Archon - A Definition

[Rotku]

Someone mentioned archon today and have been looking up the term to try and work out what it was, and I'm getting conflicting results here:

3E MM (don't have 3.5 MM) tells me:

Celestials positively drip with goodness - every fiber of their bodies and souls is suffused with it.
They are natural enemies of the fiends. Examples of three types of celestials are presented here : archons (lawful good), guardinals (neutral good), and eladrins (chaotic good).

So then this term Fire Archon came up, which had me scratching my head because that didn't quite fit. After a bit of digging, the best source of Fire Archon I could found was in the 4E MM. Their entry from Archon surprised me:

ARCHONS ARE MILITARISTIC CREATURES native to the Elemental Chaos. Vaguely humanoid in form, they serve powerful primordial entities as well as various elemental lords and princelings.

Militaristic creatures from the Choas realm?

Now, my question :

Has WotC just done one of their weird moves to make life more 'easy' and changed what Archon means in their latest edition, and I should just ignore their new meaning and stick with Archon = LG? Or is there an extended meaning for Archon that the 3E MM does not cover, which I should take into account in ALFA?

[AsteroidX]

Roll a d20 Knowledge planes

[hollyfant]

Fourth Edition has altered the whole cosmology and alignment system. Chaos is now more or less elemental, but also a superlative of evil. And with Gods of all (remaining) alignments now having angels at their disposal, the Archons were sort of out of a job.

Basicly, nothing of 4e can be applied to ALFA, things have changed too much. To us Archons are still Lawful Good and Gnomes are not Fey!

[Brokenbone]

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/archon.htm

Beats me if the way it came up was "casual OOC discussion", DMs tossing around the terms IG, or PCs tossing around the term IC.

OOC stuff, sure, people can debate sources.

DM's IG, their word's law, though if they have to backtrack later and blame something on an "unreliable NPC", that's their prerogative.

PC's tossing around terminology IC, they might be talking out of their asses (fine, people bluff), or have an excellent Knowledge (Planes) skill (fine, that's why you have skill ranks), or be metagaming (your 8 int half-orc has never been to an Upper Plane, sorry).

I guess someone trying to explain seeing a Lantern Archon could call it a Fire Archon (but if they knew the word "Archon", they might also know the difference between Lantern, Hound and Trumpet)? Or a nasty Will-o-the-Wisp? They're glowing balls of torchlike light, many descriptions would fit.

[Vendrin]

It is also possible that an Archon could be one of those fiery vengeance types, or fallen etc, and have some nice fire abilities, as there are many different types of Archons.

[Rotku]

Okay, thanks for the correction there

It was a PC using the term BB, but it got me wondering OOC what was what.

[AsteroidX]

The PC heard the name from another PC thats now dead...so as for drunken tales go it could have been a dragon for all she knew but was what she knew to call it IC.

Just to clarify using the term.