Ozryel

Ozryel
Biographical Information
Age	Trillions+ of years
Gender	Asexual
Date of Birth	Trillions of years BC
Place of Birth	Heaven
Occupation	Archangel (pre-fall)
Alias(es)	Azrael (alternately spelled name)
Species	Angel (Archangel)
Affiliations
Affiliation	God (pre-fall) His brothers (pre-fall)
Pedigree Information
Residence(s)	Heaven (pre-fall) Earth (as the Ancients/post-fall)
Children	Ancients
Other Relatives	God (father) Archangels (siblings) Angels (lower siblings) Quinlan (grandson)
Appearances
Date of Death	Millennia BC
Place of Death	Earth

Ozryel was one of the Archangels created by God at the dawn of time to carry out His will and safeguard His creation. Following his demise at the hands of his brethren, he became the progenitor of the Ancients, and thus of the entire vampire race.

History

Ozryel was one of the three archangels sent down to Earth by God, to punish Sadum and Amurah (Sodom and Gomorrah)for their wickedness. All three angels - Ozryel, Gabriel, and Michael - began their work by taking shelter in a nearby city, to observe their target cities before striking them down. While being sheltered and washed by the family that had welcomed them, Ozryel became fascinated by their blood, the substance that carried life through their bodies, and thus was a little piece of God's own divine power.

Entering Sadum in disguise as a human, Ozryel was called to by a brothel madam, who he attacked and bit on the throat, drinking her blood.

After Sadum and Amurah were destroyed, Ozryel was overcome with bloodlust and attacked his brother, Michael, in a wild rage; drinking his silvery blood as he had drank that of the humans. As punishment, God ordered the other Archangels, Gabriel and Raphael, to impale Ozryel to the ground with a spear of divine light, and then cut his body into seven pieces and scatter them across the Earth.

Over time, Ozryel's accursed parts leaked foul fluids which seeped into the dirt of their burial sites, spawning the Ancients. His name became anathema and was not mentioned in the traditions regarding the fall of those two cities:

"The third Archangel is deliberately omitted. Hidden. Lost." (from 'The Night Eternal')

The Master was spawned last, and is thus regarded as the "youngest" of the Ancients. He came from Ozryel's throat, and so he personifies the Angel's "thirst" and insatiable ambition more than any of the other six.

The manner of Ozryel's death is directly linked to the weaknesses of the Strigoi:

• Ozryel was pinned to the earth by divine light between the two rivers that flowed from Sadum and Amurah, and so his descendants were cursed to unable to cross running water, unless willingly invited by a human.
• Sunlight is the closest manifestation of God's "face" or “eyes” on the Earth, which is why it is lethal to vampires.
• Silver is the color of angelic blood, which Ozryel drank from Michael. This earned them God's wrath, and ever after, silver became a curse upon the cursed.

Abraham Setrakian explained that the number of bodily features of Ozryel found in traditional representations corresponded to  the number of souls upon the earth. This is symbolic, in 'The Strain' story-verse, of the boundless contagion contained within the Ancients and unleashed by the Master against all of humanity:

"[Ozryel] has as many eyes and as many tongues as there are men on earth. But you see, that only speaks of how he can multiply, how he can spread…" (from 'The Fall')

Ozryel is also referred to by the Ancients as "Sariel" (with whom they collectively identify) among themselves through their shared consciousness. When the last of the Ancients, the Master, was vanquished, his remnants merged with those of the other Ancients gathered by Quinlan as they had instructed him. Finally released from their earthly bonds and reconstituted as a single entity, Ozryel was allowed to enter again into heaven as one of the Archangels.

Trivia

• Azrael the Angel of Death became conflated with the fallen angel Sariel in certain traditions such as Enochian mysticism. Sariel is also identified as a primordial Power and, in the apocryphal Book of Enoch, taught humans to interpret patterns in Nature such as regulating time. Intriguingly in 'The Fall', the Ancients credited themselves with facilitating human development towards its own demise; this ultimately proved to be a phyrric victory for the Ancients, in large part due to the rash acts of the Master.
• The rending of Ozryel, who contained in tradition as many bodily features as there are souls on earth, could be related to the shattering (shevirah) in the Kabbalah of primordial man, Adam Kadmon, who contained every soul who would ever be born on earth.
• The Oz and Henson film, 'The Dark Crystal' (1982), comparably ends where the splintered races of Mystics and Skeksis were brought together and merged in a great cataclysm of light. These formed another race, the UrSkeks, which ascended to a higher realm of being. It is possible some inspiration was drawn from this film by the authors.