Faysal Anwar is a minor Angel that was once sent to oppose Johannes Lillegard, only to become his Familiar.
Johannes claims that his term as a familiar is more of a vacation from his duties.
As a Gatekeeper, he is a creator of paths and languages, a traveler’s guide, and can free the hold Limbo has on other as well as creating a pathway back and forth to it so they can come and go as they please.
Description[]
In his familiar form he resembles a tall, long-nosed dog with long white fur,[1] an afghan hound.[2]
Other forms he has taken include:
- A humanoid figure too bright to look directly at, surrounded by distorted space.[3]
- Simultaneously: a great white bear on his hind feet, a shaggy-haired wolf, and a man of indeterminate age with shining white hair and beard that had never been cut.[4]
- A white cat, dirty, but with enough white fur visible to suggest it could be beautiful if clean.[5]
- Fractal, glowing patterns resembling wings[6] and an abstract body of white fur and artificial ivory flesh.[7]
- A flicker of an enormous being, leaving an afterimage of a great wheel with lesser wheels within it, a figure with seven arms, and a motif of wings.[8]
- A beautiful man with short white hair and beard, barefoot and dressed in a gently rumpled shirt and khakis. To Johannes' Second Sight, he is so connected to everything around him he appears to glow, yet the connections are softer and looser than normal connections.[9]
Personality[]
Johannes described Faysal as an Other looking for a place to belong. He is otherwise dutiful, acting as a mediator when needed and a representative with little-to-no hostility. He also enjoys walks, not because of his canine body, but because of his role as gatekeeper.
He places his duty above other relationships, weighing the defeat of Demons over the lives of individuals. To this end he was willing to work with Barbatorem in the short term to be rid of it permanently. He states he felt no fondness for Johannes, merely anticipating his failure and setting it up to his advantage. Faysal himself admits that being an angel was simply a title of human invention, while a being of Order is naturally the antithesis of Mankind, and he isn't even on the side of Right, and all he cares about is causing the least amount of damage.
He is a planner, not a warrior, and most of his knowledge was accrued over thousands of years of observation, patience, and periodically crossing paths with others of his kind who deign to speak to him.
Abilities[]
- Pathway Creation: As a gatekeeper he can go virtually anywhere, virtually instantly, including mirrors and some places with locked doors and is capable of teleporting both itself and others from location-to-location. He can also open pathways to abstract things, like dead ends or Limbo. He can also alter space itself within a location.
- Angelic Nature: as an Angel, his power naturally opposes and drives back minor Demons.[10] He is connected to everything around him,[9] a part of it and deafeningly aware of it.[11] He can be anything or nothing, including multiple forms simultaneously.[4] Injuring his physical form has little effect on him, as injury is merely a form of change, not true destruction.[12]
- Alien Intelligence: as an Angel of the Seventh Choir he is a master of subtle, long-term plans. Although he has picked up human intelligence, his thoughts and emotions (insofar as he has emotions at all) are still deeply inhuman.[13]
Weaknesses[]
As he is in some sense "a little bit of everything", he is potentially vulnerable to some Practices which are normally limited to affecting certain species.[14] Once he took on the form of a dog as Johannes' familiar, he became vulnerable to Practices which affect dogs. Both of these render Johannes' Pipes potent, although not decisive, tools against him.[15]
The Mann, Levinn, and Lewis Firm were able to prevent him from using his power in a critical moment by absorbing it with certain diagrams and magic items.[15]
Johannes was able to slow him down briefly by burying him in rats, directly manipulating a bullet once it was buried inside him, and other such tricks.
Chronology[]
Before the Story[]
In the past, before man, he had been a theme, creating pathways by simply existing, until man came about and he grew intelligent as they did because he was reflected in their thoughts, a symbiotic relationship where he guided them. Once man began to gain power and create demons, he no longer created but maintained, watching as the world headed towards an inevitable end as stability was brought to change.
He then took residence in a small town and adjusted paths to balance the ecosystem, enhancing growth, reining in destructive elements, and sowing seeds for future possibilities. It was then that another angel appeared, named Harith, and informed him of Johannes' attempts in Jacob's Bell. He intervenes to stop his ambitions because it would upset the balance, and ended up clashing nine times and almost killing him.
Faysal was incapable of interfering in the ritual of claiming his Demesne, Johannes used the time between rounds to compromise with him, the main turning point being he refused to use his Implement, but mostly so that he could make sure Johannes didn't disclose how he performed his ritual and to manipulate things to his advantage.
He has also had past dealings with Ms. Lewis and her firm.
Mala Fide[]
Faysal is called in when three Laiah, guests of Johannes, attack Blake Thorburn. Faysal offered, in exchange for his allegiance, either a pathway that would allow him to travel freely between Limbo and reality or that he could free him from the mirror and nurture his Self to make him whole. Blake was tempted, but he refused and instead exchanged that he would drop his grudge against them and release the one held hostage in exchange for a passage into Johannes domain without trouble for the next day and a discussion, as well as nourishing him so he leaves happier and healthier than before.
By the time Blake takes him up on the offer the angel has found bits and pieces of Blake's old identity to create an image of his Self taken from Johannes, revealing that the memories weren't destroyed but only lost. For his first favor, Blake asks that he hinders the wraith of Molly Walker to prevent complications from arising, which he can do by opening paths to dead ends, while the second was that he sees about freeing Green Eyes from "The Drains". Faysal agreed to do so in exchange for Blake going against Abstract Demon, compensating for what he lost in fighting demons and left an entrance for him to get to where Molly was.
He later meets Blake at a lake, where he provides the means of freeing Green Eyes. There he assuages Blake's pondering on humanity's place in the order of things, assuring him that while he wasn't sure they were Good, they weren't Wrong.
Sine Die & Possession[]
Faysal is revealed to be behind sinking the Hillglades House and explains that he intended to ultimately sink the house and everyone it, allowing Barbatorem to take revenge on the practitioners until the Abyss gains a hold on it that would last far longer and permanently than a human, ultimately sacrificing them for the sake of what it perceived was the greater good. After sinking the house, he took hold of Johannes and made him stay put.
After they escape Limbo, Rose and the others summon him and maneuver him into helping. First by stating that the connection between him and Johannes as a familiar still remains, due to the fact that the demon owns his body and the abyss owns him, thus vulnerable to the pipes, and second by declaring themselves the Lords of Jacob's Bell to attract the members of the Toronto Powers, having him bring them there otherwise in the time it took the damage would spread.
In the following conflict, he attempts to leave only to be killed by the firm as they had retrieved Barbatorem from the abyss and used his pipes to deal with the angel, trapping his light and essence inside vessels. This means that while his physical form was destroyed, they now have access to his power.
Judgment[]
Faysal is bound in the demon's service and being forced to open portals to where demons dwell, allowing them to come into the world. He's freed by Peter Thorburn and then leaves, rendering the claim on the demesne void to fall into the Abyss.
Trivia[]
- Faysal is the first known Angel in the story.
- His name translates from Arabic roughly to "luminous separator between good and evil". It is unknown what his equivalent is in European Angelology.
References[]
- ↑ “Very well. I have one guest I can tap for the task. Faysal, do you think you could bear a message to the Duck Knight?”
His dog sat by the window, long white hair billowing in the wind.
[...]
That white dog… - Excerpt from Signature 8.7 - ↑
- Johannes seems to bear harsh wounds, no doubt tying back to his ambitious claim, with no use of one eye, one hand and one leg, though the tissues appear undamaged. He bears a set of antique pipes as his implement, and has a Gatekeeper of the Seventh Ring (ref Astral Bodies: vol 3, and Prime Movers) as his familiar, named Faysal Anwar, which takes the form of a rather large Afghan Hound. - Excerpt from Bonds 1.6
- ↑ Faysal flared. A flash of light, a gleam, a brief glimpse of a humanoid figure, too bright to look directly at, and the entire area seemed to bend, like it sometimes did in the science fiction shows, when a ship kicked off into hyperdrive and the area took a second to resettle.
Then the dog and paper were gone. - Excerpt from Signature 8.7 - ↑ 4.0 4.1 Shape wasn’t a mandatory thing for him. He could be all things, if he needed to be, but no one form completely fit. He wore three at the same time. A great white bear on his hind feet, a shaggy-haired wolf, and a man, neither young nor old, with hair and beard that had never been cut. The white of the hair and fur were so pure as to be shining. - Excerpt from Interlude 14
- ↑ If she woke up, she would only see a disheveled white cat perched on the little table at one corner of the balcony. Dirty, but with enough white fur visible to suggest it could be beautiful, if left pristine. - Excerpt from Interlude 14
- ↑ The darkness of his expression was countered by the spread of Faysal’s ‘wings’, though the wings were more a fractal pattern than true bird wings. They reached further, and the light they emanated spread across the tower’s top. [...] Faysal’s wings continued to rotate in the background, shining past the stone pillars and railings that ringed the tower’s top, the shadows sliding endlessly to the left. - Excerpt from Judgment 16.10
- ↑ Atop the large tower top was the opposition. Faysal was at the back, wearing a gatekeeper’s form, a fractal and abstract image of wings and white fur and an artificial ivory flesh, glowing with light that trailed off and away, oddly small and weak in comparison to the darkness that surrounded it. - Excerpt from Judgment 16.9
- ↑ There was a flicker, like an image between two frames of a film, too fast for the eye to grasp.
Rose saw only the afterimage, a great wheel, with lesser wheels within it, a figure with seven arms, a motif of wings. Far larger than this dog that stood before her. - Excerpt from Possession 15.7 - ↑ 9.0 9.1 The man that stood in the doorway was beautiful, slight in build, white hair and beard cut short. He wore a gently rumpled shirt and khaki pants, and his feet were bare.
Looking at the man with the sight, Johannes could see how the man fed into everything around him. Where other connections were straight lines, the man shimmered, as if connections tied him to every speck of dust, every splinter of wood. When he looked, he could see connections to more distant things. To himself. There was no tension, no rigidity to the lines. The rules, very plainly, were different, where this man was involved.
The gleam of the countless individual connections made the man appear to shine, in the lobby of this partially built apartment complex. He made everything around him radiate with something just as fundamental as light. - Excerpt from Interlude 14 - ↑ “Faysal!” she roared the words, and she gave them power. “Damn you! Help! It doesn’t get messier than this!”
The sensation was akin to a mountain deciding to move.
Faysal flared with light. He stood, he approached, and the imps were driven back.
The lawyers, even, reacted, retreating. - Excerpt from Judgment 16.1 - ↑ He thrummed, though utterly still, a part of all he interacted with. The motes of sun that touched the tundra made it reverberate like a skin stretched tight, and that reverberation reached all the way to him.
[...]
In other places, the very light of the sun striking earth and the response of the earth to the pull of sun and moon could be deafening.
Here, amid so many footsteps, a storm of being, he wondered if mankind could take him to pieces simply by going about their day. [...] They were in the midst of the crowd now. People milled around them. Each one a contained storm of events, of history, and untapped potential.
It was heady, distracting, to be in the midst of this. Harith was a source of calm in the midst of a storm. - Excerpt from Interlude 14 - ↑ Before he or the angel could say another word, he raised the gun and fired.
The angel stepped back. Blood welled from a hole in the abdomen.
“Your weapons of war don’t work against me,” the angel said.
“Okay,” Johannes said, backing up. “Angels… opposite elements are strongest. You create, bullets destroy.”
“Bullets change, they affect structure, even if that is tearing down blood, muscle, and bone,” the angel said. - Excerpt from Interlude 14 - ↑ Interlude 14
- ↑ “Well, at one point he asked why I hadn’t tried using my pipes.”
“He was a dog then, I take it.”
“He was a great many things. You could argue there was a little bit of everything in him. The pipes could have worked.”
“But…”
“But I have a sense of how things work. I might have won the battle, but I would have lost the war." - Excerpt from Signature 8.7 - ↑ 15.0 15.1 In the stillness, a faint tune filled the air.
Faysal froze.
With every passing second, it grew louder, more nuanced.
“No,” Faysal said.
Light flashed around him, then died.
Diagrams around the lawyers and tools they held each glowed with an intensity that suggested they’d taken the light. Prepared in advance.
It was the last word he spoke.
Mr. Levin approached from the edge of the crater.
By his side was Johannes, holding pipes to his mouth with one hand.
Dogs, rats, and children. - Excerpt from Judgment 16.1