As human: Long, wavy silver hair, with bangs that are tinged dark red. Eyes are a deep amber. Pale skin. Slightly above average height, lean muscular build. Generally wears a black turtleneck shirt, black pants, knee high boots and a long sleeveless vest, usually gray or red.

As angel: Hair becomes completely silver, and eyes lose pupils, becoming a solid, shining silver. They grow four shining wings, and interlocking halos with blinking eyes appear above their head.

Soft spoken & generally unwilling to divulge more than necessary. Respects your business as long as you don't ask about hers. Andante's brusque exterior is necessary in the extra-legal field in which she works (corporate espionage & info brokering), but to put it simply, she is simply not used to fraternizing. That said, she inwardly wishes to build relationships with others... now if only she could stop shooting herself in the foot, metaphorically speaking. 

Silver handgun, silver short sword engraved with the word IRISVIEL (angelic weaponry);  a pair of Gauntlets engraved in holy sigils; Superhuman strength & endurance, enhanced healing, combat expertise, brawling & martial arts expertise, stealth. Her angelic power manifests in her Silver Tongue ability, which requires direct eye contact to achieve. Think of it like the Jedi Mind Trick without the handwaving and WITH a lot of staring. She does not use this ability against the demonic or the divine. Unknown if it works on other supernatural creatures, but likely it is only an angel to human mechanism. In times of extreme pressure, she can activate her nephilim form, though this typically only happens in life or death scenarios. 

Early Life; Adoption by the familia Arcillo Posada; Education & young adulthood.

  Andante Irisviel was born Andante Irisviel Saavedra on October 18 to Serena Irisviel & Antonio Saavedra in the family’s home in the rural countryside of Valencia, Spain. Of the two Saavedra children, Andante was the younger, born six years after her brother, Gamaliel. For the first few years of Andante’s life, her family lived normally, peacefully. 

This was only thanks to the mother Irisviel’s protection. In truth, the happy couple hid a secret that could condemn the family to death if they were discovered. Antonio Saavedra was once a holy warrior of the Catholic Church, part of a secret organization in Spain that served directly under God’s holy warriors: angels. One of these angels, the commander, was Irisviel, a woman with long silver hair and eyes that could pierce the darkest shadows of Hell. A fierce, unyielding warrior, Irisviel was both merciless & devout to her cause. However, over years fighting beside her second in command, the two of them fell in love. This love, although doomed, was stronger than any angel’s blade, and Irisviel chose to abandon her holy mission in Heaven. Escaping with her God-given Grace intact, she used her power to seal away her angelic presence & essentially become human. In this way, she could hide from Heaven while protecting her family from Heaven’s rage. 

Following the birth of their first child, however, their presence became more difficult to mask. A nephilim - the offspring of a human & angel - is considered an affront to God, a mortal sin. Gamaliel, an infant, had yet to manifest any angelic powers, but when the younger daughter entered the world, she did so with a light to her. A Holy light, nearly identical to her mother’s. This was a brightness that Irisviel could not conceal for long, and when Andante was two, the facade crumbled, and a garrison of Irisviel’s former soldiers descended on the small house in the countryside. Antonio attempted to protect the two children, but was run through by an angel’s blade. Gamaliel, old enough to remember, old enough to understand, kept his baby sister in his arms, though his eyes would never unsee the destruction. In a final attempt to protect her children from harm, Irisviel consumed her Grace, reverting to her angelic form & wiping away the attackers. However, the power used to do so was too great, and the angel Irisviel, her Grace diminished, faded from existence. What remained of her Grace found its way to the soul of her daughter, and would stay there undetected for over two decades. 

Gamaliel & Andante were found in the wreckage, treated for their injuries, & promptly separated. What happened to Gamaliel would not be known to Andante until decades later when she would return to Spain to ascertain the truth, but as for the girl herself, she was adopted by a prominent family in Barcelona, who were looking for a child to raise as the family’s next heir. 

Adoption by the Arcillo Posada family

The family that took in Andante did not do so with any good intentions in mind. They needed an heir, one that they could mold into the perfect little aristocrat. This molding began as soon as the two-year-old arrived in Barcelona. Andante’s first memories are not pleasant or warm ones. They are of learning to be silent, learning how to sit and stand like a proper lady, how to not speak unless spoken to; but of course, she had to learn many languages, had to read & write without error. She was taught the cello, and the young girl’s one outlet was a love of classical music which became her escape. She was taught the art of subterfuge, of winning intellectual battles, and her adopted parents came to realize that the girl had some sort of uncanny gift, a knack for convincing people of things, of getting them to tell her everything she asked. All she had to do was look them in the eye, and their secrets would come pouring out. 

In this environment, Andante became a withdrawn, bitter girl, unwilling or unable to make friends, filled with resentment for the state of her life. She would often sneak out to the city to take part in illegal fights, which even with her size and age, she tended to win. She assumed it was just that she was faster, more accurate, unaware of the supernatural nature of her advantages. 

And she would be duly punished for these outings.

Finally, at sixteen, Andante could take no more. She took her cello, the clothes on her back, money she’d stolen from her adopted parents, and fled Spain, taking a new identity, dropping the Arcillo Posada name in favor of the middle name she had kept - Irisviel. 

Leaving Spain; developing career. 

Where does one go when they’re looking to disappear? Why, erase your identity & start a new life in America. Which is exactly what she did. Using her ability to talk people into doing whatever she wants, and the skills she had learned from her adopted family, she was able to get herself a small apartment, which she decided to set up as a loft above an office. Of course, a sixteen year old might have a difficult time finding work, so she decided to circumvent that issue by starting her own business. Using her Silver Tongue, she started taking money to steal secrets from corporations and selling them to the highest bidder. This became a lucrative enterprise, and it’s the career she would follow well into adulthood. 

It is, in fact, this career that caused her to reunite with her elder brother - Gamaliel.

GAMALIEL DOSSIER:

Name: Gamaliel

Age: 36

Date of birth: December 24

Gender: Cis male (he/him)

Appearance: Stands at about 6’, with a lean muscular build. He has shoulder-length auburn hair & brown eyes. He typically wears a leather jacket, black pants & military style boots. He has a deep scar on his chest from where Andante would stab him during their battle in Heaven.

Backstory: Gamaliel is the elder brother of Andante. Also a nephilim, he awakened into his angelic powers in his early teens. In the aftermath of his parents’ deaths, he was taken in as an orphan by the Roman Catholic Church, and raised within it, by the same people whom his father had once fought alongside. In this environment, he became an expert in Biblical lore, especially those of angels & demons. He was a natural at combat, both armed & unarmed, and was an asset to his organization. While Gamaliel was raised by the Church, all he harbored in his heart was anger & a desire for revenge. He remembered his sister, too, & felt bitterly about their separation. Was she alive? Was she dead? He had to know. But he had to bide his time, firstly; had to master his own abilities, his power. 

Eventually, he was sent on his own. Go overseas, Gamaliel, and take this blade with you. A silvered blade, one inscribed with the word IRISVIEL. He was to hunt demons in the name of the Church, and outwardly, this is what he did, traveling to North America to bathe them in holy fire. But in reality, he was looking for someone, a girl he had been tracking for years, one with strange powers, one with the same name as his sister. 

He found her there, in America. It was not easy to convince her of his true identity, because she did not remember anything from the time before her adoption, but the blood of angels knows its own. He convinced her to join him in his fight against demons, and for a while, stayed close to her, teaching her what the Church had taught him, & helping to awaken her own latent nephilim blood. During this time, he bequeathed to her the silver blade that had once belonged to their mother - Irisviel.

Finally, it was time to tell her his true plan - to enter Heaven, to stage a rebellion, to massacre the angels who had killed their family. It didn’t matter that innocent souls would die, that the order of Heaven & Hell could be thrown into chaos. All that mattered was the power that awaited him, and he was overcome by the idea. He expected Andante to agree so readily, to join him in his war with Heaven. 

She did not. And so, she became his greatest enemy.

Blood Feud; Death & Resurrection

Gamaliel’s war on Heaven had truthfully started long before. His ability to mimic a completely angelic aura allowed him to enter Heaven, at which time he began to build his own army, preparing them for rebellion. It is not easy to sway a soldier made purely to serve God, but God didn’t do anything about it, so it must be His Word. This plan to gain the power necessary to wipe out the angels was well on its way when he found Andante, and when she defied him, it put her on a warpath she was not ready to walk. 

But Andante did recognize the fallout of Gamaliel’s success would mean total destruction on the plane they called home, and if they were convinced of one thing, it was that their mother, an angel who had chosen Earth as her home, would not want this place destroyed. Surely Irisviel would have stopped Gamaliel in this situation. Andante had Irisviel’s blade, and her angelic purity - they now had to face their brother & stop him by any means necessary.

The first thing to do was learn how to hurt angels, & how to stop them. Andante mastered banishment sigils, angel traps, and protection wards against angelic attack. But this was, of course, not enough. They had to enter Heaven, & the only way to do that was through Purgatory. Into the forest of lost souls the nephilim descended, coming upon a gravesite in which was held the Graces of banished angels… including, she found, her Mother’s. In a small vial, a minute amount of silvery liquid remained, the last remnant of the angel commander. 

Typically, when a non-angel is infused with an angel’s Grace, that being is consumed by holy power & dies a horrible death in flame. An angel who takes another angel’s Grace takes their power like a battery charge. For a nephilim… it could go either way. There wasn’t exactly established precedent. But the reward would be well worth the risk. In truth, Andante knew in their heart that they would likely not come out of the experience alive, but what were they even leaving behind? Money? Who even cares about that. 

Fighting her way through Purgatory, Grace in hand, Andante finally reached the “backdoor” to Heaven that Gamaliel had set up for himself. Upon her entrance, she was able to find Gamaliel, & engage him in battle. In the time since they had parted, Gamaliel had grown exponentially in power, to the point where he was nearly full angel himself. Andante would not be able to defeat him with her own power alone, and consumed what remained of her Mother’s Grace. It was enough, pushing her angel blood to release her true form: she grew four wings, & an interlocking halo of glinting silver eyes. Finally, she was able to defeat him, sinking the angel blade into his chest up to the hilt. Gamaliel fell from Heaven. Dead, alive, who knew. 

His end had been brutal, but it was nothing compared to Andante’s. As expected, her nephilim body could not handle the pure power of a full angel’s Grace. The pain of a thousand fires burned within her blood, pouring from her eyes, ears & mouth. In that moment, Andante was flooded with memories of her mother & father… in particular, the memory of her mother’s death, as though the Grace she consumed & the Grace that existed already within her spoke like many ghosts. She fell then, too, but her fate was more certain than Gamaliel’s. Her body was broken beyond repair, far beyond what any human hospital could fix. There on the grass, alone, unmoving, battered & broken, her lifeblood seeping into the ground, the nephilim died. 

She doesn’t know how long she was dead for, or if what she saw was real. But, dream or not, what appeared to her was a woman, with long silver hair & eyes that could pierce the darkest shadows of Hell. A woman that looked remarkably like Andante herself, her shining hand reaching out to touch her daughter’s cold cheek. Since the moment Irisviel first gave herself up to protect her children, a piece of her had remained with her daughter, and it was this remnant of angelic power that would revive the nephilim from the dead. 

This act of love was Irisviel’s last, and the angel truly, finally, faded from existence.

When Andante awoke, they were alive. The physical scars of the encounter had faded, but there was no forgetting that agonizing pain, the kind of pain that made one beg to die. And their blood felt different, felt foreign… what they didn’t understand was that Irisviel’s interference had caused Andante’s angel blood to well & truly awaken, changing their aura from one of a mortal to one of an angel, & increasing their angelic powers.

This would have been a cause for any person to celebrate. But to Andante, this change, the sensation of being somehow alien, merely caused her to feel indescribable fear.

Aftermath

In the five years since the event, Andante abandoned her home office to return to Spain, trying to find the truth about Gamaliel’s turn & her mother’s origin. She cut all ties to contacts made in America & vanished from their lives. In Spain, while hunting for information, they hunted demons, becoming an expert in demonology through near obsessive research. This obsessive need for information would define her next few years. She did end up discovering the truth of Gamaliel’s path, & learned about her mother & father’s human lives before their end. Eventually, though, she found herself drawn overseas again, and set up shop once more. This time, however, something followed her back - angels. 

Now that they could no longer hide as a simple mortal, a target had been placed on their back. It didn’t matter that they had essentially saved Heaven from a terrible fate; they were still loyal to Gamaliel (who, they would come to find, had survived, though seemingly without any angel powers), and being nephilim was enough to warrant death in the angels’ eyes. 

Obsession returned. Andante perfected the art of angelic sigils, turning their home office into a kind of angel-proof bunker, in which they could safely reside without being pursued. Outside of the office, though, they can only go so long without being discovered. As such, Andante has developed an uneasy paranoia, while trying to make a living as an info broker to devil hunters. 

Where once there was a proud, confident warrior, there is now only a shell of a person, living in fear of being hunted, & living in fear of themselves. 

They still feel that torturous pain. Nightmares of that battle in Heaven. The feeling of being yanked back from Death unnaturally. The knowledge that, should they ever be in such a situation again, they could become that thing with the wings & the eyes. 

They will do anything to stop that from happening again.

DEVIL MAY CRY - Andante was made as a DMC OC so everything is pretty much the same. In this verse, Andante is an information broker & devil hunter (only when going into the field is absolutely necessary). They are very familiar with devils & other supernatural creatures, and the person to go to if you're looking for information on how to find & destroy them.

RWBY - Andante reworked as a RWBY OC. Info as follows:

Place of birth: Atlas

Race: Half-Faunus (swan); silver-eyed warrior

Semblance: Silver Tongue - Andante's semblance is not one meant for combat, but it has made her an asset to the Atlesian military. Silver Tongue allows Andante to receive only truthful answers to any question she asks. She has learned to word questions & follow up questions to ensure the clearest answer possible, and uses this ability primarily in interrogation - no violence necessary.

Weaponry/skillset:

• Irisviel, a silvered shortsword engraved in indecipherable glyphs. When imbued with Dust, its near mystical abilities are unlocked, and it becomes an extension of Andante herself. For some reason, it seems to grow more powerful under the moonlight, and holding it strengthens Andante's transformation.

• Hand to hand combat & swordsmanship.

• Flight. When holding the silver blade, Andante's white feathered wings become visible. They are strong enough to carry her and another person in flight.

• Silver-eyed warrior. When activated, Andante's eyes glow a bright silver, overpowering Grimm with a glance. This ability to her is not well understood, and she has not mastered it. It only appears in moments of great distress.

Background:  After the disappearance of her biological parents at a young age, Andante and her older brother Gamaliel were separated and raised in different families. Gamaliel went to an unknown family, while Andante was raised by a wealthy Atlesian military family hoping to groom an heir. As such, Andante was taught impeccable poise and posture, and learned at a young age to hide strong emotions. Her half-Faunus heritage was easily hidden, as outside of her transformation it only appears as white feathers on her shoulder blades. During combat, or times of distress, full feathered wings appear, which make her heritage impossible to keep hidden. While this has made her time in the Atlesian military complicated, to say the least, her Semblance has made them an asset, and no one dares to speak openly against their family name.

Note: In this verse, Andante's brother, also a half-Faunus, joins the White Fang, clashing constantly with Andante as a result.