The factions

Proposal

What the true forms say

• Each form is its faction's hubris. The Wardens kept the door so long that nothing is left inside them: they wait, so they are hollow, worked by keys and habit. The Heirs want God's throne, so they already look like what they want, with the Bible's six wings, wheels and burning faces. The Apostates renounced heaven, so they look like the people of the world.

  His ribs had a keyhole, and the key was still turning.

  The crusade never looks up at what leads it.

  An Apostate's shadow is the only part of him that is still an angel.

• The forms are the troops' shapes too. A Warden region is kept by smaller puppets, masked beasts and stone sentinels; an Heir region by zealots kneeling under something radiant; an Apostate region by ordinary people with hammers.

• White is the mark. Warden porcelain, Heir radiance: in a coloured world, heaven's white is how you tell an angel's work.

• The fallen are the only angels a child can look at, on the climbs. Nothing in you shows under the sky, because the fall left nothing to show.

• On the road to redemption, the fall is the redemption, and the climb is its price.

Proposal

How the factions play

• The Wardens.

  Every Warden carries a key, and no two are the same.

  The Wardens are the only angels who never look at the House.

  Broad and upright, with tower shields, wings folded tight like a cloak, always facing away from the House. Their skills bind, and bend any trade toward holding ground: chains that drag, locks that pin an enemy in place, a shield wall. The Doorward speaks to you, perhaps named Abdiel, after Milton's seraph who stayed loyal. Memory: you stand with your back to the bronze doors, a key heavy at your neck. A procession stops at the edge of the court, you lower your spear, and they kneel to you.

• The Heirs.

  The Heirs have already measured the Prophet for the crown.

  The Prophet has never once said what God's voice sounds like.

  Tall and thin, wings raised high, banners written edge to edge with the Prophet's words, moving in lines like a procession. Their skills rally, and bend any trade toward a host: banners that lift kin and what they raise, a judgement called down from above. The Prophet speaks to you himself: Ithiel ("God is with me", from Proverbs 30, where Agur admits he does not know the holy), whom other angels call the Listener. Memory: a silent crowd on the steps. The Prophet has his cheek against the door, listening. He straightens and turns, and the banners go up. You never hear what he said.

• The Apostates.

  They swing their hammers with their eyes shut, in case something answers.

  Wings clipped short, the only angels who look smaller, a hammer over the shoulder. Their skills break, and bend any trade toward ruin: blows that shatter armour and grow stronger against bigger enemies. No leader speaks to you; whoever hands you the hammer does. Heaven calls them the Apostates, because all of them once believed and it is the worst word heaven has; they call themselves the Unmakers. Memory: dark under the walls. Nobody speaks while you bind each other's wings short with cord. Someone hands you a hammer made below, by men, for stone.

• Wing pose is the silhouette key: folded for the Wardens, raised for the Heirs, clipped for the Apostates. Heaven has no colour, so this is how a horde reads at a glance.

• Every faction clears the game solo. The skills are how each one kills, not whether.

• A memory may show you serving a side you never chose. Before your first fall you were something else.

Proposal

The Apostates on the climb

The second time she found you, she didn't have to say her name.

• They find you first. Where the fallen wake, an Apostate is waiting: human-looking, plain, with a hammer made by men. She is the first voice of the campaign, the one who explains the world, and the one who hands you your first weapon.
• They are your way through. The great factions hold the world's regions; the Apostates know the gaps. They unbar the gates, cut the bridges, hide you from champions, and send you after the ones they cannot kill themselves. Their cells live in the world's towns, among the people, so the campaign's hubs are full of them.
• They are never simply right. They made you fall: every fallen is an angel they cut loose, in the hope it will fight beside them, and nobody asked you first. Each act shows a little more of what they have done and what they want you for, until at the top you choose: join them, or one of the great factions they taught you to hate.
• The end they want has a price. Ending heaven may end the world with it, and it surely ends the fallen: no seat to climb back to, no grace falling. Every coal in Velmarch's hearths is fallen grace, and the Apostates say the world will be warm enough without it. Nobody knows. They are the only faction fighting for the world, and the only one that would end themselves to win.
• They remember; you don't. The Apostate who finds you at the bottom knows you very well, and you don't know her. She never says who paid for your fall, if anyone did. At the top she cuts you loose a second time, in the dark, and when she finds you a hundred years later, you know her.