Melmoth

[IamLEAM1983]

Name :Melmoth
Age : about as old as Lucifer...
Gender : male
Species : nonhuman, demon

Abilities : a subaltern demon working under the auspices of the Vice named Mammon, Melmoth represents a very specific subset of avarice. His boss might be associated to base cravings that may require murder or theft in order to sate properly; he instead happens to be associated with speculation. Most Vices tend to elevate the end-process of what they represent to an art form; Melmoth represents the way certain greedy or self-serving individuals have reached their final destination. The journey is what matters to him more than the destination, and so he happens to be charged with a fairly unusual corral of damned souls and stockpiled Infernal resources.

Sometimes called the Speculator or the Infernal Broker, Melmoth is usually far less literal in his dealings with mortals, and much more pragmatic. The path to perdition is made of several small and generally pleasant life choices, and he's proven to be much more keen on working with what he calls “spiritual added value” than in trying to sink a weak mind and a fragile heart into sudden nadirs of depredation. Outright damnation is less his forté than some sort of Hellish long-term credit, tiny chunks of bad karma suffered in payment for asked assistance in one matter or another. That particular approach makes an unusually Humanist Fiend out of him, perhaps the only non-resident of Pandemonium anyone could hope to trust in Hell's cruel expanses.

Concretely, this means Melmoth has offered his services to a great many types of people, from your typical addled Infernalist to genuinely well-intentioned practitioners who were willing to trade a spot of bad luck for one guaranteed safe experiment. The roots of his moral and ethical Wall Street of Souls, in a sense, are made up of truly corrupt individuals who have more than completely damned themselves thanks to repeated dealings with the Broker. The leaves of the proverbial tree, however – and the parts of which he's the most proud – are comprised of people who asked for his assistance once, maybe twice, and who later managed to get by on their own steam. Those tiny chunks of entirely assumed perdition have proven to be worth more, in terms of arcane power, than the most utterly warped of all Damned souls.

If asked to explain himself, Melmoth tends to claim he gains power from people who aren't afraid to ask for demonic intercession – but who assume the consequences. That power, he holds, is more constructive and malleable than all of the Pit's gnashing and snarling man-beasts put together. A single mortal's personal sacrifice, no matter how small, is said to be able to power his fenced-off and pseudo-corporate campus off the banks of Pandemonium for a few small eternities.

What he does with the power he gains is also closely tied to his nature and concept. Leonard tends to stockpile power, as power equals pleasure and satisfaction. Mammon only exerts his will in order to lead weak-willed minds towards selfish ends, and refuses to exert himself, otherwise. As could be expected of him, he hoards his power away and is not expected to put it to good use until Armageddon, at the very least.

Melmoth, on the other end, considers that the power derived from his speculation needs to be put to good use. As any serious stock broker would tell you; money doesn't have any value until you spend it. So it goes with what he gains from deals both big and small; and arcane observers would be forced to admit that what translates as via in the mortal plane tends to be liberally used by the Broker, keeping only a moderate slush fund of excess potency behind in the case of emergencies. Down in the Pit, his accumulated power is what lights his office and cools his living spaces, what remunerates his employees and what also keeps the rest of the Pit at bay. On the surface, his power chiefly manifests as liberal displays of ostentation. Seemingly bottomless bank accounts, fast and flashy cars, selected items of gaudy masculine jewelery and an unexplainable amount of magnetism toward the fairer sex are all to be credited to his more affluent periods. When the Infernal Broker hits a good stride, he essentially seems to ride an endless stream of good luck and wise investments.

In more active circumstances, this means that anyone who dares to confront him physically is likely to have to deal with an extreme case of Murphy's Law. Guns jam when pointed at him, killing blows aimed at vital organs will only ever slice through fat or muscle, and attempts to poison him have typically ended with Melmoth selecting a clean glass – in complete ignorance of any threat – while accomplices in the failed coup unwittingly imbibe the poison they'd prepared.

Otherwise, the one advantage he has compared to Leonard is the fact that Mel Othstein was never a Hope native. A recent transfer and career redirection, the human called Mel slipped into a community that still considers him to be a relative unknown. The Broker has a solid twenty years of leeway before his portly biological vehicle and its apparent absence of aging starts to gather attention to itself. That's time enough to go “house-shopping” years in advance and to warn his potential friends and allies of his incoming wardrobe change, once it does need to happen.
Weaknesses : considering how his very nature relies on speculation, he sometimes hits a rough patch. Thanks to careful planning and that above-mentioned slush fund, he's never had to hit the lowest of the lows; which might involve being locked out of the Infernal Plane and being forced to live as a beggar. That still is a possibility, however, and there's been times where he lost enough capital in a bad bet to be forced to subsist off a mortal's occupation. The marks of his high-roller status tend to be the first to go, when things go awry, while his superhuman levels of luck deteriorate a little more slowly. Considering his immortal nature and given enough time, his likelihood of becoming an exiled and noncorporeal demon stuck wandering the Shadowlands will usually increase.

Like all other demons, Melmoth is also forced to inhabit a mortal vessel in order to exist in the Mortal Plane. He tends to take the smart way out and picks a recently deceased mortal, which means he has to constantly expend a small amount of energy to forcefully maintain its homeostasis. Dead flesh isn't easily stopped by any specific number of bullets or slashes, but there's always a point where no amount of injuries could be conceivably endured further. Either Melmoth chooses to find another host, or he sticks to his obtained body and does his best to help the ICU in the process of keeping the “meat sack” intact.

Otherwise, Hope's new Stock Exchange director is likely to express a bit of animosity when faced with honestly zealous types. Casual levels of faith don't bother him that much, as he's more than accustomed with the concept of mortals having placed their trust in some spiritual aspects or scientific theories. In a fairly unique twist, he tends to be harmed most effectively by hypocritical faith, such as one of his gay mortal employees being disowned by zealous relatives, or people preaching for peace while wishing harm on another ethnicity. “The Stupid”, as he puts it, hurts him as much as Matriel occasionally exuded sense of Heavenly purity might drive Leonard up the wall.

If anything, honest faith only makes him feel awkward. He'll have nothing against Father Curran, but he'll always feel as though he doesn't quite belong next to the man.

Appearance : as with Leonard and any other demon seeking to take a prolonged stroll on the Mortal Plane, Melmoth has to find a compatible host. Appearance isn't that much of a factor, but moral and spiritual compatibility are required. Vanity personified could stand to get by on the sins of a man who believed that he could do absolutely anything in order to provide for his family – including stepping on his own principles. Melmoth's softcore and Keynesian take on Avarice, on the other hand, needed someone who's only objective in life had been to live big, and live large. Perhaps, in some cases, at the expense of his hundreds of underlings.

Mel Othstein fit the bill quite nicely, a portly Texas native of some three hundred and forty pounds. With glinting blue eyes inset in excess flesh and a rather convenient form of complete baldness merging with an already thinly spread hair covering, Hope's new head of the Stock Exchange tends to look like a giant baby gone prematurely old. Gold rings are stuck on fat, nubby fingers, and the excessively expensive stogie to be expected isn't ever that far. Of a little cherub, however, Mel doesn't quite have the nose. Both in the flesh and without, his schnoz could be best described as being pugnacious; maybe a little swollen and clearly marred by a lifetime's worth of a strong affection for the bottle.

Expensive three-piece suits tend to be part of his usual attire, along with thickly-rimmed glasses. A Bluetooth hands-free earpiece is never quite far, as well, along with the expected smart-phone and tablet combo. His “day job” being the oversight of the local exchange's ebb and flow, he rarely picks up his trader's lanyard and makes his way down to the trading floor. When he does, however, the jacket usually comes off and the sleeves of his shirt are rolled up to his elbows. Being a rather passionate demon, he's obviously chosen to keep a foot on the floor and to handle a few accounts on the sly. These would be purely monetary in nature and in no way related to the supernatural – as he simply loves his job to such as extent that he prefers to keep tweaking numbers and values even when he isn't required to go and collect his fair share of human infamy.

Owing to his abilities, his somewhat homely and vaguely sanguine temperament don't quite seem to prevent him from finding ways to drive a new car every three months, or to aimlessly court a few international supermodels. Small crowds almost qualify as an accessory all their own, as anyone who'd have the ability to remain the life of the party on a permanent basis would be likely to keep a rather superficial following.

Summon him formally, however, and you'll be treated to a spin on the above, mingled with some obviously demonic cues. His body's drooping jowls are reproduced, as is its overall baldness and general lack of hair. On the other hand, his supernatural nose is more grotesque than his real one by far, as are his ears, that might appear to be slightly disproportionate in relation to his head. Tiny horns grow on top of it all, even while fairly useless bat-like wings wait along his back. The lot of it looks as though it's been covered in living limestone, while his mouth and nostrils seem to constantly produce plumes of black and oily smoke. The stream turns to a trickle if he hasn't pulled on his more-than-likely Eldritch stogie in a while, but he's been known to suddenly shroud himself in a cloud of smoke big enough to contain him, typically for the purposes of a more seamless exit.

In any case, both forms tend to stand at five feet six. His demonic form, however, is free to keep the proportions but alter its overall size, as long as he physically remains within his summoning circle. Sometimes, maybe to put some water in his wine and throw in some more classic “big, scary demon” affectations, he'll appear as a pair of glowing points of red light, lost in a column of black smoke that's as big as the room that houses his current summoning circle would allow.

If properly invited, Melmoth's also been known to shed his mortal coil and corporeally appear on the Mortal Plane. He never does it for too long, nor does he do it often, but standing both as a demon and in the flesh is something he typically reserves for his rare friends. Dropping all masks and convenient forms of ethereal existence strikes him as being a rather blunt proof of honesty and trust. As far as he's concerned, that's just one or two degrees shy of an awkward hug between friends.
Behavior : if there's one name that's never really stuck but that would be perfect as a descriptor of who and what he is – more-so than “Infernal Broker” or “Speculator” - it might be “the YOLO demon”.

Actually, Melmoth himself would suggest this, and he'd be very honest in doing so.

Parse through some tales in Las Vegas' gambling infancy, and you'll hear stories about a customer, a player of such awe-inspiring luck, that he quickly became known up and down what would become the Strip as the High Roller, the one lucky customer to end all tales of lucky customers. Where he walked, microfiche gazette clippings would have you believe, gold and coins rained. Chips and dice slipped through his fingers, and never once did he lose to unfair odds. If arcane specialists had been around to witness the transformation of a sleepy frontier town into a gambling and entertainment Mecca, they would've seen a man whose luck seemed to never run out.

That was what happens when a minor aspect of Avarice goes on vacation in a body that's already perished from an opium overdose. The money never really went anywhere and never did it actually exist, for that matter – but Melmoth, the Infernal Broker, lit up the then-unremarkable town and its few casinos with an energy the likes of which the city would need decades to see again. If the Wild Hunt had a one-man counterpart made up of impulse purchases, cheerful gluttony and hours upon hours of raunchy sex, Melmoth would be its Erlking.

To most people, anyone who happens to be a shell being led along by the Broker almost seems to be a little too much alive. Pig-headed stubbornness and passion tend to surface in the middle of what used to be fairly boring jobs based on statistics, the tired and old speculator seemingly rediscovering the joy of that first successful bid, the exhilaration of that first big score, day after day after day. Business meetings are suddenly handled with an impressive amount of gusto, and workday dinners that used to be brisk and conservative affairs turn into utterly guiltless midday Roman orgies.

The Broker lives and breathes to dabble, to speculate - to assess, as his function implies. He has to taste everything, shy away from nothing and talk to everyone. Regardless of how corpulent his affected self might be, as long as there's oil to burn, there's stuff to do. Only when the body starts to send unavoidable signals of exhaustion does he limp into bed, where he'll sleep with the same abandon he used to live through his day. Profits might have motivated his day's events, but Melmoth, above all, lives to spend his gained power. Once you've done practically everything you could do for yourself, the only things left to pursue involve other people. Melmoth doesn't look to mortals the way Leonard does; he doesn't see poor shills in need of being deceived. He sees people in need of his services.

The catch is, as he says it, that while he might be a nice guy, he ain't no angel.

To have power to spend, he needs to invest smartly. For an aspect of Avarice such as himself, that means finding the right kinds of fish to reel in. Most of his supernatural investment portfolio – the reams of available karmic fixes and power tweaks he has on offer – come from other mortals he's managed to progressively divest of their nobler traits. We'd call today's victims douchebags, short-sighted and wealthy urbanites with a need to live as fast and as hard as Melmoth seems to do, consequences be damned. He exudes wealth and offers wealth, if you're stupid and reckless enough, and will be more than happy to watch you destroy yourself with hollow and short-term bits of pleasure. You'll find them in his office on an almost weekly basis, flown in from all over the world on Mommy or Daddy's big bucks. A few years later, they're very likely to be dead in a ditch, somewhere.

Where he does get to be a nice guy, however, is when someone who doesn't deserve to burn the candle from both ends does come up to him for some supernatural assistance. He's been with mortals long enough to be able to recognize honesty and commendable intent when he sees them, and helping these people always seems to fill him with a light and bittersweet mix of pride and regret. If what he offers helps some nice kid to climb a few rungs and to get by on his own from then on, you'll see him look back on the associated file, down in the Pit, with a bit of a wistful smile. The same applies if someone offered to go through a bit of a rough Karmic patch in exchange for a boost to someone else's fate. The bigger the personal sacrifice, the more he respects that rare breed of summoner.

In fact, manage to worm your way close to his beat-up and slightly mushy heart, and you might get him to tell you about the Cancer Kid, as he calls that particular case. A father summoned him and offered his very life in exchange for a cure to his child's illness. Melmoth was so moved by this display of dedication that he set the child on a complete remission only a few minutes into the father's plea, free of charge.

Considering, some hardcore Infernalists would be correct in assuming that there isn't much of anything really demonic to Melmoth. The truth of the matter is that he used to be far more ruthless in his dealings, but the particulars of his early career more or less guaranteed that his supernatural emotional carapace was doomed to fail. Once that was gone, human values seeped through and colored the perceptions and goals of this formerly selfish and self-serving trafficker of souls. The only thing he can do to more or less stay in line with Leonard and Lucifer's shared expectations involves feeding a percentile of his total capital back into the Pit. He'll also be forced to be a little harsher than usual if he suspects he's being monitored, as he knows Leonard is more than willing to wrest his own fates towards less favorable paths if he ever looks to have “gone soft” for a bit too long.

On the whole, however, Melmoth is the most humane Fiend you could ever hope to meet, even if he does tend to come across as the cartoon equivalent to a mortal man, on some occasions. Heaven tends to try its best to offer decent conditions to Melmoth in exchange for intelligence or military statistics on the Pit's droves of foot-soldiers, while Leonard's made it fairly clear that he'd also like for Melmoth to play spymaster for his side of the fence.

To put it mildly, Mel's case has made a few philosophers and thinkers in Heaven wonder if there was a way for a demon to keep being a demon while somehow not being one. Of the horned boogeyman who drags sinners to Hell, all he has is the pair of horns, the lurid appearance and the sometimes sharkish smile at the thought of having roped in a serious twenty-to-thirty-something piece of work with too much disposable income and not enough exposure to Ethics in college. Otherwise, he considers himself as the textbook Immortal Schmoe to end all Immortal Schmoes, the kind of guy who, he admits, never had the smarts to really go about twisting the almighty dollar in his favor.

People, he says, just aren't worth the worst of his possible displays. If you were to ask him to really go Big, Bad and Demonic on a friendly dare, chances are he'd try and go for a Chernabog impersonation before ultimately pulling a supernatural muscle and yelping in a decidedly not demonic fashion. He'd then call it quits all the while rubbing his back, and then ask you if you'd rather go out for a beer, instead.

Goals : the spiritual twin to Capitalism only has one goal, which is to perpetuate its own existence. Melmoth has to keep generating power if he wants to have any to spend on a personal level, which is what makes his life a little spicier than the average (supposedly) mortal businessman. No power means no spice, but in Melmoth's case, this wouldn't exactly be the end of the world, either. He's survived for centuries off of little bits of sin and idiocy scraped here and there, coupled with his being forced, during the worst of his “lean cow” years, to pick up a more manual and survival-sustaining occupation.

To put it simply, Melmoth would rather not have to go back to farming anytime soon, even with the modern day's technological improvements being considered. If it were to happen, he'd grin and bear it as he'd have done it before already. He wouldn't be happy, but neither would he consider himself defeated on the long run.
History: Melmoth's story begins with the Fall. To make a long story short, he'd become enamored with the mortals' first few trade systems; the complexities therein and the way the value of goods shifted as he traveled. Mammon had seized on Melmoth's offered skills and used him as a private purchaser for his own goods, effectively making him an accomplice to his own increasing greed. When Gabriel pronounced himself and cast the renegade angels out of Heaven, Melmoth's remorse was almost enough to convince him to recant. He came close to apologizing and to instead offer his services to Heaven; but he'd always counted Lucifer and Mammon among his friends. Consequently, he felt obligated to accept Gabriel and the Thrones' common verdict and to follow those he'd assisted into Hell.

Thankfully, living out of time even down in the Infernal Plane enabled the Broker to start at the very end of his assumed hobby's technological prowess. Seeing the world-spanning banks and stock exchanges of today before the Italian money-lenders and counting benches of the Renaissance, he was able to remain useful in the eyes of his friends through the prospect of monetizing mortal souls. With Leonard standing as a proponent of free-range management of the Damned and Belial treating them as source materials for his creations, it fell to Melmoth to consider those who didn't reach the Gates of Heaven as a commodity to be exploited; a source of power to be both used and sold. The more they'd use them, the more they'd increase in value. The more valuable they became, the more a single deal struck with a mortal came to grow in overall importance. To the Sabbatic Goat would go the Byronic displays of power and refinement, the man who didn't need much more than a few Infernal generations to become the Infernal Broker would content himself with the practical and business-minded affectations of anything between a Wall Street shark and a Mesopotamian merchant. At first, however, there wasn't much humanity to the man, his only regrets being directed towards the few friends he'd lost in Heaven, and whom, he realized, he'd never see again.

Choosing to seat his own power responsibly as any prudent investor would, Melmoth opted to ignore the modern times and the slow social and technological climb toward their offered opportunities. In order to truly have some margin of power, he'd also need some form of long-lasting mortal leeway. The best way to do this was to ride the waves of time as a corporeal immortal creature would. Starting from the bottom and sowing the seeds of Economy really was his best available option. The angels had given bartering to the mortals? Then it would fall to the demons to appreciate or deteriorate enough values to push mortal souls into murdering one another for the least permanent of riches – gold.

This was hard work, never-mind how long Melmoth spent surfing from affluent trader to affluent trader. His chosen physical vessels were always bloated with whatever qualified as excess wealth for the era. The men he existed as were always cruel bon vivants, the best friends you could ever hope to have, until they pushed you into purposefully unsound investments.

Unfortunately, Leonard and Belial weren't exactly patient. The goat was stockpiling droves of thrashing and quailing Damned in the deepest depths of the Pit, while Belial's turnaround rate was more constant, more visible. He produced fearsome weapons that would poison the minds and souls of the late Hyperboreans, and crafted supernatural implants only waiting for the right call, the right notes of desperation, to be presented and sold. Melmoth's own corral, comparatively, aged like a fine wine. He offered quality goods, of that there was no doubt – but he was slow.

As could be expected of demons, Leonard and Belial soon conspired to give Melmoth a lesson in humility and expected demonic paranoia. Using their powers to blacken the threads of the Broker's most recent mortal lives as of early Antiquity, they severely weakened him. Practically overnight, Melmoth went from being a trader for whom nothing ever failed to a walking and ruinous mess of catastrophic investments. His trading contacts were lost or simply perished, his caravan was toppled over by bandits, and his best donkeys were killed for sport by bored Spartan boys. He'd obviously been in Greece at the time, and – to his horror – found himself unable to return to the Infernal Plane.

If Melmoth had had Leonard's spine or Belial's pig-headed nature, things would have gone on differently. The truth of the matter was that he'd never lost the roots of his angelic nature. He'd once been a naïve and easily trusting man, Lucifer's lack of any sort of reaction or even of the vaguest bits of empathy wounding him at his core. Almost overnight, his casual contempt towards mortals shifted towards venomous distrust of his fellow demons, along with a radically altered outlook towards mortals. They'd once been sheep he'd been more than glad to mooch off from, now they were the only ones who could understand what he felt.

Consequently, he was forced to live as a land-locked immortal, stuck in the stream of time, for centuries on end. Like a Wanderer, he found a new body when slain or otherwise allowed to die from old age. Those that still were his clients, however, were now becoming much more significant to him. Only a mortal has the required mindset to tolerate the concept of death and permanence being instated within less than a century's time. He managed to confide in a few people and to find solace in arms he would've previously rejected. He'd been a gold-fondling monster for generations, and found himself turning into a man starving for companionship and support within less than a single mortal generation. These fragile creatures' fast-moving world was his, now, and their nuanced lives chipped away at his supposedly wholly evil nature. It didn't take too long for his Infernal weakness of character to become a mortal strength – or for his business to be altered by his new needs and perceived moral obligations.

The Renaissance was in full swing and Melmoth was living as a well-to-do English banker that he suddenly felt his connection to the Pit snap back together. At first, he reacted like a man dying of thirst would at the sight of an oasis, gobbling up the sudden stream of Hellish power after so long spent as barely more than a mundane. He abandoned his body as soon as he could retire to a private place, expecting himself to be able to also shuck away all those quirky and useless human weaknesses...

It didn't take him long to realize that his original goal for his plot of land in the Pit wouldn't hold. Engendering Grade-A corruption was too much work for too volatile a perceptible payoff, and the Faustian bargains he struck left him with Damned he didn't appreciate handling. At the same time, he also didn't want Leonard to mooch off what was his gains and his alone.

From Hell, he first took a spirit jaunt to 2025, choosing to spend a few mortal days observing without being perceived. Rediscovering the modern stock exchanges as well as dawning onto an acceptable variant of his original plans, he again chose to exercise caution, and cast his perceptions forward into the wide stream of Possibility.

Of all the tributaries of Fate he charted, somewhere between and outside time as we know it, one of them made him smile. One of them made him think of a properly humiliated Leonard and of a ruined Belial. One of them presented him with forgiveness for his lack of foresight, as an angel.

Only one showed him a future in which he'd be truly happy.

Consequently, the present-day plateau his tithe occupies just underneath the Pit's sea level was deeply altered. From a Hellish corral with a few finance-oriented apparatuses, it almost crested the fire-waves with its radio tower and twenty stories. The supernatural half of Wolfram Investments was born, Melmoth's new understanding giving him the knowledge and confidence needed to turn a few docile Damned into accountant demons of the highest calibre. The most stable of his old-fashioned Damned became the baseline for this currency of sorts, while the more fluctuating nature of mortal morality would provide him with the impetus and forward motion he required.

Returning to England a mere few moments after his departure, he set about creating Wolfram Investments' physical counterpart. A few years of good progress were enjoyed, before Leonard found a body and enough guts to knock on the unsuspecting demon's door. He'd expected a good deal of simpering and apologies, but instead ended up with a lower lip being defiantly thrust out at him. Melmoth refused to have his plans set aside in favor of some other demon bullying him into coughing up some supposed “tithe” of power. Leonard warned the Broker that he'd have to suffer penalties if he refused, but Melmoth had already been acquainted with the worst of what the Master of Sabbaths had to offer.

As expected, many of his expected deals and crucial money-lending operations tanked. Fundraisers failed to turn up enough to start Wolfram, but this time, Melmoth didn't intend to simply sit there and bemoan his fate. His investment portfolio company did take off, but it did so in fairly Dickensian proportions in the early eighteen-hundreds, leaving him as his own single employee and forced to cut back on his heating expenses in the winter.

Little did he know that his stubborn efforts had caught a few eyes from other planes, as well. The Archangel Gabriel and the Virtue Patience, an angel of the same name, were the first to contribute rather sizable funds to the company's coffers. Gabriel even attempted to throw in an official pardon, based on his long centuries of observable tolerance and kindness towards mortals, but Melmoth humbly declined. He claimed he felt as though he could do more of a difference as a sympathetic demon of the Pit than as just another angel who only rarely spent time amongst the very people they were expected to protect. Besides, there was still plenty to his character that he knew most angels would have considered to be objectionable. Melmoth had never been much for personal improvement, he never minded being forced to live in fat or obese vessels, and his acts of kindness didn't take away from the fact that he was the least noble immortal in existence.

Gabriel smiled and chuckled at that, replying that Melmoth at least had the merit of being honest.

With Leonard toying with Melmoth's powerbase, Wolfram Investments never quite developed that textbook “managed by an immortal being” feel. Having understood the wisdom of letting mortal finances be long before Wyvern would even come into being, he settled with using his grasp on the current and worth of the British pound to offer services that fell in line with the slow development of modern investment platforms. The goat's attempts to throw a wrench in more prosperous periods only served as a means to galvanize the Broker's respect for mortal institutions. The less he bucked and heaved, the more he compensated with some good, old-fashioned mortal elbow grease, the less difficult things tended to be. Teaching himself to see the good in all situations, he found that his levels of assurance were beginning to manifest as more precise physical control and greater levels of physical power. The more time passed, the less he minded being shackled to a mortal coil.

Finally, letting one of his junior associates handle Wolfram in London as his body from the early fifties began to be too conspicuous, he shifted to the other hemisphere. He'd kept tabs on Mel Othstein, a San Antonio native with fifty years spent as a modern-day oil baron and a business trip to Hope planned, just as Wolfram and Wyvern both managed to partner with the Federal Reserve to reopen Hope's old Stock Exchange. Rhode Island's trading floors had remained silent since the Battle of Hope, but the increasing size and scope of the locally-owned Goliath Corporation, as well as the State's booming tech sector, were both beginning to warrant some form of closer and more immediate form of global monitoring. Having previously been known as the “Wall Street of the Weird”, Hope's exchange had always been where a great many arcane or hybrid products could be safely speculated on, backed as investors would be by the local talent's impressive knowledge base.

The Infernal Broker, however, had a few plans for this stroke-prone senior... One in-flight Cordon Bleu chicken and a little supernatural prodding later, a chunk of fat lodged itself in one of Othstein's ventricles. The resulting stroke was instant, Melmoth using his own Ascending motion to mercifully guide the old man's soul within a few breast strokes from Pandemonium. The mortal would have his chance at redemption, while the demon would finally be able to put his projects in full motion. It all struck him as being quite fair.

Pushing past the body's facial paralysis, it was easy for Melmoth to make the stroke pass for an unusually deep nap. From his hotel room, he began arranging the details of his permanent stay in Rhode Island. A downtown loft was purchased, Othstein's resume was adequately spruced up, and a few shaken hands, greased palms and blown minds were all he needed to go from a simple tourist to the Hope Stock Exchange's new director of operations. A little nook in the Exchange's underground parking floors was later marked as a suitable supernatural elevator between Wolfram's Pit-side incarnation and Melmoth's place of mortal business, and a few of his best men and women from Down Below began to populate his private floor.

Today, Mel Othstein isn't much more than a face that's occasionally seen on the news, either discussing growth plans for local businesses or consorting with Wall Street and the Fed; more rarely with Aldergard. The dragon hasn't had the luxury of smelling the faint aroma of death on his colleague, and still hasn't managed to pick on the subtle to not-so-subtle cues pointing to something being a little... off with the local bigwigs' new party boy. All the same, the Infernal Broker isn't giving anyone cause to doubt the fact that his actions aren't motivated by anything other than a deep love of number-crunching and productive gambling. Before coming across as a demon in disguise, he typically evokes a cod mathematician and statistician, someone who can talk about the Dow Jones, the NASDAQ or the Nikkei index with the same kind of passion you'd expect out of maverick mages like Amazo when they talk about ley lines. His is a quirky mind in a quirky body that starts with cold digits, dips into numerology and the arcane power behind numbers, and then splashes back out into hard mathematical facts.

If anything, the only obvious tell would be the number of overtime hours he logs. No mortal should ever love his or her job to that extent...