The Nature of the Hao Jin Tapestry [Spoilers]

[Chris Mortika]

In his comment about "Temple of Empyreal Enlightenment", DMFTodd wrote:

Quote:

The people in the tapestry - how did they get here? The stated reason seems to be that they wandered here from other sites within the tapestry. So Hao Jin put things in her tapestry that contained living people? That sounds - capital E - Evil.

And Hao Jin disappeared 300 years ago? Wouldn't the tapestry be crawling with multiple generations of people at this point? Not the temple itself - i see how the population would stay in control there - put the countryside should be thick with people at this point.

Has anyone come up with descriptions on how the other folks got there? That seems like the first thing players would ask.

I concur that there's a lot about the tapestry that, as a GM, I don't understand. Mark has indicated that there is a day and night in the tapestry -- how? According to the stars in the Hao Jin sky, what latitude is it supposed to be?

Are there different climate zones? Do they make sense from a planetary perspective, or is it a patchwork?

Is there a boundary in the demiplane, or does it loop back on itself like a tiny planetoid?

In the 300 years since Hao Jin created it, have there been any attempts to explore the place? To conquer neighboring territory, or to escape? Who is the most powerful character / being in the tapestry? What's the largest city? Is there trade?

What gods are worshipped there? Do the inhabitants know that Aroden is dead?

Now, I can run the available scenarios there, and I can answer any PC questions with "It's a mystery!" But I would sure like to understand what it's supposed to look like.

[Mike Lindner]

I'll take a stab at answering some of these from the scenarios I've played and run.

Since it's a demiplane latitude seems a nonsensical concept. The stars in the sky wouldn't be those of Golarion, at least not from the same point in space. They may even just be magical figments, not any more real than the stars in The Truman Show.

There certainly are different climates, as we've seen, but the magical processes to maintain them are breaking down. Scenarios have mentioned that there were at least distinct regions of desert, swamp, and temperate areas (the temple?).

Unless there were divine casters who got their spells from Aroden, it is quite possible that no one in the tapestry knows he is dead.

As to how the other people got there, most of the humans are Aspis agents, so that will get explained. Other groups seem to have come along for the ride when Hao Jin plucked various regions out of Golarion, such as the lizardfolk. The ratfolk were purposely removed, but the other thing in Round Mountain was an accident.

Hao Jin didn't seem to care all that much about trapping people in the tapestry.

The Pathfinder Society doesn't really know all that much about the tapestry. That seems to be the point, that whole being explorers thing. I think that can enhance the scenarios that take place there. From the very first mission into the tapestry you really never know what you're going to walk into. Also, from a more metagame perspective, I think a lot of the questions are purposely unanswered as doing so leaves more possibilities open for future exploration scenarios.

Hopefully players are willing to go along for the ride and let the GM use the mysteries of the tapestry to add suspense rather than strain ones suspension of disbelief.

[Bbauzh ap Aghauzh]

The obvious, but unsatisfying answer is, “MAGIC!”

[Jiggy]

Andrew Christian wrote:

The obvious, but unsatisfying answer is, “MAGIC!”

Linked that for ya. ;)

[Mark Moreland]

I answered DMFTodd's question on the original thread, but it bears repeating here.

I wrote:

Hao Jin rarely intended to move people unwillingly into her realm, at least not when she wasn't collecting creatures specifically. In this case, Dakang was rooting around in the dirt in a battlefield she collected; the inhabitants in the Wonders in the Weave series were accidentally collected when the cave network they lived in was brought along with an old ruin adjacent to it; the inhabitants of Round Mountain were brought along when she pulled a whole sphere of earth from the Darklands into the tapestry to seal off invasion tunnels from below and save a nation under attack. Where the specific folks who appear in this adventure came from isn't defined, but when you're collecting whole ruined cities, ancient temples, and geographical wonders from across the world, there are likely to be a l few people who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

And whether or not this fact would be considered evil, Hao Jin was certainly not good-aligned. She was, after all, a devout follower of Abadar.

One of the reasons we put much of the adventure in the demiplane of the Hao Jin Tapestry was that it allowed us to play with some of the assumptions of how things worked in adventures, like having Osirian ruins in a swamp, Vudrani ruins in a glacier, and a portion of the Darklands in a self-sustaining hollow mountain complete with its own society and power structures. We purposely didn't define many of the questions raised in this thread because without knowing how we want to use the tapestry in the future, we didn't want to close off possibilities before we even got started.

Since we haven't mapped the whole thing, we don't have limits of what is and isn't within it, and we don't necessarily know what happens when you get to the "edge of the map." I have some ideas, but they're just in my head at the moment. I have a few ideas about who other powerful beings within the realm might be, but until they show up in an adventure, I'd rather not nail them down.

Were the tapestry featured in an Adventure Path (like the similar demiplane of Kakishon was in Legacy of Fire), we'd likely do a full gazetteer of the realm as one of the issue's backmatter articles. Or if a whole AP were set there, we'd do a 64-page Campaign Setting sourcebook on it. But Pathfinder Society Scenarios' limited format doesn't allow us to do that level of background on many things, including the tapestry. I hope that each adventure at least provides enough information for GMs to adequately run the scenario at hand, and that over time folks can piece together a bit more about how the tapestry works, but until such time as we can devote an entire product to nailing down a lot of the other details, some things will be left to GMs to fill in as needed at their tables as questions pop up.

We have a scenario planned for Season 4 that deals directly with exploring the nature of the tapestry and trying to influence some of the forces that keep it in motion, so I imagine a lot of these questions will be answered when that comes out, but until it's written, I can't make any promises.

[Jiggy]

It's a madhouse! A maaaaaadhooouuussse!