Hollow Men stuff
Icky, but a neat idea.
...the Shifters have gotten short shrift, so to speak. Any brilliant ideas out there?
Matt Morris' connection to the 'wolf-god father of Zon-Kuthon,' who, frankly, I don't recall even hearing of, sounds pretty darn fascinating... I wonder if he's connected to Curchannus, Desna's beast-god mentor and Lamashtu's victim on her path to godhood.
I think someone in an old thread mentioned something about ZK's wolf pappy and it was in the Gods & Magic book, but I'm far from 100% sure.
We could blame the aboleths again for Shifters. Maybe lycanthropes are resistant to aboleth mind-control, so the Shifters were created as "lab stock" for experiments to better understand lycanthrope brains.
Or maybe shifters were just awakened animals that lived in magic-radiated areas and eventually evolved into humanoids?
I don't know much about Eberron, but I still enjoy reading this thread.
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I don't recall seeing any connection mentioned between the deity Lamashtu killed and the spirit-wolf Zon-Kuthon enslaved.
Yeah, nada. I was just speculating since I hadn't remembered the wolf-father thing.
Tying the Shifters into Curchannus, and having them now being corrupted by Lamashtu (explaining why most were-critters are evil), could be a neat road to take.
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Shifters.
Personality: The Shifters have a strong oral history and a deep sense of tribal pride. They are nomadic by nature roaming the Mwangi expanse.
Relationships with other races: The native Mwangi and Chelish colonists both deeply distrust the Shifters, usually calling them "beastmen" at best and treating them as monsters at worst. For their part the shifters do little do dissuade this opinion being deeply tribal by nature.
Now that the other races of men know the loss of Aroden, the way the Shifters felt the loss of Curchanus they are becoming increasingly curious about a world where the balance has been shifted.
Origins: The Shifters were once a tribe of Mwangi who worshipped Curchannus (in their legends he was called Anachus). Their worship was so devout that it was believed he favoured them above all other races of men, favouring them with a small portion of his power over beasts. He granted them the ability to transform freely into any animal they chose, from tricky ape, to joyous hyena, from proud lion to hungry crocodile. The shifters were as one with beasts as dwarves were to stone, as elves were to forests and gnomes were to magic.
Then came the murder of their god, their deity who they loved with all their hearts. Curchannus was murdered by the vile goddess Lamashtu, who stole Curchannus' dominion over beasts. But the hearts of the shifter race was pure and they would not relinquish the power that their god had given them. To the shifters a small part of Curchannus' soul lived in each of them, and through meditation and focus they could increase their bond with him gaining more animalistic traits. Yet some shifters were weak, unable to cope without the love of their god they fell in with Lamashtu, becoming her lapdogs, her show cats and her caged canaries. Lamashtu gifted them with animalistic traits, all she asked in return all they had to do was twist the world to the malformed goddess' version of beauty.
Religion: Shifters are split between animists and devotees of Lamashtu, with a smattering of Desna worshippers and Gozreh worshippers. Still their belief is that as long as the Shifter race survives then Curchannus is not truly dead, because a small spark of his power still remains within them.
Once every few generations a prophecy begins to spread of a shifter being born who will become a mighty hero, taking the test of the star stone and reclaiming the animal domain from the goddess Lamashtu. Yet Lamashtu's servants are hidden everywhere within the tribes and many portentous births (albinos, striped fur or red fur) are often killed in mysterious circumstances.
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What do people think?
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What do people think?
Very cool stuff, but it implies Curchanus' death is more recent than I have traditionally placed it (which is tens, or even hundreds of thosands of years ago, before any of the modern humanoids evolved into their current forms); that's not a canon objection, though, just my own thoughts...
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Thanks Set, I really appreciate that ^_^
Shisumo, my entire knowledge of Golarion canon comes from the Wiki (can't justify buying a book on a campaign setting that I'd be modding for my own purposes anyway). Still a big part of the myth of Curchannus' death was that it was what caused the rift between men and animals. So at the least his death should occur when humans were first leaving their caves on Azlant to explain that rift. But to each their own.
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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Matt Morris' connection to the 'wolf-god father of Zon-Kuthon,' who, frankly, I don't recall even hearing of, sounds pretty darn fascinating... I wonder if he's connected to Curchannus, Desna's beast-god mentor and Lamashtu's victim on her path to godhood.
The Wolf That Was (Pathfinder #11)
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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So for the Kalashtar/Quori/whatever, I'm liking best the idea of the people having been 'hollowed out' psychically / spiritually, so to speak, to 'make room' for otherworldly sentiences (which, unlike in Eberron, aren't extraplanar, but extraterrestrial).
(snippage)
To elaborate on this idea in my direction, I'm going to look to psionics and Dreamscarred Society Mind.
Rather than being hollowed out, what if they're families who are being controlled and manipulated and shaped. If you take the Society Mind from Dreamscarred and add it to the Unbodied from the XPH/SRD you get a pretty good proxy for a Quori.
If you want to import the 'evil spirits possessing vs fragments of good spirits' you could make the Kalashtar spirit no longer coherent, simply manifesting in shards in its descendents. I could see them being binders for that reason.
So you have the inspired analogue being controlled by a hive mind, but the Kalashtar is holding on to the fragments of a defeated/dispersed mind.
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Rather than being hollowed out, what if they're families who are being controlled and manipulated and shaped. If you take the Society Mind from Dreamscarred and add it to the Unbodied from the XPH/SRD you get a pretty good proxy for a Quori.
If you want to import the 'evil spirits possessing vs fragments of good spirits' you could make the Kalashtar spirit no longer coherent, simply manifesting in shards in its descendents. I could see them being binders for that reason.
So you have the inspired analogue being controlled by a hive mind, but the Kalashtar is holding on to the fragments of a defeated/dispersed mind.
Yeah, that's kinda/sorta what I was thinking of with the 'spirits of the dead speaking through the living' idea, making it seem like ghosts walking around in living people, only to later find out that they aren't 'ghosts,' per se, but the collective memories of their race throughout history, existing as a kind of race memory that is passed on to inhabit their descendents. The first ones were made effectively 'hollow' so that the Aboleth (and later, the Aucturni sentiences) could slide in and take over, but fragments and pieces have remained, like echoes, and now the 'hollow men' are full again, of the tiny dregs of collective spirit assembled from all of their own ancestors, individually not enough to count as a 'soul,' but, in collaboration, sufficient to 'fill' the current generation.
I wouldn't want them to be a full on hive mind, because that limits play options, but each of them would have fragments of a dozen other lives within them, and their names might include name fragments from some of their most strong-willed spirit-ancestors (who might have only the most distant blood-relation to them, as the spirits pass on in ways that have nothing to do with consanguinity).
But that would just be one option. Others might still be 'hollow' and filled with other entities. Some might even still be kept in the eternally dark citadels of Geb, to serve as 'hosts' for ghosts and the like. Geb himself might wear one to gatherings of his fellow undead aristocrats, so that he can sample the pleasures of food and flesh once again.
You could also pillage from GURPS Psionics, which had the notion of tapping into even latent psychics like batteries to fuel more powerful psychics. One ultra-tech example would be a society that cloned hundreds of these latent psychics, strapped them in chairs and left them plugged into some sort of telepathic grid, for the telepathic citizenry to tap into for extra power (or to communicate across at greater ranges than their own powers allowed). The Aboleth might have bred a group of psychically active humans to use in this very manner, securing them in organic chairs of coral, so that their masters could use them like cell-phone towers and batteries to enhance their own abilities. Those that survived and 'got out of the Matrix,' so to speak, could have become the Kalashtar, wide-eyed like newborns into this very different world than the drug-dreams they've been living in for their millenia of sleeping abandonment (assuming you want to introduce them as a 'new' race, but keep the ancient Aboleth origins).
I believe warforge can be added to Golarion - although they will have to be labeled constructs or as someone already stated Golems. In addition, they can also be clockwork. Sure it fits, it's fantasy after all and don't tell me a wizard does not experiment in Golarion... ;)
What about the Axiomites? They could be foot soldiers, the lowest of the Inevitables, standing ready to enforce their own law- Conflict is Inevitable. Some are routinely freed upon the material plane as agents to seek out and fight against Chaos, though a handful are often overwhelmed by their newfound freedom, and fall away from their ingrained discipline.
Other thoughts:
Gearmen is another good idea
Gorum is everything the lord of Blades should be
I'm planning on using Golarion with D&D4E/Exalted cosmology. I really like the idea of Kalashtar as Azlanti slaves used for psionic experiments in order to contact with aberrant entities from the Far Realm.
For shifters, my idea is tied with lycanthropy. Lycanthropy used to be a curse levied by this powerful Fae on humans who dared to cross into the Feywild. But the curse spread like a disease, and soon you could find were-beasts everywhere, eventually even siring offspring that could be either completely animalistic (like dire-wolves and worgs) or more sentient (the shifter's progenitors). One shifter in particular, tired of the tiranny of their lycanthropic forefathers and hoping to end the curse of savagery, entered deep into the Feywild searching for a cure. There he/she stroke a pact with the Fae who devised the original curse and learned the secret to control the change.
A vicious war on three fronts followed: an alliance of men and elves, the were-beasts army and the rebelling shifters who undertook a secret ritual to 'fix' their form. The werewolves army was crushed and almost completely destroyed, and the shifters won their freedom.
Nowaday shifters live in nomadic tribes which revere the moon-goddess and their totemic patrons, but they have also spread far and wide and can be seen in most large cities too.
Where was this big war fought? I think somewhere NE from lake Encarthan.
Regards,
ZOOROOS
Adding more ideas to the mix, I really like my Azlanti as Melniboneans, that is, as a more culturally advanced pre-human race of decadent nobles who mastered psionic and divine powers and where later seduced by the discovery of Arcane magic (of which Xin was a pioneer who was ironically exiled for initially trying to promote sorcery in Azlanti society). Not happy with that, they used their psionic talents to contact cthonic entities from the Far Realm in order to strike a pact for more arcane power (this is where Kalashtar initially come from). But they grew so hubristic and vain that they forsook the pact, and the cthonic primordial ordered the Aboleths to summon the Starfall, which put an end to old Azlant.
Also, I think of Aroden as the "last Azlanti" in the same way the numenoreans who conquered the common men from the Middle Earth. And I also figured he became a legendary figure who lived hundreds of years and acquired divinity on Golarion, not unlike Warhammer Fantasy' Sigmar.
On the subjecto of Warforged, maybe connecting them with the lost kingdom of Shory and their floating cities? Ancient mechanical beings torporing in the ruins of the floating cities, I think it could be pretty cool.
Regards,
ZOOROOS
Also, I think of Aroden as the "last Azlanti" in the same way the numenoreans who conquered the common men from the Middle Earth. And I also figured he became a legendary figure who lived hundreds of years and acquired divinity on Golarion, not unlike Warhammer Fantasy' Sigmar.
Ha! Quoting myself, I also added the Empire of Nerath (from D&D4E) as the last human empire which desintegrated itself with the Aroden fiasco and the start of the Age of Lost Omens. The three main provinces of Nerath where Absalom, Taldor and Cheliax, but their influence reached far. During the last Gnoll wars the empire fell, and soon Absalom isolated itself, Cheliax fell to infernalism and Taldor... well, Taldor entered into a slow death.
I really like the Points of Light concept with my settings, and I think both Warhammer and D&D4E half-setting can add a lot of spice and mood to Golarion history.
Regards,
ZOOROOS
P.S.: I'm sorry if this last bit was off-topic.
I'm glad I found this thread, although it seems a long while since anyone has posted anything here.
The only reason I began searching for any such thread, I have a player who requested to play a warforged (may call him ironborn or gearforged, not sure) in a (possible) CoT campaign. I was hesitant at first, but as I looked over their v.3.5 stats and thought some more about it (I too would have placed them 'originally' from Numeria, although as someone here mentioned (and another player of mine commented) having them be recently rediscovered Azlanti 'artifacts' (awakened in the last several decades perhaps) was another angle that I liked).
I also thought that, many people (mostly common folk) wouldn't know the "ironborn" was anything but a man in a suit of full-plate armor... unless they got really up-close & personal... :)
I think I noticed on another thread, that someone thought they might allow for cure spells to provide full healing benefits, not half, since there aren't repair spells (or if there are, they haven't been re-discovered yet). I also might allow mending or make whole to cure/repair the damage a warforged/ironborn takes.
Thanks everyone for taking the time to start a thread like this, even if I came to the "party" a few months too late. :)
Dean; The_Minstrel_Wyrm