Clicking on the first picture returns the error "We can’t connect to the server at cdn.paizo.coma7d62ac8-7f03-00ef-f1f0-83fb8bf332e2". (The second picture doesn't have this problem.)
Captain, I desire the scifi language of garage door opener violence ray and enemies with the Plunger of EX and Singular Electric Hand Mixer Beater of TERMINATE XD Now I want to see JawaScript . . . .
The system doesn't let me Favorite the page, but I Favorited every post above this one. Congratulations to all who stood up and are standing up for justice under extremely hostile circumstances.
{. . .} Despite Asmodeus being the official state religion, it is essential to note that even within a theocracy, discrimination and prejudice can still exist and that the fight for justice and equality must be continuous. {. . .}ESPECIALLY within a theocracy, discrimination and prejudice can still exist. And you can be sure Asmodeus is not fighting for justice and equality . . . I say, you must not be from Golarion . . . . But it is a theocracy, at least in part: Although worship of deities other than Asmodeus is allowed, all must pay homage to Asmodeus. Regarding racial prejudice, if Cheliax were smart, they'd try to do away with it and, instead, install something my Antipaladin Hellknight would call "Merciless Meritocracy." He'd say that the circumstances of one's birth is an immutable characteristic and not something one can help and so not something they can be "guilty" of. But Cheliax very much has a system of noble houses, and in order to function, that requires notions of noble birth and the trappings of such. (Well, if they had a powerful capitalist system, they could instead use wealth, but they don't have that -- if you want that on Golarion, you have to go to Druma.) What they CAN control is their efforts if they don't actually try to succeed in a lawful manner, they can be guilty of not applying ones' self fully to become successful. They could be lazy (beware nobles, for even the rich MUST apply themselves to PROVE they are worthy of their station!), dishonest, or have any number of mortal faults that cause them to fall by the wayside, poor, criminals, etc. I could certainly see the rulers of Cheliax advertising this -- but living by it is another matter. Actually, that sounds very familiar . . . .
. . . Especially if the dungeon crawl is big enough and varied enough that you need to deal with story elements there as well. A specific example would be the (almost) first part of the first chapter of Wrath of the Righteous, where Spoiler:
you have to get out of the underground, but you can't just go around killing everything -- you actually have to work things out with some people. Of course, that was just one little piece of an AP, so on a far smaller than what you would want with a whole dungeon crawl AP or even a whole dungeon crawl chapter.
ANDORAN VS CHELIAX WAR AP IS HAPPENING! . . . Can't they come up with a more catchy name than "planar silk creatures"?
I am making this new thread to revive what I posted in another thread, but this time trying to start it off better by being more comprehensive in coverage of the diversity to expect based upon looking at what we have on Earth. This time, I will start on the music system side. Consider how on Earth, Western music has long been dominated by systems of 12 notes per octave (although exceptions exist, going back into the late Renaissance), while cultures elsewhere have their own systems of not necessarily 12 notes per octave. I have not enough knowledge of the history of music systems outside of European tradition to say much, although I do have a passing familiarity with some examples of what exists today, so I will mostly stick to the European side, while recognizing that Earth also has many non-European musical traditions, which I will touch on later as much as I can, and we should expect no less for Golarion. For Western European music, which hails from ancient Greek and Roman music, and before that Mesopotamian music, scales were originally based upon intervals between notes initially consisting of ratios of powers of 3 with powers of 2, with some ratios later being adapted in recognition of the usability of higher primes to reduce the number of powers of 3 -- so ~3/2 (fifth), ~4/3 (fourth), ~9/8 (whole tone --> also ~10/9 and ~8/7), ~16/9 (minor seventh --> also ~9/5 and ~7/4), ~32/27 (minor third --> ~6/5), ~81/64 (major third --> ~5/4), etc. (The "~" is to acknowledge that the ratios are often inexact in many tuning systems, although in the Mesopotamian variant commonly known as Pythagorean tuning, they are required to be exact, and Pythagorean tuning is exactly the same as strict 3-limit just intonation.) Using ratios of 3/2 and other powers there of (like 4/3) sets up what today is known as a circle of fifths, with the fifth being ~3/2. (I wonder who came up with that terminology, naming the octave-reduced third harmonic the "fifth", and naming the octave-reduced fifth harmonic the "major third".) But this really amounted to an (in principle) infinite helix of fifths. Although the use of higher primes (usually only up to prime 5 and sometimes 7) is often spoken of as a Renaissance invention, some of the scholars of Antiquity (such as Archytas and Claudius Ptolemy) also made use of primes 5 and 7, and it seems that Medieval and early Renaissance adherence to strict Pythagorean tuning (using only ratios containing 3 and 2 and powers thereof) was a matter of backsliding. In the Renaissance (at least as early as 1495), meantone was invented (with early pioneers including Pietro Aron, Lodovico Fogliani, Gioseffo Zarlino, and Francisco deSalinas), replacing strict 3-limit just intonation with approximate 5-limit just intonation. This flattens the fifth (hence ~3/2) by some set fraction of the syntonic comma (81/80) and equates ~9/8 with ~10/9 to perfect the major third (5/4, in 1/4-comma or quarter-comma meantone, the dominant variety, literally choosing the geometric mean between 9/8 and 10/9) or rarely the minor third (6/5, in 1/3-comma meantone) or achieve a state in between (in 2/7-comma meantone) or also rarely even going beyond to perfect 10/9 (in half-comma meantone). This also included 12-tone equal temperament, also known today as 12 equal divisions of the octave (12EDO), discovered in both Europe and China in the 1500s (in China possibly even earlier) -- this is almost the same as 1/11-comma meantone, and exactly 1/12 Pythagorean comma meantone. But at the time, most people did not like the way it sounded -- the major thirds are considerably sharp of 5/4 but not all the way to 81/64, while the minor thirds are considerably flat of 6/5 but not all the way to 32/27. The closest convenient ratios are 63/59 and take your pick of 25/21 or 16/19, respectively -- these are respectable ratios, but energy transfer between strings doesn't work very well with such complicated ratios, thus causing it to sound somewhat dull and yet rough unless an instrument is designed with extra power and resonance to compensate, like a modern piano, pipe organ, or synthesizer (the latter not having to bother with resonance at all unless it is designed to emulate resonance). Thus, 12EDO took a long time to catch on, and meanwhile other meantone tunings (primarily quarter-comma meantone) took over to support tertian harmony (that using major and minor thirds and chords composed by stacking these). Both Pythagorean tuning and most meantone tunings, having infinite helices of fifths, have wolf intervals (especially the wolf fifth) if you cut the number of notes per octave short, so that the player is forced to use the nearest available note in the now-broken chain of fifths (forced into an imperfect circle) when modulating beyond a restricted set of key signatures. To try to get around the problem of wolf intervals, a couple of approaches were tried. One approach is to provide extra notes to allow for more modulation. This includes some systems of split flats/sharps, as seen on some harpsichords and pipe organs of the early Baroque; split frets on lutes and viols perform an analogous function. Although many instruments did not have this feature, it is reasonably easy to find videos of such instruments, with split keys for G♯/A♭, often also for D♯/E♭, and less commonly additional split keys. In rare cases this resulted in harpsichords having 19 or more notes per octave (at this point also inserting a key between B/C and another between E/F). In the case of Nicola Vicentino's Arcicembalo and Arciorgano of ~1555, this went all the way up to 36 notes per octave, although with terrible ergonomics (distributing them between 2 keyboards engaging the same rank of strings or pipes, or in the case of Vito Trasuntino's Clavemusicum Omnitonum of 1606 (see same article as for Arcicembalo), 31 notes per octave with still challenging but more manageable ergonomics. The other approach is to bend pitches to get the helix of fifths to close into a finite circle, with the wolf interval being spread enough around the circle to stop being objectionable. This includes the above-mentioned 12EDO, but that is not the only number of notes capable of supporting a closed circle, and if the above approach of adding split flat/sharps is used, larger sizes are possible. Other sizes tried in Western Europe included 19EDO, which is nearly identical to 1/3-comma meantone and flattens the fifth nearly to 112/75; 31EDO, which is a bit sharp of quarter-comma meantone and was also one of the tuning systems(*) used by the above-mentioned Nicola Vicentino (and is compatible with the above-mentioned Clavemusicum Omnitonum and its modern derivatives); 43EDO, which is nearly identical to 1/5-comma meantone, 50EDO, which is a bit sharp of 2/7-comma meantone, and 55EDO, which is a bit flat of 1/6-comma meantone. (*)Nicola Vicentino also had the alternative idea to use extended quarter-comma meantone on the lower manual of the Arcicembalo and Arciorgano, and tune the upper manual at pitch a quarter comma above the lower manual, to be able to get both pure major thirds (5/4) and pure perfect fifths (3/2); however, the tuning diagram in the Wikipedia article does not appear to match either tuning system. In Western Europe, these larger sizes did not catch on, probably because the pipe organ was very important in Western Europe, and adding more organ pipes is very expensive and takes a lot of space; even on a clavichord, harpsichord, or piano, adding more strings to get more notes per octave is no light matter, not only because of expense, but also because it cuts into adding more strings to get more volume. Also, 31 notes per octave seems to be the practical limit of the Halberstadt (clavichord/harpsichord/piano-style) keyboard, so while a very small number of 31EDO-capable instruments were built, this kept 43EDO and 50EDO (and other large tuning systems such as 41EDO that were NOT meantone, although reportedly one experimental 41EDO piano was built) from being more than a theoretical prospect in Western Europe (but not in some parts of Earth that did not have such large and expensive instruments -- see below). Leopold and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart did recommend using a subset of 55EDO (approximating 1/6-comma meantone), but had to contend with a mess of different players disagreeing on tuning systems (and even with violinists lacking a mathematical understanding of how finger position spacing changes along the violin strings), as documented in Mozart's Teaching of Intonation by John Hind Chesnut, Journal of the American Musicological Society Vol. 30, No. 2 (Summer, 1977), pp. 254-271 (18 pages), Published By: University of California Press. Since instruments having 12 notes per octave won (in Western Europe) on practicality grounds, but 12EDO had yet to catch on (at least beyond small instrumental ensembles that lacked a keyboard instrument), mid-to-late Baroque and Classical through early-mid Romantic music went through a phase of using well-tempered tuning systems, with inventors such as Andreas Werckmeister, Johann Sebastian Bach himself, Johann Philipp Kirnberger, Jean-Philippe Rameau, Leopold and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Francesco Antonio Vallotti, and Thomas Young. These systems make major thirds more pure in parts of the circle of fifths and fifths more pure in others, so that no intervals are so far off as to constitute a wolf interval, and all key signatures are playable (as in J. S. Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier), with the most commonly used key signatures sounding the best overall and the others having distinct flavors but not sounding so badly off as to be objectionable. Instrumental evolution and increasingly large orchestras and other ensembles combined with the mess of tuning systems that the Mozarts had to contend with drove Western European (and by this time also American) tuning systems towards standardization on 12EDO, although at the cost of loss of musical flavor. A side benefit of 12EDO and its well-tempered cousins is that for all its roughness in approximating 5-limit just intonation, it also gives a free (although even rougher) approximation of 7-limit just intonation, which can be of use when one is able to bend pitches to favor 7-limit or 5-limit intervals as needed, as is often done in traditional jazz and blues and some types of music derived from them. I do want to touch upon some of Earth's other musical traditions which closed the circle of fifths (when they even use fifths as a scale generator at all -- some temperaments use a different generator) at different values, although I must apologize for not knowing more about them, and for having left out some of them (such as pre-European American) due to complete lack of knowledge.
• The traditional music of Thailand reportedly also uses 7 notes per octave, but the information I have seen about the tempering of those notes is inconsistent. • In parts of Africa, closing the circle early resulted in 5 divisions of the octave (not sure if equal), with the octave stretched to work with the inharmonic instruments that could be made and maintained with limited materials availability in a hot climate that is not friendly to most European instruments. • Some music (Slendro) in Indonesia does the same thing, while some other music (Pelog) in Indonesia uses 9 divisions of the octave (not sure if equal) with 7 of the 9 notes normally being used. • Arabic music since the 1700s uses quarter tones (24 notes per octave if all possible quarter-tones are included, but Arabic music does not necessarily distribute them evenly); while Arabic music leading up to the 1700s reportedly used a system of 17 notes per octave, although not equally distributed. • At least some classical Indian music uses a system called Shruti, which has well over 12 notes per octave (often 22), not equally distributed. • And Turkish music theory teaches 53 divisions of the octave (53EDO is barely flat relative to extended Pythagorean tuning), although not all of the notes are normally used. Even in Western Europe, the idea of something other than 12 notes per octave never went away completely, and the Twentieth Century saw composers such as Ivan wyschnegradsky, Charles Ives, and Alois Hába experiment with more notes per octave -- usually 24EDO, which has the strange property of being the easiest higher-than-12EDO system for players in the Western European tradition to adapt to from a performance perspective, but very hard to actually compose for due to having twin circles of fifths that do not communicate with each other by any intervals having only primes 2, 3, and 5, instead requiring intervals such as 11/8 and its combinations with the other primes (technically prime 7 also works for doing this in 24EDO, but badly -- if you are going to be stuck with a multiple of 12EDO, 36EDO is much better for prime 7). Compositions in 24EDO that actually use notes from both circles of fifths at the same time or in rapid succession counterintuitively sound much more bizarre than compositions in some temperaments with more bizarre-seeming numbers, such as 17EDO, 19EDO, 26EDO, 31EDO, 41EDO, 46EDO, 50EDO, or 53EDO; or even 34EDO, which has twin circles of fifths, but is able to connect them using ratios that include prime 5. In the last couple of decades, the advent of (somewhat) affordable generalized/isomorphic keyboards and soft synthesizers that actually sound good (while not being limited to notes that can be produced on the installed base of fixed pitch acoustic instruments) has led to an explosion of microtonal/xenharmonic music composition that can be found on YouTube (and with more digging or a helpful Xenharmonic Wiki article link, also on other places). Information about the above tuning systems can be found on both Wikipedia and on the Xenharmonic Wiki, which has links to various non-closed regular temperaments including meantone and various non-meantone linear temperaments (some similar to meantone and some very dissimilar and not even using fifths as a generator), just intonation, historical tuning systems, and (as of this posting) equal divisions of the octave of every size up through 321EDO before starting to skip sizes, and thereafter selected sizes up through 5407372813EDO. (Note that this site usually converts EDO to lowercase, which is unfortunate, since warts that modify usage of a tuning system are also in lowercase.) The Xenharmonic Wiki also has information about equal step tuning systems that do not treat the octave as supreme, such as Bohlen-Pierce (13 equal divisions of the twelfth). Many of the Xenharmonic Wiki articles on tuning systems have links to music (on YouTube or otherwise) using those tuning systems. Both of these sources and links from them contributed to much of this post. On the instrumental side, and now getting to the Pathfinder Campaign Setting, canonically some Western instruments from the Baroque through High Classical eras have been listed as being present in Avistan, and that a few threads have popped up about music on Golarion every so often (like this one and this one) as well as my own previous failed attempt), but has anything more detailed come up on this? (And searching for microtonal music on these messageboards formerly brought up exactly 1 hit that was not viewable, and now it doesn't come up at all.) Also on the instrumental side, Golarion has working magic, which should enable the development of arcanaphones, which would be Golarion's equivalent of synthesizers, but using magic instead of electricity to generate sound. Given the existence of fairly low-level magic for making convincing sounds of things that aren't really there, the cost of such instruments should be only moderately outrageous -- out of reach of most of the common people, but easily in reach for the nobility and upper merchant classes. Environments commonly used on Golarion but not commonly used on Earth would be expected to have an influence on music-making. For instance, those living underground and having easy access to stone and metal but not to wood or most other organics could find themselves pushed in the direction of making instruments of the idiophone families, consisting of struck bars or rods, which would have highly inharmonic partials, thereby causing effective harmonic relations between notes to be different from those produced by stringed, woodwind, and brass instruments; yet they would also be able to make brass instruments and even metal "woodwind" instruents and pipe organs, both of which would tend to have more conventional harmonics. And they just might want an arcanaphone (see above) to glue it all together. And if they had short fingers, it would tend to drive them to develop keyboards of layout radically different from the Halberstadt (piano/harpsichord/organ-style) keyboard familiar to us; such radically different keyboards started to appear at least as early as the 1800s on Earth, so their development on Golarion would not be completely unexpected). And if they had enough wealth, as the Dwarves are reputed to have (along with great longevity), their nobility might even be inclined to splurge for something like a pipe organ having as many as 50 notes per octave as well as numerous ranks, that would cause Earth-based accountants (even those working for nobility) to take fright. I got interested in this subject from stumbling upon microtonal music on YouTube, which has seen a recent great radiation of microtonal music that actually sounds good (as noted above). And then the Xenharmonic Wiki (linked above) has been a great resource -- even if fairly rough around the edges -- for learning the mathematical details of music, even if some of it does seem to require a degree from a college of magic in mathematics. Even i I never produce any music (microtonal or otherwise) myself, it has been a wild ride in learning what it is that makes our dominant Western system of 12 equally tempered notes per octave actually work. And since Paizo is now working especially hard to flesh out parts of Golarion that are culturally different from Earth's Western Europe even after accounting for technological differences, this seems like a good time to flesh out the music of Golarion, both Avistani and otherwise.
^Now I've got this vision of the PCs opening a secret door, and on the other side is a monster very hastily pulling up pants, glaring back at the PCs, and exclaiming "If you don't mind . . . !"
That fits with what I posted earlier about trying to keep your own side from doing something truly horrific, but also try to keep it from collapsing.
It could be partly diplomatic as well as horror. What if you had to deal with some of the Krakens in order to defeat the big one? Then it would be:
Another approach for the warring sides AP ideas is one in which the PCs have to try to prevent their own side from doing something truly awful, but they also have to make sure it doesn't collapse.
^Archives of Nethys for 1st Edition seems to be broken (not just that link, but the whole site) for the moment, so here's the d20pfsrd.com version. And although it's an Aberration, in some ways it seems like an Undead.
Interesting. If I'm reading UnArcane's spreadsheet correctly, before the War of Immortals in PF2E there were 365 living deities. After the War, there are 384 living deities, and 19 dead ones. Not sure I understand why there are 19 more living deities, or what caused the 19 dead ones to be dead (Gorum we know, of course). It's not my spreadsheet. It's by Elfteiroh.
I want an Iblydos AP, and I want a proper film noir detective genre AP. Suddenly -- even though it isn't film noir -- I have thoughts of the Dial of Destiny . . . .
Hey yeah, you reminded me: Where are my Titanium Elementals and Chlorine Elementals?
It's up to the Goblins to uncover a grand conspiracy by the Blackfingers, the Skinsaw Cult, the Gray Masters, and the Reapers of Reputation. Because even if Goblins were traditionally seen as being Evil like the divine patron of these conspirators, I just can't see Goblins getting along with Nobooger.
Here's a Runelord idea: A new generation of Runelords has arisen, but rather than staying secreted away in demiplanes or castles, these brazenly move among the public, actively moving the levers of political power and swaying the masses with crude yet glitzy demagoguery, as they seek World Domination through Political Action.
^Yes, 1st Edition AD&D Bard was THE original prestige class. Monk and Assassin were straightforward base classes by comparison, but (along with the Druid) had limits on how many characters over a certain level could exist of each, and in addition these all had hard caps on level. Then AD&D Unearthed Arcana introduced higher levels of Druid which restarted the numbering and bypassed the number of characters cap, but didn't get rid of the cap for lower level characters, thereby making it effectively a prestige class of itself.
"War gavel." Hmmm. This meeting WILL come to order . . . or else!
So i understand better, Vindicators are Holy and Inquisitors are Unholy? So Vindicators have to choose a deity with Santification. . . . But Santa DOES have something to do with Inquisition, as alluded to by this song about Santafication, the 1934 version (for kids) of Big Brother is Watching You.
So . . . for vindication, you vill vant your Avenger to vipe your vindows vith Vindex . . . .
Yeah- as much as I'd like to get the "wizards summoning up fiends" rules that we lack outside rituals, you either get to invite the Taldan spies-in-training or the Chelish diabolists, not both. Who says you won't accidentally get both? Actually might be hard to avoid, although it would also be hard to see.
I didn't think they were malicious -- I thought they were doing this at legal gunpoint.
^Actually, I'm sure Cheliax would be happy to share education (magical and otherwise) regarding Diabolic pacts . . . for a price.
Here's one I wish they had done, inspired by Blademaster's Mirror Image from WarCraft III: A spell of Shadow Conjuration (also available to higher-level Magi) that would make copies of yourself. Unlike D&D/Pathfinder Mirror Image, which is a Figment, these could flank, and they wouldn't pop on just 1 hit (unless it was a really big hit).
^This resurfaces the question of whether the Starstone made Aroden awesome or Aroden made the Starstone awesome . . . . As for Rovagug, I still favor the theory that at some point (now obviously quite a way in the future, probably the far future), the other deities try to kill him by throwing him into the black hole at the center of the galaxy, and although this seems to get rid of Rovagug himself, now they're faced with an aware and vengeful black hole . . . .
^By a remarkable coincidence, several weeks ago I stumbled upon the perfect theme song for Puddlejumper once he manages to acquire some awakened friends.
In the end(?)...: The Pathfinderwiki article about Achaekek says that Achaekek is tasked with assassinating those who seek divinity. It also says that Achaekek is supposed to be incapable of assassinating anything with divinity above demigod status, but gives several indications that this prohibition may sometimes fail . . . .
So you made some Drow friends, eh? Too bad they're about to suffer a sudden Spontaneous Massive Existence Failure . . . .
{. . .} if you're updating Wrath of the Righteous to use 2nd edition rules at your table, then you don't have to really worry about that at all. A GM can freely mix any content in their private game that they wish. If you intend to make your game public via something like a video series or the like, things get more complex, but if you're just running Wrath of the Righteous for your home group, then you don't have to adhere to that level of strict compliance to the license. Any more than you have to worry if one of your players names their wizard Gandalf. Helpful tip: If somebody gives you trouble about a wizard named Gandalf, tell them that you're a complete computer nerd (hey, it might even be true!) and that you've named this wizard in memory of the defunct modem and terminal adapter company.
Going to make a last ditch guess and say Gorum as there haven't been any large scale wars in the Lost Omens setting since the start of 2e. And I can see the potential for (as others have posted above) the followers of Gorum to be the least distressed by Gorum's death (compared to the followers of any other slain deity, such as Aroden), especially since war obviously doesn't stop.
. . . And Arazni sure seems to have de-lichified herself, at least on the outside . . . .
Going to make a last ditch guess and say Gorum as there haven't been any large scale wars in the Lost Omens setting since the start of 2e. You just reminded me that given that since some of the Godsrain Prophecies have resulted in that thing that the dead deity represented running out of control, Gorum would be the perfect candidate for kicking off a grand war by kicking off.
So this is a glimpse of what a Sorcery school looks like, in contrast to what a Wizardry school looks like.
For #1, #2, and #4, if you found out, they'd have to kill you.
If you look carefully towards the end of the teaser video, you can actually see a significant amount of the area of one of the pages.
The posts about the bad things that would happen if Rovagug's essence rained down everywhere lead to a revival of an idea I posted in an earlier one of these threads: Rovagug dies from being imprisoned and starved for so long, or perhaps devours himself, either way as others have posted above. As soon as the news breaks, the other deities no longer have the fear of Rovagug escaping to keep them in check from war on those of each other that they hate. Meanwhile, those deities that hold onto some sense realize that the corpse of Rovagug is extremely hazardous material, and that a Rovagug Godsrain must be prevented. So they steal his corpse and send it off for disposal in the black hole at the center of the galaxy. In the haste and chaos, some Rovagug material does rain down on Golarion, but much less than what would have otherwise occurred. Eventually, they succeed in dropping the great majority of the corpse into the black hole. . . . Millennia later, the black hole awakens . . . .
I assume the Beast is a Qlippoth, similar to how Rovagug is a Qlippoth... The Qlippoth that are known are just the entities from the surface most portions of the lower Abyss... but in an infinite plane, the deeper you go, the more powerful and twisted things get! Rovagug was a God from the deeper portions that left the abyss for whatever reason... whos to say that there aren't things MUCH worse down there! Whether Rovagug or just kin, whoever this is may have learned ONE thing from Rovagug's imprisonment: It pays to be stealthy.
Seems like the adventure bits at the end could be fleshed out into a full adventure -- or pair of adventures if you have PCs coming from out of town and PCs who grew up in Sandpoint.
Now I want to see this movie Deadpool Goes to Golarion . . . .
Maybe they're locked into a cycle of each one dying and the other one taking over, and then the reverse . . . .
Well, that would have fit with my idea of Urgathoa coming back in or shortly before Starfinder time, having to make ends meet working in a pizza parlor while slowly working her way up to divinity . . . .
{. . .} We also took these opportunities to update monsters in interesting ways where we could, thus the shift from the dragon’s color to their horn and the addition of their impaling charge. The change in focus allows us to make the dragon more of our own and even opens them for future possibilities. While the horned dragon in Monster Core is green and lives in forests, there’s a decent chance you could see a blue horned dragon that lives in a lake or a tan horned dragon that lives in a desert sometime in the future! Better yet (especially since these are supposed to be long-lived creatures), have them be able to shift colors like chameleons. DWAGGIN DWAGGIN DWAGGIN Now you've got me thinking of Elmer Fudd in a Viking outfit hunting Dwagons because he couldn't catch a Wabbit . . . .
That's where the above idea of chameleon-like color change comes in especially handy. 30-50 Corvid HogsStrigiform-ursine hybrids Ooo! Ooo! Time for . . . the ManBearPig!
Plot twist: The events in this prophecy take place, but Ihys soon discovers that just as Asmodeus actually failed to eliminate him forever, he likewise failed to eliminate Asmodeus forever, but the payback time is a LOT shorter.
Now I've got this vision in which Urgathoa is the one that dies, and it takes her all the way to Starfinder time to come back, but as an intermediate stage in coming back, she secretly gets a job in a pizza parlor . . . .
What if they are ALL correct in their own timelines, and the real challenge is to figure out which parallel timeline you're in before it's too late?
It would certainly be...novel. But I don't really think adventurers are equipped to deal with a stock market crash or widespread financial panic. {. . .} Eh. Don't worry. Since he's in Starfinder, he would just be spending the millenium dead for tax purposes.
We know that Rovagug isn't around in Starfinder AND has a replacement that is similar in attitude although physically very different. Maybe Rovagug finally starves to death in prison, and Pharasma judges Rovagug even dead to be too dangerous to put through the normal judgment process, and so throws Rovagug into the black hole at the center of the galaxy. Millennia later, the black hole awakes . . . .
Today I just happened to stumble upon why we don't hear about PoultryFolk: Whenever they try to start a revolution to improve their lot this happens: Spoiler: They always chicken out.
I know that canonically some Western instruments from the Baroque through High Classical era have been listed as being present in Avistan, and that a few threads have popped up about music on Golarion every so often (like this one and this one), but has anything more detailed come up on this? (And searching for microtonal music on these messageboards brought up exactly 1 hit, and it is not viewable.) Golarion has working magic, which should enable the development of arcanaphones, which would be Golarion's equivalent of synthesizers, but using magic instead of electricity to generate sound. Given the existence of fairly low-level magic for making convincing sounds of things that aren't really there, the cost of such instruments should be only moderately outrageous -- out of reach of most of the common people, but easily in reach for the nobility and upper merchant classes. And it is not just the instruments that I am interested in, but also the music systems -- like how on Earth, Western music has been dominated by systems of 12 notes per octave (although exceptions exist, going back into the late Renaissance), while cultures elsewhere have their own systems of not necessarily 12 notes per octave (although I must admit to at best passing familiarity with these). Environments commonly used on Golarion but not commonly used on Earth would be expected to have an influence on music-making. For instance, those living underground and having easy access to stone and metal but not to wood or most other organics could find themselves pushed in the direction of making instruments of the idiophone families, consisting of struck bars or rods, which would have highly inharmonic partials, thereby causing effective harmonic relations between notes to be different from those produced by stringed, woodwind, and brass instruments; yet they would also be able to make brass instruments and even metal "woodwind" instruents, both of which would tend to have more conventional harmonics. And they just might want an arcanaphone (see above) to glue it all together. And if they had short fingers, it would tend to drive them to develop keyboards of layout radically different from the Halberstadt (piano/harpsichord/organ-style) keyboard familiar to us; such radically different keyboards started to appear at least as early as the 1800s on Earth, so their development on Golarion would not be completely unexpected). I got interested in this subject from stumbling upon microtonal music on YouTube, which has seen a recent great radiation of microtonal music that actually sounds good (apparently largely driven by the evolution of somewhat affordable isomorphic/generalized electronic keyboards and software synthesizers of good quality, although acoustic instrumental music of this type also exists, and indeed is common in parts of Earth outside the Western world). And then the Xenharmonic Wiki has been a great resource -- even if fairly rough around the edges -- for learning the mathematical details of music, even if some of it does seem to require a degree
^I'm not a Christian at all, but even so, the Runelords' magic being sin magic looks very interesting to me (and disturbingly prophetic about our own world and its technology). I wouldn't want to see it dropped -- not only that, I'd like to see it fleshed out even more. As for a sin to associate with Divination, if you've been in or at least looked in on the worlds of StarCraft and WarCraft, you'll see that Treachery actually makes sense. Think of Maphacking . . . .
If any of you have seen Kitsch’s favorite marble pestle, she’d appreciate it if you’d make sure it makes its way back to the Office of Procurement and Supplies before the end of the year. She needs it to powder some poison arrows and help prepare her popular ginger and cardamom cookies for the holiday party. Very important: DO NOT GET THOSE MIXED UP. |
