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This is a set of reactions and questions prompted by the recent article on Milani in the AP book "Shackled Hut", with some reference material before we get started: Paizo Store Product Link for Shackled Hut
Also relevant, Milani on Pathfinder Wiki. This broadly establishes she is a CG-aligned Lesser Deity who favors revolutions that have the express intent of installing a better government for the citizenry, and works together well enough with LG deities such as Iomedae.
Between that overview and the article, it brings up questions that I find interesting so I'm going to quote some pieces of it in the hopes it prompts good discussion.
Is Milani a minarchist?: Milani is unusual amongst Chaotic Good in that she seems to tolerate some government. Clearly she isn't an anarchist in the classical sense (meaning "no strong central authorities in the society", not "burning kittens in the streets and robbing everyone you come across"), as she allows "(fair) taxes that contribute to the betterment of society..." So, is she a minarchist (that is, someone who wants the smallest government that can maintain authority on topics of broad social interest, but shows no control in small-scale/private matters)?
Combined with her willingness to cooperate with Iomedae (who is Lawful Good Classic), can we infer that Milani and her followers generally want a government structure where any given topic is handled at the smallest possible unit of organization? That is, they start at "can an individual handle this?", and work their way up (Family/Friends, City Government, Regional Government, National Government, Worldwide Organization) only if the immediately preceding unit in that chain cannot deal with the matter? For the purposes of this question, you can substitute 'Church' or 'Privately Owned Company/Business/Guild' for 'Government' if it makes more sense on any given problem.
Clearly Milani wants some kind of organization, just one that favors individual freedoms as its main priority while simultaneously encouraging these free citizens to be excellent to each other. Where does she draw the line, though? Her CG alignment suggests there is one, else we're left to wonder why she's not NG or LG instead.
On Elves in Milani's faith: Clearly Milani avoids elven deities wherever possible, the AP68 article makes that clear. What about mortal elven followers, though? Does she try to discourage them (or possibly even forbid them?) from joining, or are actual elves quite welcome?
Expanded Summons: This brings up some fun questions, some of which are game mechanical in nature.
Defining 'Priest' - Is a 'priest' someone who casts any kind of spells and follows Milani? For example, can a Wizard with Milani as their deity cast Summon Monster I and bring in the Great Horned Owl? Edit: Or would this be strictly defined as Divine casters of this deity? Regardless of the answer, can it also be applied to other deity-expanded-summon lists in AP articles?
Great Horned Owl in general - What is its value as a summon? It appears to be slightly inferior to the Eagle overall (albeit cool looking). Can one apply the Celestial template to it when summoned through Milani's expanded summoning rules in this article?
CG Hound Archons - Now here's the real surprise; Milani counts among her celestial army... a breed of creatures that are supposed to be embodiments of Lawful Good. Here we have a CG deity with CG Archons. The flavor link I infer from this is it's meant to further illustrate her cooperation with LG forces ("Let's work together to beat up Evil, then we'll sit down and have a non-violent talk about what kind of 'Archy/Cracy/etc.' we're going to replace the deposed regime with.")
How common are they, though? Does this have any implications on similar creatures existing in other deities' realms? For example, LG Azatas, NG Archons/Azatas, etc.?
Hopefully these topics bring up some good things to discuss; AP68's article on Milani added some much needed details on an obscure but interesting deity!
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That's cool. I'll be here when you're rested up and more able to add to the discussion! I was mostly reading over this and realizing, "Well... apparently she's not a full-extreme libertarian ("Small 'l'" for those who wonder) or anarchist, so where does she fall into the CG paradigm?"
The idea of a CG deity that isn't an extreme of CG and has arrived at a consistent, thought-it-through socio-political philosophy amuses me and I wanted to explore the idea a bit more. For example, would she favor abolishing any given city's Town Guard in favor of privatizing the function? If not, why not? Does she view police functions as a valid part of a government that covers the bare minimum of publicly provided services and then cedes everything else to personal freedom? Am I even right in interpreting her as a minarchist? If I'm wrong, does she actually lean toward NG enough that you could make a good case for her being NG or CG?
Just being opposed to slavery isn't enough to put her in the CG camp, nor is having some interest in personal freedom because LG and NG also have these aspects to varying degrees. Even most of the Sarenites who tolerate slavery (and this is noted as a point of contention) aren't happy about the arrangement, as James Jacobs has mentioned at some length in other threads... and many others outright oppose it.
So I'm curious about determining how precise Milani's CG philosophy is, because she has the potential to be among the most interesting deities in Golarion. Artwork of her and her followers is good stuff, too.
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On the move at the moment, but I really loved the bit on the CG hound archon. It gives a bit more precedence to deities having outsider exemplar followers that really fit thematically* that are otherwise divided if one enforces alignments as absolute.
*Shelyn and lilendi are probably the most obvious example that stick out to me
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There's another benefit to it too... you'll notice most Chaotic Good outsiders are very big on high mobility, misdirection, 'trolling' tactics, ranged attacks, and so on. ...They have trouble bringing this together into a cohesive whole that can really pour on the damage and finish a target off unless they're very high CR CG outsiders.
Hound Archons can work surprisingly well with such creatures. They have enough Speed (40 feet) to keep up with the various fey/azata/etc.... and hit hard up close. They're the anchor that a mobile CG force could revolve around.
This is 'theorycraft' more than anything since one rarely sees entire teams of *G Align Outsiders taking the field, but if they did... these CG Hound Archons would be great teammates for other CG outsiders.
Dot.
I am pleased to learn that Milani finally got a write up. I haven't looked through Reign of Winter yet, but I am running a campaign in (Vive le) Galt (!) and had read everything I could find about her in the various deities and campaign setting books.
I'm sure people won't be surprised to learn that in my campaign, Milani is a Trotskyist.
Vive le Galt!
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Vive le Permanent Revolution!
The idea of a CG deity that isn't an extreme of CG and has arrived at a consistent, thought-it-through socio-political philosophy amuses me
Well, if Milani has a consistent, thought-it-through socio-political philosophy, then she's certainly not a Minarchist. All snark aside, Minarchy suffers from the problem that abuse by private individuals is airbrushed away. For example, "privatizing the city's Town Guard" simply shifts one potentially tyrannical authority figure (the town government) for another (the owner and manager of the guard company). From the point of view of the person getting beaten for being a half-orc in the elvish part of town, it doesn't really matter what uniform the person holding the stick is wearing.
Trying to apply real-world political philosophies in Golarion is difficult for several reasons. First, Golarion is primarily a medieval world; a lot of the political developments of the past five hundred years that we take for granted are not widely accepted. Slavery, for example, is controversial across Golarion, while being near-universally abhorred here. The pirate nation of the Shackles would last about twenty minutes before a US carrier group decided to take out the Hurricane King (Somalia lasts as long as it does only because there's no actual pirate government to take out). The notion of "human rights" or even "a republic" is scarce, and a lot of governments are ruled by actual kings-by-divine-right.
Secondly, in a world where clerics can call down Flame Strike on unbelievers, notions like "separation of church and state" are ludicrous,... and worshippers of Rovagug are actual threats to public safety. "Freedom of worship" is not only not a human right, it's a damnfool idea that no one with any sense would embrace. But even the idea of competing interpretations of the same god is a little silly; since all spell-casting clerics need to be compatible with the ideas and ideals of their deity, the idea of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic God would be silly. At least one of those heretical interpretations wouldn't work.
Thirdly, we're talking about a world where economics demonstrably doesn't work. No one has ever managed to make a realistic economy for D&D (and probably no one ever will), which makes most economics-based political theories groundless and counterfactual.
Essentially, alignments in D&D are defined in moral terms, not in political or economic terms. They're also defined, in practical terms, by the specific whims of far-from-omniscient gods, who are both capable of tricking and being tricked as they jockey with other gods.
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"Let's work together to beat up Evil, then we'll sit down and have a non-violent talk about what kind of 'Archy/Cracy/etc.' we're going to replace the deposed regime with."
This strikes me as the most important bit. What follows the revolution isn't so much in her department. It's getting the bad guys out of power.
She typically is presented as the "Mob storming the castle" type, but that last bit has me wondering what she thinks of "Send in an assassin to take out the evil despot." Does the ends justify the means? This would impact my gunslinger/inquisitor of Milani.
About your bit on her verging towards NG. We know that deities can change their alignment over time, based on their worshipers. This was demonstrated by Lisalla. But Milani hasn't been a goddess for that long really. I could see that Milani on her own would be NG, but since the vast majority of her followers are chaotic, it pulls her into CG.
About your bit on her verging towards NG. We know that deities can change their alignment over time, based on their worshipers. This was demonstrated by Lisalla. But Milani hasn't been a goddess for that long really. I could see that Milani on her own would be NG, but since the vast majority of her followers are chaotic, it pulls her into CG.
Actually according to Word of James Jacobs she was always lawful evil. I think it was a matter of her priesthood was mostly lawful neutral and became more evil as time went on.
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Orfamay: That's a good response, and you've raised some interesting points. Going into her economics is probably not worthwhile beyond the most basic summary (we're talking one-word to one-sentence summaries with the most classic, fact-neutral meanings here; "communist," "capitalist," "doesn't even care how societies handle money/trade so long as everyone's okay with the result", "believes private property is paramount", etc.) for the very reason you've pointed out. Practically modeled, functional economies that correspond to the real world just don't work in Pathfinder. We have to accept that some items are inherently valuable and remain so no matter how many of them are brought into the market. That is, a diamond remains valuable in Pathfinder even if a million diamonds suddenly show up out of nowhere. Otherwise Raise Dead becomes a super-cheap spell and other things likewise fall apart.
So it's not worth going over her economics in anything but the most basic "who owns things?" definition, I concede that.
As to police functions, that is of course a good point as well... I think Robocop (the first one at least, possibly the second movie too?) vaguely (very vaguely) explores this theme of what happens if a private company holds too much sway on police functions with no real interest in public benefit. Obviously no Good-aligned Milanite is going to say "Well, it's privatized brutality, so it's totally okay!" ...Something tells me what form any given town guard function takes is going vary from community to community, thus. Some might contract it out to a company made for the purpose, others might tax fund it, others might just hire a rotating pool of adventurers/mercenaries for it, others will provide manpower through the local Milanite church. It's all good, I suppose.
Freedom of Religion seems to exist in a moderated form in Golarion. It seems the social ideal for this is "allowed to openly worship any Neutral or Good deity you want." That certainly varies from region to region (Sarenrae is an illegal faith in some areas, Milani definitely is in many areas since her modus operandi is "depose unjust rulers"), but "any *N or *G is fine by us" seems to be the ideal that many aim for. Open worship of *E deities hits an obvious snag in regard to freedom because CG generally favors "freedom up until you hurt someone" (or "you give up your freedom once you begin aggressions unto another person", perhaps), and... well, *E churches invariably, by definition, hurt people or are actively preparing to do so.
Thus one could argue Evil congregations have broken that non-aggression principle and given up their freedom of religion. This seems to absolutely allow a Milanite, Desnan, Cayden Caileanite (right word?), or other CG religiously active character to just start dishing out pain to random Zon-Kuthon churches and so on.
Comrade Anklebiter: That certainly can work in your home campaign, though Sean K. Reynolds' AP68 (The Shackled Hut) article actually discusses this... Milani and her faith specifically hate how Galt's revolutions have turned out, and they refuse to celebrate All Kings Day (or whatever it's called, it's something close to that I believe) due to this. Galt is basically "This is how everything can go very, very wrong. Don't follow this example!" to them.
Milanites want a single revolution that produces the clear result of shaping a new society where personal freedom is very important, yet people use that freedom to generally be nice to one another; this would be the strongest thing pulling her toward CG, I believe. Constant bloodshed is not part of Milani's agenda in Paizo-canon Golarion, it appears.
Thistledown: This is just personal opinion, but I would say Milanites certainly would be willing to do so if they thought they could control the ensuing scandal. Would it send the tyrant's soldiers into an uncompromising frenzy? If so, then maybe not a good idea. Yet if they'd just mellow out once their ruler was gone, then a Milanite should be willing to consider and carry out that option.
After all, they afford only basic respect to the concept of "office", viewing it as a legitimate authority only if it keeps taxes reasonable (and uses them for demonstrable public benefit) and doesn't brutalize the populace. Basically, "I'll respect your office once you prove you're worthy of it"... followed by actually providing said respect if you keep your end of the deal. Thus if they don't respect someone who cloaks themselves in fancy titles and laws to 'justify' their cruelty... they're certainly going to be willing to kill just one arrogant and high-ranked enemy to win the war instead of killing thousands of "just following orders" (regardless of whether that's a valid excuse or not) enemies to achieve the same effect.
Basically, they only afford value to your fancy robes when you provide value to said. Otherwise you're a valid target to them, I suspect.
(End of current reply/post. This MIGHT show up multiple times due to bizarre technical issue in my browser. Think I have it fixed, but if not and it shows up several times then I'll either edit it if I notice in time or a moderator might need to clean it out if not. Sorry for any oddities this causes!
Open worship of *E deities hits an obvious snag in regard to freedom because CG generally favors "freedom up until you hurt someone" (or "you give up your freedom once you begin aggressions unto another person", perhaps), and... well, *E churches invariably, by definition, hurt people or are actively preparing to do so. Thus one could argue Evil congregations have broken that non-aggression principle and given up their freedom of religion. This seems to absolutely allow a Milanite, Desnan, Cayden Caileanite (right word?), or other CG religiously active character to just start dishing out pain to random Zon-Kuthon churches and so on.
Ironically enough, you've just given a very strong argument for why Milani (or other chaotic deities) would not follow Minarchism or any other similar philosophy. Chaos is, by definition, unprincipled, not in the sense of "evil" but in the sense of pragmatic and not guided by overarching theory.
A Milanite would not need an argument to "start dishing out pain," or pay attention to whether someone had "broken that non-aggression principle," because, fundamentally, principles be damned. The Kuthite is being an oik and deserves pain, and, well, I-the-Milanite am in a position to provide it. No further justification is needed, or in fact, appropriate.
Ask any six libertarians about the exact meaning of the "non-aggression principle," and you'll get seven different hotly contested answers, none of which would actually be of interest to a chaotic person. Chaos is a very pragmatic philosophy that addresses the needs of the moment with very little regard to principle; Rand wrote extensively about (and against) this in Atlas Shrugged, a book that I assume you're very familiar with. One of Rand's key points throughout that book is that absolute law is necessary because pragmatic solutions to problems inevitably cause more problems further down the line, and only by duly following the strict regimen of her philosophy will problems be actually solved. It doesn't get more "Lawful" than that.
Similarly, Minarchists insist upon principle ("the smallest government that can maintain authority on topics of broad social interest") over the actual wishes, desires, and happiness of the people who would actually be subject to that government, suggesting that if Minarchism were associated with an actual alignment, that alignment would be LN. The happiness and personal welfare of the people involved is to be strictly subordinated to theory, because theory says that the people don't actually know what would make them happiest. Again, I can't imagine much that is more Neutral than telling me that I don't actually know what makes me happy....
If you really want to know what a CG government would look like, I suspect it would be some sort of modified feudal system, federal state, or confederation, one where each individual area were free to make its own decisions with relatively little input from any other, including freedom from the imposition of rules and principles from above. (The idea of a Bill of Rights, for example, would be regarded as silly, in part precisely for the reasons that the original Bill of Rights in the US was opposed -- because that would provide a codification to which people could point and say "but that's not in the codification, and therefore not a right.") Instead, the only overarching principle would be "don't be an oik," and any actor who behaved like an oik would be subject to summary pain -- irrespective of whether the oik was a teenaged hoodlum, a corporation polluting the watershed, or a person wearing the wrong color lipstick on a Sunday. Or, for that matter, a person dishing out unwarranted summary pain.
But as soon as you start to invoke principles in support of your actions and argue that I should follow your principles, you're moving away from chaotic good and into the realm of at best lawful good, and at worst lawful evil, depending upon what actions you want me to take. Certainly if you are arguing that, because so-and-so has done something that you object to, that I should therefore allow you to hurt him, or worse, that I should participate in and condone that hurt,.... well, at that point you're in lawful evil territory. From a chaotic standpoint, your principles are your own opinions, nothing more, and nothing about your opinions compels me to actions I disagree with. And from the fact that you're actively advocating causing pain to others, I have no difficulty in inferring the inherent evil in your position.
Which is one reason that Minarchy is not a "consistent, thought-it-through socio-political philosophy." At best, it uses the trappings of chaotic good to justify pure law. If we're lucky, it bends the rules enough to allow good despite itself, as in a prohibition on privatized brutality. I've met too few Minarchists of that type to take that end point seriously. Most of the Minarchists I've met are outright lawful evil, demanding that I actively participate in their tyrannical actions in the name of respecting their personal freedom to pull the wings off flies.
Comrade Anklebiter: That certainly can work in your home campaign, though Sean K. Reynolds' AP68 (The Shackled Hut) article actually discusses this... Milani and her faith specifically hate how Galt's revolutions have turned out, and they refuse to celebrate All Kings Day (or whatever it's called, it's something close to that I believe) due to this. Galt is basically "This is how everything can go very, very wrong. Don't follow this example!" to them.
Milanites want a single revolution that produces the clear result of shaping a new society where personal freedom is very important, yet people use that freedom to generally be nice to one another; this would be the strongest thing pulling her toward CG, I believe. Constant bloodshed is not part of Milani's agenda in Paizo-canon Golarion, it appears.
Yes, my game is set in a Galtan concentration camp and I was envisioning the church of Milani as being a persecuted sect, possibly one harkening back to the original program of Darl Jubannich and Hosseter, before the Thermidorians took over.
I didn't ever do anything with her because the dwarven cleric's player opted to choose his domains first, couldn't find a god, and decided to go with one of those non-god cleric options. He started out worshiping the Spirits of Nature and now, as far as I can tell, he worships alcohol.
Anyway, I am going to read the article in the AP soon, thanks for the heads up!
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They kind of already are. Her faithful hold that those that die in her service will be reincarnated again into the faith, and she has a very heavy martyr aspect to her. Her faith is normally about peacefully changing tyranny and also setting up resistance groups, but specifically focusing on keeping the people hopeful that a new day will come and staying strong.
I personally didn't care for the Milani article, it sort of ruined the mystery for me and I don't know, I think it just had a lot to do with I like the ideas I had better and had too high/different expectations. More Boondock Saints and less send out the mob.
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Rand wrote extensively about (and against) this in Atlas Shrugged, a book that I assume you're very familiar with.
Dealing with lightning storms, so only have a moment to answer this bit: Surprisingly enough, I'm not. I know very basic overviews of it, and I'm told one of the common critiques against it can reportedly be refuted by noting that certain words Rand used (such as 'altruism' in its various forms) had a subtly different meaning back when it was written, but I can't really comment on the work in any meaningful detail.
Edit: Slight revision to clarify a few words. While I'm here for a bit more time, did anyone care to take a stab at the elven followers question and/or my Summoning questions?
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About your bit on her verging towards NG. We know that deities can change their alignment over time, based on their worshipers. This was demonstrated by Lisalla. But Milani hasn't been a goddess for that long really. I could see that Milani on her own would be NG, but since the vast majority of her followers are chaotic, it pulls her into CG.Actually according to Word of James Jacobs she was always lawful evil. I think it was a matter of her priesthood was mostly lawful neutral and became more evil as time went on.
That's rather disappointing. I really liked the idea of deities being influenced by their clergy.
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{Is Milani a minarchist?: Milani is unusual amongst Chaotic Good in that she seems to tolerate some government. Clearly she isn't an anarchist in the classical sense (meaning "no strong central authorities in the society", not "burning kittens in the streets and robbing everyone you come across"), as she allows "(fair) taxes that contribute to the betterment of society..." So, is she a minarchist (that is, someone who wants the smallest government that can maintain authority on topics of broad social interest, but shows no control in small-scale/private matters)?}
Not really. She exists to overthrow tyranny (LE). She is not a nation-builder. Her attitude and role are more "this is wrong and must be taken down and replaced with something better" than "everyone having more freedom is always better."
Alignment is a broad guideline for defining a person, and gods should be even harder to pigeonhole into one of nine simple boxes.
{On Elves in Milani's faith: Clearly Milani avoids elven deities wherever possible, the AP68 article makes that clear. What about mortal elven followers, though? Does she try to discourage them (or possibly even forbid them?) from joining, or are actual elves quite welcome?}
She doesn't exclude mortal elves from her faith.
{Defining 'Priest' - Is a 'priest' someone who casts any kind of spells and follows Milani? For example, can a Wizard with Milani as their deity cast Summon Monster I and bring in the Great Horned Owl? Edit: Or would this be strictly defined as Divine casters of this deity? Regardless of the answer, can it also be applied to other deity-expanded-summon lists in AP articles?}
I always use "priest" to mean "a person who worships that deity who is able to take a leadership role in that deity's church," and it's almost always exclusive to divine spellcasters (in her case, clerics and rangers).
{Great Horned Owl in general - What is its value as a summon? It appears to be slightly inferior to the Eagle overall (albeit cool looking). Can one apply the Celestial template to it when summoned through Milani's expanded summoning rules in this article?}
Yes... normal animals summoned by the summon monster spells always have the celestial or infernal template.
{CG Hound Archons - Now here's the real surprise; Milani counts among her celestial army... a breed of creatures that are supposed to be embodiments of Lawful Good. Here we have a CG deity with CG Archons. The flavor link I infer from this is it's meant to further illustrate her cooperation with LG forces ("Let's work together to beat up Evil, then we'll sit down and have a non-violent talk about what kind of 'Archy/Cracy/etc.' we're going to replace the deposed regime with.")}
That, or it's a rare type of CG outside that otherwise has the stats of a standard hound archon. I'm a fan of reusing monster stat blocks for other kinds of monsters.
{How common are they, though? Does this have any implications on similar creatures existing in other deities' realms? For example, LG Azatas, NG Archons/Azatas, etc.?}
Perhaps. After all, the Calistria writeup mentions creatures she calls "vengeance demons," which aren't demons but look like insect-winged succubi and have all the abilities of succubi except they're CN instead of CE.
I'm glad you like the article. :)
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This is a welcome surprise; I didn't expect clarifications from the author himself. Thanks, Sean! I think that answers most of my questions.
Kinda wish I could edit my original post to note you cover this material, because it guts a lot of my theories and presumptions. Not that I mind, since it corrects something I otherwise would have thought was correct and ran with it. One supposes individual worshipers might have somewhat differing priorities from Milani, as the deities seem to tolerate "So long as you arrive at my general goal I'm fine with you being in my church." Nonetheless, I understand Milani better now. So I'm now left with a deity whose priority list is more clear to me. Revolution first, then sticking around on the local ("community") level to help hash out some of the details if still welcome in the area afterward... which is distinct from the nation-building you've clearly said she doesn't do. Then encourage freedom, but not as an absolute top priority. I see how she arrives in the general CG portfolio; Milani is among the top of the list for those willing to engineer regime change. Given LG is usually described as being reluctant to pursue revolution until other options have been pursued, Milani leaning toward Revolution over Reform (provided the abuses are sufficiently egregious) means that the CG label now makes sense to me.
I could still make a case for her being NG since she's apparently quite willing to tolerate Lawful societies replacing the ones her followers help overthrow, but that's getting into absurd levels of semantics/nitpicking and doesn't lead anywhere productive (unless someone really wanted to play a Paladin of Milani, perhaps?). As you say, sometimes Alignment is a little too pigeonholed to cover a creature's entire philosophy; I'll let it go at that.
To quickly go over the other topics you spoke up on...
Elves: Cool. That gives me one more noun to work with in making character concepts. I'm thinking "Elf Bard Counter-Propagandist (e.g. makes speeches, etc. against the regime) that worships Milani". Could be fun.
Priest clarification, Horned Owl clarification: Alright, got it. That's a slight shame (one of my favorite builds is holy-themed Sorcerers that do a lot of summoning), but I can live with that and use that understanding in your deity spotlight articles going forward. Thanks! I'll see if I can come up with some uses for this summoned creature anyway, I like how they look.
On Hound Archons/Outsiders in general: That works too, sure. I kind of like the idea of this symbolizing the cooperation between Milani and Iomedae, but that's also a fine idea to run with.
And sure, I liked the article. Here's a fun comparison between your article and a movie:
A movie/theater trip: $12 to $20, provides approx. 2 hours of entertainment. Possible side-conversations with friends afterward might drag this 'hours of entertainment' value out a little further. That's not bad, but compare it to...
Article plus accompanying write-up on Courage Heart: $16 (the rest of the book isn't much use to me. It's good stuff, I just can't use it). I got an hour or two out of reading it a few times, then a follow-up discussion where I was mostly proven wrong (but that's okay, since we arrived at this conclusion in a civil manner), some rules clarifications that will be very useful to me, a new character concept, and some really nice art depicting 'light infantry/light armor' style characters and their equally cool looking deity.
Clearly, your article was the better way to spend my money. Thanks for dropping by!
Remember, you can always go with your version in your campaign—or, if you aren't the GM, convince the GM to let you run it your way. Nothing wrong with that. :)
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Remember, you can always go with your version in your campaign—or, if you aren't the GM, convince the GM to let you run it your way. Nothing wrong with that. :)
Your right, and I didnt mean that to come off as if I thought the article was terrible or poorly written as much as it sort of felt like it was presenting a different deity with similar interested from the earlier material that was more vague. Wasnt, for example there a significant following/cell in Cheliax, both among the Halfling Bellflower Network and also the general people that dont like the way things have headed? And in Galt, too.
As deminstrated, Milani in this article comes off as contensiously LG -NG, and nothing really even hints at Chaotic. She both uses and advises strong group tactics, working behind the scenes, and methods to overcome enemies that both out number and out gun her side. She has a strong community aspect, which kind of begs the question why niether Abbadar or Eristal (more likely) would have patroned her instead of Aroden who would seem to be very at odds with her pov. Eristal in particular would probably have loved her as a saint or companion whose focus would be more along the "ok, there is a point when you need to stand up and fight for your community" as well as a bit more of the civilized version of his own portfolio, but not to the point of Abbadar's.
No worries, I didn't get that impression from your post at all. :)
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{On Elves in Milani's faith: Clearly Milani avoids elven deities wherever possible, the AP68 article makes that clear. What about mortal elven followers, though? Does she try to discourage them (or possibly even forbid them?) from joining, or are actual elves quite welcome?}
She doesn't exclude mortal elves from her faith.
Hey Findeladlara! This is how it's done! :P