About all I reckon is say you have a wizard, npc or maybe pc even, summoning gobs of efreeti to work on cheapo magic items.....then some aeons get hinky about it and show up to wreak massive havoc; set existence back to within two or three standard deviations of normal,....
anything else?
Woah let me re-type this thing. Lost my entry.
I will be using the Akhana in my current campaign if the players follow up something that is currently present.
I am working the the aspect of the Akhanas' understanding that living things deeply influence cosmic balance and that sometimes "life must give way to death," in order to maintain that balance.
A side quest that I presented to the two players (a cleric of Pharasma, and a spy track rogue) after they needed to fake their own deaths for royally failing an adventure. However, they were both in the form of gnomes (not their original race) for the adventure presented previously.
I have a group of zealots known as the, "Order of the List," who essentially record and maintain episodes of fate in terms of who is supposed to die, and stay dead. They had a "clerical error" (pun intended) which listed my two players as being fating to actually die. However, they became confused when the two gnomes in question were not gnomes, but a human and an elf.
Not wanting to admit their wrong-doing, or go about fixing it themselves, a few agents of the order give the players an offer. Had the cleric followed any other deity this option wouldn't have come up. They were going to be allowed one month to find two gnomes to send into their respective afterlives that would not disrupt fate, nor cause issues for their list.
Both players became frustrated by the group, and I trust are going to do their homework and try to take them out at some point. After all, ho doesn't like calling cults into question and taking them out?
I hadn't intended to use the Akhana since I did not have the Bestiary 2 until last week, but this beauty is going to be the head hauncho for this group.
I like it.
I guess for me the whole idea of trying to portray "fate" as an actual existent phenomenon in a game where god does play at dice is a bit disconcerting.
It feels like any and all talk of fate has to occur after some dice fell...
I generally take the stance that fate is relative in the game. You can believe in it's power, or you don't have to. What's true for one person/thing doesn't have to be for another.
But the Aeons believe in it to a very extreme extent. I feel they would have very black and white views. But just because a high level Aeon is a believer in ultimate fate, doesn't necessarily make it so and it doesn't mean the player is bound by what that creature believes.
The player could quake in fear and lose all sense of their own free will or not. It's up to them. But this character's idea of fate and a living being role in the space of time never has to be the end-all-be-all.
I suppose I create a conflict of fate and free will with the players. But it's a great age old conflict regardless.
Belief in hard determinism might not be so strong in a world where you can punch fate itself in the face. :P