With the ARG, I plan to stat out an elf-tiefling (ala Nightcrawler/Kurt Wagner).
He's gonna be a 'ladies man' too. Won't have anything to do with being an elf, though.
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With Calistria and the elves.
-The elves focus on her deception and vengeance aspects. Elven temples of Calistria are set up like thieves guilds
-Calistria is not the head of the elven pantheon. She is just the one who accepts non elf worshipers.
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With Calistria and the elves.
-The elves focus on her deception and vengeance aspects. Elven temples of Calistria are set up like thieves guilds
-Calistria is not the head of the elven pantheon. She is just the one who accepts non elf worshipers.
and that is exactly my problem with Calistra as elvem godess. Petty revenge seems the most unelvish to me, everything abou calistra screams human to me.
shelyn is the most elvish god teh way I view them
I think racial deities are a poor concept anyway. You mean to tell me that elves on one side of the continent worship the exact same god as the elves 2000 miles away with whom they have not had contact in millenia?
Even if they stem from a common ancestor, having the same belief system is completely "unrealistic." Granted there's a level of realism you have to give up, and this is one I'd concede before many others, it does kill verisimilitude for me a lot of times.
With gods being cosmically powered semi-mortals who are known to interact directly with the material plane in Pathfinder, I suppose it makes a bit more sense, but you'd think there would be several different interpretations of those gods based on their deeds witnessed by any given group, and how the deity intended to affect them.
Not all aasimar and tieflings are partly human.
This.
I still don't see to this day why all the planetouched/element-touched/etc. races aren't templates.
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Recently read "Kushiel's Dart", while not dead on Calistria I think reading it would give one a pretty good idea of how the religion plays out.
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I keep seeing Petty vengeance thrown about. Why do people think she is a goddess of Petty Vengeance? Calistria is the goddess of ALL vengeance.
Batman and The Punisher would both be worshippers of Calistria: They dedicate themselves nightly to avenge the deaths of their families on criminals.
Medea would be a worshipper of the goddess of vengeance.
An elf perspective would be "vengeance is a dish best served cold". Being long-lived they might start allying with their target's rivals and enemies and empowering them to act against their target. An elf enacting vengeance has plenty of time to see the fruit of their revenge. A chaotic evil elf would see your house burn and your descendants pay. A chaotic neutral elf would settle with seeing you brought low, as would a neutral. A chaotic good elf would probably be satisfied with retrieving weregild for your crime or slight.
A chaotic good worshipper is less concerned with personal vengeance as recompense for injustices. Robin Hood robbed from the rich and gave to the poor, not to see the poor fed, but to see the rich b@$+##)$ eaten.
I keep seeing Petty vengeance thrown about. Why do people think she is a goddess of Petty Vengeance? Calistria is the goddess of ALL vengeance.
Batman and The Punisher would both be worshippers of Calistria: They dedicate themselves nightly to avenge the deaths of their families on criminals.
Medea would be a worshipper of the goddess of vengeance.An elf perspective would be "vengeance is a dish best served cold". Being long-lived they might start allying with their target's rivals and enemies and empowering them to act against their target. An elf enacting vengeance has plenty of time to see the fruit of their revenge. A chaotic evil elf would see your house burn and your descendants pay. A chaotic neutral elf would settle with seeing you brought low, as would a neutral. A chaotic good elf would probably be satisfied with retrieving weregild for your crime or slight.
A chaotic good worshipper is less concerned with personal vengeance as recompense for injustices. Robin Hood robbed from the rich and gave to the poor, not to see the poor fed, but to see the rich b@$+##)$ eaten.
Nope. The Punisher would have a huge problem with Callistria's association to crime and criminal fraternities.
The origin of the petty vengeance is from Calistria's focus on attacking people for perceived slights over actual ones, as described in the Elves of Golarion book.
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Batman and The Punisher would both be worshippers of Calistria: They dedicate themselves nightly to avenge the deaths of their families on criminals.
Being a Batman fan, I would greatly disagree. If seen for vengeance alone, Batman's parents have long been avenged. His ongoing crusade against criminality goes far beyond that.
Same case with Frank Castle.
Creative Director
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With Calistria and the elves.
-The elves focus on her deception and vengeance aspects. Elven temples of Calistria are set up like thieves guilds
-Calistria is not the head of the elven pantheon. She is just the one who accepts non elf worshipers.and that is exactly my problem with Calistra as elvem godess. Petty revenge seems the most unelvish to me, everything abou calistra screams human to me.
shelyn is the most elvish god teh way I view them
And in fact, that's kind of exactly why she's one of the core 20 deities.
The simple route would have been to make the elf deity in the core rules be a classic nature/archery deity, but a lot of the choices we made for things in Golarion are deliberately off kilter.
There ARE other elf deities in the game. The one that is the most popular overall, among ALL mortal races, is Calistria. In a lot of ways, her religion got as popular as it did BECAUSE the concepts translated well (for better or worse) to other races.
That said, while we list her ethnicity as Varisian, Desna also often appears in elf form, and works quite well as a more high-profile elf deity if that's what you're looking for among the Golarion deities.
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Batman and The Punisher would both be worshippers of Calistria: They dedicate themselves nightly to avenge the deaths of their families on criminals.
Being a Batman fan, I would greatly disagree. If seen for vengeance alone, Batman's parents have long been avenged. His ongoing crusade against criminality goes far beyond that.
Same case with Frank Castle.
They simply have a broader vengeance than you do. They are avenging not just their own families, but everyone who ever lost a family member to crime.
Also "vengeance for perceived slights", has a LOT of leeway in it. Number one the elf must perceive something as a slight, also vengeance can be commensurate with the slight.
Example using Merisiel:
"Lem just made fun of me through song! Well two can play at that game." She proceeds to unstring Lem's lute while he sleeps and tie Lem to a tree. When he wakes up: "Try playing one of your mean songs now... jerkface." At which point Lem will likely apologize and Merisiel will consider the vengeance paid. They're even.
"That Runelord sent giants to kill me. I'm going to make sure he dies last... and painfully. With pointy things in his kidneys."
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From the 'sacred prostitute' Wikipedia page that two people have googled at me now:
"...there is a great multitude of women coming and going; passages marked by line run every way through the crowd, by which the men pass and make their choice. Once a woman has taken her place there, she does not go away to her home before some stranger has cast money into her lap, and had intercourse with her outside the temple; but while he casts the money, he must say, “I invite you in the name of Mylitta” (that is the Assyrian name for Aphrodite). It does not matter what sum the money is; the woman will never refuse, for that would be a sin,"
Yeah, sure, you sure proved to me that sacred prostitution isn't ugly and is TOTALLY something a deity-level powerful woman would openly promote. /Sarcasm. It's great 'flavour' for a female deity to promote her worshippers to completely give up their body and pride to a. Men and b. Money.
Personally, I think Calistria would be the God most likely to burn these f#$%ers down.
But that's just me.
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Hm... this is kinda getting more Alignment/Pantheon-topiced than I expected. Relevant, I expected, but not to become the dominant issue.
I kind of prefer the Elf standards of the Forgotten Realms. Innately good, more reserved towards outsiders yet unquestionably passionate with those they let in.
Take for example Innovindil from Drizzt's The Hunter's Blades trilogy:
Her mate died in battle just days ago, and yet she threw herself at Drizzt when they got alone.
Pretty much Drizzt goes "That's quite a short mourning period for an elf,"
She then teaches him about how love like an elf, having many lovers throughout the centuries of both human and elf. The point is not to live a ridiculously long tifetime, but to live through many different lifetimes through the ages.
So, yeah... that kinda justifies the quick 'getting over it' period.
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It's great 'flavour' for a female deity to promote her worshippers to completely give up their body and pride to a. Men and b. Money.
Personally, I think Calistria would be the God most likely to burn these f#$%ers down.
But that's just me.
See, the thing about fictional universes is that something that is one way in reality doesn't have to be the same way in fiction.
So sacred prostitution in Golarion isn't ugly, because that's the reality of the world.
If it's so unrealistic, why do we have women that promote sex work in the real world?
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They choose to do it so it MUST be okay!
Erm, yes?
There are legitimate sex workers in the real world, who freely choose to make a living that way and are proud of that choice.
Calistria's sacred prostitutes are probably more akin to Firefly's companions (they choose who gets the privilege of such a blessing).
The world is not is not a simple place, and I'm glad Golarion reflects that.
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Sorry, I posted too briefly.
I know it's a fantasy setting, and things work differently. What grates me is that in the fantasy setting with the highly powerful female goddess, that goddess is written to be actually denigrating females more than the other gods (including Erastil! ;D ) It harkens back to an ugly and brutish past that is usually aligned with the evil gods of Golarion, not the good/neutral gods and certainly not the racial gods.
There's a lot of cool stuff that could be written in to Calistria, but lying around with silk and lavender in some sort of impossible orientalist harem waiting to be bought isn't one of them.
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Sorry, I posted too briefly.
I know it's a fantasy setting, and things work differently. What grates me is that in the fantasy setting with the highly powerful female goddess, that goddess is written to be actually denigrating females more than the other gods (including Erastil! ;D ) It harkens back to an ugly and brutish past that is usually aligned with the evil gods of Golarion, not the good/neutral gods and certainly not the racial gods.
There's a lot of cool stuff that could be written in to Calistria, but lying around with silk and lavender in some sort of impossible orientalist harem waiting to be bought isn't one of them.
But that's not what it's like at all?
A Calistrian is empowered by her sexuality, she chooses the client and the client better be respectful and thankful for the opportunity or he might find himself "revenged upon" so to speak.
I always tell people: You don't win a "No Prize" by saying how something doesn't work, you win it by putting it together in such a way that it makes sense.
Also: There are men that work in those temples too.
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Dude, can you tell us exactly what you mean happens when a client 'isn't respectful and thankful for the opportunity' to have sex with the Calistria worshipper? Do they not say thank you afterwards? Or, given the fact that they're having intercourse, that something else entirely is involved? Something that doesn't respect the Calistrian worshipper? Can you see how incredibly ugly this whole 'sacred prostitute' trope is?
Also - citation on the Calistrian prostitutes choosing their clients?
Empowered by sexuality means being confident and happy with one's appearance and sexual choice.
It doesn't mean getting turned into a commodity.
It doesn't mean getting paid for sex.
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A Calistrian is empowered by her sexuality, she chooses the client and the client better be respectful and thankful for the opportunity or he might find himself "revenged upon" so to speak.
That 'empowerment' is designed in such a way not to elevate women but to be gratifying to men that are appeased by that aesthetic.
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Dude, can you tell us exactly what you mean happens when a client 'isn't respectful and thankful for the opportunity' to have sex with the Calistria worshipper? Do they not say thank you afterwards? Or, given the fact that they're having intercourse, that something else entirely is involved? Something that doesn't respect the Calistrian worshipper? Can you see how incredibly ugly this whole 'sacred prostitute' trope is?
Watch a few episodes of Firefly. Seriously. It's come up in this thread twice.
Sex for some can be a spiritual experience. Being respectful with a priestess who has agreed to those kinds of rites is extremely simple. I mean, if you understand what respect means, then you have the answer. Respect her boundaries, respect that she has selected you among other petitioners, respect that she is not an object.
It's not terribly difficult. It's like geisha who think it's okay to have sex with the client, only the Calistrian church enforces certain rules.
I mean, without getting into graphic detail about what happens inside their private chambers, what kind of answers do you want?
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A Calistrian is empowered by her sexuality, she chooses the client and the client better be respectful and thankful for the opportunity or he might find himself "revenged upon" so to speak.That 'empowerment' is designed in such a way not to elevate women but to be gratifying to men that are appeased by that aesthetic.
Citation on Calistrian prostitutes not being allowed to choose their clients?
Is a woman who enjoys her job as a sex worker unempowering women?
As a GM (with players of both sexes, of different sexual orientations and with players who play characters of different genders from their own), my responsibility is to present an interesting world with interesting philosophical view-points.
Erastil would agree with you that Calistrian prostitution is disgusting.
Calistrians would tell you that Erastil's worshippers are closed minded.
Somehow they both are disempowering women.
My argument is that empowerment is choice. The prostitutes (and prostitute is a loaded word) of Calistria are there of their own free will. They enjoy the work they do and are empowered by it. They have agency and power, they are free to take any partner they want (male, female, trans, human, elf, dwarf, gnome, tengu or otherwise) or take none at all.
Why should they be ashamed of what they do any more than a doctor (most clerics), or a confessor (Iomedae cleric), a farmer (Erastil), a brewer (Cayden)?
Sex Work is not inherently evil, bad, or chauvanistic.
Sexual slavery on the other hand is an abomination, and I'm sure Calistria's Inquisitors would hunt down any who perverted the sacred act of sex by turning it into a mere "commodity" rather than a divine act.
This is rapidly transforming into a debate about who's feminism is better, and I'm going to bow out of this thread before it leads to hurt feelings or entrenched view points. Everyone projects their own stuff onto the canvas of the setting. I find that making value judgments of ideals you disagree with can be too dismissive. The writers and designers of the Pathfinder Campaign Setting are aware of gender disparity issues, and don't just write this stuff blindly and without thinking of how the audience will take it. At my table all are welcome.
Calistrian churches wouldn't NOT be selective about their "clients." The ones that offer sexual services probably get more "business" than they can realistically support.
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Dude, can you tell us exactly what you mean happens when a client 'isn't respectful and thankful for the opportunity' to have sex with the Calistria worshipper? Do they not say thank you afterwards? Or, given the fact that they're having intercourse, that something else entirely is involved? Something that doesn't respect the Calistrian worshipper? Can you see how incredibly ugly this whole 'sacred prostitute' trope is?
What client is going to be callous around a group of people who worship a goddess that takes revenge for perceived slights? That's just asking for trouble.
Can it be ugly? Yes. Must it be ugly? No.
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I can imagine the Calistrians would have standards though
For example. Very NSFW.
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Watch a few episodes of Firefly. Seriously. It's come up in this thread twice.
I've watched all of Firefly.
Inara is a tragic figure in that show. Apart from the 'Cor Lummy! :wink wink:' lesbian episode, I don't see how you couldn't pick up on that.She wants Mal, who is our hero, and yet 90% of conversations Mal has with Inara involve him consistently berating her choice of profession and making arguments that behind all the silk and incense, what she does is uglier than how he makes a living. He is working hard to take her out of that life. She is just doing what she can to survive, the same as everyone else on the Firefly.
A key theme in Firefly is staying true to who you are, despite the powers that be forcing economic pressure on you to compromise. Mal is the key figure that refuses to compromise his browncoat status, and his greatest irritation is that the beautiful, intelligent Inara is seen to compromise herself to nincompoops to make a living.
95% of Inara's clients are presented as incompetent virgins or men that aren't good enough for her, which is contrasted with Mal, who is. Why? Because he doesn't compromise who he is.
But you think it's positive?
I can't keep this up guys, I really can't.
I'm out of this thread too.
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I can imagine the Calistrians would have standards thoughFor example. Very NSFW.
Whatever that Sap is that can take away barbarian rage, I want it now.
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As for elven promiscuity, it appears that elves are, like in many fantasy settings, not terribly prolific, and probably have to have a lot of sex before 'one takes.' Biologically, it would make sense they have a strong libido, if they've got to have sex a thousand times before someone gets pregnant.Good theory, though one wonders if it's the males or females (or somehow a combination of the two) that lacks a human-like fertility. If they're so highly active, then it can't be that female elves don't ovulate as often, or that the males have under-active... meiosis. (Trying to keep this PG; not exactly sure what terminology is considered 'decent'.)
Half elves come out of a mix, so I would think they have to be similar enough in that regard.
Perhaps the lack of elven fertility has something to do with their reduced Con scores. A species wouldn't survive long with this sort of deficiency, in a world with other species that lack that weakness (or, like dwarves and hobgoblins, have an advantange in general health and survival). Perhaps elven infertility has nothing to do with elves, and everything to do with Golarion, a world that is not native to them, and whose environment may be deleterious to their health. (Indeed, it could be a testament to the base stamina of elves in general that they are thriving so well on what, to them, is an alien planet. Dwarves transplanted to Sovyrian might find themselves suffering a similar fate, over generations, as they find nutrients and atmospheric balance and micro-organisms to be very different...)
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The simple route would have been to make the elf deity in the core rules be a classic nature/archery deity, but a lot of the choices we made for things in Golarion are deliberately off kilter.
And that's a cool thing.
As someone who'se been playing versions of D&D for decades, I've got Ehlonna (Greyhawk), Mielikki (the Realms) *and* Tanil (Scarred Lands), covering that angle already, and I'm not sure how much 'play' is left in that area that hasn't already been covered.
IMO, all three of those other elven/archery/nature goddesses were pretty awesome, and I'm not sure that there's a ton left to explore in that area that would be new and exciting.
That being said, Torag sure didn't travel too far from Moradin's shadow. A dwarven god of runes and magic (perhaps even a one-eyed Odin-homage), or something equally unexpected, could have gone the same off-the-beaten-path route that Calistria went.
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The origin of the petty vengeance is from Calistria's focus on attacking people for perceived slights over actual ones, as described in the
Okay now I see where some of my disconnect is coming from!
Spoilered because I do not want to get certain posters started on complaining about that book again and they'll never stop. I mean I had some problems with it, but damn.
Inara is a tragic figure in that show. Apart from the 'Cor Lummy! :wink wink:' lesbian episode, I don't see how you couldn't pick up on that.
She wants Mal, who is our hero, and yet 90% of conversations Mal has with Inara involve him consistently berating her choice of profession and making arguments that behind all the silk and incense, what she does is uglier than how he makes a living. He is working hard to take her out of that life. She is just doing what she can to survive, the same as everyone else on the Firefly.
A key theme in Firefly is staying true to who you are, despite the powers that be forcing economic pressure on you to compromise. Mal is the key figure that refuses to compromise his browncoat status, and his greatest irritation is that the beautiful, intelligent Inara is seen to compromise herself to nincompoops to make a living.
95% of Inara's clients are presented as incompetent virgins or men that aren't good enough for her, which is contrasted with Mal, who is. Why? Because he doesn't compromise who he is.
But you think it's positive?
I can't keep this up guys, I really can't.
I'm out of this thread too.
I never said anything of the sort; you put words in my mouth... er keyboard.
It's a sacred and spiritual profession. Her relationship with Reynolds has jack to do with that profession. Maybe her as a character, but not her profession.
Atherton Wing's disgrace in "Shindig" is a PERFECT example of how a Calistrian church would protect their priestesses; she black lists him. And it's in that same episode that Malcolm defines the difference between his opinions of what she does and her. It shows that HE respects her. He disrespects what she does, but not HER.
On the incompetent virgins: Inara chooses Fess Higgins, specifically because he's nothing like his father. He even tells her that he doesn't feel like bedding a woman made him feel like a man; would that not be an even more chauvinistic, or misogynistic (which ever applies)? If she hadn't had a reason to pick him, she wouldn't have. And the jerk kid in the pilot episode? How much do you want to bet he didn't get a gold star in the companion registry.
There is at least one episode where Inara laments her lack of work due to a lack of respectable clientele in the area.
The truly tragic thing about Inara is that she and Mal just refuse to admit their feelings for one another. Oh, and she had a terminal illness that would probably have resulted in her and Mal never being together. That puts a damper on it.
Inara was not tied to the Companion lifestyle. She left the academy of her own volition and continued to practice. With her broad range of skills, she could easily have done something else if it was so terrible, but I'd say that companions take pretty good care of one another.
I would like to have seen a little different dwarf deity as well, have the forgemaster and the hammer-wielding all-father, by all means, but some sort of outlying factor like Calistria would have been interesting.
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Oh wow. I just looked that up. It always slips my mind that Desna is a total badass.
Varisian Wanderer went into more detail on it upthread too, for those wondering about it.
Yeah, Desna will straight up shank a sucker. Someone crosses the line, she'll kick their door down, chew their face off, and burn their house down.
I like to believe Lamashtu and Ghlaunder soiled themselves just a bit when that went down.
Do explain where was this mentioned?Under "Aolar, Lady of the Hunt" on page 30-31, if I know what Mikaze's talking about for sure.
It's not a lot of info, though.
Yep!
Basically Aolar had been hacking the bestest forum on the Internet, stealing passwords and locking accounts. One of the mods, Desna, completely lost her @#$%, hacked the board Aolar hung out at, stole Aolar's personal info itself, and unilaterally restored all of the locked accounts back on her forum.
The other mods got into an argument over Desna going off on her own, both because she broke the rules but also because Aolar's hangout seemed to be preparing for a mass forum raid that could break their servers. Some of the mods argued that Desna needed her admin authority revoked and a temporary suspension. Some argued that what she did was understandable, notably Sunbeam7, <3grrl, and Calistria. Cal wasn't present for much of that debate though because she was apparently keeping busy.
That forum raid never happened. A number of its most infamous trolls had certain organized for one, and it was the most unified they had ever been that anyone could remember. It really looked like it was going to be scorched earth all around for that forum. But someone, it's believed now to have just been one person, weaved into their midst and with a combination of light hacking and mild sockpuppetry, the trolls turned on themselves and the effort just fell apart. People look back at that now, and they note that whoever was responsible was one of the greatest trolls to have ever trolled.
Calistria: problem, demon lords? :7
Win post.
This, plus your post in the Distant Worlds thread, make you my new Paizonian Hero.
Elves of Golarion would disagree, but surely there are new numbers out on what is worshiped majorly and minorly.
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This, plus your post in the Distant Worlds thread, make you my new Paizonian Hero.
On any Inara/Mal tragedy:
Kinda like someone that was raised Catholic, carrying that cultural background even as he scorned God, and someone that was...some sort of...Buddhist nun....courtesan...hybrid...this realworld analogy is falling apart, but the idea is that they're two people that really like each other but can't get over each other's culture.
That's how it came across to me at least. :)
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The last time I played an elf, I marked his deity as Shelyn. Goddess of beauty, and her favored weapon is a glaive (and my elf was a Fighter [Polearm Master]). Makes enough sense. It's not like every elf has to worship the same deity, right?
I didn't really read elves as being overly promiscuous, just a bit foppish-- they probably all have chaises longue in their houses and drink fancy coffee in the afternoon. When I roleplay an elf, I talk with a French accent (makes a nice counterpoint to the Scottish accent of the dwarves).
Honestly, if any of the core races can be labeled as "extra promiscuous", it's HUMANS. Just look at all the different half-human races there are! Half-elves, half-orcs, half-dragons, tieflings, aasimars, sylphs, ifrit, oreads, undines, the list goes on. Two out of the seven core races are half-human. If that's not crystal-clear evidence that humans will bed anything that moves, I don't know what is.
While no one has brought up the elven prosmiscuity thing to one of my PFS characters, I already imagine him making a few remarks on minotaurs, satyrs and centaurs.
I think that perhaps revisiting some of the races of Golarion might be interetsting as I imagine that there would logically be several different subcultures. I like to think that Golarion is big enough for different takes on humans, elves, dwarves and other PC races.
Hm... this is kinda getting more Alignment/Pantheon-topiced than I expected. Relevant, I expected, but not to become the dominant issue.
I kind of prefer the Elf standards of the Forgotten Realms. Innately good, more reserved towards outsiders yet unquestionably passionate with those they let in.
Take for example Innovindil from Drizzt's The Hunter's Blades trilogy:
** spoiler omitted **
This...
I think this hits my problem with the elves of Golarion... In the other settings, the 'player races' are innately good. The npcs are all over the place, but the heroes come from the so called 'goodly races.' It's what sets the elves and dwarves apart from the orcs and goblins.
Having Calistra a CN, Vengence driven, sex obessed deity who favors whips and lashes as their 'preferred' diety puts a distasteful spin on my previously favorite race.
Forgotten Realms had Goddess' like her too... but they weren't the 'highly favored' ones of 'heroes'.