Meet Father Crucifix Rosary, my new OC!

I thank you for your words but the second part might be rather impossible. Whilst I certainly hope not to produce partisan propaganda like the Left Behind series, I plan on calling a spade a spade. Part of me almost feels that if the audience isn't hating Crucifix at least some of the time, then I've failed at my job as the themes I hope to address can be "controversial."

Part two might up tomorrow.

Don't worry I'll take your words to heart. And yes, I know about overprotection. Pope John Paul II taught in his encyclical Fides et Ratio (Faith and Reason) that faith without reason becomes mere superstition and reason without faith becomes mere nihilism. www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_15101998_fides-et-ratio_en.html

Of course, faith in what? A crackpot religious fanatic has a corrupted faith in religion, a crackpot secular fanatic has a corrupted faith in science. It should never be faith or reason. In the pratice of religion, it should never be love or justice. In each case, it has to be both.

It might be tricky in writing this, but while Crucifix might be a troll (in the cause of goodness of course!), I try not to be. As Christ says, be as cunning as snakes but as innocent as doves.

Oh, and while I have yet to spit and polish the second part of the character sheet, I found an interesting picture. I imagine Father Crucifix being a literal bastard, with his mother a pony nun who was raped. As to what mom looked like look here.



Don't worry, despite broken hearts, she loved him anyways and he had a happy childhood... until he learned of the circumstances of his conception!

Mr. A... is signing out.

;D I was actually thinking of Rarity! Crucifix goes to Ponyville to lead a religious revival and asks Rarity to make some clerical vestments for him. For his day to day cassock, any old thing will do but to preach a good sermon... why he needs the best! Rarity is at first uncertain but having always been intrigued by the beauty and splendor of Nestorianism, decides to help out.

It has been accused of snobbery at times, but traditional Christianity recognizes the need for beauty. A lack of beauty can be seen in this. badvestments.blogspot.com/ Remember "Dressed for Success" where Rarity is forced to make the ugly costumes? This is the Christian version of that.

But on to the delayed second part of the character sheet. Here we go!


Father Crucifix Rosary Part II

Personality: It would be so easy to dismiss Crucifix Rosary as a religious fanatic. On the surface, he seems to be a ruthless, self righteous, egotistical bully who engages in fast talk, double talk, manipulation, self incrimination, and outright intimidation to not only defeat his enemies, but to humiliate and destroy them. It’s worth saying that his enemies list is everyone and anyone who a) he defines as a heretic, b) defines as a sinner, c) is a non Nestorian working against the faith, or d) someone aiding the above. To be perfectly honest, yes, he has broken families and, yes, he has ruined lives and, yes, if you don’t meet his moral standards, he’ll sooner cuss you out and give you a bloody nose than ask you the time of day.

Yet at the same time, Father Crucifix is so much more because what those moral standards are is nothing less than just saying sorry. Most every third party observer agrees that every last one of his “victims;” whether corrupt politician, greedy businesspony, wife beater; had it coming. Not to mention that he's never fought anyone weaker than himself--even if they did have it coming. The whorses, saltheads, and thieves whose lives he turned around and turned into responsible citizens all describe him as the gentlest and kindest pony they ever knew, someone who stuck by them when everyone else abandoned them and loved them even when no one else would. No matter what sins you committed in the past, no matter how much you might keep backsliding after you claim to reform, he’ll forgive you. All you have to do is sincerely say, “I want to be good.”

Sentient beings of any species can find a friend in Crucifix. If, for example, a Moohamedden comes by and strikes up a friendly conversation, Crucifix will be glad to respond in kind. Are Nestorians and Moohamaddens enemies? Yes they are, dating back to the Crusades on Earth where Saint Paladin led ponies and human kings led men against the Saracen hosts of jinn, ghouls, griffins, ifreets, Minotaurs, and, yes, bulls. However, just because a person has made bad decisions doesn't make for a bad person. They can be reformed and even if they never do, as long as they leave other people alone they should be left in peace as they are still children of Equiideus. He's built working relationships with pagan White Buffalo Woman worshiping bison tribes, heretical Celestia worshiping ponies, and even True Tirac worshipers/satanists. While he tries his best to convert them from their errors (True Tirac worshipers most of all!), if you're in need Crucifix will come galloping to your aid and give you the cassock off his back, no questions asked.

This strange mix of kindness and cruelty is at the very core of the priest’s being and is reflected on his very cutie mark. By His death, Nestorious Alicorn gave ponies life; by embracing defeat, He claimed the greatest victory. Sacrifice even unto death in the name of Equideus was sanctified for an execution was made the most hallowed event in all the history of the world. It was to whorses and thieves that a gentle donkey named Nestor brought His message because they were the ones that needed it the most. And it was to the corrupt unicorn aristocracy and high priests (the priests who above all ponies should have been the first to recognize who He really was) that He reserved His harshest venom because of anyone should have known better it was them.

Father Crucifix takes no pleasure in the things he has to do. His happiest time of day (aside from saying mass) is the time he spends volunteering in soup kitchens and hospitals. He makes sure to spend at least an hour daily in the corporal works of mercy because staying in touch with the people he’s sworn to protect keeps him honest and allows him to just do the right thing. Knowing that one less family will go hungry that night, seeing a child’s face light up when he gives them a toy on Christmas, easing a wounded stallion’s pain, it’s things like this that keep him going, that remind that it really is all worth it. He knows that in a perfect world, that was all he’d ever do; to be accurate, he reminds himself, in a truly perfect world he wouldn’t have to do these things and instead he would spend his time teaching Sunday school. Yet, it is to safeguard the innocent that Father Crucifix knows he must face down the forces of evil, no matter the cost.

As a result, Crucifix sees any time he has to go “Father psycho” on someone as a moral failure on his part. If only he had tried harder! If only he were a better pony! What it means is that a person that he, maybe, could have been friends with has to be an enemy. Even when dealing with an unrepentant murderer, he knows that that villain is still a child of Equiideus and still bears the imprint of the divine. Thus, for him to raise his hoof against anyone—even if were the mortal Tirac himself—is therefore like raising his hoof against Nestor. Not a few times after defeating a foe, has he collapsed sobbing in the shower, vainly hoping to wash his filth away. He knows someone has to do Equiideus’ dirty work and be the scapegoat that bears the sins of the world… but that doesn’t make it easier when the day has to come.

When those days do come, however, Father Crucifix knows his duty. He knows that freedom isn’t free. He is a priest and so to serve in his twin missions as Equiideus’s instrument for the salvation of souls and as a protector of the innocent, he will endure any price, bear any burden, pay any price, support any friend, and oppose any foe. If you say that you’re on the side of good (and most every criminal tries to justify his actions) when you are in fact on the side of evil he will destroy you.

In defense of his own life, he’d sooner die than kill but to safeguard the lives of others… He learned how to use homemade switchblades at the age of seven. What do you think is going to happen? When he goes on the offense, he perhaps does only uses words because as a cleric he can never shed blood but the fact he has driven his not-so-innocent victims to the brink of suicide, however, has led his enemies call him a mind rapist. Oh, and don’t flatter yourself by asking if he goes through your trash. He goes through everyone’s trash.

His faith, his guile, and his sheer balls lead ponies to say that he’s the only pony who could play poker with the True Tirac and win. And considering Father Crucifix, it’s something that he’d actually try to do.

Part III forthcoming.

Father Crucifix III

His intertwine of darkness and light began with his very conception.

Crucifix was born to a saintly young nun named Sister Angelica Rosary. His earliest memories are of happily toddling about in the halls of Virgin Mare-y Queen of Heaven Convent fussed over by his mother and all his collective aunts. He never lacked for love and was enveloped in a halo of love; they denied him nothing and he would have terribly spoiled if not for his mother. She raised him to love Equiideus more than anything and then to love his neighbor as himself. Tales of the saints were his bedtime stories and hymns were his lullabies.

Feeling that her son needed to meet ponies his own age, however, Sister Angelica eventually became a teacher in a parish school and enrolled her son. Everyone thought he was adopted and left at that. He made friends and while the other foals thought him a trifle weird with how all he ever seemed to do was talk about Nestor, they liked him nonetheless. He was a nice colt who always helped you out and always watched your back. The fact that he had the biggest collection of holy cards they had ever seen cemented his coolness factor. When they heard him talk of becoming a priest when he grew up they weren’t surprised at all and many attended his first mass.

Yet while they were not surprised by that, they were moved when they saw the love between him and his mother. The two were inseparable, each the other’s best friend. They shared in each other’s triumphs, Angelica when her son became an altar colt to the parish priest and served in his first mass, Crucifix when his mother’s plan to open a prison outreach program was approved. It was quite a sight for the thieves and murderers held in Equestria’s only prison, a nun and her altar colt son come to say “Nestor loves you.” It was here, from his mother’s example, that Crucifix’s desire to lead souls to salvation was born.

It was also here that his belief that no soul is beyond salvation began. When the stallions there saw the colt and his mother, they at first thought it was some kind of joke but on seeing that they would be given free trinkets now and then and that attending mass could get them off work, they decided to play along. A number of them, however, had been raised Nestorian and even those that weren’t appreciated the fact that the altarcolt and the nun actually did care about them. Some of them had sons or little brothers on the outside and went so far as to adopt Crucifix as their nephew. In fact, he and his mother were never safer than when surrounded by violent criminals as his new uncles (and her new brothers) served as their “touch them and you’re dead” bodyguards.

One story should suffice. It was Christmas (his mother refused to hear of PC trash like “Hearth Warming”) and Crucifix eagerly told his uncles it was going to be Nestor’s birthday. They told him that they were not that eager as their families were on the outside. Knowing that nopony should be away from his family on Christmas, the colt spoke to the warden and arranged for his uncles to give him any bits they might have earned which he would then use to buy toys they chose from catalogues and then give those toys to their children and little siblings, nieces and nephews.

The day after Christmas, he galloped back to show them photographs of their sons and baby brothers enjoying the gifts. More importantly, he brought them mouthwritten notes saying “I love you daddy!” With that, hardened cons burst into tears and held him tight and, breathing in the scent of cigarettes and stale booze, he hugged them back. It was an act that would have shocked anyone else but not him; how else could it have happened? It was Christmas!

He learned three lessons that day: miracles always happen on Christmas, good guys always win, and lastly, no matter what sin a person might have committed, no matter how sordid someone’s past might be, no soul is beyond salvation.

Whether they have been released or are still serving life sentences, it’s these stallions that the adult Crucifix meets on Father’s Day. If not for them, he would have never learned what it means to be a stallion. They taught him to stand up for himself and to never run from a fight. They impressed on him the ideal of loyalty, of sticking to your crew no matter what. In fact, since the incident wherein he beat up the neightheist colt for insulting Nestor happened after all this, it’s really thanks to his uncles that he got his cutie mark. When he told them the story and he showed him his mark, they all cheered him and gave his first mug of rock salt saturated moonshine onion alcohol.

After the colt was in the emergency room and they had to meet his mother, the stallions shamefacedly promised only to give him chocolate milk ever again, if that much.

Yes, Crucifix learned a lot from his surrogate fathers such as how to cheat at poker and how to swear nasty enough to make Grogar blush. He could never understand his mother’s embarrassment, though; he was always rather proud on learning his uncle’s lessons so well. After all, what other colt knew how to use homemade switchblades! Looking back, the adult Crucifix can only smile at all the face hoofs his juvenile delinquent foalhood gave his mother. (Not that she didn’t love her crazy surrogate brothers any less for these things, she saw that many sincerely did seek to reform.)

Yes, the colt lived a happy life, loving his mother and his God, yet he knew he was different from the other children. They didn’t know their catechisms as well as he did but that’s because they didn’t have nuns for mothers. They didn’t have—penitent!—convicts for uncles but that was because they weren’t enrolled in a prison outreach program. No, he was unlike his schoolmates because unlike them, he had no father. He saw the other colts swept up in the forelimbs of proud loving stallions at the end of every school day but no such stallion ever came for him. Yes he had his uncles and yes he had the priests and yes he had his father in heaven Equiideus… but he had no Earthly father like the other foals. Confused, asked his mother, “where’s my daddy?”

It was a question Sister Angelica Rosary had dreaded from the moment of his conception but it was one to which she knew she would have to tell the truth. The truth was that it hurt. When mare and stallion unite in carnal glory, it’s meant to be a holy reflection of the divine, each throbbing ache a symbol of Equiideus burning passion for them, each orgasm a dim foretaste of Heaven, and, most importantly of all, each foal conceived the living incarnation of his parents’ love. The sacred covenant of love between husband and wife is sacred only because it is modeled on covenant between Equiideus and His people. Should the gift of sacred union be corrupted as the True Tirac himself was when he chose to fall, however, if instead of an incarnation of love the resultant child were to be an incarnation of hate… It should have been the happiest moment in any Nestorian mare’s life, the night which she surrendered her virginity to her husband… and all Sister Angelica remembered was that it hurt.

Angelica Rosary only ever wanted to be a nun. With coat and mane both purest snow white and the most piercing ice blue eyes, she was a vision of unearthly beauty and a soul most immaculate given unto Equiideus. She had just sworn her wedding vows earlier that day to His only begotten Son Nestor, Firstborn of all Creation. Her habit, in fact, was her wedding dress, a dress she promised never take off again… except for that night. Kneeling before Nestor’s statue, she piously and lustfully disrobed to bare her naked body to her divine husband’s pleasure. That was when a stranger came from nowhere and raped her.

She never knew what happened; all she was sure of was that on her wedding night a fiend stormed her marriage bed and stole from her the treasure she had safeguarded all her life, a treasure she now would never give Nestor. The next day, the other nuns found Angelica beaten half to death and sobbing uncontrollably in the church. Weeks later they learned that she was, in fact, pregnant with the rapist’s child. In a shocking move, the Mother Superior urged her to get an abortion but in a more shocking move Sister Angelica reported Mother Superior to the police for that and then asked the Archbishop of Canterlot for her excommunication. Angelica Rosary wept; she didn’t care how her baby was conceived! The child was innocent. Crucifix was her son and she loved him!

With that, a great change came upon Crucifix. He wanted a father but not like this! The once happy colt became sullen and withdrawn, no longer able even to look in the mirror for fear of his “father” looking right back at him. He hated himself for how his just being alive reminded his sweet mother every day of the stallion that disgraced her. Why should she suffer that kind of torment? Every moment of his life was self loathing since he owed his very existence to his mother’s pain.

The fact that he knew his mother loved him regardless only made it worse; he knew he didn’t deserve it! She told that even if she could have gone back in time she would have allowed herself to be raped just so she could hold her son. That light might come out of darkness was, in fact, why she named him Crucifix. The colt would just shake his head at that. Bah! She should have had the abortion!

In some ways, even his faith was poisoned as the now teenage Crucifix’s fasts and mortifications became increasingly severe, even suicidal. Even as a child he had practiced such things in imitation of his mother but always with restraint. Now he horsewhipped himself half to death and used barbed wire for his cilices. His mother even had to stop him from slashing his wrists for having forgotten to say grace before a meal. Sister Angelica began to wonder if she had done the right thing in telling her son his origins. She knew the reason for his self tortures was simple; he didn’t want to be like his father.

It all came to a head when he and his mother tended victims of a disease outbreak. The town had been quarantined with the sick abandoned by their very families to rot in their own filth. Sister Angelica and Acolyte Crucifix were the only ones in the area with any nursing skills and so they volunteered to look after the sick until doctors arrived. They set up a field hospital and began treating their patients. They quickly learned, however, that with no means of protecting against the disease that they would certainly die.

Sister Angelica chose to remain behind and told her son to get away while he was still healthy. Now nearly a stallion, Crucifix begged his mother to let him take her place, he begged her not to rob him of this glory! To die caked in manure, covered with open lesions and vomiting blood, he thought this was glory? With a fever light in his eyes all he could say was, Yes!

Angelica had seen her son’s descent into madness and it had pained her. She saw how much he hated his father—how much he had come to hate himself—so much so that he wanted to die. Yes, his mother said, if he died a martyr’s death he would win great glory. Oh how good and noble Crucifix is! How fortunate must Equiideus must be to have such a pony in His service! How much better Crucifix is than all the wretched sinners of the world! How much better than his father! On saying that, a teary eyed Sister Angelica looked straight at her son and asked a question.

“Why do you seek to die in Nestor’s name? Is it for His glory, or for yours?”

Even now, he fights backs tears whenever that memory returns because if not for those words, is it for His glory or yours, he knows he would have gone on to become the monster his enemies say he is. He had been so desperate to not be like his father that he had turned into the True Tirac by making himself his own god. He didn’t sacrifice himself out of love for Equiideus, he couldn’t have cared less about Him! No… he sacrificed himself… FOR HIMSELF! For years he had acted only so that others could see him and so he could wallow in own self righteousness. His entire world falling apart, a whimpering Crucifix fell to his mother’s hooves and cried. “They” weren’t the sinners… he was.

Angelica kneeled down to comfort her son who whimpered things like he was the worst sinner in the world, that he betrayed Equiideus trust. Her son curled up into a ball and reduced a sobbing wreck, she pressed him her breast and whispered that it would be alright, that she still loved him and more importantly, Equiideus still loved him to.

But how he asked? How could Equiideus still love him? He was every criminal who tried to justify his crimes. No, he was worse he told his mother because if even after everything she taught him, he still committed such a sin against Him, he had become the unicorn Sanhedrin who turned over Nestor to be crucified—who turned over God to be crucified!—thinking that they and not Equiideus knew what was “good.”

Tears streaming from her eyes, Sister Angelica Rosary weakly smiled at her son’s words. How could Equiideus forgive him? She walked up to him and placed a mother’s kiss on his cheek. It was, she said, because there was no sin he could commit that could be greater than Equiideus’ mercy.

Soon after, Sister Angelica went to the dying ponies in the sick room. Crucifix brought medicine and supplies as his mother tended to those in need. Thanks to her love, the sick managed to hold on just long enough for the doctors to arrive to save almost everyone. Almost everyone… Sister Angelica Rosary only ever wanted to be a nun and to be like her husband Nestor. She succeeded because while she saved everyone else, she was unable to save herself.

The disease is not communicable in the last stages and so mother and son spent their last moments together. She made him promise to forgive his father, whoever he might have been, and more importantly to forgive himself. She asked him to forgive himself for existing, for corrupting his faith, for everything. He said he’d try and asked her to pray for him in Heaven. She did. The last thing Crucifix heard her say was that Nestor had come to welcome her into the Kingdom, that she was now an alicorn. Then he cried.

Like so many things in Crucifix’s life, his mother’s funeral was a strange mix of both the sacred and the profane as half those attending were his nun aunts and half were his ex con uncles. Of the scores of stallions whom his mother had befriended, many had become model prisoners and thus received early paroles or had even been released altogether. (Those of them who had not yet achieved either—and if they had had their way never would—would have escaped jail to attend the funeral had not Crucifix urged them to stay where they were.) Both mare and stallion, both sinner and saint, wept for the holy mare whom was indeed “sister” to each and every one of them. Fighting back his own tears, Crucifix urged both sides of his family not to cry and reminded them of what Queen Majesty told her pony subjects after her husband’s brave sacrifice.

“Don’t any of you dare pray for her, pray TO her! She’s in heaven and so much happier there at Equiideus’ side that even if she had the chance to come back she wouldn’t take it. No, she is in Heaven with Nestor and she shares in His resurrection as the alicorn she was meant to be. She watches over us as a goddess, a pale pathetic imitation of which can be seen in Celestia. If you believe in Nestor, if you believe in the Resurrection, then believe in her now.”

In the wake of the funeral came the question of what would happen next. His aunts offered their dear little nephew—they son they, in fact, never had—a chance to stay at the convent where he grew up as an archivist or a lector. As for his uncles and their families, he and his mother were the reason they never lost hope and had stayed together through the stallions’ incarceration. Grateful, they all offered to take him in and give him a job. He thanked them all but politely declined.

He wanted to stay with them, with all of them but on the road he would have to travel, he knew no one could follow. On this road, he knew for certain that he was alone and that although the end was far away and that the journey there was perilous, he would have to find his way, or the chain of faith would be broken. The only ponies who could teach him were the stallions of the Most Holy Order of Saint Paladin, King of Ponies so it was to them he went. He told his aunts at the convent as much as he packed his things and said his final goodbyes.

They gasped when they heard him say that. On realizing that he would place himself in the hooves of the mad stallions of the Chapel of Bones and learn the Black Mass of Nightmare Moon, one of the nuns whispered.

“…Oh Crucifix… may Equiideus have mercy on your soul.”

Very nice character! ;D Didn't you suggest I use a pony like this in one of my fics?

I'm loving this! That hit me in the feels, when his mother died.