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So I was looking through the Bestiaries, and there's the section that introduces the Archons. They have a sidebar with a list of sample "Archon Empyreal Lords":
Asteria, of the Endless Order
Cocidius, Hawk-Keeper
Duellona, the Warrior Maiden
Erlang Shen, the All-Seeing
Hors, the Freezing Sun
Inanna, Princess of the Sky
Lugus, the Three-Faced
Ogoun, of Fire and Iron
Oro, the Flame in the Sky
Radigost, Bringer of Boons
Sheave, the Orphan Lord
Svarozic, the Face of Flame
Tanit, Guardian of Life
Tahmineh, the Wounded Mother
Then there's the Azatas.
Atonga, of Seas and Songs
Aizen Myo-o, the Red Wisdom
Cernunnos, the Stag Lord
Connla, the Wolfhound’s Son
The Forgotten, Free Even from Memory
Itzamna, Who Watches from Clouds
Lada, Lady of Dance
Maahes, the Guardian Beast
Muyingwa, the Seed Thrower
Ibeji, the Twins
Ogma, the Champion
Tsukuyomi, Prince of the Moon
Qetesh, the Sacred Lover
Vikramaditya, Wise and Valorous King
Then there's a shorter list of Agathion "leaders" in Bestiary 2.
Chavod Broken-Spear (cetaceal)
Kelumarion the King Over the Mountain (leonal)
Korada of the Dream Lotus (avoral)
Lady Taramyth the Singing Flame (vulpinal)
Sixlife the Violet Fury (silvanshee)
Walks with Golden Stars (draconal)
What struck me was that all of these guys were introduced as the Empyreal lords, but nothing has been reported about them since. Now, Korada is a notable exception; he's in Chronicle of the Righteous, with an illustration to boot.
But other then him, none of the Empyreals from the bestiaries get any kind of mention. It's as if they completely disappeared.
I'm not trying to criticize Paizo. Chronicle of the Righteous is perhaps the best Campaign Setting book I've ever read and filled a much-needed nice in regards to information regarding good-aligned outsiders. I have a Paladin of Ragathiel in the campaign that I'm running, and two paladins of Olheon and Arqueros are important NPCs. But why is it that none of the "old" Empyreals got any kind of support? Did Paizo just decide, "Nope, these guys are lame. Let's make some better ones."
It would probably be silly to ask for a Chronicle of the Righteous Part 2, but it would be cool if (at some point) we could get domains, favored weapons, and nominal descriptions of the beta-Empyreals. Y'know, just in case someone wants to play a paladin of Lugus or cleric of Connla.
One last thing: If I somehow violated copyright law by posting the excerpts, I sincerely apologize and will take them down immediately.
bump?
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The thing is that Bestiaries are non-setting specific and open content in their entirety on principle, so any proper names that Paizo drops in there become open content. None of the Bestaries contain any Golarion-related content, because Paizo keeps their IP that's linked to the setting under control. If, say, Ragathiel was name-dropped in a Bestiary, he would go open content, and any 3PP could publish Ragathiel the Fluffy Angel of Bunnies or Ragathiel the Angel of Soft Rock and thusly water down the Paizo IP.
Korada is somewhat based on real-world myth IIRC, so he's a fair game for reinterpretation anyway since r-w-m stuff can't be copyrighted anyway.
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Must have had a change of heart about Tsukuyomi, Prince of the Moon being an Azata empyreal lord at least. There is now Tsukiyo, Prince of the Moon who is lawful good in Dragon Empires.
I like the idea of them being the same entity, playing up Tsukiyo's Madness aspect. :)
I was expecting:
Kelumarion the King Over the Mountain (leonal)
To be a bear.
But that's just me.
Makes sense. Some of these would be a bit redundant, too. Duellona=Falanya.
Creative Director
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Yes; the Bestiaries are world-neutral, and so we generally don't include demigods in those books unless those demigods are also mythological. ALL of the demon lords in the bestiary we mention are from mythology and/or open game content; we didn't include any of the ones we made up specifically for Golarion.
When you get to things like Empyreal lords... an increasing percentage of them are made up by us for Golarion, so we decided to make names up for them in the Bestiary; these guys don't have roles to play in Golarion, yet. We probably should have gone back to the Bestiary to pick up some of those names for Chronicle of the Righteous... but for whatever reason (I wasn't involved in that book's design—Wes would be a better person to ask this question) we didn't.
Kelumarion first appeared in TBG, but outside of I think a namedrop in CotR, he hasn't appeared since. Lady Taramyth is namedropped as well I think.
I won't complain about subsequent lack of exposure because, well: A) I never had space to do anything with them originally (and it being my fault it was that way), and B) CotR developed a seriously awesome set of empyreal lords.
Occasionally the first thing put out there doesn't get the opportunity for further development, or it gets lost as a setting evolves, etc. This happens, but given the content of CotR, we're not missing much (and besides, for those that I created in TBG, the names didn't have a lot behind them at that stage, so nothing lost). :)
So, it looks like one of these guys is getting some coverage after all...Cernunnos the Stag Lord is in Bestiary 4.