afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VIII

[enderlord99]

Are there any creatures that are damaged by the "mending" and "make whole" spells? If so, what is their creature-type (and subtypes, if applicable) and what sort of energy animates and/or heals them?

[Tzardok]

I would expect something like that in Ravenloft. I'm currently reading Denizens of Dread and you wouldn't believe the amount of creatures with a very specific Achilles heel in form of an antithetical spell. Furthermore, I would assume that the creature would be a Fey or an Outsider of the Mist subtype, embodying in some sense the concept of decay and decomposition. Alternatively it could also be a specialized undead with a similiar theme or even a construct, some kind of refuse or trash golem for example.

[ShurikVch]

Some extraplanar Outsiders are, if killed outside their home plane, would reappear on their "native" plane. Question: does it works for Elementals too?

Doomguard has a fortress on every negative quasi-elemental plane. The 3.X assumes there are no quasi-elemental planes. What's happened with the fortresses?

Was D&D multiverse created by a single Overdeity? And, if "yes", - did they created the Far Realm too?

Is Planescape compatible with Spelljammer? (My default presumption is "No")

"And Madness Followed" adventure (Dungeon #134) featuring the Yellow Sign, Lake Hali, and Carcosa city. 1E Deities and Demigods included deities from Cthulhu Mythos. Does it mean all lovecraftian entities are exist in the D&D? Was multiverse created by Azathoth?

[aj77]

What is the deal (origin, purpose, horrible secrets) with the Garden in Avernus?

I accept if the answer is there's nothing interesting about the Garden, but I'd like to make sure you saw this.

[Caelestion]

Is Planescape compatible with Spelljammer? (My default presumption is "No")

Why wouldn't it be? Not only were they both 2E settings, when everything was connected in some fashion, Spelljammer connects the worlds of the Prime Material, not the other planes.

[Eldan]

It's not less compatible than other Settings. A few details get a bit weird, but overall it's not too bad. There's a few official nods in the settings to each other, too.

[ShurikVch]

Why wouldn't it be? Not only were they both 2E settings, when everything was connected in some fashion, Spelljammer connects the worlds of the Prime Material, not the other planes.

Why?
Say, because Planescape have no info about the Phlogiston, while Spelljammer says nothing about the Far Realm?
Or because Spelljammer was aggressively anti-science, while Planescape is scientifically unanswerable? (I mean: our Earth is a D&D world, but Voyager 2 isn't stuck in a Crystal sphere)
Or, maybe, because Planescape was released to replace Spelljammer, and Spelljammer don't get any books ever since? (I mean - if you want something new to be 100% compatible with something old - then why replace it at all?)

The only items of Spelljammer which may be compatible with Planescape are Shadow of the Spider Moon (which is notably different from the "mainstream" Spelljammer) and Voidjammers! (since ships there are traveling the Astral Plane - not the Phlogiston - Planescape is obviously compatible)

[Caelestion]

Planescape had very little to say about the Prime Material, which is where Spelljammer takes place. I don't see the problem.

Besides, how do you know that Voyager 2 isn't still in our Crystal Sphere? As far as we know, it's only just passed the Sun's heliopause.

[Lapak]

Or, maybe, because Planescape was released to replace Spelljammer, and Spelljammer don't get any books ever since? (I mean - if you want something new to be 100% compatible with something old - then why replace it at all?)

Just pulling this out, because Planescape was in no way designed as a replacement for Spelljammer. The only thing that they have in common at all is that they are a way to travel between different material planes, but that is very much not the point of Planescape and is only a secondary aspect of Spelljammer. Both are intended first as settings in their own right, and are different in everything from mechanics to tone in those settings.

Planescape plays with philosophy-as-landscape, different types of ethos at war with themselves and each other. It plays with the traditional ideas of D&D by foregrounding the metaphysical concepts that underpin a lot of Material Plane campaigns and making more of the subtext into text. It strikes a balance between humanizing truly inhuman forces (demons and celestials, both in the markets of Sigil) and highlighting their genuinely alien nature.

Spelljammer is a very traditional D&D campaign to the point of being almost retro when it was released, leaning hard into the sci-fantasy and assuming a playstyle that pushes exploration into unknown territory to the fore. Forget Keep on the Borderlands, get yourself into the true frontier of unknown space. It is rollicking, swashbuckling, it has aliens in the more Star Trek sense and less in the 'moral concepts made flesh' sense. It is grounded in physics (albeit pseudo-medieval physics) rather than metaphysics.

[Bohandas]

If an item under the effect of Shrink Item is thrown and unshrunk in midair does it retain its speed, or does it retain its momentum?

[Fable Wright]

If an item under the effect of Shrink Item is thrown and unshrunk in midair does it retain its speed, or does it retain its momentum?

Psst. This is the Planar questions thread. That's a Simple RAW Thread question.

[afroakuma]

Are there any creatures that are damaged by the "mending" and "make whole" spells? If so, what is their creature-type (and subtypes, if applicable) and what sort of energy animates and/or heals them?

Not that I'm aware of, but I'd assume they are out there somewhere. What kind of effect would heal them, I assume, would depend on what they are composed of - perhaps rusting grasp for something made of oxidized and pitted metal scraps, or blight for something made of decayed and corrupted wood.

Some extraplanar Outsiders are, if killed outside their home plane, would reappear on their "native" plane. Question: does it works for Elementals too?

No. Elementals that die on the Prime are dead. Some superior elementals (Princes of Elemental Evil, for instance) may be powerful enough to enact such a contingency, however.

Doomguard has a fortress on every negative quasi-elemental plane. The 3.X assumes there are no quasi-elemental planes. What's happened with the fortresses?

I mean, I don't hold to the 3.X omission of quasi-elemental planes, but if one does, your two options are: shunted onto a nearby Inner Plane; or plunged out of existence during the reordering of the cosmos. Take your pick.

Was D&D multiverse created by a single Overdeity? And, if "yes", - did they created the Far Realm too?

No and no.

Is Planescape compatible with Spelljammer? (My default presumption is "No")

Absolutely. Planescape even notes that there are sites (one exists in the Marketplace Eternal on the Outlands) where spelljammers can land. I myself ran a Planejammer campaign for a while.

"And Madness Followed" adventure (Dungeon #134) featuring the Yellow Sign, Lake Hali, and Carcosa city. 1E Deities and Demigods included deities from Cthulhu Mythos. Does it mean all lovecraftian entities are exist in the D&D? Was multiverse created by Azathoth?

D&D didn't have the license to the Cthulhu mythos, which is why there are two printings of the 1E Deities & Demigods - one with the Cthulhu mythos, the other without. Given that it was unlicensed, afrocanon omits it from the multiverse.

In any event, no, the multiverse was not created by Azathoth.

I accept if the answer is there's nothing interesting about the Garden, but I'd like to make sure you saw this.

I did in fact miss that - but if you've read about the Garden, then you have as much canon information as I do.

Psst. This is the Planar questions thread. That's a Simple RAW Thread question.

Very correct. I deal in fictional metaphysics, not fictional physics

[Bohandas]

D&D didn't have the license to the Cthulhu mythos, which is why there are two printings of the 1E Deities & Demigods - one with the Cthulhu mythos, the other without. Given that it was unlicensed, afrocanon omits it from the multiverse.

Well it's public domain now, with the exception of like 2 or 3 stories

[Eldan]

Yes, but also no. The problem is that a lot of what people think they know about Lovecraft (like Azathoth creating/dreaming the universe, like Afro mentioned above) isn't actually by Lovecraft. Like, half hte aspects of the gods and almost every monster associated with them is either from different authors or the Chaosium RPGs. So while you technically can use the Lovecraft mythos, it might not be the mythos people know.

To add to the Spelljammer/Planescape compatibility, the big poster map of the Planes that came with Planescape shows the material plane full of crystal spheres.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

There's also the issue that Lovecraftian stuff would require lots of tweaking to fit into Planescape because the two mythoi are fairly tonally incompatible.

There are definitely shared themes (humans being tiny in the face of a much larger universe/multiverse full of unknowable eternal beings, inhospitable swaths of existence full of inhuman races and unimaginable wonders and terrors, and so on) but the "cosmic horror" aspect of the Mythos doesn't really translate, given that Lovecraft sages start losing their grip on reality after seeing something with too many tentacles and are helpless before its might and majesty, while D&D sages will happily study said betentacled beast up close and personal to catalog its various interesting abilities and stab that thing in the face if it tries anything; Lovecraft protagonists cower at the prospect of an infinite universe in the face of which they are like unto the merest speck, while D&D protagonists can easily waltz into and out of infinite planes full of infinite demons without worrying too much about it; and most importantly the Lovecraftian cosmology is anywhere from "utterly uncaring of human life" to "actively hostile to all living beings" with a constant threat of ending if The Stars Are Right, while the Great Wheel has just as many Big Goods as it does Big Bads and will keep on truckin' literally forever unless someone is dumb enough to let Tharizdun loose or something like that and Prime worlds are threatened with ultimate conquest/destruction/etc. (and subsequent nick-of-time saving by adventurers) every day of the week and twice on Tuesdays.

So the Mythos entities as originally described, with all their fabric-of-the-universe-supporting ineffability and such, don't and really can't exist in Planescape, and versions of them that do fit would basically end up as another demon prince, Far Realm abomination, Elder Evil, or similar with a confusion aura, amorphous form, and other generic aberration-y abilities. Which is cool and nice and all, but not quite the same, so headcanonically omitting them is probably for the best.

[Tzardok]

From what I remember, most of Lovecraft's protagonists were mentally unstable even before they met the otherworldy. If we instead take that one story where an awakening Cthulhu is forced back into sleep when the protagonist rams him with a steam ship, we get a view that's more... compatible with the Wheel. Also it shows that if you are sane (or at least a different type of nutcase ) the Lovecraftian abominations are more comprehensible.

[Bohandas]

There's also the issue that Lovecraftian stuff would require lots of tweaking to fit into Planescape because the two mythoi are fairly tonally incompatible.

There are definitely shared themes (humans being tiny in the face of a much larger universe/multiverse full of unknowable eternal beings, inhospitable swaths of existence full of inhuman races and unimaginable wonders and terrors, and so on) but the "cosmic horror" aspect of the Mythos doesn't really translate, given that Lovecraft sages start losing their grip on reality after seeing something with too many tentacles and are helpless before its might and majesty, while D&D sages will happily study said betentacled beast up close and personal to catalog its various interesting abilities and stab that thing in the face if it tries anything

With the exception of Lovecraft's mary sue self-insert characters Randolph Carter and Abdul Alhazred.

In Dream Quest Carter keeps going after all sorts of weird crap as well as half the characters in the book telling him that it's a bad idea.

[ShurikVch]

but the "cosmic horror" aspect of the Mythos doesn't really translate, given that Lovecraft sages start losing their grip on reality after seeing something with too many tentacles and are helpless before its might and majesty, while D&D sages will happily study said betentacled beast up close and personal to catalog its various interesting abilities and stab that thing in the face if it tries anything;

D&D sage looks at Obyrith and starts hacking their owl limbs off - believing they're possessed by demons (spoiler: they're not, but sage is too mad now to understand it)
D&D sage looks at the Pale Nigh and falls dead from sheer fear

Lovecraft protagonists cower at the prospect of an infinite universe in the face of which they are like unto the merest speck, while D&D protagonists can easily waltz into and out of infinite planes full of infinite demons without worrying too much about it;

Well, firstly: Dream Cycle
And secondly:
Lascer was once a human, planar explorer; he become the first human to visit Zionyn; at his second visit, he was caught by Obox-ob, and - after untold tortures and experiments became a demonic errant boy for Prince of Vermins (Lord Lascer's origin story)
Dwiergus the Crysalis Prince tend to cocoon visitors - which, unless timely rescue, would turn them into half-fiendish servants of Dwiergus
Whoever was almost trapped by the Demiplane of Imprisonment would become a cultist of Tharizdun - with no saving throw, and no method to restore them
Heck, the mere approach of Zurguth destroyed the whole tower of Wizards!.. (Kaorti origin story)

and most importantly the Lovecraftian cosmology is anywhere from "utterly uncaring of human life" to "actively hostile to all living beings" with a constant threat of ending if The Stars Are Right, while the Great Wheel has just as many Big Goods as it does Big Bads and will keep on truckin' literally forever unless someone is dumb enough to let Tharizdun loose or something like that and Prime worlds are threatened with ultimate conquest/destruction/etc. (and subsequent nick-of-time saving by adventurers) every day of the week and twice on Tuesdays.

Oh, really?

• The Dawn War
• Karsus's Folly
• The Time of Troubles
• Spellplague
• Second Sundering
• Cataclysm
• Chaos War
• Second Cataclysm
• Invoked Devastation
• Rain of Colorless Fire
• The Wasting Plague

Heck, in the Eredane, Evil actually won once and for the foreseeable future - even if it's rather Tolkien's Evil than Lovecraftian Evil
Also, I can argue Abeir-Toril and Krynn have no Good deities at all - because FR deities employed the Wall of Faithless, and Krynnish deities - allowed the Cataclysm
On the other hand, Cthulhu Mythos has Nodens and the Elder Gods...

So the Mythos entities as originally described, with all their fabric-of-the-universe-supporting ineffability and such, don't and really can't exist in Planescape, and versions of them that do fit would basically end up as another demon prince, Far Realm abomination, Elder Evil, or similar with a confusion aura, amorphous form, and other generic aberration-y abilities. Which is cool and nice and all, but not quite the same

Firstly - why the heck not?!!
And secondly: D&D also have the Dark Powers of Ravenloft, the Rad Death of Gothic Earth, and the Lady of Pain in Sigil
(Add in Tharizdun which was directly inspired by Cthulhu Mythos)

[PairO'Dice Lost]

D&D sage looks at Obyrith and starts hacking their owl limbs off - believing they're possessed by demons (spoiler: they're not, but sage is too mad now to understand it)
D&D sage looks at the Pale Nigh and falls dead from sheer fear

There's a significant difference between the D&D setup in which some monsters have mind-affecting abilities that inflict fear, insanity, and such but otherwise running into anything from aboleths and balors to yeth hounds and zodars is no biggie, and the Lovecraft setup in which the mere sight or knowledge of things like non-Euclidean critters (At the Mountains of Madness) or a sketchy family history (The Rats in the Walls) and such can drive one to terror, despair, or madness. Confront Francis Wayland Thurston or Briden with the existence of Cthulhu and he falls into an existential despair from which he may never recover, confront most D&D PCs with the existence of Cthulhu and they start shopping for +1 aberration-bane vorpal longswords.

Well, firstly: Dream Cycle
And secondly:
Lascer was once a human, planar explorer; he become the first human to visit Zionyn; at his second visit, he was caught by Obox-ob, and - after untold tortures and experiments became a demonic errant boy for Prince of Vermins (Lord Lascer's origin story)
Dwiergus the Crysalis Prince tend to cocoon visitors - which, unless timely rescue, would turn them into half-fiendish servants of Dwiergus
Whoever was almost trapped by the Demiplane of Imprisonment would become a cultist of Tharizdun - with no saving throw, and no method to restore them
Heck, the mere approach of Zurguth destroyed the whole tower of Wizards!.. (Kaorti origin story)

You missed the point a bit on this one. All those bad things happening are the result of people encountering specific creatures or locations that do terrible things to them, but in the Mythos merely the knowledge that something nasty is out there somewhere is enough to mess with their minds, whether it's "there exist non-human monsters who might destroy humanity" (Dagon), "the Necronomicon is actually true" (At the Mountains of Madness) or whatever.

Oh, really?

Yes really.

For every terrible cataclysm that befalls a given setting (and there are many, since D&D is by nature post-apocalyptic), dozens of schemes to set off undead apocalypses, summon evil gods to the Material Plane, merge worlds with the Abyss, flood the world and lead to an abolethic empire, and so forth are averted all the time; every adventure canonically assumes the adventures win, after all, and you can't exactly keep adventuring in a world for long if it's destroyed.

More than that, though, all of those are "local" cataclysms that affect at most one Prime world and generally target a continent or less, leaving the rest of the planet, the crystal sphere, and the Material Plane itself completely unaffected; even Pandorym getting loose isn't a "the Material Plane explodes" kind of threat, more of a "Pandorym will get around to muching on your Prime world one of these millennia" kind of threat. And without one of those cataclysms going off, the Great Wheel doesn't have a built-in or prophesied end and can keep on going forever.

Contrast that with the Mythos, where there are a ton of "game over" scenarios that affect a whole world or more and are definitely going to happen at some point, from "Cthulhu wakes and everyone goes nuts" to "Azathoth wakes and the multiverse evaporates," and the entire point is that those things cannot be stopped by the merely human and totally cosmically helpless protagonists, only averted or delayed by stopping fellow humans who are trying to bring them about.

Also, I can argue Abeir-Toril and Krynn have no Good deities at all - because FR deities employed the Wall of Faithless, and Krynnish deities - allowed the Cataclysm
On the other hand, Cthulhu Mythos has Nodens and the Elder Gods...

It doesn't particularly matter whether a given Prime world has Good gods or not...though note that the existence of the Wall of the Faithless in post-Crucible material is more a continuity mistake from copy-pasting older lore referencing the Wall of the Faithless instead of the new Wall of Mirrors, and even then its existence would be more the fault of Ao than the Good gods who are stuck with it, and the Cataclysm is just described as coming from "all the gods" without detail or differentiation to my knowledge so it's entirely possible that the Good gods of Krynn were against it but were outvoted by the Neutral and Evil ones.

The point is that the Great Wheel has beings, locations, and planes of explicit and undeniable Goodness that are just as powerful as (if not more so than) their Evil counterparts and do everything from empowering mortals with the power of Goodness to providing Good afterlives, and the Good gods actively care about mortalkind even if Good planar lords are ambivalent. The very nicest cosmic beings in the Mythos, meanwhile, are at best neutral-with-good-tendencies, while the rest are all apathetic to evil and largely hostile to humanity. A D&D character can't really have the same kind of existential despair over a hostile cosmos that a Lovecraft character can because the D&D multiverse isn't innately hostile in that way.

Firstly - why the heck not?!!

Because the ineffable statless beings fundamental to the Great Wheel already exist and they can't stand competition?

Outside of the context of the Mythos, the various Lovecraftian entities lose a lot of their unique identity and fearsomeness that makes people want to use them in games. Lovecraft!Nyarlathotep is scary because he's a nigh-omnipotent (compared to humanity) incarnate god who walks the Earth and brings madness and destruction; D&D!Nyarlathotep can only exist on a Prime world where the Divine Compact and local overgod allow gods to send avatars or manifestations to that world, in which case ol' Nyarly is just one divine proxy among others and can't get away with nearly as much before an adventuring party shows up to slay his cult and banish him. And so on.

And secondly: D&D also have the Dark Powers of Ravenloft, the Rad Death of Gothic Earth, and the Lady of Pain in Sigil
(Add in Tharizdun which was directly inspired by Cthulhu Mythos)

You'll note that every single one of those beings is not only largely "local" in power and influence but actively trapped and/or bound: the Red Death only exists on its own world; the Dark Powers only have power in Ravenloft, even if their reach can extend beyond it to a limited degree; the Lady of Pain can reach far beyond Sigil but is, as far as we know, trapped in the Cage; and Tharizdun is stuck in the Demiplane of Imprisonment.

In the Mythos the Great Old Ones are a supreme unstoppable force, in Planescape the gods defeated Tharizdun and stuck him in timeout. If that doesn't nicely convey the tonal and thematic differences between Planescape and the Mythos, I don't know what does.

[Bohandas]

You'll note that every single one of those beings is not only largely "local" in power and influence but actively trapped and/or bound: the Red Death only exists on its own world; the Dark Powers only have power in Ravenloft, even if their reach can extend beyond it to a limited degree; the Lady of Pain can reach far beyond Sigil but is, as far as we know, trapped in the Cage; and Tharizdun is stuck in the Demiplane of Imprisonment.

That all actually fits the great old ones almost perfectly, expecially Cthulhu and Hastur.

[Eldan]

The fun thing about Hastur is that in the original story he's arguably a hallucination. If even that. He might also just be a character in a play. All that stuff about imprisoned in the stars is... Derleth (shudder.)

[Bohandas]

The fun thing about Hastur is that in the original story he's arguably a hallucination. If even that.

Are you talking about The King In Yellow or Haita the Shepherd.

In any case it definitely fits Cthulhu.

And, IIRC, Yig was a properly regional deity

[Thurbane]

Question about celestial hierarchies.

Hypothetical scenario: a normal, mortal character is permanently PAO'd into a celestial form, like a Hound Archon (if PAO doesn't work for this, lets assume another method, like a permanent mind switch).

Let's also assume the base mortal was a LG Human in this case, so there is no alignment conflict.

Would the celestial hierarchies accept this Hound Archon as one of their own, and allow it to live out the rest of it's existence on an appropriate outer plane?

Would the answer to the question change if we were talking about a Guardinal or Eladrin instead of an Archon (assume the base mortal had the appropriate alignment in each case)?

[Tzardok]

Hmm. I would assume that (at least in the case of archons) there would be hearing on the whole thing to determine what recourse would be best for both the individual and the cause, and then (on the condition that he would be accepted) the ex-mortal would be demoted to lantern archon to start climb the hierarchy, as promotion in archon society is based on enlightenment and understanding of Lawful Goodness and I think it doubtful that any mortal would have the base understanding necessary to be of a higher caste species.

[Bohandas]

Hmm. I would assume that (at least in the case of archons) there would be hearing on the whole thing to determine what recourse would be best for both the individual and the cause, and then (on the condition that he would be accepted) the ex-mortal would be demoted to lantern archon to start climb the hierarchy, as promotion in archon society is based on enlightenment and understanding of Lawful Goodness and I think it doubtful that any mortal would have the base understanding necessary to be of a higher caste species.

Unless the spell changed their temperment, as it does in cases such as transmuting an inanimate object into a living creature

[Eldan]

Are you talking about The King In Yellow or Haita the Shepherd.

In any case it definitely fits Cthulhu.

And, IIRC, Yig was a properly regional deity

Depends if Yig is Set or not.

[Efrate]

On Yig, he is the inspiration iirc for Quazecotl(sp?) according to some stuff, as well as various others.

[Fable Wright]

The point is that the Great Wheel has beings, locations, and planes of explicit and undeniable Goodness that are just as powerful as (if not more so than) their Evil counterparts and do everything from empowering mortals with the power of Goodness to providing Good afterlives, and the Good gods actively care about mortalkind even if Good planar lords are ambivalent. The very nicest cosmic beings in the Mythos, meanwhile, are at best neutral-with-good-tendencies, while the rest are all apathetic to evil and largely hostile to humanity. A D&D character can't really have the same kind of existential despair over a hostile cosmos that a Lovecraft character can because the D&D multiverse isn't innately hostile in that way.

Your writeup is good and I agree with you on all points, but, well.

"Why do I exist?"
"To become god food."

The right spin on something can really recontextualize it.

Also? Fourth-wall-aware characters would be very aware that their universe exists only so long as the GM runs it. The moment the GM is bored, the universe just ends. More than that, when their adventures are concluded, when they would retire to become legends, their world dies with them. No afterlife. No legacy. Just fleeting recollections by higher dimensional beings, until those, too, fade in time.

You could absolutely do Lovecraftian horror in D&D.

[afroakuma]

Would the celestial hierarchies accept this Hound Archon as one of their own, and allow it to live out the rest of it's existence on an appropriate outer plane?

So, this question does require some theorizing, but also... we have a (sort of) case study of this happening. Not exactly in line with what you describe, in this case, and essentially a sort of reversal of it, but... in The Deva Spark, we see a deva place its essence somewhere quite unwise, which ultimately ends up in a bebilith. The result is a very depleted deva and a very altered bebilith.

The following points are important:

• A mind switch (see the psionic powers mind switch and true mind switch) also migrates the soul, which retains a tether to its previous body.
• A non-native outsider, such as a hound archon, does not have duality of body and soul. They form one unit.
• I would personally contend that a non-native outsider, elemental, Far Realm entity, etc. is not the same "kingdom" for the purposes of polymorph any object, and hence that particular method could never be permanent, but that's DM preference so we'll walk past that one.

The essence of the hound archon that got swapped is the hound archon, and the archons would be most concerned about investigating and if possible rectifying the violation that occurred, not least of which because it's very likely that there will be unfortunate consequences for such a switch. Even if the mortal is the LGest LG to ever L a G, it's still a mortal, not an archon, and there are some important considerations to that - the soul of the mortal never spent time as a lantern archon and did not earn the position of hound archon; it would be incapable of advancing in the hierarchy and taking new forms. Further, it would lack essential qualities of the archon (supernatural and spell-like abilities are not conveyed by a mind switch) and would be missing the true spiritual worldview of an archon.

Most critically, though, are two points:

• Separated from its incarnate form, the essence of the hound archon (plus its host body) would sicken and eventually extinguish. That's a bad.
• As an unmatched soul and body, the transmigrated mortal won't remain a hound archon forever. Over some amount of time, what specifically it is will change - not so dramatically as the deva-bebilith above, but certainly into something that is not a hound archon or the mortal's original form.

So, archons in particular would be very strict about not accepting this individual as a "true" archon, because by any reasonable measure under the Law, it's not. That's not to say that, assuming there was no complicity on the part of this mortal and no means to rectify the situation, they wouldn't be compassionate about their situation. It's entirely up in the air whether the transmigrated mortal would ultimately retain the ties to Celestia as home plane or if it would eventually realign with the Prime, but if it remains attuned to the Mount, then they would find a place for it and provide aid in getting set up. They are Good, after all.

Would the answer to the question change if we were talking about a Guardinal or Eladrin instead of an Archon (assume the base mortal had the appropriate alignment in each case)?

Sssssort of. All of the above analysis still applies to the situation, but for guardinals, while they would recognize that the transmigrated mortal is not a true guardinal (and, as previously, would prioritize fixing the situation if possible), they wouldn't have cause to treat them particularly differently - but again, no capacity for advancement, different spiritual outlook, missing abilities, so there would always be an awareness that they are not a true guardinal and some distance accordingly. They would want to respect who this individual is, rather than trying to treat them like the guardinal that used to inhabit that shell.

As for the eladrin... they're chaotic, they don't care. Recognize the authority of the Court of Stars and don't do anything an eladrin shouldn't do, and hey, welcome to the club, you weird, ineffectual, bizarrely nonmagical thingie. As above, they would still want to fix the situation first, for the sake of the displaced eladrin, but their "society" isn't particularly structured outside of bowing to the Queen of Stars and there are plenty of unorthodox eladrin out there. If you wanted to call yourself one, the reaction (assuming the whole "not fixable" thing is settled) will be a shrug.

Your writeup is good and I agree with you on all points, but, well.

"Why do I exist?"
"To become god food."

I would really like to stress, yet again, that this is a very poor way of looking at it. Joining with your deity makes you one with that deity's consciousness - you become part of the gestalt identity and will that drives the divinity, and your identity remains "you," within the god. You're not getting eaten, you're literally becoming your deity.

[Bohandas]

I would really like to stress, yet again, that this is a very poor way of looking at it. Joining with your deity makes you one with that deity's consciousness - you become part of the gestalt identity and will that drives the divinity, and your identity remains "you," within the god. You're not getting eaten, you're literally becoming your deity.

I like to envision it as gradually taking on the qualities of an aspect