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![]() Taking inspiration from various fantasy stories I've read: if there's something that has multiple IRL versions of it in fiction, use one of the things from there. Vampires are prolly the easiest for this, since not only is there a lot of different types of vampires in fiction, there's also a lot of different vampire stories where someone goes "yeah XYZ only works in STORIES, in REALITY it's ABC". Human brains aren't super great at remembering WHERE they came across a concept before, but they're good at going "this seems familiar". ![]()
![]() Ed Reppert wrote:
...actually, idea: it wasn't the trigger for the START of it, but it's the BOUNDARY of it. Working under the assumption of "whatever CAUSED the Gap, it happened after the 'start' of it, and erased records of things going backward (possibly forward as well but that's not relevant here) in time". It kept going until it either burnt itself out (which is what I'd previously assumed), or encountered something that could disrupt it. And "the death of multiple gods, in close proximity, violently" would disrupt a LOT of things.As for how the Gap "starts" at different times in different places... it's like splashing. ![]()
![]() New question: how do you think the upcoming academies book will change the arguments in this thread? Things that'll be settled (aside from "just wait until the book comes out to see what it has"), completely new issues that'll be raised, things where people keep arguing about that aspect but it's now clear they agree on the facts and just have differing value judgements, etc. I have absolutely zero dogs in this race; this is mostly just so people will be able to say "called it" afterwards. ![]()
![]() thaX wrote:
Oh I actually know the explanation for this! (Or at least to SOMETHING, I don't know if BG1 is actually relevant to what I'm thinking about.) Apparently it all stems from an early edition of D&D, where kobolds are illustrated as kind of like dogs and kind of like reptiles. When stuff got over to Japan, it developed in the "kind of like dogs" direction, whereas D&D went with the "kind of like reptiles" direction. ![]()
![]() 132. At first it appears to be audio recordings of a person screaming in pain and terror; then you hear brief coughing, clearing the throat, commentary on how that one sounded, then another bit of screaming but this time with a slightly altered pitch.
133. A collection of files, labelled by date, that depict artwork, seemingly all by the same person. The earliest-dated pieces are consistent with something a young child would make, and they show an improvement in skill and sophistication as time goes on. There's a gap of a few years, where there's nothing for that time, then when it starts up again, the pieces are radically different in subject matter. 134. Video journal from a few years ago, of a normal person with a coincidental strong resemblance to a minor celebrity. Or rather, that was a minor celebrity back then, and is now a major public figure; and you have information which you can use to find someone who looks a LOT like that important and/or controversial person. 134. Amateur-quality draft of a story with the EXACT same plot points and twists as a recent hit space-movie. The file's date means that it can't have been written AFTER the movie was released.
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![]() Yeah I was going to comment too on "wait wasn't his hair darker than that", and it does make sense that time has passed, but how many years are we talking? ...and then I just realized that doesn't necessarily matter, since my youngest aunt started to grey in her thirties; but still, it was starting to GREY, not go full white.
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![]() VVKing wrote:
...wait, are we POSITIVE that this death is being correctly attributed? There's plenty of deities involved with "deception", after all.... Heck, it's also possible that the killer is who we think it is, but the killer didn't realize the VICTIM was who he actually is. ![]()
![]() I had not thought about that, that he'd likely be more popular among groups of first settlers. Makes a lot of sense though, so thanks for mentioning it. And through a process of free-associating which I wasn't actually able to keep track of the steps in it, I've come to the conclusion that he's one of the more popular of the "I'm going to start worshipping some obscure niche deity" gods in the Pact Worlds. Like, for people who specifically seek out something in order to be a bit counter-cultural, but they're not looking to completely go against society. He's old-fashioned and unfamiliar (exotic!), but he's neither harmful nor really weird. ![]()
![]() Oh, yeah we NEED to see the response from Rahadoum about this. ...now I'm wondering, how would that philosophy react to people who are like "yeah I recognize that my god is dead, but I'm still acting in accordance with his teachings"? Because on the one hand, that's subordinating your will to divine whims without even potential bribery of magic; but on the OTHER hand, that's choosing something of your own free mortal will, and the god's not around to DIRECT you to do anything any more. I predict it'll be resolved as a political issue, more than a philosophical one; since it could go either way, the deciding factor would be "are these people particularly annoying, or are these people valuable allies". (And if they end up NOT widespread interacting with them, then it'd be a case-by-case basis.) I just had a thought, that there's going to be a popular story going around Rahadoum; one person's saying something like "I don't think the gods are worthy of worship", another person says "may [deity most associated with political enemies at the time of the telling] smite you for that", and then the second person gets smacked by a piece of Gorum's armour. It just seems like the kind of urban legend that gets passed around; something that validates the views of the audience, and makes their opponents look foolish. ![]()
![]() PossibleCabbage wrote:
Like Vash the Stampede, the Humanoid Typhoon? (Trigun) ![]()
![]() Eeveegirl1206 wrote:
I generally shy away from "supernatural evil was the cause for real-world disaster"; so I choose to believe the incredibly entertaining instead possibility of "Szuriel had nothing to do with the start of WWI, and alternated the whole time between mentally kicking herself for not thinking of it first, and taking notes for stuff she can do in the future". ![]()
![]() So I decided to get an outside perspective, and asked a friend who's unfamiliar with Pathfinder, and I don't know if she's ever even played a TTRPG before. I'm including here our conversation, so you can see what information she was working from. me: So, basic background: for a bunch of checks (including the relevant one), there's four degrees of possible success: critical failure, "normal" failure, "normal" success, and critical success.
her: So dubious knowledge would come across to the player like a critical success? Since u get from their perspective 2 pieces of information? me: The player knows they have Dubious Knowledge, and they also know the normal rules for Recall Knowledge. her: Maybe I need an example of the type of information u would get for the recall types… me: There's a bunch of example questions (for normal Recall Knowledge), I'll copy out the ones from the first section which is about creatures:
her: So I might be totally missing the mark but a dubious knowledge to something like “can it be reasoned with” could be something like “yes. But watch out”
me: lol I have no real idea how it's MEANT to be; I really hope this is one that'll get clarified in the next errata pass. ![]()
![]() What I most WANT is leshy or kholo, because I like them and I think they look really cool and we need to see more of them. Hobgoblin or orc are more likely, and would be acceptable, because those are also cool. I do NOT want it to be elf or human (or ai-whatsit), because we've seen a lot of them; UNLESS there's some really INTERESTING versatile heritage added. ...now that I think about it, I'm just kind of tired of seeing characters with a skin colour that is possible for humans. And unless there's other major changes to the body (ie being a centaur, or... whatever's up with the faces of goblins), I don't want them to have a skin TEXTURE that's possible for humans. ![]()
![]() ...oh man, and here I'd thought the MEANING of that feat was actually really obvious, just its LAST SENTENCE was worded so horribly I can't tell what they meant to convey by it. The easiest way to think of it, is any situation where you know something is ONE of two things, but not WHICH. Doesn't even have to be DUBIOUS knowledge; yesterday I took an online quiz of locating the provinces of Canada (I'm Canadian), and I have never been able to remember which is Nova Scotia and which is New Brunswick. I got that question wrong yesterday (because I was just guessing), and I'd gotten it wrong half the time when I was a teenager and my family was doing a road trip through the area, and I'd gotten it wrong half the time in grade 2 when we had a quiz on that stuff. But if you say "maritime province that's adjacent to Quebec", I'm not going to be randomly guessing from all provinces in Canada; I know it's ONE of those two, just not WHICH. I honestly don't get how anything thinks "the GM gives you two pieces of information, one of which is OBVIOUSLY false" is how it's supposed to go. That's how it can go WRONG, sure, but that's like saying "whenever I use the toaster the bread always comes out super-burnt, thus toast is the worst possible form of bread and I don't know why it even exists" instead of realizing your toaster is on the wrong setting. ![]()
![]() Nethys was messing with time magic and snapped something load-bearing, which is also why prophecy doesn't work any more (because the world's a few degrees off the normal chain from cause to effect). Aroden doesn't realize anything has happened, because no time has passed for him whatsoever; and he seems "dead" to his followers because he currently doesn't exist in relation to their timeframe. Nethys was very sorry, and promised to never do it again. A few millennia later, Nethys was messing with information magic, and that's how we got the Gap. ![]()
![]() This is an idea I had back when his Godsrain prophecy came out, and I only now realized I could actually, y'know, post about it here. So obviously "hunting" and "farming" aren't as relevant to most people in Starfinder, as opposed to Pathfinder era. "Community" is always a thing, but he's a pretty old-fashioned guy, I don't think he's going to pivot away from those other aspects of himself. But you know what kinds of people, in our world, have an interest in outmoded forms of food production? Not (just) as historians, but as skills they want to acquire for themselves, not out of any perceived need, just because they're neat? I think Erastil is the god of historical re-enactors. It'd also fit with his focus on "community"; it's a niche interest, and that builds stronger bonds between the people who share it. ![]()
![]() Okay. So. I'm pretty sure they didn't pick "nine" at random, there's got to be some MEANING behind that number, and not seven or eight or ten; however, "nine" might be "the number of really great ideas we got from our brainstorming session", or "the number that works out the best with our projected page count", or some other factor we don't have access to, thus no point in trying to guess it based on THAT. Now, what do we have "nine" of, from the information we DO have access to..... "Nine alignments", obviously, except "alignment" is no longer a thing with ORC. Planes, going off the inside cover of RoE, number up to 19, and there ARE ways to chunk them together such that it becomes "nine", but nothing which immediately jumps out to me in a way that makes sense. It could be different things which ADD UP to "nine". There's four types of magic, but I can't think of any five other things which would have an equal kind of spread. I mean there's PROBABLY not any kind of underlying "theme" for the different stuff, unless you count "all together, these give coverage for a lot of different character concepts", but yeah. ![]()
![]() So, I had a thought, and I don't know whether it should go here or in the Starfinder forum, but: it said an Gorum's death is apparent on every world he's worshipped on, which I can see why they made sure to include that, but what might that mean for non-Golarion worlds? Do we have enough information about the religious practices of, uh, I'm blanking on the names of the other planets in that solar system, so just imagine I actually named one here, to tell if some of them worshipped Gorum, possibly under a different name, and if so, what effects his death might have THERE? Was it ever mentioned how long the vesk have been worshipping Damoritosh? Because I can easily imagine "one war god dies, another war god -- one of conquest this time -- steps in, and begins to forge them into an empire". (If that contradicts with Starfinder canon, then I choose to believe an that same kind of thing still happens, just on a different planet, which might or might not have lasted to Starfinder times.) And yes, I know "Starfinder isn't guaranteed to be in the same continuity as Pathfinder", but let's pretend it is, for the sake of having fun with speculation. ![]()
![]() Wei Ji the Learner wrote:
Ooh now THAT would be a good one too; it allows for him to have gotten dishonourably fatally attacked without being able to counterattack (which is what I believe they're going for), but WITH him still being able to strike back against his attacker. Like sure their IMMEDIATE goal (killing Gorum) succeeded, but their OVERALL goal (using his essence for their own purpose) failed. ![]()
![]() Berselius wrote: I wonder though, does the crew of the Zoetrope have any fighting ability? Does the Zoetrope have any defenses? I ask as I'd imagine their sure to run into hostile creatures in their explorations I'd imagine. From what I've gathered, "defences against an upset animal who wants you to LEAVE, or who thinks you're potential food" and "defences against intelligent hostiles who want you specifically to no longer be alive" work on two very different paradigms. So, what the ship has as protection against "hostile creatures", might not be things that would show up on a combat statblock. ![]()
![]() I can see him being stabbed by surprise, but I hope that, while dying, he's able to go out fighting. I think it'd be interesting if his death was SUPPOSED to be a stealthy assassination, but he fights back enough that he's basically blowing the war horn. (Or whatever the phrase is.) Like, the PLAN was to kill him and throw his body somewhere it'll cause maximum turmoil; but he survives long enough, draws enough attention, that everyone knows WHO'S to blame. ![]()
![]() Leliel the 12th wrote:
I love that concept, although I don't think it'll play out like that, if only because "ideas that can be properly conveyed in a three-sentence forum post" and "ideas that can be properly conveyed in an AP" don't have much overlap (there's SOME, but the odds are against it). Still, that gives me a thought... what if Arazni is at like ground zero of Gorum's death? If DROPS of his blood can give mortals powers, imagine what more it could do if you're right beside him as the life leaves his body, possibly bathed in it. And that'd also explain how she gains enough recognition to become one of the top 20 most-known deities in the Inner Seas region; if she's there for such a major event, possibly suspected of his murder or acknowledged as taking vengeance on his killer or some other thing I'm not thinking of right now. ![]()
![]() Jan Caltrop wrote:
His armour's broken and there's blood from the sky As his essence rains down from on high![]()
![]() By "innate weaknesses" for vampires, are we talking "vampires will be harder to kill" or "vampires aren't as controlled by their desire for blood"? Also, thank you VERY much for this, I hope your dreams tonight give you the solution to an issue you've been struggling with. EDIT: OH THANK GOODNESS, that's the one I was most hoping for. ![]()
![]() I'm at peace with whatever is likely to happen. No matter who's revealed to die, it won't ruin my day. I'll be sad if it's some of them, I'll feel bad for other people if it's one I know they love; but it won't cause me agony. Is anyone able to commit to giving regular updates in this thread, when something happens? Because I'll likely be refreshing it every few minutes, since there's zero chance I'll be able to watch the stream without massive delays, that hasn't been on the table for years, and I'm pretty sure that even opening Twitch will make my browser slow down to the point it's nigh-unusable, and if I try to actually WATCH something these days, I wouldn't be surprised if my computer crashes; it's very old. ![]()
![]() Squiggit wrote:
He's a good element of the setting! He just shouldn't be on THAT list. ![]()
![]() I'd recommend getting Rage Of Elements, if only for the lore stuff; I read all the MECHANICS stuff on AoN, and it was cool, but there were just these tantalizing GLIMPSES of what had happened in the world. (I only started going on the forums like a month or two ago.) When I got it, not only was there cool art and lore I hadn't seen on AoN, but there were STORIES about the planes, in-'verse narrators, it was wonderful. ![]()
![]() The Raven Black wrote:
PLEASE; I want Rovagug OFF that list, he's not thematically a "deity". Replace him with literally any demon lord; not only would it be BETTER, but there's a lot more stories you can tell about "destructive jerks who have a specific goal (that isn't to destroy the planet)" than "destructive jerks who just want to mindlessly ruin everything". ![]()
![]() Perpdepog wrote:
...oh now that is a REALLY cool idea; I'd never before considered "in-'verse grandfathering of getting spellcasting from this particular deity", but now that you've mentioned it, I can't see how I HADN'T thought of it. ![]()
![]() Perpdepog wrote:
*shrug* Might be someone who wasn't the direct subject of one, but still was upset by it? Either on another's behalf, or because they were incidentally mentioned and Didn't Like It. ![]()
![]() Eldritch Yodel wrote: Valeros follows Cayden and always holds his holy symbol by his side. I actually associate Valeros with Cayden more than Len with Shelyn. I was specifically looking at "deities who aren't confirmed safe". ...and honestly the only reason I had it strongly in my mind, Lem and Shelyn, was that earlier today I was rereading the Earn Income section of PC1, and he's one of the examples, having it included that like "there's a chance his patron deity Shelyn might be attending the performance".![]()
![]() Okay. Lemme just go through who all is possible again....
My money's on Iomedae or Sarenrae, for two reasons. First, I don't particularly want either of them to die, and I always try to bet on things I do NOT want to happen, thus I win either way (which can also be looked at as "losing either way", but that's a philosophical matter). Second, they're both HIGHLY represented by iconics -- Merisiel has ribbons in Calistria's colours, but that's not the same -- which I judge to make them MORE likely to die, instead of LESS.
My second point isn't infallible; there's prolly characters SOMEWHERE in the books who not only worship but get divine spells from any of the other gods. (Now might be a good time to mention that I've been able to read very few of the actual sourcebooks.) But like, there's multiple arguments for and against literally every single possibility, and at some point you just have to say "I know this isn't guaranteed, but this is what I'm guessing". ![]()
![]() Mudfoot wrote:
I return to the example of Franz Ferdinand. Although that doesn't DIRECTLY correspond, since it's more like "minor crisis that ballooned catastrophically", instead of... whatever's going to happen with whoever dies here. But the point stands, an someone's death can have more meaning (to people outside their immediate circle) than who they were in life.Or, look at pretty much every murder victim who hadn't been a public figure, especially if it sparked outcry. If you didn't know them in person, you likely wouldn't have cared if they died of natural causes, or got hit by a car; but the circumstances of their death make them (or not "them" really, but the end of their life) "interesting". I'd also disagree with your statement that they wouldn't be BOTHERED. Just because it wouldn't throw their system into chaos, doesn't mean it wouldn't cause damage or change, or that they wouldn't grieve.
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