#agathion

"American Monster - Lords of Deep Alien" © deviantArt user earthbaragon, accessed at his gallery here

[Lords of the Deep is by no means a good movie. But it is an interesting one. It's an attempt to do The Abyss on a budget roughly equivalent to digging through the couch cushions, and because talk is cheap and monsters are expensive, we don't get to see a lot of the benevolent muppety manta/angel sharks. In the movie, they are aliens from the planet Neptune who want to save humanity from Earth's destroyed ozone layer by resettling them in big organic domes on the sea bed, but they are needlessly cryptic and their actions come off more like kidnapping than rescue. Rather than making my version aliens, I've interpreted them as literal angel sharks.]

Agathion, Squatinial CR 9 NG Outsider (extraplanar) This creature has a flattened body expanding into two large, roughly triangular fins, and a muscular tail ending in a long low fin. Its eyes have black sclera and red pupils, giving it a slightly sinister gaze, but its aspect is otherwise calm and appraising.

If the avorals are the lords of the sky, squatinials are the lords of the deep. These agathions are oversized celestial angelsharks that specialize in protecting people from natural disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes and tsunami. They use their magical powers to avert such catastrophes when they can, but also to create storm shelters where fragile mortals can wait out the worst. Because of their aquatic nature, these shelters are often sequestered deep on abyssal plains and their inhabitants brought there through teleportation. Since the squatinials can only teleport with other creatures if they swallow them and carry them inside their bodies, this can lead to misconceptions of them as violent predators. That said, if a squatinial so chooses, it can shape its body to grow teeth and inflict a vicious bite.

Despite their solid appearance, a squatinial is effectively liquid, being able to loosen the connections between its cells to take on an amorphous shape and flow through the smallest cracks. They tend to fight less to kill and more to buy time for their allies to escape or regroup, using defensive tactics and interposing themselves between allies and enemies. If especially desperate, they may swallow foes in order to carry them away from the battlefield and regurgitate them elsewhere. Only against implacably evil foes like fiends and the undead will a squatinial fight to the death.

Squatinials can move about on land if they need to, but are slow and clumsy as they do so. As such, they tend to be found in the waterways of Nirvana and the worlds of mortals alike. They are social among themselves, living in pods whose members come and go. Squatinials are sometimes found as aides and allies to the larger, more powerful cetaceals. Their ability to read auras and convey large amounts of information psychically sometimes leads them to serve as diplomats or negotiators.

A squatinial is about twelve feet long with a fin-span of about fifteen feet. Because of their fluid bodies, they have surprising reach for their size.

(art by Maichol Quinto on Artstation)

And once again we return to my favorite (fully warranted) punching bag, the hellknights. As always, I have to point out that the entirety of Hellknight orders are at best dangerously misguided, and in the overwhelmingly more common majority, actively a danger to all things righteous and good. Who knew modeling your entire worldview on Hell’s order would result in you ending up being a bad guy?

In any case, while Hellknights are all well and good, the question comes up of how to be a member of an oppressive tyrannical order as a mage but also getting to wear cool spikey armor?

The answer is the signifers, hellknight mages trained in effective armor use while also sporting sinister-looking variant helms that lack eyeholes, sometimes lacking any holes at all. Rather than blinding them, these helmets are magical and allow the signifier to not only see normally, but with mastery even enhance their vision beyond what mortals are capable of in various ways.

Officially, these masked helms are also meant to evoke the idea that signifers, in the wisdom granted by their studies of the magical arts or devotion to a lawful god, are unable to be swayed to chaotic thought by coercion, debate, or bribery. It’s a sort of “justice is blind” sort of thing.

In practice of course it just makes them look even more sinister and faceless than the already sinister and faceless hellknights that make up most of the order.

Still, their techniques are quite impressive, so let’s take a look at what they can bring to the table either as antagonists or as morally-dubious protagonists.

The prerequisites for this prestige class include 3rd level spellcasting, meaning that you’ll have to be either 5th or 6th level with most full caster classes, and 7th with half casters to take it (don’t bother with minor casters, they’d be better served as true hellknights anyway). In addition to this, minor training in intimidation as well as arcane and planar lore are required, as well as either arcane armor training or warrior priest as feats. Finally, they must go through the ritual combat against a devil that the orders use to weed out the weak of body or resolve.

Thankfully, for their trouble these warrior mages gain the full benefits of caster training, so they don’t miss out on any arcane or divine (or psychic!) potency.

Whether they are a priest or not, signifers radiate an aura of law as potent as the mightiest lawful priests.

Naturally, each Hellknight, including signifers, belongs to an order, which in the case of a signifier gives them training with one or two iconic weapons associated with the order. The ability even lists the signature weapons for several common orders, but feel free to do research and come up with your own for the likes of the Order of the Pike and the Order of the Torrent, among others.

Next up, they also get their signature helm mask, which magically does not obscure their vision, and even heightens their ability to read the responses of others. Additionally, the signifier mask can be used as an arcane focus by a wizard or similar caster, with all the benefits thereof.

Divine casters that choose this path may not gain other non-spell abilities while advancing their hellknight training, but their potency continues to improve, bolstering the power of whatever gifts they have already been bestowed. Additonally, those that can channel energy learn how to channel power to wound chaotic outsiders.

Conversely, those focused on arcane magic gain even further training for casting while wearing armor, and the act of doing so eventually takes even less effort.

Signifers also receive general training in armor to reduce it’s load, allowing them to be more active and agile in it as well as further decreasing the risk of arcane spell failure.

The eyeless gaze of these mages is not just unnerving, but eventually gains all sorts of uncanny magical vision they use to root out the enemies of law and order and see past deception. These include seeing and identifying magical auras at a glance, sensing moral alignment, seeing the magical potential of a target, piercing all illusions and shapeshifting, and even seeing through nonmetallic materials. However, signifers keep it a secret that these magical gazes have daily reserves of energy that can be worn down.

As the magical branch of an order devoted to tyranny, these mages gain a reserve of magical power to cast magic that allows them to immediately notice falsehoods.

Near the zenith of their power, these diabolic mystics gain a small measure of devilish power, making them resistant to harm save for those caused by chaotic sources, as well as immunity to poison.

True master signifers, however, become outright telepathic and completely immune to being blinded. Additionally, they become such paragons of order that their words find a ring of truth and respectability among all lawful creatures, even those that otherwise oppose them on moral grounds.

This prestige class offers a really neat multifaceted detection ability and the like without taking away spellcasting ability, and also offers a fast track to being able to build your armored tank mage, while also giving divine casters the benefits of their favored chosen abilities. This makes it really appealing to use for villains and sinister protagonists alike, and you can build it in a lot of ways.

While the signifer is described as being the option for all casters that desire to become hellknights, as written the class does not have an option for psychic casters, both in terms of prerequisites and abilities that mesh directly with psychic magic and class abilities. So some homebrew is required to make that work.

There is a tense atmosphere on the Whistling Fish, as the party find themselves sharing passage with a group of hellknights led by a signifer who are escorting a prisoner. Things take a turn for the complicated when a rare bishop agathion, a goodly liason between land and sea, appears and demands that the hellknights release their prisoner into their care.

Hellknights have come to the border city of Lang Shen, and the sinister mercenaries are all too happy to help round up folk of “problematic” ancestries, regardless of the city’s leadership’s actual intent or desire. One woman, however, a vishkanya named Eltiri, plans on tearing the order’s hold on the region up by the roots.

A quick reference sheet from a couple months back for my Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous KC

She is an Idyllkin Aasimar! Leaning more heavily into the Agathian part, Avoral specifically.

A cleric of balance, she follows The Green Faith (and there is nothing funnier than playing an atheist cleric in this game) and specializes in the Animal Domain.

Because this is an RP build, her elk, Cha'aska, does most of the heavy hitting- she's there more for buffing, smiting, and killing you with the power of love, friendship and unbelievable violence.

The spoiler free origin story is that she has amnesia, and is more or less a happy-go-lucky bird who's here for the free bread and to follow on her goal of restoring nature's balance (no bears).

Race: Yoma

Alignment: Neutral-Law

April 17th, 2024

Talismans and trinkets have always been the number one spot for mischievous spirits to hide away, but sometimes, the opposite is true; a demon doesn't possess one, but rather, becomes one. Enter an Agathion, a demon that has appeared throughout the series for many a game in spite of its lack of significance.

As the series itself puts it, there is no real consensus for the real shape of an Agathion, though the series depicts it as a small specter within a golden, occultly decorated pot. Agathion are effectively a version of the concept of a familiar, an idea originating in medieval European folklore- a spiritual being conjured by a witch or wizard who would fight alongside, assist, or just be a pet to its summoner.

Familiars had no real defined form, instead typically taking the form of a common household pet such as a cat, though they could really fit any shape. The main defining feature of a familiar, as opposed to a ghost, would be that it had a real, strictly defined form- a familiar would appear like any normal animal, yet had boundless magic, and could assist its summoner in any way they'd need.

Agathion are a specific type of familiar defined as being able to take the form of an inanimate object as well- a ring, a talisman, a bottle, whatever- though they could also do the classic familiar trick of appearing as an animal or even a human as well. The biggest defining trait of an Agathion lies in the time of day it grows strongest- while most familiars had a regular amount of power no matter the hour, an Agathion could be seen as running on sunlight, as their strength grows the most when it reaches midday.

There are, frustratingly, very few descriptions nor depictions of this demon out there, being a generally accepted idea without a concrete origin. I can't even find a historical depiction of a famous agathion- most of them seem to have been common folk belief in the middle ages, and what makes this even worse is that Agathion are also a thing in, what else, but Pathfinder, where their lore is completely different! My wild goose chase for any proof of an Agathion even existing in history has turned up squat, and I'm sorry for that.

The only definition I could find would be in the book "Encyclopedia of Demons in World Religions and Cultures" by Theresa Bane, which is a short, very apt description. I come to this blog bearing not much beyond a short description and a recanting of my frustration, and I'm sorry for that.