Hi there,
This is not intended to be an editorial gotchya. I'm caught out somewhat contradicting different sources, and the players have caught on. I'm not worried about retconning something I misunderstood, but I want to reconcile this information if I can.
The article on Eleder seems to portray the community as having a strong dislike of adventurers. With no mention of a Lodge, I assumed that the Pathfinder Society was somewhat underground, and/or not well tolerated.
Sargava the Lost Colony, paints a somewhat different picture, with the resident Venture-Captain on cordial terms with Lady Daugustana (though it is implied he has something over her head), and an active dockside location.
And Seeker of Secrets imples that the PFS Lodge in Kalabuto really has been run underground.
I realize that non of this is strictly mutually exclusive, I'd just wouldn't mind it if Rob (or James) could put it in better perspective before I step on myself again with the players. (I let them read some selected sourcebooks, so it stands to reason they have questions when I seem to contradict some material. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll reconsider that decision next campaign).
Seems to me that different lodges could very easily have very different relations with the locals, depending on local culture, local history, and personality clashes among the lodge captains and leaders.
For instance:
McDonald's in US: cheap non-poisonous food
McDonald's in Paris: hated symbol of foreign exploitation
McDonald's in Moscow (c. 1991): luxury restaurant of exotic foreignness
And that's before we throw in the personality of the manager. So I don't think this is a problem at all. Just make sure you know what _your_ local Lodge is like (and if the lodge captain in the sourcebook just died and got replaced by a new one, things could be very different.)
For my game, I had the PF lodge in Kalabuto actually leave that city due to the recent increase in Mzali aggression (see the Gallows Tree encounter). The few PF agents that decided to stay in Sargava either joined the lodge in Eleder or went rogue. In fact, I even added a new rival faction led by a rogue PF agent who is courting the Pathfinders and the Aspis Consortium factions.
I'm playing the citizens of Eleder as being on good terms with adventurers. It's the Sargavan government that is distrustful of them. In our game, the PCs are being backed by the Pathfinders and the government faction is proving just as dangerous and meddlesome as the Aspis Consortium.
Everyone wants the pie (Saventh-Yhi) for themselves. ;-)
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Sargava (and Eleder) are not hostile to adventurers at all - just the opposite, in fact, as adventurers bring in m ore money, and there's always caravans and expeditions that can use their expertise.
As for Pathfinder lodges, the one in Kalabuto is indeed practically shut down because of the racial strife.
The Pathfinders do have a lodge in Eleder, but it's not a major one - that was, until recently, in Kalabuto. The Eleder lodge has been left somewhat vague, depending on the results of the Serpent's Skull AP. If the PCs join the Pathfinders and are successful in their expedition, that will likely increase the prestige and presence of the Society in Eleder. If, on the other hand, someone else beats the Pathfinders to Saventh-Yhi, their influence might diminish (replaced by the Aspis Consortium or another faction, perhaps).
Sargava (and Eleder) are not hostile to adventurers at all - just the opposite, in fact, as adventurers bring in m ore money, and there's always caravans and expeditions that can use their expertise.
::rubs eyes::
Okay, I must have been hallucinating. I could have sworn the Eleder article in Race for Ruin said something quite different, but what you say makes sense. Thanks!
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Some clarification is probably in order here:
The Eleder article in Pathfinder #38 does contain a section that makes it appear that Eleder (and possibly, by inference, Sargava) is somewhat anti-adventurer. Unfortunately, this is a development error that slipped through the cracks. We've put Eleder in the AP as a place for adventurers to well, adventure, so it really doesn't make sense that Eleder doesn't like adventurers.
The best way to rectify this is to take the resentment against adventurers as the personal views of Lady Daugustana (and, to a lesser extent, of New Haliad) - after all, she's the one who turned the "Adventurer's Club" into an elite social club, most decidedly NOT for adventurers. Her influence is such that she probably has a few sympathetic militiamen on her side, who are only too happy to give adventurers a hard time, but they do not reflect the majority.
For the purposes of the Serpent's Skull AP, Eleder should react to adventurers no differently from any other city. If you want to run a game where there is some anti-adventurer sentiment, however, it's easy to do so with some run-ins with Lady Daugustana's corrupt militiamen, maybe some stuck-up colonial nobles, and the like, but they should be the exception rather than the norm.
Hope that helps! :)
It certainly does help! Thank you for your generousity in taking a second look.
To do a bit of thread necromancy since I'm starting a Serpent's Skull game and trying to get my bearings (one of the PCs is starting as a Pathfinder from Absalom), I found the Seekers of Secrets book gives a bit more dire situation than just "underground":
I quote, "While Sargava was formerly a base from which to explore the jungles of the Mwangi Expanse, the Grand Lodge recently pulled all of its venture-captains from the nation due to fears of civil war."
Which leaves the question of what civil war SoS is referring to, when the Sargava: The Lost Colony book has a nicely beefy sidebar on the Eleder lodge.
There is no lodge in Kalabuto anymore, where the tension between the indigenous Zenj and the colonials is much more palpable than in Eleder. I think that's what the Seeker of Secrets refers to.
There is no lodge in Kalabuto anymore, where the tension between the indigenous Zenj and the colonials is much more palpable than in Eleder. I think that's what the Seeker of Secrets refers to.
Righto, that's what I more or less assumed. Just making sure I wasn't reading into things the wrong way.