Einheriar

The name einheriar, meaning 'faithful', first belonged to the honored dead of the northern warrior heaven, but it now covers any humanoid spirits that the powers of the upper planes employ as soldiers, guards, patrols or servants. They look like wispy, mist-formed warriors with equally ghostly armor and weapons, each resembling the person it was in life, most often a human. In groups they march in tight military order.

An old northern saga tells of raiders lured by a sorceress's lies onto a frozen island, where a hundred frost giants smashed their ships and broke their shield wall. As they faced death, a clear humming filled the sky and the einheriar descended like mist, helms shining, fighting as warriors and wizards beside them. They came in just enough numbers to make the fight fair, understood the raiders' speech without being understood in turn, and one old man swore he saw his grandfather among them. When the giants lay dead, the spirits rose back into the sky, their company seemingly larger by the raiders' own fallen.

Einheriar gather in large units that fight as one. Each keeps the class and level it held in life, rolled twice per individual (reroll a class the plane's alignment forbids, and multiclass spirits have their level halved or cut to a third). Every Hit Die is rolled at its maximum; THAC0s are figured normally, and they keep, casters' full spell allotments, and whatever weapon specialization warriors once had.

Their gear is top-quality nonmagical equipment suited to their class, adjusted to suit the power they serve; spirits serving a spirit-god of the open plains would not turn up in plate mail with two-handed swords. Each has a 3% chance per level of a nonspecial magical item, such as chain mail +2, a sword +1 or magical bracers, but very rarely anything special like a flametongue or armor of etherealness.

Einheriar are among the commonest servants of the good powers and fight for their causes eagerly and with conviction. They have no ranks beyond their own units and no interests outside the mission at hand; harder jobs simply go to higher-level spirits and units.

They respect celestials and archons but act on their own, taking on smaller missions than those greater beings. Their orders come to them through prayer.