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Just doing a bit of browsing around the history and stories on some prominent elves in the realm of Golarion. I mean, I shouldn't generalise based on the fact that Calistria's a major god to them, but then I read about Merisiel, Lirianne's (Gunslinger Iconic)mum, Seltyiel's dad...
I dunno.
I mean, I do play an elf ninja who is a bit of a perv himself (he he he).
But yeah, are we really meant to be sex freaks?
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They live for a bazillion years and worship a goddess who is the archetypal high school petty and spiteful cheerleader that sleeps with the whole football team.
What do you expect?
Im sure its more a case of they just live longer so they rack more up, like I mean if your early 20's now lasts 30 years or more... thats a LOT of time to be living it large - YOLO style.
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They live for a bazillion years and worship a goddess who is the archetypal high school petty and spiteful cheerleader that sleeps with the whole football team.
And the basketball team, soccer team, lacrosse team, gymnast team, the band, the computer club, the drama club, the goths, the gearheads, the ROTC, and the cheerleaders.
Anyone else smell a new CW series?
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They live for a bazillion years and worship a goddess who is the archetypal high school petty and spiteful cheerleader that sleeps with the whole football team.
And the basketball team, soccer team, lacrosse team, gymnast team, the band, the computer club, the drama club, the goths, the gearheads, the ROTC, and the cheerleaders.
Ironically, everyone except the RPG club.
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The RPG club hangs out with Asmodeus and debate rules all day.
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Calistria is the most annoying deity in PF, but only marginally beating Cayden.
Banned in games I GM.
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Here's something to think about:
How offended would people be if Calistria had been designed as a male god, with no other changes in portfolio or personality?
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Dionysus is about generous, free love and joy, frequently a hero helping people against oppression of worthy pleasures. He's actually much closer to Cayden Cailean. Calistria is about jealous, spiteful and vengeful lust, not love. Not quite the same thing.
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Calistria is about jealous, spiteful and vengeful lust, not love. Not quite the same thing.
Exactly right.
It's a snarky annoying deity; if it was "Miss Free Love" there would be no problem, but as written she's just a horrible person on every level.
Its like some kind of Jersey Shore Goddess.
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It's not really being cried out if people are just pointing out things that make them uncomfortable. Different people percieve things differently after all.
Calistria doesn't really bother me, but others might not feel the same. And we may not even be looking at that particular deity from the same angles. I can certainly see how some would react negatively to her.
(The idea of her engaging in frequent "Counter-Trolling" after reading Book of the Damned 2 really won me over. It's a pretty awesome story.)
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According to "The Book of Erotic Adventures" (an amusing supplement I picked up a few years ago), "elves are, by definition, bisexual". That obviously doesn't mean 'slutty', but I think there's an implication in there.
Dionysus is also god of dark passion and violence - not the kind of god you want your children worshipping...
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Just doing a bit of browsing around the history and stories on some prominent elves in the realm of Golarion. I mean, I shouldn't generalise based on the fact that Calistria's a major god to them, but then I read about Merisiel, Lirianne's (Gunslinger Iconic)mum, Seltyiel's dad...
I dunno.
I mean, I do play an elf ninja who is a bit of a perv himself (he he he).
But yeah, are we really meant to be sex freaks?
If you remember, in Pathfinder alpha, elves had a special ability that made them look more attractive to the opposite gender. It was removed in latter versions because several people complained about this.
But the Paizo crew put some clues in the books and the iconics backgrounds.
I must say that I appreciate this kind of thing, it makes elves less bland, more alien than idealized humans.
But you must keep in mind that there is some drawbacks : everyone knows that all elves are pervs. At the tavern, this owner will never let his daughter serve a party of aventurers if there is an elf among them.
Never played the Alpha version.
Intersting idea though:
So I am an Elf. I am a Ninja, supposedly from Jinin... which is pretty much Japan for Elves.
TWICE THE KINK
just watch out for those things with tentacles...
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It's a snarky annoying deity; if it was "Miss Free Love" there would be no problem, but as written she's just a horrible person on every level.
Imagine that, a Chaotic Neutral deity of retribution being a heinous b&%#!.
You should hear some of the things Norgorber does. It's downright... discourteous.
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In my opinion she's more like 'petty evil' than 'chaotic neutral'. She even has an order of assassins whose job is to kill people for perceived slights rather than actual offences.
You should hear some of the things Norgorber does. It's downright... discourteous.
Well... If you want to give into the real dark side of your passions - just ask Urgathoa. It just might lead to a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
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Dionysus is about generous, free love and joy, frequently a hero helping people against oppression of worthy pleasures. He's actually much closer to Cayden Cailean. Calistria is about jealous, spiteful and vengeful lust, not love. Not quite the same thing.
Dionysus gets bad press these days. Nobody seems to remember the wholesome get-drunk-and-tear-people-and-animals-to-bloody-shreds-then-eat-them side of him. Its all about the seedy orgies now.
I've actually tried to find those darker tales but they seem to be fairly well-buried.
Imagine that, a Chaotic Neutral deity of retribution being a heinous b@$+@.
Hence why I am not keen on players rolling with Calli followers; they tend to see it as an excuse to roll with the more anti-social aspects.
Here's something to think about:
How offended would people be if Calistria had been designed as a male god, with no other changes in portfolio or personality?
Charly Harper?
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Just doing a bit of browsing around the history and stories on some prominent elves in the realm of Golarion. I mean, I shouldn't generalise based on the fact that Calistria's a major god to them, but then I read about Merisiel, Lirianne's (Gunslinger Iconic)mum, Seltyiel's dad...
I dunno.
I mean, I do play an elf ninja who is a bit of a perv himself (he he he).
But yeah, are we really meant to be sex freaks?
Honestly one of my LEAST favorite aspects of Golarion.
Forgotten Realms Elves had their quirks, their own interesting ideas about love and marraige and random hookups... but it was BACKGROUND to the high Magic and Correllon and the immortality...
Golarion tries to shove it STRAIGHT in your face and make their 'friskiness' and Calistra the main point of their writeups...
As a MAJOR fan of Elves... That was a SERIOUS disappointment to me...
I've actually tried to find those darker tales but they seem to be fairly well-buried.
If I recall, that's how Orpheus died. May be wrong on that but I'm fairly sure. Dionysus/Bacchus is fairly schizophrenic if you try to draw broad characterizations - as are most ancient gods since they changed over time and geography - but jokes aside he was an especially polarizing figure, and his worship was often... controversial. I recall reading about a public ritual where young girls had to flee a Dionysus-masked man with a sword because the one that was caught didn't live to regret it.
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Honestly one of my LEAST favorite aspects of Golarion.
Forgotten Realms Elves had their quirks, their own interesting ideas about love and marraige and random hookups... but it was BACKGROUND to the high Magic and Correllon and the immortality...
Golarion tries to shove it STRAIGHT in your face and make their 'friskiness' and Calistra the main point of their writeups...
As a MAJOR fan of Elves... That was a SERIOUS disappointment to me...
I can forgive almost anything that doesn't make them strangely short and built like 12 year olds a la FR, but a little gravitas would be nice, yeah.
Just doing a bit of browsing around the history and stories on some prominent elves in the realm of Golarion. I mean, I shouldn't generalise based on the fact that Calistria's a major god to them, but then I read about Merisiel, Lirianne's (Gunslinger Iconic)mum, Seltyiel's dad...
I dunno.
I mean, I do play an elf ninja who is a bit of a perv himself (he he he).
But yeah, are we really meant to be sex freaks?
In Golarion, yes, moreso than other settings. It can mainly be traced, back to Callistria.
Calistria is about jealous, spiteful and vengeful lust, not love. Not quite the same thing.Exactly right.
It's a snarky annoying deity; if it was "Miss Free Love" there would be no problem, but as written she's just a horrible person on every level.
Its like some kind of Jersey Shore Goddess.
Agreed. Exactly. One guy in a game loved his cleric of Callistria, I am not sure he exactly got the faith, and how petty they are. They cannot be trusted, and are the opposite of being detached with self-control, or being what is commonly thought of as "good". They are in it for themselves, worshipping the Jersey Shore goddess who only cares about herself, her needs and gratifications. Intent on making the world more petty, and more like her.
Calistria is the most annoying deity in PF, but only marginally beating Cayden.
Banned in games I GM.
I am probably going to regret this, since I am a huge fan of this deity, but: What's your problem with Cayden? You explained Calistria well enough ( and I am one who never got a good handle on how to play a Calistrian elf ), but I am curious what the beef with Cayden is.
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I do think the prostitution thing is really ugly. Paizo writers need to do some actual research about the real social cost of prostitution before they pollute the setting with unrealistic ideas about 'sacred prostitutes'.
If you`re going to argue that it`s *not* prostitution, because it`s some sort of completely different spiritual practice, then come up with a different word or cultural practice for their sexual behaviour. Don`t say prostitution but different! because that`s arguably worse than 100 pictures of chain mail bikinis.
I ignore the lore about Calistria mostly, and reimagine her as an Elf goddess female version of FLCL`s Haruhara. That works for me. *shrugs*
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I regrettably have to agree with Gorb on this one, it has happened historically, and was quite different to modern prostitution/prostitution of the poor.
There were also some Venetian nunneries of the renaissance that provided the service. History article I read last year was on it. In part for the benefit of the nuns to have some good times. Noble girls up to dodginess of the day. Caused quite a scandal.
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I like Calistria, my players like Calistria. She's a nifty goddess, and provides an excellent counter-discourse to Erastil (who I ALSO like).
Secondly: Elves are not entirely about kinky stuff, in the same sense that humans, half-orcs, gnomes and tengu aren't. The way I see it, and the way I run it they are less likely to be in committed relationships because til death do us part is a whole order of magnitude different when you're talking scales of hundreds of years.
I honestly think people project much worse things onto the setting than is actually written in (Hook Mountain Massacre aside).
Mercy? You expect mercy? SHE'S CHAOTIC NEUTRAL RARRR!
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but I am curious what the beef with Cayden is.
Originally I thought "What an interesting deity".
After the 57 straight carbon copy binge alcoholic came along that simply overemphasised the whole "ale ale ale" aspect I started to just burst a vessel with the one dimensional approach people take to him. There never really appears to be any effort to delve into Cayden, just a sort of juvenile "Hey look beer lulz" and people playing a tall version of the hackneyed Dwarven Alcoholics trope.
Theres only so much of that I can take.
There's more to following Cayden than just "Party like your Frat house is closing", especially as it also doesn't line up well with the really high Wis stat of the followers.
I'm not vexatious about, just completely over the same boring personality that they all seem to take.
Now if a player was interested in pursuing the wisdom learnt from the science of brewing and its application to the world around him/her then that would be different and interesting.
"The vigneron learns the art and science of picking a particular grape at a particular point in the season, and his timing and choice defines the nectar he produces, thus the lesson for us here today is..."
"The brewer learns that by having patience when crafting his ale he.. and we can learn from his patience and apply that lesson here today"
not
BEER BEER BEER HA LULZ IM A DRUNKEN REBEL CG/NG YAY ALEZ!
Very much so. In runelords our Cayden cleric died when he fell off a bridge onto rocks and rolled into the surf. He was so very drunk.
Got it Shifty! Run Cayden clerics as reversed wisdom! So an 8 counts as a 12. A 3 is the master arch-cleric of the frat house.
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Yeah, let's pretend some terms were never used.
Personally I think they could have done without putting sacred prostitution into game lore, but its not coming out of nowhere. Pre-christian and even most christian western civilization isn't nearly as uptight as we are; few people know that the first statue they found in the ruins of Pompeii was of Pan having sex with a goat. It was a center-piece in a wealthy Roman house.
I can forgive almost anything that doesn't make them strangely short and built like 12 year olds a la FR, but a little gravitas would be nice, yeah.Honestly one of my LEAST favorite aspects of Golarion.
Forgotten Realms Elves had their quirks, their own interesting ideas about love and marraige and random hookups... but it was BACKGROUND to the high Magic and Correllon and the immortality...
Golarion tries to shove it STRAIGHT in your face and make their 'friskiness' and Calistra the main point of their writeups...
As a MAJOR fan of Elves... That was a SERIOUS disappointment to me...
that are the standard 2d elves you think about, the FR elves where the only 2ed elve the same hight or taller than humans
Just doing a bit of browsing around the history and stories on some prominent elves in the realm of Golarion. I mean, I shouldn't generalise based on the fact that Calistria's a major god to them, but then I read about Merisiel, Lirianne's (Gunslinger Iconic)mum, Seltyiel's dad...
I dunno.
I mean, I do play an elf ninja who is a bit of a perv himself (he he he).
But yeah, are we really meant to be sex freaks?
Honestly one of my LEAST favorite aspects of Golarion.
Forgotten Realms Elves had their quirks, their own interesting ideas about love and marraige and random hookups... but it was BACKGROUND to the high Magic and Correllon and the immortality...
Golarion tries to shove it STRAIGHT in your face and make their 'friskiness' and Calistra the main point of their writeups...
As a MAJOR fan of Elves... That was a SERIOUS disappointment to me...
I feel the same
Calistra and the way Elves are potrait will never make it into any of my pathfinder campaigns
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I've actually tried to find those darker tales but they seem to be fairly well-buried.
Dyonisian Mysteries on wikipedia
The Bacchae (worshippers of Dionysus) full text
Orpheus slain by Maenads (female worshippers of Dionysus
More poetically, by Virgil.
And everybody loves Ovid!
Euripides, Virgil and Ovid remain superstars of Ancient Mediterranean literature, Pseudo-Apollodorus was a hack but is thorough and concise, Pausanias is a solid reference writer.
That's a bit more useful. The main pages on Dionysus barely mentions that stuff.
So Dionysus was sometimes terrible. That makes him terrible (or at least makes some of his followers terrible). It doesn't absolve Calistria.
Bit of shame dwarves didn't get the same treatment.
Huh? Dwarves remained high-magic-tree-hugging-tolkienesque-FR wimps in PF?
*ducks for cover*
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That's a bit more useful. The main pages on Dionysus barely mentions that stuff.
So Dionysus was sometimes terrible. That makes him terrible (or at least makes some of his followers terrible). It doesn't absolve Calistria.
I think the argument would be that Dionysus shows us how a deity can have both terrible and benign aspects. Not that I especially agree because Calistria doesn't seem to have much going for her on the benign side.
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Bit of shame dwarves didn't get the same treatment.Huh? Dwarves remained high-magic-tree-hugging-tolkienesque-FR wimps in PF?
*ducks for cover*
No, they're still work-hard-and-drink-beer-live-underground-beards-ancestors-dead-serious-fig ht-orcs stuff we see everywhere. There's a dash of Judaism and some cool things with Droskar, but overall they're boring as hell and remind me of Warhammer dwarves in every worst way.
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I'd prefer that Elves were give the same versatility as humans would have. I mean, I'd like to play an elf that's a womanising perv because he is so, not because he was designed that way, like elves are.
You think Shalelu Andosana is a perv? Queen Telandia? Kreighton Shaine? All those elves who follow Desna, Nethys, Findeladlara?
You're taking something small and blowing it out of proportions.