| Incarnations
of Immortality |
| . _____In his
series of novels, Incarnations of
Immortality, Piers Anthony plays
out the roles of immortal offices
in a contant struggle for good
and order, while being plagued
with mischief from Satan, Lord of
Lies. The tales of the five
primary incarnations (Death, Time,
Fate, War, and Nature)
are ones of ordinary mortals
assuming the Offices due to fate
or circumstance and, during their
inevitable inexperience with
immortality and the jobs they
have taken, balking the Lord of
Illusion's master plans for
celestial dominance. The world that
Anthony created was one where
magic AND science progressed in a
similar fashion. Automobiles and
flying carpets vie for dominance
on the commerce fronts, Hell is
advertised much the same way
Burma Shave used to be in old
America, and there's a spell for
everything from truthtelling to
tie-dying to time distortion to
travel.
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. _____The
Incarnations, in turn, work
toward the defeat of Evil and
promotion of Good. They believe
that God and Satan have a
covenant of non-interference
in the affairs of mortals, a
covenant that God abides by while
Satan breaks constantly. Each
come to terms with their own
inner demons as Satan attempts to
use their inexperience and
naivety against them in their
respective Offices.
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| _____Thanatos
(Death) stopped Him from causing
the untimely death of one young
woman, Luna, who was fated to
balk His plan twenty years down
the line by casting some manner
of key vote that would tilt the
celestial balance to God's favor. |
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_____Chronos
(Time) caused a great distortion
of the timeline to prevent Satan
from medling with the lives of
politicians that He would need to ouste
Luna from the political career
that would prove hazardous to his
conquest for celestial dominance. |
| _____Clotho,
Lacheisis, and Atropos (the three
aspects of Fate) span several
generations-worth of Satan's
mischief, halting His attempts to
eliminate Luna's mother and
prevent the birth of the mortal
who would cause Him such
frustrations. |
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_____Mars (War)
finds himself taking the battle
between Good and Evil right to
the pits of Hell itself. He leads
a great rebellion in Hell after
being trapped there by the Master
of Mischief. Mars wins his
freedom and stops Satan's
underlying plan,the result of
which would have given Him an
unsupervised opportunity to change the
face of the political scene by
manipulating the wars and
attentions. |
| _____Gaea's (Nature)
story is a brilliantly laid out
fog of illusion that leads a
young incarnation-to-be to fall
in love with a certain Father of
Lies. Though she eventually is
faced with the truth about her
fate as an Incarnation and the
nature of whom she loves, she
accepts both that fate and His
love in return. His wedding gift
to her is the single-most
impossible gift the Lord of Evil
can give... He sings a hymn,
Amazing Grace, at the cost of his
immortality. |
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_____Anthony's
Lord of Evil is a remarkable
throw-back to the Romantic Age's
love affair with the tragic hero
Satan. Wiley and devious, we find
his Satan to be a master of
illusion and eloquence. His plans
are near flawless and craftily
hidden until approprate times.
The similarities with the
Biblical Adversary are passing,
while he is the occidental figure
of Evil, such evil is not truly
destructive or harmful.
_____Parry was a sorcer's
apprentice in South France seven
hundred years ago. Due to
oppressive measures, he was
forced into hiding. First as a
monk, then a priest, Parry find
himself using aspects of his
sorcery to work toward a greater
good. After working his entire
life as an emissary of God, Parry
winds up being corrupted by a
succubus and becoming an agent of
Lucifer, the Lord of Evil.
_____In an act of love, Parry
eliminated Lucifer and,
inadvertantly, assumes the Office
of the Incarnation of Evil. Parry,
now Satan, learns the
responsibilities of His job and
begins to remodel the currently
inefficient Hell. While
attempting to recieve the help
and cooperation of the other
Incarnations, Parry finds himself
the butt of a prank that leaves
Him bitter toward the Offices and
sets a precident for "working
them over" as new mortals
assume them.
_____Satan
decides, after a few decades of
recieving souls that should be in
Heaven in Hell, to confront God
about the matter. When He reaches
Heaven, He sees that it is an
impossibly dull place where
warriors cannot fight and lovers
cannot love. God, Himself, is
found to be in contemplation of
Himself, paying no attention to
anything else. Satan decends,
appalled at the ineffectual God
He is forced to work with for the
proper classification of souls
that should be in Heaven and
souls that ought be in Hell.
_____Satan realizes that for Him
to help properly bring out the
evil in mortals, classify the
worth of their soul (because no
good soul should be in Hell and
no bad soul in Heaven), and
ensure the system's integrity...
He must work toward the
aquisition of more souls, putting
the cosmic balance in His favor.
The Incarnations, ignorant of His
true purpose and seeing it only
as greater evil, balk His every
attempt to shift the balance in
His favor.
_____In six hunred years, Parry
has not let another close to His
heart, but one woman does catch
His eye. As she is supposed to be
an Incarnation, and would never
find herslef to Love Evil, He
courts her in a myriad of
illusions. In the end, as His
last act of love, he gives her
the only gift thought impossible
for Him to give... a song, a hymn
to God.
_____Soonafter, each Incarnation
with their own reasons for it,
they all work together to replace
the current Officeholder of the
Incarnation of Good.
_____Namely, God.
_____While Each nominate who they
will for the posistion... We find
ourselves believing Satan to be
the best candidate for the
position of God._____Anthony's
Satan offers a perspective to
Evil and Good that shakes the
foundations of what you consider
to be either. His Satan is the
figure of Evil working farsighted
Good in a near-sighted world.
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_____Satan
revamped Hell when He took Office.
Prior to His intervention, it was
run like the Hell of Dante's
Inferno. Concentric rings
contained sinners of like sins
proceeding down, sins worsening
along with punishments. Satan saw
Cerberus in the third ring and
Centaurs guarding the boiling
blood and decided to re-organize
Hell into a more efficient place
of Atonement.
_____Moving
Centaurs to record-keeping (due
to their brain capacity) and
Cerberus to the gates (guarding
them) amongst other changes, He
was able to turn Hell into
militaristic regions bracketed by
the three rivers of Hell. A more
efficient system of punishment
was meted out, to each the
suffering he has inflicted or prevented
from atonement.
_____One man,
while drag-racing a motorcycle,
smashed into a school bus and
killed more than a score of
children. His punishment is to
suffer for the sins of those he
killed, as they died before
having the chance for proper
penance or sufficient good to
balance their souls. He is caught
in an endless loop of misery due
to the ineffectual Incarnation of
Good and His lack of attentions.
_____His staff is comprised of
all the previous Incarnations of
Evil that have stepped down from
the Office, Ozymandias (ex-King
of Egypt), Lilah (before she
defected and devoted herself to
Mars), Nefertiti (the occasional
sexual liason), and a myriad of
demons and damned spirits wishing
to gain favor and alleviate their
punishment. |
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_____The
actual limits of Hell are unclear.
There appears to be no definite
boundry, nor does there appear to
be a source for the rivers or
demon-substance. The rivers of
Hell surround all the camps and
flow into one another. The actual
placement of Hell is, like
Purgatory and Heaven, much like a
two-dimensional plane that is
imperceptable to the three-dimensional
realm. Those within interact with
everything as though it is real,
although it is still spiritual in
nature.
_____Hell has extensions in the
mortal and immortal realms as
well. In Purgatory, there is a
Hell Mansion for the Incarnation
of Evil to reside in His off
times. The Hell annexes on Earth
are almost like amusement parks
run by Satanists and the damned,
though you pay for your pleasure
with percentages of your soul. |
Coming
soon
maps of Anthony's
Hell
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