Overview of the Nonpartisans

The Twelve Earthly Benefactors are, in essence, abstracts. They are all common "universal ideals" and representatives of free will. They are as timeless as the angels and the demons. And they are also just as interested in the souls and hearts of mankind. They are: Justice, Mercy, Agape, Passion, Beauty, Wisdom, Liberty, Duty, Vengeance, Strength, Despair and Inspiration.

These non-partisan benefactors (also called the Ideals or the Abstracts), much like their angel and demon counterparts, have also craved power. It has been their goal for as long as they have existed. They represent and, in balance, sustain their own ideal, for the power of an abstract is as strong as one's belief in it.

In this constant struggle, there has been a tedious balance sought in the twelve. Nearly all of the ideals are in perpetual battle against one another, against the will of God, the enticement of sin, and the resolve of human beings.

For example, Mercy exists as a convenant on Justice. Justice abhors Mercy to a fault, finding that its ability for compassion a weakness when it comes to incurring fairness and law.

The ideals operate informally in pairs. Except for two, the power and potential of one ideal can be easily challenged, perhaps negated by another. The structure is thus: Justice & Mercy, Agape & Passion, Beauty & Wisdom, Strength & Despair, Liberty & Duty, Vengeance to Itself, and Inspiration to Nothing.

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The Ideals

Justice: This ideal represents absolute moral rightness. Absolute fairness. Righteousness.

To say that law is a structure, the rules of conduct inherent in human nature and essential to or binding upon human society, then Justice is its function. Justice is a blind body; it doesn't bring eyes into an equation, and it doesn't judge off the senses and certainly never from the heart. It even factors compassion from its judgement, because compassion is always partial and is always swayed. Justice cares only about fairness. Everyone is equal. Everyone, king or slave, are bound by the same rules, and if broken, are then bound to suffer the same consequence.

Mercy: This ideal pertains to kindness and forgiveness, the motivation to be compassionate, and it is the bringer of clemency to law and moral conduct.

It judges on the basis of leniency and emotion, and seeks to eliminate all distress. Justice believes in punishment unto the deserving; Mercy believes in saving the sinners. Mercy is gentle, humane, and sympathetic, hoping for the ultimate good in all beings and situations. The downfall of Mercy is its unrelenting trust, which it expends as easily to the sinners as it does the saints. And there are some things out there undeserving of mercy.

Beauty: This is art, good taste, essentially what is contained to the aesthetics.

It is a powerful and willful ideal, giving pleasure to the senses, though its strength is bound by its subjective matter. Beauty can free minds and help forge the first desires, moulding the Helen, the Pygmalion, the unattainable yet still breathlessly sought, but it can also trap, mask, and disguise. There can be beauty in corruption. Some would seek a feast in beautiful depravity. It can fool others, falsify what is truly evil, and offer the first inticement to obsession.

Wisdom: The ability to pass judgement not by law, but by what is right and what is true. Fact. Reality. The sincere actuality. The ultimate meaning.

Wisdom is not to be confused with Justice: while Justice is in pursuit of fairness, Wisdom is in the pursuit of truth. Wisdom is direct and ruthless, preferring a hard, cold reality that lacks veils and intrigues that would seek to distract anyone from enlightenment. The enlightenment it wants is free of emotional taint and personal bias. It is a sensible, prudent, and more benevolent ideal than many, but any plans it has for people are engulfed by its overwhelming disgust of Beauty. Wisdom's desire for war is second only to Vengeance.

Agape: While Mercy defends compassion, love in the case of Agape means sacrifice.

The willingness to give or give up for another -- even if that other does not love you back. Agape is the least ambiguous of all ideals. But it is also the most tragic. Gentle, devoted, and martyring, it is passive but earnest, perhaps dangerous in its intensity to those that it loves. If Agape were to exist alone, there would be no free will, because while love frees -- it also consumes.

Passion: This is a purely selfish ideal that takes.

It craves all emotional sensation that comes with love, and all the exploits love can provide. It is man's most base desires. Sex. Jealousy. Hatred. War. So long that it keeps feeling. Passion is like Agape that it desires and needs, but passion is ultimately more selfish, possessive, and greedy, and love easily turns into hate.

Strength: This ideal is about building in power, amassing it, and maintaining it at all costs.

Strength is highly ambiguous: it arose first in a capacity to support and protect, but as its power grew, so did its intensity. Almost like a snowballing effect, it does not crave more power because it's greedy or aspiring. Strength wants more only because settling is a weakness. It is incapable of relenting. It does not compromise. It does not take a rest, because there's always more work to do.

Despair: This ideal embodies the absolute loss of hope. It accepts defeat and knows its futility. It is, by essence, the weakest ideal, but its influence upon all the others is not to be underestimated.

While Strength drives on, Despair relents. Despair is not all harmful: sometimes Despair comes to be so that it can save lives, save civilizations, and try to bring about peace instead of war. Despair is extremely powerful: it lives strongly inside of everyone, and usually when the other Ideals are busy challenging each other for power, it tends to sneak in, and make it harder for the other ideals to be recognized once again. It has terrible potential, because when someone loses will, all is lost.

Vengeance: It is about the infliction of punishment against a wrong committed.

Vengeance is, singularly, the most powerful of all the Ideals. Once Vengeance is stirred, brought to life, and delivering its damning madness unto the deserving, it cannot be stopped. There is a single, damning reason that keeps Vengeance alive: its target. What it only wants is to destroy what has wronged it, and without the act of revenge, vengeance ceases to exist. It is extremely ambiguous, intoxicating, and wants only blood. The blind rage of Vengeance is feared and despised by the rest of the ideals, corrupting what they hold dear: Vengeance's rage skews and ignores truth, and it takes justice from communal law and puts it into its own hands.

Liberty: This ideal represents the right to act and think and express without restriction. To live freely and only for yourself. To choose life, to choose right and wrong -- to choose.

Liberty was the first ideal, created the moment God bestowed man with free will. Liberty does not care about right and wrong. Liberty has no patience for moral right or the bounds of objectivity, because in the end, they are all restrictions. The other ideals viciously despise Liberty, because Liberty represents everyone's opportunity to choose, and therefore they cannot fix themselves and gain immediate power. It's left up to the person to let any of the ideals enter their heart. So what many of the ideals do is use liberty in their favour (passion creates war out of the need of liberty; strength offers determination to preserve liberty, etc.) Liberty is powerful and chaotic, good and bad. It ignores law and society, it represents freedom to the possibility of anarchy. It's power is that it always presents the decision. Choose what have you.

Duty: This ideal represents moral obligation, service in regards to any of the other ideals.

Duty is responsibility, whether it be to others, or to right, wrong, or anything someone believes in. It represents piety, the effort one must undertake to preserve their desires. Duty represents earnest work, not to become powerful (like Strength), not to take gratification (like Passion), not to be appreciated (like Beauty), but simply to provide a service, to be useful to home, country, religion, or so on. While Duty is honourable and selfless, it is ultimately restricting, and can mean living for communal gain rather than individual rights.

Inspiration: This ideal arouses emotions and actions, both in the pursuit of creation and destruction.

Inspiration is a necessary component in free will, as it creates appreciation for aesthetics, wealth, or power, for creation itself, and for the introspective nature of man, but too much of it can destroy as much as it creates. It can influence good souls toward terrible things; it is the inventor of ambition. And it does not like to be ignored. It can enslave like duty, consume like love, be as deceitful as beauty, and as selfish as passion.

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Factor of Negation

Justice versus Mercy

Seeing that enlightenment brought people to scrap traditional law and bring about more humanist ones. This convenent saw to the birth of Justice's rival, and since that point it's lost its divine right in society's law. Mercy allows emotion and compassion to weigh into deciding law, deciding what is right. They're obvious counterpoints.

Beauty versus Wisdom

While Beauty is ultimately left to the interpreter, Wisdom's ultimate right and wrong can affect artistic integrity in some of its forms. Beauty's subjective power (being able to mean everything and anything) matches Wisdom's objectivity and singular meaning. Beautiful things can skew what is right and wrong.

Agape versus Passion

Agape is the giver and passion is the taker. Agape freely martyrs itself while passion thirsts for gratification. Passion kills for its desires; Agape gladly dies for it.

Strength versus Despair

Despair is about loss of hope, a dent in the armour, about the ultimate weakness which Strength abhors. Only Strength has the sheer force and raw drive to keep Despair in check. Strength's power itself has no effect on Despair; it is only durability, fortitude, and its resistance to accept that keeps hopelessness in check.

Vengeance versus Itself

Vengeance cannot be stopped by the others. Easily, it could have destroyed the other eleven ideals long ago... if it wasn't its own negation. Vengeance cannot stop at destroying its target: the last step is revenge is it destroying itself. Because of its cyclic life, Vengeance has the power to take control of the abstracts, but without longevity, it will never attain real power. Vengeance knows this fact, and wishes to find out how to extend its life, because to it revenge never seems to last long enough.

Liberty versus Duty

Duty is obligation, and its nature to bind weighs a perfect counterpoint to Liberty's nature to live for yourself. The choice to be bound to others, be that out of love, responsibility, service -- the choice to be a useful cog in civilization weighs against having a choice. Liberty wants only to be free; it sees Duty as an atrocity, as servitude and slavery.

Inspiration versus Nothing

One would think, with all its influence, that Inspiration would wield a wealth of power among the twelve. In actuality, Inspiration is completely powerless. It was meant to be the advisor, the Rasputin, able to coax and encourage others, able to manipulate those with power to visit its desires, and never able to possess that strength itself. Constrained to its role, and bitter because of it, Inspiration is inspired to be ruthless.

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