Angel

History

Angels once held justice in the heavens between the bickering gods and their servants. They were created in the twilight years of the Divine Imperium from the cold, cosmic force of Law, apart from their adversaries, only understood as Chaos. They are noble, submissive creatures of vapor, of stardust, with a skin of flame, and each is beholden to the Divine Law. Now after a great civil war in heaven, their order of holy knights was broken and they lost their way, falling to the world below. Many have given into baser mortal impulse becoming tyrants or mercenaries, but some still obey the holy code as set by Aurum , the Golden Lord, God of All.

Today

As Aurum has since become silent after the Great Undoing, the angels are without a divine master, without a keeper of their Seraphic Compact. This however does not mean they still do not offer him devout worship. The chiefest among them, the Prime Angel, 2 Helios "The Tempest Unfettered by Chains of Infinity" has disappeared. Some say it was because he had left the Compact, the divine agreement and union that binds celestial creatures to their master god, in order to save them all. Upon searching for millenia after millennia, he found an apprentice and guided him to an entity beneath Galeanna as his nature was not to give power, but to serve.
Helios would be the first to break the contract, but not the last.

Fall

During the Blight Wars and before the Great Undoing, the rest of the angels, upon seeing the warring ascora beneath them, were conflicted. A single voice of one of the thousand prime angels held enough power to boil oceans, and for years they feuded, talking over one another. As time passed, the brutality of the first wars only intensified, and the works of the angels grew ever more bloodstained and ruined. A battle was fought in the heavens above, a battle of terrible force that destroyed nebulae and cracked the night sky. Those that lost were banished to live amongst the mortals on the blasted planet below, though their divine edicts outlined a strict law to avoid direct contact with mortals. So for a time they did what they did best. They recovered and they built. The prime angels, their connection to the stars cut, slowly turned to rock, their forms now colossal statues that litter the arid landscape of Galeanna.
The angels built around the land that looked a garden for their titanic dead. It became known as Andora , which means Graveyard of Angels. Proud in their constructed forms of hardened ash and thinking the worst had passed, the angels suffered again when Helios abandoned their ranks, the only living prime angel left.

Legacy

Outraged, the exiled angels abolished their old edicts, broke their chains of contract that forbade mingling with men, and elves, with tieflings and orcs, and forsook their laws that prevented them from enjoying earthly pleasures. They reorganized themselves into three earthly orders (detailed below) and enjoyed the rewards and tribulations of living beneath the heavens.
Eventually a large group of human travelers that came upon the graveyard, and amused by these mortal creatures they were once forbidden from interacting, taught them their ways and enlightened them with uplifting scripture. To them Aurum was a master, and powerful though he was, was not higher than a beggar who knew true enlightenment.
In translation of their vast and confusing language, the people of Andora built a religion and culture inspired by the angels. Just as the divines did, so would the Andorans venerate the sword arts, the spiritual chakras, and the insights (the 72 reincarnations of them, to be more precise). The gods were said to possess all of these insights, and though this granted them much power, this also made them quite dramatic and prone to creating mystical and troublesome prophecies.
The angels became the self-proclaimed protectors of the Andoran people, once creatures of pure law now rendered masterless, but beholden to their newly created orders that governed each other. Scholars from other lands still refute they exist, but just because they are few and many of the ones today are crazy, does not mean they are not divine.

Orders

Angels are separated into three "orders." There are the Thorn Knights, mercenaries and bandits that have abandoned the Compact either through their fascination with mortals, hatred of the Compact, or any other reason. The Thorn Knights care little for laws other than the One Law, yet must uphold them squarely, which comes in to conflict with their often new occupations as mercenary kings or bandit lords.
The second "order" is the order of the Adjutant Knights. These angels faithful either to a holy cause or still to Aurum Himself, act in accordance to holy law and act always on the side of justice. Most of the time. Their order is waning, and after they have been stripped of their dragon forging tools, are without much purpose. Though they adhere to the old laws and seek to advise and offer counsel to benevolent figures, the other angels see them as foolish, vainglorious, and misguided.
The third "order" of angels is the Knights Mendicant. These angels have forsaken the holy laws and are beholden to no lord. They do not associate with the other orders of the angels as to do so would be foolish. They are not the creatures they once were and instead have accepted that Galea will be their home until they die. They each follow their own path, and many seek simply to pursue understanding or enlightenment. They do not often associate with mortals and their conquests, preferring to stay at the borders of civilization or in the wilds entirely. A legend speaks of the Knights Mendicant, of which many myths surround them, as beggar Knights masterful in the ancient cutting arts, that they have taught the gurus of Andora the way toward enlightenment by the sword, a tool no good for living a peaceful life. For this blasphemy they were punished by the other angels and perhaps only a dozen still exist. The legends say they appear as unassuming beggars, but woe betide the man who makes an inconsiderate offering.

[[ Heavily inspired by Abaddon @orbitaldropkick and his angel lore from Kill Six Billion Demons. Requires more changing. ]]