Aroden Death

[Dragonchess Player]

One interesting tidbit was published in AP 64 Beyond the Doomsday Door on pg 33 (room C6 description):

Quote:

The prophecies issuing from his mouth are written in Thassilonian, and an examination of them along with a successful DC 30 Knowledge (Religion) check to interpret the metaphors correctly gives the impression that this fresco, well over 10,000 years old, prophesies the death of Aroden as "the passing of the last of the Azlanti at the dawn of an age of lost omens."

So, not only was Aroden's death but the failure of prophesy itself was prophesied. Don't think too hard about it, beyond the "player character choices matter" reasoning; there is currently no fixed "fate" or "foreordained conclusion" to events in Golarion. Aroden's death seems to be more of a means to an end (as a god of prophecy) and an initiating event for certain large-scale effects (the Eye of Abendego, the Worldwound, Cheliax converting to devil worship).

[Tacticslion]

You know, I've seen a lot places where Aroden has been called the god of prophecy, but really, he's not, and never was, according to my understanding.

One thing worth noting about Pharasma in all of this, is that it's not the first time she's refused to give people information on the future.

[John Kretzer]

Tacticslion wrote:

John Kretzer wrote:

I am curious why are there soo many theories that Asmodeus did it? What about the demons? The World Wound did appear right after his death.

Mostly because Chelliax, Aroden's center of worship, fell to Asmodeus upon Aroden's death. It's a sound theory, as far as motives go, but really, either Asmodeus was too arrogant (likely) or too stupid (unlikely) or both if it was him, because killing Arodeon cause the World Wound, the Eye of Abednigo, and the civil war that shattered Chelliax: the World Wound gave rise to demons, the Eye of Abendigo cut off a tremendous source of power and wealth to Chelliax, and Chelliax itself fell to a fraction of its former glory with Asmodeus' faith's rise (giving rise to no less than three now-chaotic countries and one distinctively neutral good country that is a dedicated foe).

If it was Asmodeus' plan, it didn't go very well (and he'd look something like an idiot, in that case). Of course, in that case, if it was his plan, his pride wouldn't let him admit it.

So, you know, I can see it as a viable theory (especially "in character", as most people would be concerned with their own governmental elements, and most would point to the large and powerful Chelliax being Asmodeus' as 'proof' of what happened to Aroden).

Looking at the larger picture, however, I can see so many other valid would-be murderers.

EDIT: it's funny - two recently activated threads about this make it more difficult for me to remember what I posted where.

Here are a few of my thoughts on the potential culprits. I would like to reverse my stance on Pharasma and Asmodeus, however. upon thinking about it, Pharasma seems less likely compared to Asmodeus, to me. Still not ranking them super-high on the list, though.

We are also looking at it as a single murderer...what about a allaince.

Asmodeus and various demons could have formed a allaince to do it. The Demons getting the World Wound...Asmodeus getting a chaotic Chelliax that is ripe for the taking by a devil backed noble family. Both would be confident at the the time the two fight they would win. Remember there is no Blood War on Golarion so devils and demons can work together.

Who know maybe the Daemons were also involved...maybe saomething to do with the Eye of Abendigo.

[Tacticslion]

I could definitely see such a thing, though Asmodeus would put it (in his own mind) as 'using the patsies' (whoever they were) and he'd get some sort of leverage over them in the deal (see: Rovagug's imprisonment). And I don't think he'd get his hands dirty directly (too many would-be avengers), but he'd leave himself with plausible deniability.

Regardless of who or what, an alliance is not out of the question.

[TheWarriorPoet519]

I feel like Aroden's death works best if it wasn't done by another deity, but by some as yet unknown other force at work. Asmodeus's work on Cheliax seems to fit him thematically better as an act of supremely well executed opportunism.

[John Kretzer]

Though personaly...knowing James Jacobs it was either the Demons or the Lovecraftivian Old ones...as he loves them so much. ;)

[Cpt_kirstov]

Tacticslion wrote:

You know, I've seen a lot places where Aroden has been called the god of prophecy, but really, he's not, and never was, according to my understanding.

One thing worth noting about Pharasma in all of this, is that it's not the first time she's refused to give people information on the future.

No he's not, but one of the things that happened since his death no major prophecy has come true

[Pual]

i reckon he never actually existed - he was just a gnome stood on another gnome's shoulders in a long coat

[rknop]

James Jacobs wrote:

I need only point to the popularity of "Lost" before the final episode as evidence—while there were secrets in that show, folks loved it and it was a sensation, but once the show ended, it seemed to breed a lot of animosity and disappointment and frustration with its viewers because the answers revealed didn't match the many different (and themselves often contradictory) viewer-assumptions of answers.

While I agree with this, there's another approach. That's the one Straczynski took with Babylon 5. As the show opened, there were all sorts of secrets and unknowns. Most of them were revealed within a couple of years, however, even though the show still had time to go. For instance, the big questions of what was the hole in Sinclair's memory, and why did the Minbari suddenly stop the Earth/Minbari war when they were about to completely pound Earth into nothing-- big unanswered backstory questions in the first season, that had been answered by the second season. His philosophy was that trying to keep something like that secret for too long wasn't really possible, and the impact of the secret would be weakend over time.

Of course, this isn't really comparable to the death of Aroden. The whole Sinclair/Minbari business was pretty central to the plot of B5. In contrast, the death of Aroden is central to the current layout and nature of Avistan, and to how things are in the world, but not to the plot directly, of (say) published APs.

I think Lost made the mistake of linking the interest of the show to too many secrets-- secrets that became banal when revealed, or that sort of became forgotten and were never really addressed anyway. A lot of the "what's going on" business from the first season was never really answered, and when it was answered, it undermined what had gone before. I don't think that was the case with most of the revealed secrets in B5.

An example from gaming is probably the "ancients" from the original Traveller. They were used as plot points, but when revealed, a lot of people found it very banal. I fear I didn't play Traveler back then (a pity, because I would have loved it), so I don't know really how much it affected people's games or campaigns. I would suspect not much, because I don't think a lot of games were focused on "finding out what the ancients did", but rather used ancient technology as a McGuffin, or as part of the background in a way that exactly where it came from didn't overmuch affect the story when it was used.

The death of Aroden is one of those really big secrets that would almost certainly piss people off if revealed, but also that can't be the direct focus of a campaign as a result. I like the way it's handled right now; it's utterly key to the setting, but not utterly key to the individual motivations of characters in the setting. They're in the world they're in, but they almost don't even need to know that a god died a hundred years ago making the world into what it is today. There's just this bigass hurricane and this crack that demons come out of, so, hey, let's go engage in some serious intrigue with people around all of that.

[Tacticslion]

Cpt_kirstov wrote:

Tacticslion wrote:

You know, I've seen a lot places where Aroden has been called the god of prophecy, but really, he's not, and never was, according to my understanding.

One thing worth noting about Pharasma in all of this, is that it's not the first time she's refused to give people information on the future.

No he's not, but one of the things that happened since his death no major prophecy has come true

Yes, I'm quite aware - that's the nature of the Age of Lost Omens, after all, and that's the era we play in!

I just mean that I've seen many mentions of Aroden being a god of prophecy (which he wasn't), and thus the linkies. :)

I do submit that it is peculiar that his death is tied to a lack of accurate prophecy, however. Still, Pharasma kept her mouth shut about Earthfall and the Age of Darkness (causing [redacted for spoiler*]).

Major point being that we're unsure of the state of prophecy during the Age of Darkness, and Pharasma tends to act a little skittish and prophecy-shy around major catastrophic events. While Aroden's death hasn't (directly) rocked the world quite as much as Earthfall, it's still pretty serious biznus and its effects, like that event, are lingering and potentially devastating (and potentially worse, given the Abyss now has a foothold on the prison planet of the most powerful Qlippoth in existence, albeit the rift itself is owned by demonic instead of qlippothic** forces).

Anyway, my point wasn't to negate the Age of Lost Omens but to point out that Pharasma, though her importance in prophecy is diminishing, is still the god(dess) thereof and has been tight-lipped before, even to people that - ostensibly - seem like they should know.

*

Minor Serpent Skull AP Spoiler:

... causing on of her most powerful clerics and diviners and a major player in Savinth-Yhi to slowly drive himself to paranoia with fear and nightmare spores until, in his madness, he poisoned an entire city with refined nightmare spores so that they, too, were insane and paranoid in a failed bid to gain power to protect the city from Earthfall... just in time for Earthfall to happen anyway and the world to basically collapse.

** Or however you'd say that. :)

[Morrigna]

While my familiarity with Pathfinder extends back scarcely a month, it seems to me that the best puzzle pieces I've seen on Aroden's death are in this thread: leak, deception, denial non denial, honest man, rebuke, and omission.

The other thread's alien entity long-con starstone hypothesis was amazing, but far too intelligent a guess. That's the kind of excessively good fitting of disparate details to logical necessity and probability that you get from reverse engineering things. Real history and organically developing creative fictions never have this fingerprint, for similar reasons. By comparison, Therrin's Big Badguy clunker is much more likely.

We must also examine the source. Is Therrin a liar? I judge his posts have a ring of authenticity. They appear to be a carelessly delivered, garbled transmission of an uninspiring, early version. This version reflects no current agenda and satisfies no one - as it wouldn't, since it was conceived long before. Look at Tolkein's notes - a creator's concepts gestate and develop from mustard seeds to mighty trees. Here I believe we have the seed. Furthermore, I see no evidence in Pathfinder, pace James, of the sort of epic weaving power that would make me expect a higher quality seed. It is enjoyable elaboration - a cavern of quartz, not a silmaril.

Objection #1: Rova-Gug's escape would be cataclysmic, and impossible to cover up.
Answer: Seed, not tree. Cracking prison, not successful escape.

Objection #2: If Aroden died nobly, there would be no coverup.

Answer: Rova-Gug plausibly stands outside prophecy and divine control - the prophecy that he will end the world does not signify application of fate's laws to him, but rather is similar to the knowledge that the Sun will still be burning in 5 minutes - nothing conceivable could stop it.

Thus his mini-eruption was unexpected, unprophecied, and severely screwed things over, adding another deity to Rova's kill/sacrifice count.

Rova's very TOMB is unnamed, its location unknown. The portents surrounding Aroden's death might give a dangerous hint as to its location - I believe the beast chained at the center of the Earth is a popular myth? And where better to bind the destroyer of all than at the very center of creation? Not to be un-Copernican or planar-parochial, but one must admit the Pathfinder cosmos resembles a matryoshka doll. The center would be the logical place.

Furthermore, the gods don't want to admit and nobody wants to hear that Rova really can't be controlled and may burst forth at any time. Motives of morale, pride, and discretion are more than enough to explain the silence.

In fact, Paizo's "we'll never tell" statement implies that they can know for sure that it will never be discovered by 3rd parties and that the gods who know the story will never tell it under any circumstances, which narrows down the options considerably towards the universe's #1 and best kept secret.

Lastly, we have the testimony of character. Therrin didn't care to write well or make sense, and then left, but the kernel of a story can be extracted. Moreland said he'd "jump on the grenade" and then issued a denial-non-denial. James called Moreland out for blatantly lying about something, so we may suspect him of inexactitude on other matters. James denied nothing, although he has had no problem shooting down other theories, including one on this thread.

My hunch from the limited info is that Moreland's grenade phrasing was an emotive leak revealing that Therrin's story was a substantially true damaging revelation, and that any denial of it would have more than a tinge of falsehood.

Anyhow, I don't really care. I've already decided on my own version. I play a Psychopomp alignment, and it's pretty clear from the fluff on the Morrigna that the Spire tolerates no mortal ascension to godhood that slights Limbo's bureaucracy. Pharasma did it, Aroden is her paperweight, and she's coming for the rest. Nobody cheats Death.

Of course, the two theories are not mutually exclusive. In fact, their combination is even more satisfying. Killing gods is a tricky business. One must be patient.

Speaking of...:

Coincidentally, my GM has come up with some sort of home-brew Christ-figure immortal demigod emperor of Golarion (or something). Naturally, I'm going to accompany my good party members until our heroics earn us an audience, then pop an Eversmoking Bottle and use my animated Kere tombstone's gate SLA to drop a Spire assassination team into his throneroom. I'll hand him (the GM) the backstory when the gate opens, then see how many hit die a god really has.

I assume the Spire team will do the heavy lifting, but any tips on killing demigods would be welcome. I'm a void wizard 9. Planar binding -> Kere normally requires lvl 11. Obviously I will do as much recon as possible in-game, and report it to HQ via the Nosoi, Katrina, Kere or Morrigna "off-screen".

I realize this may not be exactly kosher, but I think there's a certain immersive value in having the GM and his emperor experience the sudden shock of the assassination attempt together. Who says GM's can't have fun too?

Maybe I should appeal to his sense of fair play to make it a fight, perhaps with the party squaring off against me while the Spire takes on the Emperor. If I win, free burials for everyone.

Hmm, actually, since the Emperor's claim to fame is stopping another homebrew-goddess' continent-destroying volcano, I can just gate the goddess' team in, teleport out, and retain plausible deniability. That saves me an involuntary trip to Limbo. (Not that I would mind the promotion.)

EDIT: Ah, here's the tree:

it was suicide:

Seriously. Here's my thinking: According to the Starfall Doctrine, Aroden's return was supposed to kick off the Age of Glory -- a 1000 year golden age where Aroden was going to personally lead the human race to greatness. That sounds an awful lot like something I read before:

Quote:
6 Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years.
7 And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison --Revelations 20
The allusion isn't an accident -- and neither is Rovagug's epithet, "the Rough Beast." It's a reference to William Butler Yeats' poem, The Second Coming:
Quote:
(first two stanzas omitted for brevity)
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Aroden knew that the Age of Glory prefaced Rovagug's release. In order to stop the prophesy, he had to destroy prophesy itself. His death was the only sure way to accomplish this -- the preordained sequence of events could not occur from that point forward. This is why prophesy stopped being accurate afterward -- fate itself was broken. This is also what caused the cataclysmic events of 4606 AR; the Eye of Abendego, Worldwound, and Shatterfield are scars in the fabric of the universe, left behind by a mass reconfiguration of reality itself. It was like trying to divide by zero.

The details can't really be known -- I prefer to think that Aroden just put a metaphysical gun to his own head for the good of humanity. It's possible that he engineered his own murder, Sandman style, and deliberately let his guard down at the right moment (Asmodeus is my prime suspect, but there are certainly others).

The more I mull this over, the more convinced I am that I'm right (Mr. Jacobs, please feel free to disabuse me of my pretension).

Better than I thought. I haven't actually played a game yet, so maybe I don't have an accurate impression of their narrative qualities.

Anyhow, the prophecy connection plus the Echo of Lost Divinity makes Pharasma's involvement extremely likely, without considering the god-killing motive.

[Alleran]

Morrigna wrote:

Rova's very TOMB is unnamed, its location unknown.

Rovagug's prison is the Dead Vault, a closed-off demiplane in the middle of Golarion. Is that what you were referring to?

[John Kretzer]

I have thought up another theory...

It was Desna. One of the results of Aroden's death was prophecies became...unreliable. If you read her views on prophecies she it make sense she would want to free all the races from the chains of prophecies. She prefers the future to mutable to prevent bad outcomes.

[Ashkar]

I'm with the theory, that Aroden was a Veiled Master. :)
The manual of Occult Mysteries by the way, has some interesting ideas on the matter of Aroden's Death and Veiled Masters.

[MagusJanus]

On the idea that Therrin was correct...

Well my alternate self from a timeline that never existed played at the table of James Joyce and we actually RPed out the death of Aroden. He died on Earth during the War of 1812, but will be revived when the disco era hit. Powered by the funky music and using an interstellar disco ball, he will return to Golarion to institute a new, funky age of humanity's dominance.

On my personal theory...

Where is Aroden's body? I bet it's in Numeria.

[rknop]

MagnusJanus wrote:

Where is Aroden's body?

...floating in the Astral, with all the other dead gods....

[MagusJanus]

Hush! No upsetting my delusion on what a certain drive does! ;)

[BuzzKillington]

I heard it was syphilis he got from Iomedae.

[Rubber Ducky guy]

Aroden was one day out from retirement his return when he came across a pack of devils knocking over a church of Cayden Cailean.
They got lucky with a crit and it turned out to be a bad day to leave your amulet of natural armour at home.

[rknop]

Actually, he came across a group of PFS players on a mission. He started to talk to them, but they totally murderhoboed him. They were overpowered optimized builds and his tactics were written for a PFS scenario, so they killed him in one round.

[Scarletrose]

Talynonyx wrote:

Wraithcannon wrote:

Gained the most? What about Iomadae?

Wouldn't that be a twist if she cut a deal with Asmodeus to kill Aroden and assume his powers?

With none the wiser........

Pretty sure she wouldn't be an LG goddess of valor, justice, honor, and rulership in that case. So I'd say this didn't happen at all.

It depends.

Do we really know that Iomedae is LG?
Or is just Iomedae religion that is LG.

In the end, short of a Iomedae character sheet, all we know is the cult of Iomedae, and if she portrays herself as LG, offers her powers to those who's alignment is compatible with her dogma (a dogma that she dictates but that nothing really confirm that she has to follow herself).

Not that I believe she is but .. I wouldn't dismiss the hypothesis as impossible

[Alleran]

Scarletrose wrote:

In the end, short of a Iomedae character sheet, all we know is the cult of Iomedae, and if she portrays herself as LG, offers her powers to those who's alignment is compatible with her dogma (a dogma that she dictates but that nothing really confirm that she has to follow herself).

Inner Sea Magic notes in the "important NPCs" section that she's Lawful Good.

Of course, after WotR, well, yeah.

[Steelfiredragon]

rknop wrote:

My theory: Aaroden died because of PLAP ("Paizo's Last Adventure Path"). As the world is coming apart at the seams, the Pathfinder Society finds it self as the last, best hope for mankind. They put together a group of PCs to figure out what's happening. Those PCs, in book 6 of the adventure path, travel back in time and are forced to kill Aroden.

This effectively closes the book on Golarion. After that, Paizo dedicates itself to the publication of My Little Pony fanfic.

you sir are evil for mentioning that crap so here is my revenge

watch this
my little pony

[The Orc]

An idea that I've been building a game around is that Aroden isn't dead but fighting a losing battle against one or more of the Outer Gods(Cthulhu mythos) and is only keeping them at bay due to his conserved powers of divinity. The only god who knows is Pharasma who can't involve herself with such an affair outside of her domain so she is forced to keep it secret.

[magnumCPA]

I'd like to think it's something so mind-blowingly epic that mortal minds cannot comprehend it. Like the godhood version of what's going on here. So the shark and the dynamite have some kind of crazy epic template.

[WitchyTangles]

Qlippoths ate him....
...nom nom nom....

Sorry =D

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

I like to think he was killed by some being from outside the Pathfinder universe so there would finally be a setting where the Age of Humans is ending.

[rknop]

Monte Cook's "Diamond Throne" setting (that went along with his "Arcana Unearthed/Evolved" alternate Player's Handbook) had humans, and humans were common, but they weren't the dominant race. The dominant race was giants. Before the giants, it was dragons (long, long time ago).

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

rknop wrote:

Monte Cook's "Diamond Throne" setting (that went along with his "Arcana Unearthed/Evolved" alternate Player's Handbook) had humans, and humans were common, but they weren't the dominant race. The dominant race was giants. Before the giants, it was dragons (long, long time ago).

Never quite seemed like that to me.

Plus if I want to get picky that setting isn't having humans' existence "fade" the way elves and dwarves are seen so often in standard fantasy setting cliche.

[Meadow lark]

ok to bump this, cause I am doing a home game and wanted to touch on aroden, how we know he is dead?

the wiki states

and all presume Aroden is dead

no confirmation! where is the stuff about pharasma seeing him to be judged?

[I'm Hiding In Your Closet]

Another hypothesis for all of you, fresh out of my ass:

The cataclysms that came after Aroden's death were actually "minor" aftereffects of the TRUE cataclysm, which actually destroyed the whole world (what was this uber-cataclysm? I dunno, maybe back when Eox was blowing up other planets, it fired at Golarion before/after creating the Diaspora - I guess it would have had to be some kind "time bomb," then). As the noble patron of Humanity who'd otherwise have nobody to be god of, Aroden sacrificed himself, like a voluntary Ymir, to be the raw materials to create a replacement Golarion from; his blood became the seas, his flesh the land, his brains the clouds, his bones the mountains, his teeth the rocks, his hair the plant life, and his soul that crucial little stretch of replacement time so that the planet never "actually" blew up.

[James Jacobs]

The Wiki isn't official, and they sometimes get things wrong.

Aroden is dead, never fear.

[UnArcaneElection]

_I guess that means so much for the Metro-Man theory . . . Unless Aroden did the Metro-Man trick but then got actually killed.

[Nawtyit]

James Jacobs wrote:

Aroden is dead

I heard from a semi-reliable source that Aroden is really dead.

[Freehold DM]

James Jacobs wrote:

The Wiki isn't official, and they sometimes get things wrong.

Aroden is dead, never fear.

now I want to see a comic strip of aroden constantly trying to come back to life, only to be killed by paizo staff every time, who complain about the chore.

Lisa- it's 4:00 pm...has someone killed aroden yet?

Erik- hey, I killed him yesterday.

Crystal- Did not! I killed him when I ran him over with my car this morning! He was making a break for it because SOMEONE didn't lock up properly last night!

Cosmo- mutter mutter

Liz- waitaminute...I'm pretty sure I shotgunned him before lunch.

Lisa- Crap. Is he resurrecting himself multiple times in a day again?

bright light, choir of angels singing from off panel

Jamesoff panel - Aah! Aroden is in the break room! He's discovered the coffee machine!

Lisa- not on my watch. Okay team. Standard Aroden neutralization formation. GO!

[Herald]

Years ago while on the boards here I came across a post with some of the paizoites and I remember some of them saying that a female character was involved and Aroden's last words might have been "...why?"

At first blush that might lead some to believe that Iomedea might have been the killer, but I posit that it was Arazni. She has a motive, revenge for not rescuing her from Tar Baphon. She more than likely had the opportunity as she would know how to access Aroden, and as his herald (and I believe, lover) she just we'll have might have know his weaknesses.

Even still, it might a situation where Arazni is more or less the weapon for someone else rather than the actual instigator. She might have been the "Manchurian Canidate" for another party, which might have included Geb, Tar Baphon, or even perhaps Norgober.

[Myrryr]

I find it... odd, that Asmodeus is suspected so much by many to be Aroden's murderer. Asmodeus rules Hell itself and basically has control over almost all lawful evil souls.

Golarion probably contributes less 1.1 x 10^-23 percent of those. It's one planet in an infinite material plane. Why in the hell (heh) would Asmoedeus care about a single upstart godling who's only known on one planet that's only significance is that it happens to be a prison? Especially as Asmodeus has the key to that prison already anyway.

[Pharasma, Lady of Graves]

I know what happened! But I'm not telling!

[Aurelio 90]

I think Aroden isn't dead - if you don't find the corpse you can't talk about deaths. Instead, it could have be in another universe.

Any deity should bring to bear its presence/influence in the multiverse of this setting. You might assume that Aroden can be finished in an alternate dimension, so far from Golarion who has lost all contact with the other gods (included Pharasma) and the planet. If this theory is correct, then we must determine what size we are talking about alternative (perhaps Earth?), And why he left his universe... perhaps he was kidnapped? Or was attracted by something?

[Sam the silver dragon]

Aurelio 90 wrote:

I think Aroden isn't dead - if you don't find the corpse you can't talk about deaths. Instead, it could have be in another universe.

Any deity should bring to bear its presence/influence in the multiverse of this setting. You might assume that Aroden can be finished in an alternate dimension, so far from Golarion who has lost all contact with the other gods (included Pharasma) and the planet. If this theory is correct, then we must determine what size we are talking about alternative (perhaps Earth?), And why he left his universe... perhaps he was kidnapped? Or was attracted by something?

Earth is in the same universe as Golarion. (see "Rasputin must die!")

[Brother Fen]

I know exactly what happened to Aroden in my Golarion. It is tied in to the end game of our overall campaign arc.

[Yakman]

James Jacobs wrote:

The eyeless krakens washed ashore on the Isle of Kortos in the year 4700 AR, some 94 years after Aroden's death.

They are ABSOLUTELY foreshadowing something I've got planned for the future, but that event doesn't really have anything to do with Aroden's death at all.

That's what you want us to think. ;-)

[Duiker]

Aroden never died because he never existed in the first place.

*insert Inception BRRRRRRRAAAAAWWWWRWRRRMRMRMMRMRMMMMM!!!*

[LazarX]

Dragonchess Player wrote:

One interesting tidbit was published in AP 64 Beyond the Doomsday Door on pg 33 (room C6 description):

Quote:

The prophecies issuing from his mouth are written in Thassilonian, and an examination of them along with a successful DC 30 Knowledge (Religion) check to interpret the metaphors correctly gives the impression that this fresco, well over 10,000 years old, prophesies the death of Aroden as "the passing of the last of the Azlanti at the dawn of an age of lost omens."

So, not only was Aroden's death but the failure of prophesy itself was prophesied. Don't think too hard about it, beyond the "player character choices matter" reasoning; there is currently no fixed "fate" or "foreordained conclusion" to events in Golarion. Aroden's death seems to be more of a means to an end (as a god of prophecy) and an initiating event for certain large-scale effects (the Eye of Abendego, the Worldwound, Cheliax converting to devil worship).

Aroden's death was what signaled the failure of prophecy. As he had been prophesised to appear in Cheliax and lead Humanity to a new Golden Age. When instead he didn't show up, and all Aroden clerics lost their powers instead, the bulk of Pharasma's prophecy clerics went irreversibly mad. It's hinted that Pharasma may have known what was going down and didn't warn anyone, not even her clerics.

[Goth Guru]

Someone told him that humanity would become weak and Rovagug would destroy Glorion. He ascended to a higher plane and invested his life force into the star stone. His new agenda is to make so many deities that they will tear Rovagug apart. He cannot manifest now.