On these pages you will get to meet Pieter van Rhyn in more detail.

 

If you're at all confused, it will probably help to know that "Pieter van Rhyn" is the long-time cover for a Celestial creature having the designation Variel.  If Paradise actually did maintain an intelligence apparatus on Earth's plane – and who knows? – then Variel might rate as one of its most controversial agents. Well, he would if not for the fact that his approach to maintaining a cover and advancing the causes of the Giver in his corner of the Cosmos weren't becoming the rule among operatives assigned to Earth, rather than the exception.

 

Maybe it was the liberation that came in manifesting in the form of a free-wheeling human being. Perhaps it was coming down to this plane of existence in possession of the metaphysical equivalent of a suitcase-full of plenary indulgences – enough to make Johann Tetzel blush or Martin Luther just give up on reforming anything. Regardless of the reason, one thing Variel and his a steadily-increasing number of his colleagues have in common is that next to no one would suspect any of them of being agents of the Celestial cause.

 

Mysterious ways, right?