Malphas
Faction: The Broken Circle · View the Gallery · Listen in the Songbook
The Broken Circle: 3 - ULLU (Power Level 3)
Malphas arrived at The Lodge during the Third Crusade, which tells you something about the era but nothing about what he is. The Broken Circle makes instruments of desire — they locate the thing a person most wants and redirect it, quietly, toward ruin. Malphas was patient at this work for three centuries. He was not kind about it. He was careful.
What stopped him was not conscience in any recognisable form. He was given a painter — a man working in Jerusalem whose devotion to his craft was clean and unambiguous. Malphas was to corrupt the devotion. Turn it to vanity, then spite, then ash. He spent six months watching the man work and could not find the angle of insertion. The work was too precise. The man was trying to see something clearly — hold it still, make it true. Malphas had no interest in sacred. But honest wanting was something else. He could not bring himself to cloud that.
He did not complete the commission. The Circle does not forgive incompletion.
He has been at The Lodge since. He sketches — faces of people the Circle consumed during his three centuries of service. People he helped deliver to that ending. He does not call it penance. He calls it record-keeping. His hands are always stained. He does not wash them.