Three ideas I put forward in the discord earlier today. Not gonna fluff any of them super dramatically, but I think we need something to address the widespread qualitative advantage the demonic infantry has over us, and we also need to step up our game as far as intrigue to prevent the demons from gaining too much more headway in places like the Scholarly Towers. Anyway...
Heavenly Martial Arts/Angelic Fist/Way of the Purifying Hand/etc
Inspired by the ability of the Monks of Minos to channel pure Good into their blows, Heliel has devised a system of martial arts to exploit this ability that will be useable by people who actually want to kill evil things. The techniques and principles in this martial art are manyfold, but boil down to the following:
- The acolytes learning the art must cultivate Good within themselves by a variety of means - keeping one's mind aligned with heavenly attributes, acting in ways that create Good, meditation and concentration on the Good within themselves, and other means. The more successful the practitioner is at this stage, the more potent their strikes will become. At higher stages of cultivation, an experienced practitioner should even be able to use Good to enhance their body to supernatural extremes.
- Combat training. One has to know how to fight in order to fight, after all, and channeling elemental Good through one's limbs most effectively requires techniques that may sometimes seem flashy or unorthodox.
- Learning to channel the cultivated Good through their bodies, both to enhance the damage of their strikes against Evil opponents, but also to enhance their bodies to be stronger, faster, tougher, and more resistant to evil magics at a rate proportional to the amount of Good they are able to cultivate.
The end result is a way of combat that will allow the majority of our soldiers to deal more damage in combat and generally perform better - even Acolytes could derive some benefit due to the accumulation of Good within themselves - as well as in the future allowing the creation of devastating clades of monks who have cultivated their inner Good to extreme levels.
Oaths of the Righteous
The advent of the Uruk has forced Heliel's hand - widespread magical augmentation of her forces is now a strong need to counter the magical bombardments of the enemy. To that end, the Angel sang a note of purest Good for eight days and nights, and extracted from it the Oaths. These hallowed promises are a binding geas - to swear one is to cut the freedom of choice away from yourself, for the Oath will prevent you from taking actions against its purview. In recompense, it grants those who swear it great power. In general, there are two variants of each Oath - a lesser version that does not grant as much power, but allows more latitude of action, and a more rigid Greater Oath, which stringently binds its adherents to its tenets in exchange for great strength.
Example Oaths (however many we have access to being a matter of balance):
The Oath of War is the promise of the vigilant soldier who may never rest easy while Evil is still abroad in the land. Those who swear this Oath are bound to either fight Evil or train and prepare to fight Evil with every waking moment. They must slay any Evil creature they see the moment they see it, and are reluctant to retreat save for if they have slain a sufficient number of evildoers. In exchange, the Oath grants increased strength, speed, toughness, and combat capability in the area of their specialty - an archer would become an excellent shot, a swordsman would become vastly more skilled, etc.
The Oath of the Sage compels its adherents to save and preserve knowledge of all kinds - from mundane information to magical secrets, all must be kept from the touch of evil's corruption. They cannot abide untruths or falsehoods, and are urged by the Oath to disprove or remove them from existence. For this service, the Oath grants its followers reams of magical knowledge they would not otherwise possess, and the ability to use these secrets in battle.
The Oath of Compassion forbids its adherents from harming any living thing, for all life is precious for its ability to create Good and must be preserved from Evil. In accordance with that principle, they are compelled to heal any who are injured in their presence, save for those who have sworn themselves to the service of Evil, as that would go against the principles of the Oath. In exchange, those who swear this Oath are granted powers to prevent harm and to heal it - magical shields, increased power of Heliel's Love, etc.
Other Oaths could easily be written in - the idea is that they're something a large portion of our forces will be able to apply to themselves, to greater or lesser degrees depending on how specialized they need to be. Someone who's not gonna do anything but fight can swear the Greater Oath of War and become a badass on the battlefield, but unable to do anything resembling a civilian life.
Ran out of time, but my third idea was an intrigue hero who was basically Angelic Batman. I'll be able to do a post on them probably tomorrow. For now, these two will undoubtedly require some tweaks.