• The Sanctuary is a separate world, created after the failures of the Demonic and Mortal realms. All three are interconnected, and the Mortal realms are a sort-of neutral middle ground.

    The creator allegedly left to fight his own battles after the creation of the Sanctuary – however, the Seraphs, whom he left in charge, know that, in reality, he left because al three of his creations failed his expectations and thus deserved no more of his attention.

    There have been 13 Seraphs since their creation – Evangeline, Aria, Alana, Sandra, Victorie and Luna as the six female Seraphs; Matias, Faer, Xavier, Andre, Atolai, Enui as the six male seraphs; and Maelhi as the Thirteenth and outcast Seraph on whom the burden of all decisions ultimately lies. The Seraphs have near-ultimate power within the Sanctuary, as long as their decisions are brought before the rest of their kind and the votes are unanimous. No one sees the true form of the Seraphs – they remain in their castle, but wonder the Realms in a spirit-body – perfectly tangible, but not real.

    With time, the Seraphs grew corrupt. Lunar Angels were created to execute death sentences – the perfect assassins for any job. Rebel Angels came to be, Angels that had seen and understood the corruption of the Seraphs. Fallen Angels began to roam the Mortal Realms as a few Angels tasted bloodlust.

    Of Angels, there are two kinds – ones that fanatically follow the Seraphs’ will, not only never questioning it but feeling pride in what they are doing; and the ones that just follow without any sort of emotion attached to their actions – for them, orders are orders. There is no difference between them other than their mentality.

    Of Lunars, there are also two kinds – ones that kill and ones that have been around for too long and wish to take up civil professions. The latter are the Smiths and Healers and Retrievers – people necessary for the survival of the Lunar kind and rather respected for that fact.

    Fallens are split in two as well. There are the normal Fallens – emotionless killers, beyond saving; and ones that have regained their emotions. The latter can control their blade and generically are able to feel and think for themselves. Of those, there are some that wish to return to Angelic status.

    Rebels wish to shape the realm to what the Creator wanted it to be. They are perfectionists and idealists with their own beliefs, taught to put their kind before anything else. They are not allowed out of the Sanctuary because the Seraphs wish not for the truth to get out to the Mortal Realms, and are persecuted within the realm.

    The races are generically distinguished by their colors. Angels are yellow, white, and blue, sometimes silver and gold. Their blood is white with a slight blue tint, hair blonde and eyes blue. Rebels’ colors are silver and black, hair ranging from silver to gray to white and eyes anywhere from blue to silver. Their blood is silver with a black tint. Lunars are primarily black with little silver; black hair and dark eyes, silver-tinted black blood, and a silver band around the wrist. Fallens are black and red: any color eyes, black hair with any sort of pattern in red, and red-black blood. The Angelic kinds dress in accordance with their kind-colors, and thus their identification is fairly easy to one that knows all of the Angelic types.

    The wings of all four races are different, but can be hidden with a simple spell known to all kinds from birth. Angel-wings are pure white; Rebel wings are similar but they have a black crest on the joint; Lunar-wings are black, and, depending on the Lunar’s skill, there may be silver streaks – the streaks will move about if the Lunar is very highly ranked; Fallen wings are black, each feather tipped off in red as though it had been dipped in blood.

    There are two ways an Angel is created. The simpler is when they were born an Angel, to two Angelic parents. The other – this is called a ‘dead’ Angel – is an ex-human that died and was deemed worthy of Angelic status. That is judged by the Seraphs at the time of the person’s death.

    ‘Dead’ Angels get specific privileges in the Sanctuary for the first thirty days of their existence. After death, a human is teleported for an hour into the castle of Seraphs where they become young again – appearing to be about twenty. Then they are placed into the community, their appearance the same as it was in the Mortal realms, just younger. It takes thirty days for their hair to turn blond, their complexion to pale, and their eyes to turn blue. During those thirty days, wings are grown and magic is developed. Once thirty days are over, there is no possible way to distinguish a ‘dead’ Angel from a ‘born’ one, other than the lack of experience in the use of magic.

    Once an Angel sees the corruption of the Seraphs, it has two choices – either to turn a blind eye or to truly believe in it and become a Rebel. The transformation is painful – that much the Seraphs could do to prevent Rebels from becoming more numerous. However, it only proves their true intent to the Angel, and further convinces the beliefs of newly-formed Rebels. Rebels can also be born – there are old Rebel families dating back to the initial appearance of their kind in the Sanctuary.

    There is no possible way to become a Lunar but to be born one. Lunars live forever unless drained of magic, and the original fifty still reside in the Sanctuary. Occasionally, there are new Lunars born, and the race has expanded.

    To become a Fallen, an Angel has to feel blood-lust – pleasure in a kill. The transformation is momentary – the Angel loses the ability to feel, is rid of all memories, and armed with a soul-less spirit-blade. In all, Fallens are empty killers, unable to do anything other than take lives. Because of the lack of emotions, there are no born Fallens.

    Due to the power of the weapon, anyone killed by a Fallen dies forever, and is not resurrected as an Angel or Demon. The weapon itself is a piece of the Fallen’s soul, and desires to consume as many souls of Mortals as possible, draining them when said Mortals are killed. Thus, if a Fallen regains their emotions and wishes to once again become an Angel, they must deliver a hundred souls to the Seraphs. For that, they must part with their weapon and regain their memory – a process just as painful as becoming a Rebel.

    Seraphs cannot change what they are, but they can easily change their spirit’s appearance. However, all of them have settled on a permanent ‘stereotype’ for their spirit-appearance – a youth with silver-and-blond hair, light eyes ranging from blue to completely white, and the pale skin characteristic to all Angelic kinds. Their wings are white with a black crest – ironically like a Rebel’s – and they are six in number, three on each side of the body.

    Their sprit-form is achieved during meditation. Frequently, the Seraphs will wonder the Realms in their form, since sitting in one place without outside interaction had gotten boring during the first hundred years.

    The magic of all Angelic kinds deals mostly with the fifth dimension and the space between the Realms. They are able to teleport, hide objects and call them back out of ‘nowhere’, but they are limited in their fields of influence. Some Angels are also taught to heal, but the skill is a rare one.

    Rebels lack the magic necessary to move between realms, and thus must remain in the Sanctuary. Angels are at home within both Mortal and Angelic realms, and their teleportations do not drain their magic at all – therefore, they can endlessly move between realms. Lunar teleportations require a significant use of magic and the magic must be ‘recharged’ in the Sanctuary – therefore, there have been instances where Lunars were stuck in the Mortal realms. Fallens generically do not use magic, but there have been a few infiltrations of the Sanctuary when they decided that moving to another realm would give them more kills.

    For Angels, there is a fatal flaw. The lack of belief in the existence of the Creator will cause an Angel to simply disappear – as their belief wanes, their form will become more and more transparent, until there will be nothing left. Lunars lose magic in the Mortal realms – and thus are not able to remain there for long, for when a Lunar loses all their magic, they die. For them, the silver band on their wrist is an indication of how much longer they have to live in the Mortal realms – if the silver is dull, they have nearly no magic left. Rebels are hated within the Sanctuary, and that in and of itself is a weakness. They rarely have spirit-blades to defend themselves with, and commonly have to deal with simple blades, frequently brought by Angels from the Mortal realms and then discarded. Their magic is also very basic, but, on occasion, there have been instances when a rare power was used by a Rebel – for example, Sky’s Song or Storm’s Sight. Song allows Sky to control the objects around her, while Sight allows Storm to twiddle with the fourth dimension – time. For Fallens, their only weakness is that they have no emotions, and cannot analyze a situation from an outside point of view. They must kill, and that is all.