Uriel

Uriel (pronounced /ˈjʊəriəl/) is a famous inhabitant of Nuclearth who looks like a handsome blond man with great, white, feathery wings. Although he was a foundling of unknown parentage, his physiology seems to clearly mark him out as a mutant. Still, based on his appearance and his behavior, there are many who believe him to be a literal angel, sent from Heaven to help humanity in the wake of the nuclear apocalypse. This view is shared by Uriel himself, who goes so far as to gather followers and prophesy of future events.

History

Although his birthplace is unknown, Uriel was discovered as a baby by an old woman named Clever Griet, having apparently been abandoned in the forest near her home in the city of Zwolle, in what had before the war been the Netherlands. Griet took the baby home and raised him herself, her own children having years ago grown up and moved away. It was she who named him Uriel, after the traditional archangel, based on his wings and his angelic appearance.

The name notwithstanding, it's unclear to what extent Griet really believed the baby she found was an angel; while she made some statements that implied this, she had always been known to have a wry sense of humor. Also, by the time she found Uriel, she was very advanced in age and may have been somewhat senile. Be that as it may, whether Griet believed it or not, many other inhabitants of Zwolle did wonder whether Uriel was really an angel, especially since he showed remarkable intelligence and resiliency—not enough to be demonstrably superhuman, but definitely well above average. And when Griet died of old age when Uriel was six years old, there was no shortage of other townspeople willing to jointly raise the youth. In fact, a sort of unofficial cult grew around the child, and soon word spread to people of other towns as well.

With such an upbringing, surrounded by people who spoke of his special, semi-divine nature, it may not be surprising that Uriel grew to believe in it himself. Certainly not everyone believed that Uriel was anything more than a particularly intelligent mutant, but those who did were the people with whom he had the most contact. So Uriel grew into his role, and conscientiously tried to do his best to live up to the image people had of him. Whether or not there was anything literally angelic about him, Uriel was certainly a thoughtful and benevolent young man, which of course only convinced his devotees still further about his celestial nature. Finally, when he was about fifteen years old, Uriel decided that if he was set on the world to bring about God's will, he had better do so more broadly, and resolved to leave home and travel around the world doing good works.

In the fourteen years since, this is more or less what Uriel has continued to do, and through his own preaching and the word spread from his existing faithful he's gathered more of a following all over the Earth. For the most part, he does his best to right wrongs and advise and comfort the distraught wherever he finds them, though over time more aspects have been added to his ministry. In particular, it wasn't until four years after he left Zwolle that he began to proclaim predictions about the future and give people specific commandments.

Description

Aside from his white, feathery wings, Uriel appears completely human, albeit as an unusually attractive human. He has a slender build, a heart-shaped face with chiseled cheekbones, and wavy blond hair. His eyes are large, blue, and very slightly slanted; his nose is narrow and slightly upturned at the end; his lips are red and frequently curved in a smile. Although he aged normally until he hit his early teens, after that his physical aging seems to have slowed down; Uriel is now almost thirty years old (and may possibly be older, if he was older than he looked when Clever Griet found him), but still looks around twenty.

Although his wings certainly have the appropriate proportional width for a flying bird, Uriel doesn't have the hollow bones of a bird, and it doesn't seem as if his wings should be able to provide the lift to allow him to actually fly. Despite this, however, Uriel quite clearly can and frequently does fly, and has even been known to do it carrying up to two other people. It seems, therefore, as with many other flying mutants of Nuclearth, that something other than solely his wings is responsible, most probably a psionic ability of some sort.

Prophecies

One of the things Uriel is best known for is his prophecies in which he speaks of events yet to come. Although his prophesying isn't really as perpetual as many presume—the perception of his constantly spouting elaborate predictions everywhere he goes is a drastic exaggeration—it's true that he does claim the power of prophecy, and he does claim to foretell future events.

Occasionally, Uriel speaks prophecies dealing with local matters, warning of coming disasters or promising the resolution of a problem a settlement is currently facing. Better known, however, are the broader prophecies he sometimes speaks, referring to events that will affect whole continents or even the entire world. Among other things, he has predicted a "changing storm", a "plague of teeth", and a "baptism by light", as the subjects of these prophecies have come to be commonly known. His best known and most detailed prophecy of all, however, concerns a coming kingdom of God that he says will one day exist on the Earth, much of what Uriel does being to prepare the way for its arrival.

Though it's easy to dismiss Uriel's prophecies as the ravings of a madman, too many of them have come true to be readily dismissed as coincidence. None of his more wide-ranging prophecies has yet come to fruition, but those all are given without a specific date or deadline, so the fact that they haven't been fulfilled doesn't necessarily disprove them; a believer in Uriel could always counter with the simple statement that they haven't been fulfilled yet. Many of his local prophecies, however, have in fact come to pass, albeit not always in the way that their hearers have expected. This does not, of course, necessarily establish that Uriel is truly speaking the word of God. It could still be that his prophecies' fulfillment is a coincidence—a very unlikely coincidence, but not impossible. It could be that he's exploiting some senses and awareness he may not even be aware of to project future happenings. It could be that he can genuinely see the future somehow, at least in part, but that this ability is psionic in origin rather than divine. Some, however, have suggested a more disturbing explanation. It could be the case not that Uriel is seeing events that would have happened anyway, but that Uriel himself is bringing these events about. This doesn't mean he's consciously fulfilling his own prophecies, but he may have some wide-ranging psionic ability with which he subconsciously manipulates circumstances and occurrences to bring to pass the things he predicts. If this is the case, it would put an entirely different light on his dire predictions of natural disasters.

Nephilim

Although Uriel preaches and practices a great number of virtues, sexual abstinence is not one of them. Uriel has had relations with a large number of women, and has produced by many of these unions children, which he calls nephilim. The women who bear Uriel's nephilim are called Uriel's "brides", and one of Uriel's prophecies states that when the holy kingdom arrives, all his brides will be restored to eternal youth and beauty and will have important parts to play, their respective rôles in the coming kingdom depending on their own actions and proclivities. The nephilim themselves, however, play an even larger part in his prophecies, and he foretells great things to come from each of them. Indeed, all of the nephilim have shown some level of (presumably psionic) power, and some of the oldest have already made significant marks for themselves in the world.

Further evidence that something unusual is involved when Uriel fathers children comes from an incident early in his ministry, when he was only twenty years old. Indulging in some experimentation, Uriel patronized the services of a young male prostitute in Cedar City named Billy-Boy. To the surprise of everyone involved, Billy-Boy became pregnant, and nine months later bore healthy twin children (which temporarily opened a new aperture in his body in order to exit). Thus far, Uriel has not repeated the experiment, partly because of the potential trauma involved for the impregnated male partner and partly because, youthful experimentation notwithstanding, he has little sexual interest in males, and thus Billy-Boy (as he was then called; he later ran away from Cedar City and changed his name) remains his only male "bride". Still, the fact that Uriel could impregnate a male at all demonstrates that there is something not normal about his procreative powers. There has been speculation that if Uriel can cause a male to bear a child, then perhaps he could do so for anything, that perhaps he could father children by other animals if he chose to. Uriel has never shown any desire to put this to the test, having no proclivity for bestiality.

Psionic abilities

If Uriel's flight and/or his "prophecies" are psionic in nature, they're certainly not his only psionic abilities. Uriel has the power to heal the wounds of others or cure their diseases with a touch, and to mend even more serious injuries with a little more time and effort. He has demonstrated some level of mind reading ability, though the exact extent of this power remains unclear. There's some evidence he may also have some power of mind control, though if so he seems loath to use it.

Uriel also has a number of powers centered around light. He can at will cause any part of his body to glow with varying intensities or colors. He can shoot out a burning ray of light capable of searing its way through walls—clearly this also makes a potent weapon, but he doesn't use it against living beings except in dire emergencies. When he wishes it so, his entire body can glow brightly and seem transfigured into something grand and terrible, the dreadful majesty of his form astonishing those who see it and paralyzing them with awe. Uriel calls this ability "appearing in his glory", and uses it sparingly, only when he finds it useful to impress a large group of potential followers, or to stop hostile parties in their tracks.

Cult

Many of those who venerate Uriel and consider him a true angel of God have gathered into small groups to better act on his prophecies and try to live by his precepts. These cults of Uriel do not form a unified whole, comprising instead a number of scattered congregations. Not all of them really live by what Uriel says; some of them, in fact, have never even seen Uriel and only have his words secondhand, and in many cases apparently badly garbled in the retelling. Correcting the errors of his nominal devotees is a matter that Uriel is deeply concerned with; he is mortified by those that, as he sees it, practice evil in his name. Some of the more extreme of the cults are evil by nearly any measure; some have even taken up such vile practices as human sacrifice. Naturally, when Uriel finds out about such wayward cults, he puts a stop to them by any means necessary, but some cults in out-of-the-way places may go a long time without discovery. Still, these nefarious cults are very much an exception to the rule; most cults of Uriel, if misguided, are at least well intentioned and basically beneficent. Some of them undertake specific activities to spread Uriel's gospel—such as publishing collections of his prophecies—, while others keep to themselves and meditate in private on Uriel's words.

There are also a number of cults that directly venerate not Uriel himself, but one of his nephilim. The largest of these, based (perhaps inevitably) in Australia, is centered around a thirteen-year-old daughter of Uriel's named Holy Hannah. Other significant cults of nephilim include the Godparents of Florida and the Chinese Monks of Adoration.