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I know alot of people have Charon as the skeletal ferryman who pilots the Styx, and he has other "proxies" that provide the same (or very similiar) service.
My suggestion, in keeping with Pathfinder's love of the Mythos, is that Charon and his entitities are undead puppets of an enormous, planes-spanning creature named Charon, who lives under the waters of the river Styx. His tentacles control the corpses that pilot the boats, and whenever anyone screws him out of payment, he dumps them underwater into one of his many maws.
"He" is somehow indebted to the gods, or otherwise under a geas to perform the task of ferrying the souls of the dead.
Is that suitably Lovecraftian?
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As far as I can recall, Golarion Charon is a daemon with charodaemons as his minions.
Yeah, I know, but daemons never really get any source books on them, the devils get theirs, the demons get theirs, but everyone is like oh, a nuetral devil, meh when it comes to daemons.
I never really go the whole deamon rationalization either. A creature of pure evil that just rows around in a boat, not attacking mortals or corrupting them just seems, well, a bit shady, to say the least.
Hopefully daemons will finally get a splat book of their own, eventually, that can give them a motive to exist.
I never really go the whole deamon rationalization either. A creature of pure evil that just rows around in a boat, not attacking mortals or corrupting them just seems, well, a bit shady, to say the least.
They're evil, of course they're shady.
Plus, you're thinking mortal thoughts again, prisoner in time and space. Nothing says he can't ferry around people in one place and destroy life in another.
If you want to know why he's doing it, go and ask him. I hear Aroden went and did that, too, about 100 years ago.
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No, you're absolutely wrong. Aroden went to Canada to enjoy free healthcare, but got eaten by bears, because he fed them with food he bought with the money he saved on not having health insurance.
Anyways, if Todd Stewart writes about the daemons, it should be pretty good, I saw his work on the manual of the planes for Golarion and Planescape, he does some fairly awesome work. Sometimes I'd like him to flesh out a detail or a campaign seed here and there but, but pretty much awesome.
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Alright, aside from the fact that my version of Charon is not a Daemon, anything else wrong/needs more work?
The base idea is neat, reminiscent of the Lovecraft story, 'Imprisoned with the Pharoahs,' in which the vast beastie turns out to be a mere limb of the horror beneath, but I'd go one step further. The beastie doesn't lurk beneath the river Styx, it *is* the river Styx.
The water of the river don't just steal your life away, they can also strip your flesh away and animate your as a boatman in the service of the Styx-entity, which, in Lovecraftian fashion, is only partially what we would consider sentient, being (mostly) content to burble to itself and meander through the lower planes as it wishes, far too vast and potent a being for any of the lords of Hell or Abyssal scions to risk stirring from it's torporous state. It takes a tithe of the souls that cross it's watery boundaries, and the various lower planar entities have discovered that only ferrying souls across and paying the ferrymen appropriately, will allow the boat-full of souls to cross into their possession. Attempting to cheat the ferrymen will (usually) just lead to the bony boatman falling apart and the raft promptly sinking, precipitating *all* of the souls into the Styx, to be absorbed by the entity and lost forever. Sometimes, Styx notices the attack and stirs in it's slumber, and then the random skeletal boatman becomes Charon Incarnate, a mere fragment of the Styx-entities power, with the strength to challenge a Demon Lord.
No entity, demon, devil or other, has successfully challenged the Charon manifestation. Most are simply wrestled beneath the oily waters that heave up hungrily to embrace them, and are never seen again. The survivors teleported away before that happened, but the boatmen seem to recognize them and grow increasingly agitated in their presence, so few of them ever go near the waters of the Styx again, pretty much trapping them in their own little slice of Hell (barring being summoned, etc.).
Someday, it is prophesized, the Styx will awaken, tentacles of unquiet water the size of continent-spanning rivers undulating forth from a noisome central mass the size of a sea, and boil over to engulf the underworld, consuming all the souls (and outsiders) within, before rising to devour the worlds of men and gods alike.
Set, that is really good stuff.
Anyways, if Todd Stewart writes about the daemons, it should be pretty good, I saw his work on the manual of the planes for Golarion and Planescape, he does some fairly awesome work.
*glee* I'm glad that you liked!
And trust me, there's a rather large amount of daemonic lore sitting in various forms on my desktop as just brainstorming done for the hell of it, or part of the ~18k words cut from the Great Beyond.
One way or another you're pretty likely to see some of that in print at some point or another - for instance I have a piece pending for KQ that will have a little bit of a link to the daemons, among other fiends. Anything I might or might not be doing, or plan to do, for Paizo I cannot speak of or Sean will stick pins in the Voodoo doll of me and then Wesley will light it on fire, or something like that.
Sometimes I'd like him to flesh out a detail or a campaign seed here and there but, but pretty much awesome.
Which detail or seed caught your attention as being in dire need of more detail?
And a massive reply just got eaten by the internet *sigh* So I'll let my fiendish board alter-ego with much better tact and fashion sense post on my behalf, or something like that:
A few random speculations on Charon - and none of this is remotely canon till and unless it gets to print at some point. Regardless, run with it if you like in your own games.
While Trelmarixian is the youngest of the Four, Charon may well be the oldest.
The notion of Charon and his servitors being more than just skeletal boatmen is already well grounded. The notion is there in the description of the Drowning Court, and Charon's relationship with the Styx, and it to him, are very much ideas worthy of expansion.
Given that every daemon was once a mortal being, that begs the question of who or what Charon (and his three kindred among the Four) were in life. As abhorrant of humanity / mortal life as the daemons are, they more so than any other fiend are tied to it in an absolutely intimate fashion. But just how Evil does a mortal have to be to ultimately become a creation like Charon, Szuriel, Apollyon, or Trelmarixian? Just how Evil does a soul have to be in order to be twisted into such a thing so utterly its own anathema? Or what could willingly twist them that way, why, and for what purpose?
The exact relationship between thanodaemons and charonodaemons needs to be defined more precisely. Are the former just the Golarion specific term for the latter? Or perhaps the latter a lesser version of the former? This came up as something to look at for the Abbadon section of 'Beyond the Vault of Souls', but I think that cuts in the word budget made it a moot point. I don't have a specific view on the topic, but not a clue if it's my call there or not. Pure speculation here is that an inclusion of one or the other or both in a future PF Bestiary would clear things up.
Set´s ideas are made even more awesome if you consider that Styx is supposed to connect all the upper layers of the evil planes, each of which is supposedly infinite in size. So, you get an infinite evil sentient ocean lurking at the metaphorical heart of the lower planes... Small wonder no being with even a fraction of sanity intact does not want this ocean roused into action.
Stefan
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Sometimes I'd like him to flesh out a detail or a campaign seed here and there but, but pretty much awesome.Which detail or seed caught your attention as being in dire need of more detail?Well, not anything specific, aside from the Great Beyond, where there were somethings that got cut, but were still being referenced. It just seems like you write under constraint, you want to add detail, but the editors will only allow you X amount of space to do so, so what we actually end up with is the abbreviated version, kinda like when Fox show Pulp Fiction on TV.
Perhaps Charon is keeping the river from being fed, perhaps feeding the river is bad, for you, me, the gods and everyone.Perhaps the Styx is the devouring prison that holds back the "Old Ones" The fee is the only thing that keeps Charon "honest" part of the contract with Asmodeus. Also having Charon be the Guardian is a nice twist on it. Asmodean contracts are pretty tight.
Perhaps Charon is keeping the river from being fed, perhaps feeding the river is bad, for you, me, the gods and everyone.Perhaps the Styx is the devouring prison that holds back the "Old Ones" The fee is the only thing that keeps Charon "honest" part of the contract with Asmodeus. Also having Charon be the Guardian is a nice twist on it. Asmodean contracts are pretty tight.
Hmm... perhaps the souls/memories lost to the "river" feed the thing, and a certain amount is needed for the river/being to become fully sentient, reaching critical mass, as it were. Charon sees to it that this number is not reached, but is bound by a strange contract that does not allow him to save cheaters. Maybe there is a powerful ritual resetting part of the critical mass that needs to be performed by some of the most powerful denizens of the lower planes acting unisono, led by Charon himself. This has been performed once many aeons ago, and might even be (part of) the cause for the blood war - the victor supposedly controls all the planes, and can easily perform the ritual needed. The cause for the blood war should be truly world-shaking IMO, and this might do the trick.
One wonders, though, what role these frog-like demons (or are they daemons?) play who are immune to the memory loss. "Early" manifestations of the river/thing? A random effect caused by a certain amount of memories spontaneously given form?
Stefan