particularly strong faiths and beliefs, however, his goals seem as though they'll require some investment.

Of course, it doesn't help that Quint's new mind has to work through and past the original owner's acquired reputation. He can't quite simply show up with a new wardrobe and a flawless cologne game, flash a smile and instantly dismiss the HPD's memories of the former technician. When someone goes from a crass and juvenile basket case with arcane abilities to the smoothest of the city's suit-wearers in a single fortnight, something's up. He'll have to find a way to have Quint be reborn, in a sense, whereas most other local demons have had the luxury of being able to kill off their hosts entirely and in one fell swoop.

Appearance: incubi, like succubi, are designed in order to turn any body they could possibly claim into a boiling cauldron of irrepressible hormones. Being able to tweak everything about the bodies they invade safe for its base nature and DNA, they sometimes are referred to as the “Makeover Demons”, in the arcane community. Even a partially decayed corpse will stand up, if possessed by one of their numbers, and work the surprisingly mundane magic of perfumes, potential cosmetic surgeries, clothes and renewed postures and attitudes – all up until the point where some sort of raw magnetism transcends the finished product. That above-mentioned zombie is guaranteed to make heads turn and to cause more than a few uncomfortable glances, as a seemingly impossible burst of carnal interest blooms in a scant lucky few that cross its path. Thomas Quint is now a walking weapon of mass seduction, retrofitted from a snarling and near-feral warlock who was little else except the city's laughingstock to the least probable of all of the city's known ladykillers. Carried by the languid pace set by his continuously lusting mind, his uniformly red eyes now tend to look out to the world in a half-lidded gaze suggesting a vaguely disconcerting kind of hunger. To look at him is to realize that to his eyes, the mortal plane is filled with a hundred thousand different delights to experience. While sex is the main descriptor of these multitudes of pleasures, Quint is now someone who seems like he would celebrate the greasiest of hamburgers in the same measure he might one of Lucius Bromley's own prepared meals. Evocative views, cleverly expressed thoughts, unconscious bits of sensitivity or accidental poetry – anything and everything now seems like it could carry a bit of sheer bliss within itself.

It's certainly affected his poise and sartorial choices. Gone are the hunched shoulders or the feverish rounds of pacing about, and he certainly no longer yelps at subhuman minions, fighting to repress the occasional animalistic snarl. Belial's taken all of the anthro's humanity and soul, and the Spirit of Lust that has now taken control has re-purposed a lot of those tics into shameless and natural displays of interest or heated desire. Amused and slightly porcine snorts sometimes leave him at the favor of a spirited comment, while quiet pig-like grunts seem to have become markers of intellectual activity or intense focus. He's straightened out quite a bit, to the point where a bit of a distinguished bearing is his new default, with one hand behind his back and the other usually clutching the lapel of one of his new suits.

Having seemingly pointedly rediscovered personal hygiene, Tom no longer is as scraggly-faced as he used to be and has carefully polished and whitened his tusks. Rather than tolerate the patchy finish left behind by Belial's involvement, the incubus has elected to finish the job mechanically and shave every ounce of remaining hair and fur away. Quint's Otherness now feels like a badge of pride more than a pathetic afterthought, as if his being of a ruddy yellow shade were entirely natural. The warlock-worthy claw-like fingernails weren't trimmed down to standard sizes, but their edges have been cleaned up, polished and carefully blunted. He still packs the extra pounds brought about by demonic flesh and stolen delivery pizzas, but has seemingly chosen to frame them as well as possible.

The old robes have been burned away, his rebirth starting with the rather peculiar request for a suit. Typically, incompetent mages feel better with robes or loose tunics, but Quint's shifting to an off-the-rack if slightly modified three-piece ensemble shows just how confident his new driving mind truly is. Runes of power have been carefully embroidered across its expanse, blending in with the dark purples of the jacket and pants and the royal blue pinstriped vest. The overall impression, with its masculine accents in jewelery, is one of focused, specialized, if extremely tight arcane control. If the old warthog handled Hellfire the way a kid with a lighter and a can of aerosol would common flames, this is an Infernalist who plies his trade with all the care and reverence that is required. At the same time, there are a few touches of blithe self-confidence, as his body couldn't possibly get any worse. The price has already been paid, proving that Belial was never one to choose his clients wisely. It feels, in a sense, as if a savvy dealership trawler saw a car in the process of being upgraded, waited for the appropriate moment to make an offer, and walked off with the deal of the century: a powerful piece of machinery that's only waited for a responsible and talented owner to showcase its capabilities – sold off for peanuts.

Some of these extra touches, like the golden cigarette case and the black, fragrant and slim Russian coffin nails he's taken to smoking, comfortably straddle the line between arrogance and confidence. It's while in the midst of a conversation that most of anyone will realize that this isn't the same pompous fool they knew – this is a man in clear and present possession of his abilities, who's simply chosen to drape his congenial nature behind a sophisticate's devil-may-care looks. Try as he might, his demonic nature prevents him from simply being friendly – his instinctual drive to seduce and conservatively showboat will not be denied and will continuously coat his amicable nature.
Behavior: if asked what being an incubus feels like, Thomas would have to reply that all he feels is lust. Everything else rides atop of that bedrock of ever-present desire, and everything sparkles and shines. Everything catches his interest in the way only appeased felines could understand, and everything feels like it could sate his starving mind and ravenous heart. He desires all those he speaks to simultaneously, as even idiocy seems to have some sort of erotic value, hidden somewhere for him to find. His mind, heart and loins thirst for anything and everything all at once, to the point where the concept of having a defined sexuality would strike him as being laughable. There are men and women he fantasizes about for a millisecond, only to never consider them again, while others consume his mind utterly for days at a time. As circumstances have allied him with Shield, there isn't a single one of their numbers that he wouldn't aggressively kiss and passionately explore.

But first – he has to be desired, as well. His own lust gives him no sustenance, so he still feels the urge to do as incubi have always done throughout time, which is to incite desire in others.

The game of seduction is something some people learn instinctively, while others remain oblivious to it their whole lives. Rarely does anyone entirely master its rules, as people tend to only select what concerns their own personal kinks, romantic leanings and amorous hopes. As Thomas is incapable of feeling or comprehending that sort of raw, ineffable tug that is true love, he – like all other incubi – has turned into a master seducer the likes of which only Hell could produce. He gives and takes away, if given the occasion, or alternates between rewards and punishments designed to excite the senses. Being in an incubus' clutches is one of the most powerful sensations anyone could hope to experience. In normal circumstances, the end result is death.

Thomas, however, isn't like your average incubus. If he ever was, it was at the very eve of Civilization. He once did take suitors and mistresses by the thousands and he absolutely did cause an untold number of exquisite final breaths drawn in the early days of the written word. What changed him was his other existence – the one he led at the favor of the Pit's torturers and its feral denizens.

Obviously, turning into an expert in all things pleasant doesn't make a fan of torture out of you. Over a long enough time frame, even masochism loses its appeal. It was assumed that he'd simply stick to standing as one of the dispensers of all things sinful and depraved, but the one flaw in sending a receptive incubus to Earth on multiple occasions was that this exposure made him espouse Pleasure in all its forms – including those that would require that his victims be spared.

Tom the Incubus lusts for conversation, for companionship, tranquil evenings and even the occasional serious romantic involvement – all things which his nature should, normally, prevent him from appreciating. Digging around for precedents involving demons sharing consenting relationships with other creatures, he came across the stories and legends of old Iram, and read of how it once stood as a place where all the mortals and immortals of this world could live together openly.

Considering his nature, realizing this opened a deep gash inside his psyche, creating an even deeper and desperate sense of want than anything else he'd ever experienced. He found that what he desired, more than all of the world's delicate flesh and all of its loving words, was shelter. If others shared in his desire, then surely there'd be some sort of hope for some sort of sanctuary to exist for all of the Universe's peoples!

The end result is an odd cross between a humanist and a hedonist, someone who's had centuries to abandon the Pitspawn's judgmental attitude towards mortals and who would rather believe that in mortality, the living have the largest and most diverse variety of pleasures to choose from. If angels want for nothing and demons are deprived of everything, then the people who live somewhere in the middle seem to him like they're the most commendable in all of Creation. This fuels the kind of deep respect for mortals and mundanes you wouldn't be able to guess at, initially. After spending some time with him, however, anyone could come to realize that he envies the average overworked office employee, because that person experiences the distinct joys of coming home, eating, talking with his or her loved ones, relaxing and – finally – gratefully collapsing into bed.

The long and short of it is that Pleasure with a Capital P is everything to this odd duck of an Infernalist who would rather twist the powers of Hell out of shape, in order to preserve life.

Goals: Thomas wishes to remain hidden away from Heaven and Hell long enough for his connection to the Pit to fade away. It might take generations, but he wants his all-encompassing desire for all that is to disappear, to leave nothing behind except basic respect. He wants to lose all that is Infernal about himself, even if it takes him another thousand years.

He wants to stop lusting after people, and to start loving one person at a time. Especially, however, he wants to give a similar form of potential respite to all the disgruntled angels and fatigued demons out there. There is a resistance in the planes of Bliss and Pain, a group of people who believe that there are more pressing matters to consider than the continued watch over mortal souls. Something is stirring outside of Faerie. Something needs to be addressed.

Not by angels. Not by demons. Not by men or aliens or superheroes or otherwise.

By everyone all at once.

In a sense, he tends to think that his all-encompassing lust makes him able to see potential in everyone, even those in which nobody else believes.

History: born in 1972 and a lifelong Hope resident, Tom had a generally uneventful childhood, perhaps only marked by parents who excessively coddled him and who relentlessly reminded him of his familial attachment to the HPD. Jack Quint, once served as the forty-seventh precinct's captain. Jack was a decent administrator and officer, someone whose job was merely adequate. If anything, if his brother and sister-in-law had demonstrated some consideration for him, they would've never aggrandized his fairly pedestrian posting. Not that it ever bothered him – but it poisoned Thomas' conception of what law enforcement involved.

Stricken with asthma from an early age, the usual Police Academy training wasn't an option. He'd never forgive himself for his inability to earn a badge, having to instead fall back to a lab technician's laminate. Part of his determination would forever remain tainted by this self-directed spite, as he honestly believed fate owed him a squad car and a partner. He'd do a decent enough job as an Arcane Theory and Forensics student, his lack of appreciation forcing him in the same spot his uncle had occupied. He'd only ever be an okay techie; far from the sometimes genial oddballs the Department kept on hand. A bit of a jerk and fairly self-absorbed, he'd always consider his work as being more important than what other technicians were accomplishing. He consequently butted heads with almost all of the HPD's captains at least once per individual, and more than adequately managed to exasperate Deputy Chief Crystal Lowell. For years, he endured a sort of tenure, being the one Arcane Forensics specialist on staff with the most seniority and exposure to complex cases. Time allowed him to progress from being merely adequate to being insufferably essential in a few type cases, something which most of the force continuously bemoaned. Plenty of other technicians had the sort of prickly, borderline anal-retentive attitude commonly expected in lab geeks concerned with the exactitude of their test results, but he took the very concept to unsavory levels – sometimes haranguing collegiate interns to the point of driving them out of the field of study altogether.

Then, from the perspective of the HPD, a breakthrough occurred: a handful of promising Forensics recruits were admitted, their combined aptitudes being more than enough to compensate for Quint's absence. What started as a paid vacation became a concerted effort to keep him away from his own desk, to the point where a reasonable individual would've at least started by threatening the HPD with legal action. Unfortunately, the warthog's slippery slope had already begun. Suing for compensation seemed laughably insufficient to him.

A few years prior, Thomas had found himself wrestling against complex cases. Sensing that his worth to the Department was fading, he took a risky gamble that he would never, in all honesty, stop paying for. Needing a quick way out of his rut and a sudden stream of solved cases to impress Chief Alderan, he summoned Belial, Father of Orcs and Keeper of Hell's Flesh. He asked for supernatural insight – an initial gift with devastating consequences.

At first, things worked as planned. All things Eldritch and unsavory came to him in minutes, compared to the hours or days needed by his fellow lab rats. His mind was a constant cauldron of dark inspiration, with the wannabe Warlocks that had stumped him so turning into contemptible idiots who had no idea of the forces they'd meddled with. He, of course, believed he'd taken the full measure of Hell's seductive influences, and that he'd be able to stay under control.

Belial is craftier than most mages give him credit, and he made Tom's downfall a slow and graceful tumble followed by an abrupt plunge. The techie's temper ran hotter, he went out for nights on the town more often than usual, and he went from a faithful boyfriend to a juvenile womanizer. The physically capable, nerdy and fairly dickish Arcane Forensics nerd turned into an overweight, irate and easily-provoked jerk who wallowed in his diminishing successes and rejected all responsibility when cases failed because of his botched lab work. Every once in a while, he'd feel himself slip, and once again hear the siren's song of Infernal potency. Each added bit of demonic flesh was like a small bandage stuck on a festering wound – illusory comfort that increasingly blinded him to the increasingly desperate conditions he was stuck in. Disciplinary actions failed, docking his pay had no tangible effect, so Lowell and her colleagues had no choice but to corroborate the HPD's Forensics department in its decision, and terminate the warthog's employment with the city. Once replacements came along, however, the straw broke the proverbial camel's back.

Nearly foaming at the mouth at the news of his replacement, Quint vowed to find a way to make the entire city pay for the transgressions he imagined he'd suffered. Intimate knowledge of Hell's fauna and mechanics was no longer sufficient – he needed power. As ever, Belial was happy to oblige, provided the warthog part with a small token.

The little things had already been given away long ago. Food no longer tasted anything, being sated had been sacrificed for further knowledge, love, care and consideration had clouded his professional judgment – so he'd parted with them all. Self-respect no longer mattered, friendship was a pale offering in comparison to what he wanted. His childhood memories, the love for his parents and family that he'd managed to preserve...

He'd already given everything to Belial, everything that had defined him as a sensitive being. Everything that had made a man out of him.

From the renter of a decent apartment, he turned into a vagrant who wallowed in his own filth for days on end, snarling and snapping at whomsoever dared to approach him with anything that wasn't fearful reverence. When he did manage to make someone fear him, his bully tendencies had given way to the sort of self-satisfied and gratuitous spite you'd have expected out of a Saturday-morning cartoon villain.

Ousting the vagrants and bums out of the old grain silos in Sandhill wasn't too much of an issue for an incompetent and self-deluded Infernalist faced with a handful of junkies and frail vagrants. Little by little, he turned the concrete cylinder into a postmodern take on a wizard's tower and even managed to scrounge up enough disparate clothing layers to create something approaching an old-fashioned wizard's robe.

Tom essentially killed his own parents with overpowering guilt and drove his remaining relatives out of town, all of his relatives across the country declaring him a persona non grata. He was alone in the world and was too far gone to notice. By the end, even Crystal's megaphone-assisted pleas for peaceful collaboration went unheard. From as early on as 2005, the local Infernalist's clumsy attempts at garnering fame, power and respect had taken a turn for the pathetically humorous. There wasn't anything left of the former lab rat – anything except the loose shape of an anthro warthog, turned yellow thanks to Hell's influence and a diseased liver, with bright red eyes and a twitchy, borderline animalistic demeanor. While most of the city turned to pointing and jeering at the local failure of a supervillain, there were still a few people left in town who could look at Quint's tower from a distance, and admit that the whole series of events was tragic. Amazo himself would admit to thinking that seeing Quint fall to pieces like this was hard. Seeing anyone fall victim to the Dark Arts thanks to their own hubris is a painful process, even if you aren't much more than a passive observer.

For years, he'd teeter on the verge of sheer lunacy, largely existing as the source of half-baked plans that didn't go much further than imp-assisted bank robberies or botched museum heists. Occasionally, he'd bump into a more intellectually capable felon and benefit from that person's input. As expected, however, his incompetence would typically make everything backfire. A bit like Gollum – if Gollum's Precious had turned out to be a lit can of propane gas waiting to be chucked at innocents – he sometimes felt as though he had no real control over his own actions. Rote steps in a planned attack were treated as if they were the cause for celebration, when anyone else would've just moved on. He gloated when he should've kept his wits about him, and was starting to be lucky if he managed to terrorize the occasional child. He'd spend a solid decade being unable to foster even the slightest bit of surprise from even the most vulnerable of all mundanes.

Then, Thomas Quint died at the hands of the local vigilantes.

He'd been physically exhausted, but forced to push on thanks to his barely-controlled impulses. All forms of fine arcane control left him over the course of the five-minute confrontation, and he quickly devolved into the textbook case of an Infernalist who would've not only lost control, but also reached their terminal status. He needed a disproportionate amount of strength and focus to even barely manage to singe the assailants' souls. Without saying a word, he gave the last embers of his sanity to the Butcher, hoping that his raging mortal coil would avenge him.

He'd never receive this last boon. Instead, Belial took him and left Holden, McConmara et al. with a frothing and snarling beast in stained robes, too weak to cause any serious damage and too uncoordinated to even try. Grappled from all sides, his body gave out. Later exams would reveal the presence of an aneurysm, the exploded blood vessel having reduced him to a vegetable.

For thirty-six hours, Shield and the HPD were saddled with a living corpse no-one wanted to manage. The Quint family had removed their son's access rights to their funeral plot, he was too far gone to qualify as an interesting specimen for dissection or autopsy, and Hope General was growing increasingly anxious to remove the body from their patient list. Thomas' room in the ER was starting to turn into a self-made tourist trap, and people massing to take pictures of a neurovegetative body felt like a degrading concept, no matter if the man had been hardly worthy of respect. After some debate, a small group agreed to leave Holden Hall to ensure that the city's infamous, if somewhat unique Infernalist, would at least get to have a dignified passing.

The warthog was unplugged, he spent a few moments flatlining as expected – and then his ECG twitched.

What opened its ruby-red eyes was Thomas, and it also wasn't Thomas. There was no feral hatred in the look he gave them, no contempt, not even the vaguely cartoon-worthy evil relish he'd sometimes sported and seasoned with a few snorts. Instead, that one look was mildly uncomfortable on multiple levels, giving the impression that the warthog wasn't just mentally undressing the nurse – but everyone involved as well...

From then on, things took a turn for the absurd. However, from the point of view of the intelligence that had taken control of this burned-out shell, this had been a centuries-old plan in the making.

The incubus hadn't been of those that had ended in Pandemonium. It had never received a name and had never grown natively accustomed to the sense of having a job, of being valued in Hell's hierarchy. In the Pit, it had existed as a mildly suggestive punching bag and fleshly stress-relief device for most of those bigger or stronger than itself by a few inches. For thousands of years, it had trawled History as a purveyor of debaucheries and a despoiler of chaste dispositions – albeit one with an increasingly refined palate. Even before the written word, beating the proverbial meat had lost all its appeal, the organics of it all being as pedestrian and routine as a mundane's morning coffee. It had been wanting more, and more it would find in the musty tales of Old Iram, birthplace of the angel-demon half-breeds.

A bit like George Gammell, the incubus would owe its affable dispositions to the times it had spent choosing vessels better suited for the pleasures of the mind or of the other senses. It rode in the back of countless heads and possessed a few Epicurean sorts after their demise, having no identity but that of the most recent body it had claimed for itself. A few hours here and a few hours there – everything in order to avoid being accosted by the Infernal Broker or the Sabbatic Goat. A few bodies to spend pondering and planning, a few test phases during the Summer of Love; and all it needed was the one definitive shell that would allow it to advance its plans while protecting them adequately. As a demon is more than adequately suited to study Infernalism and is likely to remain unnoticed as a practitioner, afterwards, picking someone who'd fallen for Belial's long con while amassing oodles of arcane potency seemed like the easiest way in.

As luck would have it, a certain someone died, not too long ago...

There's just one catch, though: how could anyone expect the local snarling and drooling farce of an arcane menace to turn into a refined aesthete and an effective Infernalist seemingly overnight? No matter how much his head might be hazy with a thousand simultaneous turn-ons, Thomas now has enough lucidity to admit that this is a particularly difficult can of worms to open. Chances are he'll have to spend some time operating in the shadows, with the help of his newfound allies – after which he'll be able to step into the limelight of Hope's nightlife with a new name and fictitious backstory.

That solution is a problem all its own, however: changing names and identities isn't exactly legal, if you aren't in with one of the government's Witness Protection Programs. Certain angels could weave documents and databases countrywide with a Godly edict or their own sound judgment, and Leonard now seems fairly capable when it comes to making cumbersome former clients disappear. Unfortunately, Tom isn't too keen on working with the goat, for rather obvious reasons.

That leaves this tusk-sporting arcane Lothario with no other choice than to hope that the city's contacts in the Plane of Bliss will be willing to turn a kind ear to the tale of a reluctant Fiend who would rather turn into a lounge lizard than damn promiscuous mortals to Hell...
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