Barakiel (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
jarredforlife) wrote2014-03-25 01:07 pm
jarredforlife) wrote2014-03-25 01:07 pm
Entry tags:
Notes
Appearance
Icons are accurate except Barakiel:
- always has his hair down
- does not have the markings on his forehead
- dresses more informally; typically black slacks + white Oxford; always simple and black-and-white
Basically he looks more like this icon and less like this icon but you know, expressions.
Pings
- He is an angel and pings of multi-dimensional celestial bullshit. In this case I'm interpreting Barakiel as the angel of lightning specifically, so enjoy all those electricity and magnetism pings too.
- That human body/shape/form thing is ACTUALLY a human corpse that has magically treated through various rituals. It's not so much "undead" as an object made out of human flesh, in the way that ivory is not a corpse even though it was part of a body. Barakiel's body is not a part of him, it's a thing that Barakiel is inhabiting, the way that a glove is not a part of your hand.
- In addition to all of the above, Barakiel's physical vessel is also covered in various holy sigils and whatnot that clearly do . . . something . . . but they are only visible to those with magical/divine/infernal sensitivities or under ~special circumstances~.
- In his world the only supernatural things are angels or demons and most other supernatural creatures are based on angels or demons doing particular things with their vessels (i.e. a demon consumes flesh to give themself a heal boost = Wendigo/vampire, an angel shapeshifts to better kill a demon = werewolf, etc.). There are ALSO quite a few humans who have magic or are skilled with magic using a specific language that is BASED ON the angelic and/or infernal languages. So there are witches and wizards and so on.
What this all means is that while Barakiel can sense the presence of the supernatural/magical he can't identify it UNLESS it has a holy/infernal "type" to it. He can get A LOT of detail off holy/infernal-typed things like power levels, any relevant elements, etc. regardless of the actual deities involved. It's the element type that matters.
Everyone else (even if they are a human who wields holy/infernal-typed magic) that's supernatural/magical pings him as "kinda magical, probably a wizard." And if they have extra-human abilities due to technology like genetic engineering or SUBTLE CYBERNETIC IMPLANTS he can't pick up anything at all.
Powers
- He can generate lightning and electricity, manipulate any electricity (including magnetism?) around himself, and control technology maybe? Kind of. I need to learn more science. For an angel/demon bullshit universe OC. Weeps.
- His body operates at maximum human power, speed, endurance, etc. but regenerates any and all damage. Any more strenuous changes (shifting features, growing new limbs like wings, etc. will leave his body fragile and closer to breaking down. Barakiel doesn't particularly care about how quickly he goes through vessels though).
- As an angel he also as a ~true angelic form~ that is contained in his body vessel via the glove metaphor mentioned above. This true angelic form is this multi-dimensional blob of energy that is not entirely comprehensible to mortal senses but kinda looks like ball lightning turned up to eleven and smells like ozone and some other terrible sense-bending bullshit. It can be modified to a mortally-comprehensible version but even that is basically like, ANDROGYNOUS HUMANOID WITH FIFTY EYES EACH ONE SHOOTING A TERRIBLE HALO OF LIGHTNING FROM THE UR-STORM, THE STORM FROM WHICH ALL STORMS ARE BORN, AND ALSO THERE ARE TWENTY WINGS THAT SING WITH CRACKLING POWER AND THUNDER BOOMS WITH EVERY WAVE OF THE SMALLEST TIP AND AN UNEARTHLY CHOIR SCREAMS SONGS OF BATTLE AT HIS EVERY WORD and basically it's not actually that much better, it's just . . . comprehensible . . .
- The various holy sigils and whatnot carved into his body are basically trackers/power limiters. They let his handlers know where he is at all times and also limit the amount of power he can use at any one time. He can't change his vessel too much except for regen. He can't shed his vessel and appear in his (much more powerful) ~true angelic form~ or even the aforementioned modified version of it without permission from his handler. The sigils were also capable of being used to punish him . . . :')
They also render him incapable of harming his direct superiors and handlers which is why he couldn't speak in his own defense when he was scapegoated, as that would have been "opposing" one of his superiors and put them in danger.
- The sigils are inactive w/o his handler but someone with sufficient knowledge of holy magic might be able to hijack them and assume control over them. But they are VERY POWERFUL and VERY COMPLEX and also have built-in guards against being examined too closely so even Barakiel hasn't been able to figure out exactly what was done to him and to his vessels.
History
- Lucifer rebels, Lucifer's army is cast down to hell, tense war/detente between Heaven and Hell ensues.
- In this world, Heaven and Hell are factions fighting for control over humans existing in multiple parallel worlds. So basically they're still warring with humans as the battlefield, but the war is multi-dimensional and the angels/demons exist in multiple dimensions too kinda. So they use vessels, magically treated human corpses, to appear as, interact with, and influence humans of varying worlds.
- Hell became more CHAOTIC!! MIGHT MAKES RIGHT!!! POWER STRUGGLES!! Though still quite bureaucratic, just . . . very corruptly bureaucratic . . . as they built up their own version of Heaven's strict hierarchy. Heaven became increasingly orderly and strict and dictator-y.
- MILLENNIA AGO but not quite as long ago as the original Fall, Barakiel was an angelic agent who grew increasingly rebellious, doing okay work for Heaven, occasionally stepping out of line to get shit done his own way. He was young and naive and didn't really understand/care about what Heaven was doing, he was loyal, just kinda unruly.
There was admittedly this persecution thing where he was convinced that ORDER = GOOD!!! DISORDER = BAD!!! I MUST BE BAD FOR THE GREAT GOOD!!! but later events killed all of that whoops.
- After a while he was deemed a risk, but a useful pawn, so he was captured, tortured, magicked up, and basically shoved into angelic black ops!! through the use of control/tracker sigils engraved on his celestial being.
- Years pass and Barakiel grows increasingly cynical as scales fall from his eyes and he begins to truly understand the war in a more nuanced way. He does stuff to mortals, demons, other angels.
- At some point he encounters Furtur, a Very Old demon, and they strike up a frenemy-ish kinda relationship based on their frequent clashes and sense that they are both sorta disillusioned with their lives and don't really hate each other.
- And then something went wrong and Barakiel was considered a convenient scapegoat. Not allowed to and rendered incapable of speaking in his own defense, he was quickly accused of the crime and sentenced to execution.
- Spent a few millennia suffering and slowly dying because angels don't die easily; the execution process is kinda like being tossed into an equivalent of the Pillar.
- And then he died. It was kind of a relief, really.
- But for some reason (as in hypothetical game app reasons) he's alive now??? He's just going to chill and enjoy it while semi-assuming he's hallucinating because he couldn't take the literally soul-destroying torture anymore.
Personality
This is going to be very rough because I made Barakiel up many years ago and I'm sort of feeling my way along to fleshing him out to my adult tastes.
- once upon a time he was naive and really BELIEVED!!! in the angelic cause of order despite his disorderly conduct but now he's just generally disillusioned and apathetic about the whole thing. Doesn't care much about aiding angels OR opposing demons.
- apathy towards ongoing and/or prospective war aside, Barakiel doesn't . . . have much empathy for the humans who tend to be screwed over by the COSMIC BATTLE!!! Not that he hates humans or even is particularly contemptuous it's more like, "ok so humans are going to get screwed over, yes, but why??? should I care????"
- despite disillusionment and apathy and having been generally ground down he does still have this tiny little kernel of rebelliousness in him but it's a very self-deprecating "wow this is useless why am I doing this oh well /lights up and blows smoke into handler's face to see handler get angry b/c that still hasn't gotten old after literal millennia of being a dick that way"
- he is pretty resigned to being a TOOL TO BE USED!!! and went through a period of INTENSE BITTERNESS AND RESENTMENT about this until he slowly lost all the cans for such passion and now he's just like, ok, this is my life now, this is what I am, better grab and enjoy what downtime I have because some angel is going to INEVITABLY SHOW UP TO USE ME because that's what I'm for now. ok. He wasn't even that pissed at his death because welp, of course I'd get screwed over by everyone controlling me, of course.
- he is a chain smoker, mostly for the aforementioned "lol this pisses off my handler(s)" reason and also "this feels good and SINCE I'M TRAPPED IN THIS FUCKING MORTAL VESSEL LIKE A SAD SACK OF FLESH I MIGHT AS WELL ENJOY AT LEAST ONE MORTAL VICE RIGHT why can't I be a multi-dimensional celestial being again whyyyyyy" reasons. That's a personality trait right.
- he really doesn't like being trapped in his vessel, it's just uncomfortable and awkward and it's mostly been used as a method of control so he has a lot of bad feelings associated with it especially the first time he was shoved into one against his will. There aren't a lot of benefits to having a body as far as he can tell. But it's an unpleasantness he's gotten used to, as he has gotten used to so much unpleasantness in his life.
Icons are accurate except Barakiel:
- always has his hair down
- does not have the markings on his forehead
- dresses more informally; typically black slacks + white Oxford; always simple and black-and-white
Basically he looks more like this icon and less like this icon but you know, expressions.
Pings
- He is an angel and pings of multi-dimensional celestial bullshit. In this case I'm interpreting Barakiel as the angel of lightning specifically, so enjoy all those electricity and magnetism pings too.
- That human body/shape/form thing is ACTUALLY a human corpse that has magically treated through various rituals. It's not so much "undead" as an object made out of human flesh, in the way that ivory is not a corpse even though it was part of a body. Barakiel's body is not a part of him, it's a thing that Barakiel is inhabiting, the way that a glove is not a part of your hand.
- In addition to all of the above, Barakiel's physical vessel is also covered in various holy sigils and whatnot that clearly do . . . something . . . but they are only visible to those with magical/divine/infernal sensitivities or under ~special circumstances~.
- In his world the only supernatural things are angels or demons and most other supernatural creatures are based on angels or demons doing particular things with their vessels (i.e. a demon consumes flesh to give themself a heal boost = Wendigo/vampire, an angel shapeshifts to better kill a demon = werewolf, etc.). There are ALSO quite a few humans who have magic or are skilled with magic using a specific language that is BASED ON the angelic and/or infernal languages. So there are witches and wizards and so on.
What this all means is that while Barakiel can sense the presence of the supernatural/magical he can't identify it UNLESS it has a holy/infernal "type" to it. He can get A LOT of detail off holy/infernal-typed things like power levels, any relevant elements, etc. regardless of the actual deities involved. It's the element type that matters.
Everyone else (even if they are a human who wields holy/infernal-typed magic) that's supernatural/magical pings him as "kinda magical, probably a wizard." And if they have extra-human abilities due to technology like genetic engineering or SUBTLE CYBERNETIC IMPLANTS he can't pick up anything at all.
Powers
- He can generate lightning and electricity, manipulate any electricity (including magnetism?) around himself, and control technology maybe? Kind of. I need to learn more science. For an angel/demon bullshit universe OC. Weeps.
- His body operates at maximum human power, speed, endurance, etc. but regenerates any and all damage. Any more strenuous changes (shifting features, growing new limbs like wings, etc. will leave his body fragile and closer to breaking down. Barakiel doesn't particularly care about how quickly he goes through vessels though).
- As an angel he also as a ~true angelic form~ that is contained in his body vessel via the glove metaphor mentioned above. This true angelic form is this multi-dimensional blob of energy that is not entirely comprehensible to mortal senses but kinda looks like ball lightning turned up to eleven and smells like ozone and some other terrible sense-bending bullshit. It can be modified to a mortally-comprehensible version but even that is basically like, ANDROGYNOUS HUMANOID WITH FIFTY EYES EACH ONE SHOOTING A TERRIBLE HALO OF LIGHTNING FROM THE UR-STORM, THE STORM FROM WHICH ALL STORMS ARE BORN, AND ALSO THERE ARE TWENTY WINGS THAT SING WITH CRACKLING POWER AND THUNDER BOOMS WITH EVERY WAVE OF THE SMALLEST TIP AND AN UNEARTHLY CHOIR SCREAMS SONGS OF BATTLE AT HIS EVERY WORD and basically it's not actually that much better, it's just . . . comprehensible . . .
- The various holy sigils and whatnot carved into his body are basically trackers/power limiters. They let his handlers know where he is at all times and also limit the amount of power he can use at any one time. He can't change his vessel too much except for regen. He can't shed his vessel and appear in his (much more powerful) ~true angelic form~ or even the aforementioned modified version of it without permission from his handler. The sigils were also capable of being used to punish him . . . :')
They also render him incapable of harming his direct superiors and handlers which is why he couldn't speak in his own defense when he was scapegoated, as that would have been "opposing" one of his superiors and put them in danger.
- The sigils are inactive w/o his handler but someone with sufficient knowledge of holy magic might be able to hijack them and assume control over them. But they are VERY POWERFUL and VERY COMPLEX and also have built-in guards against being examined too closely so even Barakiel hasn't been able to figure out exactly what was done to him and to his vessels.
History
- Lucifer rebels, Lucifer's army is cast down to hell, tense war/detente between Heaven and Hell ensues.
- In this world, Heaven and Hell are factions fighting for control over humans existing in multiple parallel worlds. So basically they're still warring with humans as the battlefield, but the war is multi-dimensional and the angels/demons exist in multiple dimensions too kinda. So they use vessels, magically treated human corpses, to appear as, interact with, and influence humans of varying worlds.
- Hell became more CHAOTIC!! MIGHT MAKES RIGHT!!! POWER STRUGGLES!! Though still quite bureaucratic, just . . . very corruptly bureaucratic . . . as they built up their own version of Heaven's strict hierarchy. Heaven became increasingly orderly and strict and dictator-y.
- MILLENNIA AGO but not quite as long ago as the original Fall, Barakiel was an angelic agent who grew increasingly rebellious, doing okay work for Heaven, occasionally stepping out of line to get shit done his own way. He was young and naive and didn't really understand/care about what Heaven was doing, he was loyal, just kinda unruly.
There was admittedly this persecution thing where he was convinced that ORDER = GOOD!!! DISORDER = BAD!!! I MUST BE BAD FOR THE GREAT GOOD!!! but later events killed all of that whoops.
- After a while he was deemed a risk, but a useful pawn, so he was captured, tortured, magicked up, and basically shoved into angelic black ops!! through the use of control/tracker sigils engraved on his celestial being.
- Years pass and Barakiel grows increasingly cynical as scales fall from his eyes and he begins to truly understand the war in a more nuanced way. He does stuff to mortals, demons, other angels.
- At some point he encounters Furtur, a Very Old demon, and they strike up a frenemy-ish kinda relationship based on their frequent clashes and sense that they are both sorta disillusioned with their lives and don't really hate each other.
- And then something went wrong and Barakiel was considered a convenient scapegoat. Not allowed to and rendered incapable of speaking in his own defense, he was quickly accused of the crime and sentenced to execution.
- Spent a few millennia suffering and slowly dying because angels don't die easily; the execution process is kinda like being tossed into an equivalent of the Pillar.
- And then he died. It was kind of a relief, really.
- But for some reason (as in hypothetical game app reasons) he's alive now??? He's just going to chill and enjoy it while semi-assuming he's hallucinating because he couldn't take the literally soul-destroying torture anymore.
Personality
This is going to be very rough because I made Barakiel up many years ago and I'm sort of feeling my way along to fleshing him out to my adult tastes.
- once upon a time he was naive and really BELIEVED!!! in the angelic cause of order despite his disorderly conduct but now he's just generally disillusioned and apathetic about the whole thing. Doesn't care much about aiding angels OR opposing demons.
- apathy towards ongoing and/or prospective war aside, Barakiel doesn't . . . have much empathy for the humans who tend to be screwed over by the COSMIC BATTLE!!! Not that he hates humans or even is particularly contemptuous it's more like, "ok so humans are going to get screwed over, yes, but why??? should I care????"
- despite disillusionment and apathy and having been generally ground down he does still have this tiny little kernel of rebelliousness in him but it's a very self-deprecating "wow this is useless why am I doing this oh well /lights up and blows smoke into handler's face to see handler get angry b/c that still hasn't gotten old after literal millennia of being a dick that way"
- he is pretty resigned to being a TOOL TO BE USED!!! and went through a period of INTENSE BITTERNESS AND RESENTMENT about this until he slowly lost all the cans for such passion and now he's just like, ok, this is my life now, this is what I am, better grab and enjoy what downtime I have because some angel is going to INEVITABLY SHOW UP TO USE ME because that's what I'm for now. ok. He wasn't even that pissed at his death because welp, of course I'd get screwed over by everyone controlling me, of course.
- he is a chain smoker, mostly for the aforementioned "lol this pisses off my handler(s)" reason and also "this feels good and SINCE I'M TRAPPED IN THIS FUCKING MORTAL VESSEL LIKE A SAD SACK OF FLESH I MIGHT AS WELL ENJOY AT LEAST ONE MORTAL VICE RIGHT why can't I be a multi-dimensional celestial being again whyyyyyy" reasons. That's a personality trait right.
- he really doesn't like being trapped in his vessel, it's just uncomfortable and awkward and it's mostly been used as a method of control so he has a lot of bad feelings associated with it especially the first time he was shoved into one against his will. There aren't a lot of benefits to having a body as far as he can tell. But it's an unpleasantness he's gotten used to, as he has gotten used to so much unpleasantness in his life.