Robert "Bob" O'Malley

[IamLEAM1983]

Name: Robert “Bob” O'Malley
Age: about 3000 years old
Gender: male
Species: demon, Sammaelite

Strengths: as a demon of Pandemonium, the entity that's chosen to ride the body of Tam's newest employer typically acts as a rough-and-tumble therapist for the souls of the damned. On Earth, this manifests as the ability to bypass anyone's mind and touch their most sensitive aspects directly. When angels do this, mortals tend to confuse that phenomenon as being God's voice made audible. When a demon uses that ability, the more credulous sorts might say Judgment is being passed upon them, while others might claim that they're hearing some sort of “White Speech”. The Pitspawn aren't too concerned with fixing mortals that have erred, so that ability is largely unique to Bob's peers, the Infernal City being a place of introspection, inner cleansing and preparation.

Ironically, this means Bob has the ability to reach anyone's most jealously guarded secrets and speak them aloud. Not so much in order to humiliate them in public, but generally in order to push people out of whatever state of denial they've locked themselves in. In essence, that puts him closer to the Socratic notion of a demon – a “Spirit of Knowledge” existing in order to assist mortals in whatever process of reflexion or self-affirmation they would need to undertake. Some DIY scholars tend to consider Sammaelite demons as surrogate consciences, the entities that are sometimes sent in lieu and place of more threatening demonic entities in order to knock some sense into arcane criminals before they damn themselves utterly.

Of course, hijacking a summons means most Sammaelites have no tailor-made summoning rituals. Their order keeps track of the most commonly studied and summoned demons, and makes sure to imprison and contain those who would spell doom for the mortal plane, and then subverts their summoning rituals. Whatever hapless Infernalist would be hoping to have a visit from, say, an aspect of Leviathan, would instead find itself faced with one of Bob's cohorts. They also can keep track of eligible mortal vessels and take them over pending their owning soul's passing, but this usually is a last-straw measure, reserved for dangerous and illegal incursions or mass possessions that couldn't be entrusted to mortal chaplains or priests. Associated with Sammael, these demons tend to believe that most angels foster inaction in the face of mortal despair, and try to act as forcefully helping hands when no supernatural calls are answered.

To put things simply, Bob can more or less subvert Hell's rules thanks to a few provisos authorized by Heaven. A demon with a conscience who is armed and ready to dispatch lesser Fiends on Earth and keep impressionable mortals on the right track.

His weapons and tools aren't set in stone, so much as they're derived out of whatever he chooses to apply Hellfire to. Carrying his fairly superhuman annoyance and disgust at the gibbering hordes he has to keep at bay to ensure Pandemonium's safety, his applications of Hell's prime constituting matter twist and warp whatever it is he exposes to it into a more fearsome and effective version of what it used to be. Firearms, bladed weapons, vehicles – virtually anything goes. In the case of more directed weapons like guns, however, Bob can fashion supernatural payloads designed to hit the illicit Damned while sparing the mortal masses. If need be, he can also target mortals with a crippling form of supernatural anguish carried through immaterial bullets. Left physically unharmed but with their conscience painfully seared, most of those he targets tend to become rather cooperative.

Much like Leonard or Melmoth, Bob's taken the body of a deceased human. This gifts him with conveniently deadened nerves and allows him to push his vessel far more harshly than a living human of a similar condition would. Bob's physical stamina is only limited by his structural integrity, and his dead flesh couldn't be harmed by other vices. He might be able to simulate a heartbeat and a living person's expected core body temperature, intoxication only manifests with some delay while pain isn't much more than structural information. In practice, this tubby and grizzled fellow could very well go Terminator on potential targets, running harder and for longer than he normally should, or submitting himself to working hours that would seem barbarous to anyone else.
Weaknesses: students sometimes make the mistake of confusing Sammaelites, Nephilim and the Djinn. The first group is constituted of true demons who have retained a sympathetic outlook on the mortal plane, while the second one involves angel-mortal hybrids. The Djinn, however, are the descendants of angels and demons intermingling. As a demon, Bob is as sensitive to Heaven's Light as you'd imagine and experiences growing levels of discomfort depending on the levels of faith he is being exposed to. It'd be safe to say he tolerates personal faith as much as anyone else, but true-blue religious conviction manifested in an aggressively militant fashion – regardless of the professed creed – would hurt him in ways few people could understand. The simplest way to put it would be to say that if iron is the Fae's traditional weakness, then blind faith sears right through him as if he were made out of aluminum and it were a welder's torch. Some of the highest members of the Choir are so close to God as to have trouble reining in their devotion and could potentially speak him out of existence in the mortal plane, and out of Pandemonium entirely.

Most terrestrial believers wouldn't do more than annoy him – especially if their faith is slightly moronic or bigoted in nature – but it'd be easy to say that Bob is lucky that the Thrones are too dispassionate, too coldly elemental in their nature, to manage more than surprisingly lucid observations about the Creator. Go one rung down and you'll find plenty of zealous servants of the Host, willing and able to smite Bob on sight for the simple crime of being a demon. Nevermind, of course, how helpful he might actually be trying to be.

As a rule, Bob tends not to take chances and avoids encounters with angels if he can help it. The less crafty ones act mundane and congenial until they've isolated him – at which point the searing hymns and the flaming swords come out. The crafty ones, on the other hand, tend to go for the long con... Of course, as he doesn't know any of the Thrones on a personal basis as of this version of his bio, he couldn't know of his relative safety around people like Matriel.

Otherwise, it really doesn't matter how much of an undead battering ram he might come across as, once he's on the case. Tear his vessel to shreds and you've suitably destroyed his presence on the mortal plane. It'll be long years before the Sammaelites gather enough power to send him forth again. As they can't officially ask for Heavenly credit or for Leonard's backing and generally act independently, whatever summons-related via they can gather, they have to hoard away from arcane table scraps.

Appearance: Bob O'Malley the mortal is an aging former criminal with an equally yellowing rap sheet, some attitude to spare but not enough stamina and care left to tear up the State's roads and highways with his former biker gang. There's a scruffy kind of pride and gait in that lifelong Chopper fanatic and former head of a drug-running operation, the kind that takes a ne'er-do-well's aloofness and transforms it into the kind of quiet gravitas that respected former thugs tend to have. Bob O'Malley, as far as anyone knows, is a man who's more earned his extra pounds and slightly creaking joints than simply ended up with them; as if they were some kind of mantle defining him as an Elder Biker Boss – someone who would've seen it all. Looking at him, you realize he now is law-abiding by default, being too tired and scarred to consider going on another joyride.

The Sammaelite's chosen the shell of a bald-headed elder Caucasian human, someone who tends to inverse polarities by going for a clean shave on top and a proudly shaggy salt-and-pepper patch around the cheeks, neck and lips. With a flattened nose and a mess of small acne scars dating back to adolescence, he has the kind of crevice-sporting skin that's turned into a fairly expressive parchment over the years, paired with typical gangland tattoos and the scars of a life spent partying a little too hard. His frame tells a dual story, considering this: on the one hand, he has the kind of burly arms that speak of plenty of continued weight-lifting past his prime, but the rest of him makes it clear most bikers don't care for much else than upper-body strength associated to a Chopper's handles. He doesn't have the abs that would fit with the arms, instead sporting a rather generous beer gut. Similarly, his lower body makes it fairly clear that he doesn't get a lot of evenly-distributed exercise. His legs are as chunky as a diet of decades-long fast food and barbecue pits would allow.

Unsurprisingly, all of this tends to be decked out in the expected Biker attire, with slim-fit jeans cutting at his waistline and his white tee-shirts requiring more of a waist than a neckline. A faux leather vest is usually shucked on, the back covered with his old patch associating him to the Rhode Island Hellions. His tired eyes are usually covered with a pair of featureless black sunglasses, and his head is typically adorned with a black leather bandanna-style cap.

As with Leonard or Melmoth, he can't visually operate outside of his hijacked shell, unless he doesn't mind forcing his assumed body through another stroke for the purpose of temporarily vacating it. Even then, all he gets is an ineffective half-life on Earth – suitable for basic communication but useless for anything else. Still, he can drape his assumed body with his Infernal likeness, like a sort of reverse Veil designed in order to show trust to those few mortals who can be allowed to know what he is.

When he does do that, Bob likes to stick fairly close to what they previously recognized as being him. The beard disappears along with the tee-shirt, exposing a bright red epidermis that's rather shamelessly displayed. Small golden hoops pierce his nipples, his ears shift to a slightly pointed configuration, and two pale horns focus into view, one on for each temple. They curve at about ninety degrees after going straight outwards for a few inches. Their upwards points are covered with decorative golden caps. His nose appears more bull-like in this form and is demonstrably wider, housing a fairly big septum piercing ring.

Otherwise, the demon's fairly wisecracking and slightly acerbic personality is well served by the ridiculously proud chin this assumed form leaves him with, leaving room for a mouth that's more than a little bigger than his actual body's. Slightly jagged teeth fill his mouth, making any smiles with teeth on display just a tad unsettling in appearance. Both as a human and as a demon, in any case, Bob tends to settle with tight-lipped smirks or the occasional disgusted pout. In a milder take on Melmoth's constant and rather literal “smoking” habits, greyish-black plumes continuously escape his mouth. They're usually properly hidden behind a half-heartedly lit or re-lit cigar stub which Bob can't really bother to keep in his mouth if he doesn't have mortals to fool in the general vicinity. Where most of everyone will see him use a lighter, as expected, he actually conjures a small plume of flame in the empty space right above his right thumb.

Only one implement is routinely manipulated with Hellfire, it being Bob's personal chopper. Going from a custom-made Titan Motorcycles build still proudly using unleaded fuel in the age of hydrogen fuel cells and electric cars, the bike tends to metamorphose into Hellraiser's version of a low-riding rocket, the tubing and frame replaced with solidified chains and sculpted bones made out of Hell's jet-black version of steel. Spikes galore surface, the headlights turn suitably blood-red and receive what looks like a horse's skull as a frame. “Sally”, as O'Malley calls his bike, then seems to gain a rather capricious mind of her own. Only Bob and a few select allies can ride her, as she'll quickly deliberately careen and throw anyone else right off of her. Actually malicious thugs might get run over afterwards, whereas plain-old jerks are left with their bruises, wondering if that bike hasn't actually whinnied while pulling an autonomous wheelie.

Behavior: “well-meaning, slightly loving and easygoing annoyance” would be an adequate descriptor for his relationship with mortalkind. If Bob O'Malley the former biker gang leader treated everyone else like a deserving customer who just so happened to be a few brain cells short of understanding life's rougher aspects, then Bob the demon considers Humanity as being full of dunces and idiots, yes, and as certainly warranting some of the Karmic clusterfucks that befall it – but he just can't stay mad at anyone for too long, honestly. You might be stupid according to him, you might be pig-headed or just plain blind; he's well aware that most mortals mean well on a daily basis. Foresight is something a few immortals can gain out of personal experience, and it's something angels and demons are stuck with no matter what. Nobody could and should expect of any mortal that he or she pull up a perfect score on Life's grand old tally, at the end of things. It's infuriating in the worst of times and frustrating in the best of times, but it is what constitutes Humanity. Bob might shower mortals with epithets like “monkeys” regardless of their species, but this slightly condescending slur feels more like something an exasperated parent might say, with fondness poking through the tough talk.

People like to imagine that angels are burdened with God's love for his Creation, that those Bob lovingly insults by calling them “pigeons” or “birdies” are incapable of not being noble and supportive for any length of time. Exasperation isn't very becoming of anyone's guardian angel, unfortunately, seeing as it adds smidgens of Lucifer's character to a concept mortals imagine as being pure. Bob has no such compunctions and allows his patience to run as short as he feels is adequate. If you deserve to be verbally hashed out by a horned demon with a biker patch instead of having an audience with one of the Fallen, then you'll be stuck with him. If you deserve to have something that isn't human or even simply superhuman call you an idiot for pulling off whatever foolish arcane stunt you were about to do, then he will, and he won't pull any punches. Bob has been lecturing deceased mortals and brow-beating idiots towards the Light for as long as mortal civilization has existed, and chances are he'll continue to do the same for just as long.

On the other hand, his nature is complex enough to allow him to relate with more common folk. As the root of his descriptor suggests, he holds knowledge. Not just the names of dangerous entities or how one might go about reversing a curse or actually cleansing one's soul – but also of just how confusing and difficult mortal existence can be. He remains a distinctly carnal creature, someone who considers that boozing it up, ignoring the food pyramid or watching trashy TV shows with your brain turned off is payment enough for the distressing stuff people can be forced to live with. He routinely sees distress in the faces of those he exorcises at gunpoint and is obviously called to briefly soothe the pain and confusion of whoever would've been unlucky enough to house a minor Pitspawn without having actually called it forth. The Shadowlands are filled with cracks, and the same fissures into the psyche that Karthians can use to Dominate others, demons can use to take innocents over. The televangelists can pack their Bibles and Hollywood can shelve its pea soup vomit, Hell's runts and feral beasts have an infinite number of ways to torment their hosts out of pure spite.

The end result is someone who sees the mortal plane as a place of unrecognized struggles that sometimes lead nowhere, of unsung tragedies nobody will ever know of, or of injustices being trumpeted as great deeds worthy of song. His is a kind of lucidity only fellow Sammaelites or fairly long-lived angels could recognize. It's a painful burden and one that usually ends in distant friendships, no-strings-attached relationships or bitter loneliness. Bob doesn't lull himself to sleep on junk food and booze because he's a demon; but largely because transitory pleasures are the only ways he has of momentarily unplugging. He can affect happiness, of course, and he can scoff or laugh or slap his thigh with the right people as much as anyone else – but honest happiness is something only mortals could hope to grasp. You aren't born to Pandemonium's foundation and you don't see hundreds of thousands of years of living and dying souls repeating the same mistakes over and over with the hopes of grasping at those moments of carefree joy they have.

Behind the snark and the “tough guy who's seen it all” poise, Bob isn't happy. He has his body's own rough-and-tumble memories to carry, along with his early years spent wondering if he wasn't getting closer to actually helping some deserving mortal. Lecturing someone is one thing, actually contributing to their success is something else. He might receive Asmodeus' praise from time to time and going home to Pandemonium might mean getting a few fist bumps, but he almost never receives thanks from the people he's honestly helped. He can't go for one-on-one duels against possessed mortals for the sake of appearances, of course. Who would let a biker through to someone in need of psychiatric help, honestly? As for the practitioners he has to confront – that's all he can hope to do, really. Shooting the breeze with someone you've just chewed out or even potentially hexed in order to suitably punish them doesn't make much sense.

So he isn't happy. The question is, though, if demons even have the right to have a decent shot at happiness, of having someone around who understands them.

Goals: to understand why Leonard squeezed himself out of the Pit and into the mortal plane, and to put an end to his schemes. In the same blow, he intends to put an end to the rash of demonic possessions that have been plaguing Hope. Bob hasn't thought beyond his job description, as he rarely finds any reason to stay at the site of an assignment once it's completed.

History: as with Leonard and Melmoth, considering Bob's history means you have to look at what the body went through, along with its controlling demonic intelligence.

Robert O'Malley was born in 1962 to a World War II veteran and his fairly submissive wife. His father having been instilled with a fairly rigid respect for authority, all Bob was exposed to was cold and fairly dismissive control from his father, along with noncommittal support from his mother. Pair this with schoolyard bullies and you end with a young man who has no real consideration for the law. With an older brother who'd turn out to be a Vietnam War draft-dodger and his early enabling instance in organized crime, it seemed like Bob's fate was fairly well sealed. By the time the mid-eighties were well underway, he'd have joined in with the Hellions, a gang of recreational motorcyclists with a penchant for petty crimes interspersed with attempts to ape the Hell's Angels' road to success. For a while, he'd stick to the gang's network of available odd jobs and drug deals and rather naively attempt to launder some of that illicitly-gained cash through charity giveaways.

Throughout his first two decades of life, Bob had the merit of having remained sober. He didn't sample his product and merely sold it, his gang members having offered their services as dealers to the Biggs clan's drug importers. Following a few too many beers, however, he gave cocaine a shot. He spent a few years as a wiry and high-strung slab of meat that earned him a few Assault and Battery charges, but his developing alcoholism, his erratic nutritional habits and his shift to softer drugs quickly mellowed him out. Unfortunately, he'd had ten years to acquire a reputation as a fair bit of a bruiser – something which he had to keep up with. Thanks to this, he marked the Hellions' descent into the seedier parts of the criminal underbelly. Drug-peddling turned into gun-running or hex-procuring, and a junior lieutenant of his marked the summer of 1994 by attempting to take the gang's name literally. The plan was to infuse the gang's constituents with Infernal power, in the hopes of reproducing the fabled savagery of Orcs. It backfired, the overeager lieutenant becoming overpowered by his own summoned minor demon and subsequently endangering the remainder of the gang. While Infernalism is not explicitly outlawed, unsupervised applications of this specific School of magic are frowned upon. It was ruled in court that Bob was guilty of gross negligence. He'd allowed his dabbling friend to go along with a ritual that had killed three out of his nine colleagues, which meant he was also accused of participating in what had essentially been an accidental homicide. The Hellions never recovered from this. By 1998, all O'Malley had left was a battered body that hadn't been taken care of, a chopper that had been almost obsessively cared for, and highly specific mechanical skills. The turn of the millennium and the following ten years saw him carelessly slip into has-been status within the criminal underworld. His efforts at starting an independent garage paid off, however, as he was willing to maintain and modify vehicles that franchises weren't capable of covering. The flatly-named Bob's Garage became a Sandhill fixture over time, to the point where the former biker's incorrectly-used bodybuilding implements had to be supplemented with more hardware. He was forced to close off one of his garage bays and turn it into a small gymnasium his few remaining friends occasionally used. Most of the time, however, the gym turned into a sweat-stained impromptu lounge littered with beer cans, food wrappers, cigar stubs and spent joints.

Bob had never been one to honestly give thought to the consequences of some of his actions. He'd always done what felt right when it felt right. Considering this, he was pumping his aging body with junk food, alcohol and protein powder alike – and dabbled in steroid use. The end result was a rather characteristic frame, all in tree-stump arms and an oddly generous abdomen, as well as dangerous levels of exertion. By 2020, O'Malley couldn't do more than a few hours spent working on a bike or a truck before crashing in a nearby bean bag chair. His chopper had killed his back, while steroids and cholesterol had worked together to reduce his heart to smithereens.

As with Leonard, however, he'd find out that the road to Hell can be paved with good intentions. Having woken up in the late nineties to realize that he'd fathered a child, he'd spent the next twenty years doubling down on work in the hopes of leaving something behind for his young son to inherit. Unfortunately, he'd be unable to see his goals to completion. In 2025, just a few short months after having hired Tam Zainall and met Aislinn McConmara for a tattoo job, a silent heart attack killed him in his bean bag chair.

Several eternities prior, however, Bob the Sammaelite had been born of Imariel and Esther, two Fallen angels who had washed up on the shores of the Pit. Unlike Lucifer, losing God's graces had sufficed in bringing the two rogue angels out of their arrogantly held beliefs. Damnation had been a wake-up call for them, and they swore to re-purpose their twisted lives in order to accommodate something that'd resemble their initial responsibilities in Heaven. They were angels no longer, but they wouldn't stop looking after mortal souls. Following in Sammael, Barbello and Asmodeus' footsteps, they helped to found the Sammaelite order along with Pandemonium itself.

In preparation for his future tasks, the young demon was deliberately robbed of all his abilities, safe for basic immortality and the ability to return to Hell when called. He and his parents returned to the mortal plane under the guise of mortal flesh and denied themselves the advantages of their station several generations before the advent of agriculture. Forced to sweat, bleed and experience pain and loss – along with the bright stings of success and blessed moments of rest – Bob gained respect for the mortal populace. He spent his supernatural life in a cyclic manner, returning to Pandemonium for clerical instruction and lessons in Infernalism once his last mortal body wore out naturally. It didn't take too long for the demon to truly become a Spirit of Knowledge – at least as far as immortals are concerned. By the time the Mesopotamian civilizations were in their decline, Asmodeus had already bonded him to one of the rituals normally used to bring about Furfur, the Prince of Lust. That very same demon had been locked away by Gabriel and the Heavenly Choir for its grotesquely deviant sexual practices that were horrific enough to endanger thousands of lives. Asmodeus didn't need to do much in order to redirect that specific summons' effect towards Bob. Anyone who would've hoped to become an all-conquering force of seduction thanks to demonic intercession instead would receive an earful from one of the oldest Sammaelites in the Infernal City.

Luckily for the demon, the human Bob's former friend had attempted to summon Furfur. The process hadn't touched the leader, but O'Malley had still been scarred on the etheric level. He left an oozing trail of life-force in the Shadowlands, something that Fel creatures diverse – and business-oriented demons alike – could trace. All that was required was a fair bit of patience and a handy heart attack.

Externally, nobody would've noticed anything. O'Malley maybe stopped breathing for a second or two, he might've sagged and slumped for just as long, but it could've looked like a dip into deep sleep from the outside. He woke up soon afterwards, the demon being understandably forced to use the dead brain's stored memories to recall the Drifter and selkie's names and purposes for being with him. Aside for a quickly-resolved bit of awkward distance, the two women would've been none the wiser. It took a few weeks for Tam to realize that her employer slept less, complained less and had far greater stores of energy to spare. The “new” Bob was more congenial, slightly warmer to the touch – and strangely more considerate and thoughtful.

The exact nature of the involved changes wouldn't be revealed until a relaxed ride-along between Bob and Tam turned into a highway battle with a strangely careless driver. The young woman that had challenged them out of the blue managed to break her neck and spine in the crash that had ensued – but this seemingly didn't stop her from looking up to the biker from the wrecked hood of her car, and issue a croaked warning: he had to avoid meddling in the affairs of the Master – whoever that “Master” happened to be – or he'd suffer the consequences. Medical examination would reveal that the woman had been dead for several minutes prior to her having challenged them.

Following this, a string of sudden absences began to interrupt his shifts at the garage. Each time he took off, someone seemingly died around town. Each time, his victims were revealed to having been dead several minutes to several hours prior to his having shot them...

Mike Callahan and the press were more than happy to publicly crucify a former petty thief, but Holden Hall's investigators weren't convinced.

How can you murder someone – or something – that's already been dead for a considerable amount of time?