[Lore] Great Old Ones, Qlippoth and Rovagug

[Anachronaut]

So, I've been digging into the metaphysical/interplanar lore of Pathfinder for awhile now and stumbled on to an interesting fan theory at the very least.

The Maelstrom exists. The Abyss breaks off from the Maelstrom. The Proteans and Qlippoth discover each other and go to war. This distracts the Proteans enough for Law to take root in the Great Beyond and form the other planes.

Demons show up in the Abyss, made from evil mortal souls and the bodies of Qlippoth. This implies the Prime Material has been created already as mortal souls come from the Positive Energy Plane and route through the Prime Material.

In the Qlippoth/Demon war, the Abyss fractured and shot Qlippoth Runestones out into the planes.

From the PathfinderWiki: "From the very point of creation, the changes wrought shattered parts of the old qlippoth ruled Abyss and fragments from that Abyss are known as qlippoth runestones. These fragments hurtled through the planes; most were destroyed by inimical environments or continued to drift forever in the vast emptiness of the Astral Plane or the Dark Tapestry, but a handful have crossed paths with planets on the Material Plane. Golarion is one such world where at least one qlippoth runestone has entered its atmosphere, breaking up and scattering across the globe, buried deep underground or isolated in trackless wilderness through millions of years of plate tectonics. Qlippoth runestones are strange edifices ranging from small rocks only a few feet wide to towering megaliths, but all are marked by obscure runes connecting them to the proto-demons. They radiate an aura of antipathy that repels all thinking beings and poisons the land around it. Twisted mutant wildlife, hideous nightmare illusions, and even portals to the deepest rifts of the Abyss may be found in their proximity, and qlippoth can sometimes slip between dimensions onto the Material Plane near a runestone."

::TLDR:: Runestones landed in the Prime Material and Dark Tapestry. They notably corrupt life and land, making malevolent mutants.

Rovagug shows up, none of the Gods know where he comes from. In-setting, Rovagug is theorized to be either a Great Old One or a Qlippoth, but has been clarified out-of-setting to be an ascended Qlippoth.

Basically, what I'm trying to get at here is:
Qlippoth are, at the very least, similar to Great Old Ones/Outer Gods, to the degree that in-setting academics can't totally distinguish them. The Qlippoth Runestones are also noted to have landed in, and probably had some impact on, both the Dark Tapestry and Prime Material.

Are the GOOs mutated early lifeforms/manifestations of the physical properties of the Prime Material?

[Squeakmaan]

It's unlikely, as in setting a couple gods are hinted to be as old as creation, Asmodeus (if he's not lying) and Pharasma (probably not lying). But they are definitely older than mortal life, which the demons are not, so many of the gods are older than the Qlippoth Runestones.

[boring7]

Last I heard it was only HINTED that Rovagug is a Super-Qlippoth, it's another one of those mysteries like "where the heck is Nex?" (maybe trapped in his own demi-plane) or "What the heck happened to Aroden?" (Maybe the "Echo of Lost Divinity")...obtuse and unclear by design.

The Qlippoth themselves are basically D&D Obryith Lords, who included Dagon, so yeah.

The word itself comes from Jewish Kabbalistic mysticism and was used by Aleister Crowley when he was doing his Satanist thing.

On the flip side, fusion of mortal evil souls and abyssal material makes demons, and while you could argue that it's different when the matter/energy parts of the dynamic are flipped, it still seems a bit suspect. Also the Qlippoth are LOSING, they were outnumbered and overwhelmed by demons, while the Great Old Ones not only tend to appear more powerful (one of them is a planet in the Distant Worlds cosmology) but have ties to Leng (since it's a Lovecraftian plane).

Also, I kinda like the idea of there being things that scare even demons.

[Cthulhudrew]

boring7 wrote:

Last I heard it was only HINTED that Rovagug is a Super-Qlippoth, it's another one of those mysteries like "where the heck is Nex?" (maybe trapped in his own demi-plane) or "What the heck happened to Aroden?" (Maybe the "Echo of Lost Divinity")...obtuse and unclear by design.

Confirmed, at least by James Jacobs.

[Anachronaut]

Squeakmaan wrote:

It's unlikely, as in setting a couple gods are hinted to be as old as creation, Asmodeus (if he's not lying) and Pharasma (probably not lying). But they are definitely older than mortal life, which the demons are not, so many of the gods are older than the Qlippoth Runestones.

I don't see how this matters. Great Old Ones and Outer Gods are not Outer Sphere Gods or similar to them other than that they can grant divine magic.

[boring7]

True. I recall the little amount of text I could find on one of my favorite gods, BahamutApsu, says they created the first gods around the same time they created the dragons "in the beginning". Before all this mess with great old ones and demons and such. This reminds me of the Splugorth, and how despite being kind of Nyarlothotep, they feared and respected dragons.

Well mostly, this WAS the rifts RPG, so it was a mess that often had moments of specific contradiction.

And when Great Old Ones get involved, there's a decent chance that "before" is a slippery thing, with the non-linear temporal existence and the lurking at thresholds.

[James Jacobs]

There's a pretty good chance that some or all of the Great Old Ones (and by extension, the Outer Gods) are a lot older than people expect...

[Belabras]

Looks like someone said James Jacobs' name 3 times and summoned him.

[Cthulhudrew]

Belabras wrote:

Looks like someone said James Jacobs' name 3 times and summoned him.

Ah, c'mon man. He's not Candlejack.

...

...

SCREAM

[Cthulhudrew]

Belabras wrote:

Looks like someone said James Jacobs' name 3 times and summoned him.

Ah, c'mon man. He's not Candlejack, he's just-

[Dreaming Psion]

Belabras wrote:

Looks like someone said James Jacobs' name 3 times and summoned him.

So does that mean he's Hastur or Betelgeuse?

[Raltus]

James is more like Beetle Juice I would think

[Belabras]

I would have said Hastur, given the context

[The Golux]

Just don't drink the Hastur Juice.