Zariel
The Crown of Stars.
Color
Teal
Symbols - Clock Puppet
Zariel is thematically linked to clocks, clockwork, puppets, time, hourglasses, loops, cycles, ouroborous.
Elements
- Time - loops, repetition, rewind, remove
- Psychic - weird, occult, control, puppet
- Plant - natural, slow, healing, entangle, bounty
Story Beat: beginnings & endings
The story is complete, at this point.
Zariel is the context surrounding the story, the eternal loop of the story cycle.
Once this story ends, another story will begin, the loop will continue, the wheel will keep turning.1
This can mean "sequel hooks" - okay, the story is complete. What happens next?
Does this tie into a larger story?
Characterization - Inscrutable Puppet
...
Zariel is a tough one to characterize because Zariel's archetype is the one of the player character.
Often a silent protagonist, a blank slate, a neutral-feeling template for the player to project their own identity atop - they resist characterization because there's not much of a character left, there.
Sometimes they're good, sometimes evil. Sometimes competent, sometimes confused. Sometimes they roll backwards into a standing leap, push their face into the corner of the room, jump in a way that's frame perfect, and teleport directly to a confrontation with god.
They are the most powerful part of the story: the viewpoint that makes it real: without a viewpoint there can be no story, without a reader none of the book's characters mean anything.
However, not all situations call for a remote-controlled viewpoint character like this: it certainly doesn't make sense in a play.
Zariel in either sense is a character whose power is unlimited and whose motivations are utterly opaque.
In situations where the player isn't pulling the strings, Zariel becomes terrifying, an AI run amok, a clockwork entity with unclear goals and motivations, a character filled with demons all scrabbling for the controls, powerful one moment, confused the next, inevitable and unpredictable.