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Paizo Employee Creative Director

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bananahell wrote:
Do the 7 schools of Thassilonian magic have colors associated with each of the sins? For example, I notice Alaznist has a lot of red, which plays into Wrath pretty easily, and Karzoug seemed to wear a lot of green.

Traditionally, no, they don't. But that changes as of part 4 of Return of the Runelords, where colors are associated with the seven schools, with ties to the prismatic ray spells. I don't recall off the top of my head what colors I ended up associating with which, but you'll find out soon enough once "Temple of the Peacock Spirit" is out in a few weeks.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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j b 200 wrote:
Do you ever play around with alternate cosmology? Like an outer sphere that is divorced from the old ideas of the Abyss, Hell, Heaven and Nirvana etc. Not necessarily for publishing, but more of a intellectual/creative exercise?

I did when I came up with the model of the Great Beyond that Pathfinder uses. That model, with everything set up in concentric spheres rather than D&D's traditional Great Wheel, is the alternate cosmology I created for my homebrew setting a few decades ago.

I've done others as well for stories and novels not set in Golarion as well, but none of those are yet published.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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Paladinosaur wrote:

Ok, this is a weird one, but let me try to explain:

At least here in Brazil, we grown up kinda of assuming Heaven is somewhere "up" and Hell is "down". We even use the same word for Heaven and Sky. So, would dwarves in Golarion assume that their paradise is "up" or "down"?

Dwarves assume heaven is in the ground, but whether that's above or below depends where you are in the ground. Certainly the dwarven pantheon is underground in Heaven. So for dwarves, it doesn't make sense that heaven is up or hell is down.


The Starstone plunged to Golarion and destroyed Azlant. Thus it should be under the sea around the ruins of Azlant. But Aroden raised the Starstone from its resting place in the Inner Sea's depths. How did it go there? Did someone move the Starstone from Azlant to the Inner Sea? I thought Avistan was largely out of Earthfall's reach(except for Thassilon, I guess).


So I watched the promo video for Return of the Runelords recently, and saw Sorshen's artwork had her with a double sided weapon, I thought I remembered from a while back that you said that wasn't correct and a previous artist got it wrong and it was supposed to be a double headed weapon, as in two blades parallel to each other. Did you guys decide to just go with a two sided weapon instead? Not really and earth shattering question, more a mild curiosity.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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Aenigma wrote:
The Starstone plunged to Golarion and destroyed Azlant. Thus it should be under the sea around the ruins of Azlant. But Aroden raised the Starstone from its resting place in the Inner Sea's depths. How did it go there? Did someone move the Starstone from Azlant to the Inner Sea? I thought Avistan was largely out of Earthfall's reach(except for Thassilon, I guess).

Not quite.

Earthfall destroyed Azlant, but the Starstone was but one of many falling objects that, taken in total, comprised Earthfall. Earthfal destroyed Azlant but damaged Garund, Avistan, and Arcadia in the process.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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ChaoticAngel97 wrote:
So I watched the promo video for Return of the Runelords recently, and saw Sorshen's artwork had her with a double sided weapon, I thought I remembered from a while back that you said that wasn't correct and a previous artist got it wrong and it was supposed to be a double headed weapon, as in two blades parallel to each other. Did you guys decide to just go with a two sided weapon instead? Not really and earth shattering question, more a mild curiosity.

Usually when art comes in and it doesn't match the words and the art looks cool anyway we just change the words. Which is what we did many years ago with Sorshen's art and weapon description.


James Jacobs wrote:
Aenigma wrote:
The Starstone plunged to Golarion and destroyed Azlant. Thus it should be under the sea around the ruins of Azlant. But Aroden raised the Starstone from its resting place in the Inner Sea's depths. How did it go there? Did someone move the Starstone from Azlant to the Inner Sea? I thought Avistan was largely out of Earthfall's reach(except for Thassilon, I guess).

Not quite.

Earthfall destroyed Azlant, but the Starstone was but one of many falling objects that, taken in total, comprised Earthfall. Earthfal destroyed Azlant but damaged Garund, Avistan, and Arcadia in the process.

Why is the Starstone different from the rest of the debris that rained down during Earthfall?


Acavna pulled the moon from its orbit to intercept the massive meteoroid. The impact with the moon shattered the world-killing projectile into thousands of pieces. Does that mean, the alghollthus originally called down only one meteoroid, but because of its impact with the moon, the meteoroid was divided into many small objects? In other words, the alghollthus originally planned to damage Azlant alone, and didn't plan to damage Garund, Avistan, and Arcadia?

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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bananahell wrote:
James Jacobs wrote:
Aenigma wrote:
The Starstone plunged to Golarion and destroyed Azlant. Thus it should be under the sea around the ruins of Azlant. But Aroden raised the Starstone from its resting place in the Inner Sea's depths. How did it go there? Did someone move the Starstone from Azlant to the Inner Sea? I thought Avistan was largely out of Earthfall's reach(except for Thassilon, I guess).

Not quite.

Earthfall destroyed Azlant, but the Starstone was but one of many falling objects that, taken in total, comprised Earthfall. Earthfal destroyed Azlant but damaged Garund, Avistan, and Arcadia in the process.

Why is the Starstone different from the rest of the debris that rained down during Earthfall?

We go into that in detail in Mythic Origins, but the short version is...

Spoiler:
...it might just be what remains of the first god of magic, who was killed during Earthfall.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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Aenigma wrote:
Acavna pulled the moon from its orbit to intercept the massive meteoroid. The impact with the moon shattered the world-killing projectile into thousands of pieces. Does that mean, the alghollthus originally called down only one meteoroid, but because of its impact with the moon, the meteoroid was divided into many small objects? In other words, the alghollthus originally planned to damage Azlant alone, and didn't plan to damage Garund, Avistan, and Arcadia?

We've not gone into great detail about that.

Spoiler:
I've always interpreted it as it was one big asteroid that the intervention of two gods blasted apart and transformed a single planet-destroying impact into a still-devastating but much less world-ending peppering of smaller asteroids/meteorites/falling stars that allowed us to carry on with a campaign setting set on a planet and not on cosmic dust.

So has anyone else mentioned you have a Marvel super hero style name? does anyone call you JJ? Also what is your super power?

Silver Crusade

Is there any book where I could find a negative/critical view of Aroden that isn't in-character by an Asmodean (in-character by an Iomedaen, for example, would be fine)? In what I've read, he seems somewhat perplexingly universally admired for a Lawful Neutral god who massively favored one race.


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

What do Samsarans and Duskwalkers think of one another, in a broadly typical sense?

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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Vidmaster7 wrote:
So has anyone else mentioned you have a Marvel super hero style name? does anyone call you JJ? Also what is your super power?

Nope. Some folks did years ago but not today. My superpower is not being able to sleep.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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Beroli wrote:
Is there any book where I could find a negative/critical view of Aroden that isn't in-character by an Asmodean (in-character by an Iomedaen, for example, would be fine)? In what I've read, he seems somewhat perplexingly universally admired for a Lawful Neutral god who massively favored one race.

How about this: Aroden was an egotistical jerk and I'm glad he died.

(We've not really said much about him, frankly. Pathfinder #100 is the bets place to go to for info.)

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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Cole Deschain wrote:
What do Samsarans and Duskwalkers think of one another, in a broadly typical sense?

They don't, really. They don't have much interaction, so it's pretty much a case by case basis that depends on the specific circumstances of each meeting.


Earthfall damaged Avistan, Arcadia and Garund. Then were Casmaron, the Crown of the World, Sarusan and Tian Xia unharmed and intact after Earthfall?


Is Golarion a male or female noun?

And what about the other system's planets?

A friend said that a planet that support life is always a she, but that may not be true for Aucturn...

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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Aenigma wrote:
Earthfall damaged Avistan, Arcadia and Garund. Then were Casmaron, the Crown of the World, Sarusan and Tian Xia unharmed and intact after Earthfall?

Mostly, yes. They were facing away from the event at the time. Although there might be some antipodal hills going on there somewhere.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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Bruno Mares wrote:

Is Golarion a male or female noun?

And what about the other system's planets?

A friend said that a planet that support life is always a she, but that may not be true for Aucturn...

They're not gendered.

Verdant Wheel

James Jacobs wrote:
Bruno Mares wrote:

Is Golarion a male or female noun?

And what about the other system's planets?

A friend said that a planet that support life is always a she, but that may not be true for Aucturn...

They're not gendered.

I am the friend he was talking about. Sorry to press on the issue. We are translating some stuff to Portuguese (that doesn´t really have some neutral gendered words) and in Starfinder we can´t really say "Lost Golarion" without assigning a gender to it.

So, in this case, do you personally feel (not the official position) that in languages without a neutral gender, Golarion should be refered as a male name (and "neutral") or a female name ?

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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Draco Bahamut wrote:
James Jacobs wrote:
Bruno Mares wrote:

Is Golarion a male or female noun?

And what about the other system's planets?

A friend said that a planet that support life is always a she, but that may not be true for Aucturn...

They're not gendered.

I am the friend he was talking about. Sorry to press on the issue. We are translating some stuff to Portuguese (that doesn´t really have some neutral gendered words) and in Starfinder we can´t really say "Lost Golarion" without assigning a gender to it.

So, in this case, do you personally feel (not the official position) that in languages without a neutral gender, Golarion should be refered as a male name (and "neutral") or a female name ?

I don't speak Portuguese so I'm not an expert on how to translate things like that. My preference would be to simply not translate made-up words, though, or to do as close a job to translate them phonetically as possible. If that's not possible, then my preference would be female, since the real world's got more than enough masculinity these days it seems.

Dark Archive

Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Plus on side note, Earth gets referred as "Mother Earth" sometimes in multiple languages. Terra and Gaia which both refer to earth are both name of Goddesses too. So wouldn't be weird for homeplanet to be referred that way.

Anyhoo, I was about to ask about Kazavon: Is his primary motivation for most things he does boredom? Mostly wondering if he has higher goal than conquering things for his own amusement


I think the problem here is that in Portuguese (and other Romance languages), adjectives have to be inflected to agree with the number and grammatical gender of the noun that they modify (unlike the invariable adjectives in English), so that we need to know the grammatical gender of proper nouns like 'Golarion' if we were to translate PF to gendered languages so we'd know how to inflect adjectives.

Question: If you were to stat up the ilee and Brigh, which types and subtypes would you give them? Brigh only has 4 domains so she could still be statted up, right? And the ilee aren't in any position to get statted in SF.


The Age of Darkness was a thousand-year period in which the sun's light was blocked by the ash knocked into the atmosphere by the meteoric impacts of Earthfall. I'm not sure. How can the darkness last for such a long time? The ash blocking the sun would disappear after several years, I guess?

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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CorvusMask wrote:
Anyhoo, I was about to ask about Kazavon: Is his primary motivation for most things he does boredom? Mostly wondering if he has higher goal than conquering things for his own amusement

Cruelty and sadism play a bigger part in his motivations.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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Aenigma wrote:
The Age of Darkness was a thousand-year period in which the sun's light was blocked by the ash knocked into the atmosphere by the meteoric impacts of Earthfall. I'm not sure. How can the darkness last for such a long time? The ash blocking the sun would disappear after several years, I guess?

The word "darkness" in "Age of Darkness" is metaphorical for a period of devastation. Just as the so-called "dark ages" were not actually a period without light.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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HTD wrote:
Question: If you were to stat up the ilee and Brigh, which types and subtypes would you give them? Brigh only has 4 domains so she could still be statted up, right? And the ilee aren't in any position to get statted in SF.

Ilee I suppose would be aberrations, and Brigh would probably be an outsider with construct traits.


Pathfinder LO Special Edition, Maps, Pathfinder Accessories, PF Special Edition Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Starfinder Superscriber

I'd really like to see a "strategy guide" similar to the one for 1st edition published concurrently with or soon after the 2nd edition core rulebook. Any chance of that?

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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Ed Reppert wrote:
I'd really like to see a "strategy guide" similar to the one for 1st edition published concurrently with or soon after the 2nd edition core rulebook. Any chance of that?

The whole point of the Strategy Guide was to provide an easier way to get into the game than the core rulebook presents. If we do our job right, the 2nd edition Core Rulebook will do that job itself, and thus there won't be a need for a secondary "Strategy Guide" at all. So I hope we won't need to do a book like this, because if we do our job right the first time around with the Core Rules, it won't be necessary at all.

Dark Archive

Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Was there any character who flavorwise can take on entire army on their own on Golarion?(not counting Tarrasque and kaijus, they obviously can :D )


Azlant and Thassilon were very powerful countries. They can even be considered the superpowers of the time. Did Azlant and Thassilon conquer every land they found and subjugate or enslave every sentient species they encountered, ruthlessly exterminating any that refused to submit?

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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CorvusMask wrote:
Was there any character who flavorwise can take on entire army on their own on Golarion?(not counting Tarrasque and kaijus, they obviously can :D )

Yes. Plenty. The mass combat rules we've currently got allow for this—see Ultimate Campaign for their latest incarnation.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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Aenigma wrote:
Azlant and Thassilon were very powerful countries. They can even be considered the superpowers of the time. Did Azlant and Thassilon conquer every land they found and subjugate or enslave every sentient species they encountered, ruthlessly exterminating any that refused to submit?

No.


Giantslayer spoiler:
Is there only one Orb of Dragonkind for each type of dragon? For example, the Orb of Red Dragonkind owned by Volstus is the one and only Orb of Red Dragonkind in the entire universe, and thus if it is destroyed, there will be no Orb of Red Dragonkind in the world?

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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Aenigma wrote:
** spoiler omitted **

There's only one—that's a key part of what makes a "major" artifact "major."

If the one you mentioned in your spoiler is destroyed, then yes, it's out of your game for good. If you don't want an artifact to "leave" your setting, then consider very strongly whether or not you want to include it as a bad thing in a game you're running. That said, the destruction of a major artifact and removing it from the setting is one of the most classic of all plots—Lord of the Rings, for example, is exactly about this. The destruction of the ring is the whole point of the story, and if it wasn't gone forever after the story ended, it cheapens the story.


Mengkare has presented each visiting ambassador from Andoran, Druma and Taldor with a sliver of golden crystal. The dragon claims these are shards of an Orb of Dragonkind. Mengkare, being a lawful good gold dragon, would never lie. Does that mean the Orb of Gold Dragonkind is truly destroyed and we will never be able to see it in the future adventures?

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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Aenigma wrote:
Mengkare has presented each visiting ambassador from Andoran, Druma and Taldor with a sliver of golden crystal. The dragon claims these are shards of an Orb of Dragonkind. Mengkare, being a lawful good gold dragon, would never lie. Does that mean the Orb of Gold Dragonkind is truly destroyed and we will never be able to see it in the future adventures?

First of all... Mengkare is not lawful good.

Second of all, even lawful good characters can lie—alignment is not a shackle that prevents one from taking actions, but the result of those actions taken.

There's more to explore here, for sure, and in time we'll do so in print, I suspect, but for now this will need to remain a mystery.


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Aroden created the Azlanti Diamond, a clear jewel-bladed sword intended to be the weapon of the next Azlanti emperor. Eventually Aroden took it upon himself to keep the Azlanti Diamond. In many arts he has been depicted as wielding a sword. Is the sword depicted in his arts is the famous Azlanti Diamond? And was the Azlanti Diamond a longsword?

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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Aenigma wrote:
Aroden created the Azlanti Diamond, a clear jewel-bladed sword intended to be the weapon of the next Azlanti emperor. Eventually Aroden took it upon himself to keep the Azlanti Diamond. In many arts he has been depicted as wielding a sword. Is the sword depicted in his arts is the famous Azlanti Diamond? And was the Azlanti Diamond a longsword?

Unrevealed.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Was the name Golarion inspired by the name Glorantha?

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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Darrell Impey UK wrote:
Was the name Golarion inspired by the name Glorantha?

If I remember correctly, Erik was the one who came up with the word "Golarion," but I'm 99% sure Glorantha wasn't a factor. He'd know for sure though.


Is there a vampire court underground in Egorian or are vampires seen accepted or shunned within the city?


The last emperor of Azlant tried to choose a successor from a pool of unimpressive candidates. He even considered Xanderghul as his successor. Thus, can I assume that Azlant was an elective monarchy instead of a hereditary monarchy?

Dark Archive

Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

So uh, was reading Sandpoint campaign setting book(super awesome book I love it I could gush about it for hours), and noticed Sandpoint market d20 table.

Was that nat 20 result item reference to character from Doomsday Dawn's final part? :' D Is that NPC gonna come back in the future?

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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Sadnerd wrote:
Is there a vampire court underground in Egorian or are vampires seen accepted or shunned within the city?

Not publicly.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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Aenigma wrote:
The last emperor of Azlant tried to choose a successor from a pool of unimpressive candidates. He even considered Xanderghul as his successor. Thus, can I assume that Azlant was an elective monarchy instead of a hereditary monarchy?

I guess so.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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CorvusMask wrote:

So uh, was reading Sandpoint campaign setting book(super awesome book I love it I could gush about it for hours), and noticed Sandpoint market d20 table.

Was that nat 20 result item reference to character from Doomsday Dawn's final part? :' D Is that NPC gonna come back in the future?

Yes. To both questions.

When I write stuff, I always try to put at least one new plotline in for every other plotline I wrap up. With Doomsday Dawn, a HUGE ongoing plotline got wrapped up and tied up with a bow, so it was important to me in my final part for that adventure to plant a seed for something equally immense and potentially world-shaking as the countdown clocks were. The Ashen Man is that seed.

Dark Archive

Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

I have to say that I did find The Ashen Man really cool plot seed :D

BTW, is Red Bishop really CN or is that typo? I'm really surprised if he is CN since he seems so obviously evil ._.

But yeah, I have read the whole book by now and really loving it, so onto writing the review

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