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I think main thing that stuck out to me weird was amount of imperial xenophobic Kyonin colonies there :'D I might be exaggerating it in my memory though? There's just one in the Pathfinder Campaign Setting. I think you're conflating Sevenarches (former Kyonin territory, they'd quite like it back, but elves aren't allowed in for their own good not that anyone tells them about the "for their own good" part) and Hymbria (actually xenophobic Kyonin colony, established as a base from which to reclaim Sevenarches). My understanding is that Gatewalkers or Gatewalkers-adjacent material changed the status of Sevenarches somewhat in the Lost Omens Campaign Setting.
The biggest problem of Council of Thieves is disappointed expections. The Players expect an AP where they are rebelling against the House of Thrune, but in the end they are the Batman of Westcrown. You only need to change the initial speech of Janiven Key and the players will know what to expect from this campaign. (Yes, there are some other problems, too, but that's the main one. And Second Darkness + Serpent Skull have this problem, too) You do more revolutionizing in winning autonomy (self-government) for the people of Westcrown than you do in any of the APs about overthrowing a government, simply because the options for replacing the overthrown governments are so determinedly conservative.
Laria Longroad's case establishes pretty definitively that one can count as a candidate for Governorship by being adopted into one of the five families, or at least by being made heir to a Governor. She is no Urvis by blood--her ancestor, Peletera Talltallow, was Alveda Urvis's servant[1] before being made her heir. See Groves, et al., Pathfinder Adventure Path #101: The Kintargo Contract, at *22 - 23 (2016) ("Baroness Urvis bequeathed the entire estate, along with all rights and privileges, to her loyal halfling caretaker, Peletera Talltallow"). [1] I read Peletera as having been a free servant at the time of the bequeathing because she is only referred to as being "sold into slavery" afterwards. See id., at *23.
First off, kudos to your players for their democratic instincts. Pushing against the strictures of the reactionary institution, the laws establishing it, and the power underlying it, is always correct. That said, there are problems with expanding the Board of Governors, of both principle and logistics. First, The Kintargo Contract--the adventure, not the document, though I've integrated the provision into my exegesis of the document, supra--expressly provides that meetings of the Board of Governors must be plenary rather than by quorum. See id., at *23 ("In order to officially ratify a lord-mayor of Kintargo, a majority (3 out of 5) vote from a fully-staffed Board of Governors must be recorded before no fewer than a dozen witnesses.") (emphasis added). That is, all members, rather than a majority of members, must be present to vote. The structure of the adventure strongly reinforces this notion. If the Board of Governors was permitted to meet by quorum, it would be possible to obtain the necessary majority by convening and obtaining the unanimous consent only of representatives of Houses Solstine, Mayhart, and Urvis, and to bar the counterrevolutionaries Melodia Delronge and Geoff Tanessen from attending. But this is not the case. "[T]he PCs need Melodia[ Delronge]'s cooperation only long enough to ratify Jilia[ Bainilus]'s appointment." Id., at *20 (emphasis added); see also, id. ("With respect to the Kintargo Contract, this development [Carliss Mayhart's imprisonment making him unable to attend a meeting of the Board of Governors] is a disaster."). Geoff Tanessen likewise "need[s]... to join the Board of Governors." Id., at *22. Unless the Kintargo Contract is amended, an expanded Board of Governors would still need to adhere to the plenary rule, making conventions of the Board all the more difficult with each member added. The plenary rule also means that expanding the Board does not accomplish what your players want it to accomplish: securing the Board from sabotage at a single point of failure. Whether the full plenum of the Board be five, fifteen, or fifty, one missing Governor still renders it unable to act. Second, the provision for adding "a new [family] line" is pretty clearly intended to replace extinct lines rather than expanding the size of the Board, which moreover in various places appears limited to five members. Id., at *18[1] ("Had any of [the original five] family lines died out, forming a valid Board of Governors would have required ratification of a new line by the Chelish government.") (emphasis added); see also, id., at *7 (the "'Board of Governors'... is... defined as a group of five individuals"), 9 ("five family lines are required to reconvene the Board of Governors"), 16 ("five bloodlines [are] required to form the Board of Governors"... "'The Board of Governors is to consist of five people'"), 18 ("five family lines [are] required to reform the Board of Governors"). Further, as you recognize, naming a new line requires the assent of the Chelish government, which places a key institution of Ravounel outside the democratic control of its people and under the control of a foreign autocrat. Third, the situation you fear, of "[w]hat happens the next time (in 150 years) when the people of Kintargo forgets to have a Board of Governors select their Lord-Mayor," is the situation prevailing at the start of the AP, and as you note, this gave the Chelish government a free hand in Ravounel. I would propose that a solution to the problems of people forgetting that the Board of Governors exists, and of its undemocratic nature, would be to make all five Governor positions elective, from among all the members of the five families. Nowhere does The Kintargo Contract (the adventure or the document) provide that a Governor must be the head of his family, only a member. It is only circumstance and possibly tradition that "requires" the particular individuals enumerated in the adventure be the ones chosen to fill out the Board. The procedure for choosing a Governor from among each family is undefined, and can thus be determined by ordinary law rather than by amending the Kintargo Contract. That law can provide that the electorate for the Board of Governors be coextensive with the electorate for the Lord-Mayor of Kintargo/Domina of Ravounel (e.g., all citizens of Kintargo, all citizens of Ravounel, or what have you), and that elections to the Board of Governors take place at the same time and in the same manner as elections of the Lord-Mayor/Domina. This electorate will presumably choose a slate of Governors they believe will ratify their choice of Lord-Mayor/Domina without trouble. And doing so at the same time as the Lord-Mayor/Domina election will reinforce the memory of the Board's existence. Finally, electing Governors means that the Board can be brought into the democratic governance of the country in whatever capacity rather than sidelined into a singular duty of ratifying the election of a Lord-Mayor/Domina. Its members might serve as judges, or on the Silver Council, or as government ministers. A further security of the democracy and integrity of the Board might be to provide by law that each family must adopt a certain number of individuals to fill out its numbers. The most radical form of such a law might be that each family must adopt as members every citizen of Ravounel. Combined with the electoral law contemplated above, this makes every citizen of Ravounel a candidate for election to each of the five seats on the Board of Governors. And expanding each family to include every citizen of Ravounel would make it impossible for Cheliax to render any family extinct without killing every citizen of Ravounel--a thing which is functionally impossible. Not incidentally, depending on the prevailing inheritance law of Ravounel, such a law could also divide the five families' properties among the people. [1] I'm citing this line preferentially to Odexidie's explanation because it is written in the objective voice of the author and not in the voice of a potentially unreliable character.
It wasn't, that's a post hoc rationalization. And it's still the Pactmasters making the reforms, with radicals shaking power rather than the people taking power. There has not yet been an AP where the latter happens.
Return of the Runelords was the opportunity for timey-wimey f~$&ery, anyway. And I agree that, with respect to slavery at least, making its eclipse a social revolution rather than a narrative retcon was the correct move -- if I am still miffed that it was relegated to the background, and largely made by elite reformers.
If they are seriously concerned about not getting sued by Wizards of the Coast, simply removing the word "drow" and just calling them "dark elves" would be enough, just like they did with duergar, wouldn't it? Not legal advice (I'm sure Paizo got that in spades from either in-house or third-party counsel), but in a word, no. Filing the serial numbers off a work or element of a work does not in and of itself mean that the work or element is not infringing.
Again, those articles are on the product pages once the issue in question come out, it's just a matter of scrolling through them all. To clarify for OP, there is no centralized list on one webpage of all the backmatter articles in AP volumes. There are c.200 webpages on the wiki which, aggregated together, list all the backmatter articles of AP volumes.
I'm sorry that whoever was running Hell's Rebels for your group wasn't able to use NPCs beyond the encounters / scenarios they were written for. Bold of you to assume I have a group. In fact I do not and experience APs and adventures as literature and of course as a commercial product rather than in play.
The Chelish authorities are unlikely to be at all sympathetic to worshippers of Nocticula (in whatever aspect) based on their god's personal trauma. They live to cause grief and pain in the pursuit of power, after all. Rather, the cult of the Redeemer Queen may be able to escape persecution, for a while, on two grounds: (1) the cult is marginal enough as of 4715 AR to not be on any proscription lists, and is unlikely to garner significant attention until the Rebellion's Notoriety score hits some benchmark; and (2) based on her title, Nocticula seems like she competes with Sarenrae (not Calistria), who is very much on Kintargo's specific proscription list (although, so is Calistria). That said, Barzillai Thrune specifically juggles both an idiocy and an arrogance ball at all times.
there's also a ton of really fun humanoid villains who you can sprinkle into RP sessions before your Silver Ravens run into them. The Gardener in particular might be a wonderful addition to Books 2 & 3 before he's encountered in Book 4.To the OP: don't believe what you hear about Hell's Rebels. It is very much a traditionally combat-focused game, and the cast of NPCs who matter is actually vanishingly small. They might. But with the exceptions of Barzillai Thrune himself, and Nox and Tiarese (who are written as two-off combat encounters with their personalities having been destroyed between their appearances), they are written purely as one-off combat encounters.
Cheliax's religious law establishes one church and by default tolerates all others but reserves to the right to proscribe any other church at any time, for any length of time, for any reason. As of the opening of Hell's Rebels, the central government proscribed the Glorious Reclamation for sedition, obviously--but did not proscribe the Church of Iomedae as a whole. After the Glorious Reclamation's insurrection was put down, Queen Abrogail would dishonorably lure the leadership of Iomedae's mainstream church to their deaths by execution in Egorian, but would still not actually proscribe her worship. This was for nationalistic reasons: Iomedae was a Chelish subject in life, and her place in the heavens is a persistent source of patriotic pride. Barzillai Thrune in his capacity as Lord-Mayor of Kintargo promulgated several more proscriptions within his jurisdiction that are relevant to the campaign: of Calistria, Cayden Cailean, Desna, Milani, and Sarenrae. He also mandated that congregants at Shelyn's religious services register with the government, but did not proscribe her worship outright. The government will not intervene to protect a church that is not established, per se. However, the act of vandalism of another's property is generally unlawful, and you might find yourself arrested and charged if you engage in it, whatever the target. Furthermore, even if you are not, if the relevant church finds you out, it can sue you civilly for damages; the state will aid it in this aim by haling you into court, punishing you for contempt if you don't show up, and likely by favoring the institution over the individual in terms of its rules of procedure. I address Ravounel's economic base, including Kintargo's manufacture (read: handicraft) and mercantile economy here.
It's not just "the disaster didn't happen," we've got Lost Omens books suggesting Hermea is under new management. (I expect a follow-up on how things are going in Mzali is inevitable and, perhaps, imminent!) Preferably in the form of an adventure. Sticking Vidrian's and Katapesh's revolutions in the background as setting elements will never not be a disappointing coward's move, and should not be replicated going forward.
We may not be back to Galt before PF3, though based on the apparent Paizo policy of assuming not enough people have completed any given adventure that they can base a setting book or future adventure on the outcome of a specific one. I feel like Paizo could get decent mileage out of an adventure where the PCs are running the campaign of one of the candidates to fill out the Council and/or Senate. This strictly speaking needn't require Night of the Gray Death to have happened, but also isn't excluded by it and may be enriched by it. That said, speculation about Galtan democracy is rather outside the scope of this thread, which covers a region where democratic forces are very much in opposition, revolutionary or loyal.
Disappointed at the lack of inclusion of the El-Shelad Madrassa and the Academy of Scribes on the wiki, two relatively overlooked but still significant magical schools in Osirion. The Academy of Scribes has been training wizards for Osirion's bureaucracy for millennia, while the El-Shelad Madrassa teaches a blended mix of Osiriani and Keleshite traditions. They haven't gotten a lot of fleshing out, but they still exist. It's a wiki, thus necessarily understaffed and without clear project responsibilities and deadlines. Add them.
That would have been entirely wasted effort, given what became of Lastwall (would would rightly have drawn criticism of erasing players' good work). Belkzen's current attitude, it turns out, was not predicated on a lasting peace with any of its neighbors, only attachment to its own self-determination.
. . . You're pitching Hellish adventures to the demon guy.
The obvious answer is "we will keep it for ourselves and also usurp at least a layer of Hell, neener neener."
cuz... kinda thinking the labor agitation is what's illegal... Absalom is not Korvosa (which absolutely does have Combination Acts, and which absolutely does brutalize organized workers when it roots out their secret organizations). It's Pinkertoning is done under the table, not on the statute book.
About everything published about attractions in Vyre was published in Dance of the Damned's backmatter article, so look there first. PCs looking for attractions might like to visit the Final Throw (a combination circus/casino featuring bloodsports of various kinds); the Opal Market (a night market at which anything you can think of can be had for a price); the hostels (combination inns/taverns/brothels) the Dancing Cat, the Heavenly House, or the Seven Apples (the adventure directs players to this last one); or the dockside freak-and-geek show/museum Munchquaff's Quay. Other than these, Vyre is remarkably empty, or perhaps it might be more charitable to say that you can populate it with whatever you see fit. Much of the city consists of housing, or less-than-tourist-friendly institutions of various kinds (including a sanitarium and ostensible crematorium that PCs might like to visit for the purpose of disruptive adventuring but not otherwise). For characters looking to marry in Vyre, I'd advise finding a secular officiant or perhaps a Hellknight, or, in a pinch, Inamina Clov (the city's "legitimate" cleric of Norgorber). The Cathedral of Abadar is a front for a demon-worshiping cult; the other churches of Heretic's Row are occupied by drug dens, brothels, and various other cults.
What if the "Iblydian Alexander" was actually a proponent of the political and social theories you like, galvanizing true revolution in the old dusty empire and its colonies ? "The most extravagant idea that can be born in the head of a political thinker is to believe that it suffices for people to enter, weapons in hand, among a foreign people and expect to have its laws and constitution embraced. No one loves armed missionaries; the first lesson of nature and prudence is to repulse them as enemies."
I don't think Kelesh, the largest and oldest empire on the face of Golarion, is 'suffering' much from imperialism.Well, if Sarenrae is the one dying, this might shake the Padishah Empire enough that it becomes a fertile ground for upheaval, unrest, conquest...Perhaps we shouldn't base our predictions about what is likely to happen around "what would let Kelesh suffer from imperialism?" (Or its satrapies any more than they already do) It would do if conquered from without by an Iblydian Alexander, as the above posters were theorizing.
Well, if Sarenrae is the one dying, this might shake the Padishah Empire enough that it becomes a fertile ground for upheaval, unrest, conquest... Perhaps we shouldn't base our predictions about what is likely to happen around "what would let Kelesh suffer from imperialism?" (Or its satrapies any more than they already do)
It’s also worth saying that we’ve seen hero-gods in Arcadia and Vudra who had nothing to do with cyclopes myth-speaking, so we can probably consider the term just an in-setting description of a Mythic mortal hero. We've also seen the term "hero-gods" applied to the goblin pantheon. At which point the only general meaning we can probably infer is "'hero-god' is a term someone at Paizo thinks is cool."
In other news, one valid reason not to have read Strength of Thousands is that I still hope to play in that campaign. :)Then why say "you get a top Adventure Path List that would exclude every single one of the Adv Paths written for PF2 so far, imo" if you haven't... actually... read the works you're disparaging?I think a conversation about Paizo’s best that doesn’t include Strength of Thousands isn’t a serious one, personally.I cannot say. I have very little familiarity with it. Imagine being able to play Pathfinder at any point.
I don’t think any ally of Nidal’s needs to worry about a black leather shortage.I think if Paizo wanted to have Nazi-punching on Golarion, they already have a nation of racist authoritarian jackboots with an obsession about digging up artefacts in the sand - Cheliax. Fairly explicitly, Cheliax is explicitly there to be an easy go-to for uncomplicated and unambiguous bad guys. They don't need to go looking.Pfffft, they don't even wear black leather dusters. Well, their inquisitors might... Does Nidal produce and finish the black leather, or does it import and finish it, or does it import it finished? In the last case, Nidal would make a poor supplier for dusters, but on the other hand Cheliax might be able to negotiate directly with its supplier.
Well, we already got Nazis on the moon as a (terrible) movie, so "out there concepts with Nazis in it" has been done a lot in entertainment history. "Out there concepts with Nazis in it" includes making them a permanent part of the setting, which, given that Paizo has already done that with White Russians (the people who literally wrote the book on anti-Semitism) being given refuge, favor, and status in Irrisen, I do not trust them to handle with grace.
Doesn't so much ave to do with aeons blocking technological process as it does with there simply being better solutions in-world to solve problems. The trouble with this is that we don't actually see magic used to do what technology does - improve the productivity of labor so as to drive down the value of the capacity to labor or, what is a manifestation of the same thing, drive down the worker-hours required to produce a given good or provide a given service. We don't see, for instance, infernal engines competing with steam engines to drive jennies or looms, instead we see the predominance of handicraft production. We don't see aiudara or the Stone Road or other teleportation outcompeting caravan or seagoing trade (yet). The examples are myriad. To the extent magic is used in the labor process at all, it is employed by highly-skilled, nigh-exclusive classes of people who derive their high status from its exclusivity and their personal power from their exclusive skills. And it is this social/guild power of magicians (including clerics, druids, etc.) which must account for both the suppression of magic in general labor-saving applications and the suppression of mundane alternatives. Worth noting is that magical engines (including infernal engines and whatever the engine is that the Aspis Consortium uses on their ships, as well as aiudara) are as equally dependent as everything else magical on their creators' specialized knowledge and skill, and are difficult to reproduce even if the art of their creation is not outright lost with their creators. Compare machines making other machines, which is comparatively easy.
I'm hoping it's one of the good deities for the sheer emotional punch of "one of the forces of righteousness and hope is straight up gone" but I get the feeling that's not going to be the case and it'll be one of the evil deities that goes. Given that alignment is going the way of THAC0 shortly, neither your wish nor your fear will come true.
Eurythnia could be a candidate for Bard Town, as Nocticula herself seems pretty fond of Sorshen and they have the whole 'land of subservise artists and also two former LewdLords as Ruler and Patron Deity'. Nothing says Bard Aesthetic more than that. The city high on Mhar Massif is still called Xin-Shalast, unless something's changed since the World Guide. The state within the New Thassilonian confederation is [New] Eurythnia. But the city, the state, and the confederation have wizardly vibes as strong as or stronger than bardly vibes (which with respect to Xin-Shalast are tied not so much to the "subversive" as the "outcast," subversive is Kintargo's schtick). And Xin-Shalast shares Kintargo's problem of having a small population, with even fewer bardly institutions.
I am pretty sure the Infernal pacts binding Cheliax are strong and tight enough to weather the death of Asmodeus. Strength and tightness only come into play if the Cheliax Covenant is a pact between Abrogail I as sovereign of Cheliax and Asmodeus as an individual as opposed to sovereign of Hell. If the pact is between two sovereigns (that is, if it is a treaty), then it continues down the succession of sovereignty while the two states continue to exist. If the pact is between a sovereign and Asmodeus as an individual, however, then it is extinguished unless it specifies that it continues through Asmodeus's heirs. It could also be a mixed agreement, that is to say, Asmodeus in his role as sovereign of Hell promises the support of Hell's military to Cheliax, while also in his role as the patron of the Church of Asmodeus promises the support of the latter to Cheliax. Something similar could be happening on the Chelish side, with, for instance, Abrogail I as sovereign of Cheliax being promised the support of Hell, and Abrogail I, and her heirs as head of House Thrune, being promised the support of the Church of Asmodeus. I suspect this is the most likely scenario. What happens to the Church of Asmodeus in a scenario where Asmodeus dies is an open question. The institution itself probably continues to exist, but in a diminished form like the Church of Aroden, but if Asmodeus did not specify his heirs in the contract freed from its obligations unless new ones are imposed upon it by power (for instance, by a new god assuming Asmodeus's position at the head of the church, or by House Thrune or the Chelish state directly).
Dispater is way fonder of military power than Asmodeus, from what I'm seeing, which makes me think that Asmodeus dying and Dispater stepping in could lead to Cheliax going to war. The obvious targets of Andoran and Taldor seem like they'd make good red herrings, while, being of a more strategic bent, Dispater might go straight across the Arch of Aroden and seize Rahadoum, catching *everyone* off-guard, since that's not the 'obvious' target. A change in Hellish management does not imply that Cheliax goes to war with its neighbors, rather the opposite. In the first place, the state is weaker relative to its neighbors than it has ever been, and a change in management means less force available to assist than there might otherwise be, since those forces are keeping order at home. The new boss is likely to know that a gamble at this point risks losing the whole stake. In the second place, the regime is internally stronger than it has ever been. That gives it the means, and a change in management gives it the opportunity, to climb the ranks, relieve itself of some obligations, and acquire obligations from others. Also, Mephistopheles, the consciousness of Hell itself, or Geryon, who is at least indigenous to the plane, seem prima facie like more likely candidates to take the reins (as primus inter pares or otherwise) than either Dispater or Mammon or any of the other Heavenly exiles (Barbatos aside, but he's not from Hell either).
I'm also clinically incapable of not mentioning rebel-loving, opera house-having Kintargo as a City of Bards. Oppara stands head and shoulders above both it and Pitax in this regard, not only because of its outsize population, but for have two bardic colleges to Kintargo's zero and Pitax's one.
Elves of Golarion was a DND 3.5 book, not Pathfinder. Elves did not sleep in 3.5. Elves were equally immune to magic sleep effects in D&D3.5 and in PF1. Whether that immunity to a magical compulsion meant that they slept naturally was a separate matter, and left to the campaign setting to determine. Elves did not sleep in Forgotten Realms, but were always meant to sleep in Golarion.
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