Apollyon's Plotlines

Rebecca Gold/LoriBeth Murdoch
Lazarus is in LA, walking down the street when a fan stops him with the line "You're Lazarus Murdoch! I Just wrote your obituary!" If this weren't disconcerting enough, the girl is the spitting image of Lazarus' dead wife, LoriBeth. Rebecca was born a week to the day after LoriBeth died nineteen years ago, and is now a journalism student at UCLA. Lazarus begins studying this rather peculiar phenomenon, and these studies end the flirtatious relationship with Jill Morris.
    Unfortunately, the events surrounding Rebecca are not all positive. Both she and Lazarus are have precognitive dreams about her death and his, and she is slowly changing physically to become more and more like Lazarus' lost love—her eyes are changing color, and she grows an appendectomy scar. This is more than a little frightening for such a young girl, along with becoming involved with a famous rock star old enough to be her father. Further studies indicate that not only is she the reincarnation of LoriBeth, but also of Katherine of Shandamir, just as Lazarus is the reincarnation of Vanis the Beautiful.
    Despite his attempts to shield her, events beyond Lazarus' control (caused by Kensington in the Twilight) keep forcing Rebecca deeper into the strange world Lazarus inhabits. The final step of this is the replacing of Lazarus with Rebecca in the sacrifice that would give Kensington a new daemonic body. While she is saved at the last minute, and vows to stay with Lazarus, he suspects the cycles of reincarnation will take her away from him again, because Vanis always looses Katherine to an early death. Of course, she wasn't due to reincarnate until after his death. He is investigating these events.

Luther Kensington
Luther Kensington was the mentor who ushered the young Lazarus Murdoch into the mystical arts. It was almost too late before the young man discovered his mentor was a Coven recruiter. The fiery confrontation left both Murdoch's young wife LoriBeth and Kensington apparently dead in North Texas. Lazarus awoke in the Himalayas, with a memory of a young Asian woman in a robe and hood. Lazarus eventually made his way back to the States and continued his life and recording career, but he never forgot his wife or his Œmentor.'
    When he discovered that Midori's mother also had ties to Luther Kensington, and that the Crystal Dragons were claiming that Kensington was still alive, Lazarus entered a cold, calculated rage. He orders the assaults on Takamani Corp to discover the truth. When Kensington is revealed as a robot, he eases, but not for long. Conversations with Midori's mother reveal strange discrepancies in Luther's timeline; he apparently recruited worldwide, and had contact with both Lazarus and Mrs. Olafson.
    The web thickens even more with the arrival of Chandler Prentice—a detective and occult investigator from Chicago, also mentored by Kensington—who has been following clues about Kensington's continued existence to Los Angeles and the two other 'students.' The three all have reason to hate Kensington, vowing to take any action to bring him down. Lazarus is able to learn that Kensington is somehow sill alive in the Twilight, and manipulating everyone to create for himself a new body.
    The first step in this involved drawing magical power, for which Kensington possessed a drifter in NYC and use him to kill Dove of the Aquarians for her soul (also killed: Dove's lover John Lennon). A double victory for him, because Lennon was a close friend of Murdoch's. His next step was possessing the Frog Prince and subverting his plans to subvert Quetzo's plans to anchor the Mayan continent inside Los Angeles, instead using the gathered magical power to summon and possess an incredibly powerful daemonic body.
    The Host is able to thwart these plans at the last second, and Kensington's Twilight body is destroyed forever. Lazarus had an even greater stake in the outcome, since the subject of Kensington's sacrifice was not only Midori's mother, but the reincarnation of LoriBeth.

The Chessmen and Others
In his youth Lazarus was a member and lead singer of the four person band The Chessman; the band was racially integrated (two black, two white) and produced some beautiful and radical music for the late fifties/early sixties. When Lazarus vanished a second album of their studio materials appeared with the title Minstrel's Requiem. Of course, Lazarus was still alive, shocking the music world with his return years later.
    Lazarus moved to Los Angeles under the cover of working on a new album. He spent some time with other musicians and members of the musical community, and contacted Ben Casey. Casey was one of the original Chessman and was now a Baptist Minister with several albums of piano/organ/choir music. At their reunion, Casey imparted disturbing information: there had been a series of strange supernatural occurrences in Casey's parish and others nearby, smacking of occult activity.
    Their investigation was sidetracked by the death of John Lennon and Dove in NYC, friends of both Lazarus and Casey. Further instances in Los Angeles prevented Lazarus from delving any further into the mystery, but it is possible that Luther Kensington was responsible for them. The plot is still unresolved.

Magical Community & Technomancy
Lazarus has contacts across the world's mystical community, starting with his formal training in the Orient after the death of his wife and the passing of Luther Kensington. These contacts include Alexis Rashamon (a weather witch and owner of the vegetarian restaurant called The Grill in downtown LA) and Yasmina Rajid (a three thousand year old vampire who only ever appears in her astral form). He spent some time with them, Alexis in particular, developing strategies for dealing with the various threats approaching the city.
    Lazarus is also attempting to develop an entirely new form of magic—aura technomancy—using his spiritual ability to communicate directly with the soul of the machine. In this he is having some success. He is most effective when using this magic on the Apollyon armor, due to the extreme spiritual connection between it and himself. There have been prophecies made about the importance his actions, referring to Lazarus as the Singing Man and ENOCH as the New God. What exactly this means is unknown at this time.

   

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