Samael (The Secret World)

"I won't waste elaborate verbal flourishes. Let me pay you the compliment of being very plain. Lilith has shown a terrible lapse in judgement. It will be dealt with. But she is my wife and off limits to you. I want to be inescapably clear. If you harm her, I will destroy you. There is more than one way to destroy something, whole unknown dimensions of oblivion in varying bites. ''I know them all."

- "Samuel Chandra"

Samael is a character from the MMO The Secret World. He is the CEO of the international monopoly, The Orochi Group. Orochi it self proves to be a more that than just a big and corrupt business but a sinister player on the world stage. Samael has much greater scoop still than even most of his employees and business partners have comprehension of but ultimately wants little more than to live a life of abject luxury dispute his truly dimension spanning nature,

The Ages
One of the general premises of The Secret World is that the current world exists in the "Forth Age"; That per-history were themselves ages when society progressed to astronomical levels but were wiped out through various apocalyptic events. The angel Ebliss has personally wiped the slate clean at least twice, destroying all life on the planet. The angel-like creatures, The Host, whom our concept of angels is based on, wipe away civilization whenever a mortal species climbs to a level that could vaguely threaten them. The first age is only barely elaborated on. Samael claims it was a time when iron cathedrals stained the moon blood red with sacrificial pyres, and machine cities spanned the seas. The Second Age was the time when Hell was created. Little to nothing is known about earth during this time but it was eventually cleansed again. The Second Age saw the creation of demons as soldiers for the Host, but the creatures were unruly and their technology soon drained Hell of nearly all life force. Unlike the human world, Hell's residents had no natural life spans so they persisted through the apocalypse, but with the life force of Hell used up their continued existence without a stable world codified the term "hell" and it went on as a tortuous netherworld, glimpsed only in nightmares and dark rites. A small amount is known about the Third Age. The Third Age, saw humans rise to an astronomical level of technology, technology that manipulated universal laws and could be triggered mentally. Third Age technology is likened to magic, yet it it's practitioners saw themselves more as engineers and scientists rather than creators of spells. In fact the likes of Odin, Thor and Loki were all residents of this age, beings so advanced the echoed stories of their time and achievements would live on in the following age as the story of ancient gods. This would be ended not by Ebliss or the Host, at least not entirely, but by Samael and his beloved wife's experiments.

For love of the talking apes
In the First Age Samael, a member of The Host, had encountered a human called Ki-sikil-lil-la-ke. The other Host refereed to her as a "talking ape", whether this was very literal and Ki-sikil-lil-la-ke was an early stage hominid or a fully homosapien is unknown as even present day humans are called "apes" by Ebliss. Whatever the state Ki-sikil-lil-la-ke saw Samael raining down terrible power upon the mortal world during one of his interactions with it and became enamored with the power and majesty he displayed. Samael likewise became found of the mortal creature and took it on, first as a sex-object, then as a pet, and in very short order soon as a girlfriend and eventually as a wife. Samael accelerated Ki-sikil-lil-la-ke's evolotion and then passed even that. Ki-sikil-lil-la-ke was reborn as a human pushed to the level of The Host, but still beings an inherently different species. She came to understand speech, math, universal principles and soon dimensional properties. She came to exist on multiple dimensions, each version of which could act interdependently or upon the others still while all were governed by the same hive-minded consciousness. Samael came to call his groomed mate by the much simpler name "Lilith". Lilith helped her husband in his endeavors through the ages. She inhabited the mortal world yet was subject to interaction with an angel.

The pairing was seen as something of a scandal to the rest of The Host, though the details are lost to pre-pre-pre-history. Samael gave up his station as an arch-angel and lived with his wife among the mortal world, using a human guise to walk amongst them. Samael and Lilith saw the substance known as The Filth, a cancer on reality that would inevitably eat away at it. The Filth was generated by "The Dreamers" embodiment of primordial nothingness which are kept at bay by Gaia, the life force of the universe. The Dreamers are called as such because they are kept, asleep by Gaia, there but more or less unconsciousness. In an effort to work around the defect of The Filth, Samael and Lilith sought to find a way to control the Dreamers. At the end of the Third Age they found a Gaia Engine, one of the pivotal points of power that Gaia used to pacify the Dreamers. The two dug deep and carefully to find it, but upon reaching it the Dreamers stirred from their slumber ever so slightly. The awakening of the Dreamers set the world back to the stone-age and thus began the start of the Forth Age.

Orochi
With the destuction of the mortal world and his own people in no position to help him after the scandal with Lilith, Samael's outlook changed. He put off his attempts to control The Dreamers. Samael considered humans to be very base creatures and so he began selling them the means to destroy themselves, when man kind was killing each-other with rocks he sold them fire, when they were killing themselves with iron, he sold them steel, when they were killing each-other with guns, he sold them bombs and so on. The human race had proven it would persist so Samael lived off the back of mankind's need to destroy itself with the head start he had over them from the previous three ages of technology. Eventually the corporation known as Orochi coalesced from Samael's various enterprises and makes up the modern era as a global mega-monopoly. Orochi covers food, fuel, technology, bio-engineering, finance and entertainment as the head of each field the influence of Orochi is inescapable.

During the conveying millennia, Samael became more concerned with maintaining his business to get by in the mortal world. This time as a business owner eventually made Samael appropriate the simple luxuries wealth afforded him while slumming it as a mortal. He grew to enjoy extravagance and then soon became addicted to it. What Sameal did not know was that Lilith had still assumed they were working towards subjugation of The Dreamers.

Orochi is encountered many times from the start of the game onward, at the start on billboards and as background information on ownership of local business. Orochi cover-up many of the supernatural activities and act as wall between the masses and the secret worlders.