[OOC: reference post for Sam's powers!]
The foolproof guide to Sam’s abilities and other freaky powers
or, how stupidly overpowered a Waywalker and a Devil Incarnate actually is
Okay guys, here we go! For my ease and everyone else’s, I’ve compiled a list and explanation of all the weird abilities that Sam has for future reference. This is mostly so that A) I can keep track of it, B) so that people who may have their characters fight or interact with him know what he’s capable of and C) because knowing this sort of stuff may help with future plottings or anything like that, and it’s interesting anyway. :’D;;; Now divided into sections for further convenience!
Languages
OKAY so first of all, starting off with more mundane things, Sam speaks an insane amount of languages. It’s not from any intrinsic psychic ability or anything either; he’s just been on Earth so long that he’s literally dedicated himself to mastering every language he possibly can, spending on average about 40-50 years to get native-level fluent at each language. Including, as he mentions himself, many that are defunct. Chances are, if a language is or was spoken on Earth, Sam can speak it, even if he is a little rusty at it. He’s also proficient at both Heavenly and Hellish languages, so he’s got that covered too. He likes to surprise people with this ability. :’D
Oh, and as a point of interest, his first language is Elysian. The accent’s never really left his voice even after so long on Earth, but people tend to confuse it with Welsh. (Yep. In Heaven they sound Welsh. Now you know.)
Weapons/Crown
As a Prince of Heaven (if an illegitimate and exiled one), Sam bears three items identifying him as such; a long silver sword, a silver dagger, and a silver crown that’s really more like an unadorned circlet. Silver is one of the only materials that can fatally wound a Waywalker since they can’t regenerate such wounds, and Sam adds thousands of years of fighting experience to this, making him a pretty deadly wielder of the two. As for the crown? It’s said that if anyone other than the rightful owner wears it, they will instantly go insane. No one’s tested this theory yet, and considering that when Sam put it on for the first time it activated the Light inside him, it’s probably better that no one ever does.
Magic
Sam is the Son of the Incarnate of Magic. Magic isn’t so much something that he can do as something that’s a part of him, so he’s got a pretty wide range of abilities that I’ll try and sum up here:
Battle Magic
Sam is stealthy by nature. He doesn’t like loud flashes and bangs in his magic as a rule, so even his battle magic is more understated than most. He’s more than capable of what we’d think of as battle magic when he needs to be though - lighting bolts and what have you, etc. Usually the flashiest he goes with this, though, is either conjuring fire, or its icy counterpart which is arguably far more destructive, coldfire. Sam’s also learned to augment his battle magic with several fighting tricks he’s picked up on Earth - such as using surgical spirit as a catalyst for a coldfire spark, for example - not dangerous to any infrastructure, but horribly painful and destructive for anyone standing nearby. One of Sam’s favourite tricks combining magic and initiative is to make bombs out of coke cans. He basically ties a magic ward around the ringpull, and when he needs it, he breaks the ward, which superheats the coke inside and creates an explosion with lots of hot coke and sharp metal bits. 8D Sam is also quite strong in defensive magic such as physical or mental shields.
Illusions
Sam is all about illusions. He can raise a glamour with magic to disguise himself or other people, but it takes a lot of effort to maintain and tires him out quickly as he has to concentrate on keeping the illusion up. He also makes use of illusions during fights - to make himself seem invisible so that he can escape, to make it seem like there’s more than one of him so he can get the advantage, stuff like that. Obviously, they’re not infallible, but he vastly prefers that sort of thing to fighting if he can help it. After all, Sam fights dirty.
Scrying
Sam can use a basin full of water - any, it doesn’t matter what - to scry for people, either to communicate with them or just to find out where they are. A scry is loud magic, though, so Sam tends not to use it unless he’s not in danger from using it or unless he has no other choice. He often describes it as being a bit like a TV, with your mind being the remote. Oh, and you have to hit your mental TV every so often, just to make sure it’s working right.
Other
Sam has magic powers other than the ones I have listed; for example, he’s seen in one flashback holding someone immobile in the air using magic, and he’s definitely not shy about using it to throw people around, knock them out/send them to sleep, or create little traps for them to trip over. He can also create wards to protect a house, room, etc, and he’s also fond of protective magic circles (drawn in toothpaste, since it’s a better catalyst for magic than anything else he’s discovered) for when he has to do work that would leave him vulnerable. He’s also stopped fires using his magic (although again, that takes effort, time, and a lot of standing there exposed and dumb). Sam’s gone on record as saying that people never really know the extent of his power, and that’s probably true. After all, the Children of Magic are miracle makers.
Immortality/regenerative powers
Sam is a First-generation Child of Time, which grants him, among other things, the gift of immortality. Only silver, dragon-bone, and the weapons of another Child of Time can kill him. That’s not to say he can’t be injured; he can be injured just as easily as a human, with bumps and scrapes and the like. The difference is that when seriously wounded, Sam slips into a regenerative trance, in which he sleeps until his body has completely healed the wounds. Sam can also, for a short period of time, lend his regenerative gift to others, at the cost of re-opening any wounds that may not have healed naturally without the gift yet. It’s unknown if other Children of Time can do this with their gift; it’s possibly related to Sam’s magic.
The second thing being one of Time’s children grants Sam is an amazing metabolism. This means that most drugs, including alcohol, simply don’t affect him because his body breaks down the toxins too fast. To put this in perspective, near the end of the books, the people holding him captive have to drug him with an insane amount of poison just to keep him in a regenerative trance until they need him. He kind of wishes he could get drunk, though. It’d be nice to be mindless for a bit sometimes. :T
Psychic stuff
Part magic, part due to being a Child of Time, Sam has some psychic abilities. He can use telepathy to reach out to other people’s minds and hold psychic conversations, or, if he's being aggressive with it, simply hypnotise them or dig through their memories for information. Sam can also sense - eh, I don’t want to say aura, but I don’t have a better word, so he can sense people’s auras - for example, in canon he can tell if someone is a witch, or a spirit, or what generation they are if they’re descended from a greater power. Translated to an in-game example, he could pick up on Aziraphale’s angelic aura as soon as he met him in person. It kind of works like that.
Of course, if your character has mental defences, it’s unlikely Sam will be able to converse or even get a good track on their minds, so there’s that to consider. Sam himself has a lot of practice in shielding his own mind and even disguising his aura a little, although the latter is a lot more difficult to do than the former.
Waywalking
Waywalking is the ability to travel between the planes of Hell, Earth, Heaven, and formerly Eden. It’s a kind of world-hopping, basically. The catch is that only the Children of Time can do it; anyone else who tries loses their way because they can’t see anything inside and can’t find their way out. The Ways are basically portals at specific points around the different planes that connect to each other. A Waywalker can sense these portals (which are helpfully temperature coded! - Heaven portals feel warm, Earth portals feel cold, Hell portals feel downright icy) and open them to travel very quickly between places.
Waywalking is both difficult and dangerous, and Sam doesn’t really like doing it much. While the Ways seem dark and silent to the people who can’t do it, the people who can see white mist and hear noises from Wayspirits - people who lost their way and died in there and now want to drag anyone else in to share their fate. Added to this is that Waywalking is all based on willpower - if you don’t have the will to get through and keep walking through to where you want to go, you don’t get through. Oh, and there’s only as much oxygen in the Ways as you bring in with you. You can see why Sam doesn’t like it much. :’D
The Light
The Light is Sam’s last resort, the weapon he’ll only pull out when he has no other choice. It’s basically the reason he was created - to be the Bearer of Light and carry out Time’s plan (Time is such a lovely father =3=). Basically, the Light is the ultimate weapon, only the version of it that Sam carries within him is the Light Mk II - not only can it be incredibly destructive to its target, it also tortures the person who’s wielding it while it’s at it.
(Like I said. Lovely father.)
To use the Light, Sam has to tap into the minds and souls of living creatures, draw out the emotion he wants to make use of, and then concentrate that into a burst of energy which manifests itself as a white light. The more minds the Light has touched before the release, the more powerful it is. He can then use the Light either to read minds, or to blast his chosen target into oblivion.
The catch is that the Light hurts to use, and not just in the physical sense. Every time Sam uses the Light, he effectively loses a piece of himself, as pieces of all the minds the Light has touched come and set up shop inside his own mind. Basically, every time he uses the Light, Sam gets a little bit closer to going insane from it. After a release, the irises of his eyes turn white and it hurts for him to have them open, and he hears voices inside his head for hours until it wears off. During this period, he also can’t help reading minds and seeing the colour of people’s souls - the problem is, the Light only makes the bad things and bad thoughts stand out. (ISN’T TIME A LOVELY DAD, GUYS?)
It’s implied that the Light is almost a consciousness of its own, and it definitely turns into one the more minds Sam has sharing his own. Ultimately, Time’s plan for Sam is that, when Cronus, the anti-Time, is released and tries to bring about the end of the known universe, Sam will release the Light and use the minds of every living thing in every known plane of existence to wipe Cronus out in a release on a massive scale - while Sam will be either killed or driven mad by doing this.
or, how stupidly overpowered a Waywalker and a Devil Incarnate actually is
Okay guys, here we go! For my ease and everyone else’s, I’ve compiled a list and explanation of all the weird abilities that Sam has for future reference. This is mostly so that A) I can keep track of it, B) so that people who may have their characters fight or interact with him know what he’s capable of and C) because knowing this sort of stuff may help with future plottings or anything like that, and it’s interesting anyway. :’D;;; Now divided into sections for further convenience!
Languages
OKAY so first of all, starting off with more mundane things, Sam speaks an insane amount of languages. It’s not from any intrinsic psychic ability or anything either; he’s just been on Earth so long that he’s literally dedicated himself to mastering every language he possibly can, spending on average about 40-50 years to get native-level fluent at each language. Including, as he mentions himself, many that are defunct. Chances are, if a language is or was spoken on Earth, Sam can speak it, even if he is a little rusty at it. He’s also proficient at both Heavenly and Hellish languages, so he’s got that covered too. He likes to surprise people with this ability. :’D
Oh, and as a point of interest, his first language is Elysian. The accent’s never really left his voice even after so long on Earth, but people tend to confuse it with Welsh. (Yep. In Heaven they sound Welsh. Now you know.)
Weapons/Crown
As a Prince of Heaven (if an illegitimate and exiled one), Sam bears three items identifying him as such; a long silver sword, a silver dagger, and a silver crown that’s really more like an unadorned circlet. Silver is one of the only materials that can fatally wound a Waywalker since they can’t regenerate such wounds, and Sam adds thousands of years of fighting experience to this, making him a pretty deadly wielder of the two. As for the crown? It’s said that if anyone other than the rightful owner wears it, they will instantly go insane. No one’s tested this theory yet, and considering that when Sam put it on for the first time it activated the Light inside him, it’s probably better that no one ever does.
Magic
Sam is the Son of the Incarnate of Magic. Magic isn’t so much something that he can do as something that’s a part of him, so he’s got a pretty wide range of abilities that I’ll try and sum up here:
Battle Magic
Sam is stealthy by nature. He doesn’t like loud flashes and bangs in his magic as a rule, so even his battle magic is more understated than most. He’s more than capable of what we’d think of as battle magic when he needs to be though - lighting bolts and what have you, etc. Usually the flashiest he goes with this, though, is either conjuring fire, or its icy counterpart which is arguably far more destructive, coldfire. Sam’s also learned to augment his battle magic with several fighting tricks he’s picked up on Earth - such as using surgical spirit as a catalyst for a coldfire spark, for example - not dangerous to any infrastructure, but horribly painful and destructive for anyone standing nearby. One of Sam’s favourite tricks combining magic and initiative is to make bombs out of coke cans. He basically ties a magic ward around the ringpull, and when he needs it, he breaks the ward, which superheats the coke inside and creates an explosion with lots of hot coke and sharp metal bits. 8D Sam is also quite strong in defensive magic such as physical or mental shields.
Illusions
Sam is all about illusions. He can raise a glamour with magic to disguise himself or other people, but it takes a lot of effort to maintain and tires him out quickly as he has to concentrate on keeping the illusion up. He also makes use of illusions during fights - to make himself seem invisible so that he can escape, to make it seem like there’s more than one of him so he can get the advantage, stuff like that. Obviously, they’re not infallible, but he vastly prefers that sort of thing to fighting if he can help it. After all, Sam fights dirty.
Scrying
Sam can use a basin full of water - any, it doesn’t matter what - to scry for people, either to communicate with them or just to find out where they are. A scry is loud magic, though, so Sam tends not to use it unless he’s not in danger from using it or unless he has no other choice. He often describes it as being a bit like a TV, with your mind being the remote. Oh, and you have to hit your mental TV every so often, just to make sure it’s working right.
Other
Sam has magic powers other than the ones I have listed; for example, he’s seen in one flashback holding someone immobile in the air using magic, and he’s definitely not shy about using it to throw people around, knock them out/send them to sleep, or create little traps for them to trip over. He can also create wards to protect a house, room, etc, and he’s also fond of protective magic circles (drawn in toothpaste, since it’s a better catalyst for magic than anything else he’s discovered) for when he has to do work that would leave him vulnerable. He’s also stopped fires using his magic (although again, that takes effort, time, and a lot of standing there exposed and dumb). Sam’s gone on record as saying that people never really know the extent of his power, and that’s probably true. After all, the Children of Magic are miracle makers.
Immortality/regenerative powers
Sam is a First-generation Child of Time, which grants him, among other things, the gift of immortality. Only silver, dragon-bone, and the weapons of another Child of Time can kill him. That’s not to say he can’t be injured; he can be injured just as easily as a human, with bumps and scrapes and the like. The difference is that when seriously wounded, Sam slips into a regenerative trance, in which he sleeps until his body has completely healed the wounds. Sam can also, for a short period of time, lend his regenerative gift to others, at the cost of re-opening any wounds that may not have healed naturally without the gift yet. It’s unknown if other Children of Time can do this with their gift; it’s possibly related to Sam’s magic.
The second thing being one of Time’s children grants Sam is an amazing metabolism. This means that most drugs, including alcohol, simply don’t affect him because his body breaks down the toxins too fast. To put this in perspective, near the end of the books, the people holding him captive have to drug him with an insane amount of poison just to keep him in a regenerative trance until they need him. He kind of wishes he could get drunk, though. It’d be nice to be mindless for a bit sometimes. :T
Psychic stuff
Part magic, part due to being a Child of Time, Sam has some psychic abilities. He can use telepathy to reach out to other people’s minds and hold psychic conversations, or, if he's being aggressive with it, simply hypnotise them or dig through their memories for information. Sam can also sense - eh, I don’t want to say aura, but I don’t have a better word, so he can sense people’s auras - for example, in canon he can tell if someone is a witch, or a spirit, or what generation they are if they’re descended from a greater power. Translated to an in-game example, he could pick up on Aziraphale’s angelic aura as soon as he met him in person. It kind of works like that.
Of course, if your character has mental defences, it’s unlikely Sam will be able to converse or even get a good track on their minds, so there’s that to consider. Sam himself has a lot of practice in shielding his own mind and even disguising his aura a little, although the latter is a lot more difficult to do than the former.
Waywalking
Waywalking is the ability to travel between the planes of Hell, Earth, Heaven, and formerly Eden. It’s a kind of world-hopping, basically. The catch is that only the Children of Time can do it; anyone else who tries loses their way because they can’t see anything inside and can’t find their way out. The Ways are basically portals at specific points around the different planes that connect to each other. A Waywalker can sense these portals (which are helpfully temperature coded! - Heaven portals feel warm, Earth portals feel cold, Hell portals feel downright icy) and open them to travel very quickly between places.
Waywalking is both difficult and dangerous, and Sam doesn’t really like doing it much. While the Ways seem dark and silent to the people who can’t do it, the people who can see white mist and hear noises from Wayspirits - people who lost their way and died in there and now want to drag anyone else in to share their fate. Added to this is that Waywalking is all based on willpower - if you don’t have the will to get through and keep walking through to where you want to go, you don’t get through. Oh, and there’s only as much oxygen in the Ways as you bring in with you. You can see why Sam doesn’t like it much. :’D
The Light
The Light is Sam’s last resort, the weapon he’ll only pull out when he has no other choice. It’s basically the reason he was created - to be the Bearer of Light and carry out Time’s plan (Time is such a lovely father =3=). Basically, the Light is the ultimate weapon, only the version of it that Sam carries within him is the Light Mk II - not only can it be incredibly destructive to its target, it also tortures the person who’s wielding it while it’s at it.
(Like I said. Lovely father.)
To use the Light, Sam has to tap into the minds and souls of living creatures, draw out the emotion he wants to make use of, and then concentrate that into a burst of energy which manifests itself as a white light. The more minds the Light has touched before the release, the more powerful it is. He can then use the Light either to read minds, or to blast his chosen target into oblivion.
The catch is that the Light hurts to use, and not just in the physical sense. Every time Sam uses the Light, he effectively loses a piece of himself, as pieces of all the minds the Light has touched come and set up shop inside his own mind. Basically, every time he uses the Light, Sam gets a little bit closer to going insane from it. After a release, the irises of his eyes turn white and it hurts for him to have them open, and he hears voices inside his head for hours until it wears off. During this period, he also can’t help reading minds and seeing the colour of people’s souls - the problem is, the Light only makes the bad things and bad thoughts stand out. (ISN’T TIME A LOVELY DAD, GUYS?)
It’s implied that the Light is almost a consciousness of its own, and it definitely turns into one the more minds Sam has sharing his own. Ultimately, Time’s plan for Sam is that, when Cronus, the anti-Time, is released and tries to bring about the end of the known universe, Sam will release the Light and use the minds of every living thing in every known plane of existence to wipe Cronus out in a release on a massive scale - while Sam will be either killed or driven mad by doing this.