After the flood, but still long before the days when men began to record his own history in written form, the fallen angels decided again to interfere with creation and establish upon the earth nephilim. This time however, the Powers attempting to ensure the order of creation succeeded so far that these twisted souls were limited in power, and no world shaking beings as of old were introduced to the pages of history. That is not to say the powers of these nephilim were not great or terrible, but they were more limited in scope than those of the first generations had been.
Still, as is the nature of nephilim, when they came together, their children frequently had at least some of the powers of both parents, and thus it came to pass that a girl was born with the ability and wit to combine her powers, and make of them more than was possible to either father or mother alone. Thus was potion making born in its most terrible form - an aerosol that she mixed of very air itself. She used this aerosol to drive the men around her mad with lust, and to forget their families, themselves, everything except the desire for her, and to do her will.
She destroyed entire communities, for she took no care of her servants. She would use them until they dropped dead from hunger, having neglected their own needs in their desire for her. As each town and village ran out of men of age to be affected by her aerosols, she would move on to next, leaving the women and children to morn, bewildered to understand why all their husbands, fathers and brothers had (each in turn as she needed them) abandoned them. As the number of devastated communities spread, their tears cried out to heaven for justice.
While the angels responsible for that part of the world were still debating amongst themselves what form that justice ought to take, and contending against the fallen who were protecting the evil girl1, she, committed another blasphemy, or rather, a pair of them.
The girl, who by now had grown to be a woman, had also come to have a girl child of her own. Being in essence a creature of selfishness, she resolved not to be herself burdened by the care of the child. Being not fully consumed by evil, she could not bring herself to destroy her child, nor to abandon it however, and so she resolved to make servants to do the work for her. She took the fireflies of the region, and twisted them into human form, yet still with wings, to compensate for their tiny size. She took the beetle’s, and likewise twisted them, intending them not to serve the child’s needs, but to guard the child in her stead from the beasts of the forest she found herself in. She tried to give each minds, to better fill their roles as the child’s care takers and guardians, but only partially succeeded. The newly made creatures grew strange, more intelligent to a degree, but only when in the company of others of their own kind. In isolation they were no brighter than the bugs from which they came. Having an utter disdain for men, who she so regularly abused and lead to their own destruction, all of these servant creatures took the form of females, regardless of their actual gender. And in some sort of twisted motherly instinct, continued to reproduce through laying eggs, which she gave them the instinct to do in hidden places, thinking thus to preserve her daughter’s own innocence.
As happened when the dwarfs made trolls, the angels were enraged by this blasphemy, the mockery of creation in daring to create in the image of man, and to defy the Creator in this way. In part because she had done so not once, but twice at once, and in part because of her crimes against the minds of men, and the bond of marriage, justice was swift, harsh, and brutal even compared to that done to the goblins.
From her innocent child, very little was demanded, one of the Powers appointed itself to, for the rest of the child’s life, bind the child’s magic, such that the child might as well be human. It was delivered to a human family, grew up ignorant of its past, and lived a normal, happy life.
For the mother the situation was very different. The powers pooled their abilities, and stripped her of nearly all her humanity. They bound her to the form of a bird, causing her to be able to assume her natural form only when her emotions were at their calmest. Should she lose control of her anger, her lust, her greed, or her envy, they caused her magic to turn against her and transform her back to the form of a bird. They took away the years of life natural to the nephilim, giving her the lifespan of the bird she now resembled.2 Thus, they thought, she would be forced to undo her own evil before she would, shortly, die. She would, as a bird, hunt the bug-based beings she herself had created, and then, as a bird, soon die. They underestimated her malice and lust.
Despite the problems her continual transformation to bird form gave her, the girl continued to prey upon men, and eventually succeeded in retaining her human form long enough give birth to a pair of twin girls, each of whom inherited not just her powers, but also her punishments.[241120-9] She raised the girls to hate men, and to follow her in her life of vice. As they in turn had children, this sisterhood of evil slowly grew.
The angels realised that in their quest for justice they had erred. Something needed to be done, another genocide eventually be necessary. And so they pooled their powers again, to punish the unbridled lusts these bird-women both exhibited and used to prey upon men.
- They bound their magic, such that their powers would never be inherited by any male child, to limit the growth of the community.
- They bound their magic in a variety of ways intended to allow them self defence, focus their attention on their crimes, and prevent the extraordinarily strong abilities that remained from combining with any new abilities at any future point in history. Exactly what the good angels did in this intermediate stage has been lost to history. We know only the end result after both sides acted with certainty.
The fallen angels were enraged that the evil community had been thus brought down, and struck back. They too pooled their powers, and twisted the community of women. The changes they wrought where many, and all intended to prevent the veela from ever repenting or becoming a stable and peaceful species, but rather to make of them a race of monsters that would terrorise the surrounding communities and drive the populations around them to hatred, despair, and other vices.
The good angels, seeing this backlash, ceased to meddle (with a few relatively minor exceptions centuries later) and focused their efforts on preventing the enemy from making full use of the veela. See Appendix I for the resulting state.
[241120-9]: this is normal for nephil, see The Nephilim
This battle happening entirely on the spiritual plane, and unknown to any mortal.↩︎
See Appendix I for details on lifespan. eagles and vultures have lifespans anywhere from 10 years to 30 years depending on subspecies. The angels actually gave her her approximately half a normal human’s life, which is more than most birds.↩︎