Yes.
Such a little thing, to make so many Superiors scream.
The Ring, at first glance, is not much to look at:
it's a plain gold band of metal that will easily fit
on any humanoid's finger. Regular attempts to
determine its composition or powers will fail: aside
from that, and the fact that no force known on any of
the three planes can put a dent into it (before you
ask, no, not even Gabriel's Volcano), you'd never know
that it was a relic at all.
The Ring is a relic, though: in fact, it's the
relic. To begin with, it's not gold. It looks like
gold on the corporeal plane (on the celestial plane
it's blindingly bright) only because it has to look
like something, and something turned out to be gold.
What it actually is made up of are pure Forces.
Actually, every Force ripped from an angel during the
Rebellion. Every single one of them.
You see, the Symphony wasn't set up to handle that
much celestial combat at the time, so it dealt with
the sudden influx of Forces by mashing them together,
binding them and spitting out ... The Ring.
The Ring is thus unique ... and tinged with madness
and death and evil to the very core. It's literally
too dense with thrumming power to analyze, and nobody
on either side particularly wants to get anyone close
enough to try. You see, just because the thing
doesn't look insanely powerful doesn't mean that it
isn't insanely powerful...
Any one who puts on The Ring will detect one effect
immediately: his, her or its Forces (this includes
Word-Forces, incidentally) and Characteristics double.
Normal limits are thrown out the window. The user
also has access to every Song known to at least one
of the entities whose Forces now make up The Ring:
considering that the Metratron's Forces (and some of
Lucifer's, courtesy of his savaging by Michael) are in
this thing, that pretty much means that the user has
every Song known before the Fall at level/6. And
all their Attunements. And all their Rites. And
all their Distinctions.
However, they may not be able to use them right away.
There are several abilities that seem close to the
surface, as it were (the Songs of Light, Charm and the
Corporeal Song of Entropy) are notable examples), but
to use anything else the user must make an Will Roll
at -20. Each successful evocation of a Song or
ability gives a cumulative +1 to all future attempts
to evoke that Song or ability only.
Lastly, words cannot describe the Essence capacity of
something made out of millions of angelic Forces.
Practically speaking, nobody has the force of will to
coax more than about (10x total Forces), though.
That's per day, by the way.
However, all of this comes with a price. Every week
that the user wields The Ring, roll 666: on a 8 or
less, the user gains one level of the Celestial
Discord: Megalomania (not covered in canon, but fairly
obvious; also, it's a Celestial Discord that doesn't
interfere with Essence gathering) or Need: adulation
(when those hit level/6, substitute your favorite Evil
Overlord Discords). The user will usually also
develop Paranoia. The Ring also seems to be attuned
to the Word of Control (a Word never given out by
Heaven or Hell): the user gains the equivalent of (2x
current special Discords) Word-Forces, with special
abilities and Rites to match.
The only one that got this far was Legion (how he got
The Ring is a mystery: the beyond-Damned thing seems
to have developed a malevolent intelligence all its
own), which is one reason why Raphael was so ready to
do a suicide run. The assembled Superiors didn't even
try to destroy it by then (it had never worked in the
past): they just severed Legion's arm at the shoulder,
dumped concrete onto it, let it set, did all sorts of
strange and Superior-level bindings onto the block and
dumped the entire acre of land into the Volcano (the
last time Belial and Gabriel were seen cooperating on
anything). Anyway, presumably the Damned thing's
still down there.
Presumably. After all, it is impossible to detect.
Having it show up in your campaign would be...
Well, it just wouldn't be very nice of you.
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