Celestials on the other side

[Sarellion]

Inspired by the thread for the Book of exalted Deed a question comes to my mind.
When did you have to fight Celestials or other beings of the good side and why?

Our group had a fight with a Celestial in an old campaign. The party protected the negotiations between an influential count from a rival realm and embassadors from our side on the map as a Celestial arrived, serving the god of law, order and rulership. Somenone contacted him and told him that the count was up to treason and some other things. He demanded that the traitor should be turned over. The party tried to reason with him for a while but we didn´t came to terms. In the end both sides drew their weapons in deepest regret and went to battle.

What are your stories?

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hi there!

My character had to fight an Anti-Planetar (back in 1st Ed.) in the Nine Hells.

 

[Carnifex]

Well, since I ran a Planescape campaign it meant that versus-celestial battles came up several times Two stand out though, mostly because of the wierd nature of the opponents int that battle:

1) The celestial in this case was in fact an erinyes. You know, with those big feathery wings and unnatural beauty, all an erinyes needs to do to fool many onlookers that she's an archon or deva is to wear shining armour She actually attempted to lure the PC's into aiding her in attacking a Risen succubus (ie, turned-to-the-forces-of-good demon), telling them she was on a mission to kill this incredibly evil succubus who just happened to be in that tavern over there. Part way through the fight the erinyes demeanour and actions, adn the words of the succubus, alerted them to the ruse and they turned on the erinyes.

2) A fallen solar This was towards the end of the campaign with high-level characters, and a devil army was rampaging around the upper planes led by an abishai arhcmage who had released the solar from his prison on Bytopia; the Solar knew the location of where the archons had hidden a very powerful artifact that the abishai wanted.

By the time the PC's got there they found the battlefield where the native guardians had fought the Baatorians, and underneath a pile opf rubble they saw the hand of a casualty sticking out - the solar, who had been injured during the battle and lay umderneath the rock. They helped him out, whereupon he immediately got up and hit the half-dragon paladin with his sword.

His vorpal sword.

He critted, killing the paladin instantly, and went on to badly damage the party before they managed to take him down, whereupon his dark form shattered and imploded in suitably maleficient manner

 

[Sarellion]

@carnifex

How could you defeat a solar.
With teleport, heal and arrows of slaying at will (in 2ed) he seemed to be quite unstoppable (never fought one only saw the the stats).

Jump, fire, jump, heal

Rinse and repeat

 

[F5]

The only time I've ever "fought" celestials has been in a recent 3E game.
Our group was trying to gain access to on obelisk/tomb, which held secrets we needed to finish our quest. It was guarded by a Planetar, and we were 5th level, or so ( ). We were good-aligned, so the Planetar was friendly, but wouldn't let us pass unless we could successfully challenge it. We spent about an hour arguing the sematics of The Greater Good, and how vital our quest was, etc. The Planetar was convinced, and genuinely wanted to help us, but had to do its' duty. So it allowed us to name the terms of the "challenge" ourselves.
I was playing a cleric of the god of Travellers, and had a maxed-out Direction Sense. So I challenged it to what was essentially a high-stakes game of Pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey. We were blindfolded, led out into the surrounding meadow, spun around several times, and had to find our way back to the obelisk witrhout any kind of magical aid. First one there won.
Ultimately, I think that's the easiest way to handle encounters with celestials. Potential allies that may be working at cross-purposes to you unintentionally, and you have to find a way to compromise. If you ever have to fight a celestial, in a way, you've already lost.
Unless you're evil.
Then it could be fun. Brief, but fun.

 

[Lordnightshade]

My group just fought a Lich Planetar in the Abyss. Talk about a scary fight!

My thought is that fallen celestials are not uncommon (when you think that the multiverse is infinite)

 

[ruleslawyer]

Oh, I'd say that they're still uncommon. Just because the universe is infinite doesn't mean that there is an infinite amount of celestials; those that exist should be nearly infinitely impossible to convert to evil.

Back in 2e, the party I DM was sent to stop a powerful celestial (an astral deva) from retrieving an item that would have had profoundly poor effects on the celestial; having been duped into thinking that those who attempted to stop him were agents of evil, the deva attacked with all his might, forcing the PCs to come up with imaginative solutions to avoid killing him. (IIRC, they finally just plane shifted him to Arborea.)

 

[Carnifex]

@carnifex

How could you defeat a solar.
With teleport, heal and arrows of slaying at will (in 2ed) he seemed to be quite unstoppable (never fought one only saw the the stats).

Jump, fire, jump, heal

Rinse and repeat

Well, I don't have the stats on me right now and that campaign was over a year ago, so I can't remember all of the details (except that the vorpal sword hit stayed with me ), but the heal thing isn't much of a problem when the solar was effectively surrounded (I'd also changed its powers to be negatively channeling as suited its status as a fallen angel, but it did have heal memorised as a spell). All the party needed to be able to do was deal enough damage to kill it in one round. And since this party did have a high level bariaur fighter/ Champion of Va'asha (close combat PrC I created for the followers of the bariaur war goddess Va'asha in place of a paladin) they were fully capable of doing so.

Solars are perfectly killable, just don't expect to take one down without casualtie

 

[Voadam]

Years ago I ran the 1e module to find a king and the sequel Llewellyn's bane. In there they have a confrontation between a force of darkness (a devil) and a force of light (the PCs) to fulfill a prophecy. The PCs were all thoroughly evil so I reversed it, they got a temporary dark blessing and they fought some devas to fulflill the prophecy.

 

[Voadam]

As a PC I remember going into a graveyard of dimensional tombs and one we were trying to get into was for a high minion of Pholtus of the Blinding light. The guardians were devas and the higher celestials and were good and would allow us to go about our business as long as we followed the religions proper respect forms (dozens of things like saying "Oh blinding light" when walking through doorways, which way you had to make turns to represent turning to the light, etc.) But they were ready to smite any who deviated from "the way" and did not show proper respect. It was definitely a LAWFUL (good) set up. Even though my PC was NG it was very easy to see I wasn't on their side, didn't follow their exacting path, and had to act very carefully.