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I'm not sure if this is the right place for this post, but I don't know where else I would put it.

Spoilers for the AP will be below, so if you haven't read it yet/ don't want spoilers, turn away now.

The ironfang invasion looks amazing, and I plan on running it some day for a group of my friends. The Nirmathas/Molthune in the default setting is another thing I happen to be a fan of.

Of the two nations (especially with how I plan on presenting them), I'm more partial to Molthune, and I have the feeling my players will be as well from what I know about them. I think our entire group would have a lot more fun acting out Molthune's tale of the Ironfang invasion, and what lies beyond that. But for now, I only want to focus on the Ironfang invasion.

Even though the invasion really kicks off in Nirmathas, am I correct in understanding that Azaersi wants both of the rival nations and even chunks of Lastwall as icing on the cake? If that's so, I was thinking about kicking off the adventure with the PC's being members of fort Ramgate (or possibly another fort on the border), or members of a small town that sprang up adjacent to the fort, seeking protection under its walls. Not all the PC's have to be members of Molthune's military, but that'll be encouraged. Overall, they can't want to actively subvert Molthune, which I don't think will be a problem.

The game would open similarly to the standard IFI: a town being taken and the PC's running for their lives. The changes would be:

1. Starts off with Hobs capturing a full fledged fortress with the help of the Onyx key

2. The PC's- or at least some of them- get to watch as Molthune's Lord General of the Border: Resper Cyrno, who the PC's will know is a legendary warrior in her own right, gets cut down by Azaersi personally. Introduce the big bad as being wayyyyyy outside their pay grade and help encouraging them to run away even more, while also taking the characters outside of their comfort zone as the chain of command gets trashed and discipline breaks down from an unexpected and overwhelming onslaught.. She won't be the only officer killed.

The reason for taking the fort is ultimately to throw a rench into Molthune's war machine, so they won't be able to as effectively march into Nirmathas, finish her troops off, then try to take Nirmathas for herself. She might organize raids on some of the other Lord Generals as well, fully intending to shatter the chain of command which Molthune's heavily leans on.

As the fort falls, the PC's run around Not-Phander and try to save who they can before booking it into the countryside with enemies hot on their tails.

In the longer term, Molthune is going to find out about the obsidian key, and after seeing just how effective it is at conquering things, they will do just about anything to get a hold of it. After that, maybe they go and conquer Druma. I don't know, that all comes later.

Anyways... the point of making this thread is me wanting to try and convert the initial bits of the AP to be Molthune centric. I have some other things involved for later in the game, but at least initially, I will be using Trail of the Hunted as a guide for my own sake. Does anyone have any advice or feedback on how I might even start to go about this?

Sure, this AP doesn't come out until next year. Sure, we only have a bit of information to go on. But a little bit of wild speculation never hurt anyone.

I'm planning on creating a paladin- a classic knight in shining armor, a man who harkened back to the better days of Taldor at the hight of his glory. A loyal citizen of his empire wanting to do his part to ensure someone worthy of the throne becomes his fair nations new ruler.

There's just one, tiny little problem- he's a closet Sarenrae Worshiper, which is of course highly illegal in Taldor due to Qadira being awful. He's got no love of the cult of the Dawnflower or Qadira though.

Ultimately, he hopes that the new ruler will be a bit more tolerant of Sarenrae's worship once she becomes Queen.

I'm debating if he's going to be half Qadiran or not. Mechanically, I think I'll go for he shining knight route, or maybe the Legste archetype. Perhaps both.

I know that somewhere a while back, the hellknights were confirmed to still be around in starfinder. But beyond that, we don't really know much about what the organization looks like now.

So, its time for blatantly wild speculation!

In general, I imagine that the various orders are going to be significantly larger than they were in the Pathfinder universe. This is due to the significantly larger population size of the universe (both from covering multiple planets) and the advanced technology means that more food should be able to be grown.

I'm going to run through each major order and just talk about my guess as to what they are doing now.

Order of the Chain High security prisons anyone? At a minimum, they will be ruining some sort of prison, either on an asteroid somewhere or on it

Beyond that- they'll sell the services of bounty hunters to residents of the Pact worlds and the government of the pact worlds.

Order of the Gate The "big brother is watching you" order, I expect these guys will be the security team of some planet, or maybe Absalom station.

Beyond that, they will likely be expert hackers as well.

Order of the Godclaw It will be really interesting to see if the pantheon has changed since pathfinder. There are hints in the Hellknight book that Zon Kuthon might become a member, and as he is still a core deity, I think thats likely.

I still suspect that Asmodeus will be part of their pantheon though- because, well, the lord of hell should have some influence among the hell knights.

Order of the Nail An order dedicated to fighting savagery? These guys will be fighting The Swarm to the near exclusion of all other activities. It's hard to get more "savage" in sci-fi than "space bugs that want to eat everything".

Order of the Pyre This group is kind of anti scintific advancement, so I assume that they won't have much of a presence if that didn't change significantly. Irregardless, that wasn't their main focus. Their main focus was radical and chaotic religious groups. My guess is they'll hunt down members of the old cults, in addition to keeping a constant watch on Aucturn.

Order of the Rack In spite of this order's prominence in Golorian in the Pathfinder setting, I honestly expect that this order died out sometime over the gap. They are expressly opposed to scientific advancement and, well... it happened anyways. And if the Hellknights are still around... well, I suppose some sort of Reckoning happened.

Order of the Scourge I expect this groups organization will have changed little, and their purpose will still be important. They are the group that focuses on dealing with corruption in government, and that will always be a problem. In addition, I suspect that they will also lend their services to corporations as well, ferreting out embezzlement and fraud on their account.

This is all blatant speculation... but it's fun. Besides, I am tossing around ideas of running a hellknight focused game in pathfinder, so more thoughts about this sort of thing are welcome.

We already know that there are some core deities from Pathfinder that have carried over into the core 20 deities of Starfinder's pact

Abadar

Desna

Iomedae

Pharasma

Sarenrae

Urgathoa

Zon-Kuthon

On top of this, we know of at least one deity that is completely new- an ascended AI that has given mortals the power to access the Drift, which is basically hyperspace.

Beyond that... we've got 12 open slots to fill that make up the core 20 deities of the Starfinder Pact Worlds. We also know from some of the various interviews that some of the more minor deities from standard pathfinder have been Promoted to core deities.

We don't have too much information on what those deities are. But it's always fun to speculate!

I want to say that Brigh is an obvious choice... but we do already know about a separate god who who seems to be based around technology, so there would be a lot of overlap if both were included.

I'd love to see Milani be elevated to a core deity... but that doesn't seem very likely. She doesn't seem like an easy fit for the setting..

Lissala could make a return, serving as a more "presentable" lawful evil deity than, you know, Zon Kuthon.

The chaotic evil core deities of this setting will probably more Cthulhu-ish than they were in Pathfinder. Hastur seems like a sensible choice to throw into the core.

What are your thoughts? It's always fun to speculate.