App for underworldwars
|| Player Information ||
Name: PG
Personal Journal: quantumvelvet
Time zone: EST/EDT
Contact: E-mail: aoibhail [at] gmail [dot] com, AIM: quasiintuitive
Current Characters: Marian Hawke (leaporfall) and River Tam (ofunquietwater)
|| Character Information ||
Fandom: Supernatural
Name: Balthazar
Canon Point: Following The Man Who Knew Too Much
Is this character dead? Yes.
History: Here at Supernatural Wiki, here at Super-wiki.
Personality: Balthazar, if taken at face value, does not exactly fit the picture most would have of an angel. He is quite easily mistaken for a hedonistic, venal, arrogant, duplicitous coward, more interested in fulfilling his own whims and grudges than in anything that might possibly be considered a higher cause. While he does possess some of these traits, it is not quite to the degree that initial impressions would suggest. In fact, he has a habit of playing up his poorer aspects, the better to make others underestimate him and hide his true aims. Nowhere is this more clearly displayed than in the episode My Heart Will Go On, when he passes off significantly altering history as a bid to remove the movie Titanic from existance and make sure Celine Dion never becomes successful. While Fate catches on to the fact that Balthazar actually altered history to create new souls for Castiel's civil war, the other characters are all too willing to believe he would be that petty - and thus don't realize what's actually going on behind the scenes.
Balthazar does have a hedonistic streak, born equally of curiosity (and enjoyment) about the finer parts of mortal life and freedom, and of a sort of ground-down fatalism. As an angel, his millennia-long life was a structured thing, made up entirely of the drive to follow orders. There was always a plan, albeit one that was often obscure. Then the apocalypse was averted, the plan went out the window, and suddenly everyone was free to do anything. Balthazar didn't, at first - he was a part of the civil war, stating in his first appearance that he stood for Castiel in heaven. But this, atop all the other fighting done amongst the Host, wore him down. He determined that the fighting wasn't something that could be stopped, no matter who came out on top of the current doctrinal struggle. And so he faked his own death, stole a large portion of heaven's arsenal, and carved out a niche for himself on Earth. With no orders to follow, he decided that he would try everything the human world had to offer - because he could, because he wanted to, and because he saw little point in not doing so.
Despite his jaded demeanor, Balthazar is capable of intense loyalty. When he rejoined the civil war, it was clearly out of friendship more than out of principle - he cares more for Castiel, as one of his closest friends, than his cause, which he still isn't sure will play out well. This loyalty is not, however, blind. Balthazar is more than willing to point out his friend's flaws, and when necessary commit what will inevitably be seen as a betrayal in an attempt to save him (and potentially everyone else, not in the least himself) from a very bad decision - even then, it is a decision he has difficulty with and second-guesses. While Balthazar isn't seen interacting with any of the other angels (save for Raphael, who is the leader of the opposing side), it's likely that this loyalty would extend to any of his brothers and sisters he might be close to.
Balthazar is as arrogant as any celestial. He is ancient and powerful, and not at all used to being thwarted. He sees humans as lesser, and has no qualms about manipulating them to serve his purposes. He doesn't do so nearly as maliciously as some of the more hard-line angels, however - he doesn't hate humanity, he just hasn't really seen the interest of them as individuals yet (and is irritated when they act as though they're his equals). The Winchesters, by virtue of their involvement in averting the Apocalypse and their importance to Castiel, come the closest to gaining his regard (once he's gotten over his grudge at being trapped and threatened), but even then, he does not quite see them as equals the way he would other angels. He does, however, listen to them even if he's loath to admit it, and in the end is willing to work with them to keep Castiel from opening purgatory.
Caution is Balthazar's watchword. He hedges his bets, prefers to have the deck stacked in his favour, and usually either has or makes sure he appears to have something to gain by any action. This doesn't mean that he's entirely averse to risk - he just prefers his risks to either be calculated or have enough potential for gain to be worth it. (Most of his gambits are, in fact, fairly risky - faking his death and stealing the weapons, turning Raphael's vessel to salt, pitching his lot in with Castiel, all the way on down to playing mole in an attempt to keep purgatory from opening.) His methods skew heavily towards trickery and ambush, and he avoids direct, head-on conflict when possible. He has some facility for playing the double agent, if not, in the end, enough to keep him from being caught.
Balthazar is witty, with a penchant for sarcasm, innuendo, and the occasional horrible joke. He cultivates an air of mocking nonchalance to cover both his machinations and any uncertainty he might feel. He only really lets this mask slip willingly around those he's close to, and even then it's a rare occurrence. When it slips unwillingly, it's generally a sign that he's either genuinely rattled, or very, very angry.
Skills | Powers: Balthazar has the full complement of angelic abilities. He can fly - effectively teleportation with wingbeats as a sound effect. He can, at least in his own world, travel through time, and can see when a time-displaced being is supposed to be from. He is capable of telekinesis, and though he isn't shown using it, he is likely capable of pyrokinesis as well, as it seems a standard part of the angelic arsenal. Like all angels, he is telepathic (while he's only shown using this for communication, he can presumably enter dreams and render people unconscious, as these are also standard angelic abilities in his canon). He can hear prayers, and cloak himself from sight. He is an extremely proficient spellcaster, and has an impressive store of arcane knowledge - he is able to send the Winchesters to an alternate dimension via spellwork, and knows off the top of his head how to keep a human soul from being unable to re-enter a body. He can locate people remotely, provided they aren't warded against angelic scrying, and can detect unseen entities and see magic (such as the anti-angel wards used by Crowley in the season finale). Physically, he is stronger than a man his size should be, has vastly enhanced stamina, and can shrug off injuries made by most conventional or magical weapons. He is highly resistant to disease and intoxicants (and presumably other poisons as well). While he isn't ever shown in upfront combat, he does possess an angelic blade, and, being referred to as a warrior, is almost certainly proficient in its use.
In practical terms, Balthazar is only able to interact with humanity when in possession of a vessel - a human from a specific set of bloodlines who has freely consented to his occupation of their body. Outside of a vessel, the true form of an angel is a being of energy that tends to break glass and rupture eardrums when speaking, and burn the eyes out of anyone who looks upon them - useful for wide-scale destruction, not so useful for anything else.
While powerful, Balthazar is not invulnerable. He can be hurt or killed by another angel's blade, certain weapons in heaven's arsenal (Lot's salt is the only weapon explicitly shown to harm angels, but given how hot both sides of the war were to get the arsenal, there are certainly other unnamed objects that could likewise harm an angel), or by Death's scythe - or other canons' equivalents of such weapons. He can be hurt with no need for weapons by sufficiently powerful forces - archangels, cambions, Eve, the direct use of a soul's power, or similar out-of-canon forces. There are spells that can harm or forcibly exorcise an angel, and he is susceptible to angel-targeted summoning, banishing, and warding spells. He can be trapped in an ignited ring of holy oil, or destroyed if doused in it and set alight. While he has the ability to shrug off a lot of damage, he is not insusceptible to pain - canonically, angels have been broken via torture.
Angelic power depends either on their connection to heaven or the strength of their Grace - when in heaven's good graces, they seem able to use most of their powers with impunity. When cut off, use of their power weakens their Grace - the longer they're cut off and the more power they channel, the weaker they become, until they are rendered effectively mortal. Even "mortal", however, there is evidence that angels retain their ability to perceive the supernatural, though not to interact with it, and to cast magic that doesn't require angelic power (such as the angel-banishing sigils or any other magic a vanilla human could pull off).
First Person Sample: Well. This is unnecessarily grim. [The man visible on the video screen looks to be somewhere in his late forties, fair-haired and blue eyed and wearing an expression of studied, mildly amused nonchalance.] I suppose something is better than nothing, but if I had to wake up to some pagan version of the afterlife, I'd have much preferred Valhalla. Those Norse, now they knew how to have fun with death.
Although...if this is a bit of a mash-up anyways, I'd appreciate it if someone could point me towards the nymphs. I still have a few things to cross off my list.
Third Person Sample: Intellectually, Balthazar knew what happened when an angel died beneath the blade. He'd seen enough deaths on both sides of the war, seen enough evidence of it beforehand, that it was seared into his mind. The brilliance of the Grace flaming out, the almost-peaceful look of the emptied vessel, the broad stretch of ash in the shape of wings that would be the only indication to any outsider of what once was housed in the dead flesh. He knew what happened, could time it almost down to the instant. He imagined most angels could, by now.
What he didn't know, what he didn't anticipate, was just how much it would hurt. All that power, all those millennia of experience, unravelling at the speed of light, spilling out of one neat little hole like a supernova in miniature. There was no describing that feeling of erasure, of obliteration.
His last coherent thought was contemplation of the irony: that his brother, his friend, had just stabbed him in the back.
His next coherent thought was, Why do I hear water? It was followed shortly after by, Why do I hear anything? If there was one thing - and it probably was the only thing - that the factions of heaven agreed on, it was that death, for angels, was final. Humans got heaven or hell, but when one of their kind died, that was it. There had only ever been one exception to that rule, and that exception was the one who had oh-so-recently driven a knife through Balthazar's spine.
Curiousity at this twist in his tale was enough to spur Balthazar to open his eyes, though he was tempted to keep them shut against the chance of this utter impossibility unravelling. Were it not for the utter shock of being alive, he might have savored the sensation of coming to - despite his best efforts, he had never before actually achieved unconsciousness. As it was, he pushed himself up with a half swallowed groan, and looked around in utter bemusement at the river, at the boat being driven along by... No. It couldn't be.
It was.
He was in a boat, on a river, being ferried along by bloody Charon, of all creatures. The ridiculousness of it, of waking at all, of waking in a pagan afterlife that had long since been relegated to nothing more than myth, spurred a laugh. It was half-incredulous and entirely ragged, but the sound jolted him back to himself. Just in time, too, as the boat bumped against a dock, and he found himself ushered out with no words and precious little ceremony.
"I don't suppose you take plastic?" he asked as something was pressed into his hands. "I'd've brought coin, but I didn't realize I'd be reborn in a fairy tale."
He earned no response but for the lift of one skeletal hand in a point at something off in the distance. At a city, he realized upon glancing, automatic, in that direction. "Don't tell me..." he began, and trailed off as he looked back over his shoulder to see - no one. And that was all on its own disconcerting. "Oh, that's just brilliant."
He turned the object the ferryman had left him with over in his hands, idly, and the motion was enough to recall it to him. He looked down to study it, eyebrows lifting as he recognized one of the iPads several of his paramours had been so enamoured of. Or not quite an iPad; the branding was different, though he didn't recognize it.
Stranded alone, in a pagan afterlife, with nothing but a quaint bit of human electronic gadgetry for explanation. Well, Balthazar decided, he may as well see if anyone on the other end picked up.
Name: PG
Personal Journal: quantumvelvet
Time zone: EST/EDT
Contact: E-mail: aoibhail [at] gmail [dot] com, AIM: quasiintuitive
Current Characters: Marian Hawke (leaporfall) and River Tam (ofunquietwater)
|| Character Information ||
Fandom: Supernatural
Name: Balthazar
Canon Point: Following The Man Who Knew Too Much
Is this character dead? Yes.
History: Here at Supernatural Wiki, here at Super-wiki.
Personality: Balthazar, if taken at face value, does not exactly fit the picture most would have of an angel. He is quite easily mistaken for a hedonistic, venal, arrogant, duplicitous coward, more interested in fulfilling his own whims and grudges than in anything that might possibly be considered a higher cause. While he does possess some of these traits, it is not quite to the degree that initial impressions would suggest. In fact, he has a habit of playing up his poorer aspects, the better to make others underestimate him and hide his true aims. Nowhere is this more clearly displayed than in the episode My Heart Will Go On, when he passes off significantly altering history as a bid to remove the movie Titanic from existance and make sure Celine Dion never becomes successful. While Fate catches on to the fact that Balthazar actually altered history to create new souls for Castiel's civil war, the other characters are all too willing to believe he would be that petty - and thus don't realize what's actually going on behind the scenes.
Balthazar does have a hedonistic streak, born equally of curiosity (and enjoyment) about the finer parts of mortal life and freedom, and of a sort of ground-down fatalism. As an angel, his millennia-long life was a structured thing, made up entirely of the drive to follow orders. There was always a plan, albeit one that was often obscure. Then the apocalypse was averted, the plan went out the window, and suddenly everyone was free to do anything. Balthazar didn't, at first - he was a part of the civil war, stating in his first appearance that he stood for Castiel in heaven. But this, atop all the other fighting done amongst the Host, wore him down. He determined that the fighting wasn't something that could be stopped, no matter who came out on top of the current doctrinal struggle. And so he faked his own death, stole a large portion of heaven's arsenal, and carved out a niche for himself on Earth. With no orders to follow, he decided that he would try everything the human world had to offer - because he could, because he wanted to, and because he saw little point in not doing so.
Despite his jaded demeanor, Balthazar is capable of intense loyalty. When he rejoined the civil war, it was clearly out of friendship more than out of principle - he cares more for Castiel, as one of his closest friends, than his cause, which he still isn't sure will play out well. This loyalty is not, however, blind. Balthazar is more than willing to point out his friend's flaws, and when necessary commit what will inevitably be seen as a betrayal in an attempt to save him (and potentially everyone else, not in the least himself) from a very bad decision - even then, it is a decision he has difficulty with and second-guesses. While Balthazar isn't seen interacting with any of the other angels (save for Raphael, who is the leader of the opposing side), it's likely that this loyalty would extend to any of his brothers and sisters he might be close to.
Balthazar is as arrogant as any celestial. He is ancient and powerful, and not at all used to being thwarted. He sees humans as lesser, and has no qualms about manipulating them to serve his purposes. He doesn't do so nearly as maliciously as some of the more hard-line angels, however - he doesn't hate humanity, he just hasn't really seen the interest of them as individuals yet (and is irritated when they act as though they're his equals). The Winchesters, by virtue of their involvement in averting the Apocalypse and their importance to Castiel, come the closest to gaining his regard (once he's gotten over his grudge at being trapped and threatened), but even then, he does not quite see them as equals the way he would other angels. He does, however, listen to them even if he's loath to admit it, and in the end is willing to work with them to keep Castiel from opening purgatory.
Caution is Balthazar's watchword. He hedges his bets, prefers to have the deck stacked in his favour, and usually either has or makes sure he appears to have something to gain by any action. This doesn't mean that he's entirely averse to risk - he just prefers his risks to either be calculated or have enough potential for gain to be worth it. (Most of his gambits are, in fact, fairly risky - faking his death and stealing the weapons, turning Raphael's vessel to salt, pitching his lot in with Castiel, all the way on down to playing mole in an attempt to keep purgatory from opening.) His methods skew heavily towards trickery and ambush, and he avoids direct, head-on conflict when possible. He has some facility for playing the double agent, if not, in the end, enough to keep him from being caught.
Balthazar is witty, with a penchant for sarcasm, innuendo, and the occasional horrible joke. He cultivates an air of mocking nonchalance to cover both his machinations and any uncertainty he might feel. He only really lets this mask slip willingly around those he's close to, and even then it's a rare occurrence. When it slips unwillingly, it's generally a sign that he's either genuinely rattled, or very, very angry.
Skills | Powers: Balthazar has the full complement of angelic abilities. He can fly - effectively teleportation with wingbeats as a sound effect. He can, at least in his own world, travel through time, and can see when a time-displaced being is supposed to be from. He is capable of telekinesis, and though he isn't shown using it, he is likely capable of pyrokinesis as well, as it seems a standard part of the angelic arsenal. Like all angels, he is telepathic (while he's only shown using this for communication, he can presumably enter dreams and render people unconscious, as these are also standard angelic abilities in his canon). He can hear prayers, and cloak himself from sight. He is an extremely proficient spellcaster, and has an impressive store of arcane knowledge - he is able to send the Winchesters to an alternate dimension via spellwork, and knows off the top of his head how to keep a human soul from being unable to re-enter a body. He can locate people remotely, provided they aren't warded against angelic scrying, and can detect unseen entities and see magic (such as the anti-angel wards used by Crowley in the season finale). Physically, he is stronger than a man his size should be, has vastly enhanced stamina, and can shrug off injuries made by most conventional or magical weapons. He is highly resistant to disease and intoxicants (and presumably other poisons as well). While he isn't ever shown in upfront combat, he does possess an angelic blade, and, being referred to as a warrior, is almost certainly proficient in its use.
In practical terms, Balthazar is only able to interact with humanity when in possession of a vessel - a human from a specific set of bloodlines who has freely consented to his occupation of their body. Outside of a vessel, the true form of an angel is a being of energy that tends to break glass and rupture eardrums when speaking, and burn the eyes out of anyone who looks upon them - useful for wide-scale destruction, not so useful for anything else.
While powerful, Balthazar is not invulnerable. He can be hurt or killed by another angel's blade, certain weapons in heaven's arsenal (Lot's salt is the only weapon explicitly shown to harm angels, but given how hot both sides of the war were to get the arsenal, there are certainly other unnamed objects that could likewise harm an angel), or by Death's scythe - or other canons' equivalents of such weapons. He can be hurt with no need for weapons by sufficiently powerful forces - archangels, cambions, Eve, the direct use of a soul's power, or similar out-of-canon forces. There are spells that can harm or forcibly exorcise an angel, and he is susceptible to angel-targeted summoning, banishing, and warding spells. He can be trapped in an ignited ring of holy oil, or destroyed if doused in it and set alight. While he has the ability to shrug off a lot of damage, he is not insusceptible to pain - canonically, angels have been broken via torture.
Angelic power depends either on their connection to heaven or the strength of their Grace - when in heaven's good graces, they seem able to use most of their powers with impunity. When cut off, use of their power weakens their Grace - the longer they're cut off and the more power they channel, the weaker they become, until they are rendered effectively mortal. Even "mortal", however, there is evidence that angels retain their ability to perceive the supernatural, though not to interact with it, and to cast magic that doesn't require angelic power (such as the angel-banishing sigils or any other magic a vanilla human could pull off).
First Person Sample: Well. This is unnecessarily grim. [The man visible on the video screen looks to be somewhere in his late forties, fair-haired and blue eyed and wearing an expression of studied, mildly amused nonchalance.] I suppose something is better than nothing, but if I had to wake up to some pagan version of the afterlife, I'd have much preferred Valhalla. Those Norse, now they knew how to have fun with death.
Although...if this is a bit of a mash-up anyways, I'd appreciate it if someone could point me towards the nymphs. I still have a few things to cross off my list.
Third Person Sample: Intellectually, Balthazar knew what happened when an angel died beneath the blade. He'd seen enough deaths on both sides of the war, seen enough evidence of it beforehand, that it was seared into his mind. The brilliance of the Grace flaming out, the almost-peaceful look of the emptied vessel, the broad stretch of ash in the shape of wings that would be the only indication to any outsider of what once was housed in the dead flesh. He knew what happened, could time it almost down to the instant. He imagined most angels could, by now.
What he didn't know, what he didn't anticipate, was just how much it would hurt. All that power, all those millennia of experience, unravelling at the speed of light, spilling out of one neat little hole like a supernova in miniature. There was no describing that feeling of erasure, of obliteration.
His last coherent thought was contemplation of the irony: that his brother, his friend, had just stabbed him in the back.
His next coherent thought was, Why do I hear water? It was followed shortly after by, Why do I hear anything? If there was one thing - and it probably was the only thing - that the factions of heaven agreed on, it was that death, for angels, was final. Humans got heaven or hell, but when one of their kind died, that was it. There had only ever been one exception to that rule, and that exception was the one who had oh-so-recently driven a knife through Balthazar's spine.
Curiousity at this twist in his tale was enough to spur Balthazar to open his eyes, though he was tempted to keep them shut against the chance of this utter impossibility unravelling. Were it not for the utter shock of being alive, he might have savored the sensation of coming to - despite his best efforts, he had never before actually achieved unconsciousness. As it was, he pushed himself up with a half swallowed groan, and looked around in utter bemusement at the river, at the boat being driven along by... No. It couldn't be.
It was.
He was in a boat, on a river, being ferried along by bloody Charon, of all creatures. The ridiculousness of it, of waking at all, of waking in a pagan afterlife that had long since been relegated to nothing more than myth, spurred a laugh. It was half-incredulous and entirely ragged, but the sound jolted him back to himself. Just in time, too, as the boat bumped against a dock, and he found himself ushered out with no words and precious little ceremony.
"I don't suppose you take plastic?" he asked as something was pressed into his hands. "I'd've brought coin, but I didn't realize I'd be reborn in a fairy tale."
He earned no response but for the lift of one skeletal hand in a point at something off in the distance. At a city, he realized upon glancing, automatic, in that direction. "Don't tell me..." he began, and trailed off as he looked back over his shoulder to see - no one. And that was all on its own disconcerting. "Oh, that's just brilliant."
He turned the object the ferryman had left him with over in his hands, idly, and the motion was enough to recall it to him. He looked down to study it, eyebrows lifting as he recognized one of the iPads several of his paramours had been so enamoured of. Or not quite an iPad; the branding was different, though he didn't recognize it.
Stranded alone, in a pagan afterlife, with nothing but a quaint bit of human electronic gadgetry for explanation. Well, Balthazar decided, he may as well see if anyone on the other end picked up.