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(apocalypse how) application
Dec. 7th, 2019 07:27 pmCharacter Name: Anthony J. Crowley
Age: Infinite - has existed before time was a concept. At least 6000+ years old
Canon: Good Omens (TV)
Canon point: Near the end of the series, just before Crowley freezes time with Satan approaching
History: Wiki link! See also: the Bible
Personality: Describing a demon should be simple. They’re evil, they’re violent, they’re destructive. That’s how they were made to be and honestly, there isn’t much they can do about it. Free will is for humans, that was part of the point with the apple.
Ironic, then, that the one demon who seems capable of truly exercising free will is the one responsible for all that apple business. Enter: Crowley, an angel who didn’t so much fall as saunter vaguely downwards, although the truth of how he was cast out of Heaven tends to change to suit his moods. The crux of it seems to be that he never quite meant to, and never quite settled into to being a demon the way other fallen angels did. Some part of him seems to be innately complicated compared to other demons, a fact that isn’t helped by his time on Earth.
He’s gone a bit native, you see.
This isn’t to start saying that Crowley is by any means a shining beacon of goodness, or that he should’ve remained an angel, that would be inaccurate to say the least. Crowley is a fairly selfish being, most of the time. He’s fascinated by humans, openly admires their creativity and cleverness and does care about humanity as a whole, but he has little concern for them on a one-to-one basis. This is practical in a way, and it’s not that there can’t be exceptions (he seems to have struck up a friendship with Leonardo Da Vinci). But still. He shows almost no regard for pedestrians while driving, including when he does hit someone, acting more put out by the whole business instead of expressing concern for the woman who went flying over the front of his car. And while he isn’t willing to do the deed himself, he’s more than happy to try to talk Aziraphale into killing a single child to save the rest of the world. Most of the time, Crowley is looking out for himself. Someone’s gotta do it, after all. And while he does express distress and anger with God for testing humans too much with the apocalypse, his primary motivation for trying to save the world is that he likes it there. Once things turn sour for him on Earth, he's willing to abandon any chance at saving it to save his own skin, instead (as long as Aziraphale goes with him).
There’s also the fact he’s spent a considerable amount of time making sure that as many humans as possible were as miserable as possible. Crowley has a job and he’s rather good at it, it just so happens that job is trying to tarnish people’s souls so they end up in Hell. The difference between what he does and what a regular demon does is that he likes to leave it all up to the humans, how they deal with whatever negative emotions he inspires. Crowley isn’t the devil on someone’s shoulder talking them into committing a sin, he’s just that bad day you had, because the phones were down, because there was too much traffic, because your ex’s new girlfriend looks really good on instagram, and then you take that bad day out on someone else, and a little bit of goodness is lost.
But there’s still free will. That’s important to Crowley.
Of all the characters in the show, even literal angels, Crowley seems to be one of the few with a strong sense of fairness, of right and wrong, which maybe makes sense, considering the whole apple nonsense. He questions why Adam & Eve were kicked out on their first offence, he balks when informed that God plans to drown everyone, including children, all because She’s displeased with a bunch of humans, and he seems particularly perturbed by the worst of the violence that humanity can come up with. It’s this sense of fairness that seems to drive his acts of Hell ordained wickedness on Earth, it’s the reason he tries to maintain the importance of free will in everything he does.
The one place he isn’t fair is with the plants in his flat, a recreation of a garden, where they’re held to an impossibly high standard and destroyed for even the smallest mistake. But we don’t have time to unpack all that.
Let’s focus back on all those messy human things. Those emotions.
Most demons seem capable of only a handful of emotions, namely things around anger, pride, confusion (only one person in this show has a brain cell and it’s Pepper, the 11 year old) and hate. By contrast, Crowley runs the whole gamut of emotions, from fear to hope to anger to loss to love. He’s one of the more emotional and subsequently emotionally vulnerable characters in the show, and that comes from an apparent willingness to expose himself to the mortifying ordeal of being known. Unsurprisingly, this mostly happens around and because of Aziraphale, but in general Crowley shows a range and depth of emotion that other demons just completely lack. Even from the beginning, there’s a surprising tenderness to the way he talks about Jesus, empathising and sympathising with someone who should be his enemy. Crowley shows disgust at learning about the Flood, he’s anguished over his Fall, he's quick to anger, especially if the topic is something he's sensitive about, and his anger occasionally leads to violent outbursts and petty grudges. He also gets a strong sense of satisfaction from his work, and he breaks down when his best friend is killed. He’s even kind and gentle on occasion, although that’s definitely more reserved for Aziraphale. Crowley craves companionship, he goes out of his way to seek it, and he seems to understand that in order to truly have it, he has to be open to a) having emotions and b) admitting them. Multiple times in the show, he puts himself and his emotions on display in the hope that they won’t be tossed aside.
They are, but he picks himself up and tries again anyway.
The thing about emotions, though, is that they're difficult and complicated and honestly, Crowley just isn't that great at regulating his emotions, especially when it comes to emotions of the negative side of things. It comes through in the anger, but it also comes through in how quickly he gives in to despair once he thinks Aziraphale is gone, in his anxiety while trying to find the Antichrist, in the way he withdraws from his only friend for decades because of a minor disagreement. Fairly consistently, his feelings get the better of him, leading to some kind of unfortunate consequence. Crowley pushes Aziraphale too hard out of panic at losing him, and he messes up delivering the Antichrist because he's too focused on worrying over the coming apocalypse. His fears doesn't necessarily stop him from getting things done, but it drives a lot of his actions, especially as Armageddon approaches.
All that said, the stuff about free will, the fear, the mortifying ordeal of being known, the whole mess with being cast out of Heaven. It could speak to someone who takes themselves far too seriously, but while Crowley certainly has his broody moments, mostly when alone, he’s clearly also enamoured with the world and with experiences, and isn’t shy about indulging himself or having fun. His sense of fun may be a little skewed, considering it once involved turning paintball guns real, during some company’s team building exercise, but it’s still fun. He likes comedic plays, he cultivates a collection of music, he uses words like wahoo, he gets drunk and rants about how smart dolphins are, despite apparently not knowing quite how dolphins work. There’s a playfulness to Crowley, an edge of dramatics, a bit of flair that suggests he does know how to enjoy himself. Even when he’s facing imminent destruction, he takes the time to leap up on a chair and put on a bit of production to trick a Duke of Hell, a being more powerful and dangerous than he is. There’s creativity there, an imagination, something else that most demons lack. It’s all very free will of him. It’s very human of him, which is also the point.
By extension, he’s a lot better at interacting with other humans than most demons are, being perfectly of capable of developing professional relationships. In the book, he’s described as Hell’s most approachable demon, and while not exactly a high bar, it does say something about Crowley. He’s fun, he can be charming, he’s cool. Or at least, he likes to think he is, the actual effectiveness of any coolness he tries to cultivate is varied.
See: the aforementioned wahoo. And just the seventies in general. He’s doing his best. For whatever that’s worth.
Suitability: Gestures at the demon thing. He's more than used to doing terrible things because someone else wants him to, and although he'll be hesitant of doing anything on behalf of an Entity at first (out of a sensible amount of fear), it's more than likely he'll decide that there's little difference between making people sin for Hell and scaring people for an Entity. Maybe the scaring thing is less awful, honestly. At least that doesn't have repercussions for a person's eternal afterlife. He just has to be more sneaky about it, since it isn't exactly ADI approved.
As for sticking around, as much as he'd like to leave America immediately, ADI is his best bet at a) figuring out what's going on and b) getting home. There also may be some useful information about the apocalypse he's coming from, and he's a natural curious bastard, he'll want to learn more about the Entities, which he'll have to do at the ADI.
Powers/Abilities: I'm……. sorry. Unfortunately canon is super vague about what demons(/angels) can and can't do, because it wasn't really relevant to the story so Neil and Terry didn't bother to make any kind of rules. Which makes it hard to write a definitive list of abilities so I'm almost certainly going to forget something, but I am going to do my best! That said, I found a fairly comprehensive list here that details Crowley's (and Aziraphale's) use of powers. It's book canon, but there's only minor differences between the two.
Reality warping: I left the most vague power for last*, because there's really no defined limit to what angels and demons can do. Or, there is a defined limit, and it's their imagination. This means that most of them don't really do anything with this ability, but Crowley has a lot of imagination, which makes it hard to say what he can and can't do. Make his plants sentient because he read in a book that talking to them worked? Sure. Keep a flaming car driving for an hour? Absolutely. Have a working sound system despite not plugging it in, because he simply Expects It To? Yep. There's a reason they tend to call these acts 'miracles'.
In my defense I did apologize earlier.
There are less dramatic examples of this, such as swapping clothes with a snap of fingers, creating items from raw firmament (atoms, essentially), or turning off his headlights, but the basic gist is that the power of belief is incredibly important, even if said believer doesn't know how refrigerators work. This can also hinder them, because it can give powers to negative beliefs; there's absolutely no reason that Crowley can't teleport himself from London to Tadfield, but he's so caught up in his grief and fear that he seems to forget? About that? And chooses instead to deal with traffic during the apocalypse? Idiot. In game I think this could boil down to a battery sort of metaphor. He'll need to be very charged up for any significant reality warping, such as keeping a car that's on fire held together, but could manage smaller miracles, like summoning himself a new jacket, with only a little charge. It seems feasible to say that no matter how much fear he generates for the Web, it won't ever be enough power to do anything game-breaking, like dumping all of the ADI information on the network with a snap of his fingers. If this particular aspect of his powers is something that's going to need more discussion, I'm definitely open to that. I know it's kind of a lot.
Just in case it needs to be said: I won't be using any of his powers on PCs without checking in with players first.
With regards to non-supernatural abilities, Crowley's just an odd mish-mash of skills and knowledge from 6000+ years on Earth. He probably knows how to spin thread, and also knows how to hack into a Government computer system. He's not terrible with a sword, likely has basic working knowledge of firearms (he seems fairly comfortable picking up a rifle, even if it's not a real one), and can drive a car very well. He has a good head for maths and engineering, if the fact he was able to redesign plans for a major roadway is any indication, and he can make a real good powerpoint presentation.
For weaknesses, he can be hurt by consecrated items and would be completely destroyed by holy water, even a drop.
Entity Affinity: THE WEB. We stan a manipulative bitch who goes to unnecessary lengths to tarnish human souls rather than just nudging them directly to do something evil. Ensuring that humans have free will is important, but he does seem to enjoy the over the top, dramatic plans that involve multiple layers of subtle influence to get people into Hell. It might be worth noting that he creates these elaborate plans despite being able to achieve the same result with a snap of his fingers; a more straightforward Entity like the Hunt or Slaughter may align more with Hell's MO, but they'd bore Crowley. It's more fun to rely on trickery.
He manipulates humans, he manipulates Hell (he acts the loyal minion role well and purposefully seems to play up the Flash Bastard thing to keep other demons from looking too deeply), he eventually gets a chance to mess around with Heaven, too. He even manipulates Aziraphale, who he loves very much, playing on his emotions, reminding him of everything that will be lost, and eventually landing on the right argument (if an angel works to stop a demon, that must be allowed!) to ensure that he agrees to help Crowley stop the apocalypse. It's for a good cause, sure, but it's still somewhat underhanded.
On the other side of things, he's scared of being a pawn in Hell or Heaven's games, especially God's manipulations, and tends to worry about fate and free will and all that nonsense. He's also scared of being trapped in a more metaphorical sense; he'd love to be free of Hell, but the circumstances have him trapped serving them, and he hates it. He can feed other people's fear to the Web while also being fed on. It's a two for one deal.
Inventory: Clothes (partially burnt). A tire iron. A cellphone. His wallet. An expensive watch. He didn't take much with him to the end of the world.
Samples: TDM top level & replies
*This part isn't in the bullet point list because I couldn't work out how to also have paragraphs without it looking stupid :( HTML is hard :(
Age: Infinite - has existed before time was a concept. At least 6000+ years old
Canon: Good Omens (TV)
Canon point: Near the end of the series, just before Crowley freezes time with Satan approaching
History: Wiki link! See also: the Bible
Personality: Describing a demon should be simple. They’re evil, they’re violent, they’re destructive. That’s how they were made to be and honestly, there isn’t much they can do about it. Free will is for humans, that was part of the point with the apple.
Ironic, then, that the one demon who seems capable of truly exercising free will is the one responsible for all that apple business. Enter: Crowley, an angel who didn’t so much fall as saunter vaguely downwards, although the truth of how he was cast out of Heaven tends to change to suit his moods. The crux of it seems to be that he never quite meant to, and never quite settled into to being a demon the way other fallen angels did. Some part of him seems to be innately complicated compared to other demons, a fact that isn’t helped by his time on Earth.
He’s gone a bit native, you see.
This isn’t to start saying that Crowley is by any means a shining beacon of goodness, or that he should’ve remained an angel, that would be inaccurate to say the least. Crowley is a fairly selfish being, most of the time. He’s fascinated by humans, openly admires their creativity and cleverness and does care about humanity as a whole, but he has little concern for them on a one-to-one basis. This is practical in a way, and it’s not that there can’t be exceptions (he seems to have struck up a friendship with Leonardo Da Vinci). But still. He shows almost no regard for pedestrians while driving, including when he does hit someone, acting more put out by the whole business instead of expressing concern for the woman who went flying over the front of his car. And while he isn’t willing to do the deed himself, he’s more than happy to try to talk Aziraphale into killing a single child to save the rest of the world. Most of the time, Crowley is looking out for himself. Someone’s gotta do it, after all. And while he does express distress and anger with God for testing humans too much with the apocalypse, his primary motivation for trying to save the world is that he likes it there. Once things turn sour for him on Earth, he's willing to abandon any chance at saving it to save his own skin, instead (as long as Aziraphale goes with him).
There’s also the fact he’s spent a considerable amount of time making sure that as many humans as possible were as miserable as possible. Crowley has a job and he’s rather good at it, it just so happens that job is trying to tarnish people’s souls so they end up in Hell. The difference between what he does and what a regular demon does is that he likes to leave it all up to the humans, how they deal with whatever negative emotions he inspires. Crowley isn’t the devil on someone’s shoulder talking them into committing a sin, he’s just that bad day you had, because the phones were down, because there was too much traffic, because your ex’s new girlfriend looks really good on instagram, and then you take that bad day out on someone else, and a little bit of goodness is lost.
But there’s still free will. That’s important to Crowley.
Of all the characters in the show, even literal angels, Crowley seems to be one of the few with a strong sense of fairness, of right and wrong, which maybe makes sense, considering the whole apple nonsense. He questions why Adam & Eve were kicked out on their first offence, he balks when informed that God plans to drown everyone, including children, all because She’s displeased with a bunch of humans, and he seems particularly perturbed by the worst of the violence that humanity can come up with. It’s this sense of fairness that seems to drive his acts of Hell ordained wickedness on Earth, it’s the reason he tries to maintain the importance of free will in everything he does.
The one place he isn’t fair is with the plants in his flat, a recreation of a garden, where they’re held to an impossibly high standard and destroyed for even the smallest mistake. But we don’t have time to unpack all that.
Let’s focus back on all those messy human things. Those emotions.
Most demons seem capable of only a handful of emotions, namely things around anger, pride, confusion (only one person in this show has a brain cell and it’s Pepper, the 11 year old) and hate. By contrast, Crowley runs the whole gamut of emotions, from fear to hope to anger to loss to love. He’s one of the more emotional and subsequently emotionally vulnerable characters in the show, and that comes from an apparent willingness to expose himself to the mortifying ordeal of being known. Unsurprisingly, this mostly happens around and because of Aziraphale, but in general Crowley shows a range and depth of emotion that other demons just completely lack. Even from the beginning, there’s a surprising tenderness to the way he talks about Jesus, empathising and sympathising with someone who should be his enemy. Crowley shows disgust at learning about the Flood, he’s anguished over his Fall, he's quick to anger, especially if the topic is something he's sensitive about, and his anger occasionally leads to violent outbursts and petty grudges. He also gets a strong sense of satisfaction from his work, and he breaks down when his best friend is killed. He’s even kind and gentle on occasion, although that’s definitely more reserved for Aziraphale. Crowley craves companionship, he goes out of his way to seek it, and he seems to understand that in order to truly have it, he has to be open to a) having emotions and b) admitting them. Multiple times in the show, he puts himself and his emotions on display in the hope that they won’t be tossed aside.
They are, but he picks himself up and tries again anyway.
The thing about emotions, though, is that they're difficult and complicated and honestly, Crowley just isn't that great at regulating his emotions, especially when it comes to emotions of the negative side of things. It comes through in the anger, but it also comes through in how quickly he gives in to despair once he thinks Aziraphale is gone, in his anxiety while trying to find the Antichrist, in the way he withdraws from his only friend for decades because of a minor disagreement. Fairly consistently, his feelings get the better of him, leading to some kind of unfortunate consequence. Crowley pushes Aziraphale too hard out of panic at losing him, and he messes up delivering the Antichrist because he's too focused on worrying over the coming apocalypse. His fears doesn't necessarily stop him from getting things done, but it drives a lot of his actions, especially as Armageddon approaches.
All that said, the stuff about free will, the fear, the mortifying ordeal of being known, the whole mess with being cast out of Heaven. It could speak to someone who takes themselves far too seriously, but while Crowley certainly has his broody moments, mostly when alone, he’s clearly also enamoured with the world and with experiences, and isn’t shy about indulging himself or having fun. His sense of fun may be a little skewed, considering it once involved turning paintball guns real, during some company’s team building exercise, but it’s still fun. He likes comedic plays, he cultivates a collection of music, he uses words like wahoo, he gets drunk and rants about how smart dolphins are, despite apparently not knowing quite how dolphins work. There’s a playfulness to Crowley, an edge of dramatics, a bit of flair that suggests he does know how to enjoy himself. Even when he’s facing imminent destruction, he takes the time to leap up on a chair and put on a bit of production to trick a Duke of Hell, a being more powerful and dangerous than he is. There’s creativity there, an imagination, something else that most demons lack. It’s all very free will of him. It’s very human of him, which is also the point.
By extension, he’s a lot better at interacting with other humans than most demons are, being perfectly of capable of developing professional relationships. In the book, he’s described as Hell’s most approachable demon, and while not exactly a high bar, it does say something about Crowley. He’s fun, he can be charming, he’s cool. Or at least, he likes to think he is, the actual effectiveness of any coolness he tries to cultivate is varied.
See: the aforementioned wahoo. And just the seventies in general. He’s doing his best. For whatever that’s worth.
Suitability: Gestures at the demon thing. He's more than used to doing terrible things because someone else wants him to, and although he'll be hesitant of doing anything on behalf of an Entity at first (out of a sensible amount of fear), it's more than likely he'll decide that there's little difference between making people sin for Hell and scaring people for an Entity. Maybe the scaring thing is less awful, honestly. At least that doesn't have repercussions for a person's eternal afterlife. He just has to be more sneaky about it, since it isn't exactly ADI approved.
As for sticking around, as much as he'd like to leave America immediately, ADI is his best bet at a) figuring out what's going on and b) getting home. There also may be some useful information about the apocalypse he's coming from, and he's a natural curious bastard, he'll want to learn more about the Entities, which he'll have to do at the ADI.
Powers/Abilities: I'm……. sorry. Unfortunately canon is super vague about what demons(/angels) can and can't do, because it wasn't really relevant to the story so Neil and Terry didn't bother to make any kind of rules. Which makes it hard to write a definitive list of abilities so I'm almost certainly going to forget something, but I am going to do my best! That said, I found a fairly comprehensive list here that details Crowley's (and Aziraphale's) use of powers. It's book canon, but there's only minor differences between the two.
- Time: Crowley is capable of controlling time, to a somewhat limited degree. He can't time travel, but he can freeze time for a minute or two, and can haul himself & others outside time. Visually, this looks like a great big desert. I'm gonna go ahead and assume this one should be heavily nerfed, since it's a ridiculous power and would require a lot of energy to pull off. Maybe somewhere far down the line he'll get enough juice to stop time for a second or two, but if I ever wanted to play with that I'd check in with y'all first.
- Resilience: It's demonstrated in the show (via a stage direction in the scripts) that Crowley's physical body is able to take a blow to the head that 'would kill a human' and is able to pick himself back up after being knocked over by a direct hit from a fire hose (ouch). If he hasn't fed his Entity, he'll be at normal human levels of resilience. Also he doesn't age and is effectively immortal (assuming he doesn't have a run in with Holy Water), does this fit here? His body doesn’t age, theoretically I suppose it would in game if he isn't feeding the Entity, but I don't think he'll go without doing that for long enough to be noticeable.
- Healing/harming: These kind of fall under the same category, since demons and angels are able to revive/kill or heal/harm with a thought. Hastur causes a woman to have a heart attack, Aziraphale resurrects a dove (Crowley does this in the book, and the only reason for the switch was filming considerations, so I'm going to say that Crowley has the same ability). I imagine that harming will come far more easily, especially if he's doing it in a way that aligns with the Entity (we'll nerf the 'killing with a thought', that's a bit much), while healing will take a lot of metaphorical juice in the tank to pull off successfully.
- Self-sustaining: Demons don't seem to require anything to sustain themselves, such as food, water, sleep, or oxygen. As discussed on the FAQ, if Crowley isn't feeding the Entity, he'll start to suffer from the mortifying ordeal of having a human body, and will need to maintain it with rest and sustenance. Sucks to be him.
- Wings: They're just wings! They're black, they look cool! I definitely want him to keep these, on account of losing them would be incredibly traumatic, but it's never shown in canon if their wings actually enable flight, so let's go with a big fat no on that one, no matter how much fear he causes. I don't know if accessing them would require power, it's not really established… where they go when they aren't visible. Maybe a pocket dimension? I'll go with mod preference on this one!
- Physical form: He's got one, in the loosest sense of the word. For demons/angels 'size and shape are simply options'; Crowley can turn into a big black snake, or transform just part of himself, or transport himself across space with a thought, or travel through the phone lines. He's a demon stuffed into a 'corporation', which is code for a human body (although they seem to be supplied by Heaven and Hell, this isn't a case of possession), and is able to manipulate said physical corporation. This is the sort of thing that could require varying amounts of supernatural juice, and would also vary based on what he's doing the manipulation of his physical form for. Showing off his fangs to terrify someone? Go right ahead. Trying to teleport himself out of harm's way? BZZT try again. The teleportation can be nerfed to within a reasonable distance, too, so that he can't pop over to another country.
- Infernal senses: Crowley is able to sense what people want, their deep dark desires, so that he can manipulate them into sinning. It's actually kind of going to be nice for him to not have that background noise, if he hasn't been scaring people. He also seems to be able to locate Aziraphale through some unknown means, and the archangel Gabriel is able to sense 'evil', so I'm drawing the conclusion that Crowley can sense 'good', which is how he tracks the angel down. He's also able to tell when the Hellhound locates the Antichrist, despite it happening miles away. In a 'there's a disturbance in the force' kind of way. This doesn't seem especially game breaking, he'll just have to make sure to feed his Entity if he wants to be able to do it.
- Mind/perception control: To a somewhat mild extent. They're able to make it so that people don't see them, or change how they're perceived (e.g., gender presentation, or Crowley not letting people notice his eyes), as well as putting humans into a sort of trance-like state where they'll answer any question freely and honestly. There also appears to be some level of memory wiping available to them, because why not. Spoiler warning but he's going to be Web-aligned so I feel like this fits in nicely? One of those powers that'll work more easily if he's using it to be spooky scary for the Web.
- Languages: An easy one, really. He can understand spoken languages at will, and presumably speak them as well. Aziraphale's French is just bad because he's British.
- The Divine: Angels and demons are of the same stock, and are equally capable of performing temptations or divine inspiration (well, Aziraphale and Crowley are capable of it, this might be the imagination thing coming into play). Crowley performs divine miracles for Aziraphale, and Aziraphale performs temptations for Crowley. So although truly divine objects hurt him, he's still capable of pulling off miracles that could be considered holy. In game, this likely won't happen very often, as I can't see the Web being super into it. Crowley will have to have done a lot of scaring if he wants to give someone divine ecstasy.
Reality warping: I left the most vague power for last*, because there's really no defined limit to what angels and demons can do. Or, there is a defined limit, and it's their imagination. This means that most of them don't really do anything with this ability, but Crowley has a lot of imagination, which makes it hard to say what he can and can't do. Make his plants sentient because he read in a book that talking to them worked? Sure. Keep a flaming car driving for an hour? Absolutely. Have a working sound system despite not plugging it in, because he simply Expects It To? Yep. There's a reason they tend to call these acts 'miracles'.
In my defense I did apologize earlier.
There are less dramatic examples of this, such as swapping clothes with a snap of fingers, creating items from raw firmament (atoms, essentially), or turning off his headlights, but the basic gist is that the power of belief is incredibly important, even if said believer doesn't know how refrigerators work. This can also hinder them, because it can give powers to negative beliefs; there's absolutely no reason that Crowley can't teleport himself from London to Tadfield, but he's so caught up in his grief and fear that he seems to forget? About that? And chooses instead to deal with traffic during the apocalypse? Idiot. In game I think this could boil down to a battery sort of metaphor. He'll need to be very charged up for any significant reality warping, such as keeping a car that's on fire held together, but could manage smaller miracles, like summoning himself a new jacket, with only a little charge. It seems feasible to say that no matter how much fear he generates for the Web, it won't ever be enough power to do anything game-breaking, like dumping all of the ADI information on the network with a snap of his fingers. If this particular aspect of his powers is something that's going to need more discussion, I'm definitely open to that. I know it's kind of a lot.
Just in case it needs to be said: I won't be using any of his powers on PCs without checking in with players first.
With regards to non-supernatural abilities, Crowley's just an odd mish-mash of skills and knowledge from 6000+ years on Earth. He probably knows how to spin thread, and also knows how to hack into a Government computer system. He's not terrible with a sword, likely has basic working knowledge of firearms (he seems fairly comfortable picking up a rifle, even if it's not a real one), and can drive a car very well. He has a good head for maths and engineering, if the fact he was able to redesign plans for a major roadway is any indication, and he can make a real good powerpoint presentation.
For weaknesses, he can be hurt by consecrated items and would be completely destroyed by holy water, even a drop.
Entity Affinity: THE WEB. We stan a manipulative bitch who goes to unnecessary lengths to tarnish human souls rather than just nudging them directly to do something evil. Ensuring that humans have free will is important, but he does seem to enjoy the over the top, dramatic plans that involve multiple layers of subtle influence to get people into Hell. It might be worth noting that he creates these elaborate plans despite being able to achieve the same result with a snap of his fingers; a more straightforward Entity like the Hunt or Slaughter may align more with Hell's MO, but they'd bore Crowley. It's more fun to rely on trickery.
He manipulates humans, he manipulates Hell (he acts the loyal minion role well and purposefully seems to play up the Flash Bastard thing to keep other demons from looking too deeply), he eventually gets a chance to mess around with Heaven, too. He even manipulates Aziraphale, who he loves very much, playing on his emotions, reminding him of everything that will be lost, and eventually landing on the right argument (if an angel works to stop a demon, that must be allowed!) to ensure that he agrees to help Crowley stop the apocalypse. It's for a good cause, sure, but it's still somewhat underhanded.
On the other side of things, he's scared of being a pawn in Hell or Heaven's games, especially God's manipulations, and tends to worry about fate and free will and all that nonsense. He's also scared of being trapped in a more metaphorical sense; he'd love to be free of Hell, but the circumstances have him trapped serving them, and he hates it. He can feed other people's fear to the Web while also being fed on. It's a two for one deal.
Inventory: Clothes (partially burnt). A tire iron. A cellphone. His wallet. An expensive watch. He didn't take much with him to the end of the world.
Samples: TDM top level & replies
*This part isn't in the bullet point list because I couldn't work out how to also have paragraphs without it looking stupid :( HTML is hard :(