Voltron64's page

I’m incredibly curious to see what modern Razatlan looks like; the shift from being a continent-spanning empire of the ancient past to being a normal nation like everyone else is a fascinating one, and I’m eager to see a take on a Mesoamerican empire that isn’t a gore-drenched pulp parody.

Personally I wouldn't be surprised if Razatlan was originally some kind of Azlanti inheritor kingdom ala Taldor in Avistan.

The plague and disease thing is old and unfortunate canon and not ideal. It is something that I've tried to debride from out setting for a while.

It looks like you've pulled that quote from the Pathfinder Wiki, which seems to be using an old idea with the relatively new name for the Kansari (who, unfortunately, were originally called skraelings).

So! With that said, there wasn't really a plague/disease thing going on in Arcadia to any mass scale.

If anything, I leave the plague and disease to have happened well before the Ulfen ever showed up and we can thank the Azlanti for that.

There was a Columbian Exchange in Arcadia, it just happened over 10,000 years ago during the Age of Legend and the peoples and the lands have long since adapted and recovered.

It's fun to recognize old "friends" besides the ex-iconics and ex-developer-pcs :D Such as the assassin, dragon disciple, eldritch archer, horizon walker, loremaster and shadow dancer

Indeed, kind of want to know their names and/or backstories too.

Looking at the Cum Cost (common)

Phrasing!

"Yee naaldlooshii", or skinwalkers, are a part of Navajo folklore that is very tied in to their relationship with their cultural values, as they symbolize several things that are antithetical to said values. They do NOT like non-Navajo talking about this stuff or reducing it to just werewolves with the serial numbers filed off.

It's mostly the name that's the issue.

But I'm still right about the personalities of David Fincher villains-aspect, correct?

Were the Golarion version of skinwalkers disrespectful of Navajo culture skinwalkers? Or what was the problem with the name?

From what I can best describe, skinwalkers are hapeshifters from Navajo lore with the personalities of David Fincher villians.

An excellent view of Agents of Edgewatch in light of this.

Exactly, be Jim Gordon or Sam Vimes, not John C. Reilly in Gangs of New York or William Fitchner and Vincent D'Onofrio in Strange Days.

A Pueblo/Anasazi version of Minas Tirith if we get any epic fantasy cities. That one seems kind of obvious.

zimmerwald1915 wrote:

Darth Game Master wrote:

He was a human of the Kellid ethnicity, according to Pathfinder Wiki.

Which says exactly nothing about what he looked like.

Well he had Kellid ethnicity at least.

So I'm basically picturing black Irish then.

I have no doubt in my head that the Eagle Knights are lending some aid to the Firebrands, CIA-style.

keftiu wrote:

CorvusMask wrote:

Well it at least starts at level 5 so I don't see why PCs couldn't be either local or foreigners .-. It'd be kinda weird for level 5 ap to assume it either way.

And Sargava doesn't exist anymore, so kinda hard to see it being colonial story.

Colonial as in “outsiders who are probably white come to Africa and solve a problem the natives can’t handle,” not as in one tied to a colonial government in-setting.

No, there's no assumption that you're outsiders or of any particular color. You could be from Kibwe, even. It just matters that your heroes are in the right place at the right time...for danger!

Really, that's the focus I'd be explicit about. Blatantly focus on the "right place at the right time" angle above any and all concerns of mighty whitey-ness.

His magical bloodline, dude's an honest-to-god (ironic word usage enough) sorcerer.

That way, he doesn't need to use spellbooks precluding the possibility of a Mokmurian situation.

TWO NEW CHARACTERS PLUS CHARACTER REVISIONS!

Soumral, chirurgeon and warlord (CG female seer elf aspiring river monarch alchemist 9)

"Armies are like plagues: terrible, but ultimately predictable. One only need learn their patterns. Devising a means of systematically eradicating them then becomes a matter of course."

Soumral (pronounced "SOOM-RALL," rhymes with ZOOM HALL) has more or less co-opted Caladrel's backstory (with some revisions) and so is meant for a Kingmaker game or any adventure taking place within the River Kingdoms are their surroundings. As with any character, you are free to make up your own bio, and play the character anywhere or in any way you wish.

Caladrel now has a new backstory detailing her past as a lost child of the Goblinblood Wars who was trained to be a Devil Nun by the Sisters of the Golden Erinyes.

I may touch up one or both bios later to differentiate them further from one another.

I also have a new 1st-level variant of Caladrel and a second new character, both geared for people wanting to play in the Age of Ashes adventure path:

Caladrel, long range messenger (CG female woodland elf reputation seeker monk 1)

"You could never imagine the hideous level of pain we were trained to inflict upon others—trained to ourselves endure."

Rassh, freed iruxi slave (N male cliffscale lizardfolk emancipated fighter 1)

"The world is different now. It is far more glorious than I could possibly have imagined from behind the confines of slavery."

Enjoy!

The last two are perfect, just add two more and I'll have a complete pregenerated party for the Age of Ashes series.

This is a really great thing to hear! One thing that was important to me is to make sure that Mengkare was a complex figure. It would be easy enough to have a dragon that just turned out to be evil the whole time or had one bad thing happen to him that flips on the evil switch, but I didn't find that very believable or interesting. Thankfully, the original outline for the AP included Mengkare's time in Axis, which planted the seed for a more gradual shift in his outlook on the world, his overall way of thinking, and his morality. Thanks to James Jacobs for providing such a rich detail to work from!

With this in hand, it was easy enough to expand on Mengkare's unfortunate life, tying his moral development to other events in his history. Mengkare originally had aspirations to be a great hero, but saw a group of what others would refer to as heroes (adventurers) slay his parents. He developed an obsession with improving on these flawed heroes that became an aspiration for racial perfection. His aspirations for heroism became a savior complex.

In the end, Mengkare is still very much like the child playing with his toys in his room. (In fact, there was originally a set of two toys in the Vengegate encounter, one in the shape of Mengkare and one in the shape of Dahak and explained that Mengkare used to imagine himself as a hero stopping the big, bad dragon from his parents' tales. It unfortunately didn't make it into the final product due to a lack of space.) I wanted to show what would happen to a young figure who lost their parents very early on in life and became dedicated to do right by them, but lacked guidance while doing so. In a way, Mengkare is what happens to Bruce Wayne without someone like Alfred in his life to keep him on the right track. My inclusion of a memorial to Mengkare's parents on Two Tree Island is actually an allusion to this idea. Much like Bruce Wayne has with parents' grave, Mengkare has a symbol to represent his lost parents and comes by to speak with them. I imagine he would take the time to talk out his plans and do his best to remain virtuous, but began to visit less frequently, eventually losing that final connection that kept him from slipping into evil.

Anyway, that's just some of my process with figuring out Mengkare. Again, thanks for the kind words on the adventure!

Honestly, I see a lot of Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias in Mengkare too.

Voltron64 wrote:

Is it me or is the Tengu oracle probably the same Tengu featured in the cover of the Advanced Race Guide?

Well done!

Good to see we're going to get a name and backstory for him then.

Is it me or is the Tengu oracle probably the same Tengu featured in the cover of the Advanced Race Guide?

Tian-dan

Vietnamese fire breath, neat.

I definitely want to see more of Casmaron, and I hope there are a fair number of demihuman nations scattered about as well, and that they take their time in designing the continent, to truly make it unique and culturally diverse. For the northern "Siberian" part, it would be cool if they put in mysterious pre-human races equivalent to Neanderthals or Denisovans.

Heck, it'd make some sense to include some Erutaki settlements or groups in the "Siberia" part too, little nod to the region's indigenous cultures.

From my heart and from my hand

My intentions?

Is Abadar something of a patron deity for Osirion (if just unofficially) considering the royal family's status as clerics?

Voltron64 wrote:

What would you think of Keleshite-descended groups near Iobaria, serving as Fantasy Counterpart Cultures to Chechnya and other Central Asian muslim peoples?

I'd think I'd want to hire experts on those cultures to make sure we're doing it right and not being blind or making assumptions—or even better, hiring them to write those sections in the first place.

Oh I agree, but just do you consider it plausible?

What would you think of Keleshite-descended groups near Iobaria, serving as Fantasy Counterpart Cultures to Chechnya and other Central Asian muslim peoples?

Aenigma wrote:

What? Azlanti was not a single race, but a collective term for multiple races who lived in the continent of Azlant? Does that mean there are clearly some pureblood Azlanti who have no white skin, black hair and purple eyes? I thought Alaznist must be a halfblood Azlanti or not an Azlanti at all because she has red hair instead of black. Now I come to think of it, she and other runelords didn't have purple eyes as well.

The people of Azlant, collectively known as the Azlanti, comprised a wide range of skin colors and hair colors and eye colors, yes.

That works for me, I wouldn't doubt that Alghollthu picked all sorts of human peoples and ethnic groups from various continents in their Azlanti experiment.

It also helps that I've sort of visualized the Azlanti as being Latinx or mestizo in visual appearance (you know just to throw in some inclusiveness and subvert that boring and obnoxious advanced ancient white people cliche).

Dogan, those are all fantastic ideas to what I thought of as a way to acquire a cheap and eager labor force to rebuild the castle.

Tell me that this isn't one hell of way to portray a Cleric of Groetus?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEPcdCIT1gM.

Does anybody think it wouldn't be a bad idea for the PCs to share joint ownership of the deed to the Citadel with the Bumblebrasher tribe?

Do you have a personal recommendation over which rooms of the citadel should house which upgrades?

About villainous incompetence, if there is anything I've truly learned over the past few years, its that evil is at its core, really freakin' stupid.

Evil is deciding that you are right and that everyone else is wrong even when conventional wisdom and facts and general reality say different, and just barrelling on ahead anyway because you KNOW you're right, even when it gets people hurt, even when it puts the world at risk, not stopping even then because you'd rather be dead than wrong at that point.

Evil is presuming you're better than everyone else and that only your opinion matters and only people like you matter, and everyone else can just die, and anything that challenges that world view or makes you personally uncomfortable must be bad and has to be destroyed, even if its not doing anything to bother your or has anything to do with you.

Evil is being weak and frightened and small, and being so afraid of your fellow man that you have to puff yourself up and scream and badger and threaten people because you think that makes you look strong and brave. But it doesn't because you don't understand that true strength is calm, and gentle and peaceful.

Evil is being too afraid to live comfortably with your fellow man. Its being too weak to accept the fact that the world around you is going to change and it belongs to the next generation, its being too stupid to realize that IT'S NOT ALL ABOUT YOU.

And this applies to every single villain in fiction. Across the board. Dr. Doom? he's pathetic. Megatron? pathetic. Bowser Koopa, Darkseid, The Joker, The Red Skull, Vecna, Azalin, Freeza, Darth Vader, Senator Armstrong, Jack Spicer, Khan, Queen Beryl, Jasper, Jafar, Lex Luthor, All of them. If you just stop and think about it, you will realize these guys are all, to the last one, from Unicron to Boris Badinov, pathetic stupid losers.

Probably a lot of demigods, you know, empyrean lords, archfiends, etc...

We have more adventure paths than we have Iconics. It might be that Merisiel and Kyra and Seoni and Valeros, for example, did Rise of the Runelords and hit 18th level and then just did a bunch of other adventure paths and blasted through them fast in a few days or weeks as opposed to "restarting" each time with a new 1st level party.

In each home game, you'll be able to track the implications on your own.

In canon, we don't. The PCs who played through the 1st edition APs are not actual "characters" in the setting.

I’ve headcanoned that the pregens made by Legendary Games for each adventure path were the ones who did so.

Does anybody consider not attacking the hunting spiders in D1 so that way if and when the PCs befriend Renali, she could use them to assist her and the party against the other threats in the Goblinblood Caves?

I'd borrow from Peter Jackson's Hobbit with while they are all short, hairy, and crusty, they have great variety in their faces, beards, clothing, body types, personalities and weaponry.

I have to confess, had he not been used in Season 4 of PFS, I could easily see Krune being in Sorshen's place as the token Runelord who stopped being evil.

Mainly because of the following;

*He was not as violent as other Thassilonian rulers (generally attributed to his laziness, although I strongly suspect he was lazy in the same way Mycroft Holmes was lazy.)

*He gained his position through a peaceful transition of power.

*He was a chief priest of a (then?) non-evil diety.

All of all, I could have easily seen him going from Lawful Evil to Lawful Neutral.

Honestly the Shining Kingdoms if I feel like do something old-school.

All of them. I'm the kind of guy who believes there is no such thing as a bad adventure, be it path or module.

I’m a little surprised that the bugbear (I forget her name and chaotic evil she may be) doesn’t seem to have the option of becoming a briefly allied NPC ala Alak.

I mean isn’t she a member or ally of the friendly goblin tribe you’re supposed to rescue?

Xopatl is more Maya than Aztec (They ARE different cultures). Razaltan (sp?) seems perhaps closer to the Aztec empire analog.

I was pretty happy with the amount of info they jammed in there...definitely one of the best backmatter sections

And the name alone lets me think Razatlan was one of the successors states of the Azlanti post-Earthfall ala Taldor.

Will we eventually see Level 5 versions for the rest of the 2e pregens?

I hope that the various indigenous peoples of America are treated respectfully in their analogues in Arcadia.

As well as filled with the same amount of batshit crazy that makes up the fantasy kitchen sink that is Golarion.

I’d have the goblin language consist entirely of pictographs and hieroglyphs and what not all the while specifically claiming that it doesn’t count as written words.

(Basically goblins are hypocrites who think that everybody’s written languages but their own steals words from your head.)

Voltron64 wrote:

An AP set in Arcadia where you help a bunch of locals fight off and/or rebel against the Syrinx without trying to come off as a Mighty Whitey.

At the risk of getting back into other thread territory... why not play locals?

Figure I could do half and half with pc constituency, but I also kind of wanted the AP to serve as a full introduction to the continent ala Jade Regent with Tian Xia.

An AP set in Arcadia where you help a bunch of locals fight off and/or rebel against the Syrinx without trying to come off as a Mighty Whitey.

Voltron64 wrote:

Hey James, would this be an accurate depiction of a fight between Valeros and Ramsay Bolton?

(Or what happens when you put a tabletop rpg PC against a low fantasy character.)

Stopped watching cause the art style was gross, so I can't say.

Basically, a speedblitz. He moves so fast, the other guy doesn't even notice their arm got cut off before being told so.

Hey James, would this be an accurate depiction of a fight between Valeros and Ramsay Bolton?

(Or what happens when you put a tabletop rpg PC against a low fantasy character.)

Some of y'all seem like you've been watching too much Goblin Slayer.

Which is why I had this idea about a bunch of Golarion goblins fighting the infamous Goblins from Goblin Slayer.

With the former WRECKING the latter.

Inglorious Basterds-style.

Personally, I'd have included Aasimar and Tieflings in the CRB races.

Voltron64 wrote:

PossibleCabbage wrote:

If goblins are the canonical "naturally CN" PC ancestry, can we please get some goblin deities who are CG, CN, or N?

Well the CRB recommended Cayden Cailean, but I strongly feel goblins would go for Gorum and Calistria too.

Not sure what to think of goblins following Calistria.

"The goblin winks at you seductively." just doesn't sound right.

I was thinking more following the revenge aspect over the lust aspect.

If goblins are the canonical "naturally CN" PC ancestry, can we please get some goblin deities who are CG, CN, or N?

Well the CRB recommended Cayden Cailean, but I strongly feel goblins would go for Gorum and Calistria too.

Will we be seeing some new classes and maybe some old iconics again in the coming years of 2e?