I noticed all the fiends except for succubi and a few others are hideous, whereas all the celestials are beautiful or at least not ugly. Are there any ugly celestials that I don't know about?
Some Agathions are not particularly conventionally attractive (they look like idealized anthropomorphic humanoids). Some archons, angels, and azatas look fearsome and inhuman. But ugly? Can't think of any.
Ninkonda seem like they belong on a heavy metal album cover.
They are armored knight like creatures (note- armor is actually their skin) who don't have faces, and they have large spikes impaled into their flesh to represent their past misdeeds. Their primary means of attack are either punching people with their impaled hands, or throwing the spikes as a ranged attack.
Of the angel hierarchy, they are the nagging parent that is super strict with you because they remember their own rebellious phase. So they get to have the heavy metal look.
...wait, no, I looked up the bestiary image. They still look like heavily decorated golden knights. They just happen to have impaling spikes (it is up to you if that is a breaking point for beauty).
Yeah. Sorry. I guess 'ugly' for pathfinder celestials all comes down to whether you have problems with Dr. Manhanttan (idealized, but weird and glowy), weird conceptual things (like that one that is a wheel; but it is a SHINY WHEEL), or furries (hound archon, agathions).
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. What's ugly in one culture is appealing in another. I'm sure someone somewhere finds solars gross and balors gorgeous. Also, it seems likely that fiends would find any kind of celestial deeply unpleasant to look at. So I guess my answer is that it depends on who you ask.
Marking for interest.
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I, for one, would love to see Old Testament-style good outsiders; thousand eyes, a hundred grinding wheels. Be not afraid.
The closest I can think of are the foo creatures, with their faces that are quite human, but still bestial.
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There's one angel that is a burning wheel in form. Weird. Then there's a type of azata answering to Desna which is creepy at least, the thyrlien, with poisonous saliva and whose delicate-looking wings are actually as stiff as wood with razor sharp edges, and which is colored in shades of grey. Desna doesn't seem to quite get people; thyrliens could start a panic when exposed IMO. Perhaps that's appropriate considering her supposed background.
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I think it would be cool to take a really ugly real life animal (like a hagfish or potato bug) and make an agathion based on it.
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I, for one, would love to see Old Testament-style good outsiders; thousand eyes, a hundred grinding wheels. Be not afraid.
*screaming*
*screaming intensifies*
I am pretty sure there are outsiders of all varieties that are the sort that would be impossible to comprehend if you gazed upon them. We tend not to ask the artists to draw those.
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Let's face it. Desna herself is probably just a colossal 7-dimensional mass of tentacles and insect wings.
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Let's face it. Desna herself is probably just a colossal 7-dimensional mass of tentacles and insect wings.
Yes, but a beautiful one, or Shelyn wouldn't be her lover.
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Let's face it. Desna herself is probably just a colossal 7-dimensional mass of tentacles and insect wings.Yes, but a beautiful one, or Shelyn wouldn't be her lover.
Bold of you to assume that Shelyn can't find the beauty in a colossal 7-dimensional mass of tentacles and insect wings.
Love the skin you're in, babe
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Bold of you all to assume the number of dimensions Desna occupies is finite.
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The mass of tentacles would be super sparkly with star dust tho.
And I've seen enough coral reef footage and bioluminescent jellyfish to know that you can make tentacles look good.
Which is actually a serious issue for this discussion- even when celestials have weird forms, those weird forms tend to be filled with enough decorations, color, smooth lines, and other generally aesthetically pleasing details to still fall within the realm of 'conventionally pretty'.
I, for one, would love to see Old Testament-style good outsiders; thousand eyes, a hundred grinding wheels. Be not afraid.
*screaming*
*screaming intensifies*
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Does a sentient ooze fit into your category of ugly?
See Sapphire Ooze.
They come from Elysium, are shapechangers and intelligent. But I don't know if you'd consider that "Celestial" enough eventhough they're considered extraplanar.
Even then, its main gimmick is turning into a set of blinged out crystal armor.
While one could debate about whether that could be considered its real form since it spends most of its time as a regular ooze... but lets be honest. For narrative purposes, the sapphire ooze's sole purpose in the bestiary is to give the players a weird little piece of equipment in a low level encounter.
I guess the fact that demons are ugly and celestials are pretty (or at least, not-ugly) is due to how we see good and evil. We associate demons with ugliness and angels with beauty and grace. And that probably filters through in the art description. I'm sure a theoretically ugly celestial could exist, but wouldn't appeal as much as a pretty one would.
Demons and Devils have their exceptions too: Succubi/Incubi and Erinyes are supposed to be beautiful (even if dangerous appearing) even when you see them in their true form.
Let's face it. Desna herself is probably just a colossal 7-dimensional mass of tentacles and insect wings.
She is NOT ugly.
-- Atembe, my cleric of DesnaFound in the bestiary:
Cha 6: Foo Dog
Cha 8: Chalkost
Cha 9: Agathion
Cha 9: Spyglass Archon
These are all good outsiders.
/cevah
^Their low Charisma probably doesn't mean that they are ugly (after all, some things of really horrific appearance have high Charisma) -- it probably just means that they don't have much force of personality, and anyone who is inclined to resist their influence is likely to ignore them altogether (if not viewing them as threats) rather than to be repulsed by them.
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Also you are presuming that Shelyn actually looks like human lady. I mean, her father is a spirit wolf :p
In general, I hate it when people use word "ugly" when referring to people."Ugly" doesn't mean "Unattractive", it means "unpleasant or repulsive". If you feel grossed out when you look at another person's face, I think you are beyond judgmental...
There are some sights, including some faces, that can induce an instinctive revulsion without any conscious decision-making involved--that's an evolutionary adaptation. Having an involuntary response doesn't make someone a bad person so long as one recognizes when their nervous system is lying to them and makes an effort to overcome it.
Does a sentient ooze fit into your category of ugly?
See Sapphire Ooze.
They come from Elysium, are shapechangers and intelligent. But I don't know if you'd consider that "Celestial" enough eventhough they're considered extraplanar.
Even then, its main gimmick is turning into a set of blinged out crystal armor.
While one could debate about whether that could be considered its real form since it spends most of its time as a regular ooze... but lets be honest. For narrative purposes, the sapphire ooze's sole purpose in the bestiary is to give the players a weird little piece of equipment in a low level encounter.
That and based on the picture even their ooze form kind of pretty (pretty color at lest)
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Let's face it. Desna herself is probably just a colossal 7-dimensional mass of tentacles and insect wings.Yes, but a beautiful one, or Shelyn wouldn't be her lover.
*spittake*
Wait, what?
*Googles*
She is involved in a polyamorous relationship with Sarenrae and Shelyn,
...
The hell did that become a thing?
I mean, I'd have thought that might have like, been sort of an important point to mention in the Inner Sea Gods book!
Which it doesn't (I just checked)!
Frag dammit, did Paizo sneak into my skull and look at the half-made plans I had for my campaign world's three principle goddesses?
I thought it said somewhere her true form is a giant space butterfly.
The hell did that become a thing?
Going by the citations and the fact that I don't remember it coming up in The Skinsaw Murders, that leaves Planar Adventures.
The hell did that become a thing?Going by the citations and the fact that I don't remember it coming up in The Skinsaw Murders, that leaves Planar Adventures.
*looks up dates*
Okay, well after Inner Sea Gods then.
Is this like, does anyone know, a psuedo-retcon or a new thing thing in the timeline (or newly-revealed), because it... Is kind of an important dynamic change, one feels, to those three religions. (Like suddenly discovering Hephatus and Aprodite were married or something after you've been playing a metaphorical equivilent of Hercules Legenary Journies the RPG or summat...)
From what I remember about the show, that sounds like a plausible episode synopsis to me.
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Three way with Sarenrae, Shelyn, and Desna....
Who's top?
Who's bottom?
Who's middle?
Most importantly, is Sarenrae still on fire the whole time?
James Jacobs, get on this ASAP. I need this for research purposes. Module, AP, animation, lewdly-narrated short story... I don't care, just get it done!
Going by the citations and the fact that I don't remember it coming up in The Skinsaw Murders, that leaves Planar Adventures.She is involved in a polyamorous relationship with Sarenrae and Shelyn,The hell did that become a thing?
...
This is why we can't have nice things.
Going by the citations and the fact that I don't remember it coming up in The Skinsaw Murders, that leaves Planar Adventures.She is involved in a polyamorous relationship with Sarenrae and Shelyn,The hell did that become a thing?...
This is why we can't have nice things.
Plus side, my new Starfinder Space Goblin PC now has a theory as to what caused the Gap...
I, for one, would love to see Old Testament-style good outsiders; thousand eyes, a hundred grinding wheels. Be not afraid.
Too be fair old testament God/outsiders are more N than G, and this is how several aeons, psychopomps, inevitables are depicted.
Just browsing through Chronicles of the Righteous, several empyreal lords aren't beautiful.
Dammerich
Irez
Vildeis
Several more when you consider the ones that don't have art, but are based on RL myth such as Aizen-myo-o.
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I'd put Old Testament God at pretty firmly NE sometimes.
Are you the DM? Do you want there to be ugly celestials?
If both answers are yes, then there are ugly celestials.