Virellius's page

I have often wondered this too. The existing images of Xin-Shalast evoke a sort of 'Tibetan monastary hidden in the mountains Shangri-La' sort of vibe.

I haven't looked at the art in Shattered Star in a bit for the city of Xin; does it look similar?

This is sort of tangentially related; in at least Shattered Star there was a significant amount of Thassilonian clockwork (at least in the last book, if I remember correctly). How does this differ from the style used in Alkenstar? Are there any aesthetic differences or unique looks that would identify a Thassilonian clockwork from an Alkenstar type? On that note, how common were they in the day to day? Would it be likely that Sorshen may have some salvaged/rebuilt in this day and age or have they likely moved on from that whole thing?

I gotta say a big thank you to James for what you said may have been getting your own wires crossed; in planning more of my campaign I sort of off-the-cuff decided a level 10 strigoi vampire would be sealed up in an old, forgotten little outpost of Sorshen's near the base of Xin-Shalast (perhaps she had it built in ancient times as a way to keep an eye on the surrounding Runelords, as one does). I reasoned that this vampire would likely have been bound to her service around the time of the Age of Darkness.

I had 100% forgotten about the fact that literally exactly that (Strigoi who served Sorshen specifically during the Age of Darkness) was already canon in the lore and when I re-read those bits in Shadows at Sundown I felt briefly like an oracle.

Long story short, I love your work with the Runelords and Varisia and when my party finally gets to going far away for their adventures I'm gonna miss having Thassilonian messes to have them stumble over.

vyshan wrote:

What was the issue with Sorshen to begin with?

Being a Runelord entailed a lot of mass murder and enslavement as a matter of course. Sorshen decided to avoid starting up with that again not out of any realization that her actions were wrong but largely out of fear of the sticky ends her fellows met. And she was spectacularly successful in avoiding that outcome for herself, going above and beyond evading any negative consequences for her past deeds (not having to give anything up in reparation or as an earnest of her good faith) to maintaining or increasing her lavish lifestyle, personal and political power, and status. It comes across, at least to me, as a blatant exercise in narrative favor.

Consider this: Sorshen bought favor back by helping defeat the other Runelords. Also, it is boring if all the Runelords die. It makes for a more interesting setting if ancient rulers from a lost empire return changed.

I don't know about you, but thousands of years of the same thing, even the hedonistic excess that Sorshen no doubt engaged in, would get boring. Gods forbid a girl try new things.

Also consider: she's cool and I like her.

Virellius wrote:

CastleDour wrote:

Hellknight PCs will put Sorshen to justice sooner or later!

Hellknights removing the lawful and enduring ruler of a sovereign nation on her own soil?

On someone else's soil. Sorshen's soil is about 500 miles south of the realm she's currently ruling. Which she is doing by right of conquest.

Not conquest. Xin-Shalast was long-abandoned by the time she got there, thanks to the Sihedron Heroes. She is at worst moving into a derelict and refurbishing it.

If she WANTED to, she could try and move into Korvosa but I'm pretty sure she canonically decided it would be too much trouble. Plus the heroes of Korvosa would likely have something to say about that, and dealing with a party of 4 at least level 18 people who have already slain one queen using the Everdawn Pool may be a little bit complicated.

Hellknight PCs will put Sorshen to justice sooner or later!

Hellknights removing the lawful and enduring ruler of a sovereign nation on her own soil?

I don't think you know what the Hellknights are my friend.

4th level characters who get this thing and think about asking nicely the nice Runelord for wise advice about it would raise Sorshen's interest IMO. They can then, when the actual audience happens, strike her as potential reliable and efficient agents/allies.

To test them a bit, she might ask them, as a favor, to go check on Sandpoint's latest troubles. After all, things there do tend to have links to Thassilon's legacy.

And then you get the PCs to play Seven Dooms of Sandpoint.

And they should be in a perfect position to tackle Revenge after that.

My PCs actually will be level 10 by the time they get there; we have plans to run Seven Dooms with a different group of PCs tied to some of our Rise/Return heroes so we actually DID visit Sandpoint where everyone was very vague about the 'More Recent Unpleasantness' lol.

Essentially, the plan is for Godsrain to happen during an audience with Sorshen on the mountain top, the recurring antagonist to get a bit of the ol' Gorum Juice before the Lady of the House summarily removes him for the moment; the party gets the go-ahead from Sorshen to help collect some Warshards, get a little bit of their own mythic power, and then proceed to travel the world and the planes to gather the requirements to destroy the Item in Question.

My party got way too attached to the Rust-eze lol.

If you're planning on doing Revenge later with different PCs, then yeah, not as big a deal... but keep in mind that...

** spoiler omitted **

I did post something to that effect but the forums ate it.

But yes. The first volume of Revenge of the Runelords, which should be out in October, has this in it.

** spoiler omitted **

Maybe I can drag out the journey across the rest of the plateau and up the mountain until October, haha. I have it set for them to show up probably right before Godsrain and witness it from atop the mountain, so Revenge won't happen for a little while in our timeline.

Obviously this is all going to be theoretical since I don't think there's a lot of official public information but let's say travelers made their way to New Thassilon and trekked up to Sorshen's new capital. What do you think it would take to get an audience with the Runelord?

Is it a process full of red tape and long waiting? Is it a more free-form process, designed to take advantage of the new era of Thassilon and a removal of the old traditions?

Does she hold parades or would she think that's too vain and prideful?

I'm curious as to how people view what life under Sorshen's rule would be like. My party is about to visit her capital and I'm brainstorming how I want it all to play out. Do we think there is an Undercity of dissidents? Do they have legitimate complaints about her rule?

Just looking for people's opinions and thoughts.

So let me get this straight: I bought Gatewalkers when it came out. I bought the original FoundryVTT modules too. I ALSO bought the remaster.

And I have to pay FOURTY DOLLARS for the remastered FoundryVTT version AS WELL? When the changes are, let's be honest, minimal at best? That's not great, Paizo. :/ Love you guys but that sucks.

Just going to manually update the book3 stuff in Foundry myself.

Just picturing Luis Loza popping into this thread, actually seeing interest in this 'mentioned once' organization, and doing that Batman Hmmm gif.

Two years from now, the Darklight Sisterhood shows up in a new source book.

Makes sense that they aren't really used.

On the other hand, subtly inserting a 'Lady Insert Chelaxian Name Here Darklight, Noted Socialite' into a sidebar in an Old Cheliax setting book would be a very cool little treat.

Although, they're Korvosan not Chelaxian if I'm reading it right. Perhaps holdovers from when Korvosa was part of Cheliax?

Reading that the Pathfinders know almost nothing about them because they're sort of irrelevant gives me an amazing image of a bunch of 'trying too hard to be mysterious Team Rocket type girlfails' who simply are not effective but maybe stumble into some success on accident.

Wow, there's a name I haven't heard in a long time.

Sounds like a prime example of a deep cut that could be interesting to bring back in current times though considering the Cheliax situation.

Right, but I already own the Gatewalkers Foundry module. I would hate to have to buy THAT a second time.

I did get the pdf also; I subscribe so I got it a few days early.

Virellius wrote:

I really didn't get the hate the AP got. I feel like people just get weird about things without context; my table loves Sakuachi and Deniigi has been the source of at least two squabbles (two party members really like her and are bickering over who she thinks is cooler).

I love Pathfinder but sometimes I feel like I'm playing a different game after hearing from other members of the community lol.

A lot of people felt like the AP premise and players guide promise one type of campaign and then the AP itself doesn't deliver that. Missed expectations do a lot to sour people and then that impacts their view of what comes later. If you look at the worst rated APs in the big survey done last year, several of the ones at the bottom share this trait of "they promise a certain kind of campaign and don't deliver it." (Second Darkness is notorious for this as well.)

Lots of players also dislike not being the main character of the story and escort quests. FFXIV is also discovering that as it's formerly stellar player reviews have absolutely tanked in Drawntrail, and a big chunk of that is that much of the story is "the player follows Wuk Lamat around on her adventure."

When you have both of those problems in the same AP, it's going to turn a lot of players off.

To be fair, the hate Wuk gets is also due to rampant and highly prevalent transphobia directed at the VA. I don't think DT is the best expansion by a mile but it's mostly due to stagnation of the game's entire systems and direction, not any one character.

I will say though, after reading the guide and then actually running the AP, I really don't feel 'deceived' by the premise.

We're told we are people with missing memories investigating why that is; that's what we have been doing. At no point were we NOT people with missing memories investigating why until we got our memories back a bit and found out the reason is tied to the same thing Sakuachi is doing and then we're people who HAD missing memories who are still investigating why and working to resolve it.

Maybe my table is just different. Don't know; I surely wouldn't put this as worse than like Extinction Curse in terms of 'the flavor is not the story'. THAT one absolutely deserves the 'wait where did the circus plot go' criticism.

CastleDour, I can't see any similarity between Sakuachi and Nenio. Nenio is a nerd, hyper intellectual standoffish weirdo with a mysterious past and a completely socially inept personality. Sakuachi is an energetic woman with a very CLEAR past, strong goals, clear drive and focus, who travels with a group of dear friends who she is very close to. She's warm and compassionate and then sacrifices part of her own self to become the avatar for a demigod.

I REALLY don't see literally any similarities between the two characters. I -do- love Nenio but she is in no way a similar character nor does she fill even a vaguely similar role.

Also, to LordMoussaka, I REALLY hope I don't need to pay for the Foundry Module again lol. That would actually make me mad.

Mike McArtor was key in creating Darkmoon Vale and Korvosa WAY back in the early days of Pathfinder, and I suspect he either re-used the name without realizing it or threw it in there as an easter egg... but no, the Consortium hasn't been infiltrated in the same way that those in Korvosa were.

Ah well. Perhaps it's a distant cousin of the original Pre-Bahor Arkona family! Somehow. I think the Consortium one is a Dwarf actually. Darkmoon Vale is a blindspot of mine and I didn't realize that name was actually much older!

The Shining Kingdoms book has absolutely gotten me extremely excited for the upcoming plotlines, so kudos there. Great stuff in this one.

The name is so iconic among many of us long-term Pathfinder players; I saw it while reading through the Shining Kingdoms book and my eyebrow raised.

Coincidence, or has the Consortium been infiltrated by a (more) nefarious entity? Glorio and kin will always be favorites of mine; is anything written about this Jemi outside of this book?

I really didn't get the hate the AP got. I feel like people just get weird about things without context; my table loves Sakuachi and Deniigi has been the source of at least two squabbles (two party members really like her and are bickering over who she thinks is cooler).

I love Pathfinder but sometimes I feel like I'm playing a different game after hearing from other members of the community lol.

Morgan Freeman could play Jatembe. His voice is deep and soothing and I think it would work really well for a wise old wizard.

Now hear me out on this one... Curse of the Crimson Throne with Mia Goth as Illeosa. Her unhinged performance in Pearl could ABSOLUTELY work for the increasingly unstable and self-obsessed queen. 'But I'm a STAAAR!'

We decided to pause our run until the remaster came out and were just starting book 3. Haven't had time to look through it too much but I did notice some new art which is great.

Minor question: in the page for the dream scrapers in the bestiary, the sidebar mentions night hags. I thought for sure they were OGL. Was this a missed edit or is there a new remaster friendly night hag?

That aside, I am excited to finish our campaign and deal with a horrid frozen Eldritch space whale. How are other people feeling about the remaster?

Any idea if the Foundry module(once it's available) will get a discount if we buy the hardcover/pdf?

(much like the current modules are)

This is extremely important to know; I opted out of the AV and FotRP hardcovers simply because I either had the original or the Foundry module (or both). I don't really -need- this hardcover since I'm running it on Foundry anyways.

Still waiting on responses from customer service for an order issue so I hope this gets answered before y'all charge me lol.

Hey Virellius! This is a question for our Customer Service Team! Please send them an email to customer.service@paizo.com so they can look into it!

I did, haven't heard back. Back in the day I used to see people post order issues in the forums so wasn't sure if that was still a thing.

Thank you! I'll wait to hear back.

I was behind on bills and got behind on money in general. Just fixed the billing info for 44571882 and have enough for that order at this time. I don't have enough for both, as it's a change from 87 to 200+ dollars.

Can you do something to adjust it so they are split orders allowing me to get my funds in order for this months? Was really not expecting this change.

Oh that's actually pretty helpful. I was planning on introducing a group of outcast Shoanti to act as friendly NPCs during their travel across the plateau so perhaps they can actually meet at the mausoleum considering it's issues are likely handled.

It is a sacred Shoanti burial ground that was raided by a member of the Pathfinders.

In Debt to the Quah, the players are tasked with returning looted items and repairing relations with the Shoanti.

Awesome! Thank you. The wiki wasn't giving me anything and google was failing me.

Working on my eternal project of finally finishing a hex crawl across the Storval Plateau and I find the Muschkal Sepulcher listed on the map.

I can't find any notations about -where- it's listed or what it is. Anyone know? Is it in an old splatbook or society quest perhaps? If not, this is about to be VERY useful for me as a convenient dungeon location.

Paizo, I love you, but come on now. Nerfing the Vindicator? I got one in my campaign who is considering swapping characters because the subclass is just so underwhelming. They need something more, not less.

I love the insight into the process; makes a lot of sense!
I never noticed the two Stauntons, actually. That's really funny. I own the Magnimar book and Nethys knows I've read through parts enough for campaign planning, guess I missed him!
Then again, maybe the Vhanes are like the Vancaskerkins and there's one of them every time you flip over a rock.

In Rise of the Runelords, on page 200 of the pdf in the section referring to the other giant tribes around Jorgenfist we are introduced to the Jormunsir lead by Vlorian.

Vlorian... like the Vloriuan Cythnigot... as in from Vlorus, the realm of Xar-Azmak, dead Demon Lord of Rust!?

This is likely just a coincidence and means absolutely nothing, but I AM going to use this in my homebrew followup to Rusthenge. Thank you, almost-two-decades-ago Paizo for giving me a tiny little throwaway reference.

I love Golarion so much. :)

I ended up using the one from CT as it was a bit more zoomed in; just cut out the cinderlands mostly.

Party is tracing the old RiseotRL path from Sandpoint to Xin-Shalast (they really wanted to go ask Sorshen about some plot stuff lol) and we plan on running Crimson Throne later so I gently dissuaded them from going through the Cinderlands so we don't end up with a repeat location.

The overall map I'm using is the Return one, I think. It is probably the best, you're right.

ty all!

I'll have to check out the one from CT, for some reason I thought it was just the Cinderlands specifically.
I also have the old Varisia book too but my .PDF is a bit low-res. Maybe it's just on my end, I'll take another look.

Thank you!

Hey! Not sure if this is the right forum, but: I need to find the highest res map of Varisia that exists. I need to set up a bit of a hexcrawl on the Storval Plateau and I wanna make sure I'm rolling with the most HD, up-to-date map that exists.
Unless I'm mistaken, Seven Dooms only has the Hinterlands and I'm not sure which of the many PDFs may have the best one.

I'm sure I'll find it eventually but I figured I'd ask if anyone has any input. If it's in a book I don't own (unlikely but you never know!) I'll absolutely pick it up.

Bonus points for Xanesha mention. She threw my cleric off a roof.

If they keep to the river, I thought maybe a baby Black Magga spawn too could be fun.

Maybe I SHOULD browse the monster core and just find something super interesting. Have we had any recent lore updates about the dragon up at Guiltspur by any chance?

Hello! My campaign continues apace; the party has finally cleared the distance from Sandpoint to the Storval Stair. Now, after what is going to be a fun little stop in Jorgenfist with some 'oh no some threat has re-invaded the thassilonian ruins/excuse to re-use the map from Rise/ReturnotRL' I am faced with a huge order: fill the distance from there to the base of the mountains wherein lies Xin-NotYetEurythnia with interesting and fun adventure.

I also need to give the party like... maybe 2 levels worth of XP across the plateau. I was thinking of maybe converting the entire area north of the Cinderlands into a hexcrawl.

If you were tasked with adding some fun level 7-9ish adventure and plot hooks in that region, what would you do? I have some vague plans about involving the Shoanti and since this is a post-Rusthenge game I have some ideas to use a scaled-up Rust Hag pursuing them for thematic reasons but aside from that I'm sort of drawing blanks. Maybe a mini-dungeon in a Thassilonian ruin like the one from History of Ashes.

What do you guys think? What would you put into the northern half of the Storval Plateau for a travelling party to deal with?

Also: there is the possibility they just take the Storval Deep to the Kazaron River and branch off at the Stalak which does sort of negate a lot of overland travel, so perhaps some ideas as to why river travel is dangerous, or alternately, ways to make it interesting.

The Raven Black wrote:

From the Pathfinderwiki article on Gorum :

"The Godsrain fell in droplets of red and silver. Where the red Godsrain fell, natural tendencies toward conflict and war strengthened. Silver droplets of Godsrain carried divine potential that permeated places and their inhabitants with mythical power. "

And
"The rain also carried shards of Gorum's living armor, known as warshards, that varied in size from imperceptibly tiny to physical objects with varying properties. Like the rain, some warshards inspired conflict while others carried varying degrees of power. Other warshards were otherwise inert ore, but of metals never before encountered on Golarion."

Well, Paizo sure left a LOT of doors WIDE open.

Thanks.

I'm gonna say the the red droplets are bad and the silver ones are good.

How's that for a binary worldview?

And the warshards will be craftable.

There.

Sounds more like they allowed for plot hooks and home campaigns to be able to use the fallout from Godsrain as they wanted in their own stories.

You know, like a good tabletop setting does.

I'll be honest I already have altered how Vindicator's Mark works in my game; I'd do whatever ruling made the vindicator stronger.

Nothing feels worse than your core class mechanic, supposed to evoke the class fantasy of the 1e inquisitor, being able to just miss and then rendering you sorta pointless for a whole fight or so.
I'm playing with a vindicator now and it is so sad to watch them miss. Imagine if Precision rangers had to roll a separate check to be able to add the d8 to their attack rolls but it used their class DC instead?
Just let it crit and do double and not apply MAP. They're already spending two actions to turn on their instinct using a missable and focus-limited spell.

The Thassilonian cities are often near mountains; there's a lot of mountain streams from glaciers that I imagine they can use for water. They're also, you know, cities run by immensely powerful super-wizards approaching demi-god status in some cases. I'm sure they can pop open a little gate to the plane of water to flush a few toilets if they need to.

The association of barghests with goblins is indeed from D&D, and so when we remastered them, we needed to change that. Going back to original mythological roots and lore for barghests is what we decided upon.

But goblins, hobgoblins, and bugbears are still all "goblinoid" creatures (see the first line of the flavor text for the bugbear on page 47 of Monster Core, or the fact that the words "goblin" and "hobgoblin" both have the word "goblin" in them, or that all three look somewhat similar); there's just not a rules-facing term like "Goblinoid" to apply to them. They do all speak Goblin, for what that's worth.

The Goblin Hero Gods are still barghests though aren't they? Is there a reason that was able to be kept in?

My watch has ended... and the reading begins.

As a note; BEAUTIFUL art in these books.

I'd love to meet the Stabbing Beast since I have never met him once.

As far as he knows.

:)

But uhhh for real? I'd love to see some of the heralds. Cayden and Shelyn's heralds are both iconic and I'd love to see them help out in the Hellbreaker's AP with Milani or something. Lubaiko too.

For mortals, and this is kind of a copout since they haven't had an on-screen appearance in 2e only, but I'd love to see if Alexeara Cansellarion is canonically a fallen paladin serving Abrogail now. A dramatic reveal of her in infernal armor with a kind of Dark Knight of the Queen vibe would really please me.

My watch has... not ended. :( Send me the PDFs, Pharasma, and my life is yours!

I have been checking my email SO frequently I'm losing it. Have not been this excited about a shipment in a while.

Yay !! previous month shipment has not yet arrived, but I can't wait to get the NPC core

It hasn't... let me see if I can enact a ritual.

Eh-hem... *your account has been debited $200 to the Church of Razmir*

...no shipment yet. I'll keep trying.

Personlly, I'm of the opinion the most immediate danger to the Kindred Coast after Rusthenge concludes is ** spoiler omitted **

so I'd expect the easiest plot hook for continuing is tying dealing with it to the next adventure.

I'm running this idea myself and have been bothering the Setting forums a LOT with questions. My party decided to head to Magnimar to seek some information and then went to Sandpoint, and now they've decided to go ask Sorshen for help with it since they don't trust Belimarius.

I am now tasked with running 'essentially the path of Rise of the Runelords but in 2e and 15+years later' which has been ENDLESSLY fun.

If you want some ideas for Destroying That Relic, let me know. My party is still quite early in this goal but I've got Big Plans.

If the Paizo warehouse sends mine out today I'll be super happy hint hint wink wink nudge nudge

Virellius wrote:

-

-

This is super informative, thank you! That's honestly really cool. Imps being a non-planar-specific fiend was one of my favorite little changes; you can easily still have a 'quasit' in theory due to this, and it gives so much more potential for the little guys too.

Edit: That lore about Dou-Bral's name is so silly and yet so wonderful I do not know how I never caught it. I -love- Hellraiser and I'm almost ashamed of myself for not noticing it.

vyshan wrote:

Virellius wrote:

Rakshasa and Asura are in real myth quite similar or intertwined in some ways, to my limited understanding. I admit I know next to nothing about them. I DO know the backwards handed cats are from an episode of Kolchak: the Night Stalker.

Asura and Velstracts BOTH being formerly from Hell makes me wonder if a Planer Adventures 2e book would be worth making. LOTS of interesting stuff out there; they could even save room and not touch on the elemental planes since RoE did that very well.

Maybe then we could also get some more lore on Peri and Garuda, the other 'oh right you exist' outsiders.

A book covering the different planes would be cool, espeically with how things are evolving away from DnD and its particular designs. To tie this back to the vesltrecs, I think such a thing would be great for an exploration of the Netherworld. We also have a couple of ancestries that either come from the Netherworld or are tied there like the Kayals or the Wayalangs, and some nephalim.

I’d love to get a whole book on the Shadow Realm and Nidal.

Will the Forsaken return? They were given full write ups in Divine Mysteries.

The Demagogues are really interesting I’d like to know more about their relations to other Fiends.

A old ass Kobold Quarterly article mentions that they sent emissaries to Barbtros.

But other then that their interactions to other Demigods and gods are pretty bare.

I presume they consider Zon-Kuthon a kindred spirit and fellow artist of pain.

And he too likes them. Other then that seems they are pretty keep to themselves.

I presume they are aquintices with the Asura Ranas.

I have ALWAYS wondered about Zon-Kuthon and the Velstracs; their aesthetics and areas of focus are SO similar but they seem to have no shared origination. Did ZK base his style on what he found in the Netherworld? Did the Velstracs help shape his appearance? Is it possible Dou-bral become ZK, ended up in Hell and spawned the Velstracs, and then went to the Netherworld before Asmodeus ever rebelled and entered Hell?

I wanna know about their convergent evolution! Maybe the Netherworld just Makes You Like That?

Virellius wrote:

Rakshasa and Asura are in real myth quite similar or intertwined in some ways, to my limited understanding. I admit I know next to nothing about them. I DO know the backwards handed cats are from an episode of Kolchak: the Night Stalker.

Asura and Velstracts BOTH being formerly from Hell makes me wonder if a Planer Adventures 2e book would be worth making. LOTS of interesting stuff out there; they could even save room and not touch on the elemental planes since RoE did that very well.

Maybe then we could also get some more lore on Peri and Garuda, the other 'oh right you exist' outsiders.

I'm pretty sure Gygax picked up that Rakshasa element from Kolchak for the Monster Manual, which is why in the remastered lore we abandoned the backwards hands element for rakshasa—it's an OGLism on a mythological creature that isn't appropriate to use without the OGL (in the same way it's not appropriate to use shadow demons, but it's fine using invidiaks that have nothing to do with shadow themes).

I was wondering about specific fiends and such; clearly barbazu and babau don't seem to have been Pathfinder-friendly post-OGL, but I was surprised pit fiends/Nessari were. What are the criteria that determined what was too strongly DND'd? Daemons also seem mostly untouched; I imagine because they are all but nonexistant in the DNDsphere? I do love them, so I'm glad they stuck around.

Edit: on this note, any suggestions on what to swap the Hamatulatsu-style monks for, name-wise? My wife played one in Hells Vengeance and we were thinking about popping her in as an NPC cameo eventually but I'm not sure what to call her martial art.

Rakshasa and Asura are in real myth quite similar or intertwined in some ways, to my limited understanding. I admit I know next to nothing about them. I DO know the backwards handed cats are from an episode of Kolchak: the Night Stalker.

Asura and Velstracts BOTH being formerly from Hell makes me wonder if a Planer Adventures 2e book would be worth making. LOTS of interesting stuff out there; they could even save room and not touch on the elemental planes since RoE did that very well.

Maybe then we could also get some more lore on Peri and Garuda, the other 'oh right you exist' outsiders.