Mastema, The Hatred, I am Disaster

Hatred, Pain and Persecution

The image of Mastema is of a man with a curly beard of dripping blood.   In iconography, Mastema is often depicted as an eye dripping blood.

Mastema wants to gain a more active presence on Rifts Earth, with the ultimate goal of achieving actual incarnation in this dimension.   Ultimately his goal is to become the supreme entity in control of this dimension so he can craft it in his own image.

Unknown to all but the best informed, Mastema is actually one of the first creations. He was charged with providing guidance to the inhabitants of earth, among other worlds. Cursed with an abundance of pride, he was unable to cope with the idea that he had to obey and do what the Creator tasked, and he had to share this task with others who had their own thoughts on how things should go. He distanced himself from the creator and made it his own mission to make all other creations rue their collective existences. He managed to defeat and consume his oldest brother, whose favorite world was another earthlike planet. It plunged that world into an apocaplyptic cataclysm that tore it apart and opened interdimensional rifts allowing him to feed on the despair. It became what we know today as The Nightlands. Thousands of years later, he defeated and consumed his second brother, gaining more power in the process and fueling his pride to even further heights. His second brother's favored world was called Hades and it went through a similar cataclysm. He engorged himself on the despair of that endeavor until all hope was lost and depair itself withered away. With no more brothers to check him, and with a taste for more, Mastema set his baleful eyes on his own Earth, the planet into which he had been taking special interest.   He has gone by many names. One of the first recorded was Assur. He has influenced hermits and nomads in the deserts; cannibals and blood sacrifices in the deep jungles, and ruthless pirates on the high seas. He instigated bloody revolutions in the name of equality, and genocides in the name of purity. Working through witches since the dawn of time, Mastema's knowledge of and influence upon human history has been prolific. After the Egyptian dieties departed the planet, he got the idea of creating a breach to earth, allowing him better access and control, perhaps even allowing him to exist there. This would be even better than Hades!   He needed practical people to implement his plans, so he first worked on the Atlanteans, who looked upon the pyramids of their Egyptian neighbors with jealousy. Unfortunately for the Atlanteans and Earth, and especially for Mastema, that plan backfired disastrously. But it did get the attention of the Splugorth. Mastema convinced them they would be able to create a dimensional market hub there, which was just what their expanding empire needed.   The plan worked better than he could have hoped, but also worse. It allowed him much better access to its inhabitants and their life force than he had ever before enjoyed. The unintended consequence, however, is that it also opened breaches to countless other dimensions, relegating Mastema to being just one of a host of supernatural intelligences with access. Mastema believes this was surely due to the Splugorth influence, and they will feel his ire.   How long will Mastema be able to leverage his bountiful influence with humanity before it trickles away to the competition?

As a supernatural intelligence, Mastema is capable of dimensional thought beyond the comprehension of mortals, seeing infinite permutations and possibilities of any action or choice. If he were the only being of such capacity, he would be all-knowing, capable of seeing into the future, the present and the past simultaneously. But he is not the only one. The involvement of others with similar capacity and the annoying habit of individuals to exercise their free will irrationally has rendered him to be merely one of many very smart power players in the cosmic game of games.

Mastema absolutely despises mortals with a disdain that falls well into irrational. Like a sadistic child at an ant hill, he takes great pleasure in causing as much pain and suffering as he can to those he believes to be lesser creatures. This may have originated as a way to spite the creator. One has to wonder if that is all it is now, however.