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I've been trying to find more information about the prophecies of Aroden, but so far I've come up short. I know that prophecy has been unreliable on Golarion since he disappeared, but I'm wondering how detailed the prophecies were before then. For example, would someone familiar with his prophecies have known that Cheliax would split away from Taldor ahead of time, or would it have been fairly vague and the meaning would only have become clear in retrospect? Given that the Harbingers have apparently been trying to make various prophecies come true, it seems like his followers have a pretty clear idea of when certain things were supposed to happen.
I'm also curious exactly how the prophecies have failed since he died. For example, suppose that a prophecy indicates that a great darkness will fall across the land, bringing war and death in its wake, until a hero with a magic spear leads an army to victory against it. Would we expect nothing to happen, or would we expect something to happen but with an uncertain outcome? For example, would everyone be scared because some big darkness is supposedly coming and without Aroden there's no guarantee that the hero will emerge?
I've been trying to find more information about the prophecies of Aroden, but so far I've come up short. I know that prophecy has been unreliable on Golarion since he disappeared, but I'm wondering how detailed the prophecies were before then. For example, would someone familiar with his prophecies have known that Cheliax would split away from Taldor ahead of time, or would it have been fairly vague and the meaning would only have become clear in retrospect? Given that the Harbingers have apparently been trying to make various prophecies come true, it seems like his followers have a pretty clear idea of when certain things were supposed to happen.
I'm also curious exactly how the prophecies have failed since he died. For example, suppose that a prophecy indicates that a great darkness will fall across the land, bringing war and death in its wake, until a hero with a magic spear leads an army to victory against it. Would we expect nothing to happen, or would we expect something to happen but with an uncertain outcome? For example, would everyone be scared because some big darkness is supposedly coming and without Aroden there's no guarantee that the hero will emerge?
Well, the Starstone Doctrine apparently made quite clear that Cheliax would be the place where Aroden would rule the coming Age of Glory from (and his clergy was apparently able to calculate the exact date and time of it), and this was well-known enough that pre-Thrune Cheliax built its conquests on the idea that, as the place that he would descend to rule humanity from, Cheliax was thus a "precursor" to his reign. That's why a lot of Cheliax's government and imperial territories pretty much collapsed when Aroden died.
Most likely, the Starstone Doctrine doesn't specifically mention an actual Chelish state, just that Aroden's going to appear there and make it the seat of his government while he rules humanity for a thousand years. The vagaries of who's actually going to be in Cheliax is kind of outside the scope of what the prophecy's concerned with.
Anyway, prophecy is almost certainly something that was always of varying veracity, or else there'd be a lot more than the handful of societies that based themselves around it. The Starstone Doctrine is special because it was a part of Aroden's holy doctrine; it's contained in his church's holy text, The History and Future of Humanity. The real importance of the "breaking of prophecy" is that now even the foresight of the divine is in question, and even the biggest, most earthshaking, most venerable and widely accepted prophecies are suddenly up for grabs.
I think it's important to make the distinction that Aroden wasn't a god of prophecy, per se; that was and is Pharasma's bag. Aroden, as the god who represents the boundless potential of humanity, was a god of destiny and its fulfillment, particularly the destiny of humans to become great and powerful. Throughout the 4,600-odd years of the Age of Enthronement, humans lived with the bone-deep certainty that their destiny was a great and glorious one. And then all that certainty in their own greatness and potential was taken away, replaced only by endless questions.
Basically, the "breaking of prophecy" really just means that there's no certainty to destiny anymore, which on the one hand means that things could possibly descend into utter horror, but on the other hand it means that even the most hopeless situation might not really be hopeless, even if there's some prophecy saying it is or there isn't a prophecy that says it isn't. Out of universe it really just seems to be an explanation for why what the players do can still surprise and get the better of forces that should be able to see the future and know the unknowable and etc., etc.
I think one of the little blurbs in the Adventure Paths (IIRC it was one of the Kingmaker ones) is a quote by a preacher shortly after Aroden's death who was killed for preaching just that.