Valerian

"The ship of Theseus made flesh."

General

The leader of the Blackgold Church, followers of Juno Moneta, goddess of wealth and abundance. As her "Saint," Valerian also doubles as the goddess's vessel on the mortal plane and shares mind and body with her in exchange for staggering power and unquestioned authority. He is an exemplar of what the church considers to be the ideal servant of her will--a ruthlessly pragmatic hunter of profit and capital willing to sacrifice and brutalize anything that stands in the way of the bottom line. Raised from childhood in the church, he has been imbued with a fanaticism and devotion to his goddess that is paralleled by few of his peers. 

Appearance

Physical: Valerian bears the type of artificial, pristine beauty only seen in statues and idols. Has a very sharp, angular build, athletic and well-muscled in a way that feels manufactured and engineered. His skin is frigid white and blushes a cold bluish-purple. His eyes are softly downturned at the outer corners and always serenely half-lidded, shaded by long lashes. The irises are golden, and his right eye, which shares its vision with his goddess, has a black sclera. His hair reaches his shoulders in loose, airy waves, the outer layers white and the inner layers a deep gold. Overall, has the ethereal, unattainable look of someone who has paid to have every flaw meticulously airbrushed out.

Clothing: Is always wearing the representative colors of his church, black and gold, regardless of if he is “on the job” or not. Wardrobe staples include form-fitting high-necked tops, thigh high boots with a stiletto heel, and long, flowing coats, cloaks, or sashes that dominate the silhouette of every outfit. Favored fabrics are either quietly or loudly expensive--silks, velvets, latex, heavy embroidery, layers of chiffon and tulle. Everything he wears has an inverted triangle cutout at the chest, or a neckline that mimics the shape. Circling his head is a spiked metal halo, which aids in communing with Moneta as well as signifies his status in the church--as much form as it is function.

Personality

To most, Valerian is an unsettling and alien presence that fills every room with the uneasy, charged tension of a meadow just before a lightning strike. His baseline demeanor is dreamy, serene, and detached to an unnatural and chilling degree. It is so purposely disarming and saccharine as to bring to mind a predator slowly circling its prey. Every word and action is begging for your trust, for you to bare your throat to the fangs of the beast in front of you so that he can prove he would never use them on you. He is the type of person for whom socializing is a form of performance art. In every public appearance, he is playing a character. “Saint Luxeria” is a constructed act, lofty, ceremonial, and effortlessly charismatic. It’s Valerian at his most desperate for validation. It is disconcerting to see an act so paper-thin yet so doggedly committed to.

At Valerian’s core is an obsessive need for control--of others, of himself, of his church, anything he believes is within his power to change. In his mind, this is not a compulsion, but a deep sense of duty and responsibility. To control is to protect, to manipulate is to guide. Valerian excels in the business of breaking people in order to reassemble the shards in a shape he likes better. He is at his most tender and intimate when he is tearing others apart. To raise someone from their lowest point is an act of compassion--he doesn’t believe that compassion to be any less genuine just because he happened to be the one who put them there. He is, in many ways, a duplicitous and deceptive person--exceedingly comfortable with keeping others at arm's length while acting as if they are precious, dutifully keeping long-held secrets of the elite from the public--but as far as his belief that brutality is a form of devotion, he is entirely genuine.

As might perhaps be expected for one given the title of “saint,” he suffers from a martyr complex. Valerian sees himself as a vessel for the pain of his church, sacrificing body, mind, and pleasure to ensure its success. He, however, does not view this as charity to his followers, but debt. For everything that he has done, he is owed appropriate recompense, from anyone at any time. It is an all-consuming bitterness wearing amiable magnaminty as a mask. To Valerian, every member of Blackgold is someone who owes him. 

Despite it all, a deeply isolated man. So ubiquitously treated as an icon and a symbol that it is difficult to see the person behind it--and even then, he is not an easy person to relate to. Valerian is so starved of connection that finding it ignites a deep fixation with whoever has caught his interest. Most would see being “loved” by Valerian as a threat.

Abilities and Peculiarities

Valerian, as every Saint was before him, is a living channel for the presence of his deity, Juno Moneta. Theoretically, if able to tap into the whole of her power, the Saint can become a god on the mortal plane. What is easily spoken of in theory is not as easily put into practice, however. Moneta is notorious for killing her Saints through exposure--her presence is too heavy a weight for a mortal body to indefinitely bear. Outsiders say that the Saints of Blackgold burn twice as bright for half as long.

The unique ability of the Saint is to allow Moneta to intrude physically onto the earthly plane. Valerian is her doorway from the depths of the cosmos into whatever battlefield he chooses to invite her to, tearing rifts in space and time through which spill fragments of her body. Every part of her burns with radiant, corrosive energy. Her eyes sear all under their gaze with beams of light concentrated and devastating as an orbital laser. The chaotic tendrils of her limbs can twist into mirror images of the Saint’s, creating a grasping labyrinth that burns all that it touches. Most feared are the gaping cosmic maws, ringed with countless rows of teeth and always starving for anything that can be consumed. All of this Valerian is allowed to use as if it were his own--his only limit is himself.

His abilities are as much renewal as they are rot, however. The nature of his goddess makes Valerian and his predecessors uniquely durable. Another of Moneta’s blessings is a healing factor so exponential as to be nearly instant. Enemies of Blackgold refer to Valerian and his fellow Saints as cancers upon the battlefield--no matter how grievous the damage, he always becomes whole again. Severed limbs, punctured organs, and other similar damage, become temporarily replaced by prostheses made of the same burning light that Moneta herself is made from. These last until the threat has passed, after which more permanent measures are needed to patch the damage. It is for this reason that Valerian is more metal and silicon than flesh these days.

Replacing his failing organic organs and limbs with cybernetic replacements and transfusing his rotten blood with mandatory donations from his followers are the primary ways he combats the goddess-induced degradation of his body.

Past

Birthplace: a village whose name has been long lost

Childhood: Rescued from the ruins of a burning village with a mob of other children, Valerian was given a home in Blackgold’s newly-built war orphan nurseries and placed under the care of a church matron. He and other elven children were seen as largely expendable and quickly trained up as child soldiers. In the present day, the Blackgold Church is a titanic organization with unquestioned dominance, but the Blackgold that Valerian grew up in was still fighting to carve out a place in a world torn apart by the warring followings of countless different gods. He was and is fiercely protective of the church that is the only home he ever knew well enough to remember.

Adulthood: In his adult life, Valerian remained heavily tied to Blackgold’s military sector. He frequently ventured beyond the boundaries of his home city of Kos on a variety of campaigns against the followings of rival gods, and he and his troops would return to parades and festival days in their honor. Before people knew Valerian as Saint, they knew him as the face of Blackgold’s propaganda campaigns. Despite his celebrity amongst the rank-and-file followers, his unfavorable origins in the war orphan program made him the subject of derision from clerical elites. His promotion to Sainthood was a controversial one for many reasons, and his early years in the position were spent proving his legitimacy to the old guard of the church.

Finances: paradoxically always making good money but perpetually in medical debt

Present 

Current location: Kos, the Neon Metropolis

Current status: Valerian has entered the hundredth year of his tenure as the church’s Saint. He holds a sort of mythic status in the minds of many of Blackgold’s followers, who see him as living history, an unchanging constant who can always be counted on to outlast everyone below him. For many, he is the only leader of their faith that they, their parents, their grandparents, have ever known. A quiet truth that is only whispered in the church’s most elite circles is that while everyone else trusts him to live up to his epithet of “the Eternal,” Valerian is waiting to die.

Finances: is rumored to own 51% of Kos’s market if all his assets are counted

Other

• Saints are all given epithets that correspond to traits that are thought to be iconic to their tenure. Valerian is called “the Eternal” because of the length of his reign. Most of his predecessors died after thirty years at most.
• Outside of his church, he is also known as the host of a for-profit death tournament that is held and televised once every five years.
  • Valerian himself is a past victor. It’s not a fond memory.
• Self-conscious of his true age. Will say that he’s 29 if asked, no matter how obvious the lie would be.
• Keeps vases of artificial silk flowers in his office and apartment, all carefully modeled after specific specimens that a deceased lover once favored.
  • If asked about this, he will lie and say they are only there for aesthetics.
• Regularly dismembers his subordinates without warning if he decides that they will benefit from a cybernetic replacement.
  • Notable incidents include: the left arm of a second-in-command, the eye of a personal secretary, both legs of an entirely different second-in-command…etc…
• The only parts of his body that have not been replaced by cybernetic augments are his brain and nerves. Everything else has broken down under the pressure of hosting Moneta.
  • There are rumors that Valerian harbors a deep-seated bitterness for those who have managed to go through life with their organic bodies largely unscathed, and that this is the true reason why he is so quick to mutilate fellow members of his church.
  • If one were to listen to Valerian himself, he claims that he sees augmentation as akin to divine transcendence and only wishes to impart such “blessings” to his followers…a wholly unselfish act.
• Church rumors say that his preferred coffee order is so hellishly complex as to reduce unprepared interns to tears…
  • Church rumors also say that he used to be several inches shorter before all of the augments and that there are little explanations for the difference other than personal vanity.
  • Church rumors also say that he cracks open the ribs of underperforming members of the clergy and rips the still-beating hearts from their chests.
  • There are many church rumors about Valerian.
• Much like a moray eel, has a pharyngeal jaw lurking at the back of his throat--a useful asset for cannibalizing heretical clergy.
• Cold to the touch, like someone who has spent hours standing outside on a winter night.
• Plays piano, pipe organ, and cello all at a semi-professional level.
  • Feigns humility and bashfulness to a nauseating degree if this is ever brought up in conversation (“Play something? Oh I could never, I’m terribly out of practice, I’d only embarrass myself--” and so on and so on)
• A thorn in the side of other church leaders and local politicians--it is quietly understood that Valerian must be appeased and placated if you wish for your career to remain intact, for unlike his more mortal peers, he can always be trusted to outlast you.