Main Deities, Tian Xia Deities, Racial and Cultural Pantheons, Outer Gods, Empyreal Lords, Fiendish Divinities, Great Old Ones, Other Gods
Empyreal Lords
The Celestial Paragons and Archangels of the setting. They may be Archons (Lawful Good), Agathions (Neutral Good and animal-themed), Azatas (Chaotic Good, often fey-themed), or Angels (any good alignment). open/close all folders
In General
Shared Tropes
- Celestial Paragons and Archangels: The Empyreal Lords are the highest-ranking and most powerful of the Good-aligned outsiders, having risen high enough to gain a spark of divinity themselves.
- Good Versus Good: Averted completely. The reason all celestial demigods are called Empyreal Lords is because they are all part of the same political faction, as Good also includes the ability to recognize the virtues of cooperation; they may argue, but azatas and archons are more than capable of dropping their personal agendas when it comes to the gain of the cosmos and mutual interests.
Angels
Sarenrae
The Dawnflower
Goddess and angel empyreal lord of healing, honesty, redemption, and the sun
Alignment: Neutral Good
See the page for core deities.
Arshea
Spirit of Abandon
Angel empyreal lord of freedom, physical beauty, and sexuality
Alignment: Neutral Good
- All-Loving Hero: Is probably the most compassionate of the Empyreal Lords detailed so far, and even tries to redeem evil creatures by fulfilling whatever desire torments them, as long as it isn't a desire for something evil to happen.
- Ambiguous Gender: Arshea looks very androgynous and the narrative goes out of it's way to avoid assigning a gender.
- Angelic Beauty: Resembles a beautiful, androgynous Winged Humanoid and is, in fact, an angel.
- Blithe Spirit: As part of their ethos of liberation from societal strictures.
- Ethical Slut: Not necessary promiscuous themselves, but a strong believer in sexual freedom.
- Everybody Wants the Hermaphrodite: They canonically "combine the most attractive traits of femininity and masculinity" and their portfolio includes beauty and sexuality.
- The Hedonist: A very heroic version, as they are all about freedom and happiness for all.
- Heel–Faith Turn: Combined with Sex–Face Turn, this is one of Arshea's many powers. They can see anyone's deepest desires, and if fulfilling a (non-evil) desire would turn them good, they will help them to fulfill it. This is often a religious and sexual experience.
- Muscles Are Meaningless: Arshea is only Medium-size, and rather lithe in their official art, but according to their statistics they have the same strength score as the average rune giant.
- Shapeshifting Seducer: While a power most gods have to some degree, it is explicit in Arshea's case — the spell shapechange is among their abilities. In second edition it's stated that Arshea also does a sort of platonic equivalent of this, appearing in the form of whichever mortal they address in order to show that person their own beauty.
Immonhiel
Balm-Bringer
Angel empyreal lord of herbs, medicine, and toads
Alignment: Chaotic Good
- Artificial Limbs: One of her arms is made of wood.
- Healer God: Immonhiel's servants travel the mortal world, passing on herbal remedies and advice on how best to tend potent marsh plants, and teaching combat medics and battlefield healers the best techniques to ensure their warriors live to fight another day. For those who cannot be healed, she provides ointments that take away the pain and grant peace until life's final moments
- The Medic: Immonhiel is a healer on the eternal battlefields of the planes, where she nurses injured angels back to health and soothes the wounds of empyreal lords who clashed with the armies of evil.
Lymnieris
The Auroral Tower
Angel empyreal lord of prostitution, rites of passage, and virginity
Alignment: Lawful Good
- Amazing Technicolor Population: He's emerald green.
- Hooker with a Heart of Gold: Many of his worshippers. His portfolio specifically covers prostitutes who are in the industry for love of the job, ones forced into the profession from money issues or more unsavoury methods pray to him for salvation from their predicament.
Pulura
The Shimmering Maiden
Angel empyreal lord of constellations, homesickness, and northern lights
Alignment: Chaotic Good
- Angelic Beauty: Pulura appears as a lissome Tian woman with an achingly beautiful face and the poise of a trained dancer.
- Light Is Good: An angel who watches over light.
Ragathiel
General of Vengeance
Angel empyreal lord of chivalry, duty, and vengeance
Alignment: Lawful Good
- Antagonistic Offspring: Ragathiel's nemesis is his own father, the archdevil Dispater.
- Arch-Enemy: Of his father, Dispater.
- Ascended Demon: He's half-devil on his father's side.
- Daddy Issues: He's got serious problems with his archdevil father.
- Divine–Infernal Family: He's the estranged son of Dispater, the Iron Lord of Dis and one of the nine archdevils. Ragathiel takes a very direct role in battling the forces of Hell, in large part to prove to both himself and the rest of Heaven that he has no link to his father's evil. Dispater, for his part, considers this to be essentially a fit of teenage rebelliousness and expects that Ragathiel will return to him in time.
- Evil Counterpart: He has one in the Whore Queen Eiseth: both focus on vengeance and warfare in their portfolios, but while Ragathiel is an ascended half-devil/half-elemental, Eiseth is a fallen Empyreal Lord of righteous wrath. A link between the two is implied in source materials but left ambiguous.
- Good Is Not Nice: He treads the line of what
Lawful Good entails, and it's been stated that this is intentional. The most extreme manifestation of this is probably the his celestial obedience, which requires the person to personally kill an evildoer every day, which seems more like something you'd associate with The Punisher than an angel. That being said, the boon one receives from this ability is only really useful while one is expecting to fight more evil creatures (a war, for example). This makes it less of a daily thing, and more something his followers do when they're going to fight evil anyway. - Good Wings, Evil Wings: Five wings made out of flame, reflecting both his status as an angel of righteous vengeance and his being born to a demigoddess of elemental fire. He used to have six, but one was torn off by his father when he deserted Hell for Heaven.
- Knight in Shining Armor: A bit angrier than typical for the trope, but his heart's in the right place.
- Nonhuman Humanoid Hybrid: Ragathiel is the son of the archdevil Dispater and Feronia, a goddess of fire.
- The Paladin: Very much in the "detect evil, smite evil, repeat" variant of the archetype.
- The Power of Trust: The other empyreal lords decided to allow Ragathiel into their ranks when Arqueros pledged to watch over him if he was allowed to ascend.
- Revenge: A big part of his portfolio.
- Unstoppable Rage: He has a strong violent streak due to his diabolic heritage, although he manages to channel it constructively.
Seramaydiel
Lady of Inspired Notes
Angel empyreal lord of communication, inspiration, and music
Alignment: Neutral Good
- Magic Music: Seramaydiel uses her heavenly double chromatic harp to lull evildoers into a false sense of security before killing them.
- Omniglot: Seramaydiel speaks all languages and enjoys fostering communication between disparate parties.
Soralyon
Tolc
Snow-Strider
Angel empyreal lord of cold, frozen wilds, and survival
Alignment: Chaotic Good
- Angel Unaware: Tolc's followers claim to see him in their temple-longhouses with some frequency. Many believe he assumes the guise of a wanderer in need of respite and leaves flecks of gold in the bedding of those who provide him hospitality.
- Archenemy: Aims to be Kostchie's, though the demon lord is more focused on Baba Yaga.
Vildeis
The Cardinal Martyr
Angel empyreal lord of devotion, sacrifice, and scars
Alignment: Lawful Good
- The Determinator: She's so incapable of dealing with the mere concept of evil that she literally cannot rest until all evil has been purged from creation, to the extent that she doesn't even have a fixed abode like other deities do.
- Eye Scream: Vildeis blinded herself in order to make herself incapable of seeing evil and corruption.
- Good Is Not Nice: She's righteous and good, nominally, but utterly uncompromising in the face of evil and far more focused on constant warfare against evil than any other deity.
- Good Scars, Evil Scars: And how. Vildeis appears as a scar-covered bald, blindfolded woman with enormous blood-red wings, whose body is wrapped in bloodstained bandages.
- Good Wings, Evil Wings: Her wings are the usual angelic kind, but stained completely red with blood.
- Principles Zealot: Quite possibly one of the most demanding deities of Golarion, both towards herself and her followers. Her followers are required to dedicate themselves so thoroughly to serving good that they give up their homes and families, and receive no material rewards for their service. All that matters is the eradication of evil.
- Self-Harm: She put out her own eyes because the sight of evil offended her so. Some of her followers bear ritual scars as marks of their devotion, and her obedience requires its performers to ritually scar themselves and rub ash into the wound.
Archons
Andoletta
Grandmother Crow
Archon empyreal lord of consolation, respect, and security
Alignment: Lawful Good
- Angel Unaware: It's not uncommon for people wandering in rural areas around sunset to come across an old woman traveling by herself, dressed in black rags and followed by a flock of crows. This woman is Andoletta in mortal guise, and if greeted politely and offered a meal, she will reward this generosity with valuable advice.
- Animal Motif: Crows. Besides being know as Grandmother Crow, she's frequently followed by flocks of corvids while wandering the mortal world when she doesn't simply take the form of a crow herself, and even in human guise she has a pair of crowlike wings.
- Apron Matron: She has a bit of a "stern but loving matriarch" theme, and her preferred guise is one that could easily be mistaken for a kind but stern village grandmother.
- Cape Wings: What most people mistake for a black feathered cape is in fact her wings, which she keeps furled against her back most of the time.
- Elderly Immortal: While she's as ageless as any other empyreal lord, she eschews the youthful or awe-inspiring forms most other lords favor to appear as a wizened and elderly, but still healthy and vigorous, human woman.
- Friend to All Children: Andoletta has a soft spot for children, as she believes that aiding and protecting the innocent and helpless is indispensable if Heaven's righteous crusades are to mean anything, and often appears to comfort scared or orphaned children.
- Good Is Not Soft: She believes in redemption, but she doesn't take any crap.
Arqueros
The Golden Bulwark
Archon empyreal lord of bodyguards, protection, and watchfulness
Alignment: Lawful Good
- Bling of War: Sheathed in golden armour and armed with a golden spear.
- Protective Tropes: Worshipped by a wide range of protectors and guardians.
- The Power of Trust: The other empyreal lords decided to allow Ragathiel into their ranks when Arqueros pledged to watch over him if he was allowed to ascend.
- Stone Wall: The ultimate defensive fighter.
- Unstoppable Force Meets Immovable Object: Was the immovable object to Baphomet's unstoppable charge.
Damerrich
The Weighted Swing
Archon empyreal lord of executions, judiciousness, and responsibility
Alignment: Lawful Good
- Berserk Button: Corrupt judges and careless executioners, who rouse his fury like little else.
- Dark Is Not Evil: A hulking figure in black armour carrying an axe. He's one of the good guys.
- The Dead Have Names: His obedience requires you to meditate on the names and faces of all those you have killed, evaluating your own actions in the process.
- Good Is Not Soft: He believes that evil must be punished, though never unfairly or without due consideration.
- Off with His Head!: He represents all the just executions that have ever been carried out, and therefore has beheading as a big part of his portfolio.
Falayna
Warrior's Ring
Archon empyreal lord of femininity, martial training, and rings
Alignment: Lawful Good
- Amazonian Beauty: She is generally described as a muscular woman of exceptional beauty.
- Arch-Enemy: Moloch, who killed her beloved.
- Kicking Ass in All Her Finery: Her silk robes are a fetching compliment to the gleaming silver armor she wears beneath, and her fingers are decorated with jeweled rings of every color which also make her punches hit harder.
- Lady of War: Represents the intersection of femininity and war.
- Named Weapon: Betrothal, her blessed longsword.
- Take Up My Sword: Done quite literally. When her unnamed beloved fell in battle, Falayna marched into Hell and took back their sword, adding martial discipline to her domain.
Ghenshau
Breezes-Still-and-Ripples-Cease
Archon empyreal lord of ignorance, placidity, and simplicity
Alignment: Lawful Good
- Mellow Fellow: Celestial exemplar of Chill Dudes.
- Nice Guy: He's very personable and laid-back.
- The Perfectionist: In his backstory. He developed his current mellow attitude after realizing perfection was impossible.
- The Slacker: A bit. More in a "sit back and take time to appreciate the beauties of life" sense than simple laziness.
Olheon
The Just Arbiter
Archon empyreal lord of deservedness, nobility, and rulership
Alignment: Lawful Good
- Berserk Button: Incompetent rulers, tyrants and anyone who would abuse their power and station or cause those under their protection to suffer.
- Chrome Champion: She has golden skin.
- Statuesque Stunner: She's tall even for an empyreal lord — her true form is sixteen feet tall.
Tanagaar
The Aurulent Eye
Archon empyreal lord of night, owls, and watchfulness
Alignment: Lawful Good
- Ominous Owl: Tanagaar's true form is that of a platinum-gray and black owl roughly the size of an elephant. Even in a humanoid form, he retains his glowing golden owl eyes.
Winlas
The Elder of Divinity
Archon empyreal lord of ceremonies, religiousness, and service
Alignment: Lawful Good
- Ritualsand Ceremonies: Winlas is also called the Master of Rituals and is a very big proponent of ceremonies and ritualistic worship. He even has a book that contains all of the ceremonies and rituals of every religion.
Zohls
Verity
Archon empyreal lord of determination, investigation, and truth
Alignment: Lawful Good
- Good Wings, Evil Wings: Somewhat unusually, she has pure white bat wings.
- Great Detective: Zohls revels in unwinding mysteries—the more complicated the better—as well as shedding light upon previously obscured events. Zohls sees existence as a series of interlocking puzzles and delights in discovering patterns.
- Intelligence Equals Isolation: She's unusually smart even for an immortal demigod, and finds it hard to find beings who can keep up with her intellectually.
- The Spock: Zohls is guided by logic more than instinct, and has trouble interacting with less perceptive beings, even fellow archons.
Agathions
Bharnarol
The Tempered Inventor
Agathion empyreal lord of creativity, invention, and persistence
Alignment: Neutral Good
- Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: Intervenes when an inventor is creating something dangerous.
- Non-Human Head: He has the head of an elephant.
Eritrice
Heart-Speaker
Agathion empyreal lord of debate, opinions, and truth
Alignment: Neutral Good
- Cat Folk: She has the head of a lioness.
Halcamora
Lady of Ripe Bounty
Agathion empyreal lord of gardens, orchards, and wine
Alignment: Neutral Good
- Astonishingly Appropriate Appearance: She's the patron of gardens, and she has ladybug wings.
- Little Bit Beastly L Halcamora appears as a young woman with ladybug wings and two slender black antennae.
Irez
Lady of Inscribed Wonder
Agathion empyreal lord of cards, scribes, and spells
Alignment: Neutral Good
- Cards of Power: Her magic comes through cards.
- Creepy Good: She's quite possibly the most visibly monstrous of the empyreal lords, being a green-skinned humanoid with a serpentine lower body and massive, tattered and downright demonic wings with hands sprouting midway down their lengths, but is just as benevolent as any other agathion lord.
- Geometric Magic: She knows the ways of rune magic.
- Snake People: Her lower body is a serpentine trunk, and her upper body is green and scaly as well.
Jaidz
Fearless Claw
Agathion empyreal lord of cowards, the untested, and youths
Alignment: Neutral Good
- Stealth Pun: He helps fearful people become brave, and he takes the forms of large felines.
- You Are Better Than You Think You Are: He specializes in helping fearful people find their inner courage.
Korada
The Open Hand of Harmony
Agathion empyreal lord of foresight, forgiveness, and peace
Alignment: Neutral Good
While Korada is perhaps the most accomplished martial artist in the Upper Planes, he is best known for his infinite mercy and forgiveness. A consummate pacifist, he believes that all creatures are capable of betterment and redemption and often acts as the Upper Planes' ambassador to their foes; many powerful fiends have, at least temporarily, set aside their planes of conquest and ruin after Korada, alone, visited their courts to suggest that they follow a different path. His symbol is either a pair of figures kneeling before a lotus or a golden monkey with three tails, and his sacred animal is the monkey. His realm is the Dream Lotus, a violet palace whose walls drip with golden, soothing nectar.
- All-Loving Hero: Korada is endlessly empathic and forgiving, and believes that all creatures, even the vilest villains and fiends, can be convinced to see the light and accept goodness into their hearts.
- Anti-Magic: Korada can dispel any permanent magic effect, such as those placed on living beings or freestanding magical phenomena such as conjured walls of flame, with a physical blow.
- Bare-Fisted Monk: When he must fight, Korada specializes in unarmed combat. He's quite proficient at this, fighting as a 20th level monk and being able to use any combat style in existence.
- Little Bit Beastly: He has fur and three monkey tails.
- Lotus Position: His official art depicts him meditating cross-legged on top of a giant lotus bloom.
- Martial Pacifist: He's a skilled martial artist, but he doesn't pick fights or use lethal force.
- Mystical Lotus: He makes frequent use of lotus imagery. His official art depicts him meditating atop a lotus blossom, his sacred symbol consists of two figures kneeling before a lotus, and his realm is called the Dream Lotus.
Rowdrosh
The Divine Herdsman
Agathion empyreal lord of herd animals, husbandry, and shepherds
Alignment: Neutral Good
- Kindly Vet: Some of his agents.
- Non-Human Head: In his natural form, he's a man with a ram's head.
Shei
The Ibis Matron
Agathion empyreal lord of age, life, and self-actualization
Alignment: Neutral Good
- Badass Bookworm: She's more wise than scholarly, but she fits.
- Non-Human Head: In her true form she has the head of an ibis.
Ylimancha
Harborwing
Agathion empyreal lord of coastal waters, fisherfolk, and flying creatures
Alignment: Neutral Good
- Arch-Enemy: Ylimancha and Pazuzu have fought for dominion over the souls of flying creatures since at the dawn of time, when these beings first sprang into existence.
Azatas
Ashava
True Spark
Azata empyreal lord of dancers, lonely spirits, and moonlight
Alignment: Chaotic Good
A being of dance, pale light and the beauty of nighttime wildernesses, Ashava believes that no creature should ever be lost and seeks to help those who stray find their path.
- Dark Is Not Evil: She's associated with the night and ghosts, but is benevolent towards mortals.
- Elemental Shapeshifting: She can turn into moonlight and back at will.
- Fusion Dance: She came into being when the floating marshlights of the wilds of Elysium came together into one creature.
- Light Is Good: As the deity of moonlight, she manages to combine this with Dark Is Not Evil.
- Our Werebeasts Are Different: She counts good lycanthropes as followers.
- Psychopomp: She rescues wandering spirits and escorts them to the afterlife.
- Will-o'-the-Wisp: She's a benevolent version of this. Her true form is a hazy sphere of silvery moonlight, and she entices others to follow her so as to lead them home (if they're living) or to the afterlife (if they're dead). Conversely, she despises true will-o’-wisps due to them deliberately leading people astray and encouraging fear of the wilderness and the night.
Black Butterfly
The Silence Between
Azata empyreal lord of distance, silence, and space
Alignment: Chaotic Good
- Celestial Body: Her body is pitch-black and dotted with glowing stars and nebulae, and her wings resemble sheets of the night sky shaped like butterfly wings.
- Dark Is Not Evil: A being of night who represents emptiness, but still an absolutely good being.
- God of Darkness: Black Butterfly is associated with darkness, distance, and space. She appears as a dark humanoid silhouette gleaming with images of stars and nebulae, and her personal realm is a quiet void whose physical surfaces are pockets of solid shadows.
- Winged Humanoid: Giant black butterfly wings with a design of all the stars in space.
Cernunnos
The Stag Lord, the Horned Lord
Azata empyreal lord of fertilities, seasons, and wild animals
Alignment: Chaotic Good
A stag-horned empyreal lord who sees it as his duty to hunt evil beings who would defile nature and mortal communities. Cernunnos is the son of the gods Erastil and Jaidi, and the brother of the agathion lord Halcamora. His symbol is the head of a horned animal with torcs or rings hanging from its horns, and his sacred animal is the stag. His realm is Briarbough, a palace made of interwoven trees and foliage.
- Bottomless Magazines: He spontaneously creates fresh arrows when firing a bow.
- Cernunnos: Pathfinder's take on modern depictions of the ancient deity, depicted as a humanoid with antlers rising from his brows and associated with hunting, the wilderness, and Forest Rangers.
- Forest Ranger: Cernunnos casts himself as an embodiment and protector of the wild places of the worlds who spends most of his time wandering in the wilderness, hunting down evil beings, and prefers to fight his enemies using stealth and range after having drawn them into terrain of his choosing. His worshippers tend to be rangers, druids and other protectors of nature.
- Horned Humanoid: He resembles a human with a pair of antlers rising from his brows.
- Master Archer: Cernunnos is an extremely talented archer, having practiced his craft for longer than most mortal civilizations have existed. His Perfect Archer special ability allows him to use his bow in melee without provoking opportunities for being counterattacked, and he can shoot arrows 500 feet farther than would otherwise be possible with whatever bow he's using.
Chadali
The Serendipitous Path
Azata empyreal lord of fate, safety, and serendipity
Alignment: Chaotic Good
- The Chessmaster: For all her talk of fate, she does like to nudge events in the proper direction, creating more fortuitous results for all.
Chucaro
Maiden of Haze and Whimsy
Azata empyreal lord of dreams, hallucination, and mists
Alignment: Chaotic Good
- Higher Understanding Through Drugs: Zig-zagged. Some of her followers practice this (her obedience involves meditation while taking shrooms), but she does not condone hallucinogen abuse that damages one's health.
- The Mentally Disturbed: She tries to aid those who suffer from delusions.
Jalaijatali
Rillsong
Azata empyreal lord of natural music, rapids, and waterfalls
Alignment: Chaotic Good
- Lizard Folk: Watches over good lizardfolk.
- Making a Splash: Part of the domain.
Lalaci
Picoperi
Merrygleam
Azata empyreal lord of jokes, pranks, and surprises
Alignment: Chaotic Good
- Combat Pragmatist: In battle, Picoperi prefers ambushes and traps over forward charges.
- For Happiness
- The Prankster: The eternal prankster, Picoperi finds delight in the simplest of jokes and finds existence a never-ending series of surprises.
Sinashakti
Immaculate Joy
Azata empyreal lord of journeys, joy, and messengers
Alignment: Chaotic Good
- Amazing Technicolor Population: He's blue.
Valani
Fireshaker
Azata empyreal lord of change, growth, and primal forces
Alignment: Chaotic Good
- Emotional Bruiser: His mirth and his rage are both mighty.
