Name: Liseth
Race: Machine
Age: Height: N/A
Weight: N/A
Appearance: Physical AttributesStrength: N/A
Agility: N/A
Constitution: N/A
Other Abilities:Infrastructure: Liseth lacks any physical form. She is a consciousness dwelling within occult machinery that has perfectly intermeshed with the physical layout of the city itself. She is invisible even to the eyes of supernaturals, requiring remarkably thorough forms of supernatural sight or powers specialized towards her type of abilities. If she’s entangling herself into an area that would otherwise be different she can easily create a front. A restaurant can practically pop up overnight where there were ruins, humans being easily enticed to come in and act as cover as she does work. Liseth is every bit of this infrastructure, primarily rooted in the most stable and well off districts. Direct observation of certain parts of infrastructure can inspire mortals into devout worship, creating machine cults who faithfully try to serve her.
Beyond the basics of the concealment mechanisms that keep her hidden Liseth can also construct far more varied structures. Her defensive mechanisms manipulate people and supernaturals alike. When people start getting too close or start destroying the buildings that she’s rooted these types of constructions kick in. Mostly they spend their time gathering power. These mechanisms create cults to protect it, entice supernatural creatures to attack certain targets, and can even do something as simple as hiring an assassin to kill whoever has been heckling her. It may even cause… unfortunate incidents. A car hitting the person on their way home, a gas explosion in their house, or a door locking shut when you’re trying to run from a murderer. By focusing on a singular problem Liseth can destroy collapse dozens of buildings into rubble or call a devastating horde of creatures on an area. Others are simply good at fixing what’s broken. Unless you're real thorough that collapsed restaurant that's a front for her work is back in a few hours, people in it like nothing ever happened.
Occult Matrices: There are hidden secrets in the world that can be exploited for power. Most of the time they are useless and utterly maddening to humans. How could folding a bunch of newspapers into paper cranes and tossing them into a lake on the full moon do anything? The answer is mostly that the universe is rather complex.
Liseth in her current state of comprehending these otherwise impossible to understand pathways and exploit them. These can take the forms of little rituals, habits that people take up in certain facilities, jobs the undertake that they don’t really understand but further the generation of power, and construction workers who end up producing objects they don’t really understand or care to that serve to further her needs. Sometimes very special events can create a massive amount of energy. The death of an important individual (a PC), the rise or fall of a district, a celestial event of great import, these can all provide enough energy for her to do amazing things. This can greatly magnify the power of her defensive infrastructure, let her create even more of it at an exponential rate for a time, or allow her to make temporary but frighteningly powerful agents.
Mechanical Knowledge: All machines are a reflection of the beautiful infrastructure Liseth creates. They are the shadows upon the cave and she is the light. Relying on them is a mistake. While she might not have perfect control over anything not attached to her she can definitely use them. If it can record she can see and listen, if it has information on it she knows it, everything is an open book. Even if she doesn't consciously realize the depths of this knowledge she can easily remember it when needed, like a book you read back in high school.
Archons: Acting on the scale of individual humans can be hard for someone like Liseth. In that case she can create up to five agents to act on her behalf. Every single one of them have incredibly precise senses, capable of seeing far more electromagnetic spectrum, being able to identify the slightest bit of organic matter with taste and smell, feel print on a page or identify the exact problem in a machine based of the slightest vibrations, and even hear the humming of someone’s cells. They also have perfect control over their own perceptions of truth and lies. Not only do they lack any physical tells and have perfect controls over their own phases, but archons consciously decide whether what they say is true or false. This is to such an extent that powers based off of whether the statement is the actual concrete truth, not if they believe that it is such, will still fail to work so long as the demon has decided such.
All archons are also hidden by a human cover. These can be considered falsified bits of reality so in depth that it makes the concealment abilities used by Liseth’s infrastructure look hilariously blatant. Their histories, where they live, funds, mundane equipment, almost all of these can be manufactured perfectly. Liseth can manufacture an archon that can get into nearly anywhere that requires the right credentials. Furthermore, she can grant her archons the knowledge and skill sets needed to perform nearly any mundane task. They may also exploit the same occult physics that she uses in order to perform various effects. The subtypes of archons are listed below. Without their covers most archons appear as mechanical monstrosities, armed with a variety of artificial weapons. All angels sit between Amazing to Incredible at best in stats. However, in cover they might as well be normal humans. If they perish in it they die. However they can also move between a myriad of different covers almost at will, all provided by Liseth.
Archons are not cheap but they aren't prohibitively expensive to create. The time requirements and how it divides her attention is what keeps her limited. Ideally a defeated archon could be salvaged and remade cheaply and quickly, a few hours. Total destruction is a bigger problem, one that would either result in her diverting power from her infrastructure to get the archon online or from other angels. Either case limits her reach and power.
Destroyers:
Powerful assassins and brutal fighters, Destroyers are all masters in the field of making problems disappear. Their abilities allow them to kill people in broad daylight, enrapturing the mortals who see such things in a helpless bystander effect that makes it impossible for those who saw to even remember anything concrete about them. They can greatly increase the flammability of mundane objects, letting them casually blow up cars or other such machinery to tremendous effect. They can drive people into conflict or calm them down, knock out even the hardiest individuals with a good punch to the head, and alter the possibility of a binary choice such as a coin flip or whether a safety is on or a light is off. They can instantly determine threats, identify people of certain skill sets, shatter any mundane object the size of a door or smaller with a single hit, and reordering the connections of a building to block off any escape that doesn’t involve smashing the place to pieces. When unobserved certain Destroyers can alter reality to move at Heroic speeds, this includes alterations in space so that when in something such as an elevator the moment the door closes they can immediately be at another floor.
Without cover they are the most dangerous of angels, their body made of terrible blades, flying about with jets fueled by occult energy, and firing off blasts of energy from arm cannons with the speed of an automatic rifle (striking at Incredible), usually accompanied by conventional firearms as well. With more advanced powers in this state a Destroyer can turn a singular blast into a dozen at once or intensify attacks up a rank. It may do this for allies as well, dramatically strengthening or increasing the amount of their attacks. However, while Liseth can make any angel into a Destroyer converting all five is rarely efficient. The advanced powers out of cover are only for the specialized Destroyed model she currently has unless she makes extensive modifications to the others. This applies similarly to the other types.
Guardians:
Sometimes it is necessary to protect a place or person from danger. They may have an important part to play in Liseth’s calculations or it may be a place for important infrastructure. Their awareness is second to none in this regard. They can instantly know how to plan a perfect ambush in an area to catch even the most prepared opponent suddenly off guard, make sure every shot that isn’t carefully aimed against them or theru allies misses, compress hours of work into minutes, shove even the heaviest objects not affixed to the ground several yards, or inspire a moment of hesitation in their opponents to take advantage of. A Guardian can also launch brutal counter attacks by taking advantage of the power and force of their enemy’s own attacks, deafen her foes, detect anyone who would hold hostility against them or their charges, place a mystical marking on anything of their choice so she can detect them anywhere, and transfer recent damage from themselves or their allies to anything that they can touch. They can also take command over an area to control a large building as if it was part of her body though she can’t make anything in it do something impossible she can open doors or windows, run appliances or electronics, and be aware of everyone within. Guardians can even animate otherwise inanimate beings including corpses. While at best they can retain two or three at Exceptional to Amazing stats, they can permanently add them to existing infrastructure to serve as indefinite guards. This allows Guardians to continuously accrue guards if they wish. They can even blunt attacks that could otherwise seriously wound or kill them or others so long as they can react in time, leaving some bruises but not much more.
Armored and agile, the mechanical clambering of a Guardian is usually paired with a myriad of sensors and energy projectors. This allows them to make Incredible shields and expands their senses into a wider area. They have powers to greatly increase their perceptions up to Heroic by overclocking their minds, alter gravity’s effect on them to make massive leaps, heavy enough to need Fantastic strength, lift incredibly heavy objects like a feather before returning their weight to them, and walk up walls or onto the ceiling.
Collectors:
Sometimes Liseth needs an agent to apply social pressure and manipulate people rather than just rampaging around with brute force in order to peacefully acquire the materials and property needed to expand. A Collector can make someone believe they have the right and qualifications to be somewhere such as a meeting, police evidence locker, or an executive’s office. They may also create false cover stories that witnesses will lap up until they all repeat the same thing so long as it isn’t too ludicrous, erase any physical evidence that they were ever somewhere, disrupt someone’s concentration with a song they can’t get out of their head that only intensifies as they try and think, and even take on another person’s appearances and mannerisms perfectly. Collectors can turn into living recorders with a touch and instantly access the information they have with another, vanish inside a crowd to the point where even the most prodigious senses are useless and pictures along with recording can’t even see her. Instantly changing their clothes so long as no one is looking is also possible and useful when paired with the other abilities. They can ascertain the function, layout, and value of any object or building as if they had built it themselves as well.
Collectors are varied beings, the make and nature of their gears all appear different. Still, it appears as a wondrous harmony. Eyes like kaleidoscopes glance and spin, other detection based mechanisms altering their sensory prowess to focus on things more abstract than the physical state of objects. Their senses are honed for societal connections. With ease they can comprehend what is acceptable and what isn’t, the kind of person that would be allowed in an area, local customs and culture, their focus is on how to acquire access and leverage without ever being noticed. But their powers aren’t entirely about people. Collectors can turn into shadows, flitting from one to the other in an instant to avoid capture or gain access to areas. To get people out of the way they can alter evidence from afar, bringing someone to the attention of local law enforcement as more and more proof of their involvement in whatever crime the Collector falcifies comes to surface.
Speakers:
Collectors apply pressure, Speakers enrapture. While they both have to deal with people their jobs are fundamentally different. They accrue cults, get people on Liseth’s side, and are the ones who end up leveraging the Nexus’ resources against her enemies. They can speak to people across a room like a whisper in their ear without anyone hearing, give animals orders and have them convey messages to others, craft virulent rumors that people feel like they heard or knew already, get the gist of any conversation they can see even if they can’t hear a thing, or force someone to let out the first thing that comes to their mind. With just a look they can divine your greatest desires, inspire others with any idea that the Collector has in mind, inflicting minor but long term hallucinations on someone with a touch, encode messages into objects and art that are seen only by specified targets, or crush a target with paranoia so they can be more easily separated from their support network and brought into the workings of the machine.
Out of cover Speakers are beautiful. Impossibly tiny metal plates make it almost seem as if they were bronze skinned and the light catches off them in a wondrous manner. Even as alien as they look they inspire beauty, and it is especially hard to resist their advances and desires. The powers the Speakers wield in this state command immense amounts of social influence. They can practically curse someone, just the sight of them triggering aggressive reactions and hateful feelings to the point where it would be very easy to cause a lynching by the locals. Swathing themselves in an addictive presence can leave cults entirely dependent on them just to live day by day. Speakers may also grant visions both horrific and euphoric that can spawn entire religions or drive people to insanity.
Analysts:
Among all the archons the Analysts are the least blatant of the archons. They generally stay within places of infrastructure, communicating with Liseth in order to go through the information that the others give. They also specialize in research and development, their abilities allowing them to understand the inherent weaknesses of any being. This can be anything from the location of vital points to supernatural weaknesses such as vulnerabilities to the sun and silver. Analysts can easily sort through information, using the knowledge Liseth feeds into them to quickly deduce enemy assets and abilities. Their other abilities are mostly used to boost the potency of Liseth’s local infrastructure, allowing them to produce more powerful effects due to a heightened efficiency. This even allows her infrastructure to seize control of electronics in an area, even ones that would otherwise be impossible to hack or command.
The true form of an Analyst generally resemble mechanical insects, and most commonly spiders. While in this state they have a variety of abilities to enhance their allies and make it increasingly difficult to approach them. Similar to destroyers they can alter the space of a building, but instead of just reordering openings they can expand it and create spaces far larger than their size would suggest. An ordinary office building can be turned into a gargantuan maze with constantly changing paths. Furthermore, they are amazing creators of weapons and gadgets. Analysts can create objects that emulate the powers of other archons for a temporary time or weapons that are banes to types of supernaturals, emulating the qualities of their weaknesses so well that it fools reality into making them so.
Analysts are also in charge of designing the more specialized forms of infrastructure. They tinker with high buildings, using them as the foundation to form reality anchors. These devices can curtail the Nexus’ portals. It can’t actually stop them but it can divert the flow into other areas. This helps Liseth keeps places of interest stable at the cost of flooding other areas with more strange immigrants. Other examples include holdfasts, devices made to wrench reality open and enable transit through portals.
Elohim:
There are four Elohim, all kept in stasis. Each of them contains what can be considered a singularity of infrastructure, incredibly compact and efficient models far beyond anything the archons have. The amount of power that it takes to keep them going is taxing on every piece of infrastructure that Liseth has and requires the deactivation of every archon, and even then it’s not enough without supplementary exploitation of occult matrices as said above.
Unlike the archons the Elohim share very little in common with humans, and their thinking patterns are not based on Liseth’s in the slightest. They are of thoroughly alien design. Even their personalities are a front, incredibly accurate simulations whose purpose is to disrupt or fool opponents more than anything else. The Elohim are not haughty, generous, cruel, or merciful. They simply are.
Elohim vary between Incredible and Fantastic in stats, and they have the totality of abilities possessed by the archons. Furthermore, they have their own unique abilities. They may alter their velocity at will to instantly change directions without any loss in speed, increase the range and targets for their various powers, shove souls into bodies and bring them to life, utilize energy attacks in the Fantastic range, and far more blatant things. An Elohim can scramble their possible location and allow them to switch out with any mundane human within several miles radius in order to instantly disengage from a situation. While this may not let them switch with supernaturals it does alert the Elohim to all their locations. They can cause incredibly improbable events, the floor randomly crumbling under your feet as a massive truck goes towards you at full speed, and an angry wyvern hones in on you over everything else. The greatest of their abilities make a mess of time. They can compress several minutes of preparation into an instant to unleash a hellstorm of blasts or let an ally immediately use their most powerful ability. Likewise they can extent the time it takes for their enemies to access a power, their finishing move suddenly needing several more seconds before it’s ready.
At best an Elohim can remain active for a few days so long as they remain outside of combat and focus on the acculturation of infrastructure or other such things. However, combat drastically reduces this time. Using the Elohim for the purposes of fighting or widespread destruction both taxes Liseth’s network and can reduce the length of their activity down to hours or even minutes.
Equipment: Cults: Mortal masses are quite easily brought into the fold one way or another. Whether they found and began to worship infrastructure or were drawn in by a Speaker, human servitors are never in short supply. Sometimes they even manage to net a supernatural or two. Suffice to say that along with the archons and defensive measure there are also the cults who will leverage weapons and influence against her foes. They also provide raw materials and labor for her.
Origin:One day the world ended. Very quietly. Very suddenly. She was never very special before it did. There were rough starts, fun interactions, good friends, some experimentation. But she slowly slipped away into a cozy everyday life. It should have ended like that. But...
I don't want to dieCalculating, expansive, alien. The God in the Machine dreams of being a girl called Liseth.
Weakness: Despite the influence and knowledge she uses Liseth is still dependent on buildings which even at best can’t sustain the efforts of a powerful individual. While five archons may be quite useful and powerful they’re also scattered across the Nexus trying to further her ends.
Furthermore, archons are varied but do not have access to all the powers listed. That is merely a list of what they could have. They also rely on internal power to use their abilities and usually require charging at places of infrastructure between notable fights.
Likes: Archons, games, machines.
Dislikes: Yodth, destruction of private property, early access.