+- The First Age (https://thefirstage.org/forums)
+-- Forum: News & Discussion (https://thefirstage.org/forums/forum-3.html)
+--- Forum: Biographies & Backstory (https://thefirstage.org/forums/forum-10.html)
+--- Thread: Deveny Sándor (Ezekiel) (/thread-1229.html)
Deveny Sándor (Ezekiel) - Ezekiel - 05-28-2020
Mercurial in nature, Ezekiel can be kind or malevolent, spirited or brooding, affectionate or cold. He appreciates flattery and enjoys being liked by others, relying heavily on his natural charisma and charm, and tending to be both perplexed and vindictive when it does not win him friends. Usually he is generous, though such favours come with a price often only discovered much later. He chafes under the thumb of authority but does not (appear to) seek power for his own ends; rather he does as he pleases when he pleases. He is prone to addiction, vices he sometimes embraces and sometimes fights against. Men and women earn equal flirtatious attention when it suits him, though in reality he usually has little interest in either. He enjoys both cultivating and observing fear in others, but not being the object of that fear; in fact he prefers the opposite, to be the one looked to for protection.
1. The only thing that sells better than pleasure, is fear.
Originally from Hungary, Sándor was born to a family of drifters who favoured the sort of hedonistic lifestyle ill-suited to the raising of a child. Despite poor beginnings he was awarded a surprising scholarship to study at MSU at eighteen, but was expelled after little more than a semester for dealing drugs amongst the students and faculty. Since then he has subsumed himself in Moscow’s dark culture and currently carves his living at the centre of its depraved Undercity. Most do not know him by face, only by name and notoriety earned under the moniker of Ezekiel. His calling card is a demon-headed iron coin, its expression open-mouthed joy on one side, and the gritted pain of terror on the other. Among the destitute of the Underground in particular he has cultivated a nebulous reputation for helping those who seek and call upon his favour; certainly, it is said, he will always listen, no matter who you are, and no matter what you ask. The rumour hastened by his own hand is that he cares more for the people of the Undercity than the Ascendancy himself.
Beyond that Zeke primarily peddles narcotics, and of late one in particular that induces a vibrant hallucinatory state. The small pill is colloquially becoming known as ‘P’, often erroneously thought to stand for Pleasure but occasionally understood by its darker and perhaps truer moniker of Pestilence. Intended to be used in conjunction with a neural interface, it promotes a state of mind which can be controlled via a preset or at the behest of another individual, much like a lucid dream -- whereupon the user can live out any number of fantasies.
Used without such controls, however, and the effect is an utter roulette; the experience might be euphoric, or terrifying, or anything in between. In a worst case scenario the stimulus overloads the brain, and is fatal. Pestilence is highly addictive, both for the viscerally blissful experiences it can offer, but also for the very real thrill of its dangers.
And it is lucrative.
Zeke has several other strong ties to the Underground and various business ventures there, including the fight club Almaz, where he mostly consults upon the best cocktails to subdue or enrage the fighters, but occasionally provides pain-relieving opiates when Ilya’s girls fail. In the spectacle of violence itself he has less interest. Generally he steers clear of gang politics, though his work brings him into contact now and then. Since he is free with favours and appears to prefer being well-liked he makes few enemies, though those who do choose to cross him tend to meet unfortunately ends -- though Zeke’s own hands remain clean of the deed.
In more salubrious society he is associated with the Rubik Rooms, an Underground entertainment experience -- this being the most publicly acceptable of his faces, and the most legitimate source of his income.
On its surface, Rubik Rooms offers excursion tours, supposedly into the Underground’s secret blood-soaked levels, though in reality it is not much more than a highly scripted experience popular with tourists. They also offer escape room vaults and various horror themed live-theatre encounters, both of which have been met with high acclaim and likely make use of power-aided enhancements. It’s rumoured that there are deeper, invitation only levels to RR, but such is the mystique it markets around itself that these claims are impossible to substantiate.
2. It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good.
Life in Moscow did not start well, of course.
After the university washed its hands, Sándor was left both destitute and homeless in a city without family or friends, vomited up from the dream of a miracle he had never fully believed in anyway. He sold himself to various drug trials in a bid to raise the credit needed to escape, but only ended up snared deeper inside Moscow’s hungry belly. When the fevers scalded like desert wind at the age of nineteen, Sándor knew it wasn’t just a bad trip, and he was sure he was going to die. He stumbled through alleyways, palms bouncing off rough walls as he tried not to fall, reaching out desperately for anything upon which to save himself. When he woke some time later the last of the rain fell like needles of ice on his chilled skin. The storm had been sudden and unexpected in the mild arms of Spring, but it had soothed the soar of his temperature. Sándor was left with a sense of grandiose self-importance. The world had not let him die.
Such is the conceit that has built him from nothing. And such was the birth of Ezekiel.
In the six years since he has strangled a hold on every opportunity to flutter by his attention. He is attuned now to the weather, often knowing its proclivities ahead of time, though he rarely puts such knowledge to practical use. Manipulations so far are usually trifling things, meant to impress others or amuse himself. Though only a moderate channeler, his skill at weather control is already unusual -- and will grow to be exceptional.
Appearance: Unassuming of build and height, he is more slender than lean. His dark mop of curly hair is usually unkempt, and the face beneath errs towards sharpness. His eyes are light brown and expressive, usually the thing about him people are inclined to trust. Zeke’s smile is not always an entirely comfortable thing, tending towards sinful, but others appear to find it among his most charming attributes. His mannerisms can be as changeable as his moods yet he presents as entirely comfortable in his own skin. Mostly he favours the anonymity of dark clothes, though often with some flare of showmanship to them, like he cannot choose whether to hide in or step out of the shadows. Various tattoos score his skin, none with the cohesion of art. Of the ones usually visible, a black rose sits on the back of one hand, and a gaping skull the other.
3. One man carries salvation and damnation from the desert.
Ezekiel stretched out on the grass, one hand propped beneath his head, the other plucking the cigarette from his lips and sending a plume of smoke skyward. Obnoxious music vibrated the earth beneath his shoulder blades, a steady beat-beat-beat that pounded in time to his pulse. His high had capped and crashed, and now it was the teeth-grit tear of a greater power storming his veins. The laughter singing behind was shrill; the heat and roar and stink of a fire the revellers cavorted around burning his nostrils. Above, stars prickled the veil of night beyond his own smoke. Thick ropes of power plunged up, rummaging around in the heavens.
Zeke was done selling, and he had no real wish of the company.
He could just leave.
But so could they.
The spit of answering rain was cold. He shivered as the drops hit, lips hooking a smirk when the first squeals sounded behind. Soon it slapped hard against the river beyond his feet, an intemperate wind raking the skeleton tops of the trees like the rouse of an angry beast. The music cut short amidst the howl. A few voices called his attention, but he waved them away over his head, the stub of his smoke fizzling dead. For a moment he flirted with the effort it would take to call an arc of lightning to speed their dispersal, but in the end he let them go. The vortexes drawn to the sky fled from his hold, and his lip curled a bit with the effort of letting the power go, its searing rage leaving him void in absence.
He sat up once it was silent, flicking the remains of his smoke into the tossing waves. Curls plastered icy to his forehead, water running a freezing trespass down the front of his shirt. He watched the dark churn of water.
“You’re him?”
He turned a little to the voice; to its hesitancy and sweetness. The pits of his eyes found one of the students loitering, her delicate bones soaked through. Blonde strands clung to her cheeks, mascara pooling spiders beneath her eyes, and she rubbed at her shivering arms. Something small and round clung between her fingers though, and Zeke smiled with teeth. She blinked at him, but appeared to capture some fleeting bravery. She threw him the object she held, and it caught dull in the doused light of the dying fire.
He caught the coin, slapped it automatically on the back of his other hand; straight into the grinning maw of the skull inked there. “Now where did a pretty thing like you get a trinket like this?”
“They say you help people.”
“Sometimes,” he admitted with the tilt of a shoulder. The haunt of a new smile twitched his lips now. He snuck a peek at the coin’s face, sniggered a little to himself, then pocketed it as he stood. Rain soaked him through, flattening his clothes to the slim lines of his body. A little lightning forked the sky after all, as he hooked an arm around the girl’s shoulders, and led her away.
Reborn: A demonic deity of Ancient Mesopotamia. Pazuzu, son of Hanbu, brother to Humbaba, is king of the wind demons. He is reputed to control the west and south-west winds which bring famine during the dry season and tearing storms and locusts during the rainy season, and is thought to send disease, plague and pestilence into households; however, as he is considered the force behind the destructive winds and their threat, he is also considered the best defence against them. Though Pazuzu is himself an evil spirit, he drives and frightens away other evil spirits, therefore protecting humans against plagues and misfortunes. Prayers to Pazuzu are intended to divert his natural inclination toward destruction to the more benevolent ends of protection.
Pazuzu is represented in statuettes and engravings with bulging eyes in a canine face, a scaly body, snake-headed penis, the talons of a large bird, and enormous wings. Amulets carved of his hideous face are thought to ward off evil, but idolatry of any great stature is thought to bring his attention instead.