Celestials as Antagonists

[CowardlyPaladin]

I've always heard that celestials and the various other upper plane creatures are kinda boring and uninteresting as villians and that the only solution is to have the Good creatures commit evil acts for the sake of the "Greater Good". I've always disagreed with this, and I wanted to share some ways to have the Upper Plane outsiders be antagonistic to good characters while still having them be beings of pure good. FYI, I am a huge supporter of the Alignment system, so I love using the various outsiders.

Method 1) Celestrials don't have perspective. We must remember that these beings are immortal and lack a very good understanding of short term politics for the most part. Let me give an example. One of my games is set in a fantasy stand in of the Roman Empire, which is largely evil due to the wide spread practices of rape, slavery, genocide, torture, and corruption. One of my players is trying to start an all female military division who focus exclusively upon protecting the common people from bandits and wandering monsters as the military is too busy being corrupt to do so. In order to do this, she is required to work within the system and work with various officials so that they will support her plan. While she does not tolerant any evil actions in her division (No torture for instance) she does have to work with many evil people otherwise her unit will get no funding. THis has been threatened by a group of Devas (what I call the Chaotic Good Celestrials) who are randomly assasisnating various evil officals because...well they are evil (They give them one chance to repent, which most of the officals refuse because they have never have encountered good outsiders before). These assassinations are causing local political trouble and some of these officals while evil, are necessary for my player's unit to function. The Devas are not willing to comprimise, so my player has been trying to find a way to get them to focus on other evil things. The devas als owant to tear down the empire entirely and replace it with something new z
2) Law vs. Chaos. The same character is NG, and most of the party is either Neutral aligned or CG. So when they meet up with a Paladin up with with an low int (8) and he tries to explain to them how the upper planes work. However he has an extremely strong lawful bias and tends to describe chaos and netural as weak and comprimising. This is expounded when various archons come to the city and refuse to work with neutral or chaotic characters (they don't attack or try to hurt them, they just odn't consider their advice) and act totally independently regardless of the political ramifications of their actions. Another example is when the players have to prevent an angel from assassinating the local governer, which would have sparked a civil war.
3) Lack of perspective. Many of the Good outsiders are focused primarily upon their own war against the Evil Outsiders, and thus the local politics and the idea of subtly is rather beyond. Thus random fights between the two forces in the two forces int he middle of towns can be quite devastating.

[ArcturusV]

The problem with this, is not that it's a bad idea. It's that the bad idea is generally propagated by official text. I can think off hand of maybe 3-5 examples where book passages printed for several editions will say things like "Good people/nations/tribes/religions will not fight one another". Because the idea being that Good is focused on, well, Good. And as such they will go the extra mile to make war and violence the last option. If both sides are doing that, then obviously War will never become an option. They'll stop at some point closer to negotiated peace or cultural exchange.

But running Celestials as villains shouldn't be hard. There's the obvious idea that the players themselves are evil (Or neutral) and thus run afoul of Good. But avoiding that there is, as you hinted at, the means to an end scenario.

The classic example I can think of this (Or at least the one most people I talk to about this remembers) would be framed up in that Justice League Unlimited episode "Clash". Superman and Captain Marvel, in a knockdown, drag out fight. Why?

Lex Luthor is pretending to be good, made a city for low income families. And it's powered by a reactor giving nearly free energy (Running off Kryptonite). Superman thinks Lex is still evil, and it's a bomb. It's lead shielded so he can't just see it with his Xray vision to know it's a bomb. Lex explains it's lead shielded because it's running on Kryptonite and to protect superman (And others) from it's side effects. Captain Marvel at this point has been giving Lex the benefit of the doubt. Says that explains everything, and that they should call in someone like the Atom or Steel to check it out as they have the technical expertise.

Superman says there is no time. They must destroy it.

Ensuing brawl between Superman and Captain Marvel which destroys most of the city and eventually has superman melting what was in fact exactly what Lex Luthor said, a power reactor.

This sort of logic can easily apply to Celestials. Especially since as beings of Pure Good (in some flavor), they can be rigid and unrelenting. Ideals like Mercy, Forgiveness, and Second Chances may be entirely foreign to them. They could be ruining attempts player characters are running at Redemption.

Or the coin might be reversed and the Celestials are in favor of Mercy, Forgiveness, Redemption, etc, and player characters are good aligned murder hobos who solve all their problems with something that rhymes with "litting their throat".

[awa]

alternatively you could have the celestial follow the raw of good while having people be more nuanced.

Your society uses poison and eats it's own dead as part of a religious ritual? must smite!

edit
also lesser of two evils lets say the evil overlord is ruling an empire and suppress all dissent and then the celestial come in and kill him. now there is a civil war, all the humanoids and various monster in his army are just wandering around killing anyone they feel like. People are starving because food is not being moved to where it needs to be because of the civil war and wandering monsters. So food price skyrocket and people are being forced to become bandits just to feed them selves.

[Lord Torath]

The 2nd Edition Outer Planes Monstrous Compendium actually stated that the Aasimons generally fight each other in "Holy" Wars, rather than fighting the Fiends (who are engaged in their own "Holy" War). If the celestials fight each other, there's no reason why various groups of "Good" mortals shouldn't.

The good races in Dragonlance Chronicles had to be bludgeoned into working together, and the elves nearly went to war with each other.

If you've ever read the Wheel of Time series, it is chock full of good factions (Seanchen, White Cloaks, Aes Sedai, the other Aes Sedai, Ashamam, the Borderlanders, the Prophet and his followers, the Aiel, and probably a dozen others) all in conflict with one another, each convinced that they are doing what's right. And then there are the actual bad guys...

All you really need is somebody who thinks "My Good is better than your good, so I'm right, and you must be wrong, and therefore you must let me have my way". Or someone who thinks like Miko (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0406.html).

[FreakyCheeseMan]

{Scrubbed}

[North_Ranger]

Pathfinder had an interesting mention in its descriptions of the Book of the Damned: the official codex describing the demonic, infernal and daemonic powers that be was originally penned by the celestial warrior-scholar Tabris, who turned from a shining paragon of virtue to a withered, dulled, jaded creature in the process of procuring all the information needed to describe the multitudinous powers and blasphemies of the celestials' enemies.

In Artifacts & Legends it was mentioned that should all three sections of the Book of the Damned - the demonic, the infernal and the daemonic - be brought together, a secret fourth folio, called the Chronicle of the Righteous, would appear. In these pages it is believed that Tabris described "the most regretful deeds of the celestial races and the deities of light", including but not limited to "innumerable strained compromises between celestials and fiends, instances of unholy deception, successions and sacrifices made for the greater good, occurrences of angelic corruption, massacres on divine battlefields, alliances between opposed deities, and catalogs of slain empyreal lords - in short, a collection depraved enough to undermine nearly any mortal faith". Should such a heretical piece of literature ever reach mortal hands, I would think that the celestials would go to just about any lengths to make sure that not only is the Chronicle destroyed, but any mention or knowledge of its existence is expunged. With holy fire, if need be.

So that's one way you could have celestials as a worthwhile enemy: the PCs managed to get their hands on not only the Book of the Damned, but its celestial apocrypha as well.

[falloutimperial]

Once, I was playing a CG soldier who was very dedicated to the concept of freedom. The DM introduced a character who explained to my group that for centuries, the character has been a part of a vast high council that protected and guided society behind the scenes. My character vowed to end this "undemocratic tyranny" and throw down those who would "prevent sentient peoples from self-led progress." I don't think my DM was expecting that.

With slight tweaking, this same situation could greatly apply to celestials.

[FreakyCheeseMan]

{Scrubbed}

Quoting myself, cause I realized that kinda needed explanation. :P

So, a prerequisite for this to work is that Celestials have recently gotten off their divine keisters and decided to fix some of the evil in the world. Maybe something in the Blood War wiped out most of the demons, so good can go on the offensive. I dunno.

So, Celestials start trying to "Fix" the prime materium - but, a lot of what goes on here is primitive and barbaric to them. The notion of Hereditary Rule, perhaps, or the existence of weapon merchants. None of the nations live up to the Celestials standards of Goodness, so they try to force everyone to disarm, and ignore the politics actually at play.

Meanwhile, some actually evil elements are at play, undermining the Celestial's work, punishing people who work with the "Good" powers, etc. The player characters attempt to meet these threats, but doing so involves doing what the players have always done - getting weapons, serving kings, killing goblins, etc.

In the eyes of the Celestial's, the players are now engaged in arms trafficking, sectarian violence and genocide. Surrendering to the Celestials in an option, but would probably result in the players being arrested, disarmed and detained. So, even if the players agree with the Celestials ultimate goals, they end in conflict with them in the short term.

Actually, if you want to get all deep, the "Goblin" angle might be a fun one to play. Rather than go with the usual - "Celestial powers blindly see goblins as evil", flip the scales - "Celestial powers believe that goblins are entitled to the same rights and dignities as all sentient life." However, Goblins have a prodigious breeding rate and natural aggression - co-existence may be a noble ideal, but not a realistic option, at least not in the world as it exists today.

Like any of that?

[The Dark Fiddler]

"Celestials as Antagonists" is pretty much any Shin Megami Tensei game (not the Persona series, though, and Devil Survivor 2 is also a bit light in this area). If you need some more ideas, or just another look at how it can be done, checking out those games might help.

[kardar233]

In a lot of my games Celestials are basically Fiends with better publicity. They desperately want souls to go their way to help them win the perpetual war against the Fiends, and aren't particularly picky about how to go about it. They have to keep up their public image of being the do-gooder types but it's just a PR facade to get them the souls of gullible mortals. Sure, some lower-level Celestials do actually believe in doing the right thing, but over the millennia of war the lower-level Celestials have been culled to be generally very Lawful, so they won't question the orders of their amoral superiors.

[Kelb_Panthera]

This is a difficult concept to run with, especially in 3.5.

That celestials aren't familiar with things like mercy and forgiveness simply doesn't work. These are core tenets of Good.

You can't really go with the jaded upper echelons of celestial politics either for much the same reason; if they're jaded and don't believe in the tenets of Good then they're not really Good anymore.

Good doesn't have a problem with violence. The celestials have been at war with the fiends since the beginning of creation and don't, indeed can't, have any problems with killing to eat or otherwise survive.

There's also the problem of getting the PC's in contact with the blasted things. For some reason that's ill-defined but not too hard to imagine, outsiders tend to stay on the outside for the most part.

The best bet, IMO, is something like a called archon that's been tasked with running a nation and, because of his lack of perspective and inherently lawful nature, is running it into the ground with overly extensive laws and their enforcement being carried out by mortals that misunderstand and apply already strict laws more strictly than was intended. In short: an dictatorship under an ill-equiped dictator. He means well but simply isn't up to the task.

Having realized that he's not doing a great job, he's called in several of his own kind to help him in the upper levels of government as lietenants and governers. They're bound by their lawful nature to obey and enforce the laws that the archon in power has laid down and, because they have the same background, aren't much better in their own territories than their leader.

The ultimate result is an oppresive oligarchy under the rule of celestial creatures and adherents to lawful and good faiths that's just over the line of tolerable because of corruption trickling down from mortals only a few levels below their celestial masters.

The PC's come into conflict with the celestials as a result of the desire to free the people from oppression. Whether this ends in combat or the PC's convincing the celestial governers of the necessity of removing themselves and their leader from power is up to them.

I, personally, think the most interesting result would be yielded by a mixture of the two. Some of them work to aid the PC's within the law, some openly rebel because they come to realize that the laws they're upholding are unjust, and some remain as antagonists for refusing to break the law and trying to put down the rebellion to prevent the spread of chaos. If the openly rebelious ones simply remove themselves after elevating mortal underlings, you might even get yourself a civil war.

Presto! celestial antagonists.

I have no idea how to produce celestial antagonists from angels, eladrins, or guardinals.

[hamishspence]

Eladrins backing a rebellion against a Lawful Neutral regime (shading toward Evil- it's that Evil shading that convinces the eladrins that it'll have to go).

The PCs are there to prop it up while their allies reform it from within.

Thus- they'll inevitably butt heads with the eladrins.

[Shred-Bot]

If you want celestials as antagonists you could always play a game as the BMX Bandit. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFuMpYTyRjw)

[ReaderAt2046]

Now here's a really interesting idea: A bunch of manifest celestials have been infected with some kind of curse that is causing them to go insane (Miko-style insanity, still trying to do the right thing but have completely forgotten how) and the celestial powers can't directly stop them because the curse is highly contagious and will infect any celestials sent to reign in the mad ones. Mortals, due to their more material nature, are immune to the effects, so the Powers Of Good have to recruit mortal heroes to destroy the mad celestials before they completely destroy civilization.

[Xeratos]

I once ran a campaign where the PCs had to enter a tomb to recover a necklace that was enshrined with a dead paladin for the son of said dead paladin. Needless to say, the celestials were unhappy with what they considered to be the defiling of the tomb (despite the fact that the spirit of the paladin confronted them and, when the situation was explained and after he'd used his x-ray evil detecting vision, told them to take it with his blessing).

The players were forced to kill the archon who appeared to stop the "tomb robbers." This did not sit well with the rest of the angelic realms, earning them the everlasting enmity of a lot of powerful celestial beings.

The campaign fizzled before it got much farther than that, but the party would have eventually become embroiled in a conflict with a faction of celestials seeking to prevent them from achieving their goal of entering a cursed dwarven city in search of a powerful artifact needed to break the seal on the Well of Eternity (not the one from World of Warcraft), a literal pool of divine energy capable of transforming those who enter it into demigods.

The party was opposing another faction of decidedly evil NPCs bent on becoming immortals for a variety of reasons, and the celestials balanced out the triumvirate by doing their best to keep everyone away from any of the keys that would grant access to the Well when combined.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Now here's a really interesting idea: A bunch of manifest celestials have been infected with some kind of curse that is causing them to go insane (Miko-style insanity, still trying to do the right thing but have completely forgotten how) and the celestial powers can't directly stop them because the curse is highly contagious and will infect any celestials sent to reign in the mad ones. Mortals, due to their more material nature, are immune to the effects, so the Powers Of Good have to recruit mortal heroes to destroy the mad celestials before they completely destroy civilization.

oooooohhhhhhh. That's a good one. Maybe have the curse/disease affect divine spell-casters to a lesser extent as well, just to put an edge of extra danger in the mix.

[charcoalninja]

One way to make this work in line with your political backdrop in your setting is to have the Celestials making decisions that though they lead to greater good and are good things to do, they have consequences for the mortals that the angels and such don't see as very important.

People close to the PCs could lose their livelihood because their employment was dependent upon criminal infrastructure. As you've seen with your unit, as there aren't legitimate backers for your military, these corrupt officials dying all the time makes it impossible for you and yours to mount effective defenses against bandits, and other lower societal members.

A great way to help foster this conflict is to have there only be a limited amount of celestials in the area. If there's only a handful around, they'll have to prioritize their efforts and focus their manpower. They'll focus on doing the greatest good with what little resources they have and so rather than trying to battle every bandit crew out there, they're going after the mob bosses that leak caravan information to the bandits, the loansharks that drove those people into poverty in the first place and the corrupt officials that offer those people protection from legal reprisal. So the PCs come into conflict with the celestials because they're concerned about the little people that are suffering hardship and danger because they're beyond the ability of the Celestials to help.

So they'll have to try to convince the Celestials to take a different approach or may find themselves forced out of necessity, especially if they are military and thus obligated to follow the orders of their commanders and the emperor tasked to protect some of these very same individuals the Celestials have decided to put to the sword.

There's a lot of room for conflict here, just keep focused on using them for tension rather than BBEGs and you should be able to stay true to their Goodness while still providing conflict for the PCs.

[TimeWizard]

Ask yourself this: Why would an eternal champion explicity created with an inflexible ideology and methodology be vested in the interest of mortals? I don't remember where I heard this quote, but "Did you ever notice that when God needs someone killed, he sends and Angel? would you want to, ever really want to meet one?"
You know what an literal avatar of the upper planes looks like to humans? Cthulhu. It's alien. It can't be. Can you explain the concept of deforestation to a colony of wood eating beetles? No, because the beetle can't comprehend that concept. So your job is to go torch the scuttling buggers because they will ruin the local ecosystem, meanwhile, a different group decides that it's not humans place to decide what happens to the ecosystem, and that the current status quo only exists because of numberless successful invasions- what makes the here and now so special? So group B decides to go to war with Group A, and are alternatively killing and saving beetles left and right.

We're the beetles in that scenario. None of this should make and beetle-damn sense to us. We're just here to chew the wood. That's how Celestials affect the material world.

[Jan Mattys]

I don't remember where I heard this quote, but "Did you ever notice that when God needs someone killed, he sends and Angel? would you want to, ever really want to meet one?"

That's "The Prophecy" (1995)

Thomas Dagget: Did you ever notice how in the Bible, when ever God needed to punish someone, or make an example, or whenever God needed a killing, he sent an angel? Did you ever wonder what a creature like that must be like? A whole existence spent praising your God, but always with one wing dipped in blood. Would you ever really want to see an angel?

From the same movie there's also this:
Gabriel: I'm an angel. I kill firstborns while their mamas watch. I turn cities into salt. I even, when I feel like it, rip the souls from little girls, and from now till kingdom come, the only thing you can count on in your existence is never understanding why.

[Slipperychicken]

That's "The Prophecy" (1995)

Thomas Dagget: Did you ever notice how in the Bible, when ever God needed to punish someone, or make an example, or whenever God needed a killing, he sent an angel? Did you ever wonder what a creature like that must be like? A whole existence spent praising your God, but always with one wing dipped in blood. Would you ever really want to see an angel?

I really want to see angels as Divine Thugs.

"That's a real nice city you got there, too bad it doesn't have a proper God to protect it. Because it would be an awful shame if someone up there decided to smite it..."

[TimeWizard]

Not just thugs, Wingéd Longshoreman with wrenches and cabbie hats named Paddy that only just got out of probation.

New Setting devised.

[Mono Vertigo]

I really want to see angels as Divine Thugs.

"That's a real nice city you got there, too bad it doesn't have a proper God to protect it. Because it would be an awful shame if someone up there decided to smite it..."
Well, in a way, that's what's going on in the latter Shin Megami Tensei games. Their main philosophy is "might makes right". They claim to be lawful and good because they are strong enough to beat up anyone who dares point out it's a lie. Their boss is so powerful he's effectively the God ruling over everything.
(You are generally given the possibility to kick his ass, and therefore take his place, or at least make him your servant.)

[A Tad Insane]

...
I'm sorry, but when I read "Celestials" and "Antagonists", I immediately thought of Nightmare Moon.

[Seharvepernfan]

Here's my 2cp.

Celestials are good and only good - they never do anything that isn't good (and never fail to try to do something that is good), period.

Also, to my knowledge, celestials don't go running around the material plane looking for evil to smite. They don't go to the material plane at all unless there are fiends there to be stopped (or have been summoned/gated). Even if this isn't the case, it's how I do it.

Humans, even good humans, almost always tend to choose a secular course over a strictly moral one. We tend to fall prey to prejudices, emotions, instincts, laziness, and so on. Celestials don't. Ever.

That's where your conflict comes from. The humans (or whoever) want to save their "area" (tribe/town/nation/planet) from some disaster, but the only way to do it is to fight other people - say, your area is going through a drought, and the only water around is in the next "area" over, so you go there to get some water, but they only have enough for themselves and won't share it with you. Will you let yourself and your friends/family die of thirst? For whatever reason, this is the only option. Say, you're on a desert island and you don't know of any other islands, and nobody is a cleric.

Would you kill those other people?

There is a weak celestial among those other people, and he can't leave the island (say, he's a hound archon or something). He knows that some of these humans are just going to have to die of thirst. He stands between you (and your people) and the water you need.

Most people would pick up an axe and go kill for the water, or die trying. How could you let your own family die of thirst if there is water to be had?

[hamishspence]

Here's my 2cp.

Celestials are good and only good - they never do anything that isn't good (and never fail to try to do something that is good), period.


Asmodeus (or at least his minions) would beg to differ- many were celestials until they did Evil acts enough to Fall.

[Seharvepernfan]

Asmodeus (or at least his minions) would beg to differ- many were celestials until they did Evil acts enough to Fall.

Where is the line, though? How not-totally-good can a celestial be before falling?

[Kelb_Panthera]

Asmodeus (or at least his minions) would beg to differ- many were celestials until they did Evil acts enough to Fall.

This may or may not be true. The lore in FC2 suggests that the angels that became erinyes devils did so over a period of time before the foundation of the nine hells in baator and the drawing of the pact primeval, before even the creation of the material plane. It's as likely as not that the transformations they underwent were voluntary; the results of deliberate transformative magics and grafting.

[hamishspence]

Where is the line, though? How not-totally-good can a celestial be before falling?

In Elder Evils, Avamerin is a fallen planetar- Chaotic Evil- but retains all of his plantar abilities, including the Good subtype. Only difference is his cleric spells.

[Seharvepernfan]

In Elder Evils, Avamerin is a fallen planetar- Chaotic Evil- but retains all of his plantar abilities, including the Good subtype. Only difference is his cleric spells.

That's Elder Evils though. Most splatbook writers don't know the rules all that well.

[Kelb_Panthera]

In Elder Evils, Avamerin is a fallen planetar- Chaotic Evil- but retains all of his plantar abilities, including the Good subtype. Only difference is his cleric spells.

The existence of this and at least one other example, Falls-From-Grace (of planescape: torment fame), is what suggest the erinyes became what they are voluntarily rather than as a result of some spontaneous transformation.

Another alternative theory is that their transformation is a result of one of the clauses in the pact-primeval.

[DigoDragon]

I'm sorry, but when I read "Celestials" and "Antagonists", I immediately thought of Nightmare Moon.

Hee, I see where you made that connection. :smallbiggrin:


In my homebrew D&D campaign world, Celestials always take a "Bigger Picture" view of things, thus finding ways to justify short-term dark paths and shady choices for the long-term benefit of Good.

Example:
Coastal city has a cult presence that's importing drugs overseas? No problem, St. Cuthbert sends a wave of water elementals to flood the city. But wait! Here comes the PCs to save the town by fighting off the elementals. Ah, but this is an obstruction of justice! What's a few innocent lives if it means destroying an entire drug trade? Well now the PCs are at odds and think they can dig out the cult without needing to destroy the entire city!

Kinda like that.

[Cerlis]

I greatly dislike the notion of making Angels and Good outsiders evil for the sake of just being able to fight angelic beings. In this I consider "evil" to cover all that "bigger picture" stuff and the usual tropes.

Naturally the problem is with retaining both the "good" aspect as well as the conflict.

I've been playing Samurai Warriors (3) recently and a short discussion had me thinking about how each side in the game is usually "good" (well, except Nobunaga of course :P). In fact several characters have your character fighting alongside someone, then fighting against them. In one battle I remember one warrior questioned the others continued resistance, even though your own character (the other) is not in a position to carry out your regime. In otherwords you are basically just rebels being the last faction to be snuffed out before a 500 year era of piece. And her reply is that if she does, the people she cares about will come to harm.
So it basically comes down to one group fighting to remain independent and the other fighting for unification.

I find the notion and politics of a faction debating what measures they need to subjugate a faction and still retain their beliefs versus others who could "just submit" (and possible lose all control of their life) or fight (and die) as well as ask others to fight for you. In fact the Correct ending for Yukimura in Samurai Warriors 1 (each tended to have a positive and negative ending. With all the war in feudal japan the negative ones where usually the historical ones) resulted in him realizing that his cause was for naught, his faction destroyed, and as a unified japan his role (as a warrior) was meaningless And so he simply fights on until he dies
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HR9qIUXOjYY

There are flaws with this system. And I'm sure any given person in this type of Peace versus Freedom scenario could be (given the right words) talked out of their action. But the whole point of tragedy is that that doesn't happen. This good person is to proud to apologize, and that good person misunderstands their stubbornness. And so they come to blows and one or both of them die needlessly. But in the scenario its very easy to put the someone who anyone would say is a good person in both roles. That is the tragedy of war.

And i think that is ultimately the best medium for having Celestials as enemies. A contest of factions. Perhaps they are starting to police the material realm. Perhaps the outer realms are collapsing and they are refuges. Perhaps they are hunting down horrible evil people but the fact is that in war that there are innocent casualties always. Perhaps its not even the celestials fault. Perhaps its the mortals failing to trust others. Perhaps its the mortals pride, or greed, or want of independence even if it means the deaths of thousands.

These types of horrible tragedies ARE possible with people who show mercy, who take care of prisoners and refugees. its possible between peoples with the same ideals who simply have different needs or disagree on how peace should be handled.