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Tzitzimitl, mostly due to scale and the general cosmic horror vibe of Aztec mythology. The implication that every star in the sky is one of these beings, and the sun is the only thing protecting you from them! Incidentally, this is why I'm actually disappointed with Pathfinder's depiction of Cipactli. It's only 50 feet long, according to legend it's what the gods used to MAKE THE WORLD, so it should be more along the lines of planet-sized! THAT would be scary!
I mean, if they ARE osharu, they got that in spades: they're benevolent scientist people who want to make sure their innovations are used for good but have social anxiety, so when they travel they tend to either go in pairs or latch on to a friend group (like an adventuring party) ASAP. That's compelling to me at least, they're such cinnamon rolls!
It's probably been said earlier in the thread, but I can't wait for drow to become properly playable again, with maybe a half-drow versatile heritage thrown in for good measure. I got sooooo many ridiculous combos I wanna roleplay: tiefling drow! Aasimar drow! Oread drow! Maybe some kind of drorc or a drowarf if a GM is cool with it!I know it would drive folks opposed to too much of a "main character" vibe up the wall, but a Drow Half-Orc is just the kind of indulgent fun I crave sometimes, and a Drow Tiefling almost as much. Maybe a Magus, to double down on feeling special? Believe it or not, I actually HAVE encountered at least one person with a drow half-orc character that they've got art of! They were even MORE main-character because they were a paladin/warlock multiclass (D&D-based)!
It's probably been said earlier in the thread, but I can't wait for drow to become properly playable again, with maybe a half-drow versatile heritage thrown in for good measure. I got sooooo many ridiculous combos I wanna roleplay: tiefling drow! Aasimar drow! Oread drow! Maybe some kind of drorc or a drowarf if a GM is cool with it!
Honestly, I've had a character concept of playing one of the last Frozen Shadows traveling from Kalsgard disguised as a mercenary, desperately seeking a purpose in life now that their clan is almost all gone and the ones who did it now seemingly untouchable on the other side of the world...until their travels take them to a little village called Heldren and they find themselves drawn into the Reign of Winter AP, their skills serving them uniquely well on the journey, finding a kind of redemption and becoming a hero in spite of themselves...I've wanted to play that for YEARS.I /love/ that! What Ancestry are they? Human, of mixed Tian-Min and Ulfen ancestry.
Honestly, I've had a character concept of playing one of the last Frozen Shadows traveling from Kalsgard disguised as a mercenary, desperately seeking a purpose in life now that their clan is almost all gone and the ones who did it now seemingly untouchable on the other side of the world...until their travels take them to a little village called Heldren and they find themselves drawn into the Reign of Winter AP, their skills serving them uniquely well on the journey, finding a kind of redemption and becoming a hero in spite of themselves...I've wanted to play that for YEARS.
So...am I a boring roleplayer because most of my characters fall into the special-snowflake half-elf category? That's the thing: the majority of the characters I think about are future tense, not played yet, hypothetical. They're primarily conceived with play-by-post games in mind, which treat recruitment like an audition, and I get anxious when I see other people's submissions and they're things like tengu, ganzi, poppets and such. I feel like the guy who came to a potluck dinner, and everyone is bringing unique, flavorful homemade dishes and I'm the guy who just walked in with a pizza, and not even a good pizza, like a store-bought frozen one that got left in the oven too long.
That thought HAS crossed my mind a few times...it's not like peasants would really care how many sword duels their lord has won or how much honor they have, especially if that means who's in charge changes every few months or so because they keep picking fights or other lords keep picking fights with them. That was part of why Choral was able to beat them so easily: they spent so much time and effort squabbling over who was actually in charge that it delayed their ability to present a united front. If that IS the case, however, it's not explicated very much in the text, leaving the implication that the politics of Rostland's common folk DO align with that the Swordlords, that for all intents and purposes, the Swordlords ARE Rostland. That's honestly a problem Brevoy inherits from its ASoIaF inspiration: a tendency for the average person and daily life to be forgotten about while the focus is all on the bickering nobles and their drama, and that war is BAD, no matter what it's in service of. Even if the Swordlords won their independence a lot more people than just the Swordlords themselves would have to suffer to get it.
That'd be incredibly cool. Given how open most Kaer Magans are to all kinds of relationships and people, it wouldn't be out of the question for maybe someone falling in love with an Augur and her having a troll-blooded kid (the majority of Augurs are troll women, as troll men tend to be...charitably put, difficult...and don't manifest the Augurs' "unique powers," so they only really admit them to their compound specifically WHEN they want to have kids, there's only ONE male Augur and he's something of a savant because he actually CAN see the future, whereas the majority of the Augurs are just very good information brokers with a very dramatic gimmick they use to give their realpolitick a veneer of mystical gravitas).
See, the writing about the Surtova-Lebeda wedding suggests it was intended to stabilize Brevoy by marrying the Issian regent to a representative of Rostland as a symbolic gesture of unity. The writing also says that the Lebedas are the most "Rostlandic" of Brevoy's houses, but it isn't clear if that's because the family originated in Rostland or if that's just where their holdings are and they absorbed the neighboring culture. That matters because Rostland was founded by and for the Aldori Swordlords, who lost almost everything when Choral the Conqueror forced them to yield. Issia's lords surrendered to Choral almost as soon as he made himself known, while Rostland fought to maintain their independence. Choral crushed the Swordlords and almost wiped them out (it doesn't matter how many skilled swordsmen you've got, without at least a cleric and a wizard you're not going to win against two red dragons at once!), and further humiliated them by giving the majority of their conquered lands to his Issian cronies as rewards for so swiftly and easily falling in line. So either House Lebeda is an Issian family who recieved Rostlandic holdings at the founding of Brevoy and just kind of adopted a lot of the culture of their lands, or they somehow have a Rostlandic origin distinct from the Aldori Swordlords that doesn't match the rest of the area's written history, since to be a true Aldori swordlord, especially back when they actually ruled Rostland, you adopted Aldori as your own surname to symbolize the abandonment of all previous claims to land and title outside of the Swordpact. Either way, I find it likely that the Swordlords would view the idea that House Lebeda represents them laughable or insulting, so the intended marriage between Noleski Surtova and Elanna Lebeda wouldn't have healed the Issia/Rostland divide at all. If it was having Noleski marry an Aldori Swordlord proper, like say, Jamandi Aldori, that might carry more symbolic value, but then it also probably wouldn't mean much to the actual Rostlanders because the Swordlords are (on paper at least) meritocratic, the only determinants of power and social standing are how many duels you've won, and ties of blood are supposed to be meaningless. This whole scuppered Surtova-Lebeda marriage plotline seems to forget Rostland operated completely differently to a traditional feudal structure prior to Choral forcing that model on to it after his conquest, and that it's the Swordlords who'd need to be courted if they actually wanted to try and heal the conflict between Brevoy's two peoples, and as written elsewhere, the Swordlords aren't interested in anything less than Brevoy as a nation ceasing to exist to facilitate the rebirth of independent Rostland.
Disclaimer, the following is NOT my concept, it's teaxch's and they deserve all credit for it, but it's PERFECT for the Impossible Lands, Alkenstar specifically. Check out the rest of the leshy concepts in that post too, they're adorable! First Shoots, Leshy (Gourd) Gunsmith Gunslinger "Who gave that leshy a gun?! This was supposed to be a gardening leshy. Why would I want a gun leshy? Somebody should have double-checked this. Their eyes aren't even pointing in the same direction! Do they have any depth perception?! They're not even looking where they're aiming...Oh, of COURSE their head is full of ammunition! Why not?!...I guess they seem happy enough. Just...send them somewhere else, though. They're kind of noisy." Druidic is a subtly expressive language, but its vocabulary is somewhat limited when it comes to concepts that are generally of little concern to most druids. A translation error resulted in the creation of First Shoots, a leshy with a penchant for firearms. Commentary: I absolutely adore the descriptive writing teaxch placed around First Shoots, it sounds exactly like what their exasperated druid creator might say. The fact that their name references the infamous "Han Shot First" Star Wars meme is icing on the cake! The Unexpected Sharpshooter archetype would also complement them perfectly.
In practice the closest would probably be The Fallen Gods. None have any explicit ties to the desert, but they also don't have as tight a focus as the Rust Saints or Raider Mysticism. My character in this game (Saraon Duskdragon) is a Druid, and he venerates The Fallen Gods as part of nature and keeping the memory of the Old Faith alive.
Another new idea for Thaumaturge. A little Babushka/Abuela, her implements are at the very least her soup ladle(filled with love) that functions as a wand Implement, and her scarf(regalia). Here to travel and keep all those young adventurers safe using old wives tales, bedtime stories, and home remedies. Perhaps pick up medic or herbalist archetype. You say that like a grandma's homemade soup ISN'T a fortifying home remedy! :P
Besides, the idea of the marriage between Elanna Lebeda and Noleski Surtova making peace easier in Brevoy doesn't really work in the context of the Issia/Rostland divide, because it isn't very clear what side of that divide the Lebedas actually fall under in terms of origin: Rostland was ruled by the Aldori Swordlords and they primarily take "Aldori" as their surname when swearing the Swordpact, and they're infamous for their stubborn pride, so if the Lebedas ARE ethnically Rostlanders, the Swordlords wouldn't respect their authority or worse, may consider them traitors for kissing up to Issians and trying to advance in the heirarchy of Brevoy instead of helping break it back up into Issia and Rostland. Otherwise, the Lebedas are just Issians and therefore just more oppressors marrying other oppressors. Can you tell the particulars of this plot hook have bugged me for a while? :P
And I'm reassured by what I've read: it looks like part of Drift Crashers' plot is that you're working to prevent the Drift Crisis from becoming the kind of apocalypse I was worried it'd be. Having a little agency in mitigating the devastation goes a LONG way for soothing my anxieties.
Seconded, Kaer Maga always seemed more the "cool" metropolis compared to Absalom for me because of all the unique people and factions there, and The Redemption Engine only solidified that, even if it DID give canon answers to some of the things that were originally left as mysteries for GMs to hang plot hooks on... One of my dream games has always been to do a kind of slice-of-life campaign set in Kaer Maga with some sort of bar as the hub.
Very plausible indeed! There are also a few Issian houses who practice with the Aldori dueling sword even though they can't learn the Swordpact-specific techniques (officially, at least, but there are some Swordlords who break their oaths and teach the uninitiated). Of note would be House Khavortorov, one of House Rogarvia's vassals that is now trying to play with the big-name houses as an equal. Their crest is a white dragon (contrasting Rogarvia's red) with a helm embedded in its chest, and their motto is "We Won't Be Saddled." Of the big-name houses there's House Lebeda, which has always been considered the most "Rostlandic" of them due to having strong Taldan features, a love of finer things and swordfighting. They're in a bit of a rough spot right now, as their eldest daughter, Elanna Lebeda, was on track to marry Noleski Surtova, which would have been seen as a symbolic union between Rostland and Issia, but that fell apart when the King-Regent's sister, Natala Surtova, accused the lord of the House, Lander Lebeda, of treason. There's a lot of debate surrounding this, though, as while Lander Lebeda DID harbor revolutionary sentiments in his youth, he hadn't expressed any since taking over leadership. Some believe the accusations, while others (like House Orlovsky) claim it's just more propaganda to disguise another Surtova power-grab. Some even think Natala made the charge specifically to prevent the marriage from occurring, so she could maintain her power in her brother's court (many have argued she's the TRUE power behind the Surtovan throne, with Noleski largely following her recommendations). , Complicating this even FURTHER is if you came from Kingmaker, you've MET Lander Lebeda, and depending on how you played it, he actually DID try to commit treason ...against YOU, the ruler of the Stolen Lands, to try and claim them for himself. There's admittedly some discrepancy between Lander's depiction in the books and the PC game (his illustration in the books has a beard, but he's clean-shaven in the game, in the books his alignment is listed as LN while in the game it's CN leaning towards evil). He can even be killed and resurrected depending on your decisions in the game, so what exactly is going on with the Lebedas may require a bit of work on the part of your GM. And speaking of the PC game, one of the companions, Valerie, is herself an Issian noble scion who went to Restov after she quit the Shelynite paladin order she'd been practically raised in, but she decided the path of the Swordlord ultimately wasn't for her either, as she preferred taking hits with heavy armor and a big shield instead of dodging them, so she worked for them instead, which is how she gets involved with your party.
That's a big point of contention: TECHNICALLY Noleski Surtova is the King-Regent of Brevoy, and some of the noble houses have made it ABUNDANTLY clear that they will not recognize him as Brevoy's true ruler while there's still a chance the Rogarvias may be recovered (House Orlovsky in particular, followed by Houses Garess and Medvyed who'd possibly join an Orlovsky-led rebellion against Surtova if it came to that). And as far as Brevoy's political makeup, yes, as others have said it's your old-fashioned fantasy feudal monarchy. Of note is that there's ethnic divides as well as class ones: When Choral conquered Issia and Rostland, and forced them together to make Brevoy, the Issians were put on top because they fell in line behind him quickly, whereas the Swordlords pridefully fought against him to the end, meaning the Rostlanders they ruled got the worse part of the bargain. Every named noble House in Brevoy is of Issian descent, and they rule the majority of Brevoy's lands. From what I can tell, the Swordlords have very little influence outside Restov itself, and most Rostlandic peasants instead have to send their tithes to Issian lords they view as dishonorable exploiters. Another thing to note about Restov itself is the Aldori Dueling Academy is only the most FAMOUS one in the city: there's multiple schools there teaching many different styles. And yes, to become a Swordlord proper, you have to be a skilled duelist and abandon previous family names and holdings to prove your loyalty to your brothers and sisters in the Swordpact, but that offers much better social mobility than the rest of Brevoy. It's even accommodating to non-human ancestries who otherwise would be viewed with suspicion like half-orcs. The Swordlord's problems largely extend from the fact that the deck is stacked against them while Choral's Issian-led hierarchy holds most of the land, titles and military power, especially in lands that are rightfully Rostlandic because they're much more fertile and profitable than the ancestral Issian lands, and...because they're so prideful and stubborn they spend just as much time arguing and dueling with each other as they do trying to stand up against Issian dominance. If Noleski Surtova tried to upgrade his status by dropping the "Regent" part of his title and prompted Poul Orlovsky to lead his House along with Garess and Medvyed in revolt against him, the Swordlords would waste time fighting both of them because even if they don't like Noleski as King (nobody like Noleski as king, really), the Orlovskys are just as Issian and therefore just as much their oppressors in their eyes.
My understanding was the Spire is actually growing because Acavna's soul is "stuck" and it's trying to reach the Boneyard so it can finally recieve judgment from Pharasma, so restoration may be out of reach for poor Acavna...
A Lucerne hammer would be nice. It may need a new name, however, as there's no Switzerland on Golarion and therefore no city of Lucerne to name it after...unless they somehow got smuggled into Baba Yaga's dancing hut and wound up in Irrisen along with the Stasian Coils! :P A bow with the Dwarf trait, for the sake of all the Mbe’ke Ghymthur out there. This'd be so cool! A bow with the Dwarf trait, for the sake of all the Mbe’ke Ghymthur out there.They already have the short bow. Booo! Bad joke! Boooooooo! :P
The return of the Tri-point Double-edge Sword, or, as I like the. All it, the Lotus Spear as a Monk weapon would be nice. The Tiger Fork would be a good option as well. The Fangtian Ji is perhaps one of the most famous kinds of Chinese spears/halberd (next to the Guandao) that I feel it could stand on its own as a unique Monk spear. Tsukubo would be a neat addition. Monk Spade needs to return, as well as the Kumade. They aren't all spears, but polearms that fit perfectly as Monk weapons. Huh...never thought of it that way, but then again my only real exposure to Final Fantasy has been through JoCat's videos. :P
I absolutely ADORE this! August can't come fast enough!
I really...REALLY feel like I'm gonna like this class! :D
Yeah, that's very much in line with how occult magic in general was described in Secrets of Magic! The occult works on stories, the connections between them, and how they resonate with the wills and expectations of mortals. It's why you get tentacles when a ritual goes wrong: because you'd heard stories of tentacles and failed occult rituals, meaning you were EXPECTING tentacles to happen if the rite wasn't preformed properly. The actual rite itself may not have mentioned tentacles at all, but because you'd primed yourself for that beforehand, the occult energies resonated with your expectations and so Cthulhu shows up and is like "You rang?" With Mios, their confidence in the research they'd done and the cures they'd attempted coupled with their own personal fortitude saw them through. They believed these cures had power regardless of how they actually functioned, and that they could beat the lycanthropy, that their story would have a happy ending, and the occult resonated with Mios' will to make it so.
The return of the Tri-point Double-edge Sword, or, as I like the. All it, the Lotus Spear as a Monk weapon would be nice. The Tiger Fork would be a good option as well. The Fangtian Ji is perhaps one of the most famous kinds of Chinese spears/halberd (next to the Guandao) that I feel it could stand on its own as a unique Monk spear. Tsukubo would be a neat addition. Monk Spade needs to return, as well as the Kumade. They aren't all spears, but polearms that fit perfectly as Monk weapons. There's nothing in this post I don't love! And they should bring back the seven-branched sword too, so I can try and roleplay a clone of the video-gamey version of Uesugi Kenshin! However, I think Monk Spade already made a return, it's just called "Dueling Spear."
And something I noticed with Nex in particular, something I wanted to discuss via this character, was that he seemed to have a thing for trying to usurp the lands and legacies of other archmages, which would always blow up in his face: he tried to conquer Absalom, Aroden's city, and he failed. His rivalry with Geb began with his aggression into Geb's domain, and it eventually saw him driven from the Material Plane. He had plenty of his own achievements, both magical and mundane, to be proud of, and yet the things people remember him MOST for were him picking fights with other mages and losing...given that a lot of the policy of the Arclords revolves around the question "What would Nex do/want?" it makes for dangerously bad governance at the best of times.
Which edition would it be (the current one is 4th, I believe)? I have always wanted to learn how to play this game after watching Narrative Declaration's WarHams Fantasy campaign (GMed by Paizo's very own Thurston Hillman!).
Care to share the rest? Sure! Long story short, he's a Magus from Nex, taking the Arclord feat and multiclassing into Champion (Redeemer) of Nethys. Not sure if I just wanna go Garundi human or throw in some Vourinoi half-elfishness, but I'm hoping we get weapon stats for the shotel at some point: Ethiopia and Eritrea, where those swords were in style, are probably what the culture and aesthetic of Nex resembles most, and if you were to superimpose Earth onto Golarion they'd probably overlap very closely. Backstory is where I REALLY have it all figured out: The son of a mid-ranking Arclord and possessing great magical talent, he seemingly had his career planned from the moment he could cast a cantrip, but his path began to meander shortly after joining his parents on a trade caravan journey around the Impossible Lands and Golden Road. Seeing how others lived, especially those who didn't have magic to make things easy, got him thinking more broadly than just magic, and he began to study swordplay, theology and statesmanship as well, even Avistani political philosophers like Hosetter and Jubanich, developing an egalitarian mentality and a strong sense of justice. He developed the traditional Third Eye of an Arclord, but his political career stalled as he began to question why his homeland continues to determine public policy based on speculation about what Nex, who hasn't been there for centuries and honestly wasn't necessarily a good person, would want, rather than the immediate needs of its people. He has since taken to adventuring to act as an ambassador and example for what modern Nex could become, and to personally fight back against irresponsible and cruel magic users who give the rest of them a bad name. Growing up, of course, he idolized Nex. But as he learned more about him, his hated rival Geb, and about other great archmages like Aroden, First Emperor Xin and Old-Mage Jatembe, he began to realize Nex might be a much more flawed figure than his inheritors would like to admit, and that maybe he should be viewed as much as a cautionary tale as a role-model...Maybe even that Nex and Geb had a lot more in common than he was initially taught. He's come to the conclusion that he needs to be a good person before a powerful mage, and that too many mages let the power they wield make them arrogant and unkind, and Golarion has suffered greatly for their egos.
Something that's been bugging me lately is I've got an Impossible Lands character idea I've wanted to share here and almost EVERYTHING about the concept has crystallized...except the character's name. It's not even that I'm not sure of the naming conventions: given Nex's geographic location and population makeup I think I know what naming conventions to look at, but I'm getting indecisive on just what name to pick OUT of those naming conventions...
Aw, thank you! To elaborate on some of the prior points, though, I see the Aldori story as one of identity as much as politics: are they a covenant dedicated to preserving Rostland and Sirian's traditions and legacies, or just a really good dueling school who should prove it by having everyone dueling as often as possible? In the debate between Restov and Mivon's Swordlords over which are the true Swordlords, which was the greater dishonor: Restov's surrender or Mivon's retreat? Part of it is that, like I said, the writing on the Swordlords tends to either focus specifically on their external politics (Kingmaker and the stuff about Mivon) or their internal ones (which is most of what their Adventurer's Guide chapter focuses on), complete with different sets of NPCs for each set of conflicts: Jamandi Aldori (that's her in the Broken Lands chapter of the World Guide as the representative for the Aldori Duelist archetype) for the politics and Garen Aldori vs. Tiedlara for the internal strife. Like, while Garen and Tiedlara argue about how the Swordlords should comport themselves (though in reality it's more that Tiedlara is just trolling Garen, as she doesn't seem to have much interest in the Swordlords as an organization as much as she does cultivating and shaping the perfect rivalry with him specifically), gearing up to settle it in a single, epic, anime-style duel, Jamandi's over here on the sidelines trying to move their actual political agenda forward (how successful she is depends on how you play Kingmaker, naturally). Something else I'm intrigued by is that there's some folks who use the Aldori dueling sword WITHOUT joining the school, such as House Khavortorov mentioned in Knights of the Inner Sea. That's interesting in and of itself because House Khavortorov is ostensibly Issian, since if they joined the Swordpact proper they'd have to stop using their family name and become Aldoris instead. And they're trying to define themselves and find prominence among Brevoy's other noble houses, since they were a vassal house to the Rogarvias but owe no such loyalty to the Surtovas. And then there's the fact that the Surtovas have agents who've infiltrated the Swordlords called Dragonscale Loyalists who are working to steal the Swordpact's secret techniques while undermining their political project, and this is all happening with the looming shadow of Chorral's impending return rising in the background...
Just looking to confirm from my own research, the closest weapon in-game to approximate the haladie is the orc knuckle dagger?
I suppose I COULD say that I am? I feel like they require a bit of buy-in, though: either as part of Kingmaker (the whole plot gets kicked off as a gambit by them to astroturf allies in preparation for seceding from Brevoy, and the PC game goes into more detail with it, with your choice of advisors and decisions either pushing the situation into full-on civil war or cooling things back into annoyed tensions with a truce), or by taking the information presented in 1e's Adventurer's Guide and putting them center-stage in the campaign, focusing on both their revolutionary ambitions and the interpersonal drama between the various cliques of Swordlords competing to either maintain Sirian's traditions or cast them aside. Complicating matters is that there's also the River Kingdom of Mivon, who consider themselves the true inheritors of the Swordlords (because they didn't capitulate to Chorral the Conqueror the way the mainstream Swordlords did, which those Swordlords would counter by saying Mivon's founders were cowards who dishonored the Swordpact), though in practice they're largely a mafia-esque hierarchy with Swordlord trappings. I feel like a Swordlord-focused campaign would have to take them into account, especially since after the events of Kingmaker the player-made Kingdom is bordered by Mivon on the south (this is significant for me, at least, since my Kingmaker PC was a multiclassed Paladin/Swordlord). And then there's the fact that 2e's focus in Brevoy seems to have shifted more towards the confirmation that Chorral the Conquerer was indeed a red dragon and he's apparently about to return. Plus, all the noble houses in Brevoy that can have all that juicy, ASoIaF-style drama are Issian, whom the Swordlords are opposed to by default. So...yeah, you could say I've thought a lot about this. Kingmaker WAS the first AP I ever really read through and got invested in.
Yes. Pike + shield combo should be a thing. Seconded! I'd love to be able to play something like this!
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