Nashira

From Familia Niveum

Nashirah, the Blind Gazer, the Grim Celebrant, the Bearer of Good News

The angel Nashira is an abstracted, distant soul who seems to brim with a great secret which both troubles and sustains her. Her mien is grim, but her rare smile is of uncommon brilliance even among angels, and it is said her laughter- given just thrice since the begining of the Excrucian War- causes the air to ripple with all the hues of silver. Her most favored form resembles a tall, dusky woman- Arabic, perhaps, though no mortal race does her justice- with a glorious cascade of rave-and-onyx hair, trailing beneath and around her feet to trail just above Base Earth. Her large, expressive eyes are pure orbs of the liquid, Heavenly metal Aurichalcum.

Though she holds no special place in the hierarchy of Angels, Nashira the Gazer once stood aside all Creation- literally, for her ancient post was in the highest tower of heaven, contemplating the nothingness Beyond. Among the untainted Angels of Heaven, however, Nashirah now has one of the greatest involvement's with Earthly affairs and the conduct of the Valde Bellum.

In the begining, when the entire world was young, even as the Lady of Snowfall calmed the terrible echoes of Creation, Nashirah looked up. She was not the first Angel to do so, nor the last, but something she saw in the endless vault of blackness above Heaven fascinated her like it did none other among the Children of Cneth. By first nature, she was the Gazer.

Thus it was that when the Angels each made their first gift to Creation, Nashirah created the estate of Windows so that the beings below Heaven could always look out. Thus it was that when the tower rose above Heaven which could overlook all of Creation at once, Nashirah joined two others atop it. Nashirah looked out. Idris, by first nature the Scribe, looked down upon Creation to note all that happened in it. Lucifer, by first nature Persuasion, did not look but rather spoke, marshalling the endless ranks of spirits to the tasks of Heaven.

In those happy auririchalcine days, Nashirah's centuries of gazing outwards rewarded her with the first understanding beyond the puissant but simple intuitions of the newborn Angels. She brought the first inkling of Infinity into the close confines of Creation, and created Philosophy in a bid to understand her own discovery- one still in progress, millennia later. Her pursuits made her wise, far wiser than most of the Host, so much so that she stood among the few who ruled Creation as brothers and sisters in those days.

Those glory days could not last, and it is their denouement that shaped Nashirah as she is today. Lucifer, the Great Prince of the Angels, the brightest of the Three Stars that stood astride heaven, conceived (or at least, proclaimed) that he was to become the one true god of Creation, that the voice of Cneph was a lie, that beauty was a worthless cause, and many of the greatest Angels joined his corrupt faction. Because her understanding stood bright and clear, and because as one of the Stars she knew Lucifer better than almost any other, she stood at Sol Invictus' left hand as one of the chief generals of the loyal Angels.

At the final battle of the War in Heaven, Lucifer unleashed his most potent weapon- a radiant glory so terrible that, he thought, none could look upon it or approach it, and thus none could come forward to strike at him. The hour was desperate for Heaven when wise, learned Nashira realized the weakness of Lucifer's weapon. It was a lie, for an angel [i]could[/i] look upon the Morning Star- and nothing else, ever again. She met the Great Traitor's eyes and denounced him, and the weapon was broken- but the Gazer was no more, her incomparable vision given to her cause. Many more angels drew upon Sacrifice in that battle, many in manners even greater, but it was Nashira who brought it into being and housed it in her soul.

The battle won, the forces of Corruption were locked in hell- and Heaven was shattered. Now fell to Nashirah the final duties that would shape her as she is today. In homage to the dead, the blind general led the Angels in creation of a grove of Ashes, each colossal in scale, each created in the image of Yggdrasil, each with things of beauty and wonder hung about its branches as entire worlds depend from those of its template. These they concentrated as the first Memorials, and of this concept too Nashirah became the keeper, and through it the link between departed souls and the living world.

Finally, though, came the thing which marked Nashirah even worse than betrayal, even worse than Sacrifice. Some angels who had fought against Heaven had not fallen in battle, and had refused exile. They were too dangerous to be freed upon Creation, and Heaven could not be sullied with a prison. There was only one alternative, and so with heavy heart Nashira created the domain of Execution, ending their threat forever. To these Fallen Angels, too, she ordered Remembrance Ashes be raised.

In the wake of the War in Heaven, Nashira was a different being. She became stranger and stranger to her fellows, seeming to drift ever farther from their concerns, developing her many estates in subtle and ineffable ways. She turned her attention from the places Beyond she could no longer gaze into, and to the Veil of Death- the barrier across which [i]no[/i] power could gaze. It became her chief concern, and she discovered something which unsettled her, and all others who could grasp its import. Death was a thing not just greater than Imperial power (it must be that, of course, for it claimed Imperators) but separate from the Spirit World entirely. From the date on which she made that discovery and- to her later regret- let it slip, she has kept her knowledge secret from all other souls.

Some time after the War in Heaven, the Unconquered Sun gifted his general with beautiful eyes of Aurichalcum, but she refused his offer to give them sight. Many believe that she feared for Sacrifice if she accepted, had grasped through Philosophy that Estates could be damaged even before the Valde Bellum. Some even whisper that she foresaw the Excrucians themselves. When the gatekeeper of Heaven was slain by the weapon Abomination, some claim, she greeted the news not with the shock of her brethren but with a resigned, wistful look and a fitting memorial already prepared.

Whatever the truth of that, she has served Heaven as a subtle leader ever since. In this war she is no tactician and leader of charges but a deep strategist, laying plans achingly both achingly slow and, sometimes, shockingly inscrutable. Some fear that the incomprehensibility of her strategems could hide betrayal and disaster, and point out in whispered tones that her great obsessions lay outside Creation proper- precisely as do the Excrucians. Others take hope from this very fact, praying that she is even now nurturing some momentous discovery that will lead to the end of the Horsemen.