Dark Fantasy X Race Deep Dive: Seraphim

There's been a long and storied history of mythology about angelic beings mating with humans, giving rise to hybrids. Frankly, the stories of most of the Greek heroes aren't far removed from this paradigm either; Theseus is a semideus son of Poseidon, Herakles of Zeus, Perseus of Zeus, etc. Gilgamesh is also supposed to be a demigod, as is the Irish hero Cú Chulainn (or Cuhullin as he's sometimes known in older English texts) who was a son of Lugh.

In the famous yet disappointing RPG originally written and developed in the northern Midwest, but now under the ownership of terrible yet ridiculous people from Seattle, angel-blooded mortals are relatively common. Known as aasimars, they have appeared in many scenarios and settings as NPCs and are available as a player character race in many editions, including spin-off games like Pathfinder. Curiously, the idea of an unwed knocking up of a human by a mortal (or vice-versa, I suppose) is—in typical Seattle fashion—seen as a good thing, as is the actual marriage of a mortal and an immortal. I mean, even the Greeks didn't think Zeus' philandering was an admirable trait. I've never thought this made any sense; if angels are bangin' mortals, that is pretty much the default condition for being a fallen angel, and therefore hardly a creature of good.

Hebrew mythology, which has infected some weird apocryphal Christian beliefs, takes a similar tack, and refers to the Sons of Men, or The Watchers, in some cases, as angels who fell for some human girls and spawned a race of giants... although conveniently forgotten is that giant meaning "an extremely physically large person" is only one meaning of the word, and not necessarily the most likely or common one from the past, or necessarily the best interpretation of how the original word which was translated into English as giant should have been translated. Jotunn is also frequently translated as giant, and yet we see that many of them were normal sized peers of the Aesir, not gigantic monstrous creatures; although sometimes they were indeed monstrous, gigantic, fanged, many-headed, etc. But also, Odin himself is half jotunn, Loki is usually considered a jotunn, or at least half jotunn, depending on the source, Mimir, the advice-head of Odin is a normal-sized jotunn, etc. The same verse that calls the sons of children of the "Sons of God and the daughters of men" giants, refers to their great renown, which is almost certainly a better indicator of their being giant. I've even heard a description of the term meaning that they were like criminal warlords, who ruled as giants on the earth. I don't know that that's what was meant, but it sounds reasonable to me and I like it.

My own church takes a more conservative position than that of fallen angels, which is echoed by many other sects of Christianity to greater or lesser degree; that the Sons of God were actually the descendants of Seth who had made covenants with God and received his priesthood, thus becoming his sons. Their abandonment of their covenants to chase after those who were not of their faith (often considered to be mostly the offspring of Cain—but I don't believe that Adam and Eve's named children in Genesis were truly their only children; merely the ones that were mentioned because they were important enough to be mentioned for whatever reason) is their defining feature. In doing so, their progeny became the Nephilim, which is probably more accurately translated as "the fallen ones" than anything like giants. But they weren't fallen angels, they were fallen people who had the truth of the Gospel and authority passed down to them from God through Adam himself and his righteous descendants. 

But still; while I consider the mortal offspring of fallen angels to be mythological rather than theological, fantasy borrows a ton of cool ideas from mythology. And it fits perfectly with my conception of demihumans. For a long time, I had nephilim as a playable character race, as a kind of darker mirror to D&D's rather facile and shallow concept of aasimar... but I didn't really love the name. I also envisioned them maybe as more mortal rather than really very angelic; like the highmen of Age of Wonders fame, or even the Numenoreans of the Lord of the Rings before they became corrupted and "degraded" to being "just regular men" status. I struggled with the idea of a society for them, but ultimately decided that they were too rare to have their own society; they showed up—sometimes generations after any such fallen angel union—among normal people and normal societies, and their nature wasn't necessarily recognized right away; they might just be considered extremely handsome children, although as their platinum blond hair and light gray eyes turned to pure silver chrome as they entered adolescence, the cat was usually out of the bag. 

I also changed the name to seraph (plural seraphs or seraphim) which, I know, is a type of angel in Hebrew angelology, because I think it's a better name than nephilim, which doesn't even have a real singular form. As an editorial comment (I'm both writer and editor in this case, of course) I'm actually not all that fond of the concept anymore, although I'm loth to remove it. That said, I'm in some ways equally not all that fond of any of the PC demihuman races, although I see a place for them. I would probably run a Dark Fantasy X game with the rule that you can only play human characters until your group at least meets another non-human or demihuman PC, at which point, you "unlock" access to that race in your game. Of course, because you already have a character, you're not likely to kill him off or bench him just to run off and play an orc or Hyperborean, or whatever, keeping the strong humano-centric theme of the game, while technically allowing deviations from it in a small way. I think the craziness of 3e-5e is in large part driven by the designers' fascination with the bizarre, which translates to a fascination among the player base because the designers have written their weirdo races with so much passion. Of course, 5e has gone so far off the reservation in that regard that animal-people furries are common, and the game feels more like a strange cosmic and deranged cartoon version of The Avengers or the Justice League in fantasy drag rather than an actual fantasy setting in any kind of traditional sense. And that's fine if that's what it wants to be, but let's acknowledge that that isn't what is used to be, and there's certainly a big place within the market for more traditional fantasy that's grounded in our shared Western civilization European Medievalist culture. 

Given that, seraphs may not be very likely to appear in many of my games, and I don't have an iconic character who's a seraph. I also have a pretty vague curse on them (there's a reason my setting used to be called Dark•Heritage, and all of the demi-human races have their dark side.) Given the fallen angel status of their angelic forebear, seraphs all struggle with very base emotions and urges, and many—if not most—of them are profoundly flawed individuals. This, of course, makes them even more difficult as player characters, but here's a list of flaws I found long ago that could serve as a point of inspiration on where to point our character. Many seraphs who are unable to conquer their fallen impulse are truly psychopathic, sociopathic, narcissistic, perverted, sadistic or otherwise truly disturbing individuals. (SJWs and other leftist hangers-on, if you will. The Kyle Brink of Dark Fantasy X.)

That said, seraphs do exist in the Dark Fantasy X setting, and they are playable, depending on the GM. (Let's be honest; I'm the only one who would ever GM this, and I'd be unlikely to have a seraph in any game of mine, unless some player down the line after the game was already running really got a hankering to play one.) They don't have a specific society, because they are born into human society—but they are always outsiders who don't quite fit in to the societies in which they live. Sometimes they are predators and parasites, using their Dark Triad traits to manipulate those around them, sometimes they are merely loners and outsiders, or they are life of the party, popular, but in a shallow sense that excludes much in the way of deep personal connections with the people around them.

Of course, everyone is fallen; that's a key point of Christian doctrine. For the seraphim, however, their struggle with their fallen nature should be a more crucial part of their character arc and one of the main themes for using the race at all.

Anyway, maybe this isn't the deepest of race deep dives, but that's likely because the seraphs aren't ever going to be a deep part of the setting anyway. Here, as is my wont, is my Hero Forge collection of seraphs—smaller than for some of the other races that I have a clearer idea of what to do with. Some of them advertise their fallen nature fairly well, but many of them just look like normal people with silver hair and eyes.

This seraph adventurer is more likely to represent a player character than most here.

This one, on the other hand, probably represents a notorious highwayman or outlaw

Another seraph who gives away little of his character other than his lineage

This guy was modeled (loosely) on a piece of art I saw somewhere, including the metal hand. I thought he looked more like a seraph than anything else

A seraph assassin

This seraph more closely resembles the semi-angelic Roman look of the highmen from Age of Wonders; probably because the Roman-like lorica segmentata gives off a vaguely angelic and classical vibe

Another seraph bad guy of some kind or another.

A seraph good guy for a change; one who works hard to conquer his fallen nature and works as a colleague alongside guys like the Clevengers in the Ranger Corps

As normal, let's finish off with the text from the game itself.

Seraphim: The seraphim, or seraphs, claim that their exotic ancestry is angelic, and they do look the part, with beautiful, well-proportioned bodies, pale skin, silver-white hair, chrome eyes and clear voices. However, if angels left progeny amongst mortals, then they must, by definition, be fallen angels… A seraph gains a +1 to MND and a +1 to Knowledge and Communication. They are rare enough that they don’t have any specific homelands or communities, but live among others.

These last few images have nothing whatsoever to do with the seraphs. But I like them, and want to include them. I'm working on how exactly to incorporate them into Dark Fantasy X somehow.

The King in Yellow. He was actually a figure of some consequence in Dark•Heritage, so maybe it's appropriate to port him over.

An ancient iron golem or other animated statue of some kind, covered in rust and vines. I actually only have flesh golem stats in the monster list. I always wanted to include stone and iron, but then again, maybe there's no point in having slightly different stats for them anyway when one set works just fine

Based on an illustration I found once long ago for a gnophkeh, one of the Lovecraftian races who were supposedly responsible for chasing the people of Zobna away from their homeland to Lomar. I've always said that the thurse stats could represent everything from ogres and bugbears to sasquatches, yeti and gnophkeh, so here's yet another interpretation of a thurse, I suppose.

Here's the art that I loosely based it on: