Solomon Page

Demonologist: Humble Beginnings

You’ve been with Solomon since the beginning. You are the first who bore witness to his knack for ripping things from between worlds – sometimes, accidentally – when he was still a child. Maybe you’re the mentor that guided him on his initial steps, or maybe you’re the first demon he’d ever laid eyes on, let alone pulled squirming into the meat and noise of the Source. You nurtured this skill, most likely for your own aims and personal gain, but it’s not like he didn’t flourish, and he’s probably even grateful.

Demonologist: The Courteous Leash

Secretly, Solomon keeps a handful of Outsiders as... retainers, carefully thrice-bound to a host of his make. It might be a little humiliating, being coaxed around by someone who looks like a particularly aggressive spring breeze might knock him down, but he’s polite and respectful and asks surprisingly little. He also doesn’t egotistically punish you for getting snarky like many demonologists like to do, just to remind you of ‘your place,' either. He even talks to you like an equal– though maybe that’s pretty unintentionally insulting for someone of your lineage. He does, however, expect you to behave out in public.

Once More, Unto the Breach

Mercenaries, condottieri, landsknecht– there’s a dozen words to try and dress up what you are: a career murderer. Maybe you’d met him once, several years ago. Things were so much more chaotic back then: the moon falling; the shelling and endless fire; the awful silence. So with the world torn asunder, maybe you didn’t really blink twice when a boy just fourteen years old stood alongside you as you ran into the fray. He was good at what he did, and besides, nothing made sense anyways. A lot of kids lived through the Calamity and had it even worse. Maybe the two of you kept in contact the entire time – a role model or simply an older friend who probably often gave him a good ribbing – or maybe you lost contact only to sign up for a job years later and find him in the same squad as you. Just as beaming as before.

Children of the Calamity

You knew Solomon before the collapse. Maybe you went to the same school as him or maybe you were simply a childhood friend that used to write to him when he was studying abroad. One day, though, it happened and of course the letters stopped or you watched as he marched off to soldiering at fourteen. The world needed order and sacrifices had to be made, but in the blink of an eye... he was gone. Years later and out of the ether, though, there the two of you are again: face-to-face in a borderland tavern; disembarking from different ships on the same pier; or… maybe he’s unknowingly trying to collect a bounty on you.

A Jumble of Sparknote Hooks

Solomon the Exorcist; old ex-lovers or recurring tristes prone to bickering; the demon he'd bound into a severed hand / mirror / dinner fork gets unruly and wouldn't you know it, you're right there when it happens; family members; Solomon the Tutor; university study-buddies & rivals; the witch-hunter gets wise to Solomon’s bullshit.

Characteristics

General Details

“–some people don’t get a happy ending,” Nicholas states plainly but insistently as Solomon traces another sigil– another wound in the world, and how fitting: with his finger, and with someone else’s blood. The most intimate rituals have to be done by hand. Something in the air shifts. Something is falling into place.“For fuck sake, not this again,” he murmurs, mostly to himself. He’s barely slept all week, their citadel is under siege, and he’s tired of wasting his time and emotional energy on these sorts of discussions.“Some people have to be satisfied with their busted smiles and broken lives, Solomon– with a tourniquet to stop the blood. Too much has already been stolen, it can't be gotten back." Solomon ignores him and continues to crawl on hands and knees to work another rune into the hard, stone floor. In the Far Distance, there is a steadily-building whine; the sound of reality beginning to ripple. It reminds Solomon of the northern front, moments before Garlemald’s airships would scream overhead.“I don’t know what you’re talking about– now are you going to help or not?” He knows, but he’s already decided he isn’t going to talk about it, or that maybe they can talk about it later, when everything is all said and done.“Sol– Sally, come on, man, this isn’t safe– people are going to get hurt–”“Safe? You wake up this morning and forget we’re in a warzone or something? Nothing is safe, and people are getting hurt every fucking minute– every minute our comrades are climbing that breach hoping– praying that whatever we’re doing in here is more than… than a couple dumb kids just beating off to, like, I don’t know– Rimbaud’s goddamn Eighty-Seven Precepts to a Noble War? They don’t give a fuck about that– I don’t give a fuck about that. All any of us are thinking of, besides you apparently, is how not to wind up dead or in a Garlean camp. You know what those aether-deaf cavemen do to mages?”“I’ve heard, yeah, but this is bigger than that– the fallout of this– dominos, you know how quickly this can spiral out of control, you’ve seen it, you’re a good person, you don’t–”“What?” He stops working but doesn’t look up. He just stares at the dark stains scrawled beneath him. He almost wants to laugh – a mean, bitter laugh.“I said these things can quickly spiral–”“After that.”“You’re a good person…?”“Yeah?!” Solomon snaps and whips his head around. The chamber quakes. Something bends inwards. “Huh, let’s see. I’m finger painting with this auri girl’s fucking blood, Nico – who, by the way, has started to fucking seize again so do your job and keep her subdued – but yeah there’s that so how do you figure? Sorry, but no, that’s you– you’re the ‘good person’ here, not me. Nooooo. No-no-no. That ship–” and there it is, that bitter, angry laugh “–that ship sailed with Hera and–”“We were fifteen–!”“And she was sixteen, and now she’s fucking gone and you know it– you know I’m a sick little freak, too, and just don’t have the good sense like the others did to ditch my ass. But I’m done feeling sorry for myself. Hera was weak, I don’t need you to fill her slot.”“Knock that shit off, S–“ Solomon slams a palm hard against the stone floor, flings his other wrist outwards, and hurls a wall of force into Nicholas. It sends him careening backwards. Solomon closes his fist and Nicholas stops, suspended and helpless in midair. Solomon gets to his feet and looks at him.“And that’s only because–” Nicholas tries to speak over Solomon, but Solomon tightens his fist more and forces the air from his lungs before continuing “–you never quite got it, Nishka. You never figured out what the rest of us already knew: you get to be either a good wizard or a good person– not both.”Nicholas doesn’t deserve this. His only sin is caring too much, but when you feel as tarnished as Solomon does, that becomes a suffocating, unbearable sin, and he really needs him to stop– so maybe he’s being a little cruel, whatever. He drops him with a hard, pained thud before turning back to his work.They can talk about it later, he tells himself.They don’t.“Not– fucking– both.”