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As for my favorite monster well...
** spoiler omitted **
This I cannot wait to see! :D
*Cheering for Szuriel intensifies*
I am now wildly curious if my baby Szuriel (assuming she's the one who kills Gorum) did it on her own design or if she was hired to do it by another power, be it a deity or otherwise. I'm super excited to see this all play out as things get released! <3 Also I would murder if it let me do a daemon-themed AP. Just saying!
Color me intrigued! Color the Horsemen salivating.
Welcome all of you new wonderful people and you returning rock stars alike!
Sorry for the wildly late response. I didn't see the new post! Oh you are more than welcome! She's one of my favorite creations! I'd suspect that Szuriel would happily deal with 'loths if she got to further the Blood War and in any tangential way get to deal death to mortals in the process whenever that spilled over. As for the 'loths, rest assured that the arcanaloths penning contracts with her would flatter and bow and praise, all while holding her with complete and utter disdain. Having daemons and yugoloths within the same cosmos brings up intriguing questions of course: would daemons end goal of destroying all mortal life end up causing issues for 'loths in a Planescape type cosmology where belief shapes the outer planes, and without mortal belief would that starve the outer planes? Or... since the 'loths predate mortal life in that sort of cosmology would some of them consider going all in with daemons to return the planes to that original, primeval version prior to mortals. Or... would the idea of daemonic annihilation disgust them because it offered oblivion rather than the yugoloth ideal of perfect, all-pervading suffering? Lots of possibilities!
As long as I still get to write more about my slithery, warpwavey babies the proteans, and as long as I have the possible option of expanding more upon axiomites (who, like proteans, have been purely Paizo content from day 1) I'm down with however Chaos and Law are handled. :)
Ooooooh I like the potential here for planar content!
By the strict rules reading it's a single standard action to slurp it up, crystalize, and regurgitate it as a nice, new, shiny soul gem. In a game I'm more likely to extend the time period as needed for narrative and tension effect. Are summoned (not called) cacodaemons willing and able to hand over a created soul gem, provided it is able to stick around long enough for the soul gem to be created? Following that, if they are able, does the soul gem disappear when the summoned cacodaemon disappears? If not, would knowing they are unable to keep it to take back to a higher powered daemon lead to more of a willingness to give it over to the one who summond it? I'd rule it as yes, both summoned and called cacodaemons are absolutely more and even giddily willing to hand over soul gems. The joy for them is in the making of the gems and their own little contribution to the downfall of mortal life, whatever the immediate fate of the bottled soul. Long term it benefits daemon-kind. I tend to play them as talkative while they're eating and puking them back up, describing the soul's taste, their plans, how they'd love to do the same to their mortal audience/summoner, etc just to make the situation unseemly and disturbing. Playing up the horror of it all despite them cacodaemon being a little, awkward, toothy football of a fiend. Or would it be more likely to consume the soul, regurgitate the soul gem (if required for this part), and then consume it itself to send the soul to Abbadon? Provided of course it has the time to do this. I generally avoid having cacodaemons capable of eating their own soul-gems, though they will absolutely try regardless of being able to or not. Have them gnawing futilely on it, slurping on it like a lozenge to no effect, etc. The get their metaphysical sustenance from the act of creating the gem and siphoning off tiny bits of essence, not from devouring the souls directly. Edit: Also, not sure if you had a hand in create soul gem, but if so, a player also recently asked if a mundane item such as a ring or necklace could be set with a cut and polished soul gem created by the spell and still function as a soul gem in the future, or at least persist past the length of time the spell states given that it has been used to craft an item. (Sorry for the tack on.) To be honest I've worked on so much stuff over the years that I don't specifically recall on that. Odds are that yes I did since I solo wrote the book it showed up in first, but it may have been added during development and I don't have the submitted rough draft handy at the immediate moment. But, that being said, I'd absolutely say that you could polish the gem and have it set in jewelry and retain its function as a soul gem in the future, especially for narrative effect. Hope my informed by non-canon answers help! Thank you for asking! :)
An awesome team! I can't wait to see what you come up with, and I hope to work with all of you in the future!
My own personal obscure obsession is Maelstrom prehistory and its earliest interactions with the Qlippoth and the Abyss, and the activities of obscure protean choruses (such as the Wyrms of Paradox/Chorus of Malignant Symmetry, Chorus of Razored Discord, Chorus of the Burning Spiral, Chorus of the Broken Spire, etc). Secondly I adore the perpetually revisionist history of Abaddon as each new Horseman alters their own history books, and how the original Horsemen all but erased the Bound Prince/The 1st Horseman/The Oinodaemon from cosmic historical memory when they overthrew them. Plus the notion that there was an original hideously NE soul that developed into the Oinodaemon and really what sort of acts in life would that have taken to seed? Basically I adore planar historical mysteries and dangling, open-ended plot hooks (like the Lethe Wall in Galisemni, the nature of the Prison of the Laughing Fiend, etc) and I promise I will make more of them given the opportunity.
Don't have my copy of the Great Beyond nearby, but IIRC there is a sphere at the center of the Negative energy plane that basically says, in words immediately understandable to any onlooker, that the game has already been played and lost and that reality is but an illusion to conceal this abominable truth. I had fun creating Eternity's Doorstep. It gets touched upon further in 'Planar Adventures'. >:)
*smiling and listening to the conversation*
I just had a crazy idea, Amber. Do you think Astrid could be built as a pixie sprite? She may be small even for that and may be hard to put in dragon features, but it might work so that you can play her in a Pathfinder game. That's one way to do it I suppose. I've played her before as a PC actually, back in PF1 as a custom race I worked with the GM to approve for use in their game. The game didn't last super long, but she was a joy to play!
A book of planar cities, with connections to other planes and planar trade routes, and reasons and rationale for PCs of various levels of power and ability to be there or want to go there: that's what I would love to see at some point. Give us a book on the most prominent planar trade cities like Galisemni, Shadow Absalom, Awaiting-Consumption, High Ninshabur, Vialesk, etc. I'd also love to write it. I'd also love to write any book about any of the Pathfinder planes. :D
*collides with keftiu and explodes in a shower of gamma rays*
Tons of mortals living in Galisemni, in the Maelstrom.
This is awesome Patrick! I can't wait to see more of these blogs! *goes to send off an email to marketing*
Not jumping into the conversation fully, but I wanted to say that I'm always curious to see folks discussing proteans and their particular flavor(s) or Chaotic Neutrality, especially as it contrasts with, for instance, the slaadi from D&D. I tried to go out of my way to make proteans less 'evil lite' or 'comic relief' as slaadi (as much as I love them, especially Xanxost) were often portrayed, especially so after Planescape. Ultimately I think proteans can't be judged on a broad level for "what does CN mean to them" but rather "what does this individual protean, a member of this individual chorus have, for the moment, as a motivating philosophy and immediate course of action".
Has anyone ever played a character who was a devotee of a protean lord? I'd love to hear about them. My PC in my last campaign that I was a player in, I played Il'setsya Wyrmtouched aka D'zenirusiphia the Pink Exhalation of Wanton Whimsy. She was a devotee of the Watching Se7en of Galisemni (who may or may not be the original keketars who comprised the Chorus of Malignant Symmetry), and she was also a self-appointed fan-girl of Ssila'meshnik the Colorless Lord. I once played her in a one-shot PaizoCon game that Erik Mona ran, and every time she introduced herself to a new named NPC I had her ramble out a completely new protean name/title each and every time (about 5 times). She was -VERY- CN without (as much as I could) derailing the campaign or making things un-fun for the other players. She was scatterbrained, focused on the moment, random, and hedonistic, yet brilliant. She was goals. :3 She later showed up in print in 'Planar Adventures', as an in-character source of information in the gazetteer of Gluttondark in 'Extinction Curse: Siege of the Dinosaurs', and later she shows up as an NPC in 'AoE: Ruins of the Radiant Siege'. I wrote the following that should give a good idea of her personality as both a ganzi and as a follower of a protean chorus (sometimes known as 'The Mad Chorus' if that says anything): So You Want To Summon Il'setsya Wyrmtouched - A Guide to Alcoholism and Catastrophe in 12 Steps. [Warning, it has potentially naughty words]
First things first: all of my statements here are my opinion only rather than canonical unless something I say appears in print. That out of the way I think the one thing you need to keep in mind about proteans is that they don't really have a single overall goal*. Instead each individual chorus will have their own specific philosophy/goal/obsession, and that each chorus may radically change to something else as the Maelstrom/Speakers of the Depths so inspires them. *[Yes, dissolve the rest of non-CN reality back into the true freedom of the Maelstrom is a 'goal' but it isn't necessarily the immediate driving force of every single protean. Likewise 'go nuts and wail on any demon or qlippoth because they're the original corruption of true chaos and yeah, sure, we'll get to those dumb LN axiomites eventually, we guess if opportunity strikes' is also a 'goal', but same caveat there.] One chorus like the Chorus of Malignant Symmetry may have had the focus of 'Crack open a doorway to the Abyss because that would be cool! *chaotic crushing of chaotic beer cans into chaotic foreheads*' while the Chorus of the Lambent Moon and Broken Spire has the notion of 'tear down Pharasma's spire' while another might be focused on 'close the Worldwound because demons suck' and another 'create demiplanes full of a amazing living creatures as living art forms', and another 'inspire mortals to make chess sets, and sometimes murder lawful chess players as a bonus'. There's really no rhyme or reasons behind what a particular chorus might be doing, but there's the haunting notion that -all of them- are working towards a gigantic butterfly effect, contrived and coordinated by the Speakers of the Depths. Maybe. If they actually care about anything that happens in existence. Whatever. Tailor it all to your own campaign and have fun! :D
Yes, it's just a bit of protean-speak constantly, incessantly talking to him, slowly taking a toll on his mortal brain.
And big thank you for Wes Schneider back in the day giving me my first chance in Dragon Magazine, and then, after I'd submitted my first draft, he wrote me back explaining how to avoid using passive voice (because that's default in scientific writing but not in fiction and I'd quite literally never learned or even taken a creative writing class in college). I wouldn't be here if he hadn't given me the chance and then taking the time to teach me something I needed to know. <3 Also a huge nostalgic thank you to Mike McArtor for writing the outline for one of my first Pathfinder projects, the original Osirion book that I worked on with Jason Nelson. Mike was awesome and he is missed.
OMG this thread is awesome! Thank you so much Kobold Cleaver and WormysQueue for your kind words! I'm absolutely humbled that you and others have enjoyed my work over the years. I'm still shocked that I've ever been able to write anything for publication since I didn't do any fiction writing until grad school, I come from a hard science background, and I originally pitched stuff to Dragon and Dungeon magazines on a complete lark, not thinking that I'd even get a glance, but years later and here we are! I've loved every project that Paizo has graciously let me work on, and I've adored every bit of planar content (and non-planar content too!) that I've been able to write for Pathfinder, and I absolutely hope to continue writing similar stuff in the future! I don't usually hear much feedback on stuff I write, so I genuinely treasure any level of feedback, even harsh critique if it's honestly written (for instance I still haven't gotten a review on my first AP entry ;_;). Man, now I just have a laundry list of things in my head that I want to write more of for publication.
Some Axiomite in Axis: Oh my God Becky, look at her tail
Ganzi evolved a bit since the original presentation in 'Distant Shores', to one with multiple subtypes based on the various beings of Chaos from the Maelstrom. Since the proteans are the primary heralds of CN, protean-touched ganzi got a prehensile tail. Probably didn't hurt that the one illustrated example ganzi in 'Planar Adventures' was protean-touched with a tail that a keketar would have been proud to call their own. The key thing is that they're wildly varied in appearance, probably more so than any other planar scion. So go crazy with customizing them in your home game!
I'm always open to improving my work, especially when it comes to making it more sensitive and inclusive. I want the broadest audience to enjoy my work, and I can't do that if I don't at least try to listen to opinions and critiques.
I don't think I did the first one, and I didn't write material with that second point. I did go out of my way in HotJ to reference areas off the map, to the south of the Mwangi expanse, including the Shatterfield and a number of Bekyar city states, and an ancient gate in one of the southern mountain ranges that suggested an older Mwangi nation had once built it to fend off attacks from 'something' from the south, leaving the specifics to GMs and/or future expansion. I haven't read enough of the PF2 book to see if either of these was touched upon. I mean, imagine of Avistan were described as a monolithic entity with sparse detail. "Demons once opened up a portal in Avistan and Avistanis rushed to combat the Worldwound." Or, "Avistanis are fair-skinned with imperialistic tendencies." To an extent I think coverage of Old Sarkoris (which I've always viewed as having hallmarks of inspiration from early Slavic and Siberian cultures) has been like this. I'd love now, post-Worldwound closure that some more detail on the pre-Worldwound culture there could be expanded on as they start to reclaim their homeland, bit by bit. I worked on the Worldwound book in 1e and I did try, where relevant, to try to include things hearkening back to the history of the region pre-Worldwound.
I can come back to this later, if it’s truly desired, but I feel like my points are made. I appreciate your commentary and I can absolutely agree with trying to avoid some of the framing that can seem belittling to the indigenous groups. I will say however to my own relief that of the content that you took issue with, I didn't write any of it. The sections that I do specifically recall writing include the Aerie of Bloodletting Songs, Ranage's Circle, Regions Further South, Kibwe, Nantambu, Osibu, and Senghor. Then in chapter 3 I wrote Arzikal, Bloodsalt, Holy Xatramba, and Ird, Sele, Spiro Spero, and Zurakai the Lost.
You'll need to skip ahead to chapter 2 and 3 for my stuff as I recall for some of the specific modern cities, older historical civilizations that predated them, and adventuring locations.
I wrote a decent number of the locations in the original 'Heart of the Jungle' so if you don't mind, could you expand on specific instances that you found problematic in the original versus how it was written in the PF2 book? My approach for the original book wasn't any different from how I'd approach describing anything in say the Worldwound, or the Planes, or somewhere else in Garund or in Avistan. So if you could, what approach taken in HotJ would be an issue versus the same approach taken for any of the other locations? I'm genuinely curious and want to better my work where possible.
I'd prefer Amber, but I understand that folks have known my work by the former for a long time. While I created Alazhra as the patron of the Night Hags (as a much more alien tip of the hat to the rather obscure figure of Cegilune from Planescape) I didn't work a ton on night hags outside of the passing mentions in TGB. So as far as canonical information, I can't provide more than there is already out there. But in my home games I would absolutely present the night hags as having a fairly complex political/ideological factionalization, united by the soul trade. It's also quite possible that non-Alazhrite night hags might not have the same absolute protection from harm while in Abaddon that their other kindred have, which is a big deal, and that opens up for the possibility of Alazhra's faithful being capable of the occasional soul trade business deal with a harbinger or Horseman in Abaddon that includes the assassination of business rivals from another faction lacking that divine-mediated protection. Given hag's role in the soul trade, and the assumed daemon-mediated oblivion at the end of most paths within that trade, that Alazhra's place as an overt patron of that is a singular oddity given that almost all of the rest of the cosmos abhors it. It's probably the genesis of a lot of ideological conflict within their society.
Any thoughts on those demiplanes in the back? :0 My thoughts are that I had an absolute blast writing them! :D
Given the prior use in the module of using celestial and daemonic in various capacities, given Kharnas's history, I'd suggest using something like a custom composed pidgin language that mixed grammar and vocabulary from both of those languages.
It's my first AP entry so trust me, I'm legitimately giddy to chatter about it at every dang opportunity I'm afforded! Any comments, any feedback, any thoughts, any experiences while playing through it... I'm a captive audience for it. I will note however that there are some things I cannot truly comment on, such as changes made during development versus my draft, and content that I didn't create. For such things I will 99.9% of the time politely not address.
The camarachs were a post-turnover addition, and I didn't have knowledge of them/their size when I did that room. They're really cool critters, so I'd just increase the size the room to accommodate them.
I would say yes.
Things are improving with increased vaccination %, but things are still a bit too early for in-person conventions of that size. So I'm very happy with Paizo's decision here.
I always viewed Communist-killing-fields-nightmare-Bachuan as very similar in tone to literal-devil-worshiping-Cheliax, in terms of 'they make great villains whose oppressive rulers have zero sympathy from the PCs'. But yes, any revisit of Tian-Xia in PF2e IMO needs people well educated in and from the real world cultures that inspired the content (and I say this as someone who contributed to the PF1 book, though I contributed almost entirely to non-human nations fwiw)
I write Planescape fanfic (mostly based around one of my home games and characters developed therein). My storyhour based on that campaign is somewhere north of 2 million words long at this point and still ongoing. That fanfic is also how I got noticed in the first place before getting my first paid gigs in writing for ttRPGs back in 2003 or so. As much as some elitists might unfairly critique fanfic (or really all genre fiction) as something less than "literature", I vehemently disagree and I find fanfic writing to be just a joy to write as a leisure activity in and of itself, and also a wonderful training exercise to help you improve your writing skills in prep for paid work elsewhere. Here's one Planescape-related story I wrote: Based on one of the baernaloths from my home game And here's the main Planescape storyhour of mine It is very very long
As one of the authors on the original Heart of the Jungle I'm super excited to see what the folks working on this new book do to expand and develop hooks in the first book and brand new stuff that they add! :D
I want a planar focused AP. Personal dream. I want to write on such a thing. :)Word on the street is you're a go-to for planar adventures and setting. Is there any particular plane you want to delve into that you've never gotten the chance to? If you could set a module or AP volume in a plane of your choice, what would it be? Abaddon and the Maelstrom are the ones I've put the most work into and are most interested in revisiting (especially Galisemni in the Maelstrom), but the Abyss and Axis are always fun, and I'd love to see more done with Nirvana. The Positive and Negative energy planes have such potential for use as well, though unlikely for an entire AP, but specific locations therein would be amazing to visit in an adventure.
I want a planar focused AP. Personal dream. I want to write on such a thing. :)
You folks are going to love this! :D.
Oh that is great! Love the meshing of PC backstory with those elements of the AP. Wonderful stuff! And adding that level of madcap craziness like that was absolutely intentional. Especially chapter 2 was exceptionally dark, so having her introduced in the prior chapter was an attempt to inject some amount of levity to the atmosphere. I'm not all bleak all the time. :) I didn't make the camarach actually. That was another freelancer (I want to say Jim Groves, but I'm not absolutely certain). And Il'setsya describing them as 'A TRIP' and it being uncertain if she was talking about it literally or metaphorically in the drug sense is absolutely on brand for her. |
