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Okay, great adventure path, but the extreme age of everything is kind of getting to me.
Our AI / Android heroine has been hiding away for 500 years. Yup. 500 years. We have a ship that crashed 5 millenia ago, if not more.
Is there a compelling region for this kind of age? After all, the Numeria we see isn't like the Land of the Mammoth Lords to the North, where things are pretty standard Kellish. It's the irradiated, dessicated husk of super science vs. barbarism.
Moreover, it's pretty clear from the last part of the AP that the Silver Mount isn't thoroughly explored - but the Technic League has been going strong for thousands of years???
It just doesn't jive right.
What I propose is that Numeria had been bombarded by periodic waves of debris from the Divinity for a long time. Perhaps thousands of years - time distortion and whatnot. But it wasn't the big stuff.
The main husk of the ship falls onto Numeria when all the other stuff is happening around Golarion circa Aroden's demise - the Worldwound, the Eye, etc.
This creates a post-apocalyptic wasteland that's still kind of being explored, explains why there are robotic killers running around, and why the Technic League is still figuring all this stuff out. Starfall built in the rubble in the center of the vast, slowly recovering crater. The city is probably always inundated with water as a lake fills the crater, making exploration of the ship ever more hazardous, and making the city more like Bladerunner than Generic Evil Fantasy City 6.
It also helps out how Unity and the robots and the androids and everything else is still functioning after the crash - it's been 10 decades, not 5 millennia.
Thoughts? So much of Golarion is so old, and it just doesn't seem like it has to be, or that it helps the story along.
The Technic League hasn't been going strong for thousands of years, though. The alien debris has been there for 5000 years, but the Technic League is recent enough that they did not exist in Casandalee's time. Remember, for most of Numeria's history, the Kellids tried to bury or destroy anything alien.
Rain of Stars was 9,000 years ago:-)
I will only comment on one thing, as I have little time right now:
If Casandale is only 500 years old, than the Technic League hasn't been going strong for thousands of years, because if I remember correctly there was no Technic League around, when Casandale entered the Silver Mount first.
The founder of the Technic League started organizing in 4501 AR, and the group didn't enter Silver Mount for another 8 years.
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Okay. But still.
How are these fluids still leaking, etc.?
I get the robots created these weird repair code ecosystems within the Divinity, but wouldn't Numeria be cooler if, instead of a reclaimed barbarian paradise with some super science, it was instead, a post-apocalyptic techno-barbarian insaneistan?
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It *is* pretty post-apocalyptic. The capital city's primary import is *food and water* because it's all but impossible to grow crops anywhere but the Numerian Plains. The Felldales, where most of the debris hit, are specifically noted as being basically a wasteland. The thing about the Rain of Stars happening when it did, is that Golarion was only just out of the Age of Darkness. The world was putting itself back together after one apocalypse, and a smaller-scale one promptly hit Numeria.
The robots and technology are still working because of SCIENCE--and even then, a considerable amount of the technology has the Timeworn quality to represent exactly that question--likely to glitch unpredictably, and to completely die when it runs out of power, no recharging possible
Okay. But still.
How are these fluids still leaking, etc.?
I get the robots created these weird repair code ecosystems within the Divinity, but wouldn't Numeria be cooler if, instead of a reclaimed barbarian paradise with some super science, it was instead, a post-apocalyptic techno-barbarian insaneistan?
I think the great age of the Divinity results from the tradition of ancient ruins in Fantasy Settings.
But, I get where you are coming from though. Even with only being founded in 4501 A.R., the Technic League should have made more progress.
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How are these fluids still leaking, etc.?
They may not (I'd argue have not) have been leaking for the entire period of time. More than likely, many of these breakdowns and leaks are relatively recent- the inevitable result of time and decay on even super-strong and futuristic compounds and metals. Reactors that finally give out, etc.
Not to mention that a lot of this stuff is nuclear and toxic, and without any active efforts to clean it up, can and will linger for ages and ages. No need to look much further than our own modern day society, and the issues we have with waste disposal and cleanup- and we actively (in many cases) try to clean this stuff up, something that is more likely than not going on in Numeria, which lacks the tools, population, and organizational methods that the modern world has.
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Okay. But still.
How are these fluids still leaking, etc.?
I get the robots created these weird repair code ecosystems within the Divinity, but wouldn't Numeria be cooler if, instead of a reclaimed barbarian paradise with some super science, it was instead, a post-apocalyptic techno-barbarian insaneistan?
I think the great age of the Divinity results from the tradition of ancient ruins in Fantasy Settings.
But, I get where you are coming from though. Even with only being founded in 4501 A.R., the Technic League should have made more progress.
Considering how much that progress is handicapped by the (dis-)organizational structure, secrecy between its members, and (until recently, with Kevoth-Kul becoming the Black Sovereign and falling under their control) limited political/economic power, the Technic League probably spent much of the time since the murder of Sidrah Imeruss hoarding bits of tech to figure how to use it and stealing from each other rather than actually trying to really understand how it worked.
Without some way to recharge most tech items (like a reactor, which are pretty rare items even in Numeria, or the spell recharge, which is almost unknown outside of Numeria and expensive to boot), they quickly become useless (or mostly so) curiosities. To paraphrase Eli Whitney (on interchangeable parts, not his more famous cotton gin), you need to build better tools to build the better tools to build the even better tools to build the much better tools to build the tremendously better tools to even begin to be able to produce industrial-age tech like that in WWI Russia in Rasputin Must Die!. The super-science of Divinity is several orders more advanced than that.
While I do have issues at times with the age of Golarion, I actually don't think the Divinity crash is one of those aspects that bother me. At the minimum, the Divinity crash needs to be long enough before the rise of the modern nations to explain why there has been comparatively little interest in the region. Had the Divinity crash been only a few hundreds of years ago, Taldor and all the other existing Inner Sea powers would have been fighting to get a hold of the tech, most of which would not be buried or hidden.
As for the age of the technology, its super science...Androffans obviously built things to last, a feat that is probably not that difficult for a society that mastered interstellar travel.
Considering how much that progress is handicapped by the (dis-)organizational structure, secrecy between its members, and (until recently, with Kevoth-Kul becoming the Black Sovereign and falling under their control) limited political/economic power, the Technic League probably spent much of the time since the murder of Sidrah Imeruss hoarding bits of tech to figure how to use it and stealing from each other rather than actually trying to really understand how it worked.
So, what you're saying is that had Sidrah Imeruss been a better judge of character, the Technic League and Numeria would be vastly more advanced then they are now.
Alkenstar however is still very isolated...Numeria just might be poorly known to them, and only the eccentrics (that you list) have taken an interest.
Considering how much that progress is handicapped by the (dis-)organizational structure, secrecy between its members, and (until recently, with Kevoth-Kul becoming the Black Sovereign and falling under their control) limited political/economic power, the Technic League probably spent much of the time since the murder of Sidrah Imeruss hoarding bits of tech to figure how to use it and stealing from each other rather than actually trying to really understand how it worked.So, what you're saying is that had Sidrah Imeruss been a better judge of character, the Technic League and Numeria would be vastly more advanced then they are now.
Perhaps.
Of course, then the Technic League may have run into Unity sooner... And fallen even more under his control (along with the rest of Numeria).
Also, you only find the stuff that works. It's rarely worth mentioning the heaps and piles of broken lazer rifles.
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My reading of the Technic League is that it doesn't really care about the spread of technology as much as it claims, because most Androffan technology is useless or redundant to magic, much of the good stuff will break before anyone figures it out, and the rest is literal toxic waste.
The League does care about the spread of its studies of technology, and while it's internally dysfunctional the League somehow gets awfully competent in a hurry toward defectors or when so much as a League book winds up in a third party's hands.
But isn't that the opposite of why the Technic league is hunting the main character in City of the Fallen Sky. they aren't hunting him for defecting, and he's not teaching others their secrets at the time, but instead they hunt him because he has 3 baubles from the sky mount. Its been a while since I read, that book, so I MAY be wrong....
{. . .}
I agree that the massive stretch of time is a bit tough to believe. We're talking a period equivalent to the real-world beginning of human civilization all the way to the modern day. By all rights, the remains of the ship that crashed into Numeria should have been picked over a thousandfold, and mostly reclaimed by nature. {. . .}
This won't help with microbes, roaches, and the simpler plants, but if the remains dosed the area with enough radioisotopes having half lives in the low thousands of years, that would keep most of nature out for a while. This would have to be a Chernobyl+++, though -- nature seems to be doing a pretty good job of reclaiming the area around Chernobyl, if not Chernobyl itself.
There is another problem with the 9000 years ago.
Technological societies do not build their equipment to last thousands of years. Unlike the ancient, technological cultures do not expect the world to be the same 200 years from now, let alone thousands of years.
Avoiding the cynical "planned obsolescence," the fact that the equipment would last a couple of hundred years would be a side-effect of designing for the rigors of Space Travel. The idea that it would last thousands of years doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
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I, too, have found it a bit unbelievable that anything will be working at all in 9,000 years. But then I realized this is a setting where bards can use the power of song to make buildings explode, where wizards control the fabric of the universe by making gangster signs and speaking gibberish, and where people can get god powers by touching a giant magical rock from outer space.
Yes, those examples are all distinctly non-technological and has everything to do with magic. The point is that if a setting already has that kinda stuff in it, I think I can overlook alien technology somehow still functioning even after a massive span of time.
Your mileage may vary of course. That's just how I see it.
There is another problem with the 9000 years ago.
Technological societies do not build their equipment to last thousands of years. Unlike the ancient, technological cultures do not expect the world to be the same 200 years from now, let alone thousands of years.
Avoiding the cynical "planned obsolescence," the fact that the equipment would last a couple of hundred years would be a side-effect of designing for the rigors of Space Travel. The idea that it would last thousands of years doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
That's kind of based though on our own technological trends. I don't necessarily see a problem with a society more advanced than us building tech to last.
Creative Director
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I recall reading James Jacobs mention that, in retrospect, they should have had Starfall (ie, the apocalypse that wiped out Azlant/Thassilon) occur only a few thousand years ago. However, when the Pathfinder campaign setting was first being developed, the authors wanted to make sure there was plenty of wiggle-room in its time line. The same logic may have applied to the Rain of Stars in Numeria.
This is correct.
Had I a time machine, I would have strongly pushed to condense Golarion's historical timeline by about a factor of ten, just to make things a bit more compact. Perhaps not THAT long. Complicating things there is the fact that several races, including some PC races, DO live for hundreds of years, so the scale doesn't perfectly work there. In a world where you have elves, known history WOULD be longer, and that means we still would need a pretty long timeline to account for that.
Either that, or we would have needed to drastically shorten the lifespan of elves and dragons and the like, and at the time, that was too much for us in our quest for backwards compatibly.
In the end, if it's breaking verisimilitude too much to have such vast lengths of time... my suggestion is to reduce the time by a factor of ten. You might run into some weird things with elf PCs if you do... but it might be worth the change for you.
MMCJawa: That's kind of based though on our own technological trends. I don't necessarily see a problem with a society more advanced than us building tech to last.
Especially considering a culture that is advanced enough to have interstellar, worm-hole using technology, they could have easily had terraformimg and atmospheric-controlling technologies as well, which would almost definitely be built to survive time and circumstance.
I, too, have found it a bit unbelievable that anything will be working at all in 9,000 years. But then I realized this is a setting where bards can use the power of song to make buildings explode, where wizards control the fabric of the universe by making gangster signs and speaking gibberish, and where people can get god powers by touching a giant magical rock from outer space.
Yes, those examples are all distinctly non-technological and has everything to do with magic. The point is that if a setting already has that kinda stuff in it, I think I can overlook alien technology somehow still functioning even after a massive span of time.
Your mileage may vary of course. That's just how I see it.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
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Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
"'Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science!'"
"What's with the quotation marks? Who said that?"
There is another problem with the 9000 years ago.
Technological societies do not build their equipment to last thousands of years. Unlike the ancient, technological cultures do not expect the world to be the same 200 years from now, let alone thousands of years.
Avoiding the cynical "planned obsolescence," the fact that the equipment would last a couple of hundred years would be a side-effect of designing for the rigors of Space Travel. The idea that it would last thousands of years doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
Keep in mind that the non-timeworn pieces of technology were neither in use nor exposed to the elements all those years, in most cases they were in sealed rooms/containers until quite recently, the same is true about the robots.
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I recall reading James Jacobs mention that, in retrospect, they should have had Starfall (ie, the apocalypse that wiped out Azlant/Thassilon) occur only a few thousand years ago. However, when the Pathfinder campaign setting was first being developed, the authors wanted to make sure there was plenty of wiggle-room in its time line. The same logic may have applied to the Rain of Stars in Numeria.
This is correct.
Had I a time machine, I would have strongly pushed to condense Golarion's historical timeline by about a factor of ten, just to make things a bit more compact. Perhaps not THAT long. Complicating things there is the fact that several races, including some PC races, DO live for hundreds of years, so the scale doesn't perfectly work there. In a world where you have elves, known history WOULD be longer, and that means we still would need a pretty long timeline to account for that.
Either that, or we would have needed to drastically shorten the lifespan of elves and dragons and the like, and at the time, that was too much for us in our quest for backwards compatibly.
In the end, if it's breaking verisimilitude too much to have such vast lengths of time... my suggestion is to reduce the time by a factor of ten. You might run into some weird things with elf PCs if you do... but it might be worth the change for you.
To say nothing of intelligent magical items that might recall the previous ages, though I suspect they'd fall under the category of "extremely unreliable and biased narrator."
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Re: Time-scale.
Considering that our recorded history stretches back about 5,000 years (or even more, depending on the definition of "recorded" vs. "written"), Golarion's "known" history is only about 2-3 times as long. With several intelligent creatures with much longer lifespans than us, 2-3 times isn't a huge stretch (IMO).
^Actually, that's a good point.
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I recall reading James Jacobs mention that, in retrospect, they should have had Starfall (ie, the apocalypse that wiped out Azlant/Thassilon) occur only a few thousand years ago. However, when the Pathfinder campaign setting was first being developed, the authors wanted to make sure there was plenty of wiggle-room in its time line. The same logic may have applied to the Rain of Stars in Numeria.
This is correct.
Had I a time machine, I would have strongly pushed to condense Golarion's historical timeline by about a factor of ten, just to make things a bit more compact. Perhaps not THAT long. Complicating things there is the fact that several races, including some PC races, DO live for hundreds of years, so the scale doesn't perfectly work there. In a world where you have elves, known history WOULD be longer, and that means we still would need a pretty long timeline to account for that.
Either that, or we would have needed to drastically shorten the lifespan of elves and dragons and the like, and at the time, that was too much for us in our quest for backwards compatibly.
In the end, if it's breaking verisimilitude too much to have such vast lengths of time... my suggestion is to reduce the time by a factor of ten. You might run into some weird things with elf PCs if you do... but it might be worth the change for you.
not to nitpick, but with the elves and their little portals to Castrovel, there was a nice out there to short cut their long history - they are all on another planet, and only recently arrived (comparatively) in numbers.
As for elf PCs, they can be hanging out in a forest or jungle-adventure planet...
not to nitpick, but with the elves and their little portals to Castrovel, there was a nice out there to short cut their long history - they are all on another planet, and only recently arrived (comparatively) in numbers.
As for elf PCs, they can be hanging out in a forest or jungle-adventure planet...
That still doesn't resolve some other the other long lived races, such as Dragons, Dwarves, or Gnomes.
That still doesn't resolve some other the other long lived races, such as Dragons, Dwarves, or Gnomes.not to nitpick, but with the elves and their little portals to Castrovel, there was a nice out there to short cut their long history - they are all on another planet, and only recently arrived (comparatively) in numbers.
As for elf PCs, they can be hanging out in a forest or jungle-adventure planet...
In fact, in 3.5 Golarion, Gnomes would have been an even bigger concern than Elves; in the original Campaign Setting book, Gnomes were actually immortal barring being killed or succumbing to the Bleaching.
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That still doesn't resolve some other the other long lived races, such as Dragons, Dwarves, or Gnomes.not to nitpick, but with the elves and their little portals to Castrovel, there was a nice out there to short cut their long history - they are all on another planet, and only recently arrived (comparatively) in numbers.
As for elf PCs, they can be hanging out in a forest or jungle-adventure planet...
yeah, but gnomes are from the first world, so their story is a bit transient.
dwarves should always be dwarves.
dragons, well... dragons is dragons.
dragons, well... dragons is dragons.That still doesn't resolve some other the other long lived races, such as Dragons, Dwarves, or Gnomes.not to nitpick, but with the elves and their little portals to Castrovel, there was a nice out there to short cut their long history - they are all on another planet, and only recently arrived (comparatively) in numbers.
As for elf PCs, they can be hanging out in a forest or jungle-adventure planet...
A Dragon loaded down with cybernetics and a rocket launcher cyber armament wielding a huge Chainsaw, now thats f&~~ing metal!
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A Dragon loaded down with cybernetics and a rocket launcher cyber armament wielding a huge Chainsaw, now thats f%~~ing metal!dragons, well... dragons is dragons.That still doesn't resolve some other the other long lived races, such as Dragons, Dwarves, or Gnomes.not to nitpick, but with the elves and their little portals to Castrovel, there was a nice out there to short cut their long history - they are all on another planet, and only recently arrived (comparatively) in numbers.
As for elf PCs, they can be hanging out in a forest or jungle-adventure planet...
something like this would have been appreciated in the AP. Some iconic DnD monster kitted out like a friggin terminator. We get the Gargoyle, but... yeah. Cybugbears or Androozoids or something...
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Hey, I think we did pretty good for our first outing with the Tech rules. I know The Powers That Be were holding their breaths hoping the response for the AP would be good, but now that it's done, and they can reflect on the sales numbers, there might be some Numerian influences spreading to APs down the line...
Oh i'm beyond satisfied with Iron Gods, Crystal especially nailed her chapter:-)
Hey, I think we did pretty good for our first outing with the Tech rules. I know The Powers That Be were holding their breaths hoping the response for the AP would be good, but now that it's done, and they can reflect on the sales numbers, there might be some Numerian influences spreading to APs down the line...
Or, better yet, how about a parallel "Space Opera" line?
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Hey, I think we did pretty good for our first outing with the Tech rules. I know The Powers That Be were holding their breaths hoping the response for the AP would be good, but now that it's done, and they can reflect on the sales numbers, there might be some Numerian influences spreading to APs down the line...Or, better yet, how about a parallel "Space Opera" line?
I'm banking on a Distant Worlds AP. Though they probably wouldn't be able to do all the planets.
Not exactly a space opera, but a Dominion Invasion AP is also promising.
Hey, I think we did pretty good for our first outing with the Tech rules. I know The Powers That Be were holding their breaths hoping the response for the AP would be good, but now that it's done, and they can reflect on the sales numbers, there might be some Numerian influences spreading to APs down the line...Or, better yet, how about a parallel "Space Opera" line?I'm banking on a Distant Worlds AP. Though they probably wouldn't be able to do all the planets.
Not exactly a space opera, but a Dominion Invasion AP is also promising.
Not quite what I was suggesting though.
One way of dealing with the Tech/Magic divide is to divide them.
Many players who have a problem with technology in their fantasy would have no problem with the same technology in a Sci-Fi genre game.
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Hey, I think we did pretty good for our first outing with the Tech rules. I know The Powers That Be were holding their breaths hoping the response for the AP would be good, but now that it's done, and they can reflect on the sales numbers, there might be some Numerian influences spreading to APs down the line...Or, better yet, how about a parallel "Space Opera" line?
no. but a space opera AP could be pretty sweet. i'd pay $$$$$ for a big set of space opera rules HINT HINT HINT
put more directly:
Paizo SpellJammer Rules = Yakman $$$$$$
Make it happen JJ.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Hey, I think we did pretty good for our first outing with the Tech rules. I know The Powers That Be were holding their breaths hoping the response for the AP would be good, but now that it's done, and they can reflect on the sales numbers, there might be some Numerian influences spreading to APs down the line...Or, better yet, how about a parallel "Space Opera" line?no. but a space opera AP could be pretty sweet. i'd pay $$$$$ for a big set of space opera rules HINT HINT HINT
put more directly:
Paizo SpellJammer Rules = Yakman $$$$$$
Make it happen JJ.
Pathfinder compatible Space Opera rules already exist. But they need more adventure support.
Another option is the Santiago AP. Unfortunately, it follow the book at little too closely .
Though, I agree that something official would be completely awesome!
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Hey, I think we did pretty good for our first outing with the Tech rules. I know The Powers That Be were holding their breaths hoping the response for the AP would be good, but now that it's done, and they can reflect on the sales numbers, there might be some Numerian influences spreading to APs down the line...Or, better yet, how about a parallel "Space Opera" line?no. but a space opera AP could be pretty sweet. i'd pay $$$$$ for a big set of space opera rules HINT HINT HINT
put more directly:
Paizo SpellJammer Rules = Yakman $$$$$$
Make it happen JJ.
Pathfinder compatible Space Opera rules already exist. But they need more adventure support.
Another option is the Santiago AP. Unfortunately, it follow the book at little too closely .
Though, I agree that something official would be completely awesome!
i have the IT CAME FROM THE SKIES guide by Zombie Sky Press, which is just dandy
but it's missing something that I can't quite put my finger on (it's the utterly ridiculous neogi).
Hey, I think we did pretty good for our first outing with the Tech rules. I know The Powers That Be were holding their breaths hoping the response for the AP would be good, but now that it's done, and they can reflect on the sales numbers, there might be some Numerian influences spreading to APs down the line...Or, better yet, how about a parallel "Space Opera" line?no. but a space opera AP could be pretty sweet. i'd pay $$$$$ for a big set of space opera rules HINT HINT HINT
put more directly:
Paizo SpellJammer Rules = Yakman $$$$$$
Make it happen JJ.
Pathfinder compatible Space Opera rules already exist. But they need more adventure support.
Another option is the Santiago AP. Unfortunately, it follow the book at little too closely .
Though, I agree that something official would be completely awesome!
i have the IT CAME FROM THE SKIES guide by Zombie Sky Press, which is just dandy
but it's missing something that I can't quite put my finger on (it's the utterly ridiculous neogi).
Looks like it needs more adventure support.
Still, it is not "tech" enough for me.