Ok, seriously, who ARE those sages / scholars who are documenting stuff?


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion


More than once, I've read something along the lines of "Sages have been monitoring/watching [this creature]..." or "Scholars are aware of [this creature's behavior]...", be in Bestiaries or in sections about locations and magic items.

However, one question reamins...

Who ARE those sages and scholars? What are we talking about here? Aging wizards/loremasters in their arcane libraries? Elven scouts who spot creatures when they are on patrol? Longlasting creatures like dragons? Outsiders who observe mortals? Deities and their emissaries that pass on their knowledge to their worshippers? Dwarven blacksmiths who share their secret creations? Prisoners who spilled the bean on treasures that was recorded by peace agents?

Look, I doubt that the Pathfinder Society (yes, that is a real organisation in Golarion) has these special teams tasked to observe the wildlife and/or explore ancient civilizations, similar to how the BBC sends camera teams to observe the Earth. This has been going on ever since at least D&D 3.5, perhaps even further back, yet nobody ever addressed about the people behind all of this lore that would be available to adventurers :P

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JiCi wrote:
Look, I doubt that the Pathfinder Society (yes, that is a real organisation in Golarion) has these special teams tasked to observe the wildlife and/or explore ancient civilizations

That's literally what they do.


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I was expecting the first reply to be something a bit more conspiracy minded. Such as "You mean you don't know who THEY are? Oh.My.Garage! THEY control everything and you haven't ever heard of THEM?"

But, yeah... :)


Well, if it helps, there's a sage named Brodert Quink in Sandpoint who studies Varisian history and engineering.


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The observing wildlife portion seems to get overlooked a lot these days, probably because people expect the animals to be on tv


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Dot.


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...yes.

Seriously, though, it's probably all those things and more. With the nature-minded and knowledge-minded deities in the setting, wildlife obwervation's probably a divine calling for many. It wouldn't surprise me if the Pathfinder Society does have members dedicated to this task, or those who use the Society's resources to fulfill a personal goal of observing as many different monsters as possible. And the high-level wizards need something to do with their teleport spells and massive brainpower. ;)

Also I may have a character idea now. Cheers, mate.


I have a character that literally prepares intelligence reports.


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"Top Men...."

Scarab Sages

Explore – Report – Cooperate

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In an old 2e campaign I ran, I had an NPC sage pay the party to let him tag along (and keep him alive) so he could make notes and sketches of all the monsters they fought. In later campaigns set in that same world PCs could find his monster books for sale.


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Robert Brookes wrote:
JiCi wrote:
Look, I doubt that the Pathfinder Society (yes, that is a real organisation in Golarion) has these special teams tasked to observe the wildlife and/or explore ancient civilizations
That's literally what they do.

Yeah, it's just that that kind of work isn't interesting enough to be a scenario for Society play. At best your Pathfinders may run across some of these specialized field agents during an adventure.

Day 1: Studied nature.
Day 2: Studied nature.
Day 3: Studied nature.
...
Day 57: Something interesting happened.
Day 58: Studied nature.

That kind of thing just doesn't lend itself well to player characters.

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Melkiador wrote:
Robert Brookes wrote:
JiCi wrote:
Look, I doubt that the Pathfinder Society (yes, that is a real organisation in Golarion) has these special teams tasked to observe the wildlife and/or explore ancient civilizations
That's literally what they do.

Yeah, it's just that that kind of work isn't interesting enough to be a scenario for Society play. At best your Pathfinders may run across some of these specialized field agents during an adventure.

Day 1: Studied nature.
Day 2: Studied nature.
Day 3: Studied nature.
...
Day 57: Something interesting happened.
Day 58: Studied nature.

That kind of thing just doesn't lend itself well to player characters.

At least not during the game. One of my favorite characters had the end goal of establishing a library of monster lore once the that that was the main plot was taken care of.

Contributor

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JiCi wrote:


Who ARE those sages and scholars?

Nerds.

No, really. Every culture in history has a dedicated subculture of nerds who do nothing but study and record whatever minutae they find interesting. It just so happens that here, it could be an old wizard or scientist just as easily as it could be a yamaraj . There are guys like Brodert Quinck digging through ruins and there are entire species of outsider whose sole purpose is to study random crap, write it down, and preserve it forever.

It's usually just defined vaguely as "sages" for the sake of simplicity (and so GM's are free to plug in an NPC who might fit the situation).

Scarab Sages

PFS characters are troubleshooters. But the society employs scientists, sages, builders, spies and snitches all over Golarion.


Our world has oral and written histories and traditions. Why is this such a hard notion to accept?


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Melkiador wrote:
Robert Brookes wrote:
JiCi wrote:
Look, I doubt that the Pathfinder Society (yes, that is a real organisation in Golarion) has these special teams tasked to observe the wildlife and/or explore ancient civilizations
That's literally what they do.

Yeah, it's just that that kind of work isn't interesting enough to be a scenario for Society play. At best your Pathfinders may run across some of these specialized field agents during an adventure.

Day 1: Studied nature.
Day 2: Studied nature.
Day 3: Studied nature.
...
Day 57: Something interesting happened.
Day 58: Studied nature.

That kind of thing just doesn't lend itself well to player characters.

Wha...? How wouldn't wildlife studying be a good scenario?

My PCs have finished the Ruby Phoenix Tournament. A while after the festivities, a Pathfinder chronicler hires them as bodyguards and embarks them in a world tour around Tian Xia. His goal is simply to document the regions, but it won't be without hurdles, as each region has at least one story hook for a short scenario. By "documenting the regions", it can be to draw exotic plants, capture animals and venture down ancient ruins.

Back on topic though, did a "sage" ever manifested himself or herself for a specific discovery? I dunno... for instance, and maybe it's in one of those monster-specific booklets like "Unleashed" or "Revisited", has a sage being refered for discovering a monster's weakness or an item's secret power?

Verdant Wheel

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This is Golarion. Everything is deadly... we don't just have nerds documenting all of this, we have ACTION NERDS.

Remember, there's a whole class specifically dedicated to learning stuff about history from significant artifacts' psychic resonances. Do you know how useful that would be in modern times? "This weird rock is giving me a force-field; I'm pretty sure it's an old Holy Symbol." Archaeology would be SO much easier with psionic carbon-dating.

Heck, there's even a subset of that nerd class who are all re-enactment nerds, focusing only on battlefield items and even summoning a few of their old war heroes for a chat by picking up their weapon. You know that old family heirloom? Yeah, now you can use it to bring back Great-Grandpappy Kingkiller and ask him why he did it. Blow a whole generation of scholars' minds in the process.

Then there are those nerds who have the same psychic resonance abilities, but have the ability to transmit that information perfectly as recorded in their own minds. No need to worry about your calligraphy, just transmit the discovery thought-for-thought over to your Bard friend, and your discovery will be known across the world within a week.

Because that's another thing; it's not just Occultists, Battle Hosts and Secret Brokers that create a powerful information network through time... Bards and Skalds make our real-life oral traditions look pathetic. They keep the old knowledge alive so well that they learn a little bit about EVERYTHING THERE IS, and can become more knowledgeable than even the smartest Wizard. If you want to know about a specific monster's specific weaknesses, ask the guy who gets his powers from listening to the world's collective musings, not the guy who worked one summer in Nethys' library.

Plus, there's a Prestige Class that's devoted to this exact concept; the Pathfinder Chronicler, which is like a Bard but geekier.

(I need a buddy movie with an enthusiastically dorky Occultist historian adventuring with a bookish yet charismatic Bard-turned-Pathfinder Chronicler.)


Archeologist and Archivist archetypes

Grand Archive

Oi, I'll have less of the "nerd" language.

I didn't risk my life interviewing that ancient Kyton just to be insulted, thank you very much.

Verdant Wheel

Davina makes a good point: those nerds have a class feature that specifically grants you the ability to converse with (trap) some pretty elderly Outsiders, who would have had quite the perspective on all those barely-remembered divine battles from aeons past. They can also ask a specific number of low-HD Outsiders whose true name they know to gather their own information. I like to think of these "Outside Contacts" as seedy informants.

Of course, they need to actually cast Planar Binding (they get a free Magic Circle all of their own) to specifically call anything of high-level, but that doesn't mean they can't go out and find things to trap, or get a scroll with their ridiculous UMD.

Grand Archive

While we're on the subject, we Pathfinder Chroniclers also make excellent cartographers, what with our Pathfinding ability.

Yes. I put that inexplicably accurate dungeon map there for you to find. You're welcome.

The Exchange

Well, maybe we need new ecology articles in the vein of those old classics, when they were sometimes given in the form of actual lectures, eye witness accounts or at least reports by Elminster. Then, we knew who those nerds were (ic and ooc :D). But really, I loved those, as I loved the format of the multiple Volo's guides.

Probably that's why I took an immediate liking to the Pathfinder journal in the early APs, especially those written by Eando Kline. It's really a shame that those seem to have gone for good.

[edit:]also, Golarion really needs some Mordenkainens, Bigbys, Otilukes and Rarys to give new spells their name.

Silver Crusade

Duh, you ask your school librarian. When he isn't training teenage girls to kill vampires that is.

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