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Ah, the perils of making a joke on the internet.
Do you put in a smiley and make it seem a bit forced, or do you leave the smiley behind and end up looking like a dim bulb?
I found that an acceptable solution is to put some kind of a signal that you are joking in a spoler tag - while have the same effect of using a smiley, it also allows everyone else to understand you are awere of the fact this makes your joke seem a bit forced. That way, you come out of the all thing as the big man, and anyone having a problem with that is just jelous...
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... huh? One's no more original than the other. Heck, I've heard/seen Maiden-Mother-Crone much, much more often in reference to the triune goddess than Maiden-Mother-Matron.You might also wanna check Hecate on e.g. Wikipedia - fits the bill quite nicely (see my post above from January, 28th).
Ruyan.
Lady Hekate is a triple Goddess, but She definitely doesn't fit the Graves "Maiden Mother Crone" archetype - She's a Titan who sided with the Olympians, and was rewarded with a position as the Chthonic Goddess of death and rebirth. Her triple aspect has to do with choices (each face of Her faces in a different direction; Her torches illuminate the way).
She was something of a fringe Goddess in Greek society, present but not particularly strongly, partly because Her functions were mostly overlapping with other, more popular deities (She was a common household Goddess, but Her stories are not nearly as well-preserved as those of the Olympians and She mostly appears as a background character). She was popular among outcasts (the Semnatatoi, a major portion of Her priesthood, were transgender priestesses) partly for this reason, and I suspect that Her wide area of authority is part of Her appeal today (Hekate is much more prominent in Neopaganism than She ever was in classical Hellenic practice).
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Lady Hekate is a triple Goddess, but She definitely doesn't fit the Graves "Maiden Mother Crone" archetype - She's a Titan who sided with the Olympians, and was rewarded with a position as the Chthonic Goddess of death and rebirth. Her triple aspect has to do with choices (each face of Her faces in a different direction; Her torches illuminate the way).
She was something of a fringe Goddess in Greek society, present but not particularly strongly, partly because Her functions were mostly overlapping with other, more popular deities (She was a common household Goddess, but Her stories are not nearly as well-preserved as those of the Olympians and She mostly appears as a background character). She was popular among outcasts (the Semnatatoi, a major portion of Her priesthood, were transgender priestesses) partly for this reason, and I suspect that Her wide area of authority is part of Her appeal today (Hekate is much more prominent in Neopaganism than She ever was in classical Hellenic practice).
I can't actually think of any pagan goddesses that fit Graves "Maid Mother Crone" archetype....it's a modern new age thing ;)
Read my pdf today, and this looks like a good edition; between the adventure, Kostchtchie (will complement the one in Dragon), and the Bestiary (love the sangoi!).
** spoiler omitted **
Lucky! I'm still waiting on mine to unlock so I can read it.
Odd, my subscription was paid on Friday and the PDF isn't unlocked yet. I feel like it happened faster for the previous volume.
Customer Service Representative
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Odd, my subscription was paid on Friday and the PDF isn't unlocked yet. I feel like it happened faster for the previous volume.
PDFs are granted when we ship your subscription, which is the same time we charge your payment method. We authorized subscriptions on Friday, and are in the process of sending out subscription orders. Your subscription should be leaving our warehouse shortly.
More information regarding authorizations can be found on our FAQ.
~Justin Riddler
Customer Service
I imagine it takes a while to get every box out the door. Like, more than one business day?
Odd, my subscription was paid on Friday and the PDF isn't unlocked yet. I feel like it happened faster for the previous volume.PDFs are granted when we ship your subscription, which is the same time we charge your payment method. We authorized subscriptions on Friday, and are in the process of sending out subscription orders. Your subscription should be leaving our warehouse shortly.
More information regarding authorizations can be found on our FAQ.
~Justin Riddler
Customer Service
What about those whose packages were already shipped out? Mine was shipped out on the 12th and is currently in Orlando awaiting Post Office retrieval.
I imagine it takes a while to get every box out the door. Like, more than one business day?
Based on past experiences as a customer - about a week at most, with one or two occasions of (I'm guessing) big turnover of products where it went into a second week.
Waiting...
I just downloaded mine, so you should not have long to wait.
Odd, my subscription was paid on Friday and the PDF isn't unlocked yet. I feel like it happened faster for the previous volume.PDFs are granted when we ship your subscription, which is the same time we charge your payment method. We authorized subscriptions on Friday, and are in the process of sending out subscription orders. Your subscription should be leaving our warehouse shortly.
More information regarding authorizations can be found on our FAQ.
~Justin Riddler
Customer Service
Thank you so much for the prompt response, Justin! Yet another example of Paizo's fantastic customer service.
I just got mine! Whoohoo! Gonna take a break and read some.
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Wow.
Granted I have only studied this for about a half an hour, and I haven't read or dissected it thoroughly, but first impressions?
Tim knocked this sucker out of the park. Interesting NPCs, neat dungeons, cool story.
James Jacobs often says, "If you want to learn how to make better adventures, then read other people's adventures."
With some humility I am going to be studying this one. If people are enjoying the AP so far, I think they're in for a real treat.
The Kokogiak entry is amazing
Its dead black eyes are small but infinite
pits of malice.
The art...man, what can I say. The art. It's amazing. It's breathtaking. It's stunning. It's absolutely bloody fantastic. My favorite of the bunch, though, has to the half-page opener for the Kostchtchie article.
I assume the Kokogiak is the obscure folklore monster from Inuit myth (think I have run across him before). But what is this swiss monster? Google gives me nothing not Paizo related for the other monsters...
Developer
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I assume the Kokogiak is the obscure folklore monster from Inuit myth (think I have run across him before). But what is this swiss monster? Google gives me nothing not Paizo related for the other monsters...
That would be the azgenzak.The original name is Buratsche-ah-llgs, so we changed it to something more palatable. It was a fairly recent critter find of mine that I'd been wanting to do something with and Jason Nelson did a good job of nailing down a really weird monster that has very little information out there about it.
The description of the Azgenzak is really great. Whoever wrote that wins a little piece of my heart.*
*Herbo actually has no heart, nor does he claim to have any hearts in stock from which to carve tiny slices
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Thanks Adam...I read a lot of mythology and folklore, and Pathfinder first attracted my interest because of your guys tendency to stat up obscure monsters.
The new fey in here is also pretty awesome!
RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4; Contributor; Publisher, Legendary Games
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Glad to hear people are enjoying the bestiary in Mother, Maiden, Crone!
The monsters for this one were a lot of fun to write, whether because they were so WEIRD (a "bag of flaming eyes"? WTF do I do with this?) or cool like the kokogiak and svadilfar (I can't remember what the final spelling was), or just downright rotten and awful and so rat-bastardly evil as the strigoi. Those guys might just rival the popobala as the most EVILtotheCORE monsters I've written for Paizo. Good times! :)
Really happy to finally have this one. In the setting I run, I actually have a goddess of witchcraft that has the maiden, mother, and crone aspects, so this book is really helping to give me ideas for it.
That would be the azgenzak.The original name is Buratsche-ah-llgs, so we changed it to something more palatable. It was a fairly recent critter find of mine that I'd been wanting to do something with and Jason Nelson did a good job of nailing down a really weird monster that has very little information out there about it.
You all get me pretty cooked up for the next AP now! Only a week now till I can buy the PDF.
And i'm happy to see you also take rare and non-famous creatures into your books, I hope to see the just-as-rare-to-read-about-aboriginal Tsemaus fishmonster/cryptid in there one day.
Also aren't Strigoi just beastical vampires in myth? The european version of the Skinwalker?
If I was to venture a guess based on the context of the discussion (this installment of Reign of Winter), I'd say that Mr Nelson actually meant the sangoi and not the strigoi. The sangoi is a critter in this book's bestiary and it is quite nasty.
yeah Sangoi I think is what is meant, which is a cool little evil fey.
I just downloaded mine, so you should not have long to wait.
Well, at least another day, it seems...
Augh. It's killing me waiting on the subscription PDF. Does having extra merch in your sidecart delay order handling? I promise to never impulse purchase a pack of Gamemastery cards ever again if that's the case. :(
Augh. It's killing me waiting on the subscription PDF. Does having extra merch in your sidecart delay order handling? I promise to never impulse purchase a pack of Gamemastery cards ever again if that's the case. :(
Well, from my understanding they ship orders with similar items in batches. So if you subscribe to stuff that many other people subscribe to as well—so that the orders are identical, they get prepared in shipped in a big batch.
So by adding extra things, you make your order almost unique, which goes to the end of the line.
Sorry. And if I am wrong, someone will correct me.
On the bright side, you can order additional items and tell the system not to wait for your subscriptions to come in. That will mean extra postage, but your subscriptions might be less affected.
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I was wrong to say that, Paizo. I could never promise to stop my impulse purchases, baby.
Does having extra merch in your sidecart delay order handling?
Yes, it does. Sometimes by quite a bit. Especially if it's 3PP.
Been a subscriber long enough to notice the various correlations. :-)
*boom* Shipped and in my downloads. I'm stealing my wife's iPad and then I will caress and sweet talk to this story all night.
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RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4; Contributor; Publisher, Legendary Games
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Yeah, names often get changed a bit between turnover and final. The sangoi used to be the strigoi, the azgenzak was the augenzach, that kind of thing. Yes, the sangoi are nasty little creeps, fo sho. :)So does that mean it used to be the vampire in the bestiary but it was changed to the sangoi?
No, just that when you're doing a monster assignment, sometimes you get a name and a concept and you design it from the ground up, sometimes you get a bit of real-world folklore, which might include a name (or several variations of a name, since many monsters span several cultures and have different names in each), and you build out the stats and the game-relevant fluff to fit.
I think with that creature, strigoi was one of the names, but also the concept that it would be a fey and not an undead, and vampire-like but not actually a vampire, and that it be a certain CR. Building it up from there was a combination of knitting together some of the folkloric details with my own ideas. Once I send in my turnover based on the initial assignment, the developers (in this case, Adam) massage it to whatever extent they feel necessary, both in terms of crunch and fluff, to get it where they want it for final publication, which may include a name change (like the changes I mentioned before). Sometimes the developer changes nothing, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. It happens. One of the skills every freelancer needs to develop *early* is not to take things personally when a developer or editor changes something. :)
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Just got to do a partial read.
Man, this adventure. Some might view it as "dungeon-crawly" at a glance, but for groups that pursue it there's a LOT of intense roleplaying potential here. It definitely feels "lived in", and there's no shortage of characters that could easily be allies, enemies, frenemies, or antagopals depending on how the PCs approach the situation.
I'm really liking the Hut reconfigurations. This is only going to get weirder as it goes along, isn't it? :)
Kostchtchie is at least as nasty a piece of work as you might be expecting. He's custom-made to be hated, and it's telling that Iomedae is pretty much described as really wanting to pull a Desna on him if she could. Also, really liking the Servitor Demon section and the possibilities it promises if this becomes a regular thing in Deity article entries for demon lords. :)
Good Lord, that Bestiary intro art. Like it was said upthread, it really does drive home the scale of that creature.
The andrakzu seem to be optimized for inducing hate from players too. The "masculine Hell, feminine Abyss" theme kicks in pretty nicely here, painting these guys as the chewtoys of more powerful female demons. And these guys are pretty scary too, so that forces a new perspective for folks that never really viewed succubi to see how scary they can really get.
The sangoi entry has me extremely curious about just what kind of destiny might really be awaiting those "marked" children. Potential PC background there.
(the sangoi also ensures that RoW's child endangerment theme remains unbroken for at least the first half of the AP's volumes, speaking of which...)
Still really digging those inside cover pieces. Cripes though, I really think the portrayals of Baba Yaga in that art have been the creepiest versions of that character so far.
Azgenzak won me over at "vomits itself inside out". Then came the fire eyes. :D
yes! Yes! YES! Finally downloaded the pdf.
And I gotta say this installment is as great as I expected it to be from the first tiny little bit of information we got fed about it as I have echoed across the boards for the last months.
I mean: Iobaria, centaurs, Kostchtchie, Hecate-themed dungeon, Kostchtchie, centaurs, Iobaria...
Thank you so much! Awesome!
Ruyan.
The andrakzu seem to be optimized for inducing hate from players too. The "masculine Hell, feminine Abyss" theme kicks in pretty nicely here, painting these guys as the chewtoys of more powerful female demons. And these guys are pretty scary too, so that forces a new perspective for folks that never really viewed succubi to see how scary they can really get.
Yet another sexy female demon-type creature? There already are Succubi, Pairaka, Erinyes, Erodaemon...
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The sangoi entry has me extremely curious about just what kind of destiny might really be awaiting those "marked" children. Potential PC background there.
I think it might be best, and by best I mean worst, if there really isn't any destiny involved at all -- the little bastards are just horribly paranoid.
The andrakzu seem to be optimized for inducing hate from players too. The "masculine Hell, feminine Abyss" theme kicks in pretty nicely here, painting these guys as the chewtoys of more powerful female demons. And these guys are pretty scary too, so that forces a new perspective for folks that never really viewed succubi to see how scary they can really get.Yet another sexy female demon-type creature? There already are Succubi, Pairaka, Erinyes, Erodaemon...
No, the andrakzu are male "misogyny demons" who serve KOsthchthwchAchoo! the Deathless.
They COULD be sexy, if you're into that kind of thing ;)
But no, they are blue-white furred ape-like creatures with hoofed feet and demon horns and an almost... humanoid shark-like face. it's the only way I can describe the face. Like a shark but with a flatter face.