The Concordance is the body that represents the celestials of the varied Upper Planes coming together to fight evil.
How do they do this? What part of their work is about fighting Evil, and what part of their work is about fostering Good?
What methods do they employ, and what happens when some Evil must be done to preserve the Greater Good? What circumstances justify the deaths or even damnation of innocents or at least those in situations that push one toward Evil?
Lillendi:
-Narrative and stories
-Utilize the Infinite Staircase to understand creativity and desire
-Opposed by Triel who also seeks to control cities
-Some believe Good and Evil will always contest one another, as this drives the narrative of the Multiverse. This makes many in the Concordance, who seek the triumph of Good (Samayim), wary of them.
-Others do not believe direct wars against Evil can achieve much of anything. Rather the celestials must use the arts to spread a culture of virtue and Goodness.
Specific works of the Celestials:
Guardinal orphanage on Belierin to reform tieflings employed as child soldiers by the fiends.
Celestial embassy in Titania's Court - Guardinals and Eladrin come here to relax but also draw the fey toward Good.
World with global slave trade has a rising abolition movement. Eladrin, Asuras, and Archons all have their hand in this world and interact with each other.
Missionaries to Elemental Planes
Challenges of the Celestials (taken from Daily Planar thread):
1. There are infinite angels competing with infinite fiends.
The idea here is that while there are celestials aplenty to help you with your myriad life problems the sad state of affairs is that there are equal number of innumerable fiends that have to be countered at every moment lest Evil triumph and turn creation into an unending nightmare.
Go down this road and what you'll find is that once we're talking about infinities we're bound for some headaches of the skull splitting kind. I mean, do the two infinities cancel each other out? If you have an infinite number of any group dedicated to any single task, should they not achieve it if the task is at all possible?
Even if you divide fiends and celestials by type, you still end up with infinite groups working counter to other infinite groups. (Though maybe some groups are finite, in which case should they automatically lose?)
But perhaps, for example, the infinite guardinals and infinite yugoloths are not cohesive groups but separated by infinite distances of Elysium and the Lower Planes of Conflict respectively. So while most of us think of these exemplars as coordinating their actions on their respective home planes, what is actually happening is you have cells of varying sizes working toward common goals but unwilling and/or unable to work together to achieve these respective triumphs of Good and Evil.
This one isn't going to be settled without some Mathematicians around, and as it does the head in before the onset of intoxication I'd like to move on...
2. Clueless lives are a bulwark against the fiends.
This idea puts the burden of the Alignment War's outcome on the Clueless of the Prime Material planes. Yes, there are mortals (and their derivatives who've found some measure of immortality) with homes on the Upper Planes, and some are cared for by a parenting celestial being, but these guys are the lucky exceptions to the stark nature of reality - whoever wins the world of the Prime Material Plane wins the Cosmic Game.
This is one of those ideas that sends the average uppity planar into fits of pique. Some will point out that the Primes are actually a burden on the heavenly hosts, because it is their ignorance that makes them susceptible fodder for the fiends. The Prime's importance is a problem, one that might conceivably be countered by the primal Clueless getting their hands on the educational materials given to planar grade-schoolers.
Others will say that the Primes only seem to be more important because of the reporting bias that results from the current (meaning millennial) ratings garnered by Prime-based alignment conflicts. For some reason, despite the seeming disdain many planars have for primal Clueless (as opposed to the backwater planars that apparently have a rustic charm) the majority of planar gossip and journalism deemed entertaining is centered about various planets on the Prime Material Planes.
However, let us for a moment humor this hypothesis - that the choices of beings on the Primes carry more weight and so the angels focus more time there than anywhere else. One could see the logic that because these beings are so divorced from the planes, and thus do not see reality shift so directly from their choices of alignment, that their choices are thus more...puissant. Yet then one might wonder why the alignment choices of elementals does not seem to worry the angels as much, though one could argue that we simply aren't aware as to the extent of exemplar operations in any of these planes...
While no decisive conclusion can be reached, one has to wonder about the importance both Good and Evil have placed on those little Prime worlds whose continents are less than a drop in the Elemental Plane of Water...
3. A mass immigration of mortals to Paradise would taint the Upper Planes.
Instead of angels going out and bringing a little shine and spit polish to the rest of existence, why not let everyone join the party in Paradise? Looking out the window, seeing the begging urchins of Sigil, one has to wonder why the angels can't at least take the children...
Of course the question then becomes how many children? Actually, the question before that is why children? If a child commits an evil act, is that act somehow not thrown upon the scales of the balance? In the War of Alignments, is not a sin a sin no matter the inherited cruelty or brain scouring conditioning that led to its commission? And if it is not so, then at what age does Evil have its due?
The planes, especially the Outer Planes, do not have the dichotomy between setting and character, between place and person, that the Inner and especially Prime Material planes possess. The inhabitants of an area in the Outer Planes determine its location - gather enough evil in one corner of Heaven and that corner is no longer Paradise but someplace else entirely. Perhaps it is swallowed up by the Seven Houses of Evil, perhaps it is taken by Chaos or Law or Neutrality.
But regardless of its destination, what happens is that the Idea of Good is done violence. Yes, some can be saved by the celestials, but never enough to counter the Evil mortals do with or without the helpful guidance of the fiendish races.
4. There is a greater order to the Multiverse, and Paradise must be earned.
This is one favored by some lawful types, who explain that not everyone can simply go to Paradise because it is a gift for those who lived good lives. This is kind of hard to swallow, given the caprice of circumstance that leads to Evil. A child raised on a Prime world ruled by Abyssal princes is less likely to be good than one raised in a peaceful elven forest ruled by an eladrin blooded nobility.
Now one might convince me that a petitioner who arrives from a place not on the Upper Planes has more value or power than one who lived and died in Paradise but that is a whole different thing than "earn"...
5. Angels are Good beings serving the Good, but are not Goodness elementals.
Angels fall. We all know this, yet for some reason there are a lot of smart folks that think celestials are synonymous with Good, that they can't be anything other than slaves to their alignment. There's a whole nature vs. nurture argument to be had here, but for now let us take the incontrovertible fact that angels fall and note that this seems to indicate that angels are subject to temptation. Which means that they have free will, which means regardless of the cultural norms of Paradise angels are choosing, via this free will, to take up the sword (some Primes say "go to bat") for a bunch of whiny, ungrateful, forgetful, selfish, almost incorrigible mortal souls.
This must get tiring. I mean, sure, there are the soldiers who fight for civilization's light, teachers who bend over backwards to see children educated, politicians who risk their lives against corruption...well, actually, okay, there are lots of inspiring points of Light amongst mortals, but there's a whole lot of rotten apples overwhelming the sweet ones!
So, yes, this must get tiring. Which means that angels need to have their own personal lives, their own past times and relationships if they are going to fight the good fight. They need something to hold on to, and that thing is Paradise itself. They live in the goal, and because the foundation of this goal are those aforementioned points of Light, they can rise again and again to work toward our salvation.
Celestial they rescued from the clutches of a sibirex obyrith. The archon is insane, wracked with dark hungers, but its shattered mind can now glimpse many dark and secret places of the Abyss.
Celestials go the Sensorium and record acts of the Goodness that fit the Sensates requirements - seeking to market the Good and have people experience the essence of Light-filled hearts.
A coure eladrin enters Prime Worlds, masquerades as child's imaginary friend.
Guardinals have orphanages and necropolises for evil children and undead respectively.
Archons go on pilgrimages to understand how the Law is interpreted by mortals.
Lillendi assassins and ravage carriers.
"I was told your story was always a generational one."
-Mark Waid, Kingdom Come
Before all this there was a Garden. A place where flora and fauna shone and glittered with the beauty of the hummingbird, as if living things might be born from the heart of gemstones. Watered with tears of joy and mercy, droplets catching the light, twinkling with lapidary beauty. This was a place of the original things - Virtue and Love - unsullied by fiendish hands.
There were no kings or queens in this place, but there were parents/sheperds/gardeners that cared for all the innocent children of the Good. These simian caretakers would be named Priminals by their children, a name to invoke both in blessing and in curse.
Lost to the fathomless depths of Time is when the garden was first beset by whispering cries and hissing temptations, when the priminals first realized that there was an outside to their infinite garden. When did they first find their brethren, those strange creatures that were inexplicably but inexorably tied to them? When did they first treat with the Baern?
What is known is that the priminals were in truth circles with no boundaries, for their hearts circumscribed even these vile fiends. This led to their initial defeat for the Baern were quick to exploit what they saw as a flaw, never imagining that within Good lay the resolve to fight. They simply couldn't look that deeply into the lustre of the garden.
Over forgotten generations, the priminals came to see that, in a sense, they were flawed for they loved too much to strike down those corrupted in flesh or in soul by the Baern. They simply did not possess the conviction for murder, for killing, for war. Yet they persevered long enough to deny the Baern, long enough for those perhaps ever unknowable events to end the Primordial Age.
After this, there was no Garden.
In the dawning reconfiguration of infinities, ape-like feet alighted upon what was to become Elysium. Here they shed tears and seed to make their children, purposefully imperfect remakings of themselves. The guardinals, made to know Love but never as deeply, as openly as the priminals. For they were made to protect the Good, and thus bred for what the priminals despaired would be an unceasing armageddon. Knowing that this crime of passing their burdens, their failures onto a new generation would forever taint them, they left the Multiverse with burdened hearts.
Yet even in their mysterious home they feel that first brush of unlooked for hope. They see a time when the Baern are destroyed yet reborn in innocence, when the stone hearts of fiends crack in guilt and bleed out of sorrow and repentance. Where all things are encompassed by a flooding redemption. The ape-like countenances of these elder celestials smile and tears of joy fall in the endless dreaming that attaches them to their children by gossa mer threadwork.
But now they are awakening, for victory sits on Time's horizon. They have seen the future, been gifted with Sight.
Title as of right now:
Heavens War: A look into how the Celestials have given their eternities to saving our souls.
opening quote:
"Forsaken by our dreams, naked but for our stories, with only the stars for food, the four directions for shelter, and the spirit of all that we love our only companion, we live as warriors of a perilous order, champions of kindness, who battle for virtue in the ruthless war of survival."
--A. A. Attanasio
"In the dawning reconfiguration of infinities, ape-like feet alighted upon what was to become Elysium. Here they shed tears and seed to make their children, purposefully imperfect remakings of themselves. The guardinals, made to know Love but never as deeply, as openly as the priminals. For they were made to protect the Good, and thus bred for what the priminals despaired would be an unceasing armageddon. Knowing that this crime of passing their burdens, their failures onto a new generation would forever taint them, they left the Multiverse with burdened hearts.
Yet even in their mysterious home they feel that first brush of unlooked for hope. They see a time when the Baern are destroyed yet reborn in innocence, when the stone hearts of fiends crack in guilt and bleed out of sorrow and repentance. Where all things are encompassed by a flooding redemption. The ape-like countenances of these elder celestials smile and tears of joy fall in the endless dreaming that attaches them to their children by gossamer threadwork."
Baptism
The cornugon watches the silvery waters of Lunia, and that part of his blood that still fears Heaven thinks of the tide as a hungry creature lapping at the shore with a puerile anticipation.
The rest of his being, the part that is risen, knows it is his fear that makes him think this. The fear he was weaned on since he was a larvae dumped on the burning grounds of Avernus. The fear of fiends for what is holy, the confusion of redemption for oblivion.
Behind him stands his sponsor, the sapphire eyed Arenza, her trumpet cradled in her hand. He glances back at her, sees an encouraging smile on her face. The wind lazily raises her auburn hair away from her plump face.. Go on. the archon's expression urges.
You will be destroyed. part of him whispers in the voice of the osyluth that betrayed him, abandoning him to the mercies of the kocrachons. It shows him in agony, the flesh boiled off his bones by Lunia's holy seas.
The cornugon steps forward, unmindful of physical agony. He knows his pain as penance, as a step toward the heights of the infinite mountain.
The seas shimmer under the light of the full moon, a sparkle of all the possibilities in Love that evil could never offer. The sand is as white as a wedding gown, every one of the fiend's steps recalling the blush of the bride on her wedding day. He knows that nothing will ever be the same after this, and summons his courage to cross into a new kind of life.
Your guilt will break you, when all your sins stand revealed. These words are said in the voice of an enriynes who he had lain with for a time - until her murder had allowed for his advancement..
The cornugon steps forward, knowing that it cannot change the past, only dedicate itself to the Light for all moments hence. It's fiendish eyes pierce the depths before it, spying the gentle faces of Zoveri treading the undercurrent, waiting to lift him up should he fall gasping into the seawater's depths.
You are unworthy of Heaven's outstretched hand. Turn back. Wickedness is all you can ever know.
This time the voice is his own. The tide has run up to this feet, in the burning of his fiendish skin he can feel the offer of release. He looks to the heights of the Mount Celestia, obscured by the misty veils that part its seven layers, and feels the coldness of its mighty shadow.
He turns, looking back at Arenza, and sees the smile has not left her face. In fact, if anything it has widened, and is now colored with pride for the student finally ready for the Truth of Celestia.
"No one is worthy Hamath. Justice finds us all wanting - the archons more than anyone, for we are raised under its gaze but still touched by the flaws our free will allows us to wander into.
No one is worthy - but all are welcome. That is the very definition of Grace."
Turning back toward the waters, Hamath enters the ocean.
"If war is not holy, man is nothing but antic clay."
-Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
The lillendi had gathered, invisibly, to watch the play of the men and women of Ysgard. A thousand thousands worth of legendaries had come for this particular battle, to fight and die again and again. Splashes of red contrasted with the vibrant green grass in the opening moments, and soon the pools of blood were gathering upon the battlefield.
Floating shards of burning earth, some capable of holding whole worlds in their boundaries, streaked across the sky like comets slowing themselves to bear witness to this joyous massacre.
For the celestials of story and song, the endless repetition was both rejuvenating and a bringer of ennui. Each battle brough the estatic taste of glory, of daring that redefined the meaning of valor, revealed the permutations of the soul where each cut was part of some emergent fractal of meaning, each bruise was an inkblot to be read. And so the lillendi learned something of these souls even as the sounded out their own persons.
But how many times had they borne witness, and how many times had true understanding elluded them? Amidst all this war, all this time, and still they could not truly grasp the need for this violence. If all were Heaven, would there still be war? This was not to say that lillendi could not fight - many had, and even now many fell in wars across the Multiverse. But the lillendi did not relish violence, in fact as keepers of stories they had cultivated a certain sense of detachment. Only true aberrations among their kind ever had understood, and most of those had been pulled to darker corners of the Great Wheel.
So they watched, and waited for revelation most had come to believe would never come. Yet as the woman was pierced with a dozen swords, was there not something erotic in her last swooping arc of defiance that loped off seven heads of seven killers? Perhaps. And the boy who charges on horseback, cleaving a path of broken skulls until finally an arrow afixes itself in a cornflower eye leaving his steed to guard his body until it too falls to a cadre of footmen? Yes, there was something to that death, something that might spark a fire.
The snake women clenched fists around weapons of imagination even as this nascent arousal to battle took root. The call to conflict found purchase in those who had once merely watched and now began to not just see but comprehend why Ysgard might offer paradise to those who wished to die not once but eternally, again and again, forever locked in endless War.
Remiel in Lucifer - to do Good, one must be Good.
Celestials must win a war but will lose if they utilize immoral means to achieve victory. For Heaven, the means lead to ends. This is why they fear the Blood War so - as a conflict centered around intolerance, is this conflict strengthening Evil in ways that a unified Lower Planes never could? Those who feel this way are drawn to the Concordance - as an expression of tolerance, it is the inversion of the Blood War as Love brings together those who might otherwise be at war.
Risen fiend - makes Pit take a loss, demoralizes the ranks, makes on the fencers question value of Lower Planes....
BUT Evil also utilizes tales of risen fiends, tempting mortals with the idea that there's always a way out. These stories play on mortal lusts and desire to act out of anger, with some quick ending about the fiend being taken to heaven and coddled by celestials.
=-=-=
Just like bodaks are created from witnessing horrors, could some kind of celestial being be created from those witnessing the brightness of Heaven? Could this work or does it end in tragedy?
=-=-=
Devourer absorbed a Mahatma, a soul that the archons had thought might be reincarnating to come closer and closer to a point when it might take the place of one of the Hebdomad.
Now the devourer, redeemed by its contact with this bright spirit, has been taken to Secundus in Rempha to help the archons look into the devourer's past to see what lies beyond all known reality. The Mahatma has also refused to leave the devourer's ribcage for reasons unknown, and it is possible that it specifically asked to meet with Secundus for its own purposes...
"The lillendi, the dryads of story, guard the staircase for it is a construct made up of the tales of countless lives. A place woven from these timelines. They play at what is perhaps a majestic gamble -- that they might discern some truth from the spreading and shifting of the staircase's chaotic movements. Perhaps they think that to understand the Story in its entirety, they might be priveledged to write an ending in their favor. Perhaps celestials do not think it such a manner, it is hard to understand them."
Right now I'm thinking some historical context, work across the Planes, contesting with fiends, promotion of ideals, and insights into their societies.
My thoughts on each race so far are:
Archons:
-Old Law is overwritten by New Law. This occurs when the original Hebdomad vanish and are replaced by mortals. Zaphkiel taking the place of the previous lady of Chronias results in Triel falling for attempting to bar him.
-Archons promote cultures of goodness, traditions leading to lawful good actions. They often seek out peoples on nascent worlds to raise them in ideal of Heaven. Archons will disguise themselves in places where cultural evils are being overturned, promoting working in the system and stopping acts of anarchist violence.
-Archons enjoy practicing synchronized flight, marching, orchestras, and other group artistic activities.
-Archons are wary of passion, and their romantic lives are very prudent and based on reflection and courtship.
-Archons were left by their ancestors with a single message: Be Vigilant.
Eladrin:
-Eladrin have a dance of change, wherein which they continually shift forms. To the eladrin one does not rise to higher power but rather should continually experience different forms of their race to practice virtue in varied stations.
-Eladrin wander the Prime, helping individuals to make the right choices and for societies to promote freedom. To an eladrin, democracy is better than a lawful good but stifling society. However, eladrin also have little problem with skirting laws and pushing for protests and revolutions when the majority pass unjust laws.
-Eldarin enjoy wandering their oftentimes dangerous homeland. They collaborate in varied impromptu art festivals and contests, gatherings where invitations are sent via magic.
-Eladrin interact with fey, seeking to temper their crueler aspects. They also get along well with elves. Some believe eladrin are the ancestors of both those races, others say the fey who rose to Light became eladrin and those whose magic thinned became elves.
-Eladrin are less likely to combat the fiends directly, especially after Morwel's disastrous (though successful) charge against the Obyrith. They are more often found across the Multiverse as advisers, guiding people to the right choice rather than demanding it from them.
-Their ancestors left them the ruins of Pelion, and the remnants of the language that predates the Words of Creation.
-Eladrin are creatures of mercurial passions, though sometimes given the nature of Chaos to surprise these beings do find immortal loves. Eladrin as a rule do not commit adultery as that involves the willful using of another person and is a deception of their heart. However, eladrin get into and out of relationships with a frequency that might surprise even the most capricious mortal.
Guardinals:
-Created by their Edenic forebearers who did not possess the fortitude to defeat their enemy the Baern. In some sense, then, the Guardinals are less capable of love than their creators - this is their strength.
-Guardinals are mediators in the Concordance, and they were the first to conceive of and promote it. While the other races have a great number of representatives in the Concordance, the greater majority of guardinals abide by it and lend it their support.
-Guardinals were tasked with fighting the Baern and their tools, the yugoloths. The Guardinals seek to convert their enemies to goodness, and much of the swamplands is dedicated to the goal of converting the evils trapped there.
-Guardinals enjoy contemplation and relaxation in their pastoral plane. They often enjoy things the animals they take their aspects from would enjoy, and will engage in competitions though never competing in this manner for mates.
-Guardinals are more varied in their romances than eladrin and archons. Often times there is a soft, natural movement between friendship and romance.
Will post thoughts on the Lillendi, maybe some of the minor races well.
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