On Elves and Angels

In a post I made last week about the fey, a commenter mentioned a story about angels. According to the story, there are three types of angels:

1. Normal angels whose job is to be a protector (exemplified my the Archangel Michael) and a messenger (exemplified by the Archangel Gabriel).
2. Fallen angels who rebelled against God, also known as demons.
3. Followers of Azazel who didn’t openly rebel against God, but stopped doing their job:

And it came to pass when the children of men had multiplied that in those days were born unto them beautiful and comely daughters. And the angels, the children of the heaven, saw and lusted after them, and said to one another: 'Come, let us choose us wives from among the children of men and beget us children.' — Enoch 6:1-3

It is the last group that was of interest, because these angels could be a stand-in for all kinds of things in an FRPG. One of the more intriguing possibilities is that these “neutral” angels and their offspring become what we know as elves.

And all the others together with them took unto themselves wives, and each chose for himself one, and they began to go in unto them and to defile themselves with them, and they taught them charms and enchantments, and the cutting of roots, and made them acquainted with plants. — Enoch 7:1

Note, that this story comes from the Book of Enoch, a Jewish work from sometime around 300-100 B.C. which is not accepted as part of the Canon of Scripture by the vast majority of Jews and Christians. For my part, I think this largely has to do with the depiction of the angels, who have come to be understood as being bodiless powers. While the Nephilim are mentioned in passing a couple of times in the bible and seem to corroborate what is spoken of in detail in the Book of Enoch, the word “Nephilim” is not something that can either be easily translated or understood. The Septuagint (the Greek translation of the OT from around 300 B.C.) translated the word as “giant” not angel or demon.

Since the angels are bodiless, they can’t really be going around having children; however, I haven’t been able to get the idea of elves-as-neutral-angels out of my head for the last several days. What would a bodiless power stripped of their powers look like?

And Enoch went and said: 'Azazel, thou shalt have no peace: a severe sentence has gone forth against thee to put thee in bonds: And thou shalt not have toleration nor request granted to thee, because of the unrighteousness which thou hast taught, and because of all the works of godlessness and unrighteousness and sin which thou hast shown to men.' Then I went and spoke to them all together, and they were all afraid, and fear and trembling seized them. And they besought me to draw up a petition for them that they might find forgiveness, and to read their petition in the presence of the Lord of heaven. For from thenceforward they could not speak (with Him) nor lift up their eyes to heaven for shame of their sins for which they had been condemned. — Enoch 13:1-6

In other words, they are cut off from heaven and cannot communicate with heaven, nor will any of their prayers be heard; however, they are condemned to be bound to earth until all their children kill each other, aka the Day of Judgment.

This leads to a very interesting proposition, especially given a world in which monsters are sin personified: what if the bodiless powers bound to earth (fallen and “neutral” angels) could enter into the bodies of those willing to house them? This would explain several very characteristic attributes of elves: the fact that they are long-lived, the fact that they seem not to really have much interest in the world of men, the fact that they are not affected by a ghoul’s touch and the fact that they were the only race in OD&D and Basic D&D that could “multi-class.”

In other words, all elves are dual personalities: the person who makes the deal with the “neutral” angel and the bodiless power themselves. This relationship cuts the person off from divine intervention but grants arcane power coupled with fighting prowess. Orcs could still be seen as twisted versions of elves, except that the person making the deal is likely cheated from having any say in how their body is being used.

This also puts a new spin on half-elves and half-orcs. These no longer need to be the children of a human and an elf/orc (and the strongly implied rape in the latter pairing). Rather, these are people from those communities that refuse to be possessed by a bodiless power.

On Being Seelie

Any time one decides to set an FRPG in an pseudo-historical setting, such as Averoigne, one must deal with elves, dwarves, halflings, etc. A choice must be made: to have demi-humans or not. If they are included, they must be explained — especially if the pseudo-historical setting is Christian because the salvation of Christ is intrinsically tied to His incarnation as a human.

I have long been a fan of demi-humans. When I first began to play with the Holmes edition all those years ago my first character was an elf and my best friend's was a dwarf. Though my friends and I gravitated towards human characters as we grew older, I have always enjoyed the sense of whimsy and mystery they can bring into a game (they also can transform a "hopeless" character into something dangerous as the halfling Pawnchee has demonstrated in my Lost Colonies campaign). Therefore, I am not particularly interested in "punting" the issue of demi-humans by not including them in my version of Averoigne.

This brings me to the word seelie. With the world of FRPGs we associate this word strongly with fey creatures and their two rival courts who may or may not be benevolent toward humans. If we look at the etymology of the word, however, we find three very interesting meanings: happy, lucky and blessed. I am particularly interested in that last word, especially given this depiction of Christ by the Pre-Raphaelite William Hunt:

I defy anyone to deny that this doesn't have at least a passing resemblance to how Tolkien describes his high elves.

The word unseelie, therefore, means unholy. There are two primary examples of unholy beings that frequent the forests of Averoigne: vampires and lycanthropes. These two can be seen as men who have actively denied God's image and likeness within themselves. Vampires have chosen to seek immortality sans God and lycanthropes (literally wolf-men) have denied their own free-will to make moral choices — they give themselves over to being beasts and beings of pure instinct.

This suggests that the fey, rather than being faeries, elves, dwarves, goblins, etc. are actually bodiless powers (aka angels and demons) who either bless or corrupt normal human beings who then become elves, dwarves, goblins, etc. I imagine that the normal trajectory would look something like this:

• A child is "touched" and begins to display outward signs of being an elf, dwarf or halfling.
• This child would then never quite fit into normal human society. Society may even fear the child.
• The child would then have three options: embrace their gift (and possibly get ostracized), hide their gift in order to fit in (the origin of half-elves?) or reject it.
• Those that embraced their gift but are ostracized are tempted by unseelie fey to take revenge. Those that give in are twisted (the origin of orcs, etc.)
• Those that reject their gift will also be tempted by the unseelie fey to do whatever it takes to get rid of their gift. These will also be twisted.
• Subsequently, those that are twisted have two options: repent or no.
• Those that refuse to repent become monsters.

The one wrench in this whole set-up is the elf, who is able to cast arcane magic. Given that arcane magic is naturally corruptive (especially when not done in conjunction with divine magic and/or the church), the origin of the elven "gift" is most likely not seelie. Quite possibly, the reason people fear the "touched" is due to the very reason that most, if not all, elves are unseelie from the outset…

Children of the Watchers

Recently, while doing some research, I ran across a reference to the "Children of the Watchers." It is a phrase that pops up in some of the Apocrypha found in the Dead Sea Scrolls. The origin of the phrase lies in the word "Nephilim" in Genesis and and the word "Watcher" in Daniel.

The Nephilim were on the earth in those days — and also afterward — when the sons of God went in to the daughters of humans, who bore children to them. These were the heroes that were of old, warriors of renown. — Genesis 6:4

This is a difficult passage to translate and to understand. Are the Nephilim the children of the sons of God — angels — and women, or are they something else altogether? In context, the author is giving a litany of examples of how sinful creation has become prior to God's decision to tell Noah that He's going to flood the earth. To boot, Nephilim is not easily translated (as it is simply transliterated in the English); however, we do get a glimpse of what it might mean from the Jews of Alexandria some 300 years before Christ. The translation of the OT into Greek that they produced (called the Septuagint or LXX) translates the word Nephilim as "giants." We see a reference to giants again in the Wisdom of Solomon:

For even in the beginning, when arrogant giants were perishing, the hope of the world took refuge on a raft, and guided by your hand left to the world the seed of a new generation. — Wisdom of Solomon 14:6

Thus, this author has interpreted Genesis 6:4 to indicate that the Nephilim were monsters. In Baruch, we see giants again:

O Israel, how great is the house of God, how vast the territory that he possesses! It is great and has no bounds; it is high and immeasurable. The giants were born there, who were famous of old, great in stature, expert in war. — Baruch 3:24-26

This time the author understands giants to be the heroes of old, born of the sons of God and women.

Take all three together, and the Nephilim of Genesis 6:4 are the monstrous offspring of some angels and women.

The term "Watcher" is used in the OT exclusively in Daniel:

The sentence is rendered by decree of the watchers, the decision is given by order of the holy ones, in order that all who live may know that the Most High is sovereign over the kingdom of mortals; he gives it to whom he will and sets over it the lowliest of human beings.' — Daniel 4:17

This comes from a dream of Nebuchadnezzer that Daniel is asked to interpret. The "watchers" are an order of angels. From this particular passage, it seems that their task was to judge sin. The term "watcher" also is found in such Apocryphal works as the Book of Jubilees and the Book of Enoch. There seems to be an understanding that watchers are fallen angels. With the use of the term "Children of the Watchers" the Nephilim of Genesis 6:4 are interpreted to be the offspring of an order of fallen angels called the Watchers when they "went in to the daughters of humans."

This got my creative juices flowing, and evokes in me the image of some kind of secret society that acts as a group of depraved vigilantes meeting out their twisted version of justice through assassination. They are all descendants of Nephilim and get their name from their demonic progenitors. Since the Children of the Watchers are monsters, they can be any intelligent creature. Their ancestry and their vision of justice is what unites them. In addition to whatever powers and abilities they ordinarily have, Children of the Watchers gain all of the following abilities:

1) They surprise on a 1-4 and can only be surprised on a 1.
2) Any successful attack either from surprise or from the rear does an additional 1d6 damage for every 2HD the creature has.
3) They leave no tracks.

Regardless of their form, Children of the Watchers are all marked with the seal of their order: