Norman Randall Pollet

Norman Randall Pollet is a character from The Spectacular Exhibition.

Weapons/Abilities
His main ability is his voice. As the archbishop of the Church of the Second Eden, and the one responsible for its growth and prominence in Port Merleau, he has an almost supernatural amount of charisma, charm and sway. Also, as the archbishop, he is entrusted with a Core Staff--a staff supposedly crafted from a tree which grew from one of the seeds of the Tree of Knowledge. This staff supposedly enables him to divine certain intangible powers by affecting prevailing animist forces--for example, he can affect luck, make a thunderstorm more likely to happen, etc. However, this power "only works if God and his Forces have been curried in their favor" [Doctrine of the Word of the Church of the Second Eden, art.3 sect.12.35]. In actuality, these staffs are not carved from saplings of the Tree of Knowledge. They are produced in the nearby Halfrus Lumberyard, and are really only good for swinging at people or using as a cane. He can, however, convince people that his spellcasting is real with his eloquence. Lastly, he has that Pollet libido. This can lead to some... happenings... when coupled with his charm.

Description
A stodgy man of average height and a well-combed and well-kempt head of brown hair. Has started to get a bit of a belly after failing to exercise. When not in ceremonial robes, he is always well-dressed, wearing suits or shirts of silk--for Godliness is next to Cleanliness. You'd best believe his shoes are shined.

He has the symbol of his church carved into his hand, which is a tree blooming from the stem of an apple, crucifix inside the apple. He claims that he was struck by a bolt of divine presence one night, and thus His Word was imprinted onto Norman forevermore.

For Norman, Pragmatism comes before Idealism: He's always been about being a businessman first. When he was growing up, he saw that the clergy held the lion's share of Port Merleau's wealth. So he knew that, to get out of the indignifying poverty trap that was his family, he would have to play off that.

Norman is self-centered and untrusting. He has always thought that his days of youth were where he fended for himself; he only prevailed because he was individually strong (forgetting all of the contributions of his family). He rides on convenience and opportunity as his real prevailing gods. If someone offers him something, he will not only leap at the offer, but try to find a way to make it better for both parties--business is best done through long-term, mutually-beneficial relationships.

Of course, he wouldn't be in his line of business if it didn't do some good for people. He feels pride in the fact that the religion he helped make gives people confidence and meaning to their actions. He often makes a great deal about shows of philanthropy, and is known to appear at the right times in the community for the sake of strengthening his public image. He is not the type for boasting out loud, but rather radiate pride in a back room.

Once he heard news of his brother's death, he began to feel uneasiness and unsureness at what he was doing. Soon after, he began to see hallucinations of his brother, telling him that there was a good reason for him to feel bad: he has not done one concretely good thing in his life.

And so, now Norman has begun to feel split down the middle--half of him wants to prove his way is right by using his powers as much as he can, while the other half wants to destroy the other half for being a cruel fraud.

Mental Diagnosis
Monomaniacal hallucinations and paranoia centering on his brother's death. Claims to be "haunted" due to his poor treatment of younger brother during youth and on--and it is a trick his bastard conscious is trying to play on him.

Biography
Norman Pollet is the third to be born of the nine children born to Ethan and Nara Pollet. (From first-born to last, the nine Pollet children were Vena, Clancy, Norman, Sarah, Trenton, Burwell, Aaron, Eloise, and James.) Norman was closest to Clancy for the first few years of his life--something that changed when Clancy suddenly died of Typhoid when Norman was three. This trauma is what led him to be so untrusting--the experience left on his malleable mind the fact that who he was closest to him could be taken away from him at any time. He became uneasy with the prospect of getting too close to anyone--it could have the same result. His brothers Aaron and Burwell died when he was eight and ten, respectively; his father died when he was eleven in a boating accident.

A month after the boating accident, a storm blew through the town of Port Marleau. It was said to be caused "The Dread Spirit," the specter of a sunken ship that had been attacking and marauding the town. Whatever the source, the high winds of change lead to a social upheaval: though surface damage took about 50 lives, the ensuing several days rioting and civil war in the streets lead to a third of the population dead, another quarter wounded, and nearly sixty percent of the town entirely in disrepair. It was said that the catastrophe left a specter of bad luck on all of the survivors--perhaps God had damned them all, or perhaps it was God that should have been damned for turning his back. Either way, the town, which had recently been ruled over by the clergy of the Vercorpolic Church, stood to have something new take its place.

For ten years, the town was left in fear of having any type of religious organization be allowed near power as rebuilding happen. And rebuilding took place. Meanwhile, Norman was building a worldview of his own: if he were to escape this pit of poverty and death that was his family, he would have to grab his share in the rebuilding. It seemed almost obvious where he would make his money: where had the greatest hole been left when the clergy was decried? In belief. The town showed both potential for the future and a paranoia of the past beneath the surface, so he would have to make people believe again.

Luckily, when he was 16, he was able to find an Animist prophet who was wandering from town to town and convince him to stay in Port Merleau to try to found a church. The newfound religion stayed small, at first. Then, Norman decided that it would be most attractive to the populace if the religion he was leading contained some familiar element to it instead of being pure Animism, so he mixed Animism with Christianity. The idea struck him like a lightning bolt in a dream. It spread like a prairie fire across the town.

At the age of 21, the most significant event in the Church's history occurred: Norman Pollet was introduced into the Society of Merleau Elites. For the ten years previous, people had been wary of letting anyone in a religious position anywhere near a position of power. This, however, was different: the Vercorpolic Church was a big, evil organization, while the Second Church of Eden was a hometown effort--it still had a soul to it. Besides, most of the other Merleau elites were already a part of the Church.

At the age of 19, he had married his first wife. With his induction into the Society, he divorced his first wife and married his second. Like how he had turned aside his first wife for not fitting the mold of the Elites, Norman had, by now, turned aside his family.

Norman's success in the church caused even more resentment between him and Trenton--he had always treated Trenton like less than a brother, knocking him down to get his own rewards (when he was a teenager, he stole the fishing rod their father had left Trenton and pawned it for several pints of beer), while squabbling with him to no reward regarding their vastly conflicting ideologies. Trenton, a bacchanalian cynic who saw things fatalistically, would grow red in the face screaming "Wrong!" at the walls of straight-laced, pragmatic eloquence Norman built in front of him. Once the Church became proof that Norman was right, things came to a head. Eventually, Eloise, Trenton's closest confidant and their sister, confronted Norman on Trenton's behalf, which resulted in Norman rebuking his brother and sister by name public sermon. This caused Trenton to leave Port Merleau and wander the world, hoping to find his way somewhere.

The next thing Norman heard about Trenton was that he had died. Also, that Trenton had explicitly gone out of his way in his will to mention that Eloise was the only sibling of his remaining. For some reason, that, over anything else that had happened in his life, gave him a feeling of guilt. From then on, it felt like there was some kind of demon weighing him down.

And then the hauntings began.

To spite his dead brother, he became more aggressive in his sermons. At times, he would say things only Trenton would understand, or things directed straight at the dead man, and he would then stop to stare straight at him--only to realize that there was no one there he was talking to. Later, he'd curse his brother for making him look like a fool in front of his congregation.

Of course, his brother would be there to tell him, "that's because you are one." And so Norman would set out to prove his dead brother wrong even more and more, until one day he tore a chunk of his hair out of his head. With his scalp still bleeding from the skin he had torn, he passed out on the floor of his rectory and woke up in the realm of The Spectacular Exhibition, knowing his purpose: to prove that he was right, and that he was being guided by something more than a fake ghost.