Why wouldn't things get better? It's not like Pharasma is the omnibenevolent type.They could, but that's less interesting as a campaign setting. Also, I those were the two Gods that came to mind off the top of my head for overlapping with Pharasma. Though, I suppose it could result in Abadar taking over the sorting of souls in his Judge role. Still leaves certain aspects of Death for Urgathoa and birth for somebody, with Lamashtu having hte best claim.
And it goes without saying that something fundamental would change about the portfolio of birth with Lamashtu took it, the way that beasts began to behave differently when she stole them from Curchanus.
Mustard used the lead pipe. C'mon!
Also: what about the Aeons and the Monad? If Pharasma bit it, they'd likely go berserk.
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The aeons are odd. They could try to unseat Urgathoa with the psychopomps, or they could try to balance things by offing Nethys and getting Shelyn made Goddess of Magic.
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The Aeons are not concerned with the dead to the extent that the Pyschopomps are...and yeah...crazy.
Aeons replace Urgathoa with a toaster oven...
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"Welcome, brother, to your new home. We ghouls must band together so that the living food doesn't hunt us to extinction. Here is Father Six-tooth, High Priest of Toaster."
"Plug into Adventure, my brother. Go now, and kneel before the holy altar and make your supplications to the Lord of the Cripsy Bread."
The Aeons are not concerned with the dead to the extent that the Pyschopomps are...and yeah...crazy.
Aeons replace Urgathoa with a toaster oven...
See, the first is correct. The second... I don't agree (even though I know it was a bit of a joke). They have madness, yes, but there is a method to it. Their randomness has borders and themes.
Toaster ovens - unless, maybe, it's +10 Mythic Toaster Artifact - don't really fit the replacing of Urgathoa, otherwise, they'd have replaced Pharasma by now.
Unless her biting it was for the greater balance. And some could argue that Aeons are already berserk, going about sending mental omens to unsuspecting folk all willy-nilly and what have you.
This is substantially more like them, I'd say.
Chaos within constraint. Madness with method. Consistently thematic "random" strangeness. Balance, even if others don't see it.
Also: I heart the Brave Little Toaster. Such an amazing film.
(And Clue. Clue was also an amazing film.)
Yeah my head canon basically makes Aeons like the Weaver from Perdido Street Station. They are not sane by mortal standards, and will inexplicably change things for obscure reasons known only to them, and to further the "balance", whatever that means.
Things would get worse if Urgathoa became Death Goddess. Terraneaux was asking why couldn't someone Good inherit the mantle.
Things would get worse if Urgathoa became Death Goddess. Terraneaux was asking why couldn't someone Good inherit the mantle.Because people would decide to die that much more quickly if someone kind was at the helm? That's what Kelemvor found out.
But that's in a setting and world that explicitly values "balance" for its own sake as "the moral high ground".
In our world many religions teach that someone "benevolent" is at the helm of death, and we don't see all that many (comparatively) "early enders".
Sure, we have religious fanatics, but then again, so does Golarion. It doesn't really mean that it'll all go awkward.
I get what they were doing in FR, but I never bought it. Not really. As mortals, regardless of any proof we're given, we generally value our mortal life too much to just go free-wheeling to our death outside of a comparatively select few fanatics. Even if that number increases, the world is pretty big.
Plus, just because an over-all benevolent/kind deity comes to the helm, doesn't mean all individuals go where they want. It just means there's more justice to the whole procedure.
Kelemvore discovered what most Faerunian gods discover: Faerun and its people are really weird sometimes.
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What if Tar-Baphon inherited it?
That could be quite ironic if he found that his new perspective and new responsibilities changing his position on the whispering way.
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If anybody inherited the mantle of Death from Pharasma, I'd love to see somebody like Death of the Endless (as in, her character and concept) take on the role.
Considering that James Jacobs is on record that she was a significant inspiration for Pharasma, that wouldn't be much of a change.
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I think it would be interesting if Cayden inherited the Death portfolio....after all if you consider all the deaths caused by drink ,either directly or indirectly, not to mention ill judged heroics....
I don't know, the inspiration might be there, but Pharasma (to me) doesn't have quite as much of the kindness that Dee shows, or the general happiness.If anybody inherited the mantle of Death from Pharasma, I'd love to see somebody like Death of the Endless (as in, her character and concept) take on the role.Considering that James Jacobs is on record that she was a significant inspiration for Pharasma, that wouldn't be much of a change.
How do you know that? Have you witnessed an actual encounter with Pharasma? Do you know she doesn't have a fishtank with a couple of black goldfish in her private quarters. You are making the assumption that because Pharasma 'follows the rules' of Golarion Deities & doesn't personally manifest on Golarion that she is somehow 'less kind' than a character written to be personable 'by direct witnesses'. We only see a very small sliver of 'Endless Death"s existence & even than I don't necessarily agree that she is as without cruelty as you seem to imagine her, she is simply without needless cruelty, as is Pharasma.
Also bear in mind that we never really see Dee (or Death; 'Dee' was simply a temporary manifestation, for a specific purpose, after all) deal with enemies. We never actually witness her drawing a line in the sand & deal with the consequences.As it happens, none of this is relevant to the OP.
If anybody inherited the mantle of Death from Pharasma, I'd love to see somebody like Death of the Endless (as in, her character and concept) take on the role.
Yeah, I meant what would happen if someone who seemed to care more about mortals inherited the role. Cayden Cailen with the death portfolio... suddenly wakes and funerals become much more raucous, energetic affairs. Like a New Orleans funeral.
To a certain extent, though, the Pathfinder setting has the ideas that undead=evil and trying to extend your time alive indefinitely is an inherently bad thing encoded into it. That's a big part of what makes Pharasma and the context of death in Golarion what it is, to have a different take on death it's likely those things would have to change.
Urgathoa has the right idea, except that she's a terrible person. A good-aligned Urgathoa analog would be pretty awesome.
Yeah how dare mortals try to be like the outsiders!
Those uppity types need to know their place -- trying to live forever when you don't naturally have the ability to due to a defect of birth is just wrong!
That's what the 'good' types would have you believe at least. They'll tell you we are evil just cause we are willing to let you have all the time you want, even if you don't normally get to simply because you weren't so fortunate as to be birth/made (whatever) as something that already does.
Somehow that seems skewed to me.
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Sounds like a pretty horrible world with creepy evil gods taking over those roles.maybe Urgathoa would take over the spot and Death itself would behave differently.How much would the universe change if Pharasma was unseated, Urgathoa took over Death, Lamashtu took over Birth, and Fate stayed kaput?
It kind of already is. The gods of the Golarion plane are the Great Old Ones, and Desna, pretty much overwhelmingly evil. The gods of the Elemental planes? All evil. The gods of the Fey? Evil or Neutral, none are good.
The world is already weighted towards evil, which is by design, so that good adventurers have more to do. (Which is why there's an entire nation in the inner sea devoted to diablolism, and a huge sucking wound falling into the Abyss, but not quite so many regions falling into Elysium or nations embracing Empyreal Lord worship. At least, yet. There's rumored to be one of the latter in southern Garund, off the map!)
An evil death god would help explain why so many different means can funnel souls straight past the 'neutral judge' and into the hells or the mouths of daemons (such as the Hellfire ray spell) or even get sacrificed to Groetus. Same with undead and animate dead being able to steal souls out of Heaven. That sort of stuff makes Pharasma *look* evil for allowing it, or incompetent, for failing to stop it. If the local god of death was either evil, like Myrkul, or at least a bit more 'evil-friendly,' like Wee Jas, then this very obviously *not* neutral and 'fair' sort of stuff would make sense.
As long as the setting is pretty consistently portraying the afterlife / soul trade as being crapsack in nature, it would only be consistent (and make Pharasma seem less bad at her job) if the person in charge of the Boneyard was evil.
Sounds like a pretty horrible world with creepy evil gods taking over those roles.maybe Urgathoa would take over the spot and Death itself would behave differently.How much would the universe change if Pharasma was unseated, Urgathoa took over Death, Lamashtu took over Birth, and Fate stayed kaput?It kind of already is. The gods of the Golarion plane are the Great Old Ones, and Desna, pretty much overwhelmingly evil. The gods of the Elemental planes? All evil. The gods of the Fey? Evil or Neutral, none are good.
The world is already weighted towards evil, which is by design, so that good adventurers have more to do. (Which is why there's an entire nation in the inner sea devoted to diablolism, and a huge sucking wound falling into the Abyss, but not quite so many regions falling into Elysium or nations embracing Empyreal Lord worship. At least, yet. There's rumored to be one of the latter in southern Garund, off the map!)
An evil death god would help explain why so many different means can funnel souls straight past the 'neutral judge' and into the hells or the mouths of daemons (such as the Hellfire ray spell) or even get sacrificed to Groetus. Same with undead and animate dead being able to steal souls out of Heaven. That sort of stuff makes Pharasma *look* evil for allowing it, or incompetent, for failing to stop it. If the local god of death was either evil, like Myrkul, or at least a bit more 'evil-friendly,' like Wee Jas, then this very obviously *not* neutral and 'fair' sort of stuff would make sense.
As long as the setting is pretty consistently portraying the afterlife / soul trade as being crapsack in nature, it would only be consistent (and make Pharasma seem less bad at her job) if the person in charge of the Boneyard was evil.
I would counter that perhaps we are looking at it the wrong way. Less Pharasma is incompetent, more Pharasma is very, very busy. She is the Goddess of birth, death & prophecy for everywhere. Yes, some necromantic shenanigans get pulled off, but quite possibly a lot fewer than would be the case if she were in fact incompetent or worse yet, evil.
Source?
My guess is that its for Inner Sea Gods...
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I suppose if I wanted to open an investigation into the death of Aroden I would have to begin with cause of death. Was it murder? Were there enough mysterious circumstances to warrant further investigation?
We don't have a body. This would be a missing persons case if not for the fact that his clerics insist that he is dead. We have also received evasive confirmations from Pharasma that he is dead (suspicious). His 'death' seems to have occurred at the exact moment he was to have some sort of triumph, unlikely he would have killed himself. And no god has ever died of natural causes. This is now a murder investigation. Since we don't have a body or clues to how it was done, we have to turn to the previous case files of moments where gods were weakened or killed.
It's unclear what limits are put on a Golarion god, but historically traps seem to be a weakness. I went through all the gods that have been killed or weakened, and made a list of the relevant consequences.
Trapped Gods:
Rovagug- An alliance of the gods barely outmatch Rovagug. Though weaker individually, they overpower the much stronger entity and imprison it. Rovagug is now trapped in an unnamed prison with Asmodeus as warden.
Zon-Kuthon- Allows himself to be imprisoned in the shadow realm so long the sun is in the sky in return for getting something from Abadar's vault, a place where a copy of everything that exists, existed, and ever will exist is hidden. This establishes that one god can make a god powerless against something if the other god submits.
Curchanus- Lamashtu springs a trap and ambushes Curchanus with her personal army. Curchanus is the only other true god than Aroden killed since Rovagug's attack. Overwhelming force was also a component, the gods seem to be unable to kill one another in a one on one fight.
Ydersius- Beheaded in a fight with a Azlanti human. Not killed, just disabled. Extra investigation needed to determine how a human wounds a god.
Arazni- Not technically a true god, but still divine. Overwhelmingly killed by Tar Baphon. Should be noted that Tar Baphon's enhanced abilities were caused when a trap he created to kill Aroden backfired. Unsure if he can kill Arazni because he is so powerful, or if he just has absorbed god killer powers from that trap.
If I wanted to make a god vulnerable based on history:
1. If you can trap a god or lure it into a trap, you have an advantage.
2. Gods who manifest on Golarion are more vulnerable. Curchanus was in Lamashtu's lair on her home plane and it sounds like his death was a monumental battle between him, Lamashtu, and the most powerful demons in the abyss. Ydersius is cut up by a person on Golarion. Arazni is killed by a mortal on Golarion. It's hard to miss that Aroden was killed while executing the most defiant Golarion manifestation by a god ever, seemingly by nothing.
3. Get the god to submit to me. If the god accepts that I have power over it, I have power. Leverage of any kind makes them weak.
4. Be powerful, so powerful that only an alliance of the gods could stop me.
Since no one knows about how Aroden died, I'm leaning towards a divine level player. All the mortals that injured gods became legends, and their traps were messy and public. This might have been eons in the making.
Now we have a suspect profile: The entity who killed Aroden was someone stronger than the Golarion gods, and that someone had professional influence over Aroden as well.
I immediately dismiss all Golarion gods as suspects.
So who has motive? What was their endgame? Lets look at the consequences of a god's death. Lamashtu was a demon before she was a deity, she looted divinity from Curchanus. Legend has it that even though she stole his portfolio, she destroyed the relationship between the world and animals permanently, even for other gods associated with animals. Aroden's death permanently destroyed the reliable power of prophecy, ruining divination even for other gods associated with prophecy. I realize there are other reasons someone could want to remove a force for good that champions humanity, but there are other ways to do that that won't require killing a god. These are the unique results.
Suspect Motive: The entity either intended to steal divinity from Aroden, or to destroy Prophecy. Since no new gods have appeared and no one has claimed responsibility for the death of Aroden, we have to assume the motive was to destroy prophecy. The suspects end game was to destroy prophecy for the Golarion gods.
In a high profile crime like this, there is always a traitor, a toady. The traitor is not always a friend but he is a peer, someone that would be considered an equal. Too many details in Aroden's death revolved around privileged information. Since we've established that our Prime Suspect is someone stronger than the Golarion gods, we have to assume that the Prime Suspect is from off planet. The traitor is a Golarion god that has been off planet. The traitor is Dou-Bral, AKA Zon-Kuthon.
Zon-Kuthon is the only god we know for a fact has been off planet. We know he was captured by an alien entity that wasn't just strong enough to take him in a fight, the entity tortured him, twisted him, dominated him. Zon-Kuthon's alien entity is the Prime Suspect.
So now we need a connection between Zon-Kuthon and Aroden. The Starstone. Zon-Kuthon's freedom from the plane of shadow would come from the insane possibility that the sun would stop rising in the sky. He made that bet with Abadar because he knew the Starstone was coming. The Alien Entity told him so. Aboleths may have called it, but the Alien Entity put his Starstone creation into the asteroid that started the era of darkness. The Alien Entity is powerful, powerful enough to create the Starstone based on the abominable research he did on Dou-Bral. He knows enough about the gods from dissecting Dou-Bral that the Alien Entity can create something that will invest someone into the Golarion pantheon. He is the only fitting player that we know of that has intimate knowledge of Golarion god anatomy, who could design a Starstone. It has to be the Alien Entity.
So what was Aroden? He was the Macguffin. He was made a god just for the purpose of dying and weakening the pantheon. That's what the Starstone is for. If one god dying can destroy a power for all gods, then the divine power of the Golarion pantheon must be connected. The Starstone connects a mortal to that divine field. While it effectively makes them a god, it dilludes the power of all the gods. If the Starstone is the invention of this Alien Entity, it puts their power in subservience to The Entity. If the Entity is a controlling influence to Starstone power, it has the ability to make Starstone gods weaker. The other Starstone gods keep showing up in 1000 year increments, indicating an intelligent hand behind the way new gods are invested by the Starstone. Maybe Cayden Cailean got too drunk and that's why he doesn't even remember how he got to the Starstone. Or maybe time was running out and the Starstone needed to abduct anyone to invest with divine power. Nobody knows what happens in the Temple of the Starstone. Maybe it's full of traps unless you are the right person at the right time and that's the secret to touching the stone.
Suspect Endgame: The Alien Entity that corrupted Dou-Bral wants to conquer Golarion. He had enough time to extract all the information he wanted from Dou-Bral about the various gods, resources, history. He learned from the story of Rovagug and knew a frontal assault would never work. He knew from dissecting Dou-Bral and the story of Lamashtu's divinity how their divinity worked. The gods needed to be weakened, distracted, picked off one by one. So he killed Aroden. He had the leverage to do it. He knew every inch of the power he gave him.
If I wanted to attack a planet, I would ideally make sure they didn't know I was coming. If I could only kill one god and rob them of one power I would choose prophecy. Then I would make sure in the aftermath that there were some distractions that could be explained as the death throes of a god, things like a wound in the earth ripping open throwing demons everywhere, or a giant hurricane forever.
We're right, Aroden died to destroy prophecy, but not for the reason we think. I'd like to believe it was a noble act, but the story would harm no one to know. It would be a rallying point, but not an extraordinary one. But people don't go mad prying into gentle stories. A noble death doesn't release a hoard of demons. It's too much of a coincidence that the rock that frees Zon-Kuthon, a rock he knows is coming, also contains the Starstone.
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I think when he's referring to Tar Baphon's trap, he's talking about the pit (Well of Sorrows) he dug on the Isle of Terror that was supposed to kill/trap/something to Aroden, but the trap was never sprung. Considering the fight on the Isle of Terror (896AR), when Aroden killed TB the first time (note that this was already after TB had ascended to Mythic [Mythic Realms]), was supposed to be be when TB sprung the trap, and Aranzi was killed during the Shining Crusade (when TB was in Ustalav) during the 3800's, the Well doesn't seem connected to Aranzi's death at all.
Keep in mind too, Arazni was a demi-god, and Mythic allows mortals to challenge demi-gods and kill them. A fully powered Mythic Character (such as Tar-Baphon) could kill a demi-god like Arazni. It's worth noting, that Arazni was toyed with by Tar-Baphon before her death, hinting that Arazni wasn't a very powerful demi-god. In fact, she was Aroden's Herald, and the Heralds of the Gods are intended to be around CR 15 (at least currently) so they can be summoned by Clerics via Planar Ally spells.
It's very possible Arazni was a CR 15 demi-god when she confronted Tar-Baphon and as a CR 26ish Mythic Lich, she was naught but a toy for his amusement.
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Yeah how dare mortals try to be like the outsiders!
Those uppity types need to know their place -- trying to live forever when you don't naturally have the ability to due to a defect of birth is just wrong!
That's what the 'good' types would have you believe at least. They'll tell you we are evil just cause we are willing to let you have all the time you want, even if you don't normally get to simply because you weren't so fortunate as to be birth/made (whatever) as something that already does.
Somehow that seems skewed to me.
someone call out the paladins of Iomedae, one of the looneyss of the whispering way has escaped from the hungry mountains again......
and this one is singing and dancing to
Excuse you -- for that to be true I would have to be mortal. The whispering way is a poor imitation of actual immortality and I personally do not advocate its use.
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The Starstone as unborn planet, or even, perhaps, unborn plane of existence**, snatched up and used as a mythic power source, robbing it of the potential of engendering billions of lives and entire ecosystems, etc., etc. all so that a handful of mortals can bootstrap themselves into divinity, and join dozens, if not hundreds, who earned it 'the old fashioned way' sounds about as dark and terrible a thing as one could imagine.
(**Now there's a plan for Mythic ascension. I shall create permanent demiplanes, with the potential to expand into entire living worlds, and then devour them, absorbing that potential. Or just eat some real worlds or planes, assuming I can figure out how to make a fork and knife big enough to help me with this quest to become Galactus....)
Billions (or, in the case of a nascent plane of existence, a veritable infinitude) of potential lives snuffed out before even being born, so that Golarion could have three more gods, adding to a cast of many dozens.
Anywho, Aroden, still probably dead. If imprisoned in some way, or lured into a prison and then killed, my money is on the Eye of Abendago, being that prison. Perhaps it was meant to dissipate after he died, but the act of a god dying within it imparted it with a mythic quality of its own, and it rages on, refusing to abate, echoing with the last howls of outrage from a betrayed god who went down fighting.
In the eye of that storm, perhaps there's an island, and perhaps that island is the one place in all the universe where a cleric of Aroden could still gain spells, as some lingering remnants of the dead god still haunt that place, which, making the point moot, no one will likely ever be able to get to...
If something like the Binder class is ever converted for Pathfinder, Aroden would make one hell of a Vestige (along with Curchanos and the dead Azlanti gods of the moon and magic). It might be intriguing if there are Vestiges for people who aren't entirely dead yet, as well, such as Arazni, whose divinity may be dead as dreams, but the personage herself keeps on trucking, or Ydersius, who hasn't completely given up the ghost yet... The Binder, IMO, is a much stronger concept if it ties thematically to a setting, and doesn't have a bunch of setting-unrelated folk as Vestiges.
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This theory is still my favorite.
I'm a little late to the party here, but this is my favorite too. :)
Seriously though, I really hope they never reveal it. I like that there are intentional omissions in the setting -- it makes it more fun to GM in Golarion.
On the other hand, if Paizo did decide to let the cosmic cat out of the bag, and some random poster on the forums had guessed correctly well ahead of the reveal, I think that poster should get a prize.
Seriously though, I really hope they never reveal it. I like that there are intentional omissions in the setting -- it makes it more fun to GM in Golarion.
I also hope that they never reveal it, though for a different reason.
I find with other storytelling media (such as novel series' and comic book series') that if the author knows the secret answer to a question, but doesn't plan out exactly how that answer will be revealed, then by the time the moment of revelation comes, the author feels ho-hum about it, and mentions the answer as a kind of by-the-way, as (s)he deals more with the new subplots, characters, and other elements that now interest him / her more.
I doubt that RPG setting materials are any different in that respect.
On the other hand, if Paizo did decide to let the cosmic cat out of the bag, and some random poster on the forums had guessed correctly well ahead of the reveal, I think that poster should get a prize.
I like this idea... but it's unlikely.
I'd suggest getting an empyreal lord or something similar named after them but... uh... probably not. No. Too incongruous with Golarion at large.
I'd suggest that their character be the next to ascend via the Starstone, but... uh... no. Probably not. Too powergame-cheeze (unless Paizo chose the portfolio).
I'd suggest that their character be a BBEG somewhere, but... uh... not with some of the builds 'round here. That game could be nigh impossible.
Most any of the suggestions I'd come up with would result in rather catastrophic results for Paizo.
I'd still absolutely love it if they eventually revealed it, though. That, the Peacock Spirit, Nex, and Count Renalc. (Also more information on Old Man Jtambe, please. He's awesome.)
I'd love that, over all.
On the other hand, if Paizo did decide to let the cosmic cat out of the bag, and some random poster on the forums had guessed correctly well ahead of the reveal, I think that poster should get a prize.Something like "The Prophet of Aroden" below their forum handle would be pretty awesome.
That would be really sweet, actually!
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I know that I am incredibly late to this party, but reading through the list as it is, I read a theory or two that are similar to my own.
I theorize that Aroden has been imprisoned in the Eye of Abendego by Zon-Kuthon to be broken by the alien god breakers of the Dark Tapestry. It was during this time that Aroden detached his soul from his body to seek assistance from the other gods in ending this threat.
I'm still fleshing out the rest of the backstory, but I would like to run it as a Mythic Campaign one day.