Raziel

Angel of Mysteries
Ofanite Master of Destiny

Vessels: Human/5 (scholarly man of indeterminate age)
Skills: Computer Operation/1, Detect Lies/6, Dodge/4, Driving/1, Enchantment/4, Escape/3, Fast-Talk/4, Knowledge (many, at very high levels!), Languages (many), Meditation/6, Move Silently/6, Savoir-Faire/3, Singing/5, Swimming/2
Songs: Affinity (all/6), Artifacts (Celestial/3), Attraction (/6), Cacophony (Ethereal/3), Darkness (Corporeal/3, Celestial/1), Dreams (all/3), Entropy (Corporeal/2), Fire (Ethereal/6), Form (Ethereal/6, Celestial/6), Memory (all/6), Motion (all/6), Opening (Corporeal/6), Projection (all/3), Seals (all/4), Sensation (Celestial/4), Shadows (Corporeal/6, Celestial/6), Shields (Celestial/4), Sight (all/3), Speed (Corporeal/6, Ethereal/6), Submission (all/3), Symphony (all/6), Tongues (all/6), Wings/2
Artifacts: Book of Mysteries (see below); Mirror of Truth/6 (Liber Reliquarum, p. 67)

Attunements: Seraph of Destiny, Ofanite of Destiny, Malakite of Destiny, Mercurian of Destiny, Divine Destiny, Library Card, Right of Passage, The Akashic Record, Master of Divine Knowledge (with the Seraph resonance), Angel of Mysteries

Special Attunements: Raziel has two special attunements that he may grant to other angels (see below).

Special Rites: Solve a mystery; inspire someone else to try to solve a mystery.

Mysteries are different from secrets. A secret is information that someone knows and deliberately does not reveal. A mystery is something no one knows . . . not even the Angel of Mysteries. To understand Raziel, one must understand Yves -- of course, few understand either of them.

When Yves named all things, he named all things; things extant and nonexistent, things yet to be and things that never were, things that might have been and things that might be.

Yves, in other words, knows everything. His Library contains all knowledge. Yet Yves is not God -- he is an aspect of God, but he is finite. Despite knowing everything, he can't tell the rest of the Host the things that would settle all questions and win the War. The paradox of Yves' omniscience is one that gives lesser angels headaches and generates mistrust in beings like Michael. Michael doesn't trust Raziel either.

Raziel is one of Yves' oldest Servitors. Some say he is Yves' progeny, others say he is the Archangel of Destiny, or one of his alter-egos. He is respected by everyone in Heaven (except Michael), and he is a member of the Seraphim Council, though he rarely speaks and never votes. He has his own Servitors to whom he can grant his own attunements and Rites. He is a mysterious figure, rarely seen and even more rarely heard.

Raziel is the angel entrusted by Yves with Mysteries. Mysteries can be brief and trivial ("What happened to my other sock?") or cosmically profound ("Is Lucifer himself following a preordained script?"). They are all written in a book that Raziel carries with him, and when a mystery is solved, it vanishes from the book. Even Yves does not know the contents of Raziel's book . . . though he can choose to know anything in it, and thus remove it from the book by knowing it. How can Yves not know what's in a book his Servitor carries, yet know it when he chooses to? That's in the book . . .

Raziel himself never reads the book, nor does he allow others to. From time to time, the book has been stolen from him, and pages torn from the book have fallen into the hands of angels, demons and mortals. Legends abound of what knowledge has passed into the Symphony as a result of these thefts. Yet Raziel always gets his book back. Some say it is a function of the book to occasionally reveal some of its contents, other say Raziel does it deliberately as a function of his Word.

The Angel of Mysteries is always questing for information, always trying to solve a mystery of his own or dropping hints for other seekers of knowledge. It troubles him not at all that he could solve any mystery simply by opening his book. His Servitors are Servitors of Destiny, but they are specifically charged with helping those whose Destiny is to solve a mystery (or sometimes, be part of one). Raziel believes that mysteries are what God placed in the Symphony to keep everyone on their toes, even the Archangels. To him, the most Divine spark is the spark of curiosity, and he loathes those who are not moved by it.

Raziel's Attunements

Clue

While on the trail of a mystery, the angel may ask for a clue, for a cost of 1 Essence. This attunement can only be used once per day. The angel will know where to look next, though the information he wants won't necessarily leap out at him -- he might be directed to a certain book, or a particular address, or a specific person. The clue may be trivial or it may be the key to the crucial bit of information the angel needs to solve the mystery; this is up to the GM.

Things Man Was Not Meant to Know

There are mysteries that lead mankind toward its Destiny, and there are things better left unknown. This attunement will tell the angel which is true for any given mortal, with regard to a specific bit of information. It only works with someone on whom the angel has already used Yves' Divine Destiny attunement.

Application of this attunement will tell an angel, for example, whether a reunion with a long-lost family member will lead to a joyful reconciliation or tragedy and heartbreak, whether a genetic engineer's current research will lead to his Destiny as the inventor of a new cancer treatment or his Fate as the discoverer of a new bioweapon, or whether an explorer's discovery of a lost tribe in the Amazon will benefit or harm both the tribe and the explorer.

Back to