Linguistic Angels

Erik Nilsson

“Language is mankind’s greatest invention – except, of course, that it was never invented.”
    — Some Guy

Angels are words are spells are spirits. This is known.

Angels are made of language and symbols. Sapient thought nourishes them; spoken word exalts them.

Each angel embodies a phrase or concept—anything from “I am what I am” to “42 ducks standing in a perfect circle”—referred to as their onus. These can be abstract or concrete, descriptive or prescriptive. Whenever someone has a completely novel thought, a new angel is born.

Angels derive power from sapient thought directed toward their onus. Powerful angels are well-known aphorisms and common parlance; fledglings are weird or abstract shower thoughts. Their currency is prayer and meditation. When they trade favors with mortals, they ask for songs, poetry, and art. They tend to be particular about numbers (an⚿"angel-sum"⚿is an idiomatic expression referring to a large and annoyingly specific quantity).

For most angel names/onus (same thing), steal from Spwack’s generator here. Or just read a lot of K3BD. Angels may also be known by “family” names, which translate to functional or regional similarities within celestial society. Some examples:

Ingress: Angels of greetings and hospitality: “83 Pleased to Meet You,” “31 Hand On Hilt Steelcaste.” Generally friendly, with many opposable hands and furtive eyes. May herald the arrival of other angels.

Mandaloam: Collector angels: “19 Marble Thrones Regalia,” “8 Iron Slaked With Blood.” Patrons of dragons and other covetous folk. The strongest are those associated with gold.

Orzurion: Angels of extinction, one for every species. Most are quite weak: “14 Brings End To Geese,” “25 Sunset on Mice.” The most powerful of these is by far “2 Ash Burying Others,” the angel of orcish genocide.

Renaud Perochon

Cities of Angels
Angel society is constructed around maintaining balance between peoples, preserving dying cultures, and safeguarding civilization as a whole. They are, by construction, agents of order, of the zeitgeist.

Angels congregate along idealogical lines in towering cities on the misty fields of Celestos, a conceptual plane of endless thought. Angel architecture is built for flying through, lacking doors in favor of holes in ceilings and floors (more wall space allows for more bookshelves/shrines/paintings). The streets are mostly vertical chambers.

Pretty much every piece of every building is copied in some way from human architecture (angels are profoundly uncreative). It looks like a weird collage from an architecture major’s wet dream, or like that one scene in Inception with more vaulted arches. 

You can enter Celestos non-magically (as all realms) by walking into a thick mist, where you can't see anything but the ground you are standing on, and loudly announcing your business with a specific angel. Walk forward until the mist parts. If the angel knows you, they will meet you just outside the Golden Gates of Celestos. The next step is getting past them and the two Ingresses standing guard.

Devils
Devils are angels that contradict the teachings of one’s god. One cleric’s angel may be another’s devil: for example, incubi are devils of Archelai and angels of Lord Guu. 

Primordial Angels
Angels claim to predate civilized folk, that culture is formed in their image rather than vice versa. This is partly true.

Animals may not speak in a way that we recognize, but they do have language, and therefore do have and always have had angels. There are mewling angels and roaring angels and angels of pheromones that long predate human history, but they are fickle and distant. They embody animal needs and urges, fighting and fucking and eating what is available. These are the primordial not-quite-angels of unspeakable truths, speechless and hungry, kept at bay only by the great Gates of Celestos.

Among these primordials, the youngest breed was that of birdsong. When the angels waged war for Celestos, these were their first allies. You’ll find evidence of this everywhere in angel cities; choirs of exotic birds on every windowsill, corpulent and vibrant. However, the birdsong angels themselves are nowhere to be seen.

Angels do not allow mortals to know of their distant ancestors. They can’t risk mortal minds knowing and naming these old angels.

_____ (Angel of Birdsong)
HD 5; AC 16 (thousand-fold plumage); Feathers 1d6/1d6/1d6
It appears as a swarm of feathers, inky black one moment, pristine white the next. Each feather flies independently, as a school of fish might, around a bitter pill of ragged black meat.
Can attack everyone in a 20 ft cube of space simultaneously, ignoring any armor that isn't air-tight.
Feral, "hungry", but tame; responds to "Halt" and "Heel" so long as it hasn't been harmed. Whistling at it sates it, but you need to think like a (horny) bird as you do it.

Olya Bossak