Odor of Sanctity

"As you ought to have known, the asphyxiating cloud which prevented your attacking the patient on his walk back from the old mill is a well-known phenomenon. It is the Enemy's most barbarous weapon, and generally appears when He is directly present to the patient under certain modes not yet fully classified. Some humans are permantely surrounded by it, and therefore inaccessible to us."

"Then, of course, he gets to know this woman's family and whole circle. Could you not see that the very house she lives in is one that he ought never to have entered? The whole place reeks of that deadly odour. The very gardener, though he has been there only five years, is beginning to acquire it. Even guests, after a weekend visit, carry some of the smell away with them. The dog and the cat are tainted with it."

— "The Screwtape Letters," by C. S. Lewis, letters XIII and XXII

Some Saints, and even some mundanes on the Saint track, have a special air about them, called the Odor of Sanctity. Most mundane humans can't detect it. To the Host and many animals, it is evident as a definite but pleasant odor, different for each individual. To infernals, it is even more evident, but not pleasant, as the excerpts above describe. And it isn't a real, physical odor, either, since things like gas masks are no help.

The effect has a two- to three-meter radius from the Saint's person, and, as described above, can rub off on acquaintances and surroundings, though this "taint" wears off after d666 days. (A Divine intervention means the effect becomes permanent; an Infernal intervention removes it at once.)

A demon or undead must roll against its Will minus the Saint's Corporeal Forces to enter the radius and another roll to touch the Saint. The same applies to anything still carrying the Saint's Odor.

The Odor of Sanctity is a mixed blessing. It can give a tactical advantage and serve to certify the side you're on, but it can also blow your cover. Of course, Saints aren't supposed to go up against demons directly.

The Odor is not something Superiors can bestow or remove. It just shows up in the Saint, and works in either Celestial or Corporeal form. On the Ethereal plane, the Saint can make the Odor show up at will.

The Odor of Sanctity actually becomes stronger after a Saint bodily dies. (This is also true for those mundanes with the Odor, who will prove to be Saints on arrival in Heaven.) The odor becomes stronger, until mundane humans can readily smell it. It's usually like some flower, or incense. The bodies or vessels of such deceased Saints tend not to decompose normally, but to maintain an apparently perfect state of preservation, though after a few years they tend to crumble at the slightest touch.

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