Star Archon

Star archons are the strategists of the Heavens.  They also pull a phoenix act when slain, exploding in a holy supernova before reincarnating as a shield archon.  Which may explain their gift for tactics—it becomes much easier to make the hard choices when the ultimate sacrifice isn’t so ultimate after all.  Of course, given the sheer artillery at their disposal (sun burst, prismatic ray, polar ray, implosion, fire storm, meteor swarm, destruction—the list goes on), it’s rare they have to make those choices in the first place.

A party’s ghaele ally reveals disturbing intelligence that a star archon general is collaborating with legion of devils.  Is this an alliance of convenience against a demonic threat?  Payment for an ancient debt?  Part of some far-reaching plot whose subtlety will only be revealed in time?  The hot-tempered azata wants answers, and wants the party to retrieve the star archon for an interview…by force if necessary.

Adventures hoping to petition a Power directly must first get past her gatekeepers, the final one of which is a star archon.  The archon dislikes the role of majordomo, and while her charge is to pose them challenges of logic and strategy, she will do her utmost to provoke them into a physical confrontation, allowing her to unleash her many destructive spells without guilt.

Daverel is a shield archon with a dark secret.  Once a star archon, he is lauded from the Caverns of Repose to the Six Sacred Jubilances for sacrificing himself at the Umbral Blot.  But while it took a mob of invidiaks to lay him low—all of whom died in his explosive rebirth—at least some of the envy inherent in the shadow demons’ frigid bites must have struck home.  Since his reincarnation, Davarel has been secretly obsessed with returning to his former glorious state.  He is convinced that he has found a ritual that will speed the process…but the source is a book so apocryphal (and the components so morally dubious) that the rite has been banned for millennia.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 2 32

Seems like a lot of you dig spriggans.  Speaking of which, cheers to uwtartarus for weighing in on a particularly memorable spriggan in his game.