# Original backstory for Dark Angels

by Chris Sellers
The Dark Angels ... those poor monsters. They were people once. The wings are actually a parasitic demon: a pair of wings with four huge talons in the center. The Wings fly around and attack a person whose own sadness and depression have led him off by himself alone. The Wings then prey on him, grabbing him around the torso with the claws. If the person can't fend off the Wings, he turns irrevocably into a stone statue animated only by the spirit of the Wings. The pole-torch weapon of the Dark Angel is black iron, if I remember right: it is the Angel's bitter strength. I don't know what it's fashioned out of -- probably whatever metal the person was carrying at the time.
The Angel's stone features are erased by the wind, leaving it faceless. Pieces of it break off as it carelessly maneuvers through the land, half-paralyzed. It bothers to animate only the parts of its body that it needs for killing -- like the arms, to wield the pole-torch.
The Angel is a merciless, marauding killer ... if I remember right, it would attack alone; hopefully it still does.
The Wings themselves can't be killed, and the person who the statue used to be is gone forever. But the statue can be destroyed, at which point it crumbles to pieces, leaving behind the pole-torch. The weapon is a souvenir, but using it (it is fueled by bitterness and rage) attracts the Wings. The pole-torch is extremely powerful in the hands of the Dark Angel, and less so in the hands of anyone else. Not that we ever made it into an object, I don't think.
At the time of the statue's destruction, the Wings separate from the rubble and fly off to roost in a lonely spot. The Wings will venture out from there as often as necessary to capture another person. Over time, once in a dread age, the Wings (if unoccupied with an Angel) will find a forsaken spot, make a nest, and lay eggs (I don't know how many, but a lot) in the secluded nest. The cluster of eggs is called a brood.
The only time the Wings are vulnerable is in their own nest, sitting on their eggs. If an adventurer goes to that lonely spot and destroys the brood, without being captured by the Wings, then the Wings will shudder and die from a secret and unspeakable grief.