A Void Yai retcon?

[Gluttony]

Just something I've considered since getting the Inner Sea Bestiary:

The Void Yai oni in Bestiary 3 is supposedly not similar to any type of giant. Now that the Inner Sea Bestiary has introduced shadow giants however, doesn't that seem a bit... wrong?

It seems almost like a given that Void Yai are based off of the shadow giants, even if retroactively.

[Generic Villain]

Void yai most closely resemble rune giants. They have no relation to shadow giants.

[Landon Winkler]

Gluttony wrote:

The Void Yai oni in Bestiary 3 is supposedly not similar to any type of giant. Now that the Inner Sea Bestiary has introduced shadow giants however, doesn't that seem a bit... wrong?

Since the other Bestiaries are setting neutral, I'm not sure it's a good fit to have a type of Oni from it tied to a specific setting.

I'd actually imagine there are Golarion-specific Shadow Yai instead, but I haven't gotten my Inner Sea Bestiary yet to say how close they'd be to Void Yai.

Generic Villain wrote:

Void yai most closely resemble rune giants. They have no relation to shadow giants.

That reminds me of something: is their any talk anywhere about the ancient Thassilonians making deals with Oni to get their help controlling/empowering giants?

It seems like a great possible connection, but I haven't the faintest idea if it's official.

Cheers!
Landon

[Generic Villain]

Landon Winkler wrote:

I'd actually imagine there are Golarion-specific Shadow Yai instead, but I haven't gotten my Inner Sea Bestiary yet to say how close they'd be to Void Yai.

The real indicator that there's no relation is CR. An oni's CR tends to be a few higher than the creature it evolved from, and only rune giants have a CR anywhere close to a void yai's. If you want an official ruling, here it is:

James Jacobs wrote:

Fire yai go with fire giants.

Ice yai go with frost giants.

Water yai go with storm giants.

Wind yai go with cloud giants.

Not pictured are the void yai, who go with rune giants.

Landon Winkler wrote:

That reminds me of something: is their any talk anywhere about the ancient Thassilonians making deals with Oni to get their help controlling/empowering giants?

It seems like a great possible connection, but I haven't the faintest idea if it's official.

Yeah it's a little weird right? There's no talk about Thassilonians dealing with oni specifically, but nothing ruling it out either. My opinion: oni are purely spiritual beings who latch on to other creatures to give them form. The fact that rune giants were artificially created wouldn't really mean much to onis. All they care about is gaining flesh to experience the world.

[Landon Winkler]

Generic Villain wrote:

The real indicator that there's no relation is CR. An oni's CR tends to be a few higher than the creature it evolved from, and only rune giants have a CR anywhere close to a void yai's. If you want an official ruling, here it is:

Awesome, thanks for the link!

Generic Villain wrote:

Yeah it's a little weird right? There's no talk about Thassilonians dealing with oni specifically, but nothing ruling it out either. My opinion: oni are purely spiritual beings who latch on to other creatures to give them form. The fact that rune giants were artificially created wouldn't really mean much to onis. All they care about is gaining flesh to experience the world.

I agree they wouldn't care about rune giants being artificial, but that would say some very interesting things about Thassilon.

If the void yai, as possessed rune giants, didn't exist before Thassilon created rune giants... that's a huge deal. I don't mean that as a counter-argument, but it means that the ramifications of Thassilon's magic are truly epic and multi-planar in scope.

I might use that in my Rise of the Runelords campaign, but I could also see void yai ascending from the ranks of other yai and the Thassilonians reverse-engineering that process to create rune giants.

If I had to guess, I'd say the void yai are probably much older than Thassilon and were somehow involved in creating the rune giants. But it really depends how epic you want to make Thassilon.

Cheers!
Landon

[Generic Villain]

Landon Winkler wrote:

I agree they wouldn't care about rune giants being artificial, but that would say some very interesting things about Thassilon.

If the void yai, as possessed rune giants, didn't exist before Thassilon created rune giants... that's a huge deal. I don't mean that as a counter-argument, but it means that the ramifications of Thassilon's magic are truly epic and multi-planar in scope.

I might use that in my Rise of the Runelords campaign, but I could also see void yai ascending from the ranks of other yai and the Thassilonians reverse-engineering that process to create rune giants.

If I had to guess, I'd say the void yai are probably much older than Thassilon and were somehow involved in creating the rune giants. But it really depends how epic you want to make Thassilon.

Cheers!
Landon

If I recall, rune giants were a mix of taiga giant and fire giant. I could go back and read their original article in Spires of Xin-Shalast, but meh. Anyway, like you I find it hard to imagine that the most powerful oni suddenly sprang into being only a few thousand years ago, and only because of a few mortals' ingenuity. So we have to conclude that void yai predate Thassilon, which... yeah, just leads to more questions.

It is worth noting that, but for that JJ post, I couldn't find anything stating that void yai are actually possessed rune giants. One would expect to find such a link either in the void yai's B3 entry, or in the oni article in the first Jade Regent adventure. Thus, it's possible that this link doesn't officially exist. Who knows.