| Morrigna |
While my familiarity with Pathfinder extends back scarcely a month, it seems to me that the best puzzle pieces I've seen on Aroden's death are in this thread: leak, deception, denial non denial, honest man, rebuke, and omission.
The other thread's alien entity long-con starstone hypothesis was amazing, but far too intelligent a guess. That's the kind of excessively good fitting of disparate details to logical necessity and probability that you get from reverse engineering things. Real history and organically developing creative fictions never have this fingerprint, for similar reasons. By comparison, Therrin's Big Badguy clunker is much more likely.
We must also examine the source. Is Therrin a liar? I judge his posts have a ring of authenticity. They appear to be a carelessly delivered, garbled transmission of an uninspiring, early version. This version reflects no current agenda and satisfies no one - as it wouldn't, since it was conceived long before. Look at Tolkein's notes - a creator's concepts gestate and develop from mustard seeds to mighty trees. Here I believe we have the seed. Furthermore, I see no evidence in Pathfinder, pace James, of the sort of epic weaving power that would make me expect a higher quality seed. It is enjoyable elaboration - a cavern of quartz, not a silmaril.
Objection #1: Rova-Gug's escape would be cataclysmic, and impossible to cover up.
Answer: Seed, not tree. Cracking prison, not successful escape.
Objection #2: If Aroden died nobly, there would be no coverup.
Answer: Rova-Gug plausibly stands outside prophecy and divine control - the prophecy that he will end the world does not signify application of fate's laws to him, but rather is similar to the knowledge that the Sun will still be burning in 5 minutes - nothing conceivable could stop it.
Thus his mini-eruption was unexpected, unprophecied, and severely screwed things over, adding another deity to Rova's kill/sacrifice count.
Rova's very TOMB is unnamed, its location unknown. The portents surrounding Aroden's death might give a dangerous hint as to its location - I believe the beast chained at the center of the Earth is a popular myth? And where better to bind the destroyer of all than at the very center of creation? Not to be un-Copernican or planar-parochial, but one must admit the Pathfinder cosmos resembles a matryoshka doll. The center would be the logical place.
Furthermore, the gods don't want to admit and nobody wants to hear that Rova really can't be controlled and may burst forth at any time. Motives of morale, pride, and discretion are more than enough to explain the silence.
In fact, Paizo's "we'll never tell" statement implies that they can know for sure that it will never be discovered by 3rd parties and that the gods who know the story will never tell it under any circumstances, which narrows down the options considerably towards the universe's #1 and best kept secret.
Lastly, we have the testimony of character. Therrin didn't care to write well or make sense, and then left, but the kernel of a story can be extracted. Moreland said he'd "jump on the grenade" and then issued a denial-non-denial. James called Moreland out for blatantly lying about something, so we may suspect him of inexactitude on other matters. James denied nothing, although he has had no problem shooting down other theories, including one on this thread.
My hunch from the limited info is that Moreland's grenade phrasing was an emotive leak revealing that Therrin's story was a substantially true damaging revelation, and that any denial of it would have more than a tinge of falsehood.
Anyhow, I don't really care. I've already decided on my own version. I play a Psychopomp alignment, and it's pretty clear from the fluff on the Morrigna that the Spire tolerates no mortal ascension to godhood that slights Limbo's bureaucracy. Pharasma did it, Aroden is her paperweight, and she's coming for the rest. Nobody cheats Death.
Of course, the two theories are not mutually exclusive. In fact, their combination is even more satisfying. Killing gods is a tricky business. One must be patient.
I assume the Spire team will do the heavy lifting, but any tips on killing demigods would be welcome. I'm a void wizard 9. Planar binding -> Kere normally requires lvl 11. Obviously I will do as much recon as possible in-game, and report it to HQ via the Nosoi, Katrina, Kere or Morrigna "off-screen".
I realize this may not be exactly kosher, but I think there's a certain immersive value in having the GM and his emperor experience the sudden shock of the assassination attempt together. Who says GM's can't have fun too?
Maybe I should appeal to his sense of fair play to make it a fight, perhaps with the party squaring off against me while the Spire takes on the Emperor. If I win, free burials for everyone.
Hmm, actually, since the Emperor's claim to fame is stopping another homebrew-goddess' continent-destroying volcano, I can just gate the goddess' team in, teleport out, and retain plausible deniability. That saves me an involuntary trip to Limbo. (Not that I would mind the promotion.)
EDIT: Ah, here's the tree:
Quote:
6 Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years.
7 And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison --Revelations 20
The allusion isn't an accident -- and neither is Rovagug's epithet, "the Rough Beast." It's a reference to William Butler Yeats' poem, The Second Coming:
Quote:
(first two stanzas omitted for brevity)
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Aroden knew that the Age of Glory prefaced Rovagug's release. In order to stop the prophesy, he had to destroy prophesy itself. His death was the only sure way to accomplish this -- the preordained sequence of events could not occur from that point forward. This is why prophesy stopped being accurate afterward -- fate itself was broken. This is also what caused the cataclysmic events of 4606 AR; the Eye of Abendego, Worldwound, and Shatterfield are scars in the fabric of the universe, left behind by a mass reconfiguration of reality itself. It was like trying to divide by zero.
The details can't really be known -- I prefer to think that Aroden just put a metaphysical gun to his own head for the good of humanity. It's possible that he engineered his own murder, Sandman style, and deliberately let his guard down at the right moment (Asmodeus is my prime suspect, but there are certainly others).
The more I mull this over, the more convinced I am that I'm right (Mr. Jacobs, please feel free to disabuse me of my pretension).
Better than I thought. I haven't actually played a game yet, so maybe I don't have an accurate impression of their narrative qualities.
Anyhow, the prophecy connection plus the Echo of Lost Divinity makes Pharasma's involvement extremely likely, without considering the god-killing motive.