Created by: Brian Emord <bemord@austin.ibm.com>
Shortly after the Fall, the manifestation in opposition of Knowledge
came into being. The Balseraph Astaroth, once a servitor of Yves in the
great library, began his descent into the minds of men and angels. The fall
corrupted his outlook on knowledge and viewed his state as proof that no
knowledge, not even Yves could prevent the inevitable and thus sought to
destroy knowledge. In early manifestations he inspired rulers to fear that
which they did not know rather than learn and record for posterity. This
came in the form of genocide, rioting, and pillaging. Babylon, Alexandria,
Rome, Carthage, many great cities of knowledge and learning were set to
blaze but hints and insinutaions at the unknown.
This lead to his word-binding. With this came the dream of prince-dom, and
with the Dark Ages quickly dawning, he felt the scepter of princely power
enter his grasp. He was seated in a great sacked city within the walls of
Hell, but just as knowledge is fleeting, so is ignorance.
After a VERY short reign (by princely standards), Astaroth was deposed as
the dawning of the Rennaissance came to the world. Not to say that ignorance
was no more, but rather with such an insurgence of knowledge and free thought,
there was little that the lax demon could do against the onslaught. By the
time he had recognized the threat it was already too late and he lost his
principality.
Other great obstacles laid in the way of ignorance in the future:industrialization,
national institutions, museums, universities, colleges, and then almost
insult to injury: public schools. His word weakened in North America and
Europe, he set about indoctrinating his word in the East and South. For
awhile he was successful, but then when trade re-opened to the East and
when explorers sought Darkest Africa or the lost Incan cities, he lost grip
on more power.
In one last grasp for power he began power-plays of alliances and treaties.
The explosion of the Great War was beyond even his greatest expectations.
But this quickly faded as soon as the war ended. Again setting his sights
low, he aimed at organized crime, but this got him no where. He rejoiced
at the failure of Marc in the late 20's and early 30's, but didn't realize
his full potential in affecting the depression until too late as he concentrated
on a short little German.
The second World War inspired by many forces, but ignorance and blind faith
admittedly two of the strongest powers that guided the war. With the initial
victory over the continental Europe and the confusion and espionage that
it incurred, Astaroth made his last plea to Satan for his prince-dom back,
but was denied at the last minute his Empire of ignorance crumbled under
the blast of Vapula's Bomb.
He has spent the last few decades working on enhancing the confusion and
hatred between the East and West, but again angelic difficulties (fall of
the Soviet Union) ended this great endeavor.
Due to his roller coaster of power he has only a small retinue of servitors,
most of which are throw-backs to his days as a prince.
[If combining him with the Archangel
of Knowledge, Astaroth actually did destroy the first
holder of the Word of Knowledge, but has been losing ground to the current
Knowledge Archangel -- theirs is a bitter feud. --arcangel]
It is dissonant for any demon of ignorance to remove the clouds of doubt and the uncertainty of the repercussions of their actions. Further, they cannot enlighten anyone (excepting other demons of ignorance) as to the workings of anything to which they have power or knowledge.
Rather than warping the truth into lies, they alter misconceptions, superstition, and beliefs about the unknown into the 'truth' as it concerns the affected person.
While attuned to someone the djinn can ravage the basis of rational thought within the individual until all that they 'know' is supposition and hearsy.
Their resonance works on INFORMATION. Disks will be wiped clean, books become blank, memories (recent or not oft thought of concepts first higher difficulty to destroy ingrained memories). Check digit is rough percentage of RANDOM data lost.
Rather than causing emotional duress from 'thin air' these demons concentrate a person's fears, suppositions and ignorance into emtional stress.
These demons add their celestial forces to an attempt to geas someone into destroying information or causing the spread of ignorance.
The Will of victim is reduced by the demon's Ethereal Forces when the demon is trying to make him do somehting that he is either ignorant of, unaware of, or simply ignorant to the workings of (i.e., forcing a true hick to use a computer).
If the demon can infect his target with some kind of ignorance or fear of the unknown, then he can steal TWICE the Essence (to the maximum that the person has) in a resonance attempt.
Similar to the Seraph detect lie ability, this allows the servitor to tell whether or not the potential liar is telling what he believes to be true is due to ignorance or due to his own manipulations.
By spending 2 essence per person the demon wishes to affect (to a maximum of his celestial forces) he can have them interpret a sign, image, or oration the wrong way, or ignore the enlightening effects of teachers and books (negating any potential for learning from that source) for one day.
By concentrating on someone and spending one essence, the knight can sense the one thing that the person has little or no knowledge, but wishes to learn about.
These are the most feared vassals of ignorance, as they can twist known and unknown concepts into knots that cannot be deciphered. By spending 4 essence, they can change a 'truth' into whatever they chose. For example, they could change the answers in the back of a particular book, change a few 1's to 0's in machine code, or make a Macintosh a real computer, but they couldn't change pi to equal 4 or any universally affecting 'constant'.
Sadly, due to his decline in power, this is only a title; Astaroth is no longer able to supply this title distinction.
+1 A book once held as canon that is no longer accepted as true.
+2 Any documentary about WWII atrocities.
+3 Any "3rd grade reading level" Bible.
+4 Ashes from a burned out library.
+5 Classified Government (any government) documents.
+6 Inside Congress (or any other bloated beaucracy) while in session.