So why make Golarion disappear?

[Hunt, the PugWumpus]

Master Pugwampi wrote:

Look people, it's really very simple:

Golarion was removed to make way for a hyperspatial express route through the star system.

You've got to make hyperspatial express routes! Without them, we would have to muck about navigating around all sorts of celestial objects! Imagine!

>:)

{sets down six pints of bitters and four packets of peanuts} Drink up. We've got about 10 minutes. {ties towel around waist, starts gulping own pint of beer}

[Hunt, the PugWumpus]

Erik Mona wrote:

Actually, ERIK MONA's like or dislike of Doctor Who is what's important here.

I'm also the guy who came up with the "Golarion is missing" angle.

Make of that what you will. :)

Should we be calling you "Star-Mona, Legendary Publisher" now?

[Matthew Pittard]

Ill take no badmouthing of Dr Who here.....

How about this for a theory. Golarion isn't actually gone, its just been phased out of time 5 seconds so we can never actually see it or interact with it.

[Eltanin24]

It's clear that what ever happened to Galorian... The aboleth's did it.

[Steve Geddes]

Erik Mona wrote:

Steve Geddes wrote:

Erik Mona wrote:

Actually, ERIK MONA's like or dislike of Doctor Who is what's important here.

I'm also the guy who came up with the "Golarion is missing" angle.

Make of that what you will. :)

How much fun would it be to get to write one of the first AP instalments?

Chance of a lifetime, I reckon. :o

Quiet, you.

All I'm saying is: What's the use of having ultimate power if you never get to use it?

[Neongelion]

UnArcaneElection wrote:

. . . And good luck finding anyone who still plays D&D 4th/5th Editions.

Uh, a LOT of people are playing 5th edition, and quite a few still play 4th edition. Maybe not so much in your area, but 5e is hardly in the minority in the RPG market, not even close.

shadram wrote:

I can think of plenty of reasons, many of them already stated above. But another is that it lets them use the outline in Distant Worlds but also allows it to be a brand new setting. If Golarion was there, people would just want more details on Golarion in the future setting. This way, they can keep the people of Golarion (based on Absalom Station) but focus on the stranger, more alien worlds they've created.

Literally what I was just typing up! Curse you!

Yeah, I'm a fan of whisking away Golarion someplace else. I'd hate to be the writer(s) charged with inventing thousands of years of more history, especially one transitioning from a fantasy world to science fiction that still has that fantasy aspect.

[Vic Wertz]

Azih wrote:

Unless they do it really well Starfinder risks trivializing all the Golarion lore. Even if they do do it well it'll always be hard for some people to accept that all their Golarion adventures are kinda 'meaningless' as the whole planet just ups and disappears.

Sorry, man... hate to tell you all this, but as far as your future is concerned... well, maybe it's just best to go ahead and say it: You really needed a better roll on that last save. Sorry. So, so sorry.

And that whole closing the Worldwound thing? Yeah, congrats on pulling that off, and all, but even the statues built in y'all's honor have been destroyed by now. Nothing personal—it's just time, you know? It razes even the highest mountain.

But hey, I mean, all that is with "you" in the general sense. Of course I don't mean "you" specifically. YOU are like a god, always revered, always remembered, every die roll the subject of a different song taught to children. It's all those *other* characters I was talking about before. You know—them.

[Tacticslion]

Neongelion wrote:

UnArcaneElection wrote:

. . . And good luck finding anyone who still plays D&D 4th/5th Editions.

Uh, a LOT of people are playing 5th edition, and quite a few still play 4th edition. Maybe not so much in your area, but 5e is hardly in the minority in the RPG market, not even close.

I think it was less a stab at those editions, and more a general joke based on the idea that we'd all be here for thousands of years of Pathfinder APs.

:)

[Alexander Augunas]

Spoiler:

My headcanon is that the world of Starfinder is, up until when you play it, a world without PCs. Every bad thing that could have happened in every AP (those released and unreleased) happened, and Golarion's integrity was weakened to such an extreme point that the gods decided to just pull off every living creature from Golarion, scatter them around the solar system, and stash the planet away in the First Vault as the example of the perfect failure of a deific experiment.

I mean, the fact that there's apparently an AI who ascended to divinity in Starfinder is all the validation that I need, personally. :-P

[Odraude]

We may want to be wary of the Iron Gods spoilers to those of us that haven't read it.

[Malwing]

I did a search on the thread for the phrase 'One Piece' and I'm disappointed.

[Future Timeline Jon Snow]

Well, don't look at me, no one tells me s*!!.

[Snorb]

Why make Golarion disappear?

The same reason we have Star Trek '09: Because Star Trek: Nemesis f#@#in' killed the franchise we need an excuse for younger/sexier Alternate Universe versions of Ameiko and Shalelu, of course! =p

[UnArcaneElection]

Tacticslion wrote:

Neongelion wrote:

UnArcaneElection wrote:

. . . And good luck finding anyone who still plays D&D 4th/5th Editions.

Uh, a LOT of people are playing 5th edition, and quite a few still play 4th edition. Maybe not so much in your area, but 5e is hardly in the minority in the RPG market, not even close.

I think it was less a stab at those editions, and more a general joke based on the idea that we'd all be here for thousands of years of Pathfinder APs.

:)

Exactly. Besides, after thousands of years, D&D will probably be on approximately 500th Edition, and even Pathfinder might have undergone a couple of Edition increments.

[Richard Redmane]

Clearly the chaos wizard Zargothrax was involved in some way.

[Foeclan]

UnArcaneElection wrote:

Too bad about the economic crash of 4808. That Varisian real-estate bubble on compound derivatives will get you every time, and nobody could come to an agreement by which the Korvosan, Magnimaran, and Riddleportian governments would bail out the Bank of Abadar . . . .

Not to mention the SERIOUS crash in the Varisian real estate market when the entire planet disappeared.

[UnArcaneElection]

^from the point of view of those on Golarion, it probably seems that the rest of the universe disappeared. Although if I had to guess, when that happened, they probably wound up with a sickly bloated angry orange sun as a replacement for their original sun, and ALL real estate has probably become less desirable.

[Alleran]

Torbyne wrote:

CBDunkerson wrote:

Joana wrote:

James Jacobs has been very emphatic that Aroden is dead

Yes, but 'dead' isn't always permanent on Golarion. There are disparate hints and theories (not to mention a module) about how he might be able to come back. I doubt they mean for any of those to happen, but the possibility exists.

Oh come on. He was just a god, not an X-man. Dude's not coming back.

To be perfectly fair, several X-men can and have pulled double-duty as gods, but the revolving door of comic book death being what it is, nobody has failed to come back to life/undeath at least once. Even Uncle Ben has.

What module, incidentally? I'm obviously not up to date.

[Unreliable Narrator]

Quote:

So why make Golarion disappear?

Clearly the Martial Arcanists of Golarion Optimizer's Guild (M.A.G.O.G.) perfected the art of murderhoboing with their ultimate base class, the Krikkiter. As a result, the gods immediately sealed the planet in a Slo-Time Mayonnaise Jar, within which time would pass almost infinitely slowly for the professional murderhobos until the end of the Universe. Thus the rest of the Universe is now safe from being killed until dead, their corpses chunky-salsa'ed, and all their belongings looted for resale.

[Grond]

Martin Kauffman 530 wrote:

IF Golarion disappears, maybe I'll have no choice but to go back to D&D 5e. Well, probably not- I still haven't forgiven WotC for 4.0. I'm not a fan of the science fiction based game genre: and I have enough Pathfinder material to keep running games for years to come.

They are not destroying Pathfinder or stopping to produce it. This is not Games Workshop with their idiotic and frankly horrible decision to destroy their Warhammer fantasy world and replace it with excrement. Pathfinder will be fine. You can completely ignore Starfinder if you want.

[UnArcaneElection]

^For a few thousand years, at least.

[Flynn Greywalker]

Vic Wertz wrote:

Azih wrote:

Unless they do it really well Starfinder risks trivializing all the Golarion lore. Even if they do do it well it'll always be hard for some people to accept that all their Golarion adventures are kinda 'meaningless' as the whole planet just ups and disappears.

Sorry, man... hate to tell you all this, but as far as your future is concerned... well, maybe it's just best to go ahead and say it: You really needed a better roll on that last save. Sorry. So, so sorry.

And that whole closing the Worldwound thing? Yeah, congrats on pulling that off, and all, but even the statues built in y'all's honor have been destroyed by now. Nothing personal—it's just time, you know? It razes even the highest mountain.

But hey, I mean, all that is with "you" in the general sense. Of course I don't mean "you" specifically. YOU are like a god, always revered, always remembered, every die roll the subject of a different song taught to children. It's all those *other* characters I was talking about before. You know—them.

I can't stop chuckling after reading the dripping fun and sarcasm in this.

[Zloid]

The theory that I used is…
Starfinder IS the Age of Glory.
Think about it, what do we know about Aroden, the prophecy and the events leading up to his Death.
Aroden was the god of humaninty, culture, innovation, and history. While the Starstone did elevate him to Divinity, he was already well-known and beloved by his people far before then. His holy symbol, the Eye of Aroden, an unblinking divine eye balanced between earth and the heavens, representing his guidance over humanity and his ceaseless watch against those who would do harm to his people.
Well what if ‘those’ who would do harm to his people… were his people.

Even before Aroden was a God, he was a part of a culture that was far more advanced than most for his time. After Earthfall he was able to stabilize the broken remains of those that survived and promised to push humankind forwards towards the future. And as a god, he very easily would have been able to do exactly that.

Aroden was so important to people because he was one of them. He was a human, a blacksmith, that became a God. Someone that believed in humanity enough to pull the Starstone from impossible depths, so he could give humanity the chance to prove to itself that if you try hard enough, there is not anything you can’t accomplish.

It’s probably that his love for humanity and his faith in its drive to keep moving forwards, might be the very reason he is gone.

If Aroden saw that his presence and influence lead to Absalom becoming the next Thassilon, the empire known for its culture and advances, but also its cruelty and total disregard for anyone they deemed below themselves, he's be horrified.

My guess is that he saw the ‘birth’ of Starfinder.

Absalom, high on its own magnificence and accomplishments in technological and magical advancements, create the Absalom Station. Harnessing the power of the Starstone, a dangerously unstable energy source, they set their sights for the stars. They ascend towards it’s glorious golden future, elevating humanity to new heights never before accomplished. And the Prophecy comes to fruition.

The resulting backlash inevitably caused by the unnatural use of the StarStone results in the destabilization of the last threads of magic holding Golarion together.The planet crumples in on itself and begins to literally tear itself apart. The result, the death of everyone left on the planet, the release of Rovagug and a fight that probably killed a lot of the Gods.

Unable to witness such horror and know it was caused by his beliefs, Aroden’s mind probably would have broken and caused him to tear out his own spark in a fit of mania and desperation to stop the Prophecy. Creating the Echo of Divinity and causing the calamities across Golarion as he rejects everything that he once stood for. Pharasma is the unfortunate bystander in all this. Though she knows what happened, it is not her place to say and instead keeps Arodens last sparn of life with her.

As for those aboard the Absalom Station, they end up cast aside and forsaken by the Gods, left to drift through space with the knowledge of what they’d done. Obviously, the information would be kept secret, and as the remaining survivors slowly repopulated, the Station continued to evolve, and new generations are born. Humanity would do what it does best. Move forward, and the truth would slowly be lost.

At some point or another, thousands of years into the future, the truth would have come out and the Gods would once again, probably need to step in. However, because there are so few of them left, and they would be considerably weaker. Their solution, the Gap.

So, when you ask the Gods, ‘Where is Golarion and it’s people?’
The response you get is about YOU. The last remaining part and people of Golarion is YOU. Even now, the Gods are trying to protect you. Don't believe me?
Re-read this.

“Absalom Station is a sprawling, densely inhabited space station filling a similar orbit that the forgotten planet Golarion once held around its sun. Its inhabitants include races native to, or descended from natives of, Golarion, making the station the last relic of the lost planet remaining in the Pact Worlds system.”

[John Lynch 106]

Abraham spalding wrote:

You see Golarion is actually an ancient form of the Gallifrey.

And now everything should make sense.

Depending on how Starfinder goes with my group and PF2e goes, I may end up doing something very close to this.

Assuming Starfinder is enjoyable enough that we want to make it a regular staple of our games (and assuming Pathfinder 2e goes the way it appears to be going), we're not going to have any more PF1e Golarion specific material. As such I'm completely freed up in how I portray future Golarion. So I'm tempted to run a campaign that involves lots of time travel, aeons, seeing Golarion in different states until finally the big mystery of it's disappearance is revealed.

The mystery of Aroden's death stopped being a mystery after 2 or 3 years. Now it's become a footnote (for my group) that isn't remarked upon or talked about. So if my group keeps playing Starfinder I think it'd be better to resolve the mystery sooner rather than later.

There's always a silver lining in life if you look hard enough.

(And I just saw the post I replied to was dated 2016. Oops)

[warmachine]

Holy thread necromancy, Batman!

My theory is the designers wanted the option to copy stuff from Pathfinder into their new space fantasy, so they put it in to same universe but they'd get pestered for the history linking the two. They wanted a setting like the modern world, so players could understand it, but that would make the history comparable to our history, including economic development during technological revolutions.

Much like religion was a seething issue during medieval times, economics is a seething issue now. Any economic history the designers could invent risks a never ending flame war. Better to invent an excuse to never write about economics or economic history.