It's common in stories such as the Dresden Files and Lucifer that angels (including fallen angels) are constrained by certain rules.

The purpose of these rules, narratively speaking, is to have angels who are ancient and knowledgeable bad-ass mofos, without breaking the conflict of the story or making all mortal stakes feel pointless. Angels are powerful, yes, but because they cannot act directly they cannot just use their power to simply achieve their desired end.

I'm not aware, however, of any story that actually fully articulates the rules which angels must follow. So let's give that a go here.

The idea is to create a set of Ten Commandments which apply to angels. The commandments should be such that they give angels scope to do cool things when they wield their powers in interesting ways though humans (e.g. by gifting humans with knowledge or powers), but prevents direct action.

Angels would only be permitted to use their powers directly where another angel has broken the commandments. In that situation, angelic power may be used directly to cancel out the illegitimate influence of the transgressor.

Here's some ideas:

1. Thou shalt not kill a mortal.

2. Thou shalt not deprive a mortal of free will.

3. Thou shalt not replace faith with certainty.

4. Thou shalt not avert natural fate.

5. Thou shalt not grant a mortal that which was not already within him.

Some explanations:

Number 3: basically, this rule forbids an angel from making a human aware of the existence of the angelic (thus preventing the possibility of their having faith, because now they have certain proof). It would only apply to humans who are not already aware of the angelic.

Number 4: this prevents angels from doing things like creating/preventing natural disasters, curing diseases, etc. It does not prevent angels from interacting with mortals or influencing mortal decisions.

Number 5: limits the ability to "boost" humans by giving them whatever powers an angel likes; rather, angels can use their powers only to raise up (or drag down) humans within their pre-existing nature.

Thoughts for the other 5?

 

I might be tempted to add one like "Thou shalt not act outside your purpose." A bit general, but it would restrain their involvement with mortals even further.

 

An obvious obvious one is,

Thou shall not lay with Mortals

Since Nephilims are considered abominations in pretty much any media angels appear in.

Another would be,

Thou shall not interfere with the natural passing of a Soul.

Basically preventing resurrection through angels alone and cheapening the significance of death.

 

Assuming the angels have a superior, I would think obedience to him would be rule number one, with the stipulation that their superior's orders could override their normal rules.

 

There might be one about not siring nephilim; they're described as extraordinarily strong, giants, and the offspring of "the sons of god" and "daughters of man."

Obviously this would be one of the easier ones to skirt, since there's multiple ways to lay with someone iykwim.

 

Not sure about other five, but to these I would add that the angels and fallen interpret them differently. While angels keep to these rules as they were intended, the fallen always try to find a loophole.

Something like:

1. Thou shalt not kill a mortal... directly. You can setup a situation that will do it for you.

2. Thou shalt not deprive a mortal of free will... by controlling his body. You can try take his free will by using more natural methods.

3. Thou shalt not replace faith with certainty. You just can never directly tell him that God exists.

4. Thou shalt not avert natural fate. You can tell humans how to do it.

They fifth one I'm unsure if should be included since you mentioned earlier that angels can gift powers as an indirect action. Unless it's more about adding to their character or something like that?

 

I feel like this is too vague. Perhaps it can be revised to:

Also, if time travel is possible, then a rule against that seems wise.
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The idea would be, for example, if an angel is interacting with a wizard, they could increase their power. But they couldn't turn someone without magic into a wizard. Nor could they increase a wizard's power beyond the level which that individual would be capable of achieving if they were the most powerful version of themselves.

Kinda like the whole thing where Captain America is like the perfected Steve Rodgers. An angel could make you into Captain America, but they couldn't make you into Thor.

 

Or you can make it like Supernatural where Angels can and enable time travel, but are prevented from actually making changes since it would intrude against God's plan, and the 3 sisters of Fate and Destiny would actively try to prevent changes.

Spoiler: Spoiler for season 5 finale of Supernatural

Though that later becomes possible when God's plan of the Apocalypse gets averted by the Protagonists

 

On

I feel that

would cover time travel pretty well. Because if you reset time, you will be bringing people back from the dead. Every second there are people on this planet who die. By jumping back in time you would be interfering with their journeys to hell/heaven.

 

That's an interesting rule, I like it. You said it wouldn't apply to mortals who already know of the existence of Angels, but here's a question - would it apply to someone who denies their existence and has no faith to replace like an atheist? If an Angel revealing themselves to this atheist made them go from having zero faith to certainty in the existence of a God, would it be breaking the rule?

 

I would think it applies in that situation, since you are taking away their free will to reject a higher power(s) even exists, and replacing that with the truth that yes they do.

 

I think you're going about this backwards. First you need to know what is the purpose of angels?

A lot of the rules would be made moot if they could never leave Heaven, for instance.

 

I think an umbrella rule that covers all already stated would be: Thou shalt not give a shit

 

I have a different perspective on the idea, which is instead of angels simply being "forbidden" to do these actions (which seem pretty good in the list), they are in fact incapable of breaking the rules because they do have the same freedom that mortals have. So it follows that they would try efforts to work around restrictions -- more "spirit of the law" instead of "letter of the law".

 

* Thou shall not destroy nor decay the Ones creation.

Would prevent them going scorched earth and having to go very by proxy to cause much harm.

* though shall not share the “deep knowledge” of creation.

They can only give knowledge that humankind has at some point already discovered. They cannot give new knowledge.