Andoran, how much of a fairy tale there is?


Lost Omens Campaign Setting General Discussion

Sovereign Court

Does anyone find Andoran history surreal? I mean its based mainly of USA history but in the end its bizzare that this country exist's. There are some really illogical events that occured like why this new ideology wasn't twisted by the common folk of Andoran territory. I can understand tha nobels surrendered without a fight but if you give a choice to every lumberjack and farmer in the land who knows only things that travelers, priests and ocasionaly herolds of the realm tell them how can you expect from them to have a political education. Maybe a gentel push from the merchants , beaten nobels, churches of Adbar maybe even a miracle bestowed from some really funny god who tought "Giving the common folk some wisdom about politics might be fun!". The best chice would be that the leader of the revolt would have such a big backing from the people that he was ellected but if i recall most of the young democraces in Europa have been twisted into things like Authoritarianism, Fascism , Nazism, why didnt Andoran twisted like that? Dont know. The second thing. Very modern system of trade based on Venice. Ok i can understand that most of the merchants turned their shops into banks and somehow managed to pull it off. But if we add a very assaulting, agresivly spread and imperialistic ideology that this country stands for, it should crumble like a house build from cards. This post might offend some people because Andoran is so close in history to the USA, i didnt mean to hurt anyones feelings but thats how i feel about Andoran, and I question the existence of this country. How much o a fairytale it is?

Paizo Employee Director of Brand Strategy

There are lots of fey in the many forests of Andoran, but I don't think they constitute the nation being pigeon-holed as a "fairy tale."

As for the politics and history of the country, Andoran is not the USA. Sure, it has similar themes to the US's history, but it's a made up place in a made up world. How events take place there may not be how they would happen in the real world. That's why it's fantasy.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

This is by no means meant as an insult as I am genuinely curious about this. You sound like an extraordinarily intelligent and educated person yet your spelling is atrocious. How does that happen? Really, its not like I care, and I can get past it, I just never understand how someone can be so smart yet suck at spelling so much. I don't see how that happens. Again, please take it for what its worth, your comments are well thought out and reasoned and make sense, I'm simply commenting on the presentation of your thoughts.

:)


jreyst wrote:
This is by no means meant as an insult as I am genuinely curious about this. You sound like an extraordinarily intelligent and educated person yet your spelling is atrocious. How does that happen?

Step 1: Be born somewhere outside the English-speaking world...

You do realise this is the WORLD-wide web, right? :-)

Sovereign Court

jreyst wrote:

This is by no means meant as an insult as I am genuinely curious about this. You sound like an extraordinarily intelligent and educated person yet your spelling is atrocious. How does that happen? Really, its not like I care, and I can get past it, I just never understand how someone can be so smart yet suck at spelling so much. I don't see how that happens. Again, please take it for what its worth, your comments are well thought out and reasoned and make sense, I'm simply commenting on the presentation of your thoughts.

:)

I apologise for my spelling mistakes, indeed im not from an english speaking country but the way I spell things is because of a nearly permanent disfunction called dyslexia and the fact that i operate on a webrowser that doesn't support english vocabulary, so its hard for e to amend these spelling mistakes but please its not the point of the topic.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

Hogarth: Duh. I get that. However, his spelling is not indicative of a non-native speaker as his syntax all seems correct, its just basic words that are repeatedly incorrect. Certainly a non-native speaker has all the free-license in the world to have misspellings, god knows I already misspell often enough. I was just saying that from the way his post was worded and written he did not sound like a non-english speaker. Hell, maybe I'm wrong (probably am). So, like I said before, I meant no disrespect nor did I mean to imply anything, as I am/was genuinely curious how that happens. If he is a native english speaker I would be prone to suspect some form of dyslexia?

I really hope people don't take offense because I really don't mean any. I'm just interested in this sort of thing. I see it now and then in my workplace. Extremely intelligent people who also *suck* at spelling. My oldest daughter was in a talented and gifted program at her high school and one of her teachers (who had multiple masters degrees) was also an atrocious speller. How does one earn college degrees not being able to spell? Spell check?


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
Grandmikus wrote:
I apologise for my spelling mistakes, indeed im not from an english speaking country but the way I spell things is because of a nearly permanent disfunction called dyslexia and the fact that i operate on a webrowser that doesn't support english vocabulary, so its hard for e to amend these spelling mistakes but please its not the point of the topic.

Grandmikus: Well then, given those circumstances, please accept my apologies. As I said, I meant no disrespect and went out of my way to ensure I stated I was not questioning your intelligence, as you wrote very well. It was just a higher than normal amount of misspellings. Given not being a native English speaker, combined with a well documented communication dysfunction (dyslexia) you communicate extraordinarily well. By the way, the 3.x versions of Firefox support inline spell-check (underlining misspelled words in red) which I use ALL OF THE TIME! I always go back over everything I write and fix the multiple misspellings before I hit the Submit button.

Sorry for sidetracking your question though, consider me out as I have nothing of real value to add :(

Liberty's Edge

jreyst wrote:
Grandmikus wrote:
I apologise for my spelling mistakes, indeed im not from an english speaking country but the way I spell things is because of a nearly permanent disfunction called dyslexia and the fact that i operate on a webrowser that doesn't support english vocabulary, so its hard for e to amend these spelling mistakes but please its not the point of the topic.

Grandmikus: Well then, given those circumstances, please accept my apologies. As I said, I meant no disrespect and went out of my way to ensure I stated I was not questioning your intelligence, as you wrote very well. It was just a higher than normal amount of misspellings. Given not being a native English speaker, combined with a well documented communication dysfunction (dyslexia) you communicate extraordinarily well. By the way, the 3.x versions of Firefox support inline spell-check (underlining misspelled words in red) which I use ALL OF THE TIME! I always go back over everything I write and fix the multiple misspellings before I hit the Submit button.

Sorry for sidetracking your question though, consider me out as I have nothing of real value to add :(

He may doesn't have English Firefox, you know...

Grandmikus:
Anyway, first of all you may do not know, but OUR world is based on the same idea. You don't have to have education to vote. All citizens can vote - it's a democracy ! :) Look around you, in real, and think about it. Second, they gave a choice to nobility - Accept democracy or get out from our country. About European Democracies - It's hard to explain here. Just look for Germany after I WW and for the fact that they felt betrayed. Also, there was a great crisis too. You don't have the same things in Andoran, do you?
About Venice - It has nothing to do with this country, because there wasn't free trade in Venice. It was Mercantilism :)


yoda8myhead wrote:
As for the politics and history of the country, Andoran is not the USA. Sure, it has similar themes to the US's history, but it's a made up place in a made up world. How events take place there may not be how they would happen in the real world. That's why it's fantasy.

I'm sure the OP can distinguish fantasy from reality.

It's often useful to present fantasy settings in terms of real world settings, and if it seems clear that a particular real world nation, culture, ethnicity or whatever was the starting point for the fantasy location, subrace, etc. then it's legitimate to ask why the departures came at these points rather than, say, those points.

There are something like 40 regions on the Inner Sea map, and the shorthand of "colonial America with lots of fey", "revolutionary France", or "Italian city states under the Medicis, if the Medicis were diabolists" is helpful in grasping some of the basics, if not the Golarion-specific details.


The only real issue with having democracy in a Renaissance level of technology is communications. But maybe some of that can be solved via magic.


Ranven wrote:

(...) You don't have to have education to vote. All citizens can vote - it's a democracy ! :) Look around you, in real, and think about it. Second, they gave a choice to nobility - Accept democracy or get out from our country. (...)

Yet, it takes a certain level of education for a nation to achieve democracy, even if all of its members are not educated. Historically, many dictatorships and aristocracies kept their people ignorant for that very reason, and still today, many citizen of the world sacrifice A LOT for education (or the education of their siblings); because they know that a sound political system is achieved through a (relatively) educated population.

I know that historical references are a trap that one shouldn't fall into regarding RPGS. As an imaginary world, we are free to imagine it as we like regardless of what really happened or what is happening. But I agree with the OP to a certain extent: things are not that simple.

'findel


hogarth wrote:
The only real issue with having democracy in a Renaissance level of technology is communications. But maybe some of that can be solved via magic.

Voting in a local townhall, sending or message to the nearest center with relays, a single wand and a trained expert with UMD should be able to do it for a while, and many towns and centers have local spellcasters.


Well, it went wrong in Galt, for one.

Democracy is a workable political system at various levels of technology: Athens was a democracy, Rome was a republic (tho perhaps not quite how we understand it).

And democracy certainly has a long history in European culture: the Magna Carta was issued in 1215. Scandinavian societies were holding assemblies called "things" since at least the 7th century: Iceland's parliament, the Althing, was founded in 930 AD. Democracy in the 18th century had many of the same technological problems as you would assume in a medieval society, although Americans had the printing press.

Perhaps you think it's not credible that Andoran would establish a successful democracy because they had no democratic traditions, or early democracies tend to be unsuccessful.

Well, perhaps Andoran has a tradition of local representative government that is just not detailed in the published materials. Absalom, otoh, has a government that is at least somewhat reminiscent of Republican Rome.

And Andoran has only been free of Chelish rule for a few decades, following a thirty-year period of civil war that resulted in the ascent of diabolism there. We don't know the details of that civil war, iirc; perhaps there was a period in which the empire was dominated by a parliamentarian revolution, much like Oliver Cromwell's control of England in the 17th century. His bad example could have set the Andorans on the right path.

EDIT
And perhaps there are efforts to twist Andoran democracy in exactly the way you describe... perhaps by some Chelish bards or provocateurs from Galt. Could be an interesting campaign.


Goblin Witchlord wrote:
Democracy is a workable political system at various levels of technology: Athens was a democracy, Rome was a republic (tho perhaps not quite how we understand it).

Athens was small, though, so it didn't have the same communication issues. (The Roman senate was really more of an oligarchy than a democracy.)


Goblin Witchlord wrote:


Democracy is a workable political system at various levels of technology: Athens was a democracy, Rome was a republic (tho perhaps not quite how we understand it).

Athens was a democracy, as long as the Athenians were concerned, which did not include half the population. Rome... went through several systems. At any case, both manage to sustain a leadership that was not based on lineage, and both included a senate or something that made sure that all (important) people's voice was heard, which is a great achievement in itself.

But both of these civilizations had very high levels of education, as far as classical knowledge went at any case.


That blurb you find in the setting book, or the Pathfinder Society info about "hard people with a love of freedom" isn't really the interesting thing about the young "democracy" in Andoran. (In my opinion)

The interesting thing is that some of the important details are left out. The questions that arise make gaming in Andoran potentially full of interesting questions. Why is there such oppression of the poor working class by the Andoran Lumber Consortium in Falcon's Hollow? If "everyone votes" how do these domestic injustices occur? As a strong, but young nation with a broad international political agenda and mighty heroes abroad striking blows for freedom...where are the domestic heroes, kindly policy makers, and benevolent clergy? In Golarion, thirty (or so) years free doesn't seem like much time to get your political infrastructure together.

So that ambiguity leaves room for good game fodder, right? (and eventually they will write an Andoran supplement and then you will have more of an "official" picture of the country to use or ignore as you see fit)

>WBM

Sovereign Court

bryan.mullins wrote:

That blurb you find in the setting book, or the Pathfinder Society info about "hard people with a love of freedom" isn't really the interesting thing about the young "democracy" in Andoran. (In my opinion)

The interesting thing is that some of the important details are left out. The questions that arise make gaming in Andoran potentially full of interesting questions. Why is there such oppression of the poor working class by the Andoran Lumber Consortium in Falcon's Hollow? If "everyone votes" how do these domestic injustices occur? As a strong, but young nation with a broad international political agenda and mighty heroes abroad striking blows for freedom...where are the domestic heroes, kindly policy makers, and benevolent clergy? In Golarion, thirty (or so) years free doesn't seem like much time to get your political infrastructure together.

So that ambiguity leaves room for good game fodder, right? (and eventually they will write an Andoran supplement and then you will have more of an "official" picture of the country to use or ignore as you see fit)

>WBM

As you said till december we can only assume what Andoran is :/. Personally I would like to know how such a powerful organisation like Falcon Knights that is portaited as heroes in and outside of Andoran let a whole district of dragons with Daralathyxl as the "king" roam free. So much for the Gold Legion I guess.

Dark Archive

bryan.mullins wrote:
Why is there such oppression of the poor working class by the Andoran Lumber Consortium in Falcon's Hollow? If "everyone votes" how do these domestic injustices occur?

Company towns, often run by mining concerns or whatever, existed in this young democracy, with the Pinkertons being called in to settle strikes from uppity workers with gunfire. Democracy on the label doesn't mean that everyone's vote is counted, or that the system is working perfectly, or that corporate interests haven't found ways to 'game' the system.

Check out Henry Clay Frick or George Pullman or Blanck & Harris or Bryant & May Cracked.com. <- Language not suitable for the faint-hearted.

All that stuff happened in a democracy. Andora is an ideal, and like most ideals, looks better on paper.

Hell, on paper, communism looks like a worker's paradise!


Set wrote:

All that stuff happened in a democracy. Andoran is an ideal, and like most ideals, looks better on paper.

Hell, on paper, communism looks like a worker's paradise!

Well said...and to me, fairy tale or no, THAT is why I want to start my PC's out there. I want to see if they will try and buck the system that is in place, and how they plan to do it when the nearest official assistance is so far away.

When I sat in on D0 as a player, my gregarious, CG cleric of Cayden Calien nearly found it too much for his big, soft heart to take. Some of the things happening in the Darkmoon Vale are true injustices, and they are made more interesting to me because they happen in Andoran.

So all I was really saying is that complication is good, and that the seemingly contradictory information available on the area with its resultant ambiguity...could provide themes for a game.

>WBM


Universal suffrage and suffrage for women are pretty recent ideas, it's true. But Athens' exclusion of most of its population mirrored the history of a lot of early American democracy. Prior to the American civil war, several of the Southern states were majority-black and excluded women from the vote, so that only white men (less than 25% of the population) were even eligible to vote. Lots of the states, even non-slave states, established property restrictions on voting to disenfranchise free blacks and other people. That's pretty comparable to Athens.

Literacy rates vary over time, but feudal societies can certainly achieve relatively high levels of literacy (Japan being a good example). Rome had high enough levels of literacy to get itself covered in vulgar grafitti. And the importance of Bible-reading led to 50%+ literacy rates in England and America by the early 1600s. Golarion is a world where even the barbarians can read, so it doesn't seem unreasonable to assume that literacy is pretty high.

The Levellers of the English Civil Wars of the mid-1600s is a good example of the spread of the ideas fundamental to democracy 150 years before the American Revolution. Lots of the northern Inner Sea region seems to have a late-Renaissance feel, as written, and a fledgling democracy certainly can fit in.

Dark Archive

bryan.mullins wrote:
Well said...and to me, fairy tale or no, THAT is why I want to start my PC's out there.

It sounds great. Sort of a 'where the rubber meets the road' game where the party gets to see an example of Andora *not* at it's golden best. And, in the best of all worlds, they get to throw down the oppressors and help bring that region closer to the ideal of Andora, with liberty and justice for all.

Cue patriotic music and a flight of eagles.


Set wrote:


Cue patriotic music and a flight of eagles.

*laughs* Well, something like that. It might be a theme only I am interested in though. Gauging that will be key to the adventures being fun for the party.

@Goblin Witchlord
As for early historical democracy and the various social exclusions, I recognize the real-world correlation. I don't have much to say about it though, since I know you are right. I was carrying some personal (American) political baggage into the discussion of Democracy.

Which brings me to a question: Since Golarion has all kinds of politics, how do you use them in your games, or imagine that you would use them? To be polite, I guess we should stick more with Andoran.

>WBM

Lantern Lodge

Just for reference...

USA is a republic not a democracy

Look it up

I would think it would easier for a place like andoran to exist in a fantasy world than the USA to exist in the real world

America was formed when we didn't have easy forms of mass communication.

Where andoran has magic that can easily transport people faster than our modern technology.

Sovereign Court

laurence lagnese wrote:


Where andoran has magic that can easily transport people faster than our modern technology.

Isn't Golarion a low magic world with only old magical kingdoms like Nex or VERY bizzare places such as Hermea have that kind of vast magic use?

Sovereign Court

Laurefindel wrote:
Goblin Witchlord wrote:


Democracy is a workable political system at various levels of technology: Athens was a democracy, Rome was a republic (tho perhaps not quite how we understand it).

Athens was a democracy, as long as the Athenians were concerned, which did not include half the population. Rome... went through several systems. At any case, both manage to sustain a leadership that was not based on lineage, and both included a senate or something that made sure that all (important) people's voice was heard, which is a great achievement in itself.

But both of these civilizations had very high levels of education, as far as classical knowledge went at any case.

For the typical Athenian citizen, outside the elite, education was very thin and we can assume things like illiteracy (there are famous stories of electoral fraud being committed by the few people in the voting crowd who could actually write - they were filling out many other people's ballots).

Athenian Democracy was a product of factionalism amongst the nobles the feeling of enfranchisement engendered by a citizen militia on land and at sea - eventually the weakest noble faction had to embrace the mass of citizens (the demos) and present themselves as non-partisan patriots.

The nobles continued to dominate trade and society and were expected to fund the navy and to flaunt their wealth by funding festivals (most obviously the Panathenaia).

Pathfinder assumes a higher level of education (mass literacy).

In terms of communication it should be remembered that Athens' enfranchised territory included most of Attica. As an example: the citizens of Marathon would have had to run a... Marathon to get into Athens every day. Yet communications had enough sophistication that these people were broadly enfranchised (although, like most great capitals, Athens occasionally had problems with the urban mob).


Grandmikus wrote:
Isn't Golarion a low magic world with only old magical kingdoms like Nex or VERY bizzare places such as Hermea have that kind of vast magic use?

Short answer: No.

Slightly longer answer: Yes.
Even longer answer: Define "low magic".

Ultimately, I wouldn't describe Golarion as "low magic" (Geb, Nex, Jalmeray, Hermea, mentions of "armies of djinn", etc.) in general.


laurence lagnese wrote:


Just for reference...

USA is a republic not a democracy

Look it up

..and a Constitutional Republic at that...but what is Andoran, in your opinion?

>WBM


Goblin Witchlord wrote:


Democracy is a workable political system at various levels of technology: Athens was a democracy,

Athenian Democracy was not really a democracy per se'.

Only citizens were counted, and the definition of 'citizen' was very narrow. (in addition, women and slaves could not vote, citizen or not)
In addition, many of the elite rebelled against the idea of being ruled by the whims of unwashed majority, the poor dominating the rich.

Then again, I'm quite happy living in a constitutional monarch.

Batts


jreyst wrote:
This is by no means meant as an insult as I am genuinely curious about this. You sound like an extraordinarily intelligent and educated person yet your spelling is atrocious. How does that happen?

Easy, he doesn't use his browser's spell checking option.

Or uses an inferior browser that doesn't even have a spell checker.

:D

Paizo Employee Creative Director

Grandmikus wrote:
laurence lagnese wrote:


Where andoran has magic that can easily transport people faster than our modern technology.
Isn't Golarion a low magic world with only old magical kingdoms like Nex or VERY bizzare places such as Hermea have that kind of vast magic use?

The sort of design philosophy we use is that the more north something is, the more "low magic" it is. The northern edge of the world has places like the Realm of the Mammoth Lords (which is very Conan like) and Brevoy (very much inspired from George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire stories), while to the south you have places like Nex and Geb.

Of course, we don't 100% follow this theory (Numeria's in the north and pretty crazy, while Sargava's in the south and pretty mellow), but it's the general idea. The more south you go, the more high-magic things get.


James Jacobs wrote:
The more south you go, the more high-magic things get.

From this we see that magic is negatively charged. :)


It really does sound a bit like a fairy tale.

Just assume that the fairy tale is part of this make-belief world that is the Pathfinder Chronicles campaign setting.

Pathfinder contains places that are right out of horror stories (because, well, they are right out of horror stories), so to balance things out a bit, it has something that literally is out of a fairy tale.

Also, never assume that you are told everything, that you know all the secrets.

One theory about how Andoran could pull off that coup the way they did is this:

When Aroden died, gigantic power shifts occured not only on earth but in the outer spheres as well. Cosmic forces moved and were noted.

In Cheliax, the forces of darkness, merciless order and tyranny were able to move in without the celestial powers opposition. They saw that resisting would mean even more bloodshed, and decided to cede this battlefield for now.

But they didn't cede every battlefield. They saw potential in Andoran, so they sent their agents in secret. They sent angels and azatas (and Cayden Cailean might even have sent his herald Thais) who worked behind the scenes.


Teach wrote:


But they didn't cede every battlefield. They saw potential in Andoran, so they sent their agents in secret. They sent angels and azatas (and Cayden Cailean might even have sent his herald Thais) who worked behind the scenes.

THANKS! I am going to steal that and slam it down in my game.

>WBM


Grandmikus wrote:
Personally I would like to know how such a powerful organisation like Falcon Knights that is portaited as heroes in and outside of Andoran let a whole district of dragons with Daralathyxl as the "king" roam free. So much for the Gold Legion I guess.

I think the response would be, "If you don't like that monster of the red dragon, feel free to try to get rid of him! Just give him this note first, so he knows we had nothing to do with sending you up there to commit suicide..."

Besides, there has to be something for heroes in the Darkmoon Vale area to do after they've finished the 'Falcon Hollow' mini-campaign. Taking down the Crimson Tyrant will give them something to look forward to!

Sovereign Court

Eric Hinkle wrote:


I think the response would be, "If you don't like that monster of the red dragon, feel free to try to get rid of him! Just give him this note first, so he knows we had nothing to do with sending you up there to commit suicide..."

That's a paladins common sense for you.


I don't think it's that much of a faerie tale. Consider Athens, which was at one point a democracy (just not one we are used to). And then there is Rome during the era of the Senate (short lived though it was).

Remember that the US was already based upon previous theories, most of which had been developed during the age of the enlightenment. The way I see Golarion is as more of a "what if magic existed during the age of enlightenment". It makes it a lot easier to understand it from a historic perspective.

But it is also its own world...and so it may develop its political philosophies different.

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