I pre­vi­ously talked about the Angelus and how they came to be. Now I need to move on and make-up lay­out what I think hap­pens next; after hun­dreds of years of exis­tence in peace and self-congratulation (these guys were into their race so much the depth of their ego was bot­tom­less) the shit hits the fan.

There are many ways to approach what I need to accom­plish within the con­text of this world. With every­thing I con­sider, I really don’t come much closer to attain­ing any degree of assur­ance when approach­ing a sin­gle angle. I guess this will be another entry much like the Influ­ence of Char­ac­ters and the ques­tion of float­ing cities. Like that, I may change my mind sev­eral times or erase a the­ory altogether.

Basi­cally a rip occurs. Faith, being the foun­da­tion of the Angelus’ soci­ety, is not the one ques­tioned or blamed. Instead the often vic­tim of such things is the peo­ple them­selves — those seen as the out­casts, the unwor­thy, the Fallen.

At some point in their his­tory one of the Angelus looses their wings. This might seem pretty basic at first — “What’s the big deal?” — but I found a quote by St. John Chrysos­tom that under­lines the ‘big deal’ and the impor­tance of wings in the Biblical-based view on Angels,

A soci­ety with reli­gion so intrin­sic to their lives and one that reflects a supreme, excelled fab­ric in their nature would con­sider them­selves sub­lime on the back of their winged forms being reflected in the scrip­ture of the Bible. The Angelus use that defin­ing detail to empha­size their impor­tance, their divin­ity and to strip it away would be like tear­ing off the balls of a Gentlemen’s Only club mem­ber — you are no longer accepted, or even seen as an equal.

Any­way, back to the first Fallen shall we go…

I’m appar­ently not privy to my imagination’s answer for how or why the wings are lost, but as I said way up there ^, there are a few rea­sons this could be: Dis­ease, nat­ural evo­lu­tion, actual heav­enly actions, phys­i­cal removal, sur­round­ings (no-one said Arbi­ture was a good place for them to reside — per­haps there is a rea­son they ‘became’ on two worlds, and not the three), who knows. Usu­ally I defy giv­ing solid answers as it tends to retract from the actual story, but this time it has to be addressed.

I) Dis­ease. Why? Although a solid rea­son for such an his­toric event in a world I’m attempt­ing to keep ‘real’ (for the most part), I’m not sure why, all of a sud­den, an indi­vid­ual Angelus would loose their wings. If I were to grasp at any straw within this the­ory, I think it would be some­thing bred out of the two tribes com­ing together. Hun­dreds of years could be plenty of time for two — seem­ingly — iden­ti­cal species to develop a gene prob­lem and BOOM, sud­denly one of them doesn’t have wings, or an arm, two eyes etc…

II) Evo­lu­tion. It’s just a mat­ter of growth, right? The Angelus are sub­lime, supreme beings but over a good span of evo­lu­tion­ary time maybe they descend a lit­tle and their sur­round­ings sim­ply per­suade the body to not need those flappy things on the back of every­one. An unlikely rea­son, but one that’s pro-evoluton and anti-intelligent design (God’s cre­ation) — a poten­tial hot potato for a reli­gious race.

III) God’s Will: Eh… Although the Bible and God define the Angelus way of life, it’s not some­thing I’m going to solid­ify in their world. Whether it’s all real or not is up to the reader, not me. The Faith is being used as a tool, an exam­ple. It’s not going to have real-world, cho­sen effects. I even try to not use the name, Chris­tian­ity as that denotes a tag was cre­ated — one too famil­iar to us.

IV) Force­ful Removal: This one is tricky. It was men­tioned in the orig­i­nal short story as, “The scarred lines where once his wings hung were tes­ta­ment to the divi­sion, to the beliefs, to why the war was so.” So that kind of makes it a cho­sen avenue… BUT I shall not be forced into that the­ory just yet. There is a chance Rook (main char­ac­ter to the piece) chose to have his wings/stumps removed in a deci­sion to fight for the Fallen, or remove all evi­dence of his Angelus her­itage. It’s some­thing to con­sider. Why wings would be ripped off of one’s back I’m not sure, but with reli­gion dif­fer­ence points of view can lead to many dis­as­trous consequences.

V) Nat­ural Influ­ence: Not to be con­fused with evo­lu­tion, I’m talk­ing about a habi­tat not suit­able for winged crea­tures in some fash­ion, an allergy so severe that it could cause per­ma­nent loss or geo­graph­i­cal influ­ence that severely lim­its the full poten­tial of being of the winged per­sua­sion. It’s not a likely can­di­date, but It has to be thrown in.

I’m not sure which angle to work this, as there are a good many choices, not includ­ing the idea that it sim­ply hap­pens for no rea­son as we are focus­ing on the ram­i­fi­ca­tions and paths taken to pro­tect and sur­vive. This is also some­thing we could dis­cover later… it’s always open.

Okay, I realise this has not entirely put ‘what hap­pens next’ on the table, so I’ve bro­ken it up into two pieces. This is the first — the foun­da­tion part of the ‘next’. Next, well I’ll actu­ally describe a lit­tle of what actu­ally hap­pens — how they deal with this event and what the con­se­quences are.

Also the title, ‘Year of The Lost’ harks back to the period the degra­da­tion of soci­ety begins. Whether the ‘Lost’ refers to reli­gion loos­ing them, them being per­ceived as loos­ing their faith or some­thing else alo­gether is another one for next time… always with the next time.