Oh, Lisa. You're such a tease! LOL
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Kudos to Jacobs and his secrecy. I hope to buy Paizo's products until I'm 90 years old.
Lirgen was a society bent on astrology and prophecy. The eye wiped them out. I imagine (knowing James's tastes) that they may have seen something they shouldn't have. Aroden may have seen the same things. Even if neither saw what was to come, the probablility exists that they would be the first to notice, so they had to go.
As for the Worldwound, I know very little about Mendev and it's history.
So there are at least two people now in the know. The web is widening! Only a matter of time now!
For the record, I went and asked James if he REALLY has an answer for what happened to Aroden or whether he was just screwing with the rest of us. He went to his computer and opened a top secret file called "Unanswered Secrets" or something like that. In that, he has the answers to a number of mysteries that we don't plan to explain, but that he needs to know the answer to nonetheless. And he showed me the answer to Aroden's death. So it DOES exist. :)
Sometimes it is good to own the company...
-Lisa
Clearly, Jacobs cannot be swayed. And onsite security (cave raptors, customer service gninja, Cosmo reading poetry) will be too difficult to covertly breach in a short period of time.
But Lisa... Lisa is still a mortal.
Tempt-able.
Bribe-able.
Now we just have to determine the price in rare Star Wars l00t (and possibly alcohol and baked sweets) for her to tell all. And she'll be at PaizoCon...
MWAH-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!
A live-in George Lucas, perhaps?
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A live-in George Lucas, perhaps?
Only if you can go back in time and get a vintage 1977 George Lucas :)
Was reading Bestiary 3 earlier today and have my own crackpot theory to add. One of the signs of an impending invasion of a Hekatonkheires is storms and such leading up to its arrival. Aroden met and was killed by one of the three original Hekatonkheires, leaving a tiny trail for it to follow back to Golarion. The Eye is the sign of it's slow, yet inexorable, progress to Golarion, it will crash into the ocean there and destroy the world! Unless a band of plucky heroes save the world that is.
Pretty sure it was AM BARBARIAN.
It may not have been. It may have been shifted towards chaotic. A great (Lawful) empire falls, a rift to The Chaotic (also evil) abyss. And the Eye of Abendego is just off the edge of the formerly great Cyclopean kingdom of Ghol-Gan. We don't know enough about Ghol-Gan yet to make an educated guess as to it's alignment, but there could be something involved there.
I think from From Serpent Skull AP (Thousand Fangs Below)
General Aveshal, The Cyclops, was Lawful Nuetral. I think the Ghol-Gan allied with the Azlanti in the war against the Serpent Folk in Garund. The general might be a good indicator as to the whole, as he is the only one left to remember the old empire. He probably could answer a lot of questions.
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My speculation is that Aroden committed suicide ...
I think suicide is the right answer and is exactly the fulfillment of the prophecy. You see I think the Aboleth still had a hook into humanity through the Last Azlanti. The prophecy I think had to do with the Aboleth reclaiming their control of humanity like in the days of old through Aroden, exerting whatever high level control they had over the Azlanti people to actually control a god into terraforming the surface world into a place more suited to their needs. Look at the sodden lands, the place is perfect for an Aboleth surface colony.
I think the Lirgen looked into the dark and saw other worlds that had suffered the same fate, and having witnessed the mind behind it where wiped out for their knowledge. The Aboleth used the power of the stars to cause atmospheric phenomena to occur right before Starfall, Lirgen's astronomers probably saw something similar.The spread of the Azlanit heritage around the inner sea(Taldor, Andoran, Cheliax) looks like a prime setup for the reclamation of Humanity and their lands. The Gillmen of Absalom are probably even the "saved" Azlanti the Aboleth preserved to act as go between Aroden's city and the rest of Humanity.
I think Aroden freed humanity from the curse of the predestined servitude to the Aboleth, freeing his people from the fate the Aboleth had predetermined for the whole planet. His self sacrifice gave us a chance to write history our own way.
A god sacrificing himself for his people to prevent the forces of darkness from controlling their fate sounds strangely familiar.
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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We now know that they 'fell to evil' and 'brought the perverse beliefs
of the serpentfolk back to their empire' (Lost Kingdoms).
Many scholars link the initial degradation of Ghol-Gan society with their exposure to serpentfolk beliefs and traditions. With the Darklands’ absence of their much revered sun and moon, the cyclopes who first came to this realm initially sought to seize it from the scaled monsters in the hope that their gods would smile upon them and shine their light in the perpetual darkness of the subterranean world. As time wore on, however, those cyclopes who spent most of their lives in these lightless caverns realized their celestial deities could never find them here, and so they came to embrace the dark ideologies of the serpentfolk they had conquered. The underground-dwelling cyclopes eventually brought such practices to the surface of their empire, where the beliefs quickly spread among the common folk and later the nobility.
We now know that they 'fell to evil' and 'brought the perverse beliefs
of the serpentfolk back to their empire' (Lost Kingdoms).Many scholars link the initial degradation of Ghol-Gan society with their exposure to serpentfolk beliefs and traditions. With the Darklands’ absence of their much revered sun and moon, the cyclopes who first came to this realm initially sought to seize it from the scaled monsters in the hope that their gods would smile upon them and shine their light in the perpetual darkness of the subterranean world. As time wore on, however, those cyclopes who spent most of their lives in these lightless caverns realized their celestial deities could never find them here, and so they came to embrace the dark ideologies of the serpentfolk they had conquered. The underground-dwelling cyclopes eventually brought such practices to the surface of their empire, where the beliefs quickly spread among the common folk and later the nobility.
Oh I wish I had Lost Kingdoms, so much I don't know, so much lore unlooted.
What if it was Chaos/Freedom that was the true problem? The Serpent Folk were as much Chaotic as they where evil. Looking at the Fallout of the war with the serpent folk, even Azlant had rebels (Look at end of Serpent War/Start of Thassilon), Xin was exiled for his beliefs of wanting to work with the other races to form a stronger whole. I think Xin picked up the belief during the war.
What I find interesting in the above is the phrase "celestial deities could never find them here." Why not? We have seen that even Desna can penetrate the depth of the underdark, that cleric spells still work is proof enough that divine powers still reach. What if they("Many scholars") have misinterpret it. Does is it really mean astrological deities? The Stars do not shine in the darklands, perhaps what is out there in-between them cannot see into the depths. Maybe that is why the vaults where built there. To hide experiments that "X" didn't want to be witnessed by the powers out there.
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Well the cyclops were sun/moon worshipers (proto-saranae?) and that might just be what they believed.
Towards the end of their empire they were worshiping what suspiciously sounds like the Great Old Ones. I also don't think Chaos promotes baby sacrificing and cannibalism. :-)
Just realized something. Didn't James once say Golarion has no moon god/ess? Then what were they worshipping?
I think somewhere on the distant side of the globe, a third catastrophe is happening. These things always happen in threes.
Since Aroden was mortal before the star stone, I expect his death is a precursor to Cayden Cailean, Iomedae, and Norgorber's death as well.
Well the cyclops were sun/moon worshipers (proto-saranae?) and that might just be what they believed.
Towards the end of their empire they were worshiping what suspiciously sounds like the Great Old Ones. I also don't think Chaos promotes baby sacrificing and cannibalism. :-)
Just realized something. Didn't James once say Golarion has no moon god/ess? Then what were they worshipping?
Maybe the open and closed eye? The sun and the moon are stable, moving in roughly the same pattern for eons (i.e. lawful) the Sun represents good and moon evil (Cyclops are giants, and the werewolf Cyclops killed on the full moon, the height of evils power). What they later realized is that despite the sun covering the darkness, and the moon shinning brighter, the dark between the stars is always there.
Didn't the Azlanti have a moon goddess? Acavna- goddess of battle and moon vanished not long before Earthfall.
There seems to be a strange connection to the Cyclops, the Eye of Aroden, and the perception of something watching from above. Come to think of it; some of the Egyptian motifs with Aroden could be ties to Osirion and its connections to elsewhere. Another lead to follow in my ongoing research.
I have a question that I'm not sure has ever been answered.
How did Aroden become a god? He raised the Starstone, but I've always interpreted that he did that after his divinity was achieved. It was several thousand years after Earthfall and he is the last Azlanti. I'm thinking that he is an ascended like Irori. Or perhaps he seized his divinity from one of the dead gods like the Peacock Spirit or Acavna or another lost Azlanti divinity. I've always assumed that prior to gaining a divine spark, he was a powerful spellcaster, perhaps the most powerful to ever walk Golarion. Yet he was not a god of magic. What's his origin? We know more about most of the others but his origin is still kinda murky.
Another question. Was Aroden alive at the time of Earthfall? Being the last Azlanti could mean he was the last pureblooded Azlanti or it could mean he was the last being to have actually been a citizen of Azlant.
I have a question that I'm not sure has ever been answered.
How did Aroden become a god? He raised the Starstone, but I've always interpreted that he did that after his divinity was achieved. It was several thousand years after Earthfall and he is the last Azlanti. I'm thinking that he is an ascended like Irori. Or perhaps he seized his divinity from one of the dead gods like the Peacock Spirit or Acavna or another lost Azlanti divinity. I've always assumed that prior to gaining a divine spark, he was a powerful spellcaster, perhaps the most powerful to ever walk Golarion. Yet he was not a god of magic. What's his origin? We know more about most of the others but his origin is still kinda murky.
Another question. Was Aroden alive at the time of Earthfall? Being the last Azlanti could mean he was the last pureblooded Azlanti or it could mean he was the last being to have actually been a citizen of Azlant.
I have a theory that he is actually the son of Emperor Xin and Amendra, the last two heroes of the Azlant War with the Serpents. I think that when Xin died, and the Runelords imprisoned the unnamed prince, they in a way protected him. When Earthfall occurred Vyush'baro (Aroden, unnamed prince) and Amendra led the people (varisians) through the old Serpent Folk empire in the darklands to freedom. I think somewhere on the trip Amendra died and left Aroden the last Azlanti.
As for godhood, I think he went looking for his people Azlant and eventually found the gillmen and an Aboleth colony, the aboleth showed him how to harness the Star Stone and become a god. They gave him the idea to found the city at the center of the world (a giant sea forms in the middle of a land mass and you don't think it was an aboleth plot?) to draw humanity in closer for the invasion that was foretold to the gillmen.
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Most scholars in Golarion however, believe that Aroden's death is part of what caused...the Worldwound to open.That one's more explicitly connected, as the demon that opened the Worldwound was actually one of Aroden's old rivals.
Possibly Aroden's death opened up some 'soft spots' between the dimensions? I have the idea of the Eye of Abendego being formed by some sort of 'hole' leading right into either the Elemental Plane of Water or Air. One of Storms would be even better if it exists in the Golarion setting.
What if James' notes were something really outlandish or innocuous, and that's why he doesn't want to reveal it?
Death of Aroden: Choked on Ham Sandwich
:p
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What I find interesting in the above is the phrase "celestial deities could never find them here." Why not?
My thought is that the Ghol-Gan worshipped the actual sun and moon, not just gods of the sun and moon (which, on this side of the planet, appear to be Sarenrae and Groetus, neither of which feel completely appropriate for the culture before its collapse).
I think 'celestial' was meant here as 'astronomical objects,' and not 'celestial,' a type of upper planes outsider...
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Sooo... These may be kind of silly questions. But, somebody gave this storm a name. That name has become known well enough, that it is the common parlance for describing this giant storm.
So, my questions are:
Who or What is Abendego?
Why would a giant, never-ending storm equate to/represent/actually be his/her/its eye?
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Who or What is Abendego?
Why would a giant, never-ending storm equate to/represent/actually be his/her/its eye?
I can't recall exactly where it was, but I'm pretty sure I remember reading that the sea/bay was originally named Abendego, and thus, when the hurricane appeared, it became known as the Eye of Abendego.
I could be misremembering, though.
If I'm not, then the name obviously predates the Storm and probably hails back to Lirgen and/or Yamasa.
EDIT: Found the reference. Inner Sea World Guide p.32, it was formerly the Abendego Gulf.
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Here is a quick overview of my belief about it. Aroden is/was the deity of civilization and humanity. Way back in the day, humanoids where basically the Sith Alchemy mud puppet slaves of the various Lovecraftian abomination monsters, and eventually learned magic and evolved and began to progress and rebel, and the Dark pantheon (gods?) was not happy, decided to Noah's Flood the world by calling a massive meteor.
It devistate the world above, and the Starstone vanished below the depths. Eventually, the humanoids, having survived as races, regrew in numbers, began to rebuild, the darkness went away, and mastered magic and sentient thought, blah, blah, blah, began to expand, created cities, empires, civilization. Aroden, at some point in time, outlasted the other primal humans, the Azlanti, and rose the Starstone, becoming a deity himself.
The whole Starstone thing was kind of a Epic Level Magic ritual, and probably, being either created by such magic or drawn from somewhere else, had a lot of ambient power. Power enough that it can actually grant divinity to anyone under circumstances. But, unlike other isdividuals that pass the test of the Starstone, (we have 0 details on it), Aroden does not seem to have taken the test, but rather simply ascended by raising it alone. How this was done, is unknown, and may or may not have been his test.
He was however, the last of his kind, and with his elevation to deityhood, may have actually severed that link as well, in the same way that Lichdom actually severed Arazni's connection to divinity.
It is possible that Aroden's death was a culmination of multiple things (all possibilities). Maybe he had never taken the Test of the Starstone himself, and had only gained a temporary divinity from it, almost like a radiation, but that eventually went away. Maybe with the destruction of his Shield in the battle with the Whispering Tyrrant, (AND THE FACT IT IS INCOMPLETE DUE TO A FRAGMENT STILL BEING IN HIS HAND), the loss of 2+ of his major servants, the waining of the Starstone magic, the fact he had not actually done anything within his portfolio and perview for some time, and the tremendious power he had to exude to lock away the Whispering Tyrrant all drained him to the point where he could no longer maintain his own deitihood?
Maybe he (and Pharasma) foresaw some greater threat in the future, and the only way to avert it was to basically scrifice himself, (or more accurately to undo the evil he had done). Perhaps raisin the Starstone to the surface opened a dorway, or destroyed some sort of lock/ward holding back the Lovecraftian's? Perhaps each attempt to take the Test of teh Starstone actually drained his power, as there is only a certain amount that all who pass it must share, and it got to the point that he could no longer maintain his as a greater deity? Perhaps the Whispering Tyrrant actually won the fight, stealing Aroden's soul/divinity/power, and Aroden didn't know it until it was too late, and rather than die or continue to power him, Aroden went into some sort of Odin Sleep?
It is also very likely that Aroden was captured or destroyed by Asmodeus, who not only ascended to deityhood around then (rather than major demon lord) but also basically took Aroden's capital overnight. This might also explain why Asmodeus is more fcused on LN rather than his native LE, maybe he absorbed too much of Aroden, (highlander style?), and actually literally became a melding of himself and Aroden's personality?
Some things are clear, though. That Pharasma, and seemingly only Pharasma and himself knew, though they made absolutely no preporations for it for the rest of the world (um, deity of humanity. . .). That the Eye and the Worldwound are directly linked to it somehow, and that the Whispering Tyrrant does not seemed to have gotten any stronger afterwards. No one actually knows what happened to Aroden. No magic helps. He does not seem to have a soul in an aterlife anywhere, and if Golarian has a realm that houses the coma-like bodies of "dead" deities, it is not there.
It is very, very possible that the Eye is located at the exact spot that he rose the Starstone from originally. Traditionally speaking, whenever we have a massive, inpenetrable storm (and even radio waves and expeditions can't make it through) it is some sort of massive fortress being built to fight off the aliens and a last ditch effort for humanity. I'm just saying. Arodena nd the Azlanti have a long history with the Old Ones and what not, who created and molded them, whose magic they began to experiment with not knowing what may happen, and who also tried to genecide them from the world for being bad little boys and girls, and to this day are still active to a point in the world.
Both the Worldwound and the Eye (if it is infact related to the location of the Starstone's raising) are directly tied to concepts of pure Chaos, otherworldly Evil, maddness, corruption, and Outside of reality.
Correct.
There's a pretty huge difference between not knowing a secret and knowing one. ...
That does means there are hints, and that does mean that if someone finds them all they might be able to figure it out... I'm actually not sure there's enough hints in print already to figure it out yet, and if someone does, I'm not gonna say whether or not they're right
James, I always suspected you wrote this......
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Aroden's holy symbol was a winged eye.
How do you get a supernatural manifestation of an eye in the sky? You make a giant hurricane.
Is there a reason the other gods are silent about the connection of the Eye and the death of Aroden? Divination magic (such as Commune) doesn't reveal the answer? Do the other gods not know what Aroden was doing before his death? Pharasma doesn't know? His realm was Axis. Is everyone in Axis silent about what was going on? It's almost like the entire multiverse looked the other way right before "something" happened, and now everyone is just standing around going "what?"
My players have never pursued the path too strongly, but I'm curious about what deities would tell their most powerful (read, high level) servants when said servants inquire as to what they know about these mysteries? And if it is "Dunno" then that seems odd to me. And to answer "that is not for the likes of mortals to know" seems dismissive at best. I'd be curious to hear how others (James?) have handled divination magic (or outright discussions between high level PCs and celestial servants of the outer planes if not the deities themselves) around this subject.
I believe canon is that all the gods except Pharasma were totally caught off guard by Aroden's death/disappearance but the Lady of Mysteries is not inclined to answer questions.
Well, I suppose Nethys knows, because omniscience, but your odds of getting an answer from him are probably worse.
The Shackles has a lot of sunken lost societies and a cultural melting pot due to its high traffic and a lack of established city states.
I imagine the Eye is somewhere between Arodens death and the death of the previous civilization along with something falling from orbit that caused the storm.
You could also implicate the storm as part of the plans of the Aboleth to release a natural disaster on the 'land folk' to wash them into the sea for new slaves.
But a really simply hand wavy idea is that it's just an oversized portal to the Plane Of Air.
Unless your players are going to get to mythic levels of play beyond level 20 I wouldn't worry about it because it's basically a big o' death vortex of DO NOT TOUCH.
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Pet theory : the divine energy that was released by Aroden's death had to go somewhere. At least part of it flew back to his native planet where he was prophesied to come back and lead Humanity to greatness.
Someone in Lirgen had foreseen that and wished to harness this energy. The attempt failed, and the energy busted out of its confinement, creating the Eye and sustaining it.
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I'm not so big on that. Even in our own solar system we have eternal storms (Jupiter's red spot for one). So I don't think we need to jump straight to sentience. But lets see who gains from the death of Aroden. Cheliax comes under the auspices of Asmodeus. Sarkoris becomes a gate to the Abyss. Lung-Wa falls. And then there are two natural disasters both in Garund.
Can we graph the impact points? maybe they have something in common geographically?
No i agree with you there MUST be a link. I think there is at least one more god that knows whats going on and keeping it a secret. There are hints we don't see or there ll be not jet published.
For example what about the Storm Kindler prestige class in Adventurer's guild pg.180? It is all based on the Eye of Abendego and Gozreh. And if u worship him and gain those powers that means he give you them. And what about the theory of the ship floating in the middle of the eye? there must be hints so small we can't see the big picture behind it. IT'S DRIVING ME CRAZY!!! I can't stop chasing the truth!! I'm obsessed! xD
Are you aware the post you replied to is over seven years old?
Is there a reason the other gods are silent about the connection of the Eye and the death of Aroden? Divination magic (such as Commune) doesn't reveal the answer? Do the other gods not know what Aroden was doing before his death?
My theory goes like this.
Rovagug doesn't just destroy stuff; he is like an anti-god, and he feeds on the divinity of other deities. One reason the gods don't directly intervene in mortal affairs is that any time they spend on the surface of Golarion causes some of their divinity to get siphoned into Rovagug's cage, helping him grow gradually stronger so he might eventually break free.
Aroden should have known this, and his allies tried to reason with him, but he got prideful about his triumphant return. So much like how the gods came together to seal Rovagug away, they had to come together to stop Aroden. It's like Murder on the Orient Express: they all killed him.
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I was just thinking. What if the Eye of Abendego, the World Wound and the fall of Lung Wa aren't caused by the death of Aroden?
What if these things and Aroden's death are actually all the symptoms and/or consequences of something else?
Prophecy seems to be center to a lot of the stuff that surrounds the whole mystery.
In the Lands of the Linnorm Kings a lot of magic users simply die when their prophetic powers fail them.
The prophecies of the Lirgeni also fail, causing them to be unprepared for the destruction of their kingdom and apparently also causing some of them to commit suicide.
One of the most high profile prophecies that fails, is obviously the one about Aroden.
But do the other prophecies fail, because the prophecy about Aroden failed?
Or is the prophecy about Aroden's return just one of many prophecies that failed?
And if so, what or who is causing the prophecies to fail?
And how does the voyage of the Lirgen's Glory figure into all of this?
Are the Dominion of the Black, the Emissary from Beyond and the deities of the Dark Tapestry involved? Specifically Aucturn and its strange relation to Golarion?
Did the crash of the Divinity draw the attention of the Dominion of the Black to Golarion, starting the whole series of events?
What about Starfinder's Gap and the disappearance of Golarion?