Mr. Aroden to the white courtesy telephone, please?
Anyway. I'm currently running a Council of Thieves campaign and, since Westcrown is the town strongly connected to Aroden, was thinking about offering players an Aroden-related side arc to toy with when I don't have the whole party around the table.
Problem being, Aroden-lore seems to be in a very short supply. Is there any info, preferably canon but homebrew won't be necessarily scoffed at, that's not covered here: http://pathfinder.wikia.com/wiki/Aroden
Thank you!
Creative Director
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We intentionally leave a lot of Aroden's info blank. He's been dead for over a 100 years, after all, and while a century might not be long in the grand scheme of Golarion, it's a pretty long time. Long enough for people to start forgetting him. He's not really a relevant part of the world anymore—what we did with him in Council of Thieves is about how much his traditions interact with the world these days.
Which means if you want to punch up his presence in your home game, there's not a lot of canon to get in your way and you're free to do what you want!
One good place to look to for inspiration is what we've done with his replacement, Iomedae. Of course, that's through a Lawful Good lens, whereas Aroden was Lawful Neutral, so you'll need to make adjustments accordingly.
There's also some info about him in "Gods & Magic," and a bit more in the upcoming "Inner Sea World Guide." Not all that much though...
... and in the upcoming Humans of Golarion.
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As God of Mankind and History, Aroden was concerned very specifically with humanity and human culture. The Inner Sea Pantheon we see today, the "Big 20" as some of us fans call it, is one of his biggest projects aimed at strengthening humanity and creating a culture HE wanted. It is a near masterpiece of syncretic religion. These 20 deities are pulled from ancestral, regional, and essentially forgotten, pantheons of the Inner Sea region - that's why you've got two death goddesses, a handful of "the Devils", and a few other subtle overlaps in a single pantheon.
Aroden used his fairly direct influence on Absalom to indirectly influence the rest of the region, and cultivated missions and churches of those deities he wanted to see prosper and gain prominence - Pharasma is associated with one of the most powerful of the historic Garundi cultures, and is 'nicer' to humanity than the aboriginal Taldan death god Zyphus, so who made it into the "Big 20" and who is reduced to a minor cult? Precisely.
So if Aroden is promoting Pharasma to be "his" Death Goddess, why is the Varisian Death Goddess, Urgathoa, also in the Pantheon? Because she used to be human - Aroden's church whole-heartedly embraced ANY formerly mortal deity, which led to a number of our "duplicate" deities. Zon-Kuthon is pretty fundamental to the Taldans as their "the Devil", but Norgorber is a Starstone graduate, so we get TWO Taldan "gods of evil things" in the Inner Sea Pantheon, but none from the Ulfen. The Garundi and Ulfen "the Devil" deities are non-human, so Aroden very much quashed their influence in the Absalom meta-culture that pervades the Inner Sea.
The non-human deities in the Pantheon also happen to be the ones with portfolios most "grokkable" by humans, and likely to find adherents amongst humanity. You can bet if Aroden had lived, and Taldan/Chelish/Absalomite culture continued to ascend, those deities would be slowly squeezed out or strongly reinterpreted towards Humanity. We know gods can "change race" - look at Desna, who was worshiped by elves as an elf for millennia before humanity took the stage, and is now pretty strongly envisioned as human. Callistria and Torag would face the same fate, or would be squeezed out and about as important as Findeladlara or Minderhal.
You can imagine the clerics of deities not 'promoted' out of the ancestral pantheons to such prominence, if they're still out there after a few thousand years, are somewhat bitter about Aroden's cultural engineering projects. Plenty of cult fightin' fun for the PCs.
...a random query post gets me a response from the game's Creative director and another Dev within an hour or two... and then they ask me why do I preach Paizo like it's a religion.
Thanks James & Sean!
Cappadocious, lots of good insight there, thanks for writing it up :)
These ideas just gave me a new sub plot idea for Serpent's Skull: exploring how worship of these deities has changed since the time of the Azlanti. I expect to really poke the cleric of Desna in my group.
These ideas just gave me a new sub plot idea for Serpent's Skull: exploring how worship of these deities has changed since the time of the Azlanti. I expect to really poke the cleric of Desna in my group.
There's actually a sidebar about that in City of Seven Spears. It's a great idea if one or more of your players is really into the setting.
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Creative Director
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These ideas just gave me a new sub plot idea for Serpent's Skull: exploring how worship of these deities has changed since the time of the Azlanti. I expect to really poke the cleric of Desna in my group.There's actually a sidebar about that in City of Seven Spears. It's a great idea if one or more of your players is really into the setting.
Just keep in mind that that sidebar lists the gods of Saventh-Yhi... NOT the gods of Azlant. Azlant had more deities than those listed in Pathfinder #39.
Interestingly enough, I wonder what happens to Gods when they 'lose' followers? Do they diminish until they are but a whisper in the ether of something once terrifyingly immense and all-powerful, do they turn to stone and go to the Astral Plane or do they diminish to a Demi-God/Aspect status?
While back I ran a campaign for my players (was my 'turn' as a GM) in which there was a new Island-Continent discovered several weeks journey from the south-western coast of Cheliax. Immediately the Aspis Consortium sent out a fleet of a dozen ships loaded with mercenaries and laborers to plunder what the shipwrecked sailors had described as 'a place of giant beasts, strange plants and a truncated pyramid that glittered like fire in the sun and glowed pale red at night.'
A few days after the fleet landed, the Aspis began organizing another, as the first had been annihilated by gigantic monsters in the oceans around the island. At this stage word has gotten out and every country, merchant group and would-be Hero is mobilizing to get out there and grab a slice of the Gold.
PCs were picked up by a White Necromancer to go and 'ensure the Aspis do not ravage this sanctuary'. Small ship they were on was let pass unmolested by gigantic crocodilian monsters while the Aspis fleet got ravaged again and landed on the island. Cue several weeks of exploration in 'a land time forgot', coming across Dinosaurs, both natural and magically-created hybrids, a 30th level White Necromancer with the Deathless Subtype, one of the Masters of a small group of White Necromancers, Druids and other benevolent types who were helping to protect a race of 'normal' Lizardfolk, those who had not devolved like the standard Lizardfolk Races, for the past several hundred years.
Think the Lizardfolk from the Warhammer lineup, just less 'kill everything not us' and with a heavy Mayan Twist. They worshipped a God called the Thunderer, a Collossal+ Reptilian creature who had once been on of the Creator Races' Gods, whom had willingly stepped aside for the 'warm-blooded' Gods, knowing his time was coming and willing to wait for the Cycle to turn once again to his ascendance. PCs learned each month several of the Lizardfolk would willingly go under the Sacrificial Knives to give strength to the Thunderer and keep his divinity alive with their sacrifice, a lot of tension from them there.
My god I went off topic there. Uh.... Aroden .... it's going to be interesting to see what has actually happened to him ... and if Gods can actually die, or if they just fade away or are diminished.
I've been thinking about this, and here's what I've got so far...
1) Have ex-clerics of Aroden around.
As you might expect, they're all in bad shape. This will help show the power of Aroden, and his absence. I've created a high-level oracle who has a home-brewed oracle curse - amnesia. Players won't know he's actually an oracle for a long time. Also, there's a good choice of NPC from Tower of the Last Baron, which I've decided to include.
2) Have visible consequences.
I'm revising the 2nd ed. adventure Adam's Wrath. If gods can die, then it must also be true that humans can create life. That's what Victor Mordenheim set out to do, but turns out it's not easy.
3) Do not pass go, do not collect $200.
Want more Aroden? We're going to have a LOT more. I'm planning on having the PC's bring Aroden back to Westcrown after the end of the series. We'll be modifying two old LG adventures: Sepulcher of the Wizard King and Whirlpool of Madness.
4) Create a new villain.
Aroden wants back that which was Aroden's. We'll start with Galt, and run the 12th level PFS adventures. After that, it's off to conquer Andoran and Taldor. At some point, the PCs will realize that Asmodeus wasn't so bad, they've traded one dictator for another.
Paging Mr. Aroden
Paging? That's so Age of Enthronement! As a god of civilisation and progress, I move with the times. You can catch me on my cell. No facebook, though - those "social networks" are the death of civilisation, and thus I oppose them, of course.
If you can get your hands on Guide to Absalom, you'll get a bit more of Aroden-lore. After all, I created that city.
They'll tell you of a few things I did myself that are still there. Some of the buildings "supposedly built by Aroden himself" aren't mine, actually, but you can easily spot them by the inferior architectural design and sloppy (even for human standards) craftsmanship.
I'd tell you why I raised the Starstone and the isle of Kortos, and created the city of Absalom one fine day, but I keep that stuff close to the chest for now. I'm almost done writing my memoirs, though, and I go on about it at length in there (a couple dozen of volumes are about those topics, each).