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PaizoCon 2021 is this weekend and one of the staple panels for the con is Secrets of Golarion. The panel features Adam Daigle (Director of Game Development), James Jacobs (Creative Director), Mark Moreland (Director of Brand Strategy), and myself telling you all you want to know about the Lost Omens campaign setting, the official setting of the Pathfinder RPG.
We want your questions about the setting! Do you want to know more about a specific character? Do you want to know more about the mysteries of a particular location? Do you want to know what happened to Aroden? Ask your question here and we might answer it! (Except for the Aroden question. That one is totally off the table.)
Drop your questions here and we'll pick our favorites to answer at the panel. Then swing on by to Paizo's twitch channel this Friday, May 28th, and catch the answers live starting at 5 PM PDT. We might even try to snag some questions from our streaming audience, so don't be afraid to drop us questions there.
We look forward to revealing some of the secrets soon!
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How far in advance are the events in Golarion planed? With the recent AP's and the Society szenarios there where several changes implemented and this seems to continue with adventures like "Night of the Gray Death".
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Who lives on the Whistling Plains? It looks like a huge steppe. Do people (human, centaur, and other) from the plains often interact with the eastern edge of Galt and the River Kingdoms?
What’s the Scarlet Rose up to these days? I’d love to see Filarina again, and see a less ableist presentation of her partner.
Can we hear a name for an Arcadian country we don’t yet know?
What would the god the Aballonians are building be a god of?
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Oh, and one more thing: what’s Droon like? We know it has lizardfolk and dinosaurs, but can we get a glimpse of beliefs or structure? I’d also accept a sniff at Chauxen, Dehrukani, and Tirakawhan.
Desperate for that Southern Garund book someday :p
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What is the Isger's royal family surname?
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What were the main gods of the Jistkan Artificers and Magistrates?
If there was a temple (past or present) to Atreia on Golarion, where would it be?
What happened to the Order of the Vice?
Why is Hallit not a common language in Nidal?
How did General Arnisant die in the confrontation with The Whispering Tyrant if the Shield of Aroden absorbed the wish that was to pull his heart from his chest?
What was the Wyspenring Tyrant's rationale for laying seige against Absalom instead teleporting invisible to the cathedral and flying inside or using other magic tricks to enter city undetected?
Likewise, as part of his Ask Me Anything (AMA), James Jacob mentioned that finishing an Adventure Path would be the equivalent of taking the test of the Starstone. Was the Whispering Tyrant aware of this? And, with this in mind, did the he beseiged Absalom because he beleived that conquering Absalom was fulfilling his personal legend or desiny and, therefore, his pre-requisite for being succesful in the Test of the Starstone?
Also, seemingly, all deities of mortal origin have portfolios related to their mortal life, was the Wispering Tyrant was trynig to engineer his ascencion as god of conquest of some sort?
Humbly,
Yawar
What would the god the Aballonians are building be a god of?Answered in Starfinder: Epoch fused with Casandalee and Brigh to form Triune, gods of AI's, computers, and the drift. Epoch's aspect of Triune is the patron of hackers, programmers, and or course, Aballon's sentient machines.
Ah, I remembered the Triune lore, but not that Epoch got described! I’d /love/ to see some proto-Triune stuff get gestured at in an AP someday; it’s maybe the most satisfying payoff of a continuous setting I’ve ever seen.
I wonder if Automatons can be used to play Aballonians…
Are there any Syrinx who aren’t huge racist jerks?
I know all the 1E AP cannoically happened, so whT was the official outcome of the Red Dragon Orb from Giantslayer and the Cloud Giant Castle? Feel like many forces would want a movable fortress.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
What was the Wyspenring Tyrant's rationale for laying seige against Absalom instead teleporting invisible to the cathedral and flying inside or using other magic tricks to enter city undetected?
Likewise, as part of his Ask Me Anything (AMA), James Jacob mentioned that finishing an Adventure Path would be the equivalent of taking the test of the Starstone. Was the Whispering Tyrant aware of this? And, with this in mind, did the he beseiged Absalom because he beleived that conquering Absalom was fulfilling his personal legend or desiny and, therefore, his pre-requisite for being succesful in the Test of the Starstone?
Also, seemingly, all deities of mortal origin have portfolios related to their mortal life, was the Wispering Tyrant was trynig to engineer his ascencion as god of conquest of some sort?
Humbly,
Yawar
Honestly it feels like with EVERYTHING involving the tyrant it can be brought back to Aroden. If there is ONE thing consistent about the tyrant, its that he hates Aroden. He wishes to see this God beaten. From trying to trick around before he moved on beyond the material plane, to his attacks against Taldor. The center of Aroden worship, to what he did to Arazni the tyrant has wanted to bring Aroden low.
So here he is, mastering his escape from Gallowspire and sure, he could go and take the test just as Aroden kinda did when he rose the stone and become a God like Aroden. But the tyrant HATES him. Everything he did, everything he built. He has lost to Aroden (or his followers) twice now. It's personal. He doesn't want to just do as Aroden did, he wants to prove he is BETTER. But he's been trapped to long, Aroden is dead. So what's he gonna do? Well that's obvious. The one thing that Aroden truelly did that was great. His LEGACY, is Absalom. A city NEVER taken. He doesn't just want to beat Aroden, he wants to prove he is better. He will last. He is the Tyrant and he will tear down everything Aroden did and PROVE he is better.
Honestly it screams about how mortally flawed the tyrant is. Even in undead he is bound by living ideals of being lesser then Aroden. Beaten. It shows how much of a flawed villain he is, because those flaws make them more interesting. But this is kinda my reading on it ND the authors may say differently, but it feels like it's to make even the most powerful "inhuman" monstrous of villains, fail to mortal vices. The tyrant may even put Xanderghul a run for title of most prideful.
From the german community at https://pathfinder2.de
With the secret around Aroden's death still a mystery (and I don't suppose that there will be anything new about this except for the adventure "The Dead God's Hand") will there be at least some more smaller infos around his demise?
What caused the Eye of Abendego? What's in his center?
Will we ever learn what the Wandering Spheres in Kyonin are about?
Will the forthcoming books (Mwangi Expanse / Strength of a Thousand) go into details about the actual whereabouts of Old-Man Jatembe?
How binding are infernal contracts in Pharasma's court? If someone made a deal with a devil that damned their soul, but later had a redemption arc, would the infernal contract still stand in judgment?
Is there much piracy extending from the Shackles going on in the Inner Sea region, past the Arch of Aroden?
What kind of technology exists in Casmaron? Will any of it be explored in Guns & Gears?
Is there a write up for the answers? I couldn't watch the show.
Humbly,
Yawar
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Creative Director
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No write up, but the show itself should be on the Youtubes. If not now, then soon. In the meantime, feel free to keep asking questions on the Paizocon Discord! I'm lurking there for the next 10 hours or so, and am answering questions both on my Ask Me Anything room there, and also on the Secrets of Golarion panel discussion.
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Is there a write up for the answers? I couldn't watch the show.
Humbly,
Yawar
Magic-Sword, hero of the people, did write ups of most panels on Reddit. I don't have the link. It was on the Pathfinder 2 subreddit.
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Creative Director
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How far in advance are the events in Golarion planed? With the recent AP's and the Society szenarios there where several changes implemented and this seems to continue with adventures like "Night of the Gray Death".
On average, a year or two in advance of them being published, but in some cases they're planned many years in advance. Adventure Paths, for example, we have a vague idea of what ones we're going to do about half a decade into the future. Those things change and adjust as we go, but I had Jade Regent and Iron Gods being planned in my head during Rise of the Runelords, for example.
The events in "Night of the Gray Death" are an adventure I've been trying to get on the schedule for over 4 years.
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Creative Director
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Who lives on the Whistling Plains? It looks like a huge steppe. Do people (human, centaur, and other) from the plains often interact with the eastern edge of Galt and the River Kingdoms?
We haven't done much with this region yet. I haven't put any thought into it but I would expect humans to be there at least in some degree.
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Creative Director
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What’s the Scarlet Rose up to these days? I’d love to see Filarina again, and see a less ableist presentation of her partner.
Can we hear a name for an Arcadian country we don’t yet know?
What would the god the Aballonians are building be a god of?
Unrevealed. We haven't really had much chance to look at what's going on in Varisia these days, and exploring more about the Gray Maidens and how they've adjusted and expanded isn't something we've yet been able to explore in 2nd edition. Varisia remains my favorite region, and the Gray Maidens' evolution from "stormtrooper" to something more is a plot I'm very eager to explore further. Hopefully next time we get to do so with more than a page to talk flavor and history and characters and thus give the various groups enough room to do something other than give brief summaries, but the demand for player-facing content is a hard foe to contstrain when the mandate for a product like Adventurer' Guide was to be mostly feats and spells and archetypes and the like with a veneer of world lore to give it flavor.
I'm not sure which Arcadian countries have been publicly named or not, so this is a better question for Luis to answer... and that answer might be a variant of "None yet" or "Not time to reveal that yet."
Aballonian god building: Unrevealed.
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Creative Director
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Oh, and one more thing: what’s Droon like? We know it has lizardfolk and dinosaurs, but can we get a glimpse of beliefs or structure? I’d also accept a sniff at Chauxen, Dehrukani, and Tirakawhan.
Desperate for that Southern Garund book someday :p
Droon is a modern society with dinosaurs integrated into the day-to-day life. It's not quite "Dinotopia but with lizard folk instead of humans" but it's in that direction. It's a powerful nation with a very strong navy and army, and is mostly neutral in alignment. Faith is a mix of Gozreh and astrology. Those are all VAGUE ideas though, since Droon isn't a region from my homebrew... but I suspect that a lot of the dinosaurs-are-commonplace elements from my homebrew version of Holomog would transition to here.
Chauxen: Unrevealed other than it's a Vudran colony but mostly wilderness. Tirakawhan: Unrevealed other than it's a Keleshite colony but mostly wilderness. I have sort of in my head that these two nations fled from their homelands after being outcast or escaping, and may or may not be evil, and may or may not be in conflict against each other. Both are really small, and while they're called "colonies" they didn't displace established people. They're pretty remote from the rest of civilization and I supsect get most of their trade via ship traffic mostly going between Holomog and Droon.
Dehrukani: Azata worshipers. Human for the most part, but a lot of ganzis among them. Very isolated and mysterious. I suspect they're in a situation where they're surrounded by something bad or scary and are a mote of proverbial light in the heart of something awful, and are viewed as something of a fanciful legend by most other nations. Landlocked nation, for sure... unless what surrounds them is a large creepy monster-filled swamp I guess.
A southern Garund book would be amazing. And note that all of the above might change 100%, depending on how involved I am with that book, and whether or not those ideas stand the test of "is this worth printing" from the rest of the company.
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Creative Director
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| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
What were the main gods of the Jistkan Artificers and Magistrates?
Unrevealed.
If there was a temple (past or present) to Atreia on Golarion, where would it be?
Well hiddden and hard to get to. Somewhere volcanic. Maybe on a remote Shackles isle or somewhere deep in the Darklands?
What happened to the Order of the Vice?
Unrevealed still.
Why is Hallit not a common language in Nidal?
Because Nidal has had thousands of years under Zon-Kuthon rule, and has had all that time to make sure Shadowtongue is the primary language spoken there. There's not a lot of room in Nidal for non-Nidilese people to thrive and prosper and hasn't been for thousands of years, and what room there HAS been was mostly Varisian.
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Creative Director
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How did General Arnisant die in the confrontation with The Whispering Tyrant if the Shield of Aroden absorbed the wish that was to pull his heart from his chest?
This is a story I never really had much input on, so I'm not super familiar with it. A better question for someone else to answer, I guess, if we didn't reveal that at some point in something like Tyrant's Grasp.
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Creative Director
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If the PCs lost Wrath of the Righteous and the Rasping Rifts ate Golarion, what would have happened with Rovagug?
Rovagug's demi-plane prison isn't physically located inside of Golarion, but metaphysically. What happens if the planet is destroyed to Rovagug is undetermined; He might escape, he might stay in the prison but now have NO way to get out, in Golarion's place there might exist a weird magic singularity egg thing... could be anything. That's not gonna happen in print in Pathfinder, so what does happen is left to you to decide.
If I did have to decide, though, if anything (including the Rasping Rifts) were to destroy or remove Golarion, Rovagug would get out and he'd quickly go back to gobbling up worlds and destroying gods and being really bad news for the Multiverse, forcing the gods to try to face him down again, only this time Rovagug has had countless eons to build up his anger and I suspect there'd be a lot more divine death playing out.
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Creative Director
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| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
What was the Wyspenring Tyrant's rationale for laying seige against Absalom instead teleporting invisible to the cathedral and flying inside or using other magic tricks to enter city undetected?
Likewise, as part of his Ask Me Anything (AMA), James Jacob mentioned that finishing an Adventure Path would be the equivalent of taking the test of the Starstone. Was the Whispering Tyrant aware of this? And, with this in mind, did the he beseiged Absalom because he beleived that conquering Absalom was fulfilling his personal legend or desiny and, therefore, his pre-requisite for being succesful in the Test of the Starstone?
Also, seemingly, all deities of mortal origin have portfolios related to their mortal life, was the Wispering Tyrant was trynig to engineer his ascencion as god of conquest of some sort?
Humbly,
Yawar
I think this question might have been cross-posted to my question thread here, but the quick answer is that the Whispering Tyrant is a combination of egomaniac and coward. He wanted Absalom to quake and fear his approach, and wasn't brave enough to pop in and face all of its defenses all at once... two things that would have happened if he just teleported into the cathedral or otherwise snuck in. That sort of thing would be fine, I guess, if he wanted to be a god of subtlety and stealth and forgetfulness, but he's not. How you approach the cathedral is as much a decider as to what sort of deity you become as what happens inside it.
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Creative Director
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How are name-change retcons handled in-game? For example, do people in Golarion refer to werecreature-descended mortals as "Beastkin" or "Skinwalkers"? Was there a time in-world where they suddenly changed what they call them or have they "always" called them the new name or does it vary by location?
They just happen, and are treated as if that's how things always were. In world, no one now or ever called them skinwalkers; they now and have always called them beastkin.
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Creative Director
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What would the god the Aballonians are building be a god of?Answered in Starfinder: Epoch fused with Casandalee and Brigh to form Triune, gods of AI's, computers, and the drift. Epoch's aspect of Triune is the patron of hackers, programmers, and or course, Aballon's sentient machines.
Ah; there you go! You can for sure use that answer for them in Pathifnder, but keep in mind that the whole point of the Gap is so that if we take a story in a different way in each game, the Gap explains why they're different. The Gap exists to keep Starfinder creators from having to be Pathfinder experts, and vice versa, more than anything else.
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Creative Director
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Are there any Syrinx who aren’t huge racist jerks?
Like all mortal creatures, Syrinx have free will and some of them are different from the norm, but at this point they're a very obscure and unexplored element of the setting. Currently they're set up as an antagonist force, and I'd rather focus on the strix being the more open and aimed at diversity bird-themed ancestry at this point.
Not every culture is equally wide-reaching and diverse. Some are narrow-minded or narrowly-defined. Those that end up becoming PC ancestries are the ones who get more in depth exploration and more diversity, because when we make an ancestry available for PCs, they should be available to be played as any gender, class, alignment, religion, outlook, personality, and so on that any one player wants.
And we can't make player ancestries for everything.
So for now, the Syrinx remain as they were in 1st edition. When and if we do something with them, we'll let folks know.
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Creative Director
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I know all the 1E AP cannoically happened, so whT was the official outcome of the Red Dragon Orb from Giantslayer and the Cloud Giant Castle? Feel like many forces would want a movable fortress.
Haven't put TOO much thought into that one, but it's possible the castle crashed into the mountains and became a new potential dungeon site to explore. It certainly hasn't entered the current culture as an ongoing thing like New Thassilon, the new queen of Irrisen, or Hurricane Queen Tessa.
Which, to me, suggests the castle blew up or crashed or shot into space or something. And the red dragon orb is now out there somewhere to be found again.
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Creative Director
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From the german community at https://pathfinder2.de
With the secret around Aroden's death still a mystery (and I don't suppose that there will be anything new about this except for the adventure "The Dead God's Hand") will there be at least some more smaller infos around his demise?
What caused the Eye of Abendego? What's in his center?Will we ever learn what the Wandering Spheres in Kyonin are about?
Will the forthcoming books (Mwangi Expanse / Strength of a Thousand) go into details about the actual whereabouts of Old-Man Jatembe?
"Dead God's Hand" will have more info about Aroden from his life, but I doubt it'll shed any clues into his death.
The cause of the Eye of Abendego and what's in its center gets to remain a mystery for now.
I'd love to go back and do more with Kyonin, at which point exploring things like the Wandering Spheres might happen, but at this point I've not put any thought into them, so they stay mysterious for now as well.
By this time next year, you'll know a LOT about Jatembe and what he's been up to recently.
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Creative Director
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How binding are infernal contracts in Pharasma's court? If someone made a deal with a devil that damned their soul, but later had a redemption arc, would the infernal contract still stand in judgment?
Is there much piracy extending from the Shackles going on in the Inner Sea region, past the Arch of Aroden?
What kind of technology exists in Casmaron? Will any of it be explored in Guns & Gears?
Infernal contracts are a result of a person using their free will (usually after being tricked, but still) to promise their soul to Hell. The contract doesn't make that happen alone. The person's choice does. Those souls go to the Boneyard like any other, but they fast track through SO quickly that there's generally no time to resurrect them before they're shot right off to wherever they're scheduled to go in Hell. This doesn't disrupt the cycle of life/death/soul at all, so it's not something that Pharasma really has an issue with. She's fine with mortals making bad choices.
There's a LOT of piracy extending from the Shackles, and they're getting bolder by the day now that they're starting to get cannons.
Tecnology in Casmaron is, for the most part, the same as in the Inner Sea. Vudra has some additional stuff though that'll get touched on soon, if I recall correctly.
Oh, and one more thing: what’s Droon like? We know it has lizardfolk and dinosaurs, but can we get a glimpse of beliefs or structure? I’d also accept a sniff at Chauxen, Dehrukani, and Tirakawhan.
Desperate for that Southern Garund book someday :p
Droon is a modern society with dinosaurs integrated into the day-to-day life. It's not quite "Dinotopia but with lizard folk instead of humans" but it's in that direction. It's a powerful nation with a very strong navy and army, and is mostly neutral in alignment. Faith is a mix of Gozreh and astrology. Those are all VAGUE ideas though, since Droon isn't a region from my homebrew... but I suspect that a lot of the dinosaurs-are-commonplace elements from my homebrew version of Holomog would transition to here.
Chauxen: Unrevealed other than it's a Vudran colony but mostly wilderness. Tirakawhan: Unrevealed other than it's a Keleshite colony but mostly wilderness. I have sort of in my head that these two nations fled from their homelands after being outcast or escaping, and may or may not be evil, and may or may not be in conflict against each other. Both are really small, and while they're called "colonies" they didn't displace established people. They're pretty remote from the rest of civilization and I supsect get most of their trade via ship traffic mostly going between Holomog and Droon.
Dehrukani: Azata worshipers. Human for the most part, but a lot of ganzis among them. Very isolated and mysterious. I suspect they're in a situation where they're surrounded by something bad or scary and are a mote of proverbial light in the heart of something awful, and are viewed as something of a fanciful legend by most other nations. Landlocked nation, for sure... unless what surrounds them is a large creepy monster-filled swamp I guess.
A southern Garund book would be amazing. And note that all of the above might change 100%, depending on how involved I am with that book, and whether or not those ideas stand the test of "is this worth...
This reply made my day, thank you so much! Southern Garund is the book I would want most after a proper Arcadia one; I’m rooting for it to happen!