New Dragon Article: Ecology of the Fire Archon

[LightPhoenix]

Well, we've already seen the stat card to the Spined Devil so I don't see the Flame Archon really telling us much more than we already know. A 4e character is what we'd need to see to really begin to sink our teeth into the new edition...

Exactly.

It's an interesting read, but it's yet another non-preview "preview" of 4E. After a while it gets a little tiring.

 

[Charwoman Gene]

Exactly.

It's an interesting read, but it's yet another non-preview "preview" of 4E. After a while it gets a little tiring.

Late February Early March is when its all coming out

 

[Knight Otu]

I could appear as a giant three eyed monk fish with wings if you so wanted...

Where'd you learn that?

Oh, well, after the guardinals were killed off, so the traditional archons. Can't say I'm happy about that, I'm sure they could've found a great name for the elemental archons (and I'd argue from the flavor that archon is a misnomer). The fire archons do look interesting, though, and we're seeing some of the workings of the monster roles here. The sidebar hints a bit at dangerous environment, but we already knew it'd exist.

I'm kind of wondering if the same figure may have influenced Magic's Flame(-)kin in a way.

 

[Abstraction]

I like it, but...do they think Lolth should be an elf now, instead of a spider?

 

[I'm A Banana]

Well these are pretty cool, but I'm not calling them Archons. They'll probably be servants of Imix the Archomental or the Efreet or maybe both in my 4e Planescape campaign. All in all 4e's treatment of the Elemental Planes has me a bit intrigued, like the fact that they will supposedly be more accessible and useful for play though I will keep the structure of the Greet Wheel's elemental planes rather than the Elemental Chaos, though some ideas from that might be also integrated into Limbo.

This.

I like 'em well enough. Fiery humanoids with fiery empires and fiery armor is all well and good. Though the bit about the arcane forge might be a little too much magitech for some worlds, I generally enjoy the sprinkling of magitech, so it doesn't bug me much. They've got some potential.

Archons, however, they are not. Archons are crusading celestials from the Mountain of Heaven, and they haven't given me a real reason to buy into their name change. The animal-headed spirits are evocative of Egyptian deities and the like, they just need a bit more commitment to the archetype (hound archons who serve loyally beside mortal princes, for instance).

I think I like the term "Imixians." Humanoids wreathed in fire? Sound perfect for an ancient cult once dedicated to this Archoelemental that immolated themselves, and then didn't die, due to Imix's dark blessings.

Or to make them more generic, we could call them the "Suri" or the "Sorkhi" or the "Agnites" or the "Chvarog" (going to some Indo-Iranian fire references, though Chvarog is close to Svarog, which is Slavic). Or the "Kolovrati" (from the Slavic word for the Swastika, which is associated with the sun and fire). Or the "Belenids" (from Belenus in Celtic folklore). "Flamekin" or "Cinderkin" sound pretty good, too.

Some of those names sound SERIOUSLY AWESOME, more so than "Archon," in fact. Chvarog especially....good name for a warlike race of flaming people, methinks.

 

[Drammattex]

Love it.

Perhaps this was already apparent to others, but it seems as though the special attacks/abilities creatures are getting when at half hp (or "bloodied") serve as an indicator to tell the PCs exactly that: "Hey DM, about how many hp does he have left? How bad does he look?"

I like this because it seems to let the monster get a good hit in while simultaneously communicating to the players how they're doing without forcing them to go out of the game and ask the DM for an update. Nice.

 

[Nahat Anoj]

There's some interesting information about the assumed history of the setting. From the Fire Archon article:

Fire archons believe that the honor of being the primordials' first soldiers belongs to them, but that is a secret only the gods and primordials remember. Regardless of which type was first, the presence of the archons turned the tide of battle in the primordials' favor. Given life, the archons could reproduce themselves, building armies faster than giants could be born or angels ordained. Their uncontrolled creation pleased the primordials and worried the gods.

Thus it was that one deity devised the plan that would starve the archon armies of troops. Rather than combat the archons directly, the gods' forces attacked the creatures and energies that served as the archons' source. To create an archon, one needs another elemental being. Virtually any kind will do. That creature is then remade into an archon in a magic foundry built upon a well of elemental power. The angels, exarchs, and gods set about destroying any elementals they encountered and diverting or ruining the largest sources of elemental energy in the Elemental Chaos.

When I read this, I remembered this from the Devils & Demons article from a few months back:

In the Abyss, which gapes like a festering wound in the landscape of the Elemental Tempest, demons teem, eternally divided among themselves simply by their insatiable lust for ruin. Legend says that the Chained God, Tharizdun, found a seed of evil in the young cosmos, and during the gods’ war with the primordials, he threw that seed into the Elemental Tempest. There, the evil seed despoiled all that came into contact with it (some say it tainted Tharizdun himself) and created the Abyss as it burned a hole in the very structure of the plane. Elemental beings that came too close to the Abyss became trapped and warped. Any desire they have turns to the longing to obliterate the gods, creation, and even one another. They became demons.

So if we needed a "why" for what Tharizdun did, perhaps trying to destroy the source or the archons' power was it. Perhaps Tharizdun wasn't such a bad dude before his corruption and he and the other gods were simply desperate for a win against the archon army. He was making an honest effort to beat the enemies of the gods, but he ended up making a terrible mistake and went insane or was otherwise corrupted by it. This is pleasingly dark to me ...

 

[Nahat Anoj]

Some of those names sound SERIOUSLY AWESOME, more so than "Archon," in fact. Chvarog especially....good name for a warlike race of flaming people, methinks.

Well, FWIW I think there are going to be four types of archons - water, earth, air, and fire archons. But I don't mind them calling themselves different name (Chvarog is a pretty good one IMO).

 

[Voss]

Once again, overuse of the word 'cool' and inherent contradictions built into the article.

Archons tend to avoid building or creating anything

Fire archons craft weapons and armor of amazing quality and stunning appearance

Honestly, whats going on with this garbage? I was fine with not creating things (except possibly field fortifications). Embodiment of the destructive aspects of fire, but not stupid. Interesting stuff, created for war and all that jazz. Except, for some reason, they do create things, even though they don't. In fact, they're really, really good at it. Sloppy.


Don't like the 'elementals weren't cool enough, partly because they were flaming or stony ogres (just punched things), and partly because we didn't inflict bad fluff on you. And clearly that needs to be fixed'. Aiieee.

Sigh. I like the idea of 4e. D&D is in crying need of a new edition, as the accumulated problems of a metric ton of useless splatbooks, and there is a lot of fundamentally broken stuff just in the core books. I even like most of the 4e mechanics I've seen so far. But every time the developers open their mouths, they irritate me. They come across as bipolar children on a sugar high- everything is either awesomely cool or utterly emo, and they seem completely incapable of communicating what they're doing and why.

If they'd stop with the marketing blather and just publish mechanics, I'd be a lot happier.

 

[TPK]

As the player of a fire-themed wizard character, I say,

INTERESTING ELEMENTAL PLACES AND CRITTERS YAY!