Aasimon
Made with Hero Forge
(From Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual - 2015 [credits]):
An angel is a celestial agent sent forth into the planes to further its god's agenda for weal or woe. Its sublime beauty and presence can drive awestruck onlookers to their knees. Yet angels are destroyers too, and their appearance portends doom as often as it signals hope.
Shards of the Divine. Angels are formed from the astral essence of benevolent gods and are thus divine beings of great power and foresight.
Angels act out the will of their gods with tireless devotion. Even chaotic good deities command lawful good angels, knowing that the angels' dedication to order best allows them to fulfill divine commands. An angel follows a single driving purpose, as decreed by its deity. However, an angel is incapable of following commands that stray from the path of law and good.
An angel slays evil creatures without remorse. As the embodiment of law and good, an angel is almost never mistaken in its judgments. This quality can create a sense of superiority in an angel, a sense that comes to the fore when an angel's task conflicts with the goals of another creature. The angel never acquiesces or gives way. When an angel is sent to aid mortals, it is sent not to serve but to command. The gods of good therefore send their angels among mortals only in response to the most dire circumstances.
Fallen Angels. An angel's moral compass grants it a sense of infallibility that can sometimes spell its undoing. Angels are usually too wise to fall for a simple deception, but sometimes pride can lead one to commit an evil act. Whether intentional or accidental, such an act is a permanent stain that marks the angel as an outcast.
Fallen angels retain their power but lose their connection to the deities from which they were made. Most fallen angels take their banishment personally, rebelling against the powers they served by seeking rulership over a section of the Abyss or a place among other fallen in the hierarchy of the Nine Hells. Zariel, the ruler of the first layer of the Nine Hells, is such a creature. Rather than rebel, some fallen angels resign themselves to an isolated existence on the Material Plane, living in disguise as simple hermits. If they are redeemed, they can become powerful allies dedicated to justice and compassionate service.
Immortal Nature. An angel doesn't require food, drink, or sleep.
(from Planescape Monstrous Compendium Vol. I - 1994 - [credits])
Danis Twelve-Fingers, an inebriated scribe in the Indusium tavern in Sigil, tells (to anyone who passes his spot on the floor) his experience as chronicler of a battle on the slopes of Mount Celestia. Several legions of baatezu scaled the slope from the Gray Waste to Arborea. a wizard who learned of the conflict hired Danis to record it. Danis did not leave Sigil; instead, the wizard let him survey the field clairvoyantly.
“Awful, awful,” he says now. “First th’ fightin’, naturally, an’ then of a sudden I heard this call like a trumpet. Deafed me, it did. All th’ fiends turned, looked ’round, couldna see nothin’. Above sudden came this huuuge light from nowhere! It burned ’em! It burned ever’thing! It burned my brain!” He hiccups and adds, “Come on, basher, buy a bub for a good ol’ sod, ’ay?”
Most who know Danis call him an addle-cove and discount his story. But there is a vertical crater 200 feet tall carved from the slope of Mount Celestia, like an enormous bite.
This kind of dangerous magic is wielded by the aasimon, proxies of the powers of good on the Upper Planes. However, their magic is tempered by kindness and compassion. Aasimon answer the calls of their masters to intervene in mortal causes throughout the Upper Planes.
Aasimon neither lie, cheat, attack needlessly, nor steal, and they are impeccably honorable in their dealings. In this, unfortunately, they are sometimes predictable and even vulnerable to manipulation.
There are seven varieties of aasimon. The agathinon are warriors; the other six types (astral, monadic, and movanic devas, light, planetar, and solar) are collectively called celestial stewards.
Warriors: The agathinon, the fighting forces of the Upper Planes, defend the borders of their planes against intruders. Warriors also face each other in endless cycles of “holy” wars. Gathering a vast host of agathinon warriors and whipping them into ideological fervor, one pantheon wages devastating campaigns against another, slaughtering thousands, even millions in the name of its particular brand of goodness. Despite their goodness, aasimon can hold a grudge; hard feelings still exist between pantheons over holy wars fought thousands of years ago.
Celestial stewards: The mightiest and most just of the aasimon, the celestial stewards directly serve the powers of the Upper Planes. Although similar to one another, each steward has a particular role in the affairs of the Upper Planes Some are messengers, some render aid to mortal followers and still others act as scouts.
Combat: Aasimon take the listed damage from the following attack forms:
Acid = Half
Cold = Half
Electricity (lightning) = Half
Fire (dragon, magical) = Full
Gas (poisonous, etc.) = None
Iron weapon = Full*
Magic Missile = Full
Poison = None
Silver weapon = Full*
*Unless immune to nonmagical weapons, in which case no damage is sustained.
All aasimon have the spell-like powers: aid, augury, change self comprehend languages, cure serious wounds (3 times per day), detect evil, detect magic, know alignment, read magic, and teleport without error. They can travel freely throughout the Upper Planes and may enter the Astral and Prime Material Planes at the request of a greater power. Specific missions may briefly take an aasimon to the Lower Planes. The aasimon’s detect evil ability goes beyond the spell of the same name. Within 100 feet of a source of evil (strongly aligned individual, powerful evil magical item, and so on) the aasimon automatically detects its direction, strength, and general nature. An aasimon who gazes directly into the eyes of an evil creature learns its name, nature, and background. This power always functions automatically.
Aasimon have a special power over mortals called celestial reverence. This power works only in the aasimon’s normal, unaltered form. When the aasimon invokes celestial reverence, a blinding flash of light draws the attention of all mortals in sight of it. Anyone viewing this spectacle must immediately save vs. paralyzation. Any person of good alignment who fails the save is struck by a strong protective love for the aasimon. Those of evil or neutral alignment who fail to save suddenly fear the aasimon’s power and do not attack. Evil creatures of fewer than 8 Hit Dice who fail their save flee the area immediately. The aasimon rarely use this ability, for goodness dictates that they avoid using their powers to manipulate others.
Although aasimon cannot gate in others of their kind, they can send out a distress call that other good powers sense. If an aasimon does this, the closest enchanted good beings (for example, ki-rin, unicorns, and metallic dragons) immediately come to the rescue. This ability does not create or conjure good beings; it only alerts them.
When on the Upper Planes and in dire need, good-aligned worshipers of the utmost faith and power are 20% likely to attract an aasimon’s help. Modify the chance if the worshiper is performing a mission for his or her church.
DEVA (generic):
Devas inhabit the good-aligned Outer Planes: Arborea, Arcadia, the Beastlands, Bytopia, Elysium, Mount Celestia, and Ysgard. These proxies of the powers appear as stunningly handsome male humans with large, feathery wings fanning gracefully from their shoulders.
Devas are the cornerstone of the forces of good. With the agathinon, they are the powerful and trusted vanguard of the Upper Planes. Each of the three varieties of devas has a different task to perform in the scheme of the Upper Planes. The most common missions for each type appear below. The varieties are equal in status with no rivalry between types.
Devas live in perfect harmony with other beings of the Upper Planes. Because the remnants of their material forms disappear at death, none has ever been examined. Devas have a close relationship with the other aasimon, particularly the planetars. In times of great need, a planetar leads a group of devas to perform some mission for a good power.
Combat: Although they serve the cause of goodness, devas must often deliver their messages by the point of the swords. Devastatingly powerful warriors, they have the wherewithal to take the battle to the evil they oppose. In addition to those available to all aasimon, devas have the spell-like powers: cure diseuse (3 times per day), cure light wounds (7 times per day), detect lie, detect snares & pits (7 times per day), dispel magic (7 times per day), heal (once per day), infravision (always active), invisibility IO-foot radius, light, polymorph self, protection from evil, remove curse, remove fear, and tongues.
Devas are immune to cold-based, electrical, magic missile, petrification, poison, normal fire-based, and gas attack spells. Except for monadic devas, who are not affected by fire of any type, devas take half damage from dragon and magical fire attacks. They take full damage from acid attacks. All devas are immune to attacks from nonmagical weapons.