The Divine
What is absolute cannot touch what is particular without ceasing to be absolute.
The Divine is what founds, commands, or judges: the origin, the law, the sacred, what is worth more than anything else. Every age has given it other faces — thunder on the mountain, a throne surrounded by choirs, a heaven that grants or withdraws its mandate, an inner voice, an emptiness we no longer know how to name.
Angel comes from the Greek angelos: messenger. No figure is more exactly an Agent.
Why Agents
The difference of scale. The Divine is eternal, whole, without exception. The human world is made of nothing but exceptions: cases, circumstances, persons. A perfect law does not know what a particular case is. Someone has to carry it that far.
What each side experiences. Through Agents, humans meet the call, the law, grace, temptation — something that asks more of them than themselves. Through them, the Divine meets what it does not contain: freedom, doubt, pity, the choice not to obey.
What is transformed. An angel who has lived among humans learns what a particular life costs. A Power that welcomes what they bring back may learn mercy — or the fall.
Powers
The Sword
An Archangel: protection and judgment. It guards what is entrusted to it and cuts what must be cut.
- Protects what is entrusted to it
- Judges without appeal
- Cannot lie
- Obeys the Throne
The Abyss
A Demon Prince: the adversary, the tempter, the one who said no.
- Tempts, does not compel
- Always offers a choice
- Knows everyone's desire
- Creates nothing
The Thunder
A god of an ancient pantheon — one of those who strike, protect their own, and quarrel with their peers.
- Strikes
- Protects its own
- Demands offerings
- Quarrelsome among equals
Heaven
An impersonal order of the world, which does not speak but grants and withdraws its favor.
- Everything has its place
- Grants and withdraws the mandate
- Does not speak
- Punishes disorder with disorder
The Court
The Sword and the Abyss are not alone. A table that wants a heavenly and infernal Court can make each Archangel and each Prince a Power in its own right. Each starts from the Attributes of the Sword or the Abyss, and bends them with what belongs to it alone: the Attribute suggested below can replace one of them, or be added to them.
The traditions provide many. Here are a few.
The Archangels of the Sword
- Michael, commander of the heavenly hosts, who casts down the dragon of the Apocalypse: Never retreats before an enemy.
- Gabriel, the messenger of the Annunciation: Announces what is to be born.
- Raphael, who heals and walks the road with young Tobias: Heals those he accompanies.
- Uriel, the light of God, who in the Book of Enoch watches over the world and over Tartarus: Brings hidden things to light.
- Raguel, the friend of God, who in the same book punishes the world of the luminaries: Calls to order what strays.
- Azrael, who in Islamic traditions separates the soul from the body: Knows everyone's hour. He also looks toward Death.
- Mashit, the Destroyer, who strikes Egypt and then Jerusalem: Strikes when ordered to.
- Metatron, the heavenly scribe: Writes down everything that happens.
The Princes of the Abyss
In 1589, the theologian Peter Binsfeld assigned a Prince to each of the seven deadly sins.
- Lucifer, pride, the fallen light-bearer: Bows to no one.
- Mammon, avarice, who hunts on Money's grounds: Everything has its price.
- Asmodeus, lust, whom Raphael binds in the Book of Tobit: Undoes unions.
- Satan, wrath, the accuser of the Book of Job: Accuses.
- Beelzebub, gluttony, the lord of the flies: Is never sated.
- Leviathan, envy, the monster of the waters: Wants what belongs to another.
- Belphegor, sloth: Makes every effort useless.
Others have no sin of their own:
- Azazel, to whom the goat laden with the people's sins is driven into the desert, and who according to the Book of Enoch taught humans weapons and adornment: Bears the fault of others.
- Lilith, who refused to submit to Adam: Does not submit.
A Court makes the Divine a Horizon of intrigue. The Archangels do not confront each other directly any more than other Powers do, but their Angels cross paths constantly — and so do those of the Princes.
Families of Agents
The suggested traits are Bond traits: each comes from the relationship itself or from the Attribute shown. The Agent's Anchors belong to them and remain to be written.
Angels — the Sword
Created to serve. The Bond is creation.
- Wings of light, from the creation itself;
- Voice of the Archangel, from Judges without appeal;
- Senses the presence of evil, from Protects what is entrusted to it.
What the figure lets us think: can one carry a message without being changed by it? Obedience, and the freedom it presupposes.
Demons — the Abyss
Fallen, rebellious, or born of shadow. The Bond is allegiance.
- Senses lies, from Knows everyone's desire;
- Reads desire, from Knows everyone's desire;
- Offers a pact, from Always offers a choice.
What the figure lets us think: temptation; the price of what we desire; the freedom to say no, even to what exceeds us.
Children of the Gods — the Thunder
Demigods, heroes, descendants of a union between a god and a mortal. The Bond is kinship.
- Superhuman strength, from Strikes;
- The god's blood speaks in them, from the kinship itself;
- Cannot refuse a challenge, from Quarrelsome among equals.
What the figure lets us think: being half; inheriting what exceeds us; what we owe to parents greater than ourselves.
Prophets — any Power of the Divine
Humans who have been called. The Bond is a call they did not choose.
Hears the voice · Sees what is coming · Their words unsettle those who hear them, which come from the call itself. Other traits depend on the Power that calls.
What the figure lets us think: being the human voice of what is not human; the border between revelation and madness.
What appears
- writing, and with it sacred texts;
- printing, which puts those texts in every hand;
- forgiveness made into an institution: amnesty, truth commissions;
- human rights, a sacred without a god;
- secularism, freedom of conscience, atheism;
- psychiatry, which treats those who hear voices.
An Agent
- Bond: creation. Traits: Wings of light, Voice of the Archangel.
- Anchor Court-appointed defense lawyer: Pleads for those in the wrong, Knows the courthouse corridors.
- Anchor Loves a woman who believes in nothing: no trait written yet.
The Sword judges without appeal. Azriel has spent years defending the guilty. If he gets the defense — pleading for the one who is wrong — recognized as belonging to the Sword, Pleads for those in the wrong will pass into the Bond, and the Archangel will have learned that judging first requires listening. And other angels will begin to plead.
Situations
Bringing a novelty. An angel discovers that a human court can forgive; a demon discovers that one can believe without desiring anything.
Contending for a novelty. Human rights appear: a sacred without a god. The Sword wants to protect them; the Abyss sees in them the freedom to choose; Heaven sees a new order. Their Agents contend over what this sacred will become.
Transforming one's own Power. A demon has learned to compose music. They want the Abyss to be able to create — and to do so, must undo one of its Attributes: Creates nothing.
Tones and time
The Divine can be played as a contemporary secret war, an epic tragedy, or a satire — the celestial hierarchy lends itself readily to bureaucracy.
It joins Authority: Heaven grants the Crown its mandate, and Revolution takes it back.
It can also be played across the ages: an angel may have seen writing born, heretics burned, and churches empty.