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This is my first post here on the message boards, I tried to search for this information but was unable to find what I was looking for. Apologizes in advance if this is known somewhere and I have missed it.
I have been Gming for several years and as of the start of this year our group switched over to PF from 3.5, we have adopted the world of Golarion, every day we come across something that makes me fall in love with this setting more and more.
Our group really enjoys finding out lore and things like that so I'm always trying to find new ways to impart knowledge of the setting through npcs and other events to the Players.
We are currently at the end of Chapter 2 in Rise of the Runelords. I have some extras planned that are not in the printed anniversary addition.
Thankfully the party told Commander Ismeir in the arvensore they believe the mayor to be in grave danger as he "must be the target of the red mantis" (not true) Our group came to this conclusion apon finding the ledger stating payment for "vorals legacy to the red mantis" Unknown to the party the city had the lord mayor immediately and secretively placed in protection. He was "replaced" with a decoy who with several magical items and enchantments appears and sounds to be none other then lord mayor lord Grobaras himself.
Receiving invites to his home for a feast and thanks for saving him from potential assassination, The group is rewarded with praise, gold, renown, and private box tickets to the "Magnimarian Globe Theater" to see the magical pyrotechnic show "Earth fall the spectacular". The "mayor" is honest upfront and says " in light of current events the city guard urged me not to go, how ever after some... convincing... they agreed with you by my side as undercover body guards I would be safe"
The party will attend this show (hopefully... best laid plans of mice and Gm's...) and at the end there will be a assassination that is some what successful at least on the "decoy" leaving the party a chance to catch or kill Opi or let him slip away. leading to some fantastic Theater house combat/ chase while it is still mostly occupied with both patrons and performers alike.
The plan is to have the players experience Earthfall some what first hand in a live magical stage show. "Earthfall the spectacular" that is put on by none other then renown historian and pathfinder, Taldan, Dr. Merrion Albercroft Neverion Menas. I plan on reenacting the event and some campaign foreshadowing containing Thassilon in dramatic detail something to really help the players remember this world shaping event.
My question is exactly how much of the event of Earthfall is known to historians, not common knowledge but to actual historians who dedicate massive time and resources, such as the man stated above? most of the things i have read on the matter are clearly for GM use. I would hate to spoil a later adventure paths by giving away "unknown" portions of information locked away in some hidden ancient library or similar. I would really like to avoid ruining surprises for my players if they play in other AP's with other Gm's.
As I'm relatively new to Paizo, there must be veterans more abreast of the topic then I, thanks for any help!
Hi, Obannon, and welcome to the forums. The Pathfinder Wiki page has a section on Earthfall. There is more contained in the Second Darkness AP.
Historians would likely have a fairly comprehensive understanding of Earthfall and its effects. After all, much of the way the world is now is due to the event. However, much has also been lost, such as knowledge of the Thassilonian empire. I'm sure there are stronger Golarion authorities that can provide you with more detail.
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First: welcome! Golarion's awesome! I highly, highly recommend the Inner Sea World Guide! That thing is amaaaaaazing.
Anyway, to get to your question, it really depends on the expert. The short version, is that there isn't any place where you can look and it says "Experts know exactly this much." though perhaps the Knowledge skills could be of some use in determining what a guy knows, more or less (you can also add circumstance bonuses for things like the Pathfinder Chronicles (I think they provide a +4 bonus, if you have access to them*?), a tremendously valuable library (perhaps containing the chronicls, yielding a total of a +6 circumstance bonus?), research assistants (+2 with aid another!) and the like to get them to know what you want them to know, as GM (or what you're comfortable with them knowing.
Consider this about the knowledge (history) check:
- DC 10 nets you the approximate date of a historically significant event
- DC 15 nets you the approximate date of a specific event
- DC 20 lets you know obscure or ancient historical knowledge
Also consider:
Answering a question within your field of study has a DC of 10 (for really easy questions), 15 (for basic questions), or 20 to 30 (for really tough questions).
Now, to use that as a base...
That earthfall happened is certainly known - it's talked about in every major culture in some way or another, and it's only a DC 10, so most people would know "it happened a really long time ago". But what exactly happened?
Consider this: Earthfall occurred in the year -5293. That event ended the greatest human empire (perhaps the greatest empire period) that the world had ever seen.
After Earthfall, the Age of Darkness occurred. It lasted until -4294. That's 1001 years. Creepy? Yes. Also cool. It was ended by the god of humanity, Aroden, who did so by raising the Star Stone. During that time, all sorts of amazing and terrible things occurred: Zon-Kuthon returned to the world and gained dark powers (and corrupted the horse lords of Nidal), orcs were brought forth on the surface by pressure from dwarves, and Gorum came into existence are but a few.
The current year is 4712 (according to the Inner Sea World Guide, it's 4711, but that's because that book was published in 2011 - presume that the last two digits of Golarion's years are the last two digits of ours. That's more or less the intent).
So, it's been 9,005 years since the Age of Darkness ended. 9,005. That's... a really, really long time. That means it's been 10,006 years - 10,006! - since Earthfall.
While, yes, they have gods like Aroden (who held divinity over history), Irori (he did, too), and Pharasma (goddess over time), let's just look at our own History for a moment.
So, our written history stretches back, let's just spit-ball, 3,200 BC. But that doesn't really tell us everything about that time. Because, sure, we have writing dating back to those times, but much of it is broken, fragmented, or destroyed.
Then we've got Religion, often giving us a view of history that many scholars find dubious, but often written by those who claimed to be there at the time (or at their behest).
The thing with Golarion, is it's got both. It has historians and religious leaders both of which have a slightly different view of how things happened. Add that to Cultural Assimilation, Cultural Borrowing, and Acculturation (all of which can be seen definitively happening in Sargava, as one example) means that these myths (whether true or not) get taken, adopted, changed, clarified, and refined for the current audience. These puppies have had 9,005 years to do that. By contrast, our current difference between the earliest civilizations we have remnants of is only 5,212 years (3,200 BC/BCE to 2012 AD/CE).
So you're going to have historians who bicker and argue with the clergy about the "facts" and "reality" and some clergy go with the "secular" views, and some learned researchers go with the "religious" view, and so on.
And while Taldor was around in the early days post-Age of Darkness (and, in fact, led by Aroden, they worshiped the remnants of the Azlanti pantheon) - it was the premier country, in fact! - it hasn't been the glorious version of itself in a long, long time. Egypt was once the power on the earth. Greece. Rome (Italy)! These guys were the big dogs, and no one - no one! - gave them any lip, or else. But now, their political and financial power is far eclipsed by China, Japan, Britain, and the U.S.; many have joined the European Union for the express purpose of having a global representative in order to have more clout.
Also, good luck finding the true history of (for example) the Greeks. It's come to light, recently, that those glorious white marble statues that look so beautiful, and speak of such a glorious history? Yeah, apparently, the ancient Greeks (philosophers that they were) thought it would be a great idea to paint those with bright, ugly, primary colors (blue, red, yellow). ]We found remnants only recently.
So, I'd say, no - they don't have a clear picture of what, exactly, happened. But they can probably make a decent guess. Earthfall is known to be a "Big thing from sky, fall, go boom, coat world in darkness." That's really easy.
But what you're describing is a play. A play that may have a historian backing it, but a play, nonetheless. It's meant for entertainment, more than as a history lesson. So it's going to be big, flashy, and dramatic, but, even if as accurate as possible, it's going to be a little light on the actual history. The statues, probably won't be painted, but left marble. The dialogue will be entirely made up. And while the gist and style of the people will be as best displayed as possible, given the resources to learn details, they'll probably talk with modern accents and use current turns-of-phrase.
After all, William Shakespeare heavily adapted history to relate to his "modern" (at the time) audiences, even as far back as five hundred years ago. And some wonder if he even exists!
Also consider one historian is almost always going to put his personal bias in, especially when he has an outlet for expressing such. A sage he may be, but he's still human.
The short version: kick back, describe an amazing play, and go a little light on the perfect-knowledge-history. Describe it as the historian would describe it - include little touches that are, perhaps, his bias, and thoughts on the matter as much as actual fact. And then describe as a gigantic fiery rock smashes everything.
Anyway, I hope this helps!
EDIT: for word choice, spelling/grammar, and adding a sentence (two if you include this!)
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My question is exactly how much of the event of Earthfall is known to historians, not common knowledge but to actual historians who dedicate massive time and resources, such as the man stated above? most of the things i have read on the matter are clearly for GM use. I would hate to spoil a later adventure paths by giving away "unknown" portions of information locked away in some hidden ancient library or similar. I would really like to avoid ruining surprises for my players if they play in other AP's with other Gm's.
Historians would probably know tidbits, and be biased into factions supporting wildly different theories.
While obvious effects on geography and human culture are... well, obvious (even though the details about Azlant and Thassilon are lost in the myth) some other factors are debated or completely unknown. Why and exactly how the elves disappered just before, how and when it influenced the dwarves' Quest for the Sky, etc.Maybe some fringe scholars may even propose the theory that orcs have been brought over by the falling comet - they were living underground before being driven on the surface by dwarves.
Probably the scattered few that think that the whole event was somehow engineered are considered quite a bit off the wall - and pretty much no-one knows who was the engineer.
You can easily add or subtract whatever you want without going against Golarion canon: it's by large still a mistery for the people of Golarion, learned or otherwise.
Thanks! I'm glad someone liked it! :)
Ditto on the great posts.
Tacticslion said pretty much everything I would have (and more) from the angle of documented history.
Cibet44 covered the meta-game evolution of Thassilon knowledge as the writers have handled it pretty spot on as well.
One nitpick on creatures that survived Earthfall: most of the ones in RotRL have only recently awoken and haven't really interacted with anyone. Many of the creatures (in RotRL and elsewhere) who have been around since Earthfall also aren't very accessible or necessarily willing to talk to the average scholar so they're not really reliable sources of information either.
Beyond that though, most historians probably know the when (10,000 years ago) and the what (a giant rock/star/space poop fell from the sky). It's the who, how, where, and why that are mostly up for debate.
Thanks, guys! I'm glad you like it! Golem101's was great because it was most of what I wanted to say, but more eloquent, while cibet44's was nice because it gave actual insight into what the game world presumed.
Good point about the unreliability of various narrators, The Block Knight!
One other thing to keep in mind with that: while Golarion is a relatively high-magic world in many ways, and a well-integrated world in others, it's also a fragmented world.
That means, especially without nifty things like the internet, that information is really hard to pass around. Even if one group of scholars does manage to find the truth, this is far more likely to result in rumors of "some scholars somewhere in Avistan who know something" (and the somewhere changes from telling to telling), rather than "hey, did you know in Andoran, approximately 34 longitude and 51 latitude, there is a town named Brie where some scholars discovered the truth of Azlanti and the Starfall?"
Even with dedicated research and seeking out the "scholars somewhere", it's going to be hard. Plus you're going to run into frauds, those who look like frauds but are genuine, and genuine people who were snookered by frauds (or who, in the ancestry of their teachings, were snookered by frauds). There's a lot of misinformation out there (like today, only worse, because they don't have a Snopes) and many people, even learned people, are going to be taken in by it.
One other thing to consider, is that even those people who were "close", historically, to the time periods and wrote about such things, might not be reliable. Academia has more and more come to the conclusion that many of the ancient historical records we once relied on written by the contemporaries were, in fact... poppycock (ironically, some of the things we thought were poppycock were, in fact, true). This is because every culture always puts their own spin on things, and even those dedicated to finding the truth could be misinformed or mistaken about some of their conclusions. Some, on the other hand, deliberately changed or altered their findings to get more people to read their stuff or because it agreed with their biases better if they did so (so, you know, not much has changed between then and now). Similarly with Golarion.
Anyhoo, enjoy!
Don't forget, Golarion is full of beings that could very well have been there for the event. Outsiders live forever, there are vampires, liches and other undead. It's possible that more could be learned about it through divination magic.
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Tacticslion: Yep, more good points. Information travels slowly in a pre-industrial age without the telephone (never mind the internet). Not everyone owns a horse and even those who do don't actually get around very fast. To top it off, sure there's magic, but Sending (the equivalent of a single email) is a Cleric 4/Wizard 5 spell. Not exactly low-level magic. About one of the only truly reliable ways to learn history is divination magic. Which brings me to. . .
Talynonyx: Great point sir. Though if I was a scholar in Golarion I might hesitate to interview a vampire. That never ends well. Divination magic is reliable, especially Commune ( Contact Other Plane is less reliable), but now we're back to the problem of relying on Level 5 spells. Which is fine for the church especially since religious institutions have a historic precedent for being the most knowledgeable body in a region. Most scholars, however, don't have access to such potent magic since the majority are usually Experts with the occasional Adept. Arcane spell-users have it a little tougher since they don't get reliable divination spells until Legend Lore and Vision. And in the Pathfinder Setting, spellcasters of Level 11 or higher are pretty rare (well, they seem to be a little more common in Varisia ironically).
But your point still stands Talynonyx. If you want the best possible source check with the gods. Though getting the information can often be a heroic feat in and of itself, especially if bargaining is involved.