Minor Good Outsiders on Material Plane


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion


I don't find it surprising that most heroic parties meet more evil outsiders than good outsiders in their adventures. I mean it's almost in the job destricption to deal with different dangers and threats and these are bound to come from the evil side of alignment spectrum. So I understand why bestiaries contain 3 to 4 times more evil outsiders than good ones. It's not unusual for a party of 5th level or so to find some evil outsider inhabiting an ancient dungeon or helping an evil priest.

That being said, I believe there should still be an appropriate, equivalent presence of good outsiders on the Material Plane. Good outsiders aren't just powerful angels who send high-level parties on epic quests to defeat great evil. There are also beings like lyrakien azatas, cassisian angels or lantern archons. And if they demonic or infernal counterparts find their way to Material Plane, and sometimes get stranded on it, why wouldn't they?

Would it be considered normal for a good-aligned temple to have a resident cassisian angel or some other minor celestial sent down by the temple's patron for an unspecified period of time? What would be its duties? How would society react to it?

How would villagers act if the forest protector wasn't some sort of mythical being, but a bralani azata (CR 6), regularily visiting local inn to socialize and taste some human food?

How would city guards react to a traveling vulpinal agathion trying to explain that he's not a messenger from anyone, there's no epic threat to the city he knows of, he's just passing by?

What other situations can minor good outsiders bet met on the Material Plane? How to place them in the campaign without instantly making it into some sort of holy quest?

Shadow Lodge

I think that whether it's considered normal for celestials to casually interact with mortals would depend on the setting. Keep in mind that while it's not unusual for a party of 5th level adventurers to run into a fiend in a dungeon or helping a cult, it is unusual for them to run into an imp - let along a babau demon or host devil - just hanging around town. Even assuming that people wouldn't try to run them out of town (a problem celestials presumably wouldn't have), fiends are pretty consistently driven to pursue their evil agendas.

Celestials don't necessarily have to be fighting the Good fight 100% of the time, but if they show up someplace it should probably be related to some goal, and even if it isn't they should be quick to take opportunities to do Good wherever they can.

I would not be surprised if really minor celestials, the kinds that can serve as familiars, did regularly get sent down to help particular churches. Their duties would be related to their particular abilities. I've got a cassisian at a church in my setting helping out the priest with his record-keeping. A lyrakien might follow caravans along a pilgrimage route, encouraging the travellers and keeping an eye out for danger. They would probably be a curiosity but would only cause a real stir in small or isolated settlements where they don't see much magic period.

Bralani and Vulpinals, while minor by celestial standards, are pretty powerful compared to the average mortal - "mythical being" sounds about accurate.

If a bralani took up protecting the forest near a small rural settlement, I wouldn't expect it to need to come to the inn - people would come to it with food and conversation. The locals might even hold an annual festival in honour of their protector featuring whatever games the bralani most enjoys. If someone (like a PC) happens to show particular martial talent at this festival, then the bralani might challenge them to a friendly duel.

A vulpinal might not have any particular goal in mind, but it's not going to "just pass through." I would expect it to ask the impressed guards to direct it to a local goodly temple which would assist it in distributing healing (vulpinals have lay on hands and remove disease) and give it a stage from which to share its inspiring music and stories with the community - an event which would be very well attended. With three Knowledge skills of +21 they could easily have information relevant to the PCs. Depending on the PCs' level and goals, you could even have the vulpinal join the party on their quest in an inversion of the quest-giver dynamic.

The gancanagh are a little less powerful and also apparently a little more distractable, so there's quite a few things you could to with them. For starters, they could take an interest in a PC (who may not know that their admirer is a celestial). Alternatively, you could have a well to do couple approach the PCs with concerns that their daughter is being corrupted by an incubus. Actually, it's a gancanaugh. The parents are over-protective and over-critical of their only daughter and he's giving her the confidence to assert herself (and will not be pleased if confronted with the "incubus" accusation).


I have Golaion Setting in mind.

Rise of Runelords spoiler:
In just the first adventure of Rise of Runelords, Burnt Offerings, the party meets a quasit stranded in a lost dungeon, a vargouille in a similar situation, evil priestess has yeth hounds helping her, and the final boss is an imprisoned unique barghest. There's also a mention of hellcat that was stranded on the Material Plane, though it isn't actualy met in the adventure.
If evil outsiders sometimes just happen to be left behind because of the circumstances, why not good outsiders? I don't think there has to be some purpose for their presence (there might have been in the past, but it's gone, and now they are just left behind to their own devices). I can only imagine that outsiders in such situations will be drawn to places where they can be helful, and that includes settlements.

Take Magnimar: it is supposed to be not only a place where celestials are worshipped, but also a city visited by celestials (for example yamah azata (CR 5), but I assume similar celestials of other types as well). Are there any celestial beings permanently present in the city? Would it attract stranded outsider that can't return to their plane of origin?

In Cheliax they regularly interact with devils, even summon and bind them. Is there a place which interacts with good outsiders with a similar intensity (even if not on the same scale?).

For how it is often depicted, I get the feeling that Golarion is viewed by the celestials as a repulsive place. They sometimes visit it, but only with a specific goal in mind, and they leave as soon as their job is done (or probably get called off, as many can't leave on their own). Evil outsiders on the other hand, seem to like it here, often lingering for centuries of millenias until some adventurers get rid off them. And while fiends are often depicting interacting with mortals (eiuther corrupting them or terrorizing them), the celestials are depicted as keeping safe distance, sometimes letting themselves be seen, but rarely directly interacting, unless they need something.

I'd like to increase the presence of good outsiders in my campaigns, so that it would be closer to the already established presence of fiends. But I don't want them to become a center of attention everytime they appear. I imagine there are evil outsiders on the Material Plane, and they must be dealth with because they cause havoc, and there are good outsiders, doing their own stuff, whom PCs don't need to be concerned with, but whom the Pcs could look for if they needed their help for something.

Shadow Lodge

I am pretty fuzzy on Golarion and have not played through RotR so I'm not familiar with the example given.

Again, even if an outsider is stranded on the material plane and their original purpose for being here no longer applies, I would expect them to find something to do that is consistent with their alignment if at all possible.

Sounds like it would be pretty easy to tweak Magnimar in the direction you want and make it a hub for stranded celestials who need help figuring out what to do with themselves.

Celestials don't have to be the center of attention but they should draw at least as much attention as an adventurer of their CR. Probably a bit more because of being obviously otherworldly (aside from the handful of exceptions that can change shape like the cassisian or the gancanaugh).


In general, it is pretty common in fantasy to have demons/devils etc. meddle in the affairs of humans while angels and such leave them alone except to counter the efforts of the evil beings. Usually this is tied in with the concept of giving people choices and preserving their agency. I don't know that there is anything written about Golarion that would support this in there, and I can think of a few things that seem to make it specifically untrue, but I would expect that this general idea has at least a subconscious effect on a lot of the writers.

You certainly can add that sort of thing to your games, and I don't see any problem with it fitting in just fine. As to things like 'what is normal' and 'how would people react' that would be entirely up to you. You could make good arguments for all sorts of reactions, and a lot of it would depend on how common you want to make that sort of thing.


Heaven Unleashed provides a small number of examples of celestials who live on Golarion.


Powerful unique outsiders are fine, but I'm trying to get some ideas for minor ones, especially those that don't have the ability to travel between planes on their own. It is known they somehow end up on the Material Plane deapite of that, like the aforementioned yamahs in Magnimar. I could assume that they are only being sent there for a shor time by a more powerful being and are called back after their mission is over, but I'm not fond of this idea, especially with more chaotic-aligned outsiders like azatas who I believe should be able to act more independently. There are also the familiar-level celestials left behind after their master dies. Here as well, it could be assumed that in the most of the cases an outsider familiar is able to follow its master spirit to the Outer Sphere, but there exist examples that sometimes it may be unable to. In this case it is left behind.

I do agree that stranded outsiders would still try to find some occupation matching their alignment. And that's exactly what I'm trying to figure out, how common or uncommon are they in the Standard Pathfinder Setting (Golarion), and how mortal societies treat them. Unlike evil outsiders they don't need to hide in dungeons or limit themselves to the savage races, so even if they are fewer in number, the common folk may still be aware of their presence.


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Hell's Vengeance has a few of these, such as

Hell's Vengeance books 1 and 2 spoilers:
the kuribu watching over the Allamar brothers, the hound archon socializing at Oathday Market in Kantaria for morale, or the iophanite messengers.
It still falls into the same cliche of "outsiders are mostly present as enemies", but it still gives some ideas of reasons lesser good outsiders would be hanging around, which presumably are just as valid at other times.

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