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General timeline of creation according to Christian texts
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God creates the heavens and earth, the angels.
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⇒Lucifer falls from heaven, cast out with a third of the angelic host who are to serve as his army into the pit of hell.
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⇒God creates man; man is lured to sin by Satan.
The Beginning
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At the beginning of time when the population of man began to spread and God realized the heavy sins his children carried were too great to not have a counter, he gave unto them his only child. This, however, was not his only fallback; he knew that despite Jesus, some men would commit such heinous acts that salvation was not an option. In response to this, God gave man another gift, though this one remained a secret - seven angels amongst his most trusted were tasked with the creation of an army of 500, and given the power to wash from the darkest of men their most wretched sins. These seven - Raguel, Inias, Uriel, Adimus, Simiel, Tubuas, and Sabaothe - each hand picked roughly seventy one of their fellow angels to join their ranks, and over years of training and learning how to blend perfectly into man's society, they came to inhabit the earth; walking among mortals as their brothers, as mere human men, weighing the sins of each person through sight alone until they found one whose sins were so heavy that their only chance at redemption was to be cleansed.
Cleansing
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Cleansing, as painless as it sounds, was not a happy process; sins are carried in the blood, and in order to free a man of his sins and make him pure again, the angels - come to be known amongst God's kingdom as Valyti - had to drink of the sinners blood and take it into themselves, both purifying and killing the sinner. Death, however, was a gift - because once drained of their blood and therefore their sins, the person was then able to kneel in heaven for Judgment. Without being cleansed, death would simply lead them straight to hell.
Closed off from Heaven
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At the beginning of it all, Valyti were given free reign of both heaven and earth. They were allowed to come and go as they pleased, walk amongst both kingdoms without restriction. However, the more of God's children that they cleansed, the heavier the weight of the sins they carried became. You see, once a Valyti drinks the blood of man and takes on his sins, they can't get rid of said evils - the blood in them remains tainted, the sins heavy on their souls. God, realizing just how heavily laden his precious Valyti were, finally closed off heaven to their ranks. The Valyti were eventually stranded on earth, no longer allowed access to heaven because of the darkness clinging to them. Despite the animosity some of them felt for having their native home closed off to them, they continued to follow God's intended path - living amongst man as men, cleansing the mortals of their sins.
Labeled as Vampires - betrayed by the Church
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Sometime around 743 C.E. (C.E. means Common Era, which is the same meaning as 'after death' in Christian historical timelines - so this is the equivalent of 700 A.D.) a member of the council of the Roman Catholic Church stumbled across a Valyti cleansing sin from one of the church's parishioners. To a human, it looked like nothing more than a vampire attacking a victim - after all, the Valyti's teeth were sunk into the sinners throat and he was sucking him dry of blood. Scared and out of his mind, the priest ran and confessed what he had seen to the council - though Inias and Simiel were already there trying to run interference and calm the situation. They nearly did, too - had the Catholic church council on their side, shown their true selves to them - until Uriel slipped in once the other two left and twisted their minds, accused them of being fallen Angels and evil spirits. In 745 C.E., the Roman Catholic Church reprobated the seven angels who were the heads of the Valyti army, accusing them of the same things Uriel had leaked into their minds. They basically accused the seven heads as being fallen and ordered that they were no longer to be venerated or recognized by anyone of Christian faith as 'angels'. Later, however, they reinstated Uriel when he convinced them that he wasn't evil like the other six.
The church, desperate in it's attempt to reprobate these six angels and stop their parishioners from honoring them, labeled the Valyti as vampires. Not only out of their desire to believe they were evil, but even when they -knew- that, thanks to Inias and Simiel, they were honestly angels, the supposed men of God - the Roman Catholic Church council - became jealous of their ability to cleanse sin and latched on too easily to Uriel's lies because they wanted a reason to hunt the Valyti. They were jealous that these angels had the power to cleanse sin, when they, honest men of God, did not have the same powers to help their brothers. They spread the lie and began to hunt them down under that rumor of vampirism - and so did other people, even those not of Christian faith. When a Valyti is slain, there's not another to take it's place - and so their number of 500 dwindled over the centuries down to the one hundred and fifty or so it is today.
Blood.
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What's so good about blood, one might ask? To honestly understand why Valyti blood is such a exotic delicacy, an understanding of how Valyti's pass on their powers is imperative. When a Valyti decides they are no longer wishing to continue their existence on earth, they can find a human who is willing to take their place. If the human is willing, they can drain the mortal of their blood, and then feed their own Valyti blood back to the dying victim - thereby transferring their abilities and their overall title as Valyti. With consuming the cleansers blood however comes an intimate knowledge of all their memories good and bad, all of their knowledge, everything - so when a Valyti passes it's powers on to a mortal in order to return to heaven, the mortal knows everything dating all the way back to the beginning of time that the angel knew, and most importantly they have a keen understanding of what it feels like to reside in Heaven. This single fact is what makes Valyti blood so prized - it's like watching a movie reel of a documentary all the way back to the beginning of time and heaven itself, it's like gaining memories of all these things that aren't your own, knowing what heaven is like, what it's like to kneel before God. It often drives mortals insane who are stupid enough to try to drink of a Valyti's blood - but supernatural creatures? It's the ultimate high, and the ultimate bout of knowledge.
