I think it quite likely that Aroden had more racial hit dice than Animate Dead would allow.
Considering he was an ascended human, he probably didn't have any "racial" hit dice.
That said, even if he did, you could still, in theory, make a zombie out of him, as, unlike skeletons, zombies don't have a hit dice limit (the table caps out, but the template as-written does not), though you'd have to be a strong caster with Animate Dead, depending on how much an ascended human would be considered to have (if it's anything like the 3rd Edition deities, it'd cap out at 20 HD, which means he'd be a 21 HD zombie... not terribly impressive, considering the idea of a zombie Tarrasque).
In any event, that presumes there's a body and/or Aroden is able to be targeted, deities are subject to such effects (certainly demigods are), and similar concerns and possible caveats.
Not to mention, turning someone into a literal mindless zombie (as interesting a story concept as that may be) usually isn't seen as a sign of respect, and certainly not by the people who were - at the time of his death - literally and figuratively closest to him.
In several mythologies, the primary cause of a god's death was oathbreaking.
Has anyone considered the possibility that instead of Aroden's death breaking the prophecy, Aroden's breaking the prophecy caused his death??
Clearly the reward for passing the Test of the Starstone has an expiration date. There's a few nervous johnny-come-lately deities flitting about the cosmos.
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It was suicide.
Seriously. Here's my thinking: According to the Starfall Doctrine, Aroden's return was supposed to kick off the Age of Glory -- a 1000 year golden age where Aroden was going to personally lead the human race to greatness. That sounds an awful lot like something I read before:
The allusion isn't an accident -- and neither is Rovagug's epithet, "the Rough Beast." It's a reference to William Butler Yeats' poem, The Second Coming:6 Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years.
7 And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison --Revelations 20
(first two stanzas omitted for brevity)
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Aroden knew that the Age of Glory prefaced Rovagug's release. In order to stop the prophesy, he had to destroy prophesy itself. His death was the only sure way to accomplish this -- the preordained sequence of events could not occur from that point forward. This is why prophesy stopped being accurate afterward -- fate itself was broken. This is also what caused the cataclysmic events of 4606 AR; the Eye of Abendego, Worldwound, and Shatterfield are scars in the fabric of the universe, left behind by a mass reconfiguration of reality itself. It was like trying to divide by zero.
The details can't really be known -- I prefer to think that Aroden just put a metaphysical gun to his own head for the good of humanity. It's possible that he engineered his own murder, Sandman style, and deliberately let his guard down at the right moment (Asmodeus is my prime suspect, but there are certainly others).
The more I mull this over, the more convinced I am that I'm right (Mr. Jacobs, please feel free to disabuse me of my pretension).
Kazred, that's actually really neat.
I've had similar thoughts (as have several), but I hadn't actually put the concept of Rovagug's release as part of this equation as compared to Revelation. In that regard, I could actually even see Pharasma taking part in this (either purposefully or tacitly) in this case.
That's... really well done. :)
Wow....
I really really like Kazred's theory
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It was suicide.
Seriously. Here's my thinking: According to the Starfall Doctrine, Aroden's return was supposed to kick off the Age of Glory -- a 1000 year golden age where Aroden was going to personally lead the human race to greatness. That sounds an awful lot like something I read before:
The allusion isn't an accident -- and neither is Rovagug's epithet, "the Rough Beast." It's a reference to William Butler Yeats' poem, The Second Coming:6 Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years.
7 And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison --Revelations 20(first two stanzas omitted for brevity)
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?Aroden knew that the Age of Glory prefaced Rovagug's release. In order to stop the prophesy, he had to destroy prophesy itself. His death was the only sure way to accomplish this -- the preordained sequence of events could not occur from that point forward. This is why prophesy stopped being accurate afterward -- fate itself was broken. This is also what caused the cataclysmic events of 4606 AR; the Eye of Abendego, Worldwound, and Shatterfield are scars in the fabric of the universe, left behind by a mass reconfiguration of reality itself. It was like trying to divide by zero.
The details can't really be known -- I prefer to think that Aroden just put a metaphysical gun to his own head for the good of humanity. It's possible that he engineered his own murder, Sandman style, and deliberately let his guard down at the right moment (Asmodeus is my prime suspect, but there are certainly others).
The more I mull this over, the more convinced I...
While this is an interesting thought the parallel kind of breaks down after a point. After Satan is released he is defeated, thrown back in, and all is well forever more. The prophecy of Aroden's return makes no mention of this sequence of events or even hints at darkness to come. Just a golden age of humanity.
My theory is that, like others, he chose to die to prevent some other sequence of events from happening. One idea that's been bobbing in my head is that he chose to die to break prophecy and thus prevent Groetus from triggering the end of all things.
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While this is an interesting thought the parallel kind of breaks down after a point. After Satan is released he is defeated, thrown back in, and all is well forever more. The prophecy of Aroden's return makes no mention of this sequence of events or even hints at darkness to come. Just a golden age of humanity.
I didn't mean to imply that Rovagug is literally Satan -- only that Golarion's mythology contains deliberate allusions to Christian eschatology. It could've been done just for flavor, but I think there's more to it.
The prophecy of Aroden's return makes no mention of this sequence of events or even hints at darkness to come. Just a golden age of humanity.
There wouldn't be any overt mention -- hence all the hinting around. It's meant to be a mystery.
My theory is that, like others, he chose to die to prevent some other sequence of events from happening. One idea that's been bobbing in my head is that he chose to die to break prophecy and thus prevent Groetus from triggering the end of all things.
That's a really great idea. I agree. :P
Another interesting coincidence: in the Old Testament, the location given for the beginning of the End Times is the Mount of Olives (Zechariah 14:4). It's a real place, just to the east of Jerusalem. Built into the side of the Mount is a tomb called The Pillar of Absalom.
I think I remember a news braodcast about that some years ago.
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Guess who the Hermit is on that very small island to the immediate Southwest of Mediogalti Island is?
Weird how he washed up there right after the Eye of Abendego formed, which was right after Aroden supposedly "died."
If I were a man who became a god and got tired of all the whining about how I did nothing about Tar Baphon, or how I let Arazni get turned into a lich, or about how terrible I was because I took those orbs to make the Isle of Kortos green and made those folks in the Darklands miserable, etc., etc., etc. I might give up and hand my divinity over to Pharasma and ask her to a) send me to Golarion to some remote place where I could live as a man again in peace and b) never tell anyone about it because I don't want to be bothered by anyone looking for me or hoping I will come back. Pharasma, in addition to taking my divinity, might also take my ability to speak so *I* wouldn't screw up and tell anyone what happened.
Hmmm...
Drandle Dreng is Aroden that is why he never sleeps and wakes up pathfinder agents at all hours of the night.
The few thing we know about Aroden is that he was a wizard, and that he was from ancient Azlant. So in my view of things, I decided to tie his death to the dissapearance of Lissala, AKA the thassilonian (and originally Azlant) godess of rune and magic, that we know is still alive, but who have dissapeared and nobody know where she is or what she is doing, even her own servant and herald know.
Basically the idea is that as the date of his "glorious return" to golarion was approaching, Aroden decided to add even more flair to the event by also bringing back the godess as an ally/lieutenant of his (since we all know he loved to have women serving as his right hand), and went looking for her, but didn't succeed and died instead. Specifically, in his search for her, he found a divine equivalent to the good old "symbol of death" and just dropped dead then and there.
The reason is multiple, I like the idea that his undoing was purely his own ego (he didn't need to go looking for her, his return was already written in stone), because "ancient golarion" is full of reference to the older DnD edition (the runelords obviously working with 2e wizard rule, the green faith being 2e druid...) and Aroden dying because of the stupid unfair trap you can't predict or resist to and just have to sorta know it's there that was frequent in old DnD is funny, and because I find Lissala's whole deal more interesting than Aroden so I don't mind subbordonning his mystery as a smaller part of hers.
Also, because I have idea for a megadungeon campaign with Lissala having locked herself at the center of it, and having "absolute" runes that have irresistible effect and act more like puzzle than normal hazard is pretty central to this idea. And having literally Aroden corpse being what foreshadow/warn the party about the rune/symbol of death would be pretty neat.