Janet, Cherub Vassal of Stone, Angel of Broken Hearts
By Moe Lane
"'Well,' the Goddess said, 'your heart didn't heal
straight the last time it broke. So we'll break it
again and reset it so it heals straight this time.'"
- Children's Tales of North Arlen, ed. S'Lange
(The Door Into Shadow, pg. 223, trans. D. Duane)
Corporeal Forces: 4
Strength: 8
Agility: 8
Ethereal Forces: 5
Intelligence: 9
Precision: 11
Celestial Forces: 5
Will: 8
Perception: 12
Word Forces: 5
Vessel: young woman/3, young man/3, both with +1
Charisma
Skills: Dodge/4, Emote/6, Fighting/6, Knowledge/6
(Psychology), Medicine/3, Ranged Weapon (rifle/3,
pistol/3), Savoir-Faire/3, Seduction/3
Songs: Ecstasy (Ethereal/6), Empathy (all/3), Healing
(Ethereal/6), Memory (Corporeal/3), Nightmares
(Ethereal/3), Opening (Ethereal/3), Solace
(Corporeal/3, Ethereal/3), Succor (Corporeal/3,
Ethereal/3), Tongues (Ethereal/6)
Attunements: Cherub of Stone, Armor, Inevitability,
Vassal of Stone, Angel of Broken Hearts
Angel of Broken Hearts: Janet automatically recognizes
those who have been seriously emotionally scarred by
love. With a Perception roll, she may determine the
circumstances that caused that scarring, which will
give her a decent idea about how to put the poor
unfortunate back together again...
Rites: Mend a broken heart (+2 Essence)
Once upon a time...
Once upon a time there was a Cherub, bright and happy
and in love. It was a good time to be in love - in
those bright days when the entire world was new, it
was the best time of all to be in love. You could
love without pain, back then. You could love, and
know that the one you love didn't love you back, and
it still wouldn't matter, because there was still the
love, and there was no anguish about it all. You
could love from afar, and dream idly about what would
happen if your beloved would suddenly turn around, the
Light in his face as he looked upon you, and whisper
his own love into your ears - but if it never
happened, that was fine, too. It was the love that
was important.
Well, one day, the beloved did turn around, and the
Light was suddenly in his face as he looked at the
bright, cheerful and happy Cherub, and he did whisper
words into her ear. True, they were not necessarily
the words that she daydreamed about hearing, but did
she really expect everything to turn out precisely
like her dreams? The words that she got were honeyed,
and powerful, and they caressed places in her soul
that so badly needed caressing... so the Cherub
listened deeply, and internally shushed any errant
thought about the implications of those words. In
fact, the Cherub ignored those implications until she
found herself on a battlefield, sword in hand and
charging her brothers and sisters: she awoke from her
daydream to find herself somehow living a nightmare of
treason and betrayal.
It broke her Heart.
During those lonely years trapped in Hell, the new
Djinn sneered at love, spurned tenderness and tried
her damnedest to crush softness under her warped paw.
She avoided her former love (an easy enough task,
alas, as that worthy no longer had any use for her -
if, indeed, he ever had), both from revulsion at her
former weakness and because he wasn't nearly as
beautiful to behold as he once was. Instead, she
found herself drifting into Lust's own honeyed
embrace. So be it. Passion was for fools and
tenderness was for weaklings - but lust could be
slaked without risking betrayal. "Take what you can
get" became her motto - and she became very good at
taking.
Still, there were still those cold places in her soul.
Not the 'cold' of her new nature - that was more
ennui and apathy then anything else - but a cold that
ached. It was like an itch that she couldn't scratch,
but the worst thing was that she knew that someone
else could, and possibly very easily. All she had to
do was let them. But that would mean letting someone
get close enough to see the ache, and trusting that
that someone would soothe that itch, and not claw at
it. The very idea could not be borne.
But neither could that itch, that cold spot begging to
be warmed with kisses - and as the Djinn looked about
her surroundings with steadily-clearer eyes, she
realized that there was no one who could provide that
warmth. Not her former beloved, not her fellow-demons
and certainly not her current Prince: she saw, now,
that she had picked Andrealphus' service simply
because he retained a superficial beauty that reminded
the Djinn of her first love. But he was not her
beloved. There was no one in Hell that was worthy -
yes, worthy, she realized with a sudden, wild hope -
of love.
This truth broke her Heart, too - but this time it
healed properly.
After her escape and Redemption, the Repentant Cherub
found herself eventually in the service of Stone. She
spent the next ten thousand years proving - first to
Heaven, then to Stone, then to David and at last to
herself - that she had learned from her initial
mistakes and tribulations thereof. Love is supposed
to make you strong, you see. It is supposed to bring
you out of yourself so that you may connect with
others. It is supposed to make you rise above your
own petty, selfish concerns. Unfortunately, sometimes
it doesn't. Sometimes, love can become a crutch, or
even an addiction - and when the object of that
addiction or crutch goes away, you can all get twisted
inside in response. You shrink into yourself,
spurning what is real and freely offered for a
chimerical dream and crippling internal fantasy that
masks the pain, instead of curing it.
But, if you're lucky, you'll meet Janet. She'll look
you over and become what you think you need - until
you realize that you were a deluded fool to ever
really want it in the first place. Fair warning; it
will not be a pleasant exercise: ripping off a rotting
bandage that has entwined itself into a badly healed
wound rarely is. Janet pulls no punches: she loves
humanity too much and knows that, sometimes, healing
involves pain. If she must break a metaphorical rib
or two to do surgery on your heart, so be it. When
she's done with you, your illusions and delusions and
justifications and excuses will lie at your feet,
tawdry and mocking, and you will probably weep at the
waste of all that precious time lost in obsession and
uselessness.
But you will be free to truly love again.
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