Size
Hero Forge: 7 ft. (XXL)
Lore: 8 ft.
Suggested: Large
Other Monikers
Swords
Appearance
Abilities
- Transform arms into flaming blades
- Discorporating strike that destroys enemies and imprisons their soul
- Angelic Weapons
- Innate Spellcasting
Sword Archons are rarely seen by mortal scholars, and aspects of their appearance are hotly debated, but all agree they are towering humanoids with glorious wings, silver hair, and eyes that glow with inner light. They wear metallic breastplates, greaves, and collars. In some descriptions, however, the sword archons have wings instead of arms. In others, their arms are normal, but can be transformed into fiery blades at will.
Home Plane
Mount Celestia
Stat Block
5th edition:
- Monster Manual Expanded III by DM's Guild (2021)
2nd edition:
- Planescape: Planes of Law Monstrous Supplement (1995)
Description
(From Planes of Law - Monstrous Supplement - 1995):
Swords carry messages from tome archons (and sometimes from the powers themselves) to all of Mount Celestia’s layers. These missives proclaim the word of the higher ranking archons – usually gems of wisdom disseminated for the benefit of lower-level archons. Thus, the arrival of a sword is always regarded with some anticipation, even if the message is of impending war.
Sword archons aren’t known to consume anything, but they apparently relish battle, and often serve as elite guard for sacred sites and more powerful archons.
Combat: Sword archons are rarely seen by mortal scholars, and so there's some disagreement as to their exact physiology and method of combat, but all accounts claim they are blindingly quick, and utterly terrifying to see in a fight.
Scholars who believe sword archons have wings instead of arms claim they attack like beasts, inflicting powerful bites as many as four times per round.
Other scholars believe the sword archons have relatively normal humanoid arms which they can transform, at will, into fiery blades. There are claims that these archons can perform what observers have coined a discorporating strike - the archon dives at least 100 feet towards a single target, striking with both fiery blades, and the enemy is apparently unmade, its body completely obliterated. More than that, scholars insist the strike captures the creature's soul, imprisoning it somewhere within Mount Celestia.
Sword Archons are capable of casting spells at will from any priest sphere as if they were 15th-level clerics.
Sources
- Monster Manual Expanded III by DM's Guild (2021)
- Planescape: Planes of Law; Monstrous Supplelement (1995)