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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cheiromancer" data-source="post: 2400921" data-attributes="member: 141">Does your system support a cosmology that has fallen angels?  I.e. like Milton's Paradise Lost?  As in Milton, Sep's mythos involves a revolt in heaven; they lose, and their leader loses his name, to be known thereafter simply as the Adversary.  These angels fell to Hell, but some of them subsequently revolted against the Adversary; the refugees from the second revolt went to the Abyss.  They are called the "twice fallen."  The succubus Nehael (Lady Despina), whose conversion is the basis of the first part of the story hour, might be described as "thrice fallen."  But she is clearly a special case, though this is apparent only in retrospect.The point is that Sep's cosmology requires that celestials have multiple "choice points" in their history, much as people do.  (Some philosophers would hold that our own experience of choice is an illusion, but that is a different story. And even if our free will is an illusion, celestials would need to experience a similar kind of illusion in order to be described as fallen, much less twice or thrice fallen.)Except they sorted themselves into groups according to their individual choices.  Tho fallen who were lawful and evil went into Hell.  Those who were chaotic and evil went to the Abyss.  I am not sure what role neutral evil fiends play in the cosmology, but I suspect that the second revolt polarized alignments; either you stayed faithful to the Adversary (and stayed lawful) or you didn't (and became chaotic).  The alignment of the plane in which you were residing probably plays a role.  Still, I bet some stragglers from the second revolt ended up in Hades and are ethically neutral.What is true of celestials is that their alignments tend to be strongly polarized.  When they are good, they are very, very good, and when they are bad they are horrid.  Part of that is due to the length of time they have to develop morally and ethically; a process of corruption that is allowed to run for thousands, millions or billions of years will produce a very evil being.  Similarly something that renders them chaotic.  Since they are "intended" to be good, their evil is pathological, and tends to extremes.  Also, part of their alignment extremism is due to the company they keep, and the plane they reside on.  It is hard to be in Hell for millions of years, surrounded by fiends, without getting a little twisted yourself.Oronthonism is a type of solar monotheism.  In the early part of the story hour it is similar in feel to medieval Catholicism.  He's definitely a Greater power.  Lawful Good, but possibly a bit schizophrenic from the competing priorities of perfect Law and perfect Goodness.  I am also sensing something like the theme from the Valus campaign setting that gods can have both good and evil aspects.  (Valusian gods all have the Good and Evil domains; neutral clerics can take one if they also take the other)As for being detached, well, Oronthon usually (always?) works through angelic intermediaries, and I'm not sure how much initiative and interpretation his angels operate under.  When someone communes with Oronthon, they get the angel in charge of revelation.  I suspect that when angels commune with Oronthon, they in turn get a higher level angel.  Maybe its angels all the way up, and Oronthon is an "emergent property" of the system?Have you read the Sandman spinoff "Lucifer"?  The angels in that series generally rely on their own understanding of God's will, though a few of them (e.g. Michael) very occasionally receive messages directly.  I think that might be closer to Sep's intent.</blockquote>

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