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Name: Trellis Attributes
Songs
Attunements & Distinctions
Skills
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Trellis
Real World History
My first character for Steve Jackson's In Nomine, Trellis ran in a campaign in Boston. Towards the end, Trellis saw something that should not have been seen, and started to quickly go insane. This event coincided with my not being able to be in Boston any more.
Personality
Trellis tends not to be noticed. While much of this is due to the Kyriotate nature, some of it stems from a desire to avoid interaction. Aware that his experience with humans is not extensive, Trellis will leave communication with them to others when possible, particularly if there are any Mecurians around. He is a bit more open mouthed around friends and allies, but tends to focus more on the job than make small talk.
Polite and tactful in general, Trellis' good manners extend even to demons, though this is more from habit than any real sense of ettiquete. In general, Trellis cannot abide demons, considering them failures at best and vermin and worst.
Trellis is especially concientious when dealing with those humans who willingly allow him to possess them. Because Trellis does not understand humans well, he can sometimes overdo this and worries often about making mistakes with these kinds of servants.
When needing to communicate, Trellis tends to ask lots of questions, especially when possessing humans. In giving answers while in a human body, he will be as ambiguous as possible, and prefers to avoid questions from humans all together. He is not sure about humans or how to interact correctly with them, but is not afraid of trying it when he can.
The only entity Trellis is fairly sure how to interact with is Jean. When reporting to his boss, Trellis is matter-of-fact, brief and to the point, just the way Jean likes it. Trellis will not answer in ten words when two will do; however, while Trellis knows that Jean likes to stay closely involved with his operations, Trellis considers having to contact Jean for assistance or advice to be a failure.
Trellis is persistent, even relentless, in slowly pushing toward a goal. Even more true when possessing machines, Trellis will patiently and methodically search for hours after others will give up.
Historically, Trellis' opinions have been Jean's opinions, but this has been changing recently. Trellis' ability to inhabit animals, as well as his exposure to liberal campuses like MIT and Harvard, have given him a perspective on the hostility between Jean, Jordi and Novalis that differs from his boss. While Jean seems content to let humans find the balance between technology and nature, Trellis feels Jean should be more pro-active about this, though never voices this opinion to Jean.
Appearance
As a Kyriotate, Trellis has no set physical form, appearing on the celestial plane as a writhing collection of eyes and limbs.
History
Trellis has spent most of his existence in Heaven, most of it being a little bored. Still, a loyal servant, he followed Jean's instructions happily and without grumbling.
Through most of human history, Trellis paid little attention to humans. During the Renaissance, when the aspect of Jean's Word that deals with insight and understanding expanded by leaps and bounds, most of Jean's servitors were excited and interested in humans, but not Trellis. It wasn't until Volta's battery, Oersted's connection of electricity and magnetism and, especially, the development of Faraday's equations that Trellis started really paying attention to the corporeal plane.
Having spent most of his existence trying to avoid assignments on Earth, Trellis found himself pigeon-holed into having a "desk job" and disliking it. Being patient and meticulous, Trellis kept these feelings to himself, slowly building the skills he thought would be useful for an agent on Earth. He also started paying more attention to events on Earth, particularly those involving construction of mathematical machines, such as Babbage's difference engine.
Nearly 150 years later, sparked by the British invention of Ultra, Trellis began to lobby Jean for assignment on Earth. He had to keep this up for nearly 50 years before Jean consented, and in that time Jean's Word had expanded significantly. Needing more agents on Earth, Jean allowed Trellis to go in June of 2000.
Jean usually assigns rookie angels to guard duty in tethers as their first assignment, and Trellis was no exception. Jean, knowing Trellis' interest in computers and, more importantly, wanting to give an emerging field angels without existing biases about Earth, assigned Trellis to guard his new tether to the MIT Media Lab in Boston (q.v. Liber Castellorum, pg. 80).
Jean expected Trellis to perform his duties with the same bland efficiency he showed in performing his assignments in Heaven. Jean was pleasantly surprised when, after a short period of acclimating to the lab, Trellis began to exceed the requirements of his assignment. After becoming familiar with all of the projects in the lab, Trellis started to comb the networks of the world for information related to them. He would often alter internet search results in order to present information he found to the humans in the lab, showing them information he was fairly sure would be interesting to them even when they were not directly asking for it.
He also extended his guard duty of the tether to include the equipment of the facility. On one occasion, he detected and eliminated a virus attack on the labs computers before the humans ever knew it was there. On another occasion, he backtracked a hacker and wiped his system clean.
He also experimented with possessing people in the lab for brief periods, usually if they fell asleep. After gaining some experience with this, Trellis began to take forays outside the lab with some of his Forces, usually in a cell-phone or some other item belonging to a lab worker.
During this time, Trellis met Bob and, later, Jane. [Need to expand.]
None of Trellis' efforts went unnoticed by Jean, who marked Trellis as a candidate for advancement. Jean's timetable for this was accelerated when a sloppy infiltration attempt into the lab by a somewhat inept servitor of Nybbas was detected by Trellis and stopped largely due to his efforts.
Psyche
Trellis tends to treat technology and living creatures identically. This is not to say that he elevates technology to the level of living things, but rather downplays living things to the same level as technology. While he treats humanity as a whole as possibly the most important thing in the universe, Trellis tends to view individual humans much like any other collection of molecules. As he learns more about humanity, this is slowly changing, and he will risk himself to save or protect a human.
Though not averse to possessing humans, Trellis tends to favor devices over living things and less complex living things over humans. If, while possessing a human, Trellis cannot avoid creating a commitment for that human, he will usually leave notes or other messages detailing what the human should do.
Trellis is anxious to prove himself and make a difference to the war. He is patient, though, and not overly ambitious. He understands his current place in the symphony and, while he knows he will someday move beyond his current position, he fills his current role with everything he's got.
Trellis gets bored when doing nothing but monitoring and surveillance. Usually, at least some of his forces will be invested into events around him (if any) or into researching current technology (if not). He likes to keep at least part of his mind churning at all times.
Goals
Trellis' prime objective is to serve Jean well. Apart from that, his immediate goals are to understand both Earth and humanity better.
Trellis has given a little thought to what Word he might pursue. One of the research groups in the media lab turned him on to nanotechnology and he thinks this might be an interesting Word to pursue. Being a new and, potentially, explosive field, however, Trellis guesses that there may be other, more powerful angels vying for this Word already, so has not yet committed himself to pursuing it.