Assuming, of course, that the Gods and Outsiders remember anything at all.
That could be why they say nothing about what caused the Gap, after all; they might not actually know what happened.
The Gods went to war and it spilled over and their mortal followers began to fight as well.
Golarian and every other world was ravaged by crusades,inquisitions and jihads, the fighting was nothing short of apocalyptic.
But when all was said and done, entire pantheons had been
destroyed,reformed or come into existence as a result of dozens of gods dying,changing sides,and mortals ascending to divinity.
The New Gods wiped the cosmos clean of most of the damage that the war inflicted,Golarian a site of several crucial battles and had been "damaged" or changed beyond even the Gods power to restore and was simply sealed the planet away.
Finnaly the New Gods wiped all knowledge of the war causing the Gap.
The pact worlds and absalom station are actually a simulation being run by a supercomputer on Golarion trying to figure out whether the inhabitants of golarion can safely leave golarion forever to let it recover from being inhabited by mortals and become a garden world.
MY guess is Rovagug broke out, Destroyed Golarion, and killed most of the gods (which is why there's only a few left now) The surviving gods managed to kill him but he continues to exist in an undead form (The Devourer) who the surviving gods are too afraid to take on.
MY guess is Rovagug broke out, Destroyed Golarion, and killed most of the gods (which is why there's only a few left now) The surviving gods managed to kill him but he continues to exist in an undead form (The Devourer) who the surviving gods are too afraid to take on.
Which deities besides Rovagug and Torag are missing?
But I must admit that I am fascinated by the idea of a futuristic Golarion cut off from the rest of the universe, where the LG Torag and the CE Rovagug are the only deities.
Cayden Cailean and Erastil to name a couple. Looking at the wiki though there are more left than I thought.
Cayden Cailean and Erastil to name a couple. Looking at the wiki though there are more left than I thought.
They aren’t missing, they’re just not important or worshipped in the Pact Worlds in significant numbers.
MY guess is Rovagug broke out, Destroyed Golarion, and killed most of the gods (which is why there's only a few left now) The surviving gods managed to kill him but he continues to exist in an undead form (The Devourer) who the surviving gods are too afraid to take on.Which deities besides Rovagug and Torag are missing?
But I must admit that I am fascinated by the idea of a futuristic Golarion cut off from the rest of the universe, where the LG Torag and the CE Rovagug are the only deities.
It would be an interesting campaign built around breaking out of the cage, only for the PCs to realize doing so will free Rovagug too.
They aren’t missing, they’re just not important or worshipped in the Pact Worlds in significant numbers.
Source?
This is a long one but you asked for it. TLDR: examination of the Androffen spaceship slowly changed reality, Rovagug broke free, the gods had to hide Golarion, and wipe memories to reinsert themselves back into mortal concerns.
Natural and supernatural laws slowly change over centuries, affecting even the gods, as sentient beings 'discover' what they believe them to be. People being people, such 'discovery' is as much what they wish them to be as what they rationally determine.
When a spaceship from a different cosmos, containing a race called Androffens, crashed on Golarion and it and its scattered contents were painstakingly examined, such cosmic laws changed slowly but in a radically new direction. The Androffen cosmos contained incredible technology and radical philosophies but no arcana or divinity. A cosmos where gods and the power of nature are regarded as the ramblings of the superstitious and entertainers.
Technological secrets were slowly 'discovered' and combined with arcana but divinity slowly shrank. After all, why worship nature and gods as much when technology improves harvests and conquers disease? Why ask for the mercy of the gods when humanism and government organisation mitigates the effects of natural disasters that are natural, not caused by gods?
Rovagug, nearest the source, realised the changes and, as a being of chaos, embraced the changes. With new atheist philosophies whispered into minds and mass media across the centuries, the gods that imprisoned it would be gradually and inevitably disbelieved into myth. It would have its revenge.
The other gods, buoyed by the expanding rate of souls enabled by technology, didn't notice, except for Nethys, whose warnings were ignored. Until an impatient Rovagug broke free from its outmoded prison, a transcendent cloud of disassembling nanobots, software viruses, and nihilistic memes, laid waste to Golarion. Rovagug played its hand too early and the other gods, realising their upcoming non-existence, still had enough power to band together and fight it. Casualties were terrible but Rovagug was imprisoned in a modern prison in new demi-plane.
For the gods that survived and weren't insane, that still left a devastated Golarion and slowly disbelieving mortals on the other planets. The gods seemed doomed but they knew how mortals believed and they still had a few tricks up their sleeve. After all, most of them created the mortals. Freeze time, hide Golarion where it could never be found, wipe all historical documents, atheistic philosophies and explicit memory since serious examination of the Androffen ship, create more church buildings, print more religious texts, and insert procedural memories of worshipping. The Gap.
The gods knew that when time restarted and mortals suffered an immediate cultural crisis, they'd revert to older instincts and as well as re-read philosophy, ideology and religious books. Even though the gods aren't as important as they once were, philosophies, ideologies and stories where they're still the embodiment of mortal's ideals and values. The gods re-invented themselves for the technological age.
Eventually, Rovagug’s seal broke and the Gods prepared for their final confrontation. Only, it turned out that Rovagug had been dead for at least several million years.
The Gods were so embarrassed by being afraid of nothing that they initiated a mass mindwipe so that no one would ever know. They also hid evidence of their mistake; i.e. Golarion. They also stuck Torag on the hidden planet because he was in favor of telling the mortals that sometimes dieties make mistakes.
Cayden Cailean took a gap year before college, tried drinking even more to get ready, and the Gap is the result of his gap year hangover.
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In the Pact worlds book there is mention of a moon circling Bretheda called Yashu Indiri, this moon has many shrines to lesser deities including specific mention of Cayden Cailen.They aren’t missing, they’re just not important or worshipped in the Pact Worlds in significant numbers.Source?
Torag & Shylen are mentioned in the same sentence, though.
Specifically the shrines on the moon are built to honor "abandoned, dead, and otherwise forgotten deities, demigods, empyreal lords, quasi-deities, and even nontheistic philosophies." with "A special section [which] honors dozens of divinities who saw particularly widespread worship on Golarion before the Gap..."
So the only thing a God's shrine being on Yashu-Indiri tells us is that records of their existence are known; without further specification they could be dead, they could be MIA, or they could have just fallen out of favor and are no longer worshiped in any significant number.
The gap is the result of calden cayden finally marrying calistria. Whatever the gods did when they woke up from 897 barrels of Torags special reserve they agreed they would ALL. ALL never speak of it again.
They're arguing over who decided to take Rovagag out for "walkies" but desna DID wake up with a leash in her hand and hasn't been seen since...
My theory is that the end of days happened. The last person died, was judged by Pharasma, and Grotheus descended to end the world. However rather then simply destroying all of existence it was reborn. The centuries it took for the Golarian population to evolve and move on to the stars is the Gap. It wasnt till the very end of the gap when Golarion disappeared as part of Grotheus prophecy of the end of days. I dont know where it is now, maybe Rovagug destroyed it or maybe its in an alternate or pocket dimension, or maybe Grotheus possesses it as he did the moon over Pharasma's boneyard