Name: Cerria
Alias/Nickname: Aluvia
Age: Her current incarnation is 36.
Race: Angel
Appearance: 
Cerria’s wings are grey, coming from dark grey at the leading edge to pale near-white at the end of her feathers. Since remembering her previous existence as an Archangel without the proper assistance, her wings have become battered and torn, unable to properly contain the essence contained within her - the human essence of her body is failing and combusting as the Angelic essence becomes purer. This causes patches on her wings to glow with bright yellow gold energy in a shimmering unpredictable pattern that gives the appearance of her wings being on fire only in slow motion. While once large enough to easily achieve flight, the lack of certain key feathers has made controlled flight impossible, and gliding only possible under extremely favorable circumstances.
Social Status: A ghost, unknown to all. If the council discovered the nature of her personality, they would consider her an enemy most likely. Her essence is strong and entirely on display, making her something of a beacon for anyone with the eyes to see.
Relations: Complex relationship with Lucien.
General Activity: See Biography.
Abilities: Her abilities are typical of a weather angel.
Despite beginning the process of a regression to Archangel status, between poor handling of the process and the fact that it has barely even started, she has gained no positive effects from it as far as her powers are concerned.
The essence flares that cover her wings burn with energy in a constant state of self destruction. This causes her intense and constant pain and is the reason her wings are in the sorry state they are. It also is quite dangerous to touch for anyone or anything else, causing burns at incredible temperatures. A side effect of this destructive nature is to cause most conventional methods of damaging her wings to fail - bullets are vaporised before impact, blades blunted and poorly conducted magical attacks interact explosively with the out of control essence. None of these attributes extend beyond her wings however, and her body is precisely what one would expect of a modern Angel, that is to say, essentially human.
Equipment: Nought but the clothes on her back.
Personality: Will reveal IC.
Biography:
Cerria began existence as an Angel in Heaven many thousands of years ago, what would today be called an Archangel. Even before the creation of Earth, the lands of Heaven had a complex rhythm that required tending to, and in the early days of Angelic existence, Cerria was among those that seemed to have a natural affinity for this task, bending her formidable powers towards sustaining the environment of Heaven. Though possessed of a full range of Angelic abilities, she rarely made use of any of the others, for there was simply no need.
When Earth was created, Cerria initially had little interest in it. Angelic society had all she needed. But as the years passed, so to did a sense of curiosity for this new land develop. After a time, she decided she wished to travel to the lands of the humans, and observe the environment of Earth. It took time to persuade the Gatekeeper of Heaven, Chime, that she should be allowed to visit Earth, Angels were not allowed to pass to that land lightly in those days, but eventually she was granted passage.
On Earth, she found many wondrous things, roaming the skies as no human could, exploring far and wide. Atmospherics ran wild here, a far cry from the regulated pleasantness of Heaven. The Humans had not spread far when Cerria first explored on Earth, and their influence had not taken hold with the land. She considered the Earth and its wild nature beautiful, admiring the unregulated storms, the droughts, floods and wildfires. Not for their destructive potential, but for the way in which it all seemed to just work without outside interference, the cycle of death giving form to new life and the way in which changing topography would invariably be adapted to intrigued her. Heaven was a near deathless and hardly changing land, and this concept of concept of constant death and remaking of land intrigued her.
During this visit, humans were largely ignored by her. Fulfilling Chimes request - she did not travel among them and in her observation from afar she could discern little of what made these beings special and unique in all the worlds.
When she returned to Heaven after many years abroad, she brought with her ideas of change foreign to many Angel kind. It wasn’t long before she sought out one of the more secluded parts of Heaven and began to experiment with reshaping the land. To the best of her ability, she summoned a storm like she had seen on Earth, differing radically from the perfectly orchestrated storms of Heaven, the winds and rain wrought destruction on the land that had remained so unchanged for so long. This was only the first in a series of attempts to emulate Earth's ever changing nature within the bounds of Heaven, few of which met with any real success - either failing to change anything in Heavens environment or causing only destruction, the environment failing to restore any semblance of beauty. This behaviour generated quite the reputation for her, with many other Angels misinterpreting her actions as those of a destructive and dangerous individual to be shunned.
In the following years, Cerria made several more half hearted petitions to be allowed through the gates of Heaven once more, but Chime denied her every time. The Gatekeeper saw Cerria’s desire to interfere more heavily on Earth, and the potential for the journey to alter Cerria’s fairly benign desire to study change into something genuinely malicious.
When war came to Heaven, Cerria’s tendencies suddenly became in high demand by those that had shunned her before. She unleashed such destructive and wild storms on the demons that many of her fellow Angels favouring such powers were shocked and awed by the display, though in the end it was to no avail. During this time of war, she served extensively with fellow Angel Lucien, developing a strong bond with him as only two warriors can. During the later days of the war, when many of the Angels in command positions had been slain, Cerria gained a modest command of her own, in which Lucien was immediately included.
Cerria saw in these battles, the kind of destruction and change that the demons brought with them. They left desolation in their wake and invoked change for no reason other than because they could. Upon witnessing this first hand, she came to understand one aspect of what was special about Earth. It was a balance of Heaven and Hell. Unlike Heaven it changed, but unlike Hell it had stability and purpose in its change. With this knowledge, she was ever more determined to defend Heaven from the Demonic assault.
When all seemed lost, she was called upon by a group of surviving Angels wishing for her insight into a project of theirs - a way to allow the weaker reincarnated Angels to match the awesome power of the Hellions more readily. She was intrigued by the project, lending her knowledge of destruction and change to the furtherance of the project immediately after witnessing the preliminary results. Too late she discovered the true nature of the project – and the identity of its test subject. Her immediate instinct was to plead with her fellows to stop the implantation, but her pleas fell on deaf ears. The others would do anything for victory.
Cerria remained with them to oversee the fruits of their labor, partially out of guilt, and partially out of a desire to see some good come from the endeavour. When Luciens daughter was killed by the experiment, Cerria was in favour of full disclosure of the project. She was the only one. The others did not wish to face judgement by the few remaining Angels, and they were quick to blame the subject for their failure. Cerria had departed the group only a little before this announcement was made, fleeing their presence in disgust in and contempt. The damage was already done though, she had stood by while Luciens daughter had withered away, lifting not a feather to intervene.
Near this time, Chime was slain and Heaven overrun in its entirety. With no Gatekeeper to bar the way and nothing but destruction and the pain of betrayal left in Heaven, the passage to Earth was both easy and the only path open to Cerria.
The Earth Cerria returned to, however, was not the same one she left so long ago. The place she initially arrived to, the same location she had first set foot on the Earth, was now nearby a human industrial city. The ground was poisoned and the water thick and murky, the air filled with fumes. For a few terrifying moments, she believed she had somehow been pulled to Hell, but she quickly recovered her senses and despaired. The Humans of this land seemed intent on the destruction of their lands, and for what cause, Cerria could not tell.
She resolved to walk among the humans, and find out what might drive them to such lengths, for surely they could not be the same as the demons she had fought, the demons that destroyed for the sake of destruction. What she discovered in this city appalled her. The few ruling the many, with despair seemingly the only constant for the majority of people while the few with everything ignored the plight of the rest. Comparing it to the ideal of what Heaven once was, it seemed to Cerria as though the humans were willingly attempting to imitate Hell’s environment. Perhaps the greatest fortune of that generation of humanity, however, was that Cerria was not a wrathful Angel at that time, and still filled with despair at her actions concerning Luciens daughter, as well as the fall of Heaven. Rather than bring immediate and swift destruction on the unsuspecting humans, she withdrew to the mountains nearby to watch the city, and see if Earths old constant of change would assert itself over the men of this city.
She watched and waited for centuries, descending to walk the streets of the city every fifty years, and search for signs that the ways of men were changing. In the first century, she was tracked down by a messenger of the newly established Council of Archangels. They wanted to meet with her, for few Angels had survived the fall of heaven and every one was wanted to enforce their new order. It did not take long for Cerria to discover the identity of the Council as the very ones who had tricked her into assisting in the death of Luciens daughter. As soon as she found this out she sent the envoy back with a message - a warning not to approach her again.
In the closing days of the second century, she had observed little change in the city. Humans died and the generations moved forward, but the poor were still the majority and the rich still did not seem to care. Even the merging of Angels into the general populace seemed to hardly affect this. At this time, a small party of angels in the employ of the Council - as it seemed they all were by now - tracked her down once more to bring her before the Council. Filled with despair and a growing anger towards the humans, these unfortunate angels found themselves providing a release for Cerria’s feelings. This time rather than simply sending them back from whence they came, she donned her armour and struck down all but one of them. She sent the sole survivor back to the Council wingless, to prove that she would not suffer them or their lackies.
Things came to a head fifty years later. Cerria’s immortal patience had run out with the human city, and even as she walked amongst the downtrodden at the feet of skyscrapers, a team of Angels hunted her, with orders to capture her at any cost. They were expecting to catch her on the way out of the city, only this time she did not depart as expected. She saw that the humans had conquered the land and fended off change for the better to the best of their abilities. She decided that if they would not allow change to take its natural course, she would invoke it herself. When an out of season storm struck the city with lightning as never seen before, the angels rushed to find her. Whether they would’ve been a match for Cerria in a traditional battle, shall never be known, for she had already begun summoning some of her most destructive abilities, winds swirling into the makings of a hurricane, fanning the flames struck up by the lightning and bringing forth a firestorm that would ravage the city to the point of being uninhabitable. Many an angel and human died that day.
Cerria felt no remorse for the deed, believing herself to be ‘enforcing the natural order’ and totally in the right for doing so. Had she been a little more introspective, she may have noticed that she was beginning to enjoy the destruction wrought by her hand. When the city was nothing more than rubble, Cerria looked on the sight and rejoiced for the first time in centuries. The natural order and beauty of the Earth was restored, at least in her point of view. She gathered what few belongings she had and moved on. For a time, she traveled the Earth seeking out the most unsullied and remote of areas, trying to find examples of what she remembered to be the perfect balance of destruction and creation. She was content for a time chasing storms or sitting beneath tranquil stars, far from civilisation, always on the move.
Her roaming would not last long however, as she all to regularly came across signs of human habitation. When she did, she would walk among them and silently judge them. At first, she would wait and observe them as she had with the first city. None were ever as bad as the first city she arrived at, and some she even judged to be worthy of continuing. Many human settlements however, mostly smaller towns and villages, found themselves subject to her wrath.
When the Council heard of her actions, they changed their orders. No longer was she to be captured. She had proved a menace to humans, and in their self appointed role as the protectors of humanity, they ordered her death. She has been one of the top targets on the Councils list since that day, though while some of the best Council assassins have come close, none have yet been able to best her – and every attempt has caused significant collateral damage to the surrounding area.
Over time, as more and more largely innocent human lives perished by Cerria's hand, she began to stop waiting to judge. She spent less and less time observing, and gave in to what was becoming a burning hatred for humans and their often cruel and defiling ways. By the time the most recent war came to pass, Cerria had stopped waiting to judge entirely. Humans settlements would be judged on sight, almost on a whim. So surrounded by death and destruction so often, Cerria hardly noticed the passing of war at all.
Had nothing else changed, she may have continued on like this, uncaring for anything she could not see, for far longer still. But in the last two years, her deeds finally caught up with her. By fate or chance, her travels brought her directly into Luciens path.
She did not survive the encounter.
Reincarnation...After her death, the essence that was Cerria was cut free for a time, to roam the world in search of a new host, as all Angelic essence will do when freed in such a way. Whether by fate or chance, the woman that became the new host of the essence was not unlike Cerria near the beginning of her existence – a loner with more time for trees than people, but kind and caring nonetheless. It is ironic that all that this woman was was destroyed the moment Cerria's essence reincarnated in her body.
The first thing she remembered when she awoke was that her name was Aluvia. The second was that she had not always had a pair of great grey wings sprouting from her back. She was in the wilderness far from any city, and while she possessed all the knowledge she needed to survive, she did not know how or when she had learned such things. All the memories and experience that had defined who Aluvia was were gone. Her instincts told her she should continue traveling, to reach a particular area, for what reason she knew not. It did not take long before a second desire also formed in her mind – to
remember.Remembering was not a swift process by any means. The memory of who Aluvia had been before was gone – obliterated by the sudden and overwhelming presence of something other – but she did not know this. She did not begin to remember, despite her constant searching, until after she began to draw on her abilities to alter the environment around her. At first she was unaware of it, and she did not immediately notice that her wishes for a change in the weather were almost immediately answered every time.
After almost a year of fruitless effort and living as if in a trance, she finally began to remember. Her first memory came to her when she was asleep, and indeed, seemed a nightmare, for it was the memory of her own death. When she awoke, however, she recognised the terrible ring of truth in what she had seen, for not even a nightmare could be so vivid. Some beings might've been discouraged by such a thing, but she reasoned that whatever else she might remember could not possibly be worse than facing her own death...
It has been three years since the day of her first memory, and she has spent every second not devoted to survival trying to remember more. She has succeeded. It would've been better, for her, and for the unknowing people of the nearby city, if she had failed.
While before she had lived only half of a life, her mind had at least been intact. Though she has gone only a few decades back into Cerria's memory, the mental strain has been incredible, living through events of another life even as she continues her own. Worse, the years she has remembered are among the very worst that Cerria lived through. The barrier between who she is and whos he was was a tenuous one to begin with, not knowing the mechanics of angelic memory, but now, that barrier has become near non-existent. Only the fact that she remembers a different name defining her than the one of the woman in her memory, but this is little comfort. The emotions tied to the memory seem as real as any she has felt in this life, and she sees little reason to question their validity.
Perhaps worse even than the mental effects have been the physical ones. The body she inhabits now was never meant to undergo the strains it has been put under. Thus far, the only measurable effect has been the early appearance of grey strands in hair, but the effects of more mystical nature are far more severe. With no real ties to her humanity and the burgeoning Angelic essence within only growing stronger, the human part of her essence is breaking down. It causes near constant pain throughout her body, and the physical effect of the broken down essence being purged via her wings is impressive to say the least.
Though it has damaged them,
it causes them to shimmer and flash, almost as if they were on fire but in slow motion, and the destructive nature of the essence being purged harms anything it touches. Needless to say, a constantly growing and intense pain has not been helpful for her mental struggles either.
In recent days, she has ceased her efforts to remember any more as the pain of reaching backwards has become too great. Instead, she has decided to carry out what she remembers to be her main purpose on the Earth...
The judgement of human cities.
This then, is how Aluvia, or perhaps it is Cerria, has come to walk the city streets at this moment, though since this world of concrete and steel is so new to her, she falters in her convictions...
