So having read the most recent snapshot, now I'm curious about the hierarchies of angels. Because Vincintanious was the Angel of Winter, and other angels have had specific titles like that as well, but Simocian was just a 'nature angel' according to Glodria's POV. Is that a different class of angel? Very curious about that!
They are different classes, and it all comes down to how they’re made!
In my universe, angels are kinda… byproducts of God. Newton’s Third Law doesn’t really sound like something that should apply to God, yet every time something new is created in Creation, an angel is born into Heaven to correlate. Heavenly beings themselves don’t seem to be subject to this rule, as there seem to be no angels of Seraphim or angels of Archangels, nor is there an angel of the Heavensphere. (But, all angels are technically Angels of Heaven, so there is that I suppose.)
But for some of our angels. Vincintanious is the angel of the first frost of the season. Glodria is the angel of sunbeams. You may ask, why are these two not an Angel of Ice and an Angle of the Sun? Well, angels like to belong to hosts. There are a cluster of angels all related to the phenomenon that is the seasons. Lots of angels that play a part in winter? Boom, an angel of winter. But these are typically angels that represent more conceptual things. Simocian and Jasrien are angels of nature, of the winterberry (Ilex vertacillata) and jasmine respectively. Those are solid, tangible things that are directly correlated to nature.
Angelic rank is determined by how exclusive the group you belong to is and how special your function is. Heaven is nothing if not utilitarian. Metatron is the highest ranking angel in existence because he is unique. Seraphim, Archangel, Scribe of Heaven, this dude’s got it all going on. But he never leaves his spot. Therefore, Michael, General of Armies and Slayer of the Dragon, is the highest ranking active angel. Kalagis is a fairly high ranking angel because she is both a clairvoyant and a Lieutenant in Michael’s army. There aren’t a whole whole lot of clairvoyants to begin with, so that’s status, and the army just is extra icing on the cake. Seasonal Angels aren’t necessarily fewer in number than angels of nature, but their roles are perceived as more important so they are higher ranked. If belief patterns were to shift… who knows what would happen? Things are only what they are because we say they are.
Since the makeup of the world seems to be mostly analogous to ours, has the political history been roughly the same or has the existence of different magic groups changed what would have been our history in substantial ways?
On the whole, politics and history are mostly the same. But a bunch of notable exceptions are under the cut.
For politics, the Coventiums tend to serve as lobbying powers to state governments for the benefit of their witch constituents. Actual witch political parties are rare, usually pretty small, and usually don’t last for more than an election cycle or three. The only major exception is in the United Kingdom, where the witches political party (The Baton Party) has stayed solidly influential in its center-left position for over 100 years.
When imperialism came to the Americas and Africa, magic was able to help the indigenous people delay colonization, but not by a whole lot. Lon-Bay, however, managed to use its (truly remarkable) magic to avoid direct colonization and establish full independence under the Sae, although the current Sae is dealing with the consequences of remote Westernization.
Wars are, understandably, worse with magic. WWII was… bad. Really bad. And there was an itsy bitsy World War 1.5 that was mostly witches only, but it’s one of those things where history courses only give it like one day’s worth of coverage before moving on to bigger things like appeasement and the actual WWII. It was after WW1.5 (but only truly finalize after WWII) that the Magi Governances was compiled and ratified by the newly formed United Nations. The Governances were presented by the various Coventium Matriarchs, and it was the argument of Matriarch Fatima Bahjat that fully ratified it. Due to Matriarch Bahjat, the Coventium West Asia has a permanent spot in the UN to represent general Coventium interests. In exceptional circumstances, of course, other matriarchs will go to New York and the UN, but the Matriarch of Western Asia is deferred to.
This is probably a good time to talk about Russia. It’s a phrase in-universe that “there are no witches in Russia.” That’s true. Magic of all types was outlawed by Ivan IV, and every witch in the country was either killed or forced into exile. Even today, magic is punishable by death, and babies are routinely checked to see if they bear a witch marking. There is no Coventium Russia.
Other than that, there are of course the River’s War and the Seventh Day Accords that followed it, and there was the Alchemical Compact and the subsequent Alchemical Purge.
That’s kinda the big stuff that comes to mind in terms of major differences between our world and theirs. This was a really good question, and I had a lot of fun answering!
Aside from what we've seen so far, what kinds of fantastic/magical creatures exist in your world?
Well, there are all the types of angel and demon, but it’s easier just to lump them all into the category “angel” and “demon.” Phoenixes are chilling out in the mountains, and there are some Biblical-type sea monsters in the depths of our ocean. Then, there are a bunch of minor spirits that inhabit natural spaces. River spirits, will-o’-wisps, semi-sentient trees, mountain guardians. In ye olde days, there were twin dragons, but Adaline slayed them and fashioned weapons from their teeth.
Is shapeshifting an ability that's available to humans or is that reserved for familiars and other magical entities?
Shapeshifting is generally reserved to those beings meant to change their shape. People can wear a glamor if they need a disguise, but no glamor is permanent or perfect. There are ways to magically change hair or nails due to those cells being dead, but major shapeshifting like I think you’re asking about isn’t really possible.
You may have touched on this in the story, I can't immediately recall, but are the children of witches always witches themselves?
Not always, but magic does run in families, and more often than not magic is preserved. You can’t be a witch without having a witch somewhere in your bloodline, but it’s possible for the magic to disappear for a few generations.
This is really specific and the answer might just be no, but is time travel theoretically possible in your world? And related but since the angels seem to exist outside of our time, is time still linear for them or could they choose to come to earth at different times for us but not in the order we lived them?
I actually touch on the angel thing in a story coming out later today! Because Heaven is removed from time, angels can enter our world from pretty much whatever point they choose, provided a doorway to that time exists in Heaven. Think of Heaven kinda floating on top of our world’s timestream and bumping down at random, but also it can touch multiple places in time at once. But because time isn’t really a thing in Heaven, no one really notices the time waiting for the right doorway. It’s just there. Or it’s not. But then it is. Now, no one can figure out how Heaven doesn’t cause paradoxes. Angels are attuned to time in a different way than people, so that may help. People’s best guess is that God has mapped out all that will be and just took care of it in the beginning. Or maybe the creatures of Heaven are just beyond us and our laws of time. Who knows?
As for mortals… people can’t travel back. There are some theoretical tricks to approximate travel forward, but no one has done it and lived. People who have tried to go forward just a few hours turn up dead. People that jump centuries in advance… I guess we won’t know until we arrive at that time the long way around and see if there’s a charred body.
Kind of sort of? Probably not in the way you’re thinking. According to Lucrita in “The Left”
No one gets to know what comes next. If I get to go to God’s heavenly Paradise or if my eternal soul will be rendered again upon the Immortal Beach like so many witches before me.
Witches have these neat little things called immortal/eternal souls that exist kinda like a venn diagram with their normal soul. It’s what allows humans to do magic. It’s also why things like Witch Hunters exist, because immortal souls can be harvested and used in a variety of ways.
This idea of the eternal soul has also led to some distinct witch quasi-religious beliefs. In physical terms, when God creates the soul of a witch, a handful of sand is pulled from the beach containing some million grains of sand or whatever. This sand is compressed, becomes an immortal soul, and is fused with the inherent soul of the being. When a witch dies, the inherent soul travels to Paradise or Hell or whatever, while the immortal soul falls apart back into individual grains of sand. God then returns to the beach and continues making souls. Diversity comes from the billions of ways all those grains of sand can be combined into a single soul. So in a way, every witch is recycled and shared among each other. A group of eight witches may have the combined soul of a single witch who died ages ago. (This also leads to the idea of soulmates, but that’s more of an AU thing than something in canon) Witches theorize that certain traits are ascribed to an individual grain of sand, and it’s the totality of all those grains that gives someone a personality.
So, is reincarnation a thing? Kinda. There are also methods of preserving an inherent soul to be tethered to something inanimate (this is how the Oracles were made), or (in cases of necromancy or even darker magics) to infuse a body with a recently departed soul. The first method isn’t permanent, in time the soul will fade from the tether, and the second method is hella illegal and very dangerous. In general, it is agreed that life and death should be left to their natural cycles. Interfere, and you may have Inertial Monks knocking at your door.
