I didn't try slipping any Easter eggs into my chunk of Ships of the Inner Sea, but I do have a personal fondness for slipping the rare little in-joke so obscure that literally only I could possibly "get" it into my writing. The braggart captain of the viking ship I handled includes taming "the winter wyrm" among he and his crew's many epic accomplishments.
In the mindsphere surrounding my home games, "winter wyrm" is that viking's nickname for a specific white-scaled kobold.
Baba Yaga's 9th daughter Tashanna.. Looks at Paizo devs long and hard for that one. I see what you did there, and I love it! Any chance we might actually ever see her cough cough..
Gothic writer Alison Kindler, from Ustalav, always made me think- Anne Rice.
I don't know if this is something that has always been in the Solar description, or if it's just in Pathfinder, but I was pleasantly surprised to see "On yet another, a solar with a flaming sword stands watch over the original mortal paradise so that no creature may enter." Particularly since I was looking at the Solar description specifically with the idea in mind of having one do exactly that. :)
I'd like to know if the rest of the description are also references to other myths. :)
Baba Yaga's 9th daughter Tashanna.. Looks at Paizo devs long and hard for that one. I see what you did there, and I love it! Any chance we might actually ever see her cough cough..Are you sure you haven't already seen her?
:3
Baba Yaga's 9th daughter Tashanna.. Looks at Paizo devs long and hard for that one. I see what you did there, and I love it! Any chance we might actually ever see her cough cough..Are you sure you haven't already seen her?
Hmmmmm.
Hmmmmm...
Oh I know about that Kalindlara, I've also been playing since 2nd ed, and have a bookcase full of things including hundreds of dragon & dungeon magazines. "Tashanna" is one of my favorite old school big bads. I just don't think we'll ever get to see her directly in Pathfinder. Lilth knows who I'm talking about though ^_^.
Speaking of which I'm about to run a few players through a pathfinder updated savage tides using the mythic ruleset, should be fun.
I like that every AP set in Varisia has a member of the Vancastercan family in it. Sorry if I spelled the family name wrong, I don't have a book in front of me.
Don't forget the Foxglove's :P
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There's also the naughty succubus statue that turns up pretty frequently as loot in low-level adventures.
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There's also the naughty succubus statue that turns up pretty frequently as loot in low-level adventures.
Which ties in just nicely with Ayavah in Magnimar
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Hmmmmm...Oh I know about that Kalindlara, I've also been playing since 2nd ed, and have a bookcase full of things including hundreds of dragon & dungeon magazines. "Tashanna" is one of my favorite old school big bads. I just don't think we'll ever get to see her directly in Pathfinder. Lilth knows who I'm talking about though ^_^.
Speaking of which I'm about to run a few players through a pathfinder updated savage tides using the mythic ruleset, should be fun.
I see. I don't think they can use
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I see. I don't think they can use ** spoiler omitted ** though. ^_^Hmmmmm...Oh I know about that Kalindlara, I've also been playing since 2nd ed, and have a bookcase full of things including hundreds of dragon & dungeon magazines. "Tashanna" is one of my favorite old school big bads. I just don't think we'll ever get to see her directly in Pathfinder. Lilth knows who I'm talking about though ^_^.
Speaking of which I'm about to run a few players through a pathfinder updated savage tides using the mythic ruleset, should be fun.
Now you're getting it, and yeah you're probably right. I was sad to see her and the other great wizard names fall off their spells. To this day my brother still calls it Mordenkainen's Disjunction, etc. He refuses to rename them. But it was a price that had to be paid and nothing stops those of use who still love such characters from updating / restoring them, so I can / have lived with that. Besides Pathfinder has already produced a good number of strong NPCs that seem to be really popular. Hmmm that gives me an idea.
Hey James if you're still reading this, any chance we might ever get to let our players actually meet Count Varian Jeggare? I ask because meeting Eando Kline went over extremely well during the Serpent's Skull AP with my group. Three out of four of my players actually knew who he was, kinda made it a big deal, like the good old days of getting the artifact key for Maure Castle from Mordenkainen.
We can't use Iggwilv, no... but we still statted her up back in Dungeon #149. She's on par with Baba Yaga in power.
And we've been pretty hesitant about crossing the lines between the fiction and the adventures, but we'll see...
Fair enough, and yeah I'm already working on converting her to Pathfinder from that exact issue. :)
As for the second part, what's the reasoning for that? I feel like you or one of the other devs may have mentioned something about it before but I can't recall where. My default guess would be that giving set stats would in some ways limit the freedom/creativity of the authors. Although there's certainly plenty of ways to let someone do a cameo without having to flesh them out in solid ink so to speak. Point in case: I don't ever recall actually seeing stats for Terendelev (the mythic Silver Dragon in WoTR), outside of her ravener form in book 6. Yet her one scene and the gift of her spell/scales sets the entire thing into motion.
Or is it more of a not wanting the books to be cannon kind of thing since you don't want to do the rolling timeline like Forgotten Realms did? If so, I can certainly understand and appreciate that line of reasoning as well. Personally I'm on the other side of that fence, but I wont deny that it does have its setbacks/flaws, especially from a developer/publisher's point of view. Besides, nothing stops me from making my own time lines and saying this book or adventure path already happened in my games.
Also, to not fully hijack this thread, there's a running debate in my gaming circle on whether or not Riddleport is a parody of Seattle WA. If so, that's one hell of an easter egg in my books.
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...She's on par with Baba Yaga in power.
Eh, I don't know about that, sonny.
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And we've been pretty hesitant about crossing the lines between the fiction and the adventures, but we'll see...
I know a player or two that would be quite happy to meet Jeggare and Radovan.
PS: James Jacobs, I know you mentioned that you don't interact much with the Pathfinder Society stuff, so did you know that Eando shows up in a PFS scenario?
PS: James Jacobs, I know you mentioned that you don't interact much with the Pathfinder Society stuff, so did you know that Eando shows up in a PFS scenario?
He also show up in
Creative Director
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We can't use Iggwilv, no... but we still statted her up back in Dungeon #149. She's on par with Baba Yaga in power.
And we've been pretty hesitant about crossing the lines between the fiction and the adventures, but we'll see...
Fair enough, and yeah I'm already working on converting her to Pathfinder from that exact issue. :)
As for the second part, what's the reasoning for that? I feel like you or one of the other devs may have mentioned something about it before but I can't recall where. My default guess would be that giving set stats would in some ways limit the freedom/creativity of the authors. Although there's certainly plenty of ways to let someone do a cameo without having to flesh them out in solid ink so to speak. Point in case: I don't ever recall actually seeing stats for Terendelev (the mythic Silver Dragon in WoTR), outside of her ravener form in book 6. Yet her one scene and the gift of her spell/scales sets the entire thing into motion.
Or is it more of a not wanting the books to be cannon kind of thing since you don't want to do the rolling timeline like Forgotten Realms did? If so, I can certainly understand and appreciate that line of reasoning as well. Personally I'm on the other side of that fence, but I wont deny that it does have its setbacks/flaws, especially from a developer/publisher's point of view. Besides, nothing stops me from making my own time lines and saying this book or adventure path already happened in my games.
Also, to not fully hijack this thread, there's a running debate in my gaming circle on whether or not Riddleport is a parody of Seattle WA. If so, that's one hell of an easter egg in my books.
Because what's good for a fiction character is bad for a team of PCs, and vice-versa. And because one of the two needs to be the star, and they can't both be the stars. And because players get tired real fast of NPCs who get "special treatment" in adventures because of the idea that they have to stay alive in order to "star" in the next book. For starters.
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And we've been pretty hesitant about crossing the lines between the fiction and the adventures, but we'll see...I know a player or two that would be quite happy to meet Jeggare and Radovan.
PS: James Jacobs, I know you mentioned that you don't interact much with the Pathfinder Society stuff, so did you know that Eando shows up in a PFS scenario?
He also shows up in an Adventure Path.
There are always exceptions.
Because what's good for a fiction character is bad for a team of PCs, and vice-versa. And because one of the two needs to be the star, and they can't both be the stars. And because players get tired real fast of NPCs who get "special treatment" in adventures because of the idea that they have...
Valid points, though I will point out that Eando, at least for us, didn't steal the show, he made it more meaningful for the players who already knew about him. That being said I can certainly see how such exceptions could be overdone or handled poorly, though I think that part is more on the DMs shoulders than the developers. I personally treat my NPCs like characters from a Glen Cook novel; no one is safe from death's steely grasp.
Regardless, here's hoping for a Jeggare and Radovan encounter somewhere down the road!
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Gothic writer Alison Kindler, from Ustalav, always made me think- Anne Rice.
Think Bram "Stoker", as well :)
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Mass Effect? Or Forbidden Planet?Numeria: Land of Fallen Stars, page 9, the Witchlight Vale entry makes a voice in the back of my head shout, "Monsters from the Id!"
The one with Anne Francis and a pre-comedy Leslie Neilson, of course!
The one mentioned in Rocky Horror Picture Show!
I liked the Nexian Galley from Legacy of Fire chapter 4 "End of Eternity". The pictures on page 9 and 23 show the helmsman as a golden minotaur - it's Minoton, a stop motion monster from the movie "Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger".
In Haunting of Harrowstone from the Carrion Crown Adventure Path, the Haunt Siphons are introduced. Their design is the same as the vials of acid that Keldor/Skeletor uses (skip to 3:40) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tk2yuCc5c-I
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In People of the Stars, reference was made to the Milk Spiral as one of the galaxies that could be seen in Golarion's skies...
Carry on!
--C.
The Einstuerzende Neubauten symbols on the tower shield picture & ring of protection picture in Core Rulebook. It's also on a potion bottle somewhere but I can't find it now. One of my all-time favorite bands.
p125 GameMastery Guide - just stumbled over it :) Blixa rulez!
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Someone pointed out to me a while back that the Sincomakti School of Sciences in Ustalav contains an anagram for "Miskatonic" (from Lovecraft).
I really liked the Memory Devils from the Psychic Bestiary that work a lot like The Silence from Doctor Who. Threw one of them at my players recently, was a lot of fun.
