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So, we're culminating a partial run-through of a PF2E-adapted version of War for the Crown which will end at level ten (my party just can't commit to any more rounds of the social play loop and sandbox-style adventure the AP requires). One of the most popular choices among my group for a follow-up adventure is an idea I've had to play a Taldane squadron involved in the Shining Crusade, close to a millennium prior to the events of our current AP.

After having suggested this, I realize that (as per usual for me) I've set myself a much steeper task than I thought. Because executing this concept requires reconstructing the world of the Shining Crusade in the early 39th century AR. I'm hoping to benefit from the knowledge of people who are more conversant with central Avistan and its history than I am.

I'm planning to start our adventure with Tar-Baphon's attack on Oppara as described in Last Watch, the third book of the Tyrant's Grasp AP. (The timeline is confused here but I'm choosing to place this attack just before Arazni, canonically, is summoned to lead the Knights of Ozem about a year later.) So our adventure commences in 3817 AR with the battle between General Mediah Lionsleap and the wyrmwraith Xalxaros.

There's a lot of stuff I don't know about this era, though, that others might have insight about. Especially:

1. The territory on the western shore of Lake Encarthan that will later play host to the nations of Lastwall (or the Gravelands), Nirmathas and Molthune are likely a single Taldan province or realm at this point. What is it called?

2. What's going on in Numeria and the River Kingdoms at this point? I know we're a couple of centuries after the Machine Mage Karamoss and the Arch-Duchy of Melcat is probably around. I know precious little of what else is happening outside of the arch-lich's realm in Ustalav.

3. I know Druma is an independent nation at this point, for quite some time now. The Elves have returned to Kyonin, the Five Kings Mountains are... something close to what they'll become in the Age of Lost Omens. I know precious little of what's happening in what will eventually be known as Brevoy.

Does anyone know anything about this period that could help me?

I don't feel like anything connected to the O.R.C. is going to be especially newsworthy until a license actually exists to sign onto (it costs companies nothing to "pledge support" in the abstract), but I am curious about something.

One of the pillars of continued opposition to the Wizards' OGL is its inclusivity provision (or "morality clause" as the detractors reframe it). I think having a commitment to inclusivity and to confronting extremist attempts to produce licensed content is one of the unambiguously good ideas that has come up so far in that whole brouhaha... and I'm admittedly troubled that the "OpenDnD" and "DnD Begone" spaces are rife with over-the-top attempts to effectively call the provision the Real Racism or otherwise imagine Wizards using it to revoke the licenses of people who get caught jaywalking or something. A lot of that is sounding more like an excuse than a genuine reason for the continued outrage, and some of it is sounding like chaff from the actual people who provisions against "hateful" content are talking about.

Now, Paizo has had its own particular journey toward recognizing the importance of diversity and inclusion, and is doing a fairly admirable job of reflecting that in its product lines. So I think it should be an expected thing that this commitment will be reflected in the O.R.C. Is that the case? And if so, what form would that take?

Hi, everyone! I've been running a Pathfinder 2E conversion of War for the Crown for some time at this point, and this past weekend we finally wrapped Book Two. (I mean, mostly. There is still some epilogue to take care of and a couple of loose ends to tie up in the County of Meratt, but the group have successfully overthrown Count Lotheed and have overcome the bulk of the challenges facing them.) I know there are some people still running or planning to run this book, so I thought a retrospective on some of the things our group did, how they worked out, and which of them I would -- or would not -- recommend might be helpful.

I'll start off by laying the groundwork before getting into the actual retrospective itself in follow-up posts.

About Our Game: I run with a group on VTT that has been more or less consistent, with a couple of additions and subtractions, since late 2016. We run on Roll20 and at this point the player group is seven strong. Our sessions are typically four hours on a weekly schedule.

(This is not a group size that everyone would be comfortable running with, in fact some of my regulars were apprehensive about going to seven, but I think we have enough experience with each other and I've acquired enough of a sense of pacing and time discipline so that it usually doesn't feel unwieldy. It had some interesting effects during Book Two.)

Lessons from Book One & Before: Golarion and Pathfinder more generally were not familiar to some of my group when we started, none of us had played 2E yet, and this would really be my first attempt at running an official Paizo product more or less "as written" (apart from the conversion to 2E).

I started off WFTC with an extensive document explaining the setting, the specific themes and subject matter of the AP, and what my approach to them would be (in particular foregrounding that the AP is about social change and battling enemies with reactionary attitudes and priorities in the context of the game world). It also summarized the broad strokes of Golarian history and especially Taldan history, which also gave me a fuller appreciation for how delightfully bonkers Golarion can get. My Player Guide documents tend to be long: this one was pretty "restrained" at 92 pages.

I started us off in a prologue adventure on the streets of Oppara during the Burning Blades Festival. It was meant to introduce all of us to an early mixture of the AP's signature combination of social play and roleplay, problem-solving, combat and dungeon-delving... and to familiarize ourselves with the 2E ruleset somewhat. We were sufficiently sold on the system to embark on the full AP once this was done.

I didn't want to convert the whole adventure from scratch, so for Book One, "Crownfall," I relied on a conversion by the Archvillain Ediwir (you can find his work and a link to his Discord at A Series of Dice-Based Events), as I would do for Book Two. We learned a few things in the course of Book One.

So, that sets the stage and explains where my group was coming from. I'll start off the retrospective itself next post.

How have you guys used her in your games? Was she a thorn in the party's side, an unlikely ally, or was she just kinda there?

She wasn't a major player, but she made a fine comedic subplot with a touch of pathos.

She was not super-important in the grand scheme of things. And she was not ultimately present as an antagonist in the Palace in the final act. But as regards contributions to the roleplay aspect of the book and adding to the overall flavor and general weirdness of Meratt, she was pretty fun. She is particularly useful as a means of foreshadowing that something is Really Seriously Wrong with her creator, Panivar Lotheed.

Exaltation Day should probably happen in a season when it's easy to travel to Taldor from all quarters of the earth, as described in the fluff.

This puts it in early Sarenith in the year my version is set (4719 AR) but I think some of the resources I've been using are making different calculations, b/c we're nearing the end of Book Two and my timeline requires at least a little bit of fudging to strictly work at this point. Ultimately, as long as the dates remain consistent enough to roughly put you in the season you should be in, I wouldn't worry too much. Only the most A-Type of players will be really tracking the dates to that extent.

Interestingly, none of my players noticed Caphridius Vort's name at all. I think they're inured to goofy names at this point. He has been elevated to the rulership of the Telus Barony (where he had been "Tribune" of the shanty settlement of New Towne) after they resolved its curse. Araig can't realistically resume the title after all that's happened. Maybe this gives his elder relative pursuing the throne a bit of a buffer: Eutropia will rely on the newly-elevated Baron to help keep this part of her domain stable and won't especially trouble herself about his relative's long-shot claim to the throne.

My version of Caphridius' senior is an "Earl Vortescir" whose domains lie between Meratt and Cassomir, and whose main asset is that he's so obscure -- an officer of the Royal Mint at the end of the day -- that he counts on his sheer inoffensiveness to win influence in the charged atmosphere that is the wake of the Exaltation Massacre.

Another inventive thing my party did: dealing with Halmash and his pack. I also decided to play Halmash as a sentient being with the ability to negotiate (he had plainly struck a sort of bargain with the thorp of Sotto, so it seemed reasonable).

When they tracked him to his den after an initial encounter with his wolves -- fortunately, it went badly for the wolves -- he had some idea of how potent they were and so decided to "talk" with them. And they actually talked him into a truce with Sotto, reasoning that since he had already revenged himself on their primary wolf hunter, wiping out the entire settlement was beneath him. It was a remarkable feat in itself.

No updates on the Pump House Propaganda, one of the PCs was eaten by a fish so most scheming was put on hold for a couple sessions. However, I definitely wanted to let everyone know how the party delt with the Telus situation.

After learning that Mosle had stayed with his friend and keeping him alive all these years the party concluded that Mosle was Telus' true love. So they created a scheme to draw the Baron out so Mosle could plant a kiss on him. The hunter used his Boots of Spider Climbing to rush to the Baron's location, grapple him, and drop him to the floor, all so that Mosle could barge in and plant the kiss. It was a tough fight, and the hunter nearly died, but eventually they succeeded. The power of gay love won out!

I thought this was a fun solution, anyone else's players have a creative solution for Telus?

It's a funny thing. My players, also, happened across exactly this interpretation of Master Mosle and also went for the True Love's Kiss solution.

I decided to play the Baron as someone who had a fragment of humanity still fighting his curse (kind of like Locutus of Borg in Star Trek). And I decided to play his spidery half as sentient (but weird and deluded).

So it was possible to get the spidery half talking with some fancy footwork and high Diplomacy and Deception checks, and in moments of emotion to force the human half to the surface. The encounter stayed on the razor's edge of violence, but they eventually worked out a way to get Mosle into the room and to give him the chance to give the kiss in a moment of vulnerability where they'd lured out a remnant of the Baron's human side. Curse lifted and gay love triumphant! I was wowed that they pulled it off, it was by far the most forbiddingly difficult route available to them.

My own approach to acquainting the players with Oppara was to run a prelude adventure before Crownfall that took them to various parts of the city and gave a sense of its overall society and culture (and created a reason for them to be recruited as agents). That said, the events of Crownfall provide plenty of juicy material for missions in Oppara during the weeks in the wake of the Exaltation Massacre.

The flavor here depends on how much civil strife you want there to be. Canonical WftC keeps things relatively cozy for the most part, leaving it open for problems to be solved as much through social sparring as with the sword.

You could mix it up here, depending on your party. If there are social luminaries among them, they could head off problems in high society "at the pass," as it were, before they develop into street violence. OTOH, maybe sometimes it's like Paris during the Fronde (or certain American states during the Floyd Protests of 2020), where the violence is already in the post and the party is stuck with trying to mitigate it.

The book provides a lot of NPC hooks you can use. Check out Notable Locations starting on p. 67. There are a number of prompts here that provide immediate mission ideas for me:

The Basilica of the Last Man: The character of Cyr Amestin, who has fallen somewhat under the spell of a holy longsword with a vestige of the Starstone's power, might be in peril in a landscape of contending factions that would be curious about that development. Perhaps she'll need to be evacuated to someplace safer and more obscure.

The Cathedral of Coins: The Tare and their leader Veneranda Cain might draw hostility from Imperialists, for her departure from tradition, and attract the support of the Loyalist faction for the opposite reason. Coping with an Imperialist attempt to infiltrate the Cathedral and perhaps kidnap Cain herself would be solid mission material.

Grandbridge Vagabond Camp: There's an enigmatic Human cavalier here named Samrag Nezres who abandoned her career for mysterious reasons five years ago. Did she have some presentiment of the Exaltation Massacre and the coming succession struggle? Was there another reason tied to a plot point of your choice?

Gray Market: A pro-Eutropia smuggler, Captain Seferi, is operating here. She could gain some heat from Imperialist factions in the city, or could be tasked with smuggling people or goods out of Oppara derived from missions elsewhere. A colorful hive-of-scum-and-villainy environment.

The House of Dawn's Redemption: If your group wants to lean into Battling Bigotry, Dawnmother Zenaida Tandleos and her Sarenite temple could be the ticket. She's always been considered suspect as someone who "redeems" genuine villains and might draw direct attack from mobs of bigots or corrupt operations within the city guard from White Hall.

That's a scattering of examples: there are many more. You can use them as pretexts for everything from dungeon crawls to tense social encounters to RP or combat encounters in the streets.

I like Mothman's idea for using this as an opportunity to introduce the Persona system, too, but you don't need to. There's plenty of time provided in Book Two to work into that.

Name: Richeut Peiley-Pacias
Race: Human
Classes/levels: Investigator / 6
Adventure: Songbird, Scion, Saboteur
Location: The Beggarwood

Name: Izanami Kouchou
Race: Human
Classes/levels: Magus / 6
Adventure: Songbird, Scion, Saboteur
Location: The Beggarwood

Joint Catalyst: Underestimating the Enemy

The Gory Details: By the end of their third week in Merratt, the party was making a vast impression on the County: unraveling mysteries and hauntings at a breakneck pace, thwarting at least one of the Count's ongoing schemes in the environs of Lake Lauchlein, and liberating the unjustly imprisoned in a spectacular prison break in the town of Lotheedar.

Through it all, they had been playing an intense "both-sides-of-the-fence" sort of game with the Palace of Birdsong, portraying themselves as friends of the existing order while they leaned heavily into rebuilding Stachys. Unbeknownst to them, the sheer pace and audacity of events -- and particularly the prison break they had committed in Lotheedar, which was publicly fobbed off on the Night Swan but was far bolder than anything the masked outlaw had tried before -- had alerted the Count that something might be off.

Though continuing to portray friendship for his part, His Excellency decided to probe them. He sent Sir Gul Gusairne to "check in" on them in Stachys, taking in tow a poacher from the hamlet that had been caught on the Count's land so that the Seneschal might "observe" their trial. As the trial unfolded and the party sparred ever-so-subtly with Gusairne, he invited them after the trial to accompany him in rousting a group of bandits called the Four Hoods in the Beggarwood.

The Count wanted to see if any of the party would try to warn the Bandits before the Seneschal arrived, whereupon they would relocate to a hideout deeper in the woods. The Seneschal, who had found the location of this hideout, was to storm in on it and hopefully catch somebody there. As it happened, he did, and basically caught the party's Investigator and Magus flagrantly consorting with wanted outlaws while the rest of group were in tow with him, supposedly helping him apprehend the criminals.

What ensued was extremely messy and involved the Night Swan showing up, and a general melee in which it was super-unpredictable who would be fighting whom in the early going. Overall, however, the main party managed to preserve the impression of being there genuinely in the Count's behalf, and the Investigator and Magus were hung out to dry (by their own request) as rogue actors. The Magus, a foreigner from Amanandar, would have probably faced death, but the Investigator negotiated on her behalf and managed to get the sentence commuted to banishment in exchange for surrendering herself -- and access to her own informant networks in Oppara and elsewhere -- to the Palace of Birdsong.

It wasn't PC death, but it was a pretty definitive exit for both characters. Martella Lotheed is now faced with having to break out or (perhaps) even kill the Investigator to keep her knowledge from falling entirely into enemy hands -- I'm thinking I'll allow the first option rather than the second, since I like the character too much just whack her offscreen -- and has sent replacement operatives into a situation that is now substantially tenser than before.

It's a mess. It was also a really cool moment, though.

He might have tried. But Taldor's notoriously bureaucratic.

Possibly. And the scenario you present is amusing. :) But I have the distinct impression that Taldor's secret societies -- who are the real contenders in the succession crisis -- are a lot more efficient and disciplined than its official bureaucracy.

(Doesn't mean they're flawless by any stretch, of course, and a rogue Pytharean agent or cell might work. I think that's canonically supposed to be what winds up happening. I just don't think it feels right, overall, for overall motives lining up.)

Also, while we're on things that nobody knows about, how is it that the Mantle of Taldaris is going to convince the nobles to fall in line behind Eutropia when it's been missing for thousands of years and no one except a few Pathfinders remembers it even exists? It's a little convenient.

The Mantle is a legendary artifact identified with Taldor's golden age. I don't think remembering its existence is the problem: it would be comparable to Excalibur, only with powers that were objectively real. And the loss of the Mantle basically signals the twilight of Taldor as an imperial power (its last great undertaking thereafter will be the Shining Crusade). The Pathfinders are unusual in having found its location, not in knowing it existed.

I don't think its turning up would be enough to derail a succession claim in happier times. But as a way of verifying a candidate amid the snarl of competing claims and weird rumors that the succession struggle eventually becomes, it certainly would present a useful "out" and a way of stabilizing the realm.

Another point in support of this is that the Exaltation Massacre should be a big thorn in the side of anyone's legitimacy who is suspected of involvement -- which must unavoidably mean most of the Imperialists, and is the major reason that Taldor is never going to be able to really coalesce behind any of them. This was, canonically, the wanton murder of two hundred people from the apex of Taldan society and hierarchy, an act kicked off by the Grand Prince publicly slaying the Exaltation Day candidate after giving an insane speech about loyalty. Feelings should run extremely hot about it everywhere, but most especially among the nobility.

In due fairness, they make a believable case for why Pythareus initially chases down those leads and collects that information:

But he should expunge the lot of it once Stavian III is "out" of the picture. It would be insane not to and he's not portrayed as being insane, so that's where the existing AP's scenario loses me.

Yeah, I saw that (pg. 51).

I just can't figure out what the net gain to the story is. "Oh, I know you guys are really into Eutropia's right to the throne but YOINK! turns out no one actually has a right and it's only by force of arms and a magic artifact that anyone is Grand Prince."

Kind of makes me want to do a terrible peasant accent and say "We don't 'ave a king. We're an autonomous collective! Supreme power derives from the masses, not some farcical ceremony involving an old man's magic sweater!"

Heh. That made me smile.

"Aha! Now we see the violence inherent in the system!"

I honestly don't know who can be expected to still remember House Adella, since the last of them died before the current dynasty as far as anyone knows. Maybe that's part of the confusion that greets the reveal: having Adella blood really can't disqualify you outright, but it complicates the calculus for at least some of the nobles who do know who they were and what they did. Hence the Mantle's decisive role.

I can go with it, as I said, because there's an angle where with sufficient setup it can actually be about forcing Taldor to confront certain things about itself and I think that's actually a cool concept. But of course, I'm literally rewriting a whole book of the AP to make that a point of impact, and I can fully understand why one might just skip it.

Honestly, though:

Oh, by the by: Book 4 does in fact contain an explanation for That Certain Reveal, but it's basically lore attached to an item and/or stash that the players may or may not find and may or may not correctly interpret. I don't think it meets the mark as regards actually integrating the Reveal into the story, though.

Rakshasas can disguise themselves as humanoids, so I'm assuming they'd have to pose as agents of Milon's thus-disguised in order to get into the manor. Once there, maybe make it possible to find a self-portrait of Milon in his own human guise on one of the walls? The sort of self-portrait your average self-respecting Taldan noble might commission?

I definitely feel you about there being no context or build-up for That Certain Reveal in the actual AP. It really should be there. I happened across the connection to an old module purely by accident.

From the Yanmass Gazeteer:

Quote:

Yanmass is the center of trade coming west from the Padishah Empire of Kelesh...

And Qadira is the westernmost province of the Padishah Empire. Qadirans are Keleshite though all Kelesh are not Qadirans.

Qadira is by this point an offshoot of Kelesh. It is nominally a Keleshite "province" but pursues its own agenda and has its own culture. It certainly has distinct interests from Kelesh, which for instance can't always be relied upon to be interested in Qadira's traditional feud with Taldor (Kelesh alternately backed Qadira and reined them in during various parts of the Grand Campaign, for instance).

In meta-terms, Qadirans are basically (very roughly) the setting's not-Arabs and Keleshites are its not-Persians.

The Qadiran border runs the entire west and south of modern Taldor.

Only the south unless I'm very much misreading the maps. Taldor's western border is either Andoran or the Inner Sea, the latter of which (at least canonically) the Taldan Navy still largely dominates.

And the Yanmass gazeteer does mention bandits as a constant problem for the region.

I guess renegade Keleshites could be a contender, and Taldans might be expected not to differentiate too much between Keleshites and Qadirans regardless of the actual facts of the matter. I think that's a fair point. OTOH I can't help but feel like Qadirans would be a much more deeply-felt existential threat in the actual borderlands.

Working ahead as my group is coming to the end of Book 2, and I have to confess that I'm leaning toward relocating the events of Book 3. There are a couple of reasons for this.

(I know spoiler tagging this here is kind of putting a hat on a hat, as it were, but I'm going to anyway just to add a warning to any of my players who happen across this: seriously, very campaign-specific spoilers for OUR group ahead, my dudes.)

Does this mean rewriting a bunch of Book 3? Yes, most likely. But given how much rewriting and inventing-from-scratch the AP has required from me for playability, and that I'm already adapting it for 2E anyway, it seems like it's probably worth doing.

I'm also ditching the "turns out the whole Stavian line is illegitimate" evidence subplot in the next book because that makes zero sense to me. I mean, the PCs spend four books fighting and risking life and fortune on the presumption of Eutropia's legitimacy and it turns out nope, none of them have a right?

I actually don't mind the whole "illegitimacy" plot point as much as I thought I would at first. (Again: added spoiler tagging as a precautionary measure for the same reasons as above.)

YMMV of course.

I'm really interested in fleshing out Alkenstar for my gaming group. I like the idea of a post-apocalyptic Weird West setting that also happens to be Steampunk Wakanda set in the midst of not-East Africa (the latter vibe is something I would really lean into in terms of culture, fashion, and language).

I'm trying to figure out how it "works," to some extent, practically speaking: all the focus of the official fluff is on cities, but there have to be hundreds of dusty, hardscribble little Sergio Leone-style villages and hamlets in between where saloon entertainers can ply their trade and the Shield Marshals and Way of the Drifter gunslingers can be steely-eyed enforcers of justice (not to mention Protectors from Mutants) and the whole Weird West vibe can really flourish. This isn't even about economic "realism," per se, more like about loyalty to the canon Paizo made-of-tropes setting philosophy.

I had an idea for an NPC party from Alkenstar that was going to appear in a later adventure (we're doing little interlude adventures from our current AP). I don't think I'll get to run them, since the moment I mentioned Alkenstar to my players they wanted to run a party from there, but I like them. They're a troupe of saloon entertainers -- think a cross between Harry Houdini, Ringling Brothers, and the Wild West shows Buffalo Bill used to do -- called the Alkenstar All-Stars, and to get a sense of them, I built them out at 12th level in Pathbuilder.

I would have had, of course, to pare them back and rebuild them using those concepts to use them as NPCs. Building them as PCs was just a starting point to figure out a guideline for what abilities they should have as NPCs. I'm honestly glad that I probably won't have to do all of that... but I do have a wistful longing for my beloved All-Stars. I think they would make a really cool party.

Making use of the Four Hoods is a really good idea, I like that. (Yeah, I aged up Selli, too. I figured she'd "canonically" be nineteen by the time of WftC.)

Any thoughts or suggestions? I would also love you hear how you used this NPC in your game!

I'm three years late for my suggestions to be useful to the OP, no doubt, but here's how I'm using the Night Swan.

1) My party has an Investigator (we're playing a 2E adaptation and she's formidable) and the party immediately suspected Lucretzia Marthane after the events of the Tanager Jubilee. For this reason:

1a) I made the Night Swan's disguise a bit more formidable than canon. Her Cape provides a 2nd-level Disguise Self that prevents her from being tracked by scent or looking too obviously like Marthane in a masquerade costume, especially because I fully expected at least one of the party to catch her in the act of leaving the note (which I augmented a little) in "The Night Swan Calls." And indeed, that did happen.

1b) I have dangled Baron Okerra's daughter Selli in front of them as a potential red herring. She has something like Lucretzia's love of Galtish romantic banditry, but much more innocently so, and secretly admires the Night Swan enough to emulate her known practice of fletching her crossbow bolts with black swan feathers. Selli is intrepid, prone to roaming, and martially skilled enough to be a possible candidate... although it will surely become clear enough in the course of events that it can't be her.

2) For all her "heightening the contradictions" ideology, The Night Swan has the perspicacity to know that she needs allies and operatives of her own. She has no reason to trust the party in the early going, but I'm seizing upon Rena Winterall and her bandits in the Lionsmane Forest for this role, who are sown as a potential seed of another political rebellion against the Lotheeds.

Potentially, Rena Winterall could actually be the Night Swan in disguise. But I prefer her to be an independent actor who cautiously sees the Night Swan as a potential ally... especially, against the "bandits" from Telus Barony who roam ever further in the search of riches and flesh to feed to their horrid, cursed lord. The Lionsmane Bandits are raiding lone nobles in their domain, but do not molest the poor, and Rena will directly profess her admiration for the Night Swan.

This provides a potential point of interface: if the party can convince Rena and her bandits of their good intentions, Rena will be able to set up a meeting and perhaps, some degree of rapprochement.

3) The Night Swan will, in the meantime, continue to assail nobles and merchants entering the county. A couple of Rena's bandits have kinfolk in Stachys who feed them information, and so she will turn up in disguise as a Lady-other-than-Marthane (but still from Cassomir) for any case that seems helpful to the Night Swan's mystique. (I have the Murder case particularly in mind.)

4) Baron Okerra started the adventure as Helpful to the party thanks to some extraordinary checks during Crownfall and the Tanager Jubilee. So his attitude won't immediately worsen on any attempt to befriend the Night Swan, he'll at least provide them some benefit of the doubt and start from the assumption that they're working an angle. But two or more such incidents without consultation will worsen his attitude.

5) Lord Titus Lotheed-Cassava suspects one of the Scions of being the Night Swan and is trying to build a case to that effect for his august cousin in an attempt to win favor. He is recruiting spies of his own and is fixated on this notion beyond the point of rationality: it's simply the most convenient option for his family and the Scions are newcomers whose reputation could turn on a dime. (This angle is helped by the fact that one of our party is from Amanandar, is the specific target of his suspicion, and is actually using Shinobi -- any of whom could be readily mistaken for the Night Swan -- in Operations.)

That's where I'm at. It's early days now, we are just coming to the end of Week Two.

Considering Stavian himself has a beard I'm not sure how far you could stretch the ban and make it something anybody would take seriously.

Well, Stavian having a beard would fit, since the original law was supposed to forbid commoners from wearing beards: not the nobility or royalty. But certainly, a lot of the distinction would seem to have faded by the time of WftC, where most of the nobles we meet don't wear beards and calling commoners the "unbearded" could seem, perhaps, closer to a fossil term.

Human societies can get awfully weird about hair, though, facial and otherwise, which is what makes Taldor's old-timey beard law such an interesting setting touch. Present-day Tajikistan only allows clean-shaven men to apply for passports, for example, because the government associates beards with radicalism. Enver Hoxha in Albania had a strictly-enforced ban on both long hair and beards for men. Laws regulating hairstyles and facial hair are historically not that uncommon.

I think the Ordnance of Beards is a wonderfully weird piece of in-setting lore and I'm not keen to lose it.

My solution, b/c it's not in force by the time of WftC, is that it has transitioned from being an actual law into being an unevenly-enforced custom that mostly benefits the expanded barber profession that sprung up to enforce it. There is a particularly solid reason in my case to do this in WftC because Stavian III has toyed with reinstating the policies of the Great Purge.

I can't remember, now, b/c I've lived with this so long, whether that last is part of my homebrew or part of the core material. In my campaign -- and I think this might have inspired someone from my pre-campaign studies and gotten imported into my campaign -- the reason this happens is that the Sarenite clergy failed to revive Prince Carrius after his death (on account of his soul not wishing to return). I think that might just be a my-campaign thing. But having anti-Sarenite oppression in the picture does add a bit more spice to the whole question, and I've certainly gotten some in-adventure mileage out of it.

It occurs to me that the connection between the beard law and the question of Sarenite oppression isn't totally clear, and might also be a my-campaign thing. In my mind, the Ordnance of Beards is connected with the Great Purge b/c Sarenite clergy also wore beards (I think of them by analogy with the habits and aesthetic of Muslim clergy to some extent), and so the Ordnance was designed to deprive them of this right and to reserve that particular symbol of wisdom and authority for the nobility. Its impact on the general commoners of the realm was almost incidental to this purpose.

This is almost definitely a my-campaign thing, now that I'm thinking about it. But... well, I think it holds together. More or less. :)

I think the Ordnance of Beards is a wonderfully weird piece of in-setting lore and I'm not keen to lose it.

My solution, b/c it's not in force by the time of WftC, is that it has transitioned from being an actual law into being an unevenly-enforced custom that mostly benefits the expanded barber profession that sprung up to enforce it. There is a particularly solid reason in my case to do this in WftC because Stavian III has toyed with reinstating the policies of the Great Purge.

I can't remember, now, b/c I've lived with this so long, whether that last is part of my homebrew or part of the core material. In my campaign -- and I think this might have inspired someone from my pre-campaign studies and gotten imported into my campaign -- the reason this happens is that the Sarenite clergy failed to revive Prince Carrius after his death (on account of his soul not wishing to return). I think that might just be a my-campaign thing. But having anti-Sarenite oppression in the picture does add a bit more spice to the whole question, and I've certainly gotten some in-adventure mileage out of it.

Oh, that's a neat idea, thank you!

I'm pleased you like it. If you have any further requests for advice, I'll try to make any further responses more in the spirit of the improv commandment "Yes, and." :D

I read it as Stavian demands this crazy thing and he has sufficient, sufficiently amoral forces willing to carry out his order that it gets carried out.

Yeah, fair enough. The question that would come up for me is how Pythareus could possibly be kept out of that loop.

Perhaps, however, there's a possible candidate for that if you want to keep the full stench of the Massacre off Pythareus. My suggestion -- I keep bringing him up here because he's a big figure in Taldan lore but mysteriously absent from the AP -- would be the enigmatic maverick and canonical close advisor to Stavian III, Dominicus Rell.

(I just really like Rell as a possible villain, really. Is it partly the ring of the name? Yes. But he's also hyper-capable, he routinely outmaneuvers his fellow Masters from the Blades, he's in office when the Massacre happens, and he'd be someone who could coordinate an effort like that while successfully keeping it even from a highly-placed figure like Pythareus. And given how capable he's supposed to be, it beggars belief that this close advisor who had the Grand Prince's ear could not at least have caught a whiff of the whole thing. Just, y'know, food for thought. :) Enjoy.)

So I'm making Eutropia's position be "Sort out a byzantine mess of succession laws that don't make a lick of sense or have any standard, then repair the international reputation of our outdated joke of a country".

Those would make sense as long-term objectives.

(IDK where you got size of government angles?

My bad. I was somewhat misreading the passage "has a plan of byzantine complexity for social services once she’s done reforming the legal system to ensure more #girlbosses" and what followed. Thanks for clarifying.

I don't want Pythareus to be some moustache-twirling villain. He should be the most legitimate and respectable possible figurehead of the militarist/imperialist faction.

I mean, the basic issue is that if you have the Exaltation Massacre -- which needs a big operation to make happen -- then the faction responsible for it isn't that likely to be particularly legitimate and respectable. That whole part of the scenario is pretty much purpose-built to evoke protofascism.

(Yeah, I get that this calls up uncomfortable echoes of recent history for some, understandably so. But it's worth remembering that Pythareus was originally an analogue to a reasonably common breed of would-be military dictator and any other resemblances are likely incidental. We also do get to see in Book Four that Pythareus is not inherently evil so much as being driven to the edge of madness and paranoia by the Circle, so I wouldn't be too concerned with his moustache-twirler status? That applies to the people manipulating, and most of them do get to have actual character motives, too.)

As for Pythareus being able to rally a nation: it's Eutropia who is swimming upstream and really needs the extraordinary charisma, the Strategos has the benefit of inertia on his side. Analogous figures manage to rally political support despite not necessarily being all that personally impressive, there's no reason Pythareus shouldn't. But basically there are just a lot of moving pieces attached in the AP to Pythareus and his motives and actions, I would just be wary of messing with them too much: you might find there are unintended side-effects.

I want both main candidates to be elite aristocrats in an organ-waving contest that does nothing but hurt the common people at the bottom... [remainder snipped but not ignored]

Okay. Well, I just think be forewarned that when introducing even the potential angle of a PC heir, that caution in the AP is probably there for good reason. Given that the AP is already structured to provide a contrast between an imperfect option and a worse one but also to give the players' actions specific input into what the "imperfect" option actually winds up looking like, I'm not sure there's much benefit to be had from further complicating the picture given the potential pitfalls.

Of course you'll have to do what you feel is best. Of all the "things not to change" flags that went up for me, that does happen to be the biggest one, is all I can say. Good luck!

IDK how helpful my suggestions would be given that some of the things you suggest here seem already baked-in to what your players will have agreed to. But I'll give them. For reference, I'm running a 2E-adapted version of the AP and we're about midway through Book 2. (We're presently on a break as we're alternating this campaign with a long-running Starfinder campaign.)

That's not to say that there are things I wouldn't edit or change myself. The AP is contending with a lot of prior lore from Taldor, not all of which totally makes sense, and there are specific story beats that I am considering changing, or explaining in different ways.

Hope that's some help. Good luck.

The problem is that I'm struggling to find Taldan emperors that are not relevant to the AP that would be a good choice for a vengeful spirit. Does anyone here have a good idea of who the spirit could be?

This is a cool idea.

If you don't want to go the route of simply inventing your own Grand Prince (although I think that's a fine idea, too, and there's plenty of blank canvas in the sweep of Taldan history to work with -- I invented my own Grand Princes for the Shining Crusade era), there are a couple of figures from extant Pathfinder lore who might work.

Micheaux the Magnificent is the emperor who is supposed to have fathered the first Stavian. He makes no direct appearance in the AP but is definitely relevant to certain events and figures in it. His reign went from 4499 AR to 4526 AR.

Beldam II was Micheaux's predecessor and adoptive father. The lore originally proposed him as the figure who expunged House Adella and he is in a way a direct Stavian ancestor, so if you chose not to use Micheaux's lore, this earlier Grand Prince would still have some of the same motives.

Uirtamon II reigned sometime in the 28th century AR and has a connection to the Mantle of Kings, which is also relevant to the AP. He is the emperor who hid it, some suspected because he was a disguised imposter. A spirit version of him might repent of the instability that act has now made possible and might even remember the original hiding place. He would also possibly have been quite familiar with intrigue and backstabbing, both literal and figurative, during his mortal life.

Goscelyn II is the most ancient potential figure with a WFTC connection, this one more distant. He reigned from 1592 to 1622 AR and is credited with founding the Lion Blades. Since this organization is now playing a role in current events, perhaps he has some loyalty to it. That connection can become more important if you choose to give some play to Dominicus Rell, who isn't actually mentioned in the AP but is prominent in other Taldor-related lore and one of the Lion Blades masters at the time of WFTC.

A figure like Rell, who was canonically a close advisor of Stavian III, might either have warned the Lion Blades about the Exaltation Massacre or conspired to make it happen; if the latter, it would align him with the Immaculate Circle and constitute the grossest betrayal of the Blades' mission perhaps ever to occur. That's something that could motivate vengeance from the spirit of the Blades' founder.

(Rell also potentially offers an opportunity to spice up the ranks of the Immaculate Circle baddies a little bit, if that's something you're in the market for.)

At any rate, most of these figures will be obscure enough to most players that you can probably use them without the risk of spoiling anything. Using Micheaux might be especially useful if you can get your hands on a copy of Tomb of the Iron Medusa, because he actually appears in a flashback in the module which you could use to help build a sense of his character and mannerisms.

Glad to hear your group had a good time with it.

One thing my group was lucky with: remote gaming and VTT were how we played at all long before COVID. We ran a 20-level Starfinder campaign on Roll20 between late 2016 and 2018 before starting a second one, and we're now running a second Starfinder campaign in alternating arcs with a Pathfinder 2e adaptation of War for the Crown. It's working well thus far, which is a blessing. Trying to transition a group accustomed to playing at an actual table into VTT play is not, I'm sure, always easy.

I can certainly co-sign a lot of the above advice for long campaigns generally, whether or not they're APs*. And add to it: do a Session Zero, and sum up what everyone wants from running the campaign, and what the basic flavor and tone are supposed to be, from the outset. To this habit, I attribute never having had to cope with a character like "Ser MacRib," as funny as they sound. :)

(* I will add that War for the Crown is actually my first time trying to run a Paizo AP as written and that's been fun... but I admit I'm also going to be departing a lot more from the "as-written" version come the third book.)

I'm interested in checking out your links, but neither of them work.

Oh, there's one other thing I should cover. A sidebar to a sidebar, see the spoiler text titled "Making this make sense" in the last major post:

Thanks to any readers for reading all this guff.

I'm glad it's useful. I look forward to hearing about your take on it. :)

The Succession Loyalties Map, Book Five:

So, the setup for The Reaper's Right Hand and its considerably more chaotic succession loyalties map is basically that Maxillar Pythareus -- now dead at the end of the events of City in the Lion's Eye -- had held in reserve the devastating secret that the Stavians are supposedly illegitimate, descended from a despised and expunged House called Adella. Understandably, he kept this secret (which would have handily torpedoed his own claim as well as Eutropia's) carefully locked down, but now his leaderless operatives have released it. The book revolves around an interplanar quest based on proving Eutropia's claim is still valid.

As befits this state of affairs, the Imperialist faction once led by Pythareus has entirely collapsed... save for one apparent holdout. Many of Eutropia's supporters have deserted her, too, although she retains power bases in Tandak, Northern Tandak and Avin Prefectures. The map does a pretty solid job of conveying an "everyone for themselves" atmosphere.

BRIARSMITH, previously submerged under the tide of the Imperialist faction, have re-emerged as their own faction. Is Thestro Briarsmith still alive? If he is, is he now staging his own bid for the throne given the chaos surrounding the Stavian line? Or if he isn't still alive, is one of his relatives now carrying the torch? He isn't mentioned as having children in TFE or anywhere else that I know of, but it isn't ruled out, either.

At any rate, House Briarsmith's domain here is attenuated, with Porthmos Prefecture now chopped up among four rival factions. So whatever Thestro or his relatives are up to, things haven't gone great. Porthmos Prison, the Grand Duke's "political prison," appears not be under his control: perhaps his prisoners have been freed by this point?

(Fun Fact: In TFE, the mention of Porthmos Prison comes with art of an adventurer bribing a gargoyle with a book. This gargoyle is named Grinnd, and such a bribe is actually how adventurers get into Porthmos Prison in a very early Society adventure. The object of that adventure is to rescue a thief named Hadge, who according to TFE canon is still in Porthmos Prison at that point and leading one of the many prison gangs who run the place.)

CORCINA: There have been dramatic events in Cassomir. House Corcina -- maybe or maybe not a former Imperialist house depending on how you were inclined to read them -- has taken over control of that city, which should be House Tiberan's domain. Is there fighting here? This likely poses problems for Eutropia's faction in accessing the sea, depending on how hostile Corcina are to her.

CYRIS: If these are Stavian cousins, they'd have to be sufficiently remote cousins so that Stavian I's supposed relationship to House Adella doesn't touch them. This isn't impossible given how complex dynastic family trees can get.

DARAHAN: Now emerged from "beneath the waves" of earlier maps, the doughty monster hunters of House Darahan have carved out some space for themselves and reassumed their rightful control of Whitemarch Prefecture, as well as taking control of Zimar (which probably means they're currently helming the protection of Taldor's southern border).

They're not aligned with Eutropia: like many others, they may not know what to think about the illegitimacy battle. They also share color-coding with another House that had previously looked likely as Eutropia supporters. Perhaps both factions are awaiting the resolution of that matter and prepared to support whoever comes out on top. I'd guess this is likely if Vivexis Darahan is still leading the House: she's no shrinking violet, but she's no spring chicken either, and Eutropia's experience is showing pretty clearly how complicated being a female claimant to the Lion Throne can get.

DELRIDDIA: This is House Delriddia, mentioned last time out as likely Imperialists ("Delriddia" is the canon spelling, which I messed up earlier). Whoever is leading the House now, given the whole bizarre series of events around the Stavian claims, probably thinks they'd make as good an emperor as anyone. If this is still Grand Duke Nestor Delriddia, though, he's got problems: he was elevated from military service to his current rank by Grand Prince Stavian III, who is now supposed to have been illegitimate.

Alternatively, House Delriddia and many of these other factions could both be pushing back against claims about Stavian illegitimacy and continuing to deny Eutropia's claim for the same reason the Imperialists did (that the violence surrounding the primogeniture vote rendered its result void and that a woman can't ascend the throne). This would make sense for Nestor in particular.

DENZARNI: House Denzarni have been through some dramatic events of their own. They appear here to have been driven by House Lawsus out of their traditional seat of power in Kazuhn and to be roughing it in hilly northwestern Porthmos Prefecture. Given that their taste for hedonistic revelry virtually defines them, this cannot be a fun state of affairs. Is Grand Duchess Mellea Denzarni still alive? Is a descendant or other relative running the House in what must be very reduced circumstances?

ENNOI: The Baroness Ennoi has not only emerged into her own, but appears to have liberated a significant part of Porthmos Prefecture from Briarsmith rule. Is she staging her own claim, or is she simply running her territory as a relatively independent entity until the succession crisis is over? Either is possible. I feel like she'd be a pretty obvious candidate for Eutropia to elevate in rank at the end of things; her independent-mindedness and willingness to speak truth to power are very Loyalist traits. (Or perhaps a member of her family is in charge at this point.)

EUTROPIA: The illegitimacy claims have clearly done a number on Eutropia's support base, although she still holds the Palace of Birdsong and controls a lot of Northern Tandak and Avin.

FAHLSPAR: Previously having seemed a likely lock for Loyalist status, House Fahlspar have now withdrawn their support from Eutropia and perhaps are even making their own claim. If so, this could reflect some internal family struggle or even skulduggery: the Grand Duchess Fahlspar's unusual politics are flagged in TFE as being a great source of discomfort for her cousins, who don't share them, and she's no master of intrigue herself.

If the Grand Duchess has been supplanted (perhaps even murdered) by one of her hostile relations, it might explain why the House controls relatively little of its own domain, much of which appears to have stayed loyal to Eutropia.

HESKILLAR: House Heskillar aligned with the Loyalists at some point in the prior books, but has clearly given up on that alliance and is still, apparently, battling to assert control over Krearis Prefecture, of which it seems to directly control relatively little. There's an interesting detail in that its influence extends into World's Edge Province up to the Valley of the Azlanti (this was also shown on the map in Book One, although it ceased for a time thereafter). This could reflect a fluctuating alliance with the dwarves of the Sky Citadel of Kravenkus, which is sited there; it would fit with the Grand Duke's unusual affinity for the dwarves.

KASTNER: Shown as controlling western Opparos and part of Oppara, House Kastner have fallen away from Loyalist support -- assuming they were in fact supporters -- and are color-coded the same as House Darahan. Perhaps this reflects similar stances being taken by the two Houses or even an alliance between them.

KIU: They fell under Imperialist control in the past couple of books but are now independent again and in control of the Monastery of the Seven Forms and nearby areas. Otherwise, they're as enigmatic as before.

LAWSUS: House Lawsus had apparently been overrun by or persuaded to ally with the Imperialists by the time of City in the Lion's Eye. Now, their base of support has reemerged stronger than ever and they have displaced the ruling House from Kazuhn Prefecture. Whatever game they're playing and whatever claim they've cooked up to the throne, it looks like it's one of the stronger ones.

MERKANDER: Merkander's claim appeared to have been submerged by the Loyalist cause by book four--maybe they just bent with the way the wind seemed to be blowing -- but they're clearly persistent and have reemerged as a strong force in northern Krearis once again.

MERROSETT: The only House still color-coded according to the old Imperialist yellow is House Merrosett. Are they the last holdouts of the Imperialist cause? Are they now basing their own claim on having had the favor of Maxillar Pythareus, perhaps on some tale of the High Strategos having passed his powers to them upon his death? If so, the same forces wreaking havoc on Eutropia's base of support would be affecting them, but it's an interesting possibility.

NAZEZI: Presumably Stavian cousin claimants, Nazezi are one of a few factions who never were subsumed by either Imperialist or Loyalist factions. However, their base of support is far smaller now than in the previous book: maybe they've been caught in the crosswinds of the legitimacy affair.

PHAEBEN and PHINI: Phaeben was swamped by the Imperialist faction and Phini by the Loyalists in prior books, but they're now pressing their own claims again, from apparently quite restricted bases of support. If they're Stavian cousins, maybe their claims have been tainted for erstwhile supporters, too.

SOLARI: House Solari, probably meaning the Grand Duchess Solari, is one of the largest factions to emerge from the break-up of the Imperialist cause and controls both Destelita Solari's traditional domain at Ligos and a bunch of Lingian Prefecture, as well. Solari could be pursuing her own claim to the throne: with the legitimacy affair in full swing, she could even have decided to acknowledge the primogeniture vote and suggest herself as an heir (Eutropia's claim would no longer automatically outrank hers).

STARBORNE: The gnomes of Wispil and their ally, former senator Marquess Starborne, have never thrown their lot in with any particular faction, still have no reason to pursue the Lion Throne and clearly continue to chart their own course. Their color-coding has always hinted at least some kind of adjacency to Eutropia's cause, which would be consistent with Tanasha Starborne's character, and that doesn't seem to have changed.

TARQ: Previously overrun by the Imperialists, Tarq have now re-emerged and reclaimed much of their previous territory in Porthmos Prefecture. Their response to recent events could really be... just about anything?

THAENA: The name of a lunar naga from The Dragon's Demand that turned up on the map in Book One now reappears in the Dragonfen. If Thaena is some kind of naga, I like to think of this as her taking the opportunity of chaos to establish her own independent "monstrous" kingdom in the heart of Verduran Forest, maybe something along the lines of distant Nagajor. Would make a good excuse for some monster-hunting adventures.

TIBERAN: No longer Loyalist supporters, House Tiberan have been chased out of their rightful seat at Cassomir and are pretty clearly up against it, controlling disconnected enclaves in Tandak and the Verduran Forest.

Perhaps they've given up on Eutropia and are mounting their own claim at this point. If so it would be a tenuous one: the present Grand Duchess is the niece of a Stavian III appointee who was ultimately killed by a popular revolt. Any claim made by her now faces a complicated tangle of legitimacy questions. Atlernatively, maybe House Tiberan is just fighting to survive.

VORT: That curious enigma on the borders of Verduran Forest, House Vort have been a constant presence in the succession struggle and another faction that has never thrown in with either Eutropia or the Imperialists. They remain constant now. Again, maybe just in too much of a backwater for anyone to care too much.

ZELLVYNGIAN: The corrupt rulers of Lingian Prefecture appear to have been mostly displaced from their traditional home, much like House Denzarni: they seem to control a narrow slice of their own territory and an even narrower slice of Opparos. Given their corrupt and unpleasant character, they likely have few friends by this point: it would make sense for the Grand Duchess Solari to be outmaneuvering them.

The disorder in the realm may have moved House Zellvyngian to seek out some strange political bedfellows. Noticeably, they now have the same color-coding as...

ZESPIRE: House Zespire, too, have fallen away from the Loyalist cause, possibly because the legitimacy affair is just too much for them. Count Orlundo Zespire would be a good candidate for offering the promise of restored order in the realm, and maybe that's his appeal to followers now. The curiously similar color-coding of his House with the otherwise diametrically morally-opposite tyrants of House Zellvyngian could indicate a meeting of the minds over this shared goal. Or it could be just coincidence.

Other Notes: Large swathes of Taldor are shown beholden to no faction, which probably indicates the local nobility simply having given up trying to track who the claimants are and who's in league with whom. All of the factions on display here quickly exhaust themselves to judge by their willingness to fall in line behind Prince Carrius after Eutropia's "death" in Book Six.

Cheers. I'll have part two up soon.

While the point of the Masked Marquis is that they could be almost anyone, there is indeed a revelation in Book Six of War for the Crown:

Oh, I should mention the initial map in Crownfall, BTW. I don't talk about it here because the succession struggle has only just started by the book's end, so I don't really understand how there was time for anything to happen yet. Like, why are House Heskillar shown as only partly in control of their own prefecture mere hours or days after the Massacre? It's odd. That one I'm just kind of ignoring for the most part.

Sort of. There is something interesting happening in the middle of the Verduran forest. Thaena is shown controlling an area around Dragonfen. This corresponds with the name of a lunar naga who appears in the module The Dragon's Demand.

I don't know whether that's a serious suggestion or just an Easter egg. The Thaena of that module is too mentally unstable to be capable of ruling anything. Maybe we're seeing the activity of a certain member of the Immaculate Circle in using her as a pawn against the ruling family of nearby Belhaim (the Devy family as of that module). At any rate, Thaena is not in charge there by book two, so maybe some adventurers drove her out, but she's not gone as we'll see later.

(If we want to account for other of the more interesting things in the Book One map: there is also a bit of an interesting narrative implied about House Tarq, who seem to get mostly overrun by Pythareus in the very short span between Book One and Book Two. So, a throne claimant for whom it hasn't gone well, maybe. Also House Tiberan appears to have mounted their own claim early on but quickly abandoned it, or maybe been undecided before throwing in with Eutropia.)

Hmm. I could swear I'd put the first post here before I went to bed. That's odd. Let's try that again. -CJ

I realize, by the way, that I didn't mention the Succession Loyalties maps in books 3 and 4 in my introduction. They're in there, of course, but I'll be mentioning them in passing, mostly. The maps in 2 and 5 are where the real meat is, so to speak.

The Succession Loyalties Map, Book Two:

A lot of the names that have prior referents come from Paizo's Taldor, The First Empire supplement, hereafter referred to as TFE. It's early after the Exaltation Massacre, from a couple of weeks to a few months afterward. There is relatively little violence, and according to the text of the AP:

"Despite the chaos and violence that rocked the senate and the factionalizing of the nation’s aristocracy, remarkably little violence has broken out across Taldor. Over a dozen nobles—mostly Eutropia’s distant relations—have declared themselves the true inheritors, but for now the empire runs on momentum. Most of the populace waits nervously, unsure of what to do without a senate to declare an official heir or an emperor to appoint new senators. The open conflicts are small probes into opposing claimants’ territories and dedication; Krearis, always a hub of conflict, has seen swift battles between opposing dukes, while in the south, Maxillar Pythareus has directed the Taldan Phalanx to crush any stirrings of competition from his neighbors."

There are, in fact, just over a dozen names listed on the map, not including Eutropia and Pythareus. However, it seems unlikely that they can all be declaring themselves the "true inheritors" of the Lion Throne. And look into some of these names and you can generate a slightly more complicated story about what's happening.

BRIARSMITH: House Briarsmith and their leader, Grand Duke Thestro Briarsmith, appear in TFE as brutal tyrants who crush even the few rights that Taldor affords the common citizenry. Basically every fictional depiction of Prince John in a Robin Hood movie. Porthmos Prison, portrayed in TFE as a "secretive political prison," made an official appearance way back in 2008 in the Pathfinder Society Scenario Stay of Execution. That version of "Taldor's most infamous prison" appears to be pretty sloppily run, but perhaps the "political prison" concept hadn't evolved at that point.

The thing we learn about Briarsmith in TFE is that he uses his remoteness from Opparan society and politics to run Porthmos Prefecture as his own private dictatorship. So, is he making a bid for the throne? Maybe he's sick of being stuck on the frontier. On the other hand, maybe he wouldn't want the greater exposure and is just using the chaos to extend his own local tyranny more brazenly than before, while telling the larger players to just leave him and his local allies alone.

It's also worth noting that WFTC's secret society baddies The Immaculate Circle are based here, on an apparently deserted estate belonging to Duke Panivar Lotheed.

CYRIS: No prior reference. Possibly one of those distant branches of the Stavian family that the description in the AP refers to. That's the assumption I'm usually going with for the names that don't seem to have any other official source, but... not always. I'll come back to that.

HESKILLAR: House Heskillar have a write-up in Book Five of WFTC, The Reaper's Right Hand, and also make an appearance in TFE. They're an old and eccentric noble house with an ancestral fairytale-like myth about being descended from a brass dragon, and their Grand Duke Borand Heskillar is the rightful ruler of Krearis Prefecture: one of the places that has seen violence in the early going.

Heskillar themselves don't seem likely as a branch of the Stavian family that's making a claim to the throne (that's certainly not mentioned in any of their other setting fluff, anyway). They are also identified, particularly in TFE, as being partly on the outs in high society due to bigotry: Borand married a dwarven woman. So it makes sense that chaos came for them early.

Also with House Heskillar, I began to notice color-coding on these maps. It's hard to be sure what the colors exactly mean, but they can be suggestive. Heskillar is a House with unusual politics... and they're very close to the green of Eutropia. Are they perhaps somewhat aligned with Eutropia's Sovereign Court / Loyalist faction, even if they're not fully under Eutropia's authority?

KIU: No previous mention anywhere that I could find. The territory they're marked as controlling stretches out into the Whistling Plains -- which is supposed to be only technically a part of the Taldan Empire -- and they're certainly claiming the foothills where the Monastery of the Seven Forms is. Also note that they're color-coded very close to Eutropia.

What all this exactly means is hard to say. Are they a Stavian branch staking a claim to the throne? Warlords from the Whistling Plains taking the opportunity for a land grab? (The Plains are confusingly described in various different official Paizo sources as being either uninhabited or as being populated by a whole variety of nomad tribes, gnolls, centaurs and other things.) Local nobles fighting off the Imperialist faction of Pythareus? They're all possible.

LAWSUS: No previous mention. Possibly a Stavian branch making a claim to the throne. Other thoughts: they're color-coded yellow-green, in between the Loyalist and Imperialist factions. Are they politically "neutral" between the two extremes? Could they even be trying to mediate between the two?

A further thought is that WFTC has rather a fondness for "on the nose" sort of names (Carrius, Eutropia and Maxillar Pythareus all being examples). If "Lawsus" follows this pattern, could it be a reference to these guys being particularly devoted to legalism and using some legalist pretext to stay above the fray? Or to their having ginned up some obscure two-thousand-year-old law that "solves" the succession crisis and just so happens to legitimate their claim on the throne? Both interpretations I like, anyway.

MERKANDER: Confusingly close to Earl Yander Merkondus, an antagonist in The Twilight Child, but Merkondus is from Moda Prefecture. This is someone distinct of whom there are no other mentions, so probably one of those Stavian cousins claiming the throne and clearly one of the big winners in Krearis at this stage: their foothold in the prefecture looks just as strong as House Heskillar's.

NAZEZI: No previous mention. Probably a Stavian branch making a claim to the throne. Their color-coding is not that far from Eutropia's but not that close, either: maybe they're amenable to allying with her? Or maybe it doesn't mean anything much.

PHAEBEN: No previous mention. Probably a Stavian branch making a claim to the throne, and one with a fair amount of support given that their powerbase stretches into three different prefectures.

PHINI: No previous mention. Probably a Stavian branch making a bid for the throne, and taking the opportunity to carve same territory away from House Heskillar.

Their territory at this point seems to include Dalaston, it's interesting to wonder if House Dalassenos (rulers of Dalaston in TFE) are collaborating with them or if they've been overthrown by the envious social climbers of the Irini family, whom TFE identifies as their enemies. This would be the kind of situation where nobles could garner support by promising people titles and other privileges once they've won the throne. It's likely that dramas like that are playing out in a lot of places.

SOLARI: Certain to be Grand Duchess Destelita Solari, ruler of Ligos Prefecture and one of the villains of TFE, which describes her as a ruthless, cold-hearted schemer who wields the political rumor mill to her own advantage. She attained her position by accusing a cousin (probably falsely) of treason.

Solari is unmarried and disdainful of suitors, or was when we last saw her in TFE. Could she be trying to reinvent herself as a conservative version of Eutropia and using the primogeniture vote to stake her own claim to the throne, inventing some tie-in to Stavian genealogy? It would be just cheeky enough to fit perfectly with her character, though it would be a long shot given that Eutropia is a much more direct heir.

Alternatively, noting how close to Pythareus her color-coding is, it's possible that she's acting as an independent ally on his behalf. Maybe he's one suitor she wouldn't scoff at: he would seem in many eyes to be a solid favorite to take the Lion Throne, marriage to her would give his children real noble pedigree in a way that being supposedly "adopted" by Stavian III can't match, and marrying him would be to snare an Emperor for her own manipulative purposes. It'd look like a win-win and might even be a solid pretext for involving Solari directly in a later book in the AP, if she's a character you like.

STARBORNE: Clearly a reference to Tanasha Starborne, introduced in Crownfall as the gnomish senator from Wispil. Very clearly cannot be staging a claim to the Throne: not only is the ambient racism of the Opparan court against her gnomish heritage an explicit part of her character fluff, she's also portrayed as barely tolerating the grind of Opparan politics even just as a senator. Her actually wanting to live there and rule Taldor just does not make sense.

On the other hand, her knowledge of Taldan politics would make her an ideal advisor for the politicians in Wispil on how they should navigate the stormy waters of the War for the Crown (which probably involves being at least de facto allies with Eutropia, for whose cause Starborne voted in the primogeniture fracas and who controls the primary outlet for their timber at Cassomir). Probably it's Taldan nobles who have the notion that she's "leading" a faction in the way that Eutropia or Pythareus are. The relative democracy of gnomish society is probably alien to most of them.

TARQ: No prior reference that I could find. Possibly a Stavian branch mounting a claim to the throne... but there are other possibilities. They're as remote from Opparan politics as the Briarsmiths are: maybe what they're really up to is trying to protect their lands from increased Briarsmith predation? Also note that the name Tarq has a vaguely pseudo-Arabic ring to it. Perhaps they're part Qadiran? A House that went over to the Taldan side during the Grand Campaign, maybe?

VORT: This is a weird one. House Vort are present as a fairly prominent player close to the epicenter of Eutropia's faction throughout the War for the Crown. Along with House Nazezi, they're one of only a few factions who haven't been folded into either the Loyalist or Imperialist camps by the events of Book Four, City in the Lion's Eye. So they must be one of the stronger independent contenders for the throne.

But we do see a character from Vort in Book Two. It's Calphidius Vort, who is a part of the Baron Telus storyline. And the thing is: there's never any mention of his being from a family that's making a bid for the throne. It never comes up. I don't know if that's an oversight, if he's just from a different Vort family, or what. Maybe the Vorts aren't that prominent at all: maybe they're in too much of a backwater part of Tandak Prefecture for anybody to care what they're laying claim to and come after them. Shrug.

PEOPLE "BENEATH THE WAVES:" Other Houses are underneath the "surface" of this map as allies of one faction or another. Some of them will either emerge as regional contenders from under the waves after the events of City in the Lion's Eye, or get mentions in other parts of WFTC as potential major players in events.

House Basri are known for diplomacy and elven ties, and are probably the source of the Father Basri mentioned in Taldor, Echoes of Glory. I would assume they're Loyalists given their priorities.

House Clement have Garundi heritage going way back and are represented by Zariyah Clement in Crownfall. Probably Loyalists, I think their territories northeast of the Verduran Forest are usually under Eutropia's authority.

House Corcina are ambitious trade magnates with a write-up in The Reaper's Right Hand. They feel likely for Imperialists to me: their plans to expand business into Tian-Xa seems in tune with Pythareus' aggressive attitude. But that's just me.

House Darahan are a house of famous monster hunters and Lastwall paladins whose Grand Duchess, Vivexis, did four "tours of duty" on Vigil's ramparts. They get a pretty positive-sounding write-up in TFE and seem unlikely to be allies of Pythareus--indeed Vivexis sounds like she'd be a natural admirer of Eutropia--which probably means that those stories of Pythareus crushing resistance with the Taldan Phalanx are at least partly about them. It's not hard to imagine that Whitemarch Prefecture is effectively under hostile Imperialist occupation from early on in the War for the Crown (which would make it a pretty good place to do "ragtag bunch takes on the tyrant" side-stories).

House Delriddian, the rulers of Moda Prefecture, are in Imperialist territory and were being run by a retired admiral named Nestor Delriddian at the time of TFE. Delriddian, if he's still in charge, would probably trust a military man like the High Strategos and is likely a willing part of the Imperialist cause. There could be an element of tragedy in this, because he's far more honorable than most of them and may be unwitting as to just what kind of characters he's getting into bed with, at least at the beginning.

House Denzarni, rulers of Kazuhn Prefecture, are in House Solari's camp at this point. They appear in TFE as cartoonishly debauched nobles who are mostly obsessed with orgies and implied human sacrifice (or maybe they just party so hard as to cause frequent "accidental" deaths). They'll later become part of the Imperialist coalition just like Solari, although it's not quite clear who'd want them as allies or why.

House Ennoi are an independent-minded family whose Baroness was sent to Stavian's Hold to keep her ardent criticisms of Stavian III out of the Opparan Senate. They are in Briarsmith territory and probably at odds with Grand Duke Thestro Briarsmith, who'd be likely to target them. They're unlikely candidates for willing Imperialists, given Diddima Ennoi's antipathy for Pythareus' former sponsor Stavian III, but given how bad Briarsmith is supposed to be, I suppose they might come to welcome Pythareus for a time as a lesser evil.

House Fahlspar make an appearance in TFE as the rulers of Northern Tandak, with their Grand Duchess Breateeza a public admirer of Andoren freedoms and Kellid nationalism and more interested in hunting than politics. She's clearly in Eutropia's camp at this point.

House Germande from the Knights of the Inner Sea supplement earn a mention because an iconic from their Order of the Cockatrice is in so much of the AP art. Probably too minor a house for most people to care who they're supporting; they don't appear to stand for much except sport and tourneys, so it could be anyone.

House Karthis are xenophobic demagogues who get a mention in Taldor, Echoes of Glory. Their senator, who is never named, is obsessive about restarting the war with Qadira in much the way that Cato in ancient Rome was obsessed by Carthage. They live around Zimar and are almost certain to be fanatical Imperialists.

House Kastner are clearly major players, and Remilliard fairly clearly a natural supporter of Eutropia. Remilliard appears in Crownfall and his House gets a write-up in The Reaper's Right Hand.

House Merrosett are written up in The Reaper's Right Hand as being much less creepy than they are in TFE, where they appear as incestuous to a point that weirds even other Taldan nobles out(?) and obsessed with "genetic" experiments. Making them similarly creepy here might be an interesting choice, although it's worth noting that the overall idea of what Taldor is and will tolerate seems to evolve a bit between TFE and WFTC.

House Rell(?) appears in quite a few Taldor-related supplements including the Opparan gazetter in Crownfall and Taldor, Echoes of Glory. Or at least, the canny and treacherous Dominicus Rell does, a major player in the security apparatus of the Lion Blades who often ran his own games against the other "masters" of the blades and rendered Stavian III highly dependent on him.

Dominicus would almost certainly have had to be in on the Exaltation Massacre; either he betrayed the Lion Blades and went along with it, or he was part of informing Gloriana Morilla and her Sovereign Court about the scheme. If he heads up a family, they would be major players in whatever faction they back, and highly romanticized due to their Azlanti ancestry.

House Varima is represented by Earl Gahez Varima in Crownfall, a proponent of peace with Qadira and Kelesh with lots of contacts around Zimar. His home dominions have already been overrun by Pythareus by this point if he offered any resistance, which seems unlikely given his pacifistic character.

House Vernisant are of course flagged in Crownfall as Imperialists, and their Earl Calhadion as obnoxious in the extreme.

House Talbot have a Duke with a mostly mercantile focus who would probably favor whoever seems best for business. Given Eutropia's reputation as a do-gooder and the fact that he's estranged from his own son over the latter's decision to abandon the family business for do-gooding, I'm guessing he'd be an Imperialist.

House Tiberan rule Tandak Prefecture in the person of Grand Duchess Cisera Tiberan. There's an involved backstory here (mentioned in TFE) with her succeeding an uncle who got ripped to pieces by a mob in Cassomir, but she's clearly a key part of Eutropia's alliance given that the Princess controls Cassomir.

House Vinmark holds the Barony of Oppara and could be a major player in the capital's politics. The Baron is a former Ulfen Guardsman who owes his position to Stavian III and would probably be an Imperialist, although he might at least try to appear neutral to keep from inflaming the Loyalist parts of the city.

House Zellvyngian rules the Lingian Prefecture which looks to be under pressure from House Phaeben. This is very definitely a Corrupt Villain house, not as brutal as the Briarsmiths but brazenly criminal, and they were making considerable bank off construction projects and cash crop profits before the War for the Crown came along. No doubt they would look to Pythareus for protection and the promise of bringing back their gravy train.

House Zespire is a Loyalist faction whose leading Count Orlundo appears in Crownfall and is a naval hero. I think of him as being kind of a light-side counterpart to Grand Duke Delriddian, who has clearly thrown in with Pythareus.

Whew. That's a lot. Be back tomorrow for part two.

Hello, everyone. I'm actually running a 2E adaptation of this AP, pretty heavily modified, but I still think these observations might of use to the odd person using either system who wonders what all those names on the "Succession Loyalty" maps in Books 2 and 5 are about. Are they just set dressing? Do they matter at all beyond conveying a super-general impression? I ran across a similar question in an archived Reddit thread so at any rate I know someone out there somewhere has asked themselves this question, as I did when I encountered those maps.

Before we get started: Of course, all sorts of spoilers in the below for the AP. I'm not going to trouble too much about spoiler tags unless I relate something specific to my game that my players might read.

And a stipulation: Also of course, you technically don't need to worry about any of this. The broader details of the struggle in Taldor aren't part of the AP. The only reason I became interested in it is that I wanted to have ways of conveying a broader sense of a large-scale crisis happening in Taldor to my players (who are in the second chapter of Book Two) that comes from news seeping in from outside their current frame.

I was curious if those maps might actually be resources for that. Or at least have some worthwhile Easter Eggs. Turns out, they are. And they do.

So, if you've ever had the question: "What the heck are all those names on those succession maps? Are they just random? Do they refer to anything in canon?" The answer is that they're not just random, at least not all of them, and quite a lot of them do call back to references in prior Taldor-related products (or just earlier modules). They also, it turns out, are set up -- and if this was accidental it's an amazing accident, but I don't feel like it is -- to evoke stories, or at least the building blocks of stories, that the AP text doesn't make explicit.

Having dug into this a bit, I might as well pay it forward. Here goes.

I feel like saying or forcing all ancestries to be the same is being disrespectful to their uniqueness and culture.

And sure enough, elves, halflings, dwarves and gnomes, half-elves and (in the somewhat-more-progressive now-about-time) even goblins and half-orcs can all be distinct from each other and possessed of their own particular ranges of characteristics and flaws with none of them having to read like Christian Identity fanatics writing about the darkies. Which is because there's a long way between "races shouldn't be canned racist stereotypes" and "fantasy ancestries shouldn't have any differences," and it's never necessary to defend or tolerate racism for the sake of variety.

and you basically accusing them of being disingenuous in that regard over one page of text seems like a vast overreaction.

All due respect: if I wasn't clear enough about this earlier, I'm not much interested in your opinions about what does or doesn't constitute "overreaction." The reflexive scolding of people who raise the issue for "overreaction" is one of the habits that kept progress on this issue as utterly, embarrassingly primitive as it has been for decades.

And I'm neither discounting the positive steps Paizo has taken nor particularly impressed that "positive steps" by the early third decade of the 21st century still consist of "our game is for everyone, as witness the vary partial and marginal paring back of aggressively racist tropes that we previously treated as perfectly normal." They are, of course, better than most RPG companies, still. Unfortunately, this is mostly evidence of the across-the-board horrorshow that has been TTRPG race politics until this point.

Paizo never had a position that any race/ancestry 'cannot be Good', so they don't need to retcon it.

Depends on the specific publication. I can certainly recall APs in 1e that make this case in very explicit, direct terms. The Drow entry in the bestiary still, very explicitly and without qualification, makes the case that Drow are the result of the corruption of Elves to evil, and only this. So yes, Paizo has at various points published things that take exactly this position.

What they had the position on was that, culturally, a variety of specific species in the Inner Sea region were primarily composed of Evil members.

There's no significant difference between "mostly" and "all" in terms of degree-of-racism. You may think there is. There really isn't. "Some of them, I'm sure, are nice people" doesn't obviate racist characterization or its effects.

That position has not substantially changed, because doing that really would be a huge retcon, and one that smacks of covering up atrocities, which again is every bit as troublesome a trope as any of the issues with race.

Actually the current description of Belkzen in the Lost Omens world guide no longer feels like a description of a primarily Eeeeevil society. It's in fact one of what I would call the brighter spots as this sort of thing goes, precisely because it does manage to provide complexity to a society without this somehow being "every bit as troublesome" as sticking to racist depictions without which you'd somehow be "covering up atrocities."

(There's never a choice between choosing massively racist language and "covering up atrocities," what a silly thing to say. It's much the same as recognizing, say, the Aztecs or the Spaniards of our history as fully human and complex actors doesn't need to involve "covering up atrocities," or with any other two groups that have ever come into violent conflict that involved atrocities.)

Outside of changing that page of text in the Bestiary, what more do you want them to do?

WotC recently had the sense to announce a general tacking-away from "monster races" as a concept at all. That's a good idea. Not having attempts to tack towards diversity go by way of further racist tropes (such as "a few [such-and-such] are a credit to their generally evil and largely disposable people") would also be nice. And I'm getting rapidly sick of your constant attempts to deflect to "one page of the Bestiary."

Basically, I will see it as a golden day when I don't have to choose TTRPG products by the standard "whose content requires the least homebrewing to remove all the embarrassing, awful racist shizzle?" Paizo, right now, wins that contest. But by Gods it will be a beautiful thing if we ever get to the place where that's simply not something the POC part of the player base has to do.

(EDIT: There will, of course, be winners and losers in this. It will mean that racists will have to do more work to re-insert racist tropes into the resulting products, for instance. The illusion that one can appeal to one viewpoint without at some point pushing back against the other is just that. But Paizo already professes to have chosen its side in that tradeoff. It will be great when it all lines up.)

All of that feels like a reasonable change to the world, and there were still huge numbers of people upset about it. And most of those complaints weren't coming from a racist place, just a realism one 'Wait, goblins were universally hated but can now be PCs, what changed?'

Hint: many of those complaints probably were, in fact, coming from a racist place, with 'realism' as an excuse. That's how that kind of apologetics generally works. Don't get me wrong, I generally get why Paizo might be skittish about changing certain things: everyone is not always their bravest selves and racists can throw up epic quantities of chaff and general bull$#!t even in relatively small numbers.

They've done a good job so far, IMO, but it hasn't been without its issues and people feeling it was too fast.

The sort of people who will always "feel it was too fast" may not in fact have worthwhile or informed, or sometimes even good faith, perspectives on what made the racist tropes harmful in the first place.

Speeding up is one way to go, but I'm not at all sure it's the right one.

Good for you! But again, with all due respect, I really wasn't asking.

I feel like when every single book takes the more nuanced approach except one, the one in question is the exception rather than the rule, even if that one is the Bestiary.

Well. Except for the part where it's absolutely not the exception to larger fantasy RPG tradition. Those problematic Bestiary entries don't exist in isolation; they have the weight of long tradition pressing in behind them. The trope "Orcs are literally and truly everything your Fox News-watching uncle thinks is Just Facts About the Ghetto" has been reproduced ad nauseam for decades, with the major exception being the odd "Blizzard-style green Klingon" orcs (who are kind of a Noble Savage trope with its own issues, but that's outside the scope I'm discussing here).

It's asking a lot of exceptions to this appearing in a couple of other setting books and player guides to do the work of dispensing with the massive inertia of that tradition. So you'll forgive me if I can't give a lot of weight to protestations that "I think you're reading way too much into a single page of a single book here." Whether or not it's just a mistake or deliberate cowardice I guess is kind of a side issue; it significantly confuses the supposed mission of the game to pursue a diversity-friendly approach. Esp. with its appearing in a fairly basic-utility book like the first Bestiary for the new system, as opposed to arguably more optional content like World Guides or Advanced Players' Guides. (In the sense that you really don't need the Lost Omens World Guide to build adventures for a PF2e campaign; doing without the Bestiary content is a bigger ask.)

Expecting better than this does not, by the way, require the orcs to be retroactively made into misunderstood Good Guys, that's something of a strawman. You don't have to do that to make a people into something more than a litany of crude, vicious, venom-spitting racial stereotypes. Other peoples have complicated societies with good and bad actors that aren't "mostly" any one thing. Implementing a similarly diverse standard for "monster races" just has to hold out the possibility that different events and conflicts might have different interpretations and complex causes, for instance. That there might be layers to events or personalities or peoples previously touched upon that we haven't previously seen. That even your existing history, even if it once subscribed to Tolkien Orcs But Cruder, still admits of possibilities for better, more nuanced storytelling.

That's a good thing, I think. It's surely one of the reasons you build a fantasy setting with millennia worth of often ambiguous and deliberately obscure history to play in and with.

Paizo has already started down this road, so I'm a hard sell that Pathfinder is painted into a corner by its prior stories here. They've essentially committed to retconning the previous standard position that Goblins are baby-eating raiders who cannot be good... even if the current version is still only the minimal concession that there might be a few "good" ones. There is, as you've correctly pointed out, already some confliction of the stereotypical Orc going on in PF2e material. Which tells me there's plenty of room for the proposition of taking Goblin personhood beyond that limited concession, and likewise for (say) making Drow into something more potentially interesting than cruel, soulless sadists, or for simply not reproducing the Standard Orc in anything they publish, be it by "mistake" or not.

@Deadmanwalking: I quite agree that the game has made some strides in not reinforcing certain stereotypes *mechanically* for certain "ancestries" (although I also agree with the OP that some approaches to, say, Human Backgrounds undercut that achievement in a way that suggests Paizo as a whole isn't on the same page about what a "game for everyone" really means). That description of the approach to the Orcs seems promising.

That said, *opens Bestiary*:

And the Bestiaries tend to be focused a bit on those of the group in question that are likely to become adversaries. In fact, going to your goblins comparison, the goblin description in the Bestiary is actually pretty similar, because many goblins are still very unpleasant culturally.

*Most,* in fact, according to the Bestiary entry. Which sort of raises other questions, e.g. why the Bestiary continues to assume goblins and orcs as likely enemies and doesn't assume anything similar for most other playable races. And even setting that aside, why the Bestiary actually can manage nuanced, non-derogatory descriptions of, say, Catfolk adversaries but won't do the same for certain others, despite their getting more sympathetic treatment in other supplements that demonstrates Paizo is capable of hiring writers who don't basically rely on adjusted Eighties Monster Manual copy.

This... yeah. Feels like trying to have it both ways, basically. Goblins are *mostly* evil but you can play as one of the "good ones." Orcs are *mostly* subhuman sword-fodder filth and you have to buy the right supplements to get a different picture of them (the Bestiary includes *no* qualifying language about this or that group of orcs, for example, a courtesy it at least manages to extend --albeit in incredibly dubious "there are a few exceptions" fashion -- to the goblins).

If you've recognized that "monster races" as-received actually tend to reflect and reinforce at-the-table racism (which factually, they do, and of which the baby-steps toward playable "monster races" that aren't stereotypes are a tacit recognition) that would also have to involve recognizing that these kinds of "exceptions" are already native to racist discourse. Basically they provide scope for your PCs to say "hey, my best friend is a [goblin or orc or whatever]" but still indulge most of the standard laundry-list of stereotypes and D&D cliches.

Committing to diversity is going to have to mean committing fully to diversity at some point, hopefully soon. They've already got the basic track on how to do this: you can have people in the game have stereotypes, false beliefs and/or genuine grievances with and about each other without having the game world simply side in both fluff and mechanics with one group or the other. You can still tell rich stories about cultural conflict without having your game declare the racist interpretation to be the correct one; in fact, the game is generally enriched by avoiding that. PF2e still seems to want to dance on either side of the fence, which should've stopped being a thing a long time ago.

Someone mentioned above that there have been changes to orcs in Pathfinder 2e. Have there? I'm just dipping my toes into the new system and I see there have been changes to how half-orcs are handled (and implications that the stereotypes of them are unjustified), but it's rather undercut by the fact that orcs themselves seem to obey the same s+&! "collection of things white supremacists say about 'savages'" pattern they always have, for example: https://2e.aonprd.com/Monsters.aspx?ID=324.

This is particularly weird with Goblins now getting to be actual people in 2e.

Picking up on the OP's original starship names intent (though it's amusing that they started with Serenity, heh, I'm still into the spirit of the thing):

4.5. Moorglade*
5. Pearl of Great Price
6. Blood of Prokopius
7. Stardragon
8. Empyreal Skylark
9. Sunwolf
9.5. Mother of Invention*
10. Stillstar
11. Dream of Sky
12. Destiny
13. Mandate of Heaven
14. Skyline Judge
15. Righteous Fury
16. Noble Siren
17. Dagon Ascent
18. Vigilant Prophet
19. Eiseth
20. Anna Perenna
21. Ha'Hanal
22. Innocent Taxogeny**

(All in-campaign names. Some of them were for 'mechs when we playtested the Mechfinder homebrew, but I think they work just as well for ships.

* Names excluded from the main sequence b/c they're actually based on Seventies bands or prog rock concept albums, but hey. Still fun.

** Name of an alien ship that was actually a literal description of the AI piloting it.)

Anybody got any personal ideas for Shadow Absalom Station? I find that place pretty interesting.

I used the Shadow Plane pretty extensively in my current campaign. The way it tended to work -- it wasn't a true inversion of the Prime Material but it often worked as a mirror image -- was that locations that were full of life and bustle in our plane were often dead and half-destroyed on the Shadow Plane, inhabited only by shadow creatures of negative energy. By contrast, sometimes there were locales that seemed dead and ruined on the Prime Material that were still active and full of some kind of "life" on the Shadow Plane.

I never got to do a Shadow Plane version of Absalom Station, although I planned for the possibility: the adventure just didn't move that way. If I'd gotten to do it, though, the Shadow Plane version of Absalom Station would have been abandoned and half-wrecked, warped and weird, portions of it open to the void and the remainder overrun by various creatures of Shadow, with a very few Kayal-type humanoids forming expeditions and bridgeheads. So, that's one possible way to go.

The Shadow Plane was serving a very specific plot function in my adventure, though. If I were doing the scenario in isolation I might take it further over-the-top and deeper into horror territory and have the station overrun by Kytons and their minions.

I get the OP's objection. It's worth keeping in mind that the Gap opens up storytelling possibilities, but unavoidably there are some it forecloses. It's a tradeoff not everyone is obligated to like, though it hasn't been a dealbreaker for me.

It was my impression that 'The gap' exists to give a reason for technology to have risen.

Technology was already rising in Pathfinder before the Gap happened. Starfinder just makes it way more ubiquitous and central to the setting. It's basically a continuity device, as others have mentioned.

So I want to do an alternate history ... where "the gap" is filled in ... but I'm not quite sure where to begin.

Do I bring back Golarion as a regular world -- perhaps being what Coruscant is to Star Wars?

How do I try to estimate how many years of history were erased by "The Gap?"

Though I understand the reasoning behind it, the Gap isn't how I would have approached the problem either, personally. If you're trying to fill it in, there are hints at what seem to be about the 3 - 5 millennia that are lost therein.

The easiest way to gather those hints is to pick up the Distant Worlds Pathfinder supplement and compare the settings therein to the Starfinder setting in the CRB and in Pact Worlds. The results provide some pretty clear hints at what was going on, at least in loose outline, in the interim (and suggestions for certain weird mysteries about what happened where you can fill in the blanks yourself).

Another, IMO rather easier, way to introduce deep history into the setting is to simply go out into the Vast, create something with a detailed pre-Gap history of your own invention and plunge the players into that. Sci-fi and science fantasy are well-suited to epic storylines about Big Dumb Objects, weird alien phenomena and ancient lost civilizations on time scales far beyond anything fantasy tends to be comfortable with. You can throw your players into dramas hundreds of thousands or millions of years in the making without having to painstakingly recreate Golarian history. That's the approach I prefer; it also has the virtue of preserving some of the more weird and interesting story options that the Gap does offer (and it does).

Or of course, you can just make your own custom setting and ignore the Gap or be deliberately vague about it. I'm doing that for my next campaign, but that's mostly because I want to be able to eventually publish it as third-party content. I don't know that I would do it for something that's strictly a home game.

I've been wondering recently whether the exclamation point in "Zo!" is pronounced or not.

Little-known fact: due to an obscure quirk of Eoxian, all visible letters of the name are silent and it is actually pronounced "fan-shaw."

While this is 100% pure speculation, I think it'd be a really fun spin if they were lead by a resurrected or even undead Aroden, as Aroden was the last pure-blood Azlanti - this would at least give legitimacy to their claims of being the Azlanti Star Empire.

And besides, what could be cooler than an undead deity?

The Azlanti Star Empire would have had to split off from the Azlanti at the height of their culture's power, long before the days of Aroden. New Thespera was founded by a high-tech Azlanti expedition thousands of years ago, whereas Aroden's story stems from the collapse of Azlanti civilization.

There are narrative ways to make even high-level players feel the danger.

In Starfinder, the much-maligned gear chase also means that likely enemies and their weapons are levelling up along with the characters. Such enemies even in small numbers can still present a real and even deadly threat to a party.

Even if the guy in front of you is someone you could, all other things being equal, diss and dismiss, it's about more than the one gun in your face, the one sword at your throat: there is often something much larger behind them that the PCs still have to reckon with. If killing some random guard means getting into a war with an entire army, or an entire planet's law enforcement, or some far more powerful entity yet... even just the prospect of getting the more heavily-militarized units called in on them should give them pause. And they should have experiential reasons to have that pause.

It's a problem that can be solved with narrative and encounter-building as much as raw mechanics. You can of course build a system where, no matter how high-level you are, that one gun in one punk's hand can end you. Stars Without Number is your ticket, there... but baking that extent of "realism" into the mechanics can have serious drawbacks. It's certainly very hard to run that kind of system in the kind of heroic register that Starfinder delivers; SWN is very frank with GMs about the need for them to build the game around frequent character death, with combat something to be avoided at almost any cost.