Beholder is the biggest loss I agree wholeheartedly. Of all the monsters Paizo cannot use, beholders are the most iconic and difficult to replace.
I would like to add my thanks to the awesome design team, and to awesome authors like Amber E. Scott, who I am told is responsible for making the most awesome NPC since Ameiko: Anevia Tirabade! Seriously, you guys are awesome, making an incredible product that is also very inclusive.
⇒ Girtablilu
The great empires of the scorpion-like girtablilu have stood supreme for thousands of years, with giant stone edifices visible from the very horizon. Yet now the world is changing, and the mighty rivers which have fed their empires since time immemorial are drying up. Famine is spreading, and now, in their weakened state, as the empires of the girtablilu prepare to war against one another for control of the dwindling food supply, war is coming from outside. The nomadic thri-kreen of the far south, long content to herd beasts and keep to themselves, have been united under a single great leader promising them glories unimagined, a life of ease and luxury, just as soon as they claim that future by conquering the ancient cities of the girtablilu. Though they have little in the way of steel and iron arms, their spears and arrows are more than enough to threaten the girtablilu, who haven't the food to keep armies supplied, nor can they afford to spare the holy power of their priests to counter the thri-kreen shamans, when those priests devote all their efforts to creating food and water for their hungry people. Far to the north, the treants are stirring from eons of slumber, finding themselves parched, as the rains no longer fall as often as they once did, the forests they shepherd now withering away. They know they must do something, but the girtablilu to the south are too busy trying just to survive, and so the treants have sought the aid of troll oracles, hoping to divine the cause of the changes in weather. The trolls are unconcerned by the changes to the world, for they respect only strength, and those who are too weak to find sustenance are too weak to be of concern to the trolls. They oblige the treants only because of their shared strengths and fear of fire. The truth of the matter is that the vodyanoi living on islands dotting the islands in the eastern ocean are the ones responsible, diverting the storms to inundate their islands with rain and turn all the land they possess into soggy marshes and lush rainforests.
Running a mythic Kingmaker right now, and been redesigning Vordakai as a mythic graveknight: Cyclops (CR 5) + Wizard 6 (CR +3) + Graveknight (CR +2) + Mythic Tier 5 (CR +2) It involves a pretty drastic rebuild, but I'm tying Vordakai into the main story more by fleshing out the ancient cyclopean empire he hailed from as a nation of astronomers and engineers who build clockwork golems, grandiose observatories, and even portals to other worlds. Vordakai's status as a graveknight is the result of unwittingly building a portal to Eox and getting blasted to death with negative energies as a result. Unlike most graveknights, he's a wizard whose 'armour' is a black Robe of the Magi. Instead of having a 'Varnhold Vanishing', he's going to wage war against Varnhold, which was unknowingly built right atop the ancient site of the portal to Eox. How this all relates to the overarching story is that Nyrissa is searching for that very portal, planning to redirect it to point to the Plane of Shadow so she can be reunited with Count Ranalc, and then to the First World so they can return against the wishes of the other Eldest. Destroying the portal will be a task beyond the abilities of the party at that level, even as mythic characters, giving them an incentive to instead claim Varnhold for themselves and protect the portal against those who would use it. |
