Adam's Powers
Adam, as you may know, is the Antichrist. With unimaginable powers at his disposal, he was meant to bring about the end of the days... well, was being the keyword here. Instead, being half angel and half demon as well as being raised by humans with no persuasion to either side made him completely human - mentally, anyway.
Now, this isn’t about Adam’s mental health (which is quite healthy, by the way) but just what kind of power such a being like Adam could have. Canon gives us a pretty good idea of what Adam can do with little to no hint as to the extent of it. Fanon, from what this mun has read, has a better idea on this, especially on one major point which I will get to a bit later.
Canon powers - Essentially, Adam is a god... or at least god-like. Adam’s power, in short, is Realty Bending, if you want a nice, neat explanation. Anything and Everything he could possibly want is just a thought away.
Here is a list of all the things Adam had done over the course of the book, divided into three sections based on Adam’s awareness of his powers, which grows during the plot.
Unaware - This is a list of all the things Adam had done unintentionally without any knowledge that he was anything other than a normal 11 year old boy.
*Controlling the weather - Adam, in a vision of perfect summers and the belief that that was what a child’s childhood should be like, made a ever lasting summer, only broken up by snow every Christmas and the like. If one’s perfect vision for the season required perfect seasonal weather, it happened in Tadfield.
*Vanishing uranium from power plants that kept running without them - Very specific, I know. At this time in the book, Adam was given a whole new outlook on life. An outlook that involved conspiracy theories, environmentalism, and a disappearing ozone, no rainforests, and a very bleak outlook for the future. He had just met the neighboring Occultist, Anathema, and he quite liked her and she quite disliked the nuclear power plants. Adam started to dislike them as well (even if it was just because he didn’t get to see any bubbling green stuff that one time the plant had an open day). When Adam likes people, he wants to make them happy and while Adam was sleeping, his power was awakening.
All the uranium in the nearby power plant vanished leaving only a lemon drop behind.
*Raising Atlantis - One of the conspiracy theories Adam learned about from Anathema.
*Tibetan Tunnels - All over world, as the end of the world approaches, people are finding Tibetan monks popping up like gophers in their gardens. Why? Another conspiracy theory Adam read about. If Adam believes it, it happens, no matter how silly.
*Aliens visiting Earth is a message of peace - Yep, conspiracy theory. And apparently, Adam is a Doctor Who fan.
Uncontrolled - This is when Adam’s power, fueled by his anger at the world’s carelessness, started to bloom and take control of him, making him the Antichrist he was meant to be. Fully in control of his powers now, they flood his young mind, bringing with it the knowledge of just what he can do, and what he was meant to do. This stage was ended when his humanity returned as he realized just what it was he was doing.
*The Kraken - The Kraken rose to destroy a whaling boat as Adam sets about trying to fix the world and save the whales.
*Rainforests reborn - All the areas where the rainforests were cut down had a very sudden regrowth. Within minutes, what was once a mall became a dense jungle as trees burst out of the concrete and reclaimed its land.
*Raining fish and blood - Well, it’s standard Apocalypse procedure, isn’t it?
*Controlling the actions of others - When Adam’s powers manifest, his three best friends are there to witness it. They watch helplessly as Adam talks about dividing the world up between them, creating people they can play with, creating new, better parents that won’t tell them to tidy up. They follow Adam back to the chalk quarry that is their favorite hang out, not by choice but because they had no control over their bodies. It was said that if they tried to resist, their legs would break and they’d be forced to follow anyway. It was the knowledge that Adam was doing this that helped Adam break through the power haze that was overtaking him.
Full Control - This is what Adam has done while in full control of his powers and of himself with his humanity intact. This is the longest list of the lot.
*Control of electronics - He commanded the gates of a air base to open for him with no password, ID, or any such device normal people would need.
*Control of people’s actions - Yes, again. He told a guard that it would be best if he just fell asleep. And the guard did.
*Fired the Four Horsemenpersons - Well, sent them back into the minds of men using some twigs and bits of string. Under normal circumstances, such an object wouldn’t compete with a real sword, scales, or circlet (Death got a pass since he can’t really be destroyed and is actually kinda nice, all things considered) but because it’s Adam, the bits of string and twigs defeated the real deal.
*Can look into your soul/what passes for your soul and erase you from existence by having it so you never existed at all - I think this might be best described by a quote from the book: Crowley was not used to people identifying him so readily, but Adam stared at him as though Crowley's entire life history was pasted inside the back of his skull and he, Adam, was reading it. [...] Those Below could make you cease to exist by, well, hurting you in unbearable amounts, but this boy could not only make you cease to exist merely by thinking about it, but probably could arrange matters so that you never had existed at all.
*Tell if someone is possessed/Make a new body - There is a bit in the book where the angel Aziraphale possessed a woman since his own body was ‘misplaced’. Adam could tell at a glance that there were two people in one body and with a thought, returned Aziraphale’s body to him, exactly as it was (unfortunately).
*Stopped Lucifer from rising/harming anyone - More on this later actually.
*Sent people away, across the globe - Sent an American soldier stationed at the air base back to his home in America.
*Resurrection - Over the course of the week that lead up to Adam coming into his powers at lot people died. Eleven are mentioned being resurrected but it’s safe to assume all those that died in Apocalypse Related Business were resurrected as well with little to no memory of what happened to them.
*Alters memories - All mortals present for the Almost End of the World have a very fuzzy memory about the whole thing. They know something happened, they’re just not sure what.
*Restored destroyed property - Aziraphale’s bookshop and Crowley’s Bentley were two casualties of the War but Adam made it right... almost. He got the books in Aziraphale’s bookshop a bit wrong (not a misprinted Bible in sight) but it was filled with very expensive books and the Bentley is as good as new, Queen albums and all.
*Alters reality - There’s a few examples of this in Adam’s quest to make things right. Warlock, the child originally thought to be the Antichrist was sent back home to America (Adam figured this was the best thing since America is, to Adam anyway, a magical place with thirty-nine plus flavors of ice cream! Greasy Johnson, the other child switched about at birth, was reading a magazine article about American Football that would change his life - when the magazine was printed, it was an article about photography in the desert. The last example of this in the book was Adam creating a hole in the holeless hedge - a hole that had always been there.
Next is a list of powers that I’ve added for RP purposes. For the most part, they’re not anything Adam shouldn’t be able to do in canon. If anything, they’re pretty mild in comparison. This list is also likely to grow as Adam does.
*Flight - He has wings as a physical manifestation of his angel side (even though Good Omens canon has demons with wings too) though he's still learning how to use them. He can also 'fly' the same way Supernatural angels do. Or rather, appear and disappear with a sound of wings flapping.
*Talk to Animals - He wants to know what they're talking about so he does. They can be quite chatty, actually.
*Talk to most nonliving objects and such - He mostly uses it to repair/fix things. He's quite good at it despite no training in any way - the object in question knows what's wrong with it, all Adam has to do is ask. He also uses it to ask locked and/or warded things if he can please come in as long as he behaves himself.
*Recognize most supernatural beings - Mostly, he'll notice if you're a supernatural being if it's written in your profile somewhere. Otherwise, well, he can be very oblivious.
*Mindreading - He generally doesn’t use it even though he easily could. It’s just rude, you know.
* Knowledge - If he wants to know something, all he has to do is want the knowledge. Study? Ha! He can just will the right answers into his head. But, Adam considers this cheating and generally doesn't do it. He'll take his C-, thank you.
*He can hear prayers - He can hear your prayers, he can hear them all. Every person, every creature, in existence, on Earth or Beyond, he can hear them. He’s just that powerful and that connected to the universe, there’s no way he couldn’t hear them.
With all these powers, it’s clear just how powerful Adam is. In Good Omens-verse, Adam is one of the most powerful beings in existence. This actually leads me into my next point.
Just how powerful is Adam?
In Good Omens, there are really only two beings in Adam’s league - Adam’s real father, Lucifer, and God. Needless to say, it’s a pretty safe bet that Grandad is more powerful than all the Good Omens characters combined. That just leaves Lucifer.
In canon, I feel this bit is left kind of unclear but in a lot of fanon, it is less so. The vast majority seem to think Adam is the stronger of the two.
For this journal, after much consideration, I agree.
For canon evidence, think of all of Adam’s powers - if the Devil could do all this, particularly stop someone from existing in the first place, wouldn’t he have done so a long time ago?
There is also the fact that Adam told the collective hosts of Heaven and Hell to shove off. Their reaction? To try and reason with him. No attempts to force him, or even yell at him. No real attempts to go against him really. They didn’t want Adam angry and they definitely didn’t want him angry at them.
When the Hosts retreat, Lucifer starts to come up to have a talk. It’s unclear what happens at this point. Adam waves a hand and Lucifer’s ascent is stopped... Whether Adam sent his father back down, sent him away, or just altered things so no one got hurt, or just froze time for the seemingly few seconds their talk seemed to take. One moment Satan is rising and the next, everything is perfectly normal and safe.
Lastly, to take another page from Supernatural’s Canon (Since my Adam has so many SPN leanings), it is confirmed in that canon that a mixed heritage results in very powerful offspring.
Jesse, the Antichrist in the SPN episode “I Believe The Children Are Our Future”, is the child of a human and a demon and is said to be much more powerful than both. It can also be noted that Jesse’s powers are very similar to Adam’s.
By this logic, a child of demon and angel stock is ever more powerful. But Adam is not the child of your average angel. Lucifer was an Archangel, the most powerful of the angels. That would certainly add to Adam’s power.
While Adam’s other parent is never mentioned by name and it was only confirmed that they were of demon stock. Now, it’s safe to assume that Lucifer wouldn’t pick just any demon for this - it’d have to be a pretty powerful one, second only to himself. And this is just assuming a second party was involved at all.
Now, if Adam’s power surpasses even Lucifer’s, why would he make Adam so powerful to begin with? To put it simply, Adam was supposed to be on his side. Everything ever written about the Antichrist said so: the Antichrist was suppose to lead Hell in the battle against Heaven, you’d want that being to be pretty damn powerful in that case. The hosts of Heaven and Hell took the Word to heart and the thought that Adam would rebel never crossed anyone’s mind. The confusion over Adam not doing what he was meant to was clear on both sides.
Now that I’ve gone over all the things Adam can do, I want to go over what Adam can’t. Everyone has weaknesses and Adam isn’t any different. The only problem with this is that no weaknesses are ever given, not in canon anyway, so I had to make some up. Still, they’re not as many as I would like but I hope they’re enough to satisfy anyone reading this.
First and foremost, Adam’s body is human, despite any physical manifestations of his Heavenly (wings) and Hellish (demon eyes) origins. He needs to eat, sleep, and all the stuff that keeps humans alive. He can be injured and even killed. At least his body can. While his body can be destroyed, the part of Adam that is Adam can not. If Adam’s body is killed, Adam would just be discorporate. Unlike proper angels or demons, Adam can’t just possess someone. Not only would Adam not do that on principle, it’s not even an option. All of what Adam is cannot be held in a normal human body that was not made specifically to house Adam.
If Adam loses his body, he has to remake it completely. Adam, in this discorporate form, is very vulnerable. He isn’t protected by a physical form, anchoring him to the realm. He would be at the mercy of summoning, traps, and exorcism.
The second weakness effects Adam’s physical body. To use another bit from Supernatural (I told you he had a lot of leaning in that direction), Adam wouldn’t be affected by a Devil’s Trap or Holy Oil. Being a being of both and neither, they would cancel out the other. But combined, it can hold him very efficiently. This is true of any workable combination of Demonic/Heavenly defenses. If it can be combined in such a way that it doesn’t interfere with the other, it should work on Adam.
There is a third weakness that related to the first two. Adam is unbelievably powerful being in a very human body. It’s a lot to hold in and he just can’t. Adam has to use his powers to keep what’s in his body at a non-fatal level. As Adam ages, his power increases and will leak out if Adam is not careful. This leads to a lot of accidental shifts in the fabric of reality that Adam has to then fix. It’s a very dangerous line Adam has to tread. He has to use enough power to keep it from killing him but he has to suppress it enough that he doesn’t accidentally use it.
All this power, if built up too much, will start to burn away at his human body. If it builds up enough, all the energy will release with enough force to take out the planet. This is usually not a problem as Adam keeps a good portion of his power maintaining Tadfield, protecting friends and family, and doing a few tricks here and there.
The Holy Oiled Devil’s Trap mentioned is one way to trap Adam’s powers inside him. The Devil’s Trap, while Adam is inside it, blocks his powers but doesn’t stop him from leaving it. Adam can just step out of it at any time. The Holy Oil he can’t touch, much like a normal angel but his powers work inside it. When the two are mixed, the Trap blocks Adam’s powers while the Oil prevents Adam from leaving the Trap.
When Adam manages to leave the trap, if he doesn’t explode that is, he will have to find a way to release the pent up power. It can be something as small as altering the weather to creating a new species of frog on Mars. It depends on how much power he has to exert to calm the power inside him.
Despite all the power Adam welds, he’s amazingly responsible. He has a set of rules he sticks to closely. He wants to be as human as he possibly can without rejecting what and who he is. Because of this, he may come off as cold, uncaring, or a dick, if you want. Yes, he can do things to make the world a better place with only a thought, he can bring back your loved ones, heal the sick, bring back the whales, regrow the rainforests, cure cancer, but he won’t. It’s not that he doesn’t want to help, it’s just that Adam knows, completely and utterly, that this is the right thing for him to do.
If he went about answering everyone’s prayers, healed the world on command, it would never stop. Humans would just start to rely on him to fix their mistakes, spare them from pain they may or may not have brought onto themselves, they’d become completely careless with the world, more than they tend to be now, since it was all taken care of by someone else.
Now, if you want his help in a completely human way, he will be more than willing to help.
The Rules
*He will not interfere with people’s personal lives without a very good reason.
*He will not answer people’s prayers - most people are better off that way, whether they realize it or not.
*He will not interfere with Heaven or Hell business unless it directly effects the welfare of the human race and even then, only when there is no hope that they can save themselves.
*He will not make major changes to reality for no reason and any unconscious changes will be returned to normal once discovered.
*He will not resurrect anyone unless they died because of him in any way or if he feels they didn’t deserve what happened to them. This last bit only if Hell or Heaven was involved in some way.
*He will not use his powers against anyone else without reason.
*He WILL have a protective shield around himself but it will only dissuade people looking to directly hurt him from getting within one mile of him. If someone gets within that mile and decides to hurt him, they will have a very good chance of doing so.
*He would heal fatal injuries caused to him but nonfatal ones will be left to heal as humanly as possible.
I hope this helped explain Adam’s powers and his boundaries sufficiently. I wrote this to help people who RP with me as well as help me have a better idea of how to play Adam in a RP friendly fashion.
If you have any questions, critics, or suggestions, feel free to post and tell me them.