Eli is more than he appears

From: "Emily K. Dresner" (zenith@engin.umich.edu)

I might sound more then a bit insane, since it's been one of those days. So excuse my aimless ramblings.

I was thinking of the Eli is Christ thread, one I have taken a particular shine to. And combined with the Dominic is a Balseraph thread, it makes for all sorts of angst, in various sick and twisted ways - several of which I'll hand to my players on a platter to think about for a while. They ALWAYS need more to think about.

But I was off thinking about, oddly enough, Laurence, and his big Christianity drive. It's pretty clear that ole buddy Larry has made his decision that he will be the patron of Paladins, as long as they support HIS chosen religion in HIS manner. This is all well and good, as long as you don't explain to him that a Bodhisattva is clearly Theravada Buddhism and play a prominent role in the Lotus Sutra. (He's confused, but we still love him.)

In connection to this, I think of Gabe's comment about Larry in "Night Music" about Larry being Dominic's lap-dog. And, it seems to me, to some extent, Laurence is the marionette dancing on the ends of Dominic's strings - a convenient place to have a very dangerous Malakite if you happen to be a Balseraph. But this has been discussed.

So we have Dominic persecuting Eli for bringing Heresy to heaven. Eli is, or was, or inhabited the body of Christ, the man behind the shenanigans for the last 2000 years, participatory or not, since it's hard to participate when you're mostly dead. In persecuting Michael and Gabriel, and playing games with Laurence, he's doing a very good job of following through on a word of Corruption, if you are after the biggest word of all, Creation, and want to bring it to its knees.

I'm not going anywhere with this, actually. I just realized.

But I do see if Eli is Christ reincarnated on the Earth once again, that Dominic is going to have a fun time whipping up Laurence and his Malakim to go after the followers of Eli, human or not, by telling him that Eli - or better yet, the vessel he inhabits - is out pretending to be the Messiah and is really a corrupted False Prophet of God who must be stopped. And Dominic is following through, corrupting the one thing Laurence loves, Christianity, by destroying the Christ.

.... and Gabriel is mad. Michael and Yves, well, this would cause the War to erupt, possibly, in heaven if people knew. The others are well, the others.

I'm gonna go wander off and ponder some more.

Fun with Malakim! Do not taunt happy fun Malakim!

From: "Emily K. Dresner" (zenith@engin.umich.edu)

>>>No, Eli is Yahweh's Vessel which he uses to communicate with the Arch Angels much like the Angels use vessels to talk to humans.

>>But wasn't Jesus Yahweh's Vessel for communicating with humans?

> In Anne Rice's "Mnemoch, The Devil", Jesus is God's vessel, for him to learn how humans do live, in flesh and blood. And, guys (and gals): Eli is AA of CREATION. Doesn't ring any bell??

*bing!* Yes, of course it does.

How about this take on it: Eli IS Yahweh, or at least the ArchAngel form of him. The vessel he took the last time he decided to go on a hang with humans binge was that of a Jewish Carpenter (Role/6, Status/1) in which he carried through having the role created for him by being born. You get all (Eli is Jesus, God is Eli, God is Jesus) at the same time. Stir, mix, and serve with crackers.

I would like to go so far as to push that Moses was one of Eli's vessels. BUT... Isaiah and Ezekiel were NOT, for various reasons.

We've all seen how bonkers the ArchAngels get when new Messiahs show up. They're probably still smarting from the first time. Hell, Uriel freaked out. Michael and Gabriel were tried for Heresey. And it's quite clear that none of them have the Whole Picture.

As a matter of fact, we can take a dim KULT-y view of all this. God is actually a Man. He created Mankind as we know it in his image, and the Angels to serve Him in binding his creation to the Earth. Some Angels believed in the Freedom and Free Will for Mankind, since they were as Divine as God being created in his Image, but blinded by ignorance, and some were against - those who were FOR the freedom of Man Rebelled against the others, and were cast out of Heaven. God did not stop them, for there needed to be a Hell for souls to inhabit between lives, and tangible evils for there to be a Mankind.

And God occasionally goes down to Earth, sometimes to blind Mankind, sometimes to Enlighten them.

And who is God? Eli, the Creator. And he's Human. Weird, man.

I toyed with this whole concept for a while, especially in just killing off God altogether, but it's still sitting on the back burner.

(One of my NPC's, a Lilim, has been known to tell people, "I don't believe in God because I've never met Him. You would think I would have by now.")

From: "Andrew C. Johnson" (djohnson@atlas.socsci.umn.edu)

Fascinating. To jump on this bandwagon of possibility (despite quite a lot that might point otherwise), I would add that the first chapter of the Gospel of John deals with The Word as that which created. The gospel then goes on to name the messiah as The Word. ('In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God') Eli, who is the Creative Urge imbued with personality, has a fascinating claim to being the Word.

What is more, there are portions of the Bible in which _The_ Angel of the Lord appears to bring a message or some such, which is believed in some circles to mean Jesus, before appearing as the son of Mary two thousand years ago...

Again, fascinating...

From: David (No, not THAT David.), dwood@skipjack.bluecrab.org

True to the nature as a servitor of Malphas (I got promoted, I got promoted!), I hereby present MY take on Eli's story.

Creation, like many have said, is a big thing. So big that it's scary to most angels. Most archangels, even -- even if he didn't create the universe himself, the scope of the remodeling God did is staggering. Why, the wallpaper alone...

And in all of this, when God chose an Archange of Creation, the candidate for such an important job had to be well suited for it, and ironically, that meant that only a Mercurian could fill it. So very early on, Eli found himself in a very lofty position. And he served it well.

But it did have the effect of, shall we say, deranging him. The magnitude and nature of his job was such that in the service of his Word, his outlook changed considerably. Much the same thing has happened to many over the ages. Gabriel has a similar derangement, evincing paranoia and a very flighty nature as part of both her choir and her Word. Druiel can also be considered another case of an angel acting strangely because of a bad choice of word.

Anyway, back to Eli.

On top of that, the war took its toll on Heaven and Earth, and a balance somewhere was thrown out of whack. While his servitors and those of the other archangels produced feats, the creativity demonstrated by the humans was in its own way even more impressive. Their limited capacity made their feats of engineering and production even more breathtaking than anything performed in Heaven.

As if that wasn't enough, more energy was diverted from creating and producing new things and going to new ways to beat the Fallen back. Heaven just wasn't creative any more.

And so it was one night that Eli snuck out and changed sides. It was then that he went to serve his Word among those who also best served his Word: the Humans.

He saw it as his best course of action, both in support of the humans (who sometimes need a helping hand both with their creations and in beating back the Fallen themselves) and Heaven (supporting his Word is the best support he can give). Many of the other Archangels don't see it this way, considering what he did abandonment of his holy post. (It should be pointed out, however, that God allowed it, and that should make it okay. If only he'd come down and actually give CONFIRMATION... >:)

But regardless of what he thinks, he's there and going about his business. If cornered and asked his beliefs, he'll explain it that way: that the humans are the ones doing all the creating these days, and that his best support of his word lies among them.

Dominic, naturally, isn't happy about this setup. It's not like he's actually Fallen or working for Hell, but there's something not right about an archangel doing this sort of thing. He's willing to persecute it, not because it's definitely wrong, but because it's so grey that he *needs* to examine it fully to understand it. And would he be a good Archangel of Judgement if he didn't look into the suspicious matters, not just the definitely wrong ones?

Contrary to what Heaven thinks, Eli is not alone in his modified service. He has a small army of relievers which go about, admiring the works of those people who have found their talents, and advising as "muses" those who need guidance. He also maintains very occasional contact with his remaining loyal servitors. Those either in his own service, or service to others.

He appears in diners, in studios, in waiting rooms, on buses and trains, whereever creative people are, and he likes starting conversations with them. He's a Mercurian, after all. That's what he does. All the while, he's also working on something of his own. Nobody's ever gotten a good look at it, but those people that have had brief glimpses of it have said it's big, festooned both with engineering measurements and doodles of things to add on. And that also has some people worried.

Jean isn't sure whether to be interested in it or not. As keeper of all knowledge of technological things, he'll have a copy of whatever in his own repository. Maybe. Trouble is, this is the Archangel of Creation here. It wouldn't be beyond him to create something entirely new.

Many of the archangels (and princes) look at Eli as a loose cannon on deck for that reason: not clearly working for any side but the humans', and concocting a plan which could have a devastating effect on the War. Some have even likened it to that really big joke Kobal is working on.

Back to the INC Mainpage.

Elizabeth McCoy <arcangel@prismnet.com>
Archangel of Archives