Make-Up Department

The celestial forms here are downright surreal and suggest "energy beings." You might like that if you want to emphasize the unearthliness of celestials, or if you want to run a science-fictional crossover and don't want celestial forms unduly related to earthly forms. These surreal forms are also much simpler than a human form, which can reflect the fact that celestials, while old and powerful and intelligent, are still much simpler than humans in many way.

Kinetic Aura

Each celestial form consists of a core – different depending on choir or band – and an aura. This is a translucent zone of color resembling an aurora borealis or a solar corona. It is part of the celestial and their main organ of manipulation. They touch and move things with it. They move themselves with it, and when they move rapidly (fly), they extend it in great, wing-like lobes.

The size of the aura – and of the whole celestial form – is voluntarily variable, and the range of size variation is proportional to the Corporeal Forces of the celestial. The aura's selection of colors and textures vary greatly from one individual to another, and are one of the main visible signs of individuality.

Celestials can also sculpt the shape of the aura. This lets celestials without vessels assume approximations of earthly forms on the Celestial Plane, which can be convenient in communicating with humans, though it is nothing like having a vessel. When taking a humanoid form, celestials typically shrink their core very small and tuck it into the head or heart region.

Heavenly beings have luminous auras. Infernal auras are zones of colored darkness. Dissonance is visible as rumples and wrinkles in the aura; discord is visible as streaks of darkness or (for infernals) paleness.

Seraphim - Cosmic Strings

A seraphic celestial form is no more than a line of light, closely sheathed in aura, except at the head end, where it fans out. The head is also marked by six points of light, the eyes, hovering close to the endpoint. This linear body may be in any or several colors. It may be luminous, like the interior of a neon tube, or shine metallically. According to its individual personality, the seraph may stay relatively straight, crinkle like a lightning bold (very common among Jean's seraphim), or habitually loop and swirl in calligraphic curves or Celtic knots.

When seraphim fly, they tend to extend their aura in six wings.

Michael is a long rope of shining gold, in a vast, cobalt blue aura. Dominic is a silver thread in a deep violet aura.

Balseraphs - Webs of Deceit

In a balseraph, the seraphic form comes unravelled, developing hard knots along the body, spinning open into loops, and loops on loops. Most characteristically, the head frays into two or more heads.

Baal is a shining thread of gold, swimming in an aura of dark blood-red and glittering with multicolor gemlike lights, multiply knotted but hardly frayed at all – except at the front, where the line divides into five heads. Lucifer himself is a Gordian tangle of red in a pitch-black aura, with seven heads, three of which have forked again.

Cherubim - Great Balls of Fire

A cherub's core is a luminous globe, about beachball-sized, with four other globes, about half the diameter, touching it. These four smaller globes move freely over the surface of the larger globe. The smaller globes need not be the same color as the main globe, though all four are all usually of one color; a cherub with each of the five globes a different color is considered to have a rather striking and flamboyant appearance, like a six-foot human with flaming red hair.

When cherubim fly, they tend to extend their aura in four wings.

David, before he went Malakite, was bright sulfur-yellow, with oranger minor globes, in an aura of hot-lava orange. Novalis is a green globe with pink minor globes, in an aura shimmering with soft pastels. Blandine is an opalescent globe, with lavender minors, in a rainbow aura.

Djinn - Dark Stars

Djinn are almost exactly photographic negatives of cherubim. Their auras are shadowy, and their cores glow darkness.

Asmodeus is an anti-sun of sheer blackness, in a dark-glittering aura the color you see when someone flashes a camera in your eyes, or, more closely, like the black-and-blue dazzle some people see before a migraine. Beleth is midnight blue with blood-clot red side globes, in a curdling aura of colors you cannot name.

Ophanim - Wheels of Fire

Ophanim are very much as described in canon, except to note the aura, and that the fire of their wheels can be of any color.

Ophanim and all lower choirs and bands usually extend only two wings from their aura when they fly.

Calabim - Swarms of Scimitars

In calabim, the circles are broken. Each calabite is a swarm of flaming crescents, forever in a frenzy to pierce, claw, and cut at their surroundings.

Elohim - Celestial Spheres

Each and every elohite is a perfect, transparent sphere, a crystal ball, visually distinguishable only by the coloration of its aura.

Habbalah - Taking Their Lumps

A habbalite core is like a giant piece of hail, lumpy, grey, pitted and scarred.

Malakim - Pillars of Fire

A Malakite is a pillar of fire, the top and bottom of the pillar vanishing into a cloud that merges with the aura. The structure of the pillar varies a lot. It may be a blazing bar of pure light, or a tornado of flame, or a standing lightning bolt, etc. It may be wreathed about with sparks or smoke. The colors of all these vary with the individual. Whatever the color of the aura, it darkens to black at the edges, and the wings, when extended, are always black.

David is now a pillar of lava in a red aura. Laurance is a pillar of blue-white fire in a white aura. Uriel was similar, a pillar of sheet white light. Malakim of Eli are often very colorful, as if a tornado had hit a fireworks display, or Disney studios.

Lilim - Green Meanies and Emerald Citizens

Lilim are demons created by a human. Their cores are luminous green humanoids. Each Lilim has two shapes, male and female, though one is preferred, the way humans prefer their right hand or their left. Most Lilim prefer female. They can use their auras for short-range telekinesis, but mostly just fly with them. Dark Lilim have dark auras, Bright Lilim have bright ones. In both cases, they are usually multicolored and individually textured and patterned.

Kyriotates - Raw Potential

Kyrios are prismatic clouds, surrounded by auras, the famous jumble of limbs and eyes restlessly visible through the vari-colored mist. The bits peeking through reflect the hosts the Kyrio has inhabited recently. One reason they are so hard on the human sanity is the ... peculiar ... colors they turn – sky-blue pink, octarine, ulfire and jale, particularly salty shades of loud. And when they speak or sing, it can come out sounding blue, or coffee-flavored....

Shedim - Raw Wounds

Shedim are ragged black holes in space. Feral eyes gleam in that dark, and claws and teeth can come snatching out. They, too, give off mind-bending colors and and sounds.

Mercurians - Quicksilver

Mercurian cores are maleable wads of metallic shiniess, like quicksilver or the T1000 Terminator. Only they aren't all silvery; at least as many are golden, and a fair sprinkling are coppery. The Mercurians concerned with Terran humanity habitually mold their cores into human forms, and usually use their auras only for flying.

Impudites - Mercury Poisoning

Impudites look just like Mercurians, except that their auras are dark, not bright, and the core is shiny tar-black, liquid blood-red, or a dark shade of red in between.

Grigori - Golden Giants

Grigori, like Lilim, are tied to humanity; their cores are luminous golden giants, seven or eight feet tall unless the Grigori choose to alter the scale. They are either male or female, just like humans. Their auras are dark or bright according to their state, but have no individual coloring or texture.

Menunim - Wings of Hope

Blandine's personal choir looks like butterflies or aeriel flowers, with variously-shaped wings/petals, five or seven in number, joining at a barely visible glimmer.

Pachadim - Bats Out of Hell

Beleth's minions are built much like Menunim, but the wings are leathery rags, meeting in a clot of darkness.

Relievers - Rising Stars

Relievers are simple sparkling lights, usually a single bright one in a tight cluster of lesser lights.

Imps - Worms Dieth Not

Imps have a variety of unpleasing forms – leech- or maggot-like, a pile of slime, or a jagged shard are the commonest.


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