Heironious is on what plane? [Archive] - Wizards Community

Heironious is on what plane? [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
Frogmantis
07-10-07, 04:53 AM I feel so dumb for askign, but I can't seem to find it. What plane does Heironious reside on?
ripvanwormer
07-10-07, 09:12 AM Mount Celestia. He has a realm called the Fields of Glory in Venya.
Zousha_Omenohu
07-10-07, 10:43 AM I thought it was The Radient Arsenal. Is that his fortress or something? (While the core beliefs article about him was fantastic, it included no details about where he resides and how he holds court. Frustrating!)
ripvanwormer
07-10-07, 11:58 AM I thought it was The Radient Arsenal. Is that his fortress or something? (While the core beliefs article about him was fantastic, it included no details about where he resides and how he holds court. Frustrating!)

The Radiant Arsenal is where the archons keep their greatest weapons - weapons forged from the spirits of powerful archons, weapons that can level mountains - on the fourth tier of Yetsirah, their seven-tiered ziggurat in Jovar. It doesn't belong to any single god, but to the race of archons as a whole. It's controlled by a castellan, the sword archon Phaleg, not by a deity. It's basically a really extensive warehouse filled with heavily guarded vaults, crypts, and cellars. See the 3e Manual of the Planes, page 136, and Planes of Law before that. Complete Divine makes it sound like everybody there worships Heironeous, but I'd consider that to be just core-bias (bias toward "core" gods at the expense of other deities that deserve an equal place in the cosmology). On Hallowed Ground placed Heironeous in Venya, and I don't think anything's contradicted that since.

Phaleg isn't a proxy, so presumedly he isn't dedicated to any one deity. I imagine the archons that work there, if they aren't devoted solely to the force of Lawful Good itself, worship all lawful good gods of war equally. Heironeous just happens to be the only "core" LG war god, so he gets all the emphasis in 3.5 supplements.
Frogmantis
07-10-07, 01:54 PM Hey, thanks guys.
Zousha_Omenohu
07-11-07, 04:40 PM Complete Divine makes it sound like everybody there worships Heironeous, but I'd consider that to be just core-bias (bias toward "core" gods at the expense of other deities that deserve an equal place in the cosmology).

Core-bias? Judging by the text I read in Complete Divine:

Heironeous leads his crusades against evil from the Radient Arsenal, near the heavenly city of Yetsiraon on the sixth layer of the mountain.

That seems less like a "core-bias issue" and more like a "complete error and therefore non-canon" issue from where I'm sitting. What I mean is, it's not the writers don't have a bias towards Heironeous. To me it seems like they got it wrong.
Franco Un-American
07-11-07, 04:52 PM Wrong? Seems to me it's just a change. New editions are allowed to do that. No big deal.
ripvanwormer
07-11-07, 05:03 PM The MotP somehow forgot to detail Heironeous' realm, and I suspect one of the Complete Divine designers thought he was being clever in "repurposing" one of the sites the MotP did mention. Warriors of Heaven fell prey to that, too, associating a lot of existing planar sites with inappropriate deities when they'd never been considered divine realms before, when it would have been just as simple to invent new realms for them rather than distorting old ones beyond recognition.

I think in a campaign where Heironeous is the only or the most powerful LG war deity on the plane, it would make sense to put him in charge of the Radiant Arsenal, putting the greatest weapons of the archon race under his particular care. That's what I mean by "core bias" - it seems like some of the books do assume that the "core" deities are the only ones that exist (even with the "expanded core pantheon" in Complete Divine). Others are much more liberal with their assumptions, like the Fiendish Codices, allowing for gods of other pantheons (including real-world ones) to exist on the same planes.
Zousha_Omenohu
07-11-07, 05:20 PM I was really annoyed when I couldn't find any info on Heironeous's realm in the MotP. He's my favorite deity by far.

So what's canon and what's not? I'm never sure how defensive people around here are about canon. I always pictured canon as infallible, and violation of it as heresy. Maybe I'm just paranoid or something.
ripvanwormer
07-11-07, 05:43 PM So what's canon and what's not?

I like to define it as "something that has at some point been published in an official source." The sum total of all published works is the D&D canon. The canon often contradicts itself, but that's fine.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Frogmantis 07-10-07, 04:53 AM	I feel so dumb for askign, but I can't seem to find it. What plane does Heironious reside on?
ripvanwormer 07-10-07, 09:12 AM	Mount Celestia. He has a realm called the Fields of Glory in Venya.
Zousha_Omenohu 07-10-07, 10:43 AM	I thought it was The Radient Arsenal. Is that his fortress or something? (While the core beliefs article about him was fantastic, it included no details about where he resides and how he holds court. Frustrating!)
ripvanwormer 07-10-07, 11:58 AM	I thought it was The Radient Arsenal. Is that his fortress or something? (While the core beliefs article about him was fantastic, it included no details about where he resides and how he holds court. Frustrating!) The Radiant Arsenal is where the archons keep their greatest weapons - weapons forged from the spirits of powerful archons, weapons that can level mountains - on the fourth tier of Yetsirah, their seven-tiered ziggurat in Jovar. It doesn't belong to any single god, but to the race of archons as a whole. It's controlled by a castellan, the sword archon Phaleg, not by a deity. It's basically a really extensive warehouse filled with heavily guarded vaults, crypts, and cellars. See the 3e Manual of the Planes, page 136, and Planes of Law before that. Complete Divine makes it sound like everybody there worships Heironeous, but I'd consider that to be just core-bias (bias toward "core" gods at the expense of other deities that deserve an equal place in the cosmology). On Hallowed Ground placed Heironeous in Venya, and I don't think anything's contradicted that since. Phaleg isn't a proxy, so presumedly he isn't dedicated to any one deity. I imagine the archons that work there, if they aren't devoted solely to the force of Lawful Good itself, worship all lawful good gods of war equally. Heironeous just happens to be the only "core" LG war god, so he gets all the emphasis in 3.5 supplements.
Frogmantis 07-10-07, 01:54 PM	Hey, thanks guys.
Zousha_Omenohu 07-11-07, 04:40 PM	Complete Divine makes it sound like everybody there worships Heironeous, but I'd consider that to be just core-bias (bias toward "core" gods at the expense of other deities that deserve an equal place in the cosmology). Core-bias? Judging by the text I read in Complete Divine: Heironeous leads his crusades against evil from the Radient Arsenal, near the heavenly city of Yetsiraon on the sixth layer of the mountain. That seems less like a "core-bias issue" and more like a "complete error and therefore non-canon" issue from where I'm sitting. What I mean is, it's not the writers don't have a bias towards Heironeous. To me it seems like they got it wrong.
Franco Un-American 07-11-07, 04:52 PM	Wrong? Seems to me it's just a change. New editions are allowed to do that. No big deal.
ripvanwormer 07-11-07, 05:03 PM	The MotP somehow forgot to detail Heironeous' realm, and I suspect one of the Complete Divine designers thought he was being clever in "repurposing" one of the sites the MotP did mention. Warriors of Heaven fell prey to that, too, associating a lot of existing planar sites with inappropriate deities when they'd never been considered divine realms before, when it would have been just as simple to invent new realms for them rather than distorting old ones beyond recognition. I think in a campaign where Heironeous is the only or the most powerful LG war deity on the plane, it would make sense to put him in charge of the Radiant Arsenal, putting the greatest weapons of the archon race under his particular care. That's what I mean by "core bias" - it seems like some of the books do assume that the "core" deities are the only ones that exist (even with the "expanded core pantheon" in Complete Divine). Others are much more liberal with their assumptions, like the Fiendish Codices, allowing for gods of other pantheons (including real-world ones) to exist on the same planes.
Zousha_Omenohu 07-11-07, 05:20 PM	I was really annoyed when I couldn't find any info on Heironeous's realm in the MotP. He's my favorite deity by far. So what's canon and what's not? I'm never sure how defensive people around here are about canon. I always pictured canon as infallible, and violation of it as heresy. Maybe I'm just paranoid or something.
ripvanwormer 07-11-07, 05:43 PM	So what's canon and what's not? I like to define it as "something that has at some point been published in an official source." The sum total of all published works is the D&D canon. The canon often contradicts itself, but that's fine.