Regarding the Grand Lodge talk earlier:
3 of my 19 characters are GL. Two of them lived around the Mendev/Worldwound region and as such had front row seats to the high and mighty of Avistan ignoring the problem facing them all while the Society was one of the few players in the political field willing to go out of their way to fix things. Given that maintaining their operations there meant facing armies of demons, the whole "explore Jormurdun" thing felt rather a lot like a pretext rather than the real reason. It's pretty much my Top 1 piece of evidence that there's at least someone with half a conscience throwing their weight around within the Decemvirate. That and the fact that the Society was apparently the only bunch on Golarion with the spine and wherewithal to pull together a strike team to attack a Runelord.
Anyway, even those two characters of mine don't subscribe to the "Loyalty to the Decemvirate above all else" line, and that has seemed seriously dumb to me since the faction first came about. The Ten are, simply put, not the kind of figures that would inspire or command loyalty. Individual Venture Captains who have proven their worth and shown themselves getting their hands dirty? Maybe, on a case by case basis, though there's still some way to go until 'Loyalty to me above all else'. Torch in his workers'-rights aspect? Sure, I'll dig that. The Decemvirate? A bunch of anonymous shadow puppeteers, unaccountable and unavailable to anyone aside from a minuscule inside clique? Really?
On that thought, could one even create a character who's *justifiably* loyal specifically to the Ten without some serious Venture Captain-grade inside knowledge of what the Ten are up to? The more dealings my higher-level characters have had with the leadership of the Society, the more estranged they've grown from it. I didn't walk into those developments with a set course in mind, either.
Also, Grand Lodge totally is a default faction for folks that don't fit anywhere else. I don't remember how such things worked before the number of factions was bumped up from 5 to 10, but these days, you go register a character and it's opt-out from Grand Lodge. You want anything else, you'll have to manually affirm your preference.
The GL tagline just seems woefully detached from any basis in reality. A number of my characters, especially the experienced ones, have very real loyalties to their fellow Pathfinders - some even to the organization at large (cough Worldwound crusade cough). Given all the things agents go through on their missions, having some kind of in-group centered on Pathfinder solidarity is sensible enough. If solidarity sounds too sugary, there's careerism too - Captain titles, power, access to more resources, information...
As said before, though, the Decemvirate can go jump in a lake.
