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| Lol, The Authority is the weakest character in fiction, he died to the wind. | ||
~ Everyone who never read His Dark Materials |
No, but seriously, that is an extreme misconception. The Authority which is super old, immobile, and died to the wind is an Authority that is... Well, old. Beyond belief. many thousands of years too old, and suspended in stasis so he won't die like he naturally should.
People don't know that The Authority in his prime was actually quite a decently powerful character.
"Wherever it goes, there is the heart of the Kingdom, his citadel, his palace. When the Authority was young, it wasn't surrounded by clouds, but as time passed, he gathered them around him more and more thickly. No one has seen the summit for thousands of years. So his citadel is known now as the Clouded Mountain."
First of, the Authority created the Clouded Mountain, a literal floating Mountain-fortress that serves as his citadel. He also surrounded it with thick storm clouds.
"Baruch said, "Well, there is a world of the dead. Where it is, and what happens there, no one knows. My ghost, thanks to Balthamos, never went there; I am what was once the ghost of Baruch. The world of the dead is just dark to us.""
The angel Balthamos turns someone's spirit into an angel when they died. This is Soul Manipulation, and also Multiversal Range, since there is only one Afterlife for the entire multiverse in His Dark Materials. Angels can send souls to the Afterlife, or take them to make new angels.
"It reminded her of a certain abominable heresy, whose author was now deservedly languishing in the dungeons of the Consistorial Court. He had suggested that there were more spatial dimensions than the three familiar ones—that on a very small scale, there were up to seven or eight other dimensions, but that they were impossible to examine directly. He had even constructed a model to show how they might work, and Mrs. Coulter had seen the object before it was exorcised and burned. Folds within folds, corners and edges both containing and being contained: its inside was everywhere and its outside was everywhere else. The Clouded Mountain affected her in a similar way: it was less like a rock than like a force field, manipulating space itself to enfold and stretch and layer it into galleries and terraces, chambers and colonnades and watchtowers of air and light and vapor."
The Clouded Mountain is folded through 7th or 8th Dimensional Space, making it more like a Force Field, making it stretch and twist in unnatural ways. These dimensions are realistic though, existing on a very small scale, so it obviously isn't a 1-C feat.
"The barometric altimeter was little use in the storm, but she could judge her altitude roughly by watching the fires on the ground that blazed where angels fell; despite the hurtling rain, they were still flaring high. As for the course, that wasn't difficult, either: the lightning that flickered around the Mountain served as a brilliant beacon. But she had to avoid the various flying beings who were still fighting in the air, and keep clear of the rising land below. She didn't use the lights, because she wanted to get close and find somewhere to land before they saw her and shot her down. As she flew closer, the updrafts became more violent, the gusts more sudden and brutal. A gyropter would have had no chance: the savage air would have slammed it to the ground like a fly. In the intention craft she could move lightly with the wind, adjusting her balance like a wave rider in the Peaceable Ocean."
The intensity of the endless storm around the Clouded Mountain.
"A flight of angels, armed with spears and swords, had emerged from the Clouded Mountain to meet the witches head-on. They had the wind behind them, and they sped forward faster than arrows; but the witches were equal to that, and the first ones soared up high and then dived into the ranks of the angels, lashing to left and right with their flaring torches. Angel after angel, outlined in fire, their wings ablaze, tumbled screaming from the air. And then the first great drops of rain came down. If the commander in the storm clouds meant to douse the witch fires, he was disappointed; the pitch pine and the bitumen blazed defiance at it, spitting and hissing more loudly as more rain splashed into them. The raindrops hit the ground as if they'd been hurled in malice, breaking and splashing up into the air. Within a minute Lyra and Will were both soaked to the skin and shaking with cold, and the rain stung their heads and arms like tiny stones."
Even regular angels can influence the weather and call down lightning and rain.
"Will managed to glance upward and saw the clouds stirring and swirling, and that gleam—something immense—growing more powerful, as if the clouds themselves were becoming luminous with energy, like plasma."
Energy Manipulation on the storm clouds, making them luminous with plasma-like energy.
"He hurled himself at Will, shaking his arm, his shoulder, his hands, and the attacker was trying to shout again, but Baruch's hand was over his mouth. From above came a deep tremor, like a mighty dynamo, almost too low to hear, though it shook the very atoms of the air and jolted the marrow in Will's bones."
An angel creates a deep tremor which shakes the air to an atomic level.
""In this world human beings have dæmons, and if I go about without one, they'll be suspicious. Lyra was frightened of me at first because of that. So if we're going to travel in her world, you'll have to pretend to be my dæmon, and take the shape of some animal. A bird, maybe. Then you could fly, at least."
"Oh, how tedious."
"Can you, though?"
"I could . . ."
"Do it now, then. Let me see."
The form of the angel seemed to condense and swirl into a little vortex in midair, and then a blackbird swooped down onto the grass at Will's feet.
"Fly to my shoulder," said Will.
The bird did so, and then spoke in the angel's familiar acid tone:
"I shall only do this when it's absolutely necessary. It's unspeakably humiliating."
"Too bad," said Will. "Whenever we see people in this world, you become a bird. There's no point in fussing or arguing. Just do it."
The blackbird flew off his shoulder and vanished in midair, and there was the angel again, sulking in the half-light."
Angels can shapeshift at will.
""I swear, Metatron, her d├ªmon is in my power. Please, great Regent, hide yourself a little—my eyes are dazzled . . ." He drew a veil of cloud in front of himself. Now it was like looking at the sun through smoked glass, and her eyes could see him more clearly, though she still pretended to be dazzled by his face. He was exactly like a man in early middle age, tall, powerful, and commanding. Was he clothed? Did he have wings? She couldn't tell because of the force of his eyes. She could look at nothing else."
Metatron can move clouds with Telekinesis with ease.
Also The Authority at his prime could move between the universes through some unspecified means, either teleportation or portal creation. And even as he grew older he could still communicate telepathically across universes with people from the Biblical stories like Moses, and create illusions and minor miracles that convinced people he was God. So Mind Manipulation was also involved.
So there should be a Peak Key for the Authority, where he would be ranked as Mountain level for creating the Clouded Mountain, keeping it levitating, and surrounding it with endless storms. And it'd have these following powers:
Superhuman Physical Characteristics, Longevity, Shapeshifting, Matter Manipulation, Soul Manipulation, Telekinesis, Teleportation / Portal Creation, Telepathy, Energy Manipulation, Air Manipulation / Earth Manipulation, Weather Manipulation, Spatial Manipulation, Mind Manipulation, Illusions and Flight / Levitation.
And Multiversal Range for the non-physical abilities.
