Mel Hunter (Melchior)

"Little brother" of Bree Hunter and co-pilot of the Blackbird, a deep space salvage vessel. Quotes for "little brother" because Mel's about sixty thousand years older than Bree and seven feet tall in socks. He's adopted. It's a weird relationship.

On Angels - excerpt from a paper by Derleth Rufeal

Angels in their natural state are incredibly common, but normally would never interact with or even be detectable by physical beings. INCARNATE angels--angels that have taken a physical form and thus become bound by the laws of matter and entropy--are vanishingly rare. Those few angels who exist as incarnate entities can't tell much about what it was like for them before, because they are now unable to comprehend such an existence. In Mel's words "the meat's doing the thinking now".

A few things are known. Firstly angels are synthetic creatures, made not born. They are terraformers: they build worlds. Specifically they build worlds where intelligent life will subsequently arise. For almost every world with sapient creatures living on it, if one goes far enough back in its history one finds evidence of angels. The one known exception is Geminus, the Weaver homeworld.

It is known that angels are collected into hierarchical groups called Choirs, and a collection of Choirs constitutes a Host. Each Choir is led by a particularly powerful angel titled "Voice": fifth voice, third voice, et cetera. The First Voice, leader of the first Choir of the Host, is also titled Herald; these are some of the most powerful beings in existence, second only to the indescribably vast and godlike entities they serve.

Angel wings are not for flying--they're for singing. Singing is how angels change things, or make things. The wings are used to generate energy vibrations that manipulate matter. An angel is able to do this on a level exact enough to nudge a single electron into place, or grand enough to ignite a brand new star. Again, little is known about how this works, and the one incarnate angel who might have been willing to demonstrate is no longer able to sing.

Angels have "spheres" of influence where they are particularly talented. Some examples: air, lightning, life, dreams, darkness.