Archons

The archons are those creatures genetically engineered to act as servants, messengers, and warriors of the false gods. By those loyal to Empyrean, they are considered above humans but below the gods in the hierarchy. Each of the false gods has a High Archon or a Grand Archon who leads the others.

Most archons live in cities that float in the skies above Ymir. The cities are made to be beautiful, often made of marble and decorated with gold. Some also have gardens, parks, and even vast forests in their midst. From these cities, they enforce the will of the false gods, whom they believe to be truly divine.

While most archons look like humans with feathered wings, they have a variety of other appearances as well. The ookami are a type of archon that resemble wolves with gleaming white fur. Ursarths are archons that resemble bears that walk upright like men and have brass or golden colored fur. Houri resemble women with gazelle horns and bewitching eyes. Ryu have long, serpentine bodies and are covered in metallic scales. Apkallu often have the head and talons of a bird, in addition to the wings, on an otherwise human body. Chayot are the strangest looking archons of all, for they have the head of a lion, the horns of a ram, a human torso, wings like an eagle, and a lower body like that of a lion, with all four legs.

In addition, there are some types of archons who have more than just two wings. The seraphim, for example, have six wings with eyes on them. Fravashi only have two wings, but also have tail feathers. The muut, who are natural-born assassins and are also called “Archons of Death,” have four wings, usually with black feathers.

Rather than live birth, archons hatch from eggs. The eggs start out small, but as the infant archon within the egg grows, the eggs get bigger, and eventually hatch.

When Nebo created the archons, he knew that if he made them ageless and gave them the same fertility rate as humans, this would cause them to overpopulate Ymir within a few generations. So, he made it so that roughly one out of every one-hundred archons would be fertile.

Since a fertile archon is not always fit to raise their own children, archons do not have the same family structures as humans do. When an egg hatches, the child is placed in the care of what is called a “memitz,” which translates to “mentor” from the Archonic tongue. One memitz may raise up to ten children at a time, and each memitz is specifically trained to raise children and be a good teacher to them. Occasionally, two or three mentors will work together to raise a group of children, but usually they work alone.

All of this is true in the archon cities, where they are loyal to the false gods, but those archons who have joined Seth’s Rebellion are not bound by so many rules. In Prometheus City, the capital of the Rebellion, there are archons who do raise their own children. There have been several instances where an archon mother has realized she was with child, and rather than give up her egg to be raised by someone else, she has fled to join the Rebellion specifically so that she could raise the child herself. Sometimes, this happens for couples, with both the mother and father joining the Rebellion together for the sake of being a united family.

In fiendish societies, even archons who’ve joined the Rebellion are often mistrusted or even hated. This is largely because of the suffering that fiends have endured at archon hands. Even so, archons are a crucial part of the Rebellion.