Because these are notes about a metaphysical creation, they are somewhat dense. If anything is unclear, feel free to email me.

Background:

In my cosmology, there are two races of angels. The Sephiroth represent all that is Destruction and Darkness in the universe. Their counterparts, the Seraphim, are embodiments of Goodness and Love. White and black magic are merely emanations of the energy these creatures project.

The Sephiroth dwell in Tenaebra, the deepest, darkest recess of Hell, while the Seraphim reside in a world called Luminaria.

At the time of the un-story, the triumph of Darkness is almost complete, though few on earth realize it. The only question is which form of Darkness prevail: Zyr's, Azriok's or someone else's.

All of my angels are timeless and predate creation, but they are far from immortal. The stronger Sephiroth routinely devour their weaker brethren, just as big fish swallow little ones in the ocean. In doing so, the dark angels absorb the magic of the vanquished.

The Sephiroth slay Seraphim at any opportunity. Because the Seraphim represent Love, the hatred necessary for violence is alien to them. To fight back against the aggressors would negate their essence. The Sephiroth have gradually driven them to the brink of extinction. No one knows how few Seraphim remain. The meager remnants of white magic left in the world are the only evidence of their survival.

An angel of either race can only be destroyed completely when he is defeated in his true form, in his home world. When visiting other worlds, the angels take on forms which are merely projections. Slaying an angel's projection outside of Luminaria or Tenaebra merely exiles the being for 666 years from the world in which the slaying occurred.

Geography:

Hell is surrounded by the Astral Plane, which I imagine as a vast ocean of purgatory. To trap a Sephiroth in Hell, one can slay it on the Astral Plane, thus banishing the entity from that world. Preventing the entity from re-entering the Astral Plane effectively closes the only route of passage out of Hell. This is the fate of both Zyr and Azriok in the un-story.

The material world in my cosmos is not a single location or plane of existance. A mysterious cataclysm (an earlier armageddon?) shattered the material plane into countless fragments, bending and twisting them in the process. The material world is now an infinite series of disconnected alternate "earths." Aparans is located on a fragment entirely isolated from other places in the material world. The city of Lyr is located on a large, separate fragment adjacent to the point where the material world disolves into magical ether--thus the city has frequent contact (and even trade) with other realms.

Sephiroth:

The characters Zyr and Azriok are original. Many of the lesser Sephiroth mentioned were inspired by Christian demonology from Medieval and Renaissance Europe. The Christians, in turn, probably stole the names and characters from various locations in the Middle East. The names for both races of angels also came out of traditional European sources. Aside from the borrowed names, this cosmology has little to do with those original sources. Some of the rudimentary inspiration for Sephiroth behavior and values in my world can be traced to the work of the late Anton Szander LaVey. (They are devils, after all, and who better to inspire devildom?)

Zyr: Lord of the Sephiroth. His manifestations on earth have resulted in his worship as many different gods.⁽¹⁾

At the moment of creation, humanity was as marginally immortal as the angels. The species was created by the Seraphim in hopes of replicating their own Goodness, which was slowly being extinguished. They created a peaceful, loving species with a soul capable of reproducing itself endlessly. The Seraphim's hope was that by endowing the species with the ability to create an endless supply of new souls, the good energy would persist and flourish. It didn't happen quite that way.

Zyr corrupted the intended Goodness in humanity at creation by endowing the race with free will. He also taught the species black magic. He planted the seed of hatred in the human soul, as well as the capacity to feel pain and lust in the human body. This corruption compelled the Seraphim to revoke the species' immortality. It also became the Seraphim's worst nightmare.

Zyr taught some of the most wicked mortal Wizards the secret of slaying Seraphim. The Seraphim became hunted in Luminaria for their wings and eyes by some particularly ruthless practitioners of the black arts, who used those objects in rituals to transform the entities' white magic into black.

Zyr is a trickster. He tricked the Seraphim at creation, and he tricks humans when it suits him. He is the only Sephiroth who sees any value in the human race, and that value is strictly a function of serving his own purposes.

The secret of successfully copulating with a mortal is known only to Zyr. No other Sephiroth or Seraphim has ever been able to create a child with a mortal. He only succeeded in the act once, when Zyrdicia was created, and he sacrificed a piece of his soul to do it. For his motives in creating Zyrdicia, see "Twilight Prophecy" below.

Azriok: The Fairest Sephiroth. Like Zyr, he has been worshipped as a variety of gods on earth. He is ambitious and manipulative. He is second in power in Hell only to Zyr, and he is very eager to change that situation.

Azriok loathes humanity with a passion. He considers the race disgusting, wretched and unworthy of the magic Zyr gave to it. Like many of his Sephiroth brethren, Azriok longs to destroy the human race entirely. He considers the race a failed effort at creation, a mistake which should be eliminated. Azriok and the other Sephiroth hesitate to completely destroy the race only because they fear Zyr's wrath. From time to time, they torment humanity with mass destruction--great plagues, natural disasters, epic violence--in order to decrease the species' numbers and watch it suffer.

From Azriok's perspective, humanity is devolving. The first generation of humans were much closer to their divine creators, and to Zyr's gifts. As time has passed, the species has become gradually more distant from its divine origin. He perceives it as a form of reverse-Darwinism--a situation in which the dumbest, weakest and most annoying breed infinitely and perpetually weaken whatever dwindling strength remains in the species.

Azriok intervened in Zyrdicia's life to use her to overthrow Zyr. Her soul contains a fragment of Zyr's soul. That fragment has grown and blossomed as she has aged and become more powerful. To it, she has added stolen energy from a number of slain Seraphim. Now that the portion of Zyr's soul has matured in her, if Azriok can absorb her soul he would devour enough energy to very possibly vanquish Zyr. To do that, he has to get her to Tenaebra (Hell). If she dies on earth (or anywhere but Tenaebra), her soul will escape. He is thus passionately concerned with the task of keeping her alive. (He will get her soul instantly by default if he wins the bet with Zyr, but he isn't waiting for that.)

The Twilight Prophecy:

The prophecy's origin is unknown. Perhaps it was merely an echo of Creation. In any case, both Sephiroth and Seraphim learned that the time would come when they would cease to exist.

The essence of the prophecy is as follows:

As the Twilight Time approaches, all of the angels will be reduced to a single Sephiroth and a single Seraphim. These two will destroy each other.

As the last good angel dies, he will send what remains of his magic into humanity in hope of saving it, but white magic will have already been poisoned by his act of violence. The dying dark angel will, likewise, use humanity as a vessel to store the last remnants of dark magic. The corrupted white magic will combine with the black energy to invoke an age of wickedness and suffering never before seen in the world. There is no hope or salvation, for Goodness and white magic are no more.

Zyr inserted another section to the original prophecy. He calls it a "clarification." All known copies of the prophecy on earth are his adulterated version. He is certain that he will be the final Sephiroth. Therefore, he foretells that his final vanquishing will be illusory. He will escape into another form by becoming humanity--not just a single human, but all of humanity collectively at once. He will create a woman whose soul is formed from a sliver of his own. Her ability to procreate will allow her replicate his soul. She will create a new race, a race in which every constituent carries a small fragment of Zyr. Each member of the race will effectively become a cell within the new organism of the Sephiroth. It will exterminate the old, weaker race and rule the universe forever, continually growing and renewing itself.

To this end, Zyr carefully protects a small line of humanity from the devolution weakening the rest of the species. He shields what is left of the magic of creation in their blood in order to prevent its continued diffusion. His only purpose in doing this is to ensure that when the time comes, his human soul vessel will have an appropriate mate. No one knows the locations or identities of the product of Zyr's meddling.⁽²⁾

As often happens when documents are copied and translated over thousands of years, the text of the Twilight Prophecy has changed over the years in the material world. The misunderstanding has resulted in the common belief that the prophecy is a sham. For example, the current version known in Lyr foretells the creation of a whole family of women, theoretically a necessity for purposes of repopulating the earth. It is common knowledge that Zyr was expelled from the material world by the Crusaders, slain on the Astral Plane and trapped in Hell before any such family could be created. Zyrdicia is the only woman he was able to create before the plan allegedly unraveled. To add to this problem, Lyrian scholars are well aware of Azriok's Edict (see below) which prevents Zyrdicia from ever mating. Those two facts compel most historians to dismiss the prophecy entirely. The contemporary Lyrian translation of the prophecy also contains no mention of Zyr's human breeding experiment.

The Bet between Azriok and Zyr:

In the first prologue, Azriok bets Zyr that he can turn Zyrdicia away from Zyr's prophecy. In other words, he has to convince her forever to forsake the purpose for which she was created. This purpose, was, of course, procreation. If Azriok loses, Zyr will devour his soul out of spite and proceed with his plan to transform himself into a new human organism, possibly destroying the existing species in the process. If Azriok wins, he will exterminate humanity, absorb Zyrdicia's soul and possibly overthrow Zyr.

Azriok's Edict and his early involvement with Zyrdicia

Azriok molded Zyrdicia into a killer for a number of reasons. First, he uses her to diminish the population of the human species--he finds it amusing to use Zyr's own creation to slowly wipe out humanity. Second, he wants to alienate her from the rest of the race. He taught her to hate humanity and its weakness to keep her isolated. This was only partially successful. She is a magnet for strong, brilliant, wicked people in Lyr--the people who are the exception to Azriok's picture of a weak and stupid humanity. Despite his best efforts, she craves companionship and is by nature very social. That annoys him to no end.

While he was in her life, he kept her away from most human contact. As she grew into womanhood, he became sexually involved with her in order to keep her from longing for a human partner. The Sephiroth experience no pleasure from the human sex act. It is merely a means of manipulating and pleasing a human companion.

Azriok intended to stay close to her until her soul matured. He invested a great deal of time lavishing affection upon her to keep her relatively docile while he molded her. He taught her how to hunt Seraphim and devour their power in order to fatten up her soul. He taught her every facet of dark magic and the means to access her natural talents so that her soul would grow more powerful.

She trusted him absolutely and loved him with every ounce of her being. That love, in fact, became Azriok's undoing with her. He had taught her that love belonged to the Seraphim, that it was a form of weakness. Believing him in that as in all things, she grew to hate the part of herself that loved him. The only way to be true to his lesson was to kill him. Azriok never anticipated that.

The death of his earthly manifestation was a turning point in Azriok's relationship with her. As his chosen material form died, he realized he might well be losing control of her. He refused to concede that he might also lose the bet with Zyr. He spent his dying breath in the material world pronouncing an Edict. An Edict is the most powerful form of Sephiroth magic, in that it causes an utterance to have the force of cosmic law. It creates a permanent, unalterable reality for mortals.

The Edict prohibits Zyrdicia from ever copulating with a mortal man. Azriok essentially cheated in his bet with Zyr. He swayed her by force from a destiny she doesn't believe is real, and thus essentially suspended the bet. Nobody wins as long as The Edict is in effect. It cannot be undone unless Azriok is destroyed in Tenaebra.

She erroneously believes The Edict was merely an act of possessive vindictiveness akin to "if I can't have you, no one can." It is, in fact, an act of self-preservation for Azriok. Zyrdicia still loves Azriok in a detached and hopeless manner. Her continued need to kill him on plane after plane until he was finally trapped in Hell is a symptom of that, as is the inevitability of the final confrontation with him in Tenaebra. She can't kill the part of herself that is still attached to him until he is destroyed--forever. The thought of him no longer existing somewhere in the universe, however, sickens and frightens her.

1. His character was inspired by LaVey's early use of a plagiarized image of the Promethean Satan. Zyrdicia's self-worship, on the other hand, is largely inspired by LaVey's later work redefining Satan in purely human terms. For her, the self is the only divine entity worth worshipping. [My use of LaVey isn't intended to endorse his occult writings or the C.o.S. (His magickal system is vacant and polluted; the C.o.S. is a well-documented fraud. He merely produced a few colorful images I find particularly memorable and useful in creating a world of devils.)] Azriok's view of humanity was also influenced by the misanthropy of this school of thought.

2.Azriok has tried to locate it. Were he to find the product of Zyr's breeding experiment, he would destroy it. He has been known to refer to Zyr's work as the genesis of "a superior race of vermin."