PDA

View Full Version : The mind of celestial/angels



Starshade
2014-10-17, 05:11 AM
Reading a book written by Raymond E Feist, I found he described an angel, in his fantasy universe. But, how do regular D&D understands how angels and celestials are just, "good"? I find it simpler to figure out how to create realistic Demon and Devil characters in D&D, since they are parodies of human failings. How does one portray Angels in D&D, and make them 'realistic'? As perfect humanish characters who just got powers and are pure at heart. Or try to portray something not 'human' at all, like Feist, but something from a different realm, with a very different view of the world, a "divine hivemind", insight into some celestial 'consciousness' , etc. As Feist seem to imply in his fantasy world (who's based on his group's D&D homebrew world :D ).

NichG
2014-10-17, 06:44 AM
If you can conceptualize an amplifcation of certain aspects of human vices, can't you do the same for amplification of certain aspects of human virtues? An angel who literally cannot comprehend temptation; an angel who literally embodies empathy for the suffering of others, to the extent that the problems of others around them automatically are their problems; an angel whose existence is the gradual shedding of aspects of itself in acts of pure sacrifice, such that it eventually winnows itself away into a faint whisper of transcendent thought in the process; an angel whose existence is 'bliss' - the release from suffering and cares, and whose thought process focuses purely on the absolution of burdens, etc.

Though, having done this exercise, I sort of agree with you. Virtues are kind of unmotivated and wishy-washy compared to vices. Vices are pretty clear drives, but the classic virtues are almost always the absence of drives.

What about a different interpretation of virtues, as the gifts/abilities that humans hold as valuable? So you'd have an angel of rationality, an angel of understanding, an angel of love, an angel of intelligence, an angel of communication, an angel of prowess, an angel of health, etc.

Frozen_Feet
2014-10-17, 09:54 AM
If you think virtues are umotivated, I say you don't know enough about virtues (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_virtues). :smalltongue: Several things stand out at least: desire for justice and well-being of others as well as romantic devotion and focus towards one's work. Diligence is, perhaps, the easiest virtue to turn into a drive. Ask one question: what is the angel's job? Then, make it do that job with gusto. It gets funny if the angel is Angel of Death or Angel of Retribution. :smallamused:

NichG
2014-10-17, 11:00 AM
Well, out of those seven, at least four are predominantly passive: Chastity, Temperance, Patience, Humility. They're each basically a way of saying 'the characteristic of habitually not doing the corresponding vice'.

For the remainder, Kindness and Charity are probably the major ones that can come across well in their own right (not to mention, the colloquial meaning of those words overlaps way too much. I mean, in the Wikipedia entry 'charity' is used as a defining term for kindness. Maybe if you focused in on the fairly unique aspect - 'Kindness' specifically as the tendency to form emotional bonds with others rather than the tendency to help out/be compassionate to others.

The issue with Diligence is that it's kind of a meta-trait - you need to have an additional job above and beyond just 'being diligent' to give it meaning, so I'm not so sure it works well for an exemplar being (especially since exemplars of LN already take the whole diligence thing to 11 anyhow)

Edit:

Anyhow, I think there's lots of opportunity to move away from classical virtue/vice dichotomy and ask the question - what is transcendent about human nature? What are those aspects of human life which seem closest to touching on something greater than ourselves, or things which seem impossible to understand and yet deeply important. Take each of those ideas, everything that seems to have a spark of value for its own sake, and then turn it up to 11 and purify it - there's your angel.

The ability to appreciate beauty, for example - beauty of form, beauty in a perfect moment, etc. Distill it down to the very idea of 'being able to appreciate' - the ability to recognize the inherent value of things, and therefore to believe that things as a whole have worth. From that idea of 'appreciation' you can also naturally design the angel's opposite - a being which destroys, corrupts, and degrades because it is incapable of recognizing anything as having intrinsic value.

Grinner
2014-10-17, 03:48 PM
In past worldbuilding exercises, I've envisioned angels as being extremely machine-like. They are the hands of God(s), after all, so free will is really more of a liability for their purposes.


Anyhow, I think there's lots of opportunity to move away from classical virtue/vice dichotomy and ask the question - what is transcendent about human nature? What are those aspects of human life which seem closest to touching on something greater than ourselves, or things which seem impossible to understand and yet deeply important. Take each of those ideas, everything that seems to have a spark of value for its own sake, and then turn it up to 11 and purify it - there's your angel.

The ability to appreciate beauty, for example - beauty of form, beauty in a perfect moment, etc. Distill it down to the very idea of 'being able to appreciate' - the ability to recognize the inherent value of things, and therefore to believe that things as a whole have worth. From that idea of 'appreciation' you can also naturally design the angel's opposite - a being which destroys, corrupts, and degrades because it is incapable of recognizing anything as having intrinsic value.

The word for this is "arete".

You could play off this by setting up a new dichotomy between angels and demons. Angels are all gung-ho self-improvement nuts, while demons live to make life easier. The thing about demons is that while their particular creed sounds extremely desirable, if you examine the long game, they're really setting humanity up for failure. If you get accustomed to being given things, you'll never learn how to fend for yourself.

daremetoidareyo
2014-10-17, 06:18 PM
Celestials have two jobs, to protect and guide. And they have to accomplish those jobs using the most fallible tools ever devised: mortals.

Celestials suffer worse than fiends from the balking from religious concepts in RPG, (although not in nomine). An angel is an extension of the prime creating benevolent force, and as such isn't an individual. Many real world human religious experiences aren't about being an awesome independent agent, but are about being folded into a higher consciousness, purpose, or schema that for just one fleeting moment, finally makes sense. This leads to the opinion that celestials aren't a hive mind, they are non-contiguous extensions of pure "good." Information transfer is instant across all spacial scales for them. The ball of ineffable goodness and light healing the paladin in hell called an archon is really an extension of the greater being of goodness.

The other aspect that makes celestials a burden to deal with is anthropocentric bias. At our core, we humans are selfish creatures that need to consume resources (food air water) to reproduce and die. Scaffolded on top of that is gregarious sociality, as survival rates in an unforgiving world are increased by working together to achieve collective goals. The entire alignment axis of D&D is represented right there: the Selfish vs. the good of community clan is a paradigm that is easy to sort amongst good/evil (compassion for suffering/utilitarianism) or law/chaos (community/self). In those moments of spiritual revelation for humans, that bias melts away and humans feel really chill about just existing in the moment hence some religious explanations of nirvana. Further, the alignment system is about extremes: there are just as many times where compassion serves the greater good as utilitarianism does. There are just as many times where prioritizing the clan is better for everyone than prioritizing the self, and vice versa. Human psychology likes binaries, however, so we choose favorites, or we choose philosophies that choose favorites.

Considering all of that, you have to choose how your celestial views things. Are they simply extensions of the highest being, and is that highest being actually the best amongst competing sentient life forms whose belief forms the highest beings? Or does each race merely get at facets of the same celestial source of power?

Despite housing enormous power, each celestial behaves in a WWJD mentality all the time, and thus, has little to differentiate them from each other. They scold wickedness, exhibit compassion for real pain, cut through those stupid lies that you tell yourself, and demonstrate intolerable patience and faith.

If you gave each angel power words, say an angel of water or an angel of order, you inject humanlike conflict into a space that is supposed to be free of conflict: each angel becomes an individual. The angel of water saves drowning sailors, that is totally that angel's deal. If that angel is individualistic, they have opinions on what the angel of boating safety is doing wrong and thus the two now have beef, which totally frustrates the angel of order. The scarcity of power resources each angel runs into causes conflict. If the angel of boating safety could do more to help drowning sailors, he/she would totally do it, but even at max capacity, there was apparently a need for an angel of water to step in. Scarcity leads to tradeoffs leads to conflict. No human wants their heaven to be as mundanely terrible as DMV office politics, so we prefer a heaven of limitless resources.

Perhaps you can circumvent this by writing out how different celestials are "made". This process can lend some individuality to them.

NichG
2014-10-17, 08:39 PM
That individuality is going to come out of the structure of D&D's theology anyhow. Even if each angel is a perfect representation of its master, the gods themselves have specific domains in which they're empowered. Even if there's some pool of ambient angels who are just sort of around because of cosmic Good, the gods seem to recruit from that pool and thereby specialize. So the God of the Seas has its Angel of Water and the God of Travel has its Angel of Boating Safety and the gods themselves may scuffle over right of way as much or more than the angels would.

DeadMech
2014-10-18, 01:11 AM
Some of what I've seen in the past from a number of interpretations suggests angels are not people but closer to robots. Created with power and intelligence enough to complete their task but like an artificial intelligence you don't want to make them too independent or else they start questioning their place in the schemes of their creator. Or course there are even people who think that the angels who did fight their creator and continue to tempt man to evil do so according to plan.

How much of that applies to DnD I don't know but it did inspire me to make an emotionless girl as a character for a game. Which would have been fun.

Other sources suggest something else fun about angels. That the image of winged men and women with halos may represent the messengers of heaven they may not represent the typical of holy servants. Some descriptions of angels make them out be creatures as twisted and terrifying to the eyes of mortals as any Lovecraftian horror.

And well... when being the good guy means being a monstrosity with no individuality or will of your own... well maybe things aren't a cut and dry as they seem.

Jeff the Green
2014-10-18, 02:37 AM
Some of what I've seen in the past from a number of interpretations suggests angels are not people but closer to robots.

I like to describe them as people with part of their personality and aptitude amputated. Basically, take a human but remove any capacity or desire to do anything other than Good. It's like, I can conceive of forcing my stomach to exit my mouth like a shark, but I can't conceive of wanting to or how I might go about it. If a celestial somehow got it into their head that they should try to sin, they'd be very bad at it. Like, they'd steal candy from a diabetic baby or kick an old lady out of the way of a speeding bus.

TandemChelipeds
2014-10-18, 11:26 AM
Celestials have two jobs, to protect and guide. And they have to accomplish those jobs using the most fallible tools ever devised: mortals.

Celestials suffer worse than fiends from the balking from religious concepts in RPG, (although not in nomine). An angel is an extension of the prime creating benevolent force, and as such isn't an individual. Many real world human religious experiences aren't about being an awesome independent agent, but are about being folded into a higher consciousness, purpose, or schema that for just one fleeting moment, finally makes sense. This leads to the opinion that celestials aren't a hive mind, they are non-contiguous extensions of pure "good." Information transfer is instant across all spacial scales for them. The ball of ineffable goodness and light healing the paladin in hell called an archon is really an extension of the greater being of goodness.


"That is *funny*. You think you *see* Angels but Angels are not *light reflections*.
Maybe you think Angels are *many bubbles* too. It is such a joke.
Angels are not *many bubbles* like *campers*. Angels are just Angels.
I am Angel. I am one with many *fingers*.
My *fingers* reach through into *heavy space* and you *see* *Angel bubbles*
but it is really *fingers*.
Maybe you do not even *smell*? That is sad.
*Smelling* *pretty colors* is the best *game*."

-Seraphiel

MrConsideration
2014-10-18, 12:31 PM
I find Angels have a tendency to overshadow PCs. If an angel is preset on the Prime, why aren't they
dealing with the threat? It's better to keep them to the Celestial realm: unlike Devils and Demons, they don't have much yearning to interfere unless they're some sort of divine hit-squad, in which case has to limit them to make your PCs have any reason to oppose evil at all.


A pure being of Goodness is a difficult to imagine as a being of pure Evil, so I think giving them 'roles' helps differentiate them. An Angel of Humility could be a shoeless beggar who shames the PCs for their extravagance and avarice, but an Angel of Wrath would be quite different.

For inspiration, angels in early texts are pretty ****ing weird. They all have 100 eyes or wings made of burning lead -the 'angels are pretty humans with a halo and some wings' paradigm is pretty culturally new. Make your angels alien - your warrior-angel can be a molten body of super-hot steel which forms into blades spontaneously to most efficiently combat evil, as horrifying to behold as the strangest devil. Make them a nuclear option - one campaign idea I had was to have the PCs uncover an angel's true name, allowing them to summon an Angel of Justice to the Prime on one occasion to perform one task, with the caveat that they'd have to be judged pure for the Angel to not roast them too.

For most D&D campaigns, angels should just be decoration, blowing trumpets and holding wreaths. If there is going to be an embodiment of Good-at-arms, it should have a character sheet.

Starshade
2014-10-20, 08:01 AM
Well, lots of good ideas here :)
I thought to start DMing for a pair of fresh players, and ,though to make some different NPC's of different types, to have stuff ready in case stuff goes planar sort of, and as divine advisers. Any other low level Angel / Celestial creatures beside Lantern Archon who would fit the bill of low level divine NPC who could assist fresh PC's, if I think to have the NPC ready if they get into problems at some key points in the story?