Archons
Protectors of Mount Celestia and all innocent creatures who are free of the taints of evil and chaos. Archon philosophy typically teaches that it is preferable to enlighten and educate creatures in the right way to live, rather than actively seeking to right wrongs. However, there’s a wing of the Celestial Host who are more militant, and believe in taking the fight to where the sin is happening, in the form of Righteous Crusades.
The race is organised into three Congregations: Crusade, Confession and Compassion, which encompass the three different roles in Mount Celestia: Defending the plane and its ideals, helping to promote the qualities that Celestia stands for, and caring for the beings that call Celestia their home. All of the castes are said to be equally important, although the sly observer will notice that it’s only the Compassionate who get to actually rule the plane. Luckily, archons are a cooperative lot and recognise that without the defenders of the plane and its faith there wouldn’t be anything worth ruling in the first place.
Darker chant talks about crown archons, mysterious beings said to guide even the mighty tome archons.
Here’s the chant on the many diverse kinds of creatures in the archon community…
Wait, so Crowns now are advisors to Tomes and not the dubiously existing god-like things?
My (very much non-canonical) take is — sort of, both. I need to spend some time writing this up properly but my idea is crowns archons are still dubiously-existing godlike things (probably hidden away on Chronias), but they manifest a physical crown as a sort of avatar-artefact, which the tome archons can then wear and converse with to receive advice. I’m thinking, an LG creature is hierarchical but also cooperative, so maybe this kind of ruling-in-conjunction thing fits with that vibe. Plus, if a DM disagrees, it’s easy to say the crowns are gods and the tomes wear magic headgear that are unrelated. Plus I have some really cool pictures of crowns to use, and have mined mythology to find crowns that were significant to various cultures. What do you reckon?
Hey George, I finally got round to writing up the crown archons… 🙂