BadgerNet app

[godslantern]

Player Information

Name: Jill
Age: well over 18
Contact details: setecastronomy
Other characters: also apping Shinjiro Aragaki

Character Information

Name: Neriel
Canon: Good Omens
OU/AU/CRAU/OC: OC

World info: The Earth of Good Omens is mostly identical to the real one circa 2019. Mostly. Angels and demons are very much real (though they generally avoid going to Earth as much as they can), and have for the most part been looking forward to the grudge match that is Armageddon… which just spectacularly failed to launch, thanks to intervention from several humans, the angel and demon tasked with staying on Earth, and the Antichrist. (The OG Rebel’s son didn’t do as he was told. Go figure.) Some humans have very low-key magical/psychic talents, but not many.

Management does not recommend visiting Heaven. Or Hell, but really, one expects Hell to be dank and oppressive. One does not necessarily expect Heaven to be sterile and prone to gaslighting, but it very much is. All the real value is in the middle.

History: Before the Beginning, there was quite a lot of universe in need of filling out (just because Earth was one of the last things completed doesn’t mean everything else sat empty until then), and a multitude of angels tasked with doing so. Neriel spent some of that time helping with stellar construction, but most of it honing her natural talent for healing and hanging out with her friends. (Two of them were decidedly more than friends, but human words don’t properly capture the nuances involved.)

And then Lucifer decided it was the right moment to cause trouble, and when the dust settled, Neriel was the only one of her friend group who hadn’t Fallen. Her mentor’s absence wasn’t a complete shock (Raphael was always going to demand answers from the Almighty sooner or later), same for one of her friends (Talya was never going to be far behind him) - but poor Adriel got hacked to bits by an overzealous participant, in all the fighting, and all those pieces got up and walked away. She’s wondered ever since if she could have spared them that indignity if she’d just been able to talk to them sooner.

In any case, suddenly she was the best healer Heaven had left, and the remaining Archangels told everyone the newly-minted demons wouldn’t remember their time in Heaven, and the guy who hacked her friend to pieces was promoted to fill Raphael’s vacancy. This did not set the next few millennia up for success, but Neriel had no choice but to persevere, doing her part to patch up celestial injuries and bracing for the upcoming rematch Armageddon was supposed to be.

When Armageddon failed to launch, the Archangels blamed their field agent on Earth and tried to arrange for a covert execution, which also didn’t go according to plan. This covert execution involved having their demonic counterparts send someone up to drop off some Hellfire, and Neriel bumped into the delivery guy on their way out. It was Adriel (Eric, these days, since demons didn’t keep their angelic names), or at least one of their dozen corporeal consciousnesses… and they recognised her on sight.

Needless to say, this revelation leaves her a tad discombobulated. There’s one person she trusts to give her a straight answer, and since the Principality Aziraphale isn’t exactly coming back to Heaven any time soon, she slips off to Earth to ask him. A lot more information follows in short order: Heaven doesn’t feel loved anymore, her old mentor has been Hell’s field agent all this time (Crowley hanging out with Aziraphale isn’t a surprise from the ‘field agent’ angle, but she wasn’t expecting to find an old friend that fast), asking questions isn’t quite as forbidden as the Archangels made it seem, humans do all the heavy lifting in terms of both Good and Evil deeds, and pretty much none of the good Earth music made it Upstairs.

Neriel’s choice to stay on Earth isn’t fully conscious, at first. She’s taking in so much information that she doesn’t want to lose the chance to learn it, or to see her friends again - assuming they want to see her. It’s not until after she properly reunites with Eric that she realises she can’t go back, even to tie up some loose ends; if caught out, she probably wouldn’t be allowed to leave again, and now that she’s recalled what’s important she can’t take that risk.

Tarkus (nee Talya) isn’t exactly pleased to see Neriel again, but still agrees to help her try to undo Eric’s permanently-split-corporation problem. Together, they… mostly succeed; two pieces is less confusing than twelve, anyway. In the process, Neriel both overexerts herself and draws attention to her prolonged absence from Heaven, and it’s only quick thinking on her friends’ part that keeps her from being dragged off.

She doesn’t mind having burned that bridge, give or take the part where she has to spend several months cooped up behind very strong wards for her own safety. In that time, she works on setting up her own base of operations (a clinic, because she’s a healer first and foremost), rekindling her relationship with Eric and Tarkus, and figuring out how to protect herself and her friends from any further attempts on their lives for choosing Earth.

(I swear, this is the cliff notes version. Neriel and company ate my brain this spring.)

Canon point: Just after the Apocanope.
Age: Somewhere north of 6000. Exact age is tricky when you were created before Time was really a codified thing.

Personality: Neriel comes off to outside (read: human) observers as extremely sheltered, and possibly like she just ran away from a really weird religious cult. That isn’t too far off; as of her canon point, she has literally never left Heaven before (being the best healer left meant she was indispensable). She has A Lot to learn about how the world works.

Fortunately, she has a bit more innate curiosity than your average angel. While asking questions was largely frowned upon after Lucifer’s rebellion, no one mentored by Crowley of all beings is truly capable of not doing so. The thing that kept Neriel from Falling herself is her trust that when it comes to the big existential stuff, the Almighty knows what She’s doing, even if She’s not telling anyone else. It was the act of demanding answers that tripped her friends up.

Lucifer’s rebellion screwed up everyone, but most angels have spent the millennia since pretending nothing happened in the first place. Neriel’s been isolated in dealing with the trauma of losing all her friends at once, grieving as best she can when no one really knows how to. Being the best healer Heaven has, these days, feels like a curse more often than it does a blessing - even if no one else says so in words, she feels the weight of ‘only because your friends aren’t here to be better’ every time someone compliments her work. (Did I mention Heaven is extremely toxic? Because Heaven is extremely toxic.)

Her loyalty is first to the Almighty, being an angel and all, and second to her friends. Heaven as an entity and the Archangels as authority figures somewhat lost their hold on her when her friend was hacked to pieces for no real reason, but there were two choices at the time: Stay where she was, or Fall. She’s relieved Armageddon ended up being called off - as a healer, she can’t support needless suffering, and no one would have won the rematch any more than they won the rebellion. Between the third option of Earth opening up, and the ‘your friends all forgot about you’ lie being exposed, she really doesn’t need much of a push to walk away from Heaven.

It’s also worth noting that, while she misses the way things used to be, she has enough sense to know she can’t make what was be what is again. She wouldn’t invalidate her friends’ choices like that, and even with Eric, her big regret is not being able to save them the indignity of being chopped to bits. But just because it won’t be exactly the same doesn’t mean it’s not worth having her friends in her life again.

Character changes: Honestly, if anything the network’s going to get her to double down on Earth faster. More interaction with humans, and all that.

Capabilities: Neriel is an angel (a Virtue, specifically, so of lower-middling rank in the overall hierarchy). As a rule, angels can sense love and are functionally immortal; their corporeal bodies can be killed, but the only way to destroy their essence is by Hellfire. (Given that the Archangels have tipped their hand regarding their willingness to fatally punish disobedience, and they’re not creative enough to come up with anything else after one failure, she intends to work on a way around that.) Breathing, eating, and sleeping aren’t requirements so much as eventual habits. Size and shape are also pretty optional for beings of celestial stock.

Neriel’s particular specialty is healing, and she is Damned Good at it. She can soothe pretty much any human ailment, and fix most damage of celestial origin. Given time, she’ll learn more about human healing methods, so she doesn’t have to rely on miracles to do everything.

Beings of celestial stock (both angels and demons) tend to do their work via miracles, which can be as frivolous as reheating tea or as big as protecting oneself from a bomb going off directly overhead. With Neriel, this tends to manifest as unconsciously easing minor ailments in others (healer), or - once she has more than two composers and The Sound of Music to choose from - overriding whatever was just on someone else’s radio/stereo/what have you with whatever happens to be on her mind at the moment.

Sample: boop

Notes: I fully expect any other Good Omens apps to be from a parallel timeline to this one. While I sure won’t object if anyone is willing to play along, Neriel’s backstory and character arc ask a lot of other people, Crowley in particular, and I’m not fool enough to impose a backstory onto someone else.