Verdant Korvosa is south of the desert Cinderlands. The indigenous Shoanti are ruddy and Varisians swarthy (olive skinned) while the Chelaxians from the south are pale, suggesting more sunlight in the northern regions. Is Varisia south of Golarion's equator?
Chief Creative Officer, Publisher
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Verdant Korvosa is south of the desert Cinderlands. The indigenous Shoanti are ruddy and Varisians swarthy (olive skinned) while the Chelaxians from the south are pale, suggesting more sunlight in the northern regions. Is Varisia south of Golarion's equator?
No.
--Erik
No.
--Erik
So, are you admiting that there was an occurance of a Pole Shift/Pole Reversal Theory?
EDIT: Was this due to the sinking of Xin-Shalast?
Verdant Korvosa is south of the desert Cinderlands. The indigenous Shoanti are ruddy and Varisians swarthy (olive skinned) while the Chelaxians from the south are pale, suggesting more sunlight in the northern regions. Is Varisia south of Golarion's equator?No.
--Erik
Are you sure?
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Creative Director
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The destruction of Thassilon had some pretty major effects on Varisia and the region. Xin-Shalast, by the way, didn't sink. If anything, it went in the OTHER direction.
And the Cinderlands aren't really a desert. They're barren, but they get a fair amount of rain. We'll be talking more about them in Pathfinder 3.
And yes. Varisia is in the northern hemisphere.
And the Cinderlands aren't really a desert. They're barren, but they get a fair amount of rain. We'll be talking more about them in Pathfinder 3.And yes. Varisia is in the northern hemisphere.
Eh, it was a possibility. Interesting how we automatically assume north = cold and south = hot.
In Greyhawk, it always amused me that the Scarlet Brotherhood is a tropical empire run by near-albino-fair Suloise, but then they migrated there. I suspect that they started calling themselves the "Scarlet Brotherhood" because they were all chronically sunburnt.
"Cinderlands" would be a pretty cool name for a desert. It screams "hot."
Not to derail the topic, but do you have any info on the deserts of the Pathfinder world? I am trying to figure out how to fit the Sandshaper prestige class from Sandstorm into a Pathfinder campaign...
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Creative Director
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There are absolutely deserts in our world. The first place we'll really be exploring them is in the GameMastery module "Entombed with the Pharaohs," which is set in the region known as Osirion, our stand-in for ancient Egypt.
As for the Cinderlands... more details why they're called that will appear in Pathfinder 3. The name itself is from my own home-brew world, and there, the Cinderlands are a stretch of rugged badlands and broken hills that sit in the shadow of several active but small cinder cone volcanoes, so the entire place is often wracked with hot ash or bits of volcanic ejecta. I don't believe we've got any active volcanoes in Varisia, though, so we may indeed, at the end of the day, turn the Cinderlands into a region more like a desert. I haven't had a chance to see what James Sutter did with the region in his writeup on Varisia for Pathfinder 3 yet to confirm what's going on in there though.
Thanks for the info James. I don't know how much you know about the Sandshaper prestige class from the Sandstorm sourcebook (arcane spellcaster, using the magic of a dead civilization to control sand and desert creatures, etc). Any advice for fitting this class into my Pathfinder game? I know Osirion is kinda far off, but do you have any info on the region? Was it under the dominion of a runelord? Sorry, for threadjacking here, my original thread is: http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/pathfinder/general/fittingASandshaperI ntoThePathfinderSetting
Thanks for the info!
No one ever sets a campaign in the Southern Hemisphere :(
Eberron (the main campaign material anyway), FR, Greyhawk, Birthright, Athas, Dragonlance and Mystara are all set in the northern hemisphere. Only Zhakara is set in the south (not sure about Taladas), and that's only because they ran out of room in the north.
No sexual or racial prejudice in D&D? How about prejudice against the southern hemisphere?
Just because most D&D players live north of the equator, doesn't mean they get to hog everything!
Ansalon is in Krynn's southern hemisphere, so you're incorrect abouut Dragonlance. (Remember, the frozen tundra with whalemen and ice-axes is south of everything.)
Ansalon is in Krynn's southern hemisphere, so you're incorrect abouut Dragonlance. (Remember, the frozen tundra with whalemen and ice-axes is south of everything.)
You're right. Sorry, I was on a rant and just threw it in.
Of course, that also means they (TSR) felt compelled to have a northern hemisphere continent (Taladas) in the Dragonlance setting!
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Creative Director
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Thanks for the info James. I don't know how much you know about the Sandshaper prestige class from the Sandstorm sourcebook (arcane spellcaster, using the magic of a dead civilization to control sand and desert creatures, etc). Any advice for fitting this class into my Pathfinder game? I know Osirion is kinda far off, but do you have any info on the region? Was it under the dominion of a runelord? Sorry, for threadjacking here, my original thread is: http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/pathfinder/general/fittingASandshaperI ntoThePathfinderSetting
Thanks for the info!
Osirion is WAY too far away to have much of an impact on Varisia. It didn't even exist when Thassilon was around, and the Runelords had no interest in the region (if they even knew about it).
Looking at the sand shaper prestige class, though, it seems pretty closely tied to the desert, if only because of its requirement to have the Touchstone (City of the Dead) feat, and because its ablities work best in desert environs. There aren't going to be any of those in Rise of the Runelords, so a sand shaper will feel out of place and many of his abilities will go to waste in a Rise of the Runelords campaign.
I suppose you could rebuild/rework the class into a "monument shaper" prestige class; a character who functions best in regions where immense monuments are common. You'd need to pick a new Thassilonian ruin to replace his City of the Dead Touchstone feet (although you can probably keep the game mechanics unchanged; just alter the flavor). You'd have to pick different spells to have his desert insight, and perhaps make his sand shape ability function only on ancient monuments or fragments thereof. And so on. It'd be a lot of work, and I'm not sure in the end the result would be anything that still resembles what you like about the sand shaper prestige class.
Of course, you could also just change Varisia into a desert region. That'd mean changing a lot of monsters around, most of the boxed text, and a lot of other things. But with all the huge monuments in the region, I think this'd be your best bet if you're really keen on fitting the sand shaper into Rise of the Runelords.
No one ever sets a campaign in the Southern Hemisphere :(Hi, I'm No One. :)
My homebrew setting was a Southern Hemisphere affair. :)
So's mine. I'm talking about published material.
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No one ever sets a campaign in the Southern Hemisphere :(
Eberron (the main campaign material anyway), FR, Greyhawk, Birthright, Athas, Dragonlance and Mystara are all set in the northern hemisphere. Only Zhakara is set in the south (not sure about Taladas), and that's only because they ran out of room in the north.
No sexual or racial prejudice in D&D? How about prejudice against the southern hemisphere?
Just because most D&D players live north of the equator, doesn't mean they get to hog everything!
If memory serves, I think the southern entrance to the Hollow World is the less well guarded. I thought the Heldannic knights have the northern one bottled up, while the Aztecs and dinosaurs are down south, no?
Also, I figure Athas has the sort of feel where hemisphere doesn't really matter. Of all the campaign worlds, it's the one most likely to no longer have a molten core, what with the great age, gigantism in the home star and all.
Also, Planescape is not set in the northern hemisphere.
And anyway, if you really want your fix of southern lovin, play CoC. Just remember to bring along plenty of Miskatonic sweaters; most of Antarctica is more than a 1.5 kilometers above sea level, and that's before you even get to the Mountains!
Thanks for the info James. I don't know how much you know about the Sandshaper prestige class from the Sandstorm sourcebook (arcane spellcaster, using the magic of a dead civilization to control sand and desert creatures, etc). Any advice for fitting this class into my Pathfinder game? I know Osirion is kinda far off, but do you have any info on the region? Was it under the dominion of a runelord? Sorry, for threadjacking here, my original thread is: http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/pathfinder/general/fittingASandshaperI ntoThePathfinderSetting
Thanks for the info!
Osirion is WAY too far away to have much of an impact on Varisia. It didn't even exist when Thassilon was around, and the Runelords had no interest in the region (if they even knew about it).
Looking at the sand shaper prestige class, though, it seems pretty closely tied to the desert, if only because of its requirement to have the Touchstone (City of the Dead) feat, and because its ablities work best in desert environs. There aren't going to be any of those in Rise of the Runelords, so a sand shaper will feel out of place and many of his abilities will go to waste in a Rise of the Runelords campaign.
I suppose you could rebuild/rework the class into a "monument shaper" prestige class; a character who functions best in regions where immense monuments are common. You'd need to pick a new Thassilonian ruin to replace his City of the Dead Touchstone feet (although you can probably keep the game mechanics unchanged; just alter the flavor). You'd have to pick different spells to have his desert insight, and perhaps make his sand shape ability function only on ancient monuments or fragments thereof. And so on. It'd be a lot of work, and I'm not sure in the end the result would be anything that still resembles what you like about the sand shaper prestige class.
Of course, you could also just change Varisia into a desert region. That'd mean changing a lot of monsters around, most of the boxed text, and a lot of...
Thanks for the info James! I posted this in the Pathfinder General forums because I was interested in using the PrC in a general Pathfinder campaign, not the Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path. It will be a while before we have enough info to run our own campaigns set in the wider Pathfinder world, but I wanted to get a head start on gathering information for my players. The info on whether Osirion was affiliated with the Runelords or was an independant region was exactly the sort of info I was looking for. Thanks!
