What's Rovagug's problem anyway?

[Yqatuba]

Is it explained anywhere WHY he wants to destroy everything? If so, why is it?

[Cavall]

He's a dick.

/thread

[Isaac Zephyr]

He's an embodiment of evil and chaos? Bits of his body come off and become almighty raging monsters and abominations?

To quote from another game, the actions of gods defy mortal understanding.

[the nerve-eater of Zur-en-Aarh]

Yqatuba wrote:

Is it explained anywhere WHY he wants to destroy everything? If so, why is it?

I don't know that wanting to destroy everything is a problem for an embodiment of the concept of destruction; it's far from clear to me whether Rovagug has enough of a choice about that for motivation to even come into the picture.

[Arcaian]

Rovagug is the most powerful of the Qlippoth. These are the original chaotic evil outsiders, and the original inhabitants of the Abyss. When the Proteans of the Maelstrom dug too deep, they breached into the Abyss, and where the two planes met creation occurred that was not instantaneously destroyed. This formed the material plane, and other Gods created mortals. The Qlippoth were for the most part content to fend off attackers into the Abyss and rule their realms there until the Daemons established a foothold and the Horsemen began experimenting on mortal souls in the Abyss. The Abyss is a semi-sentient plane, almost like a creature, and responded to the souls of mortals by transforming them into demons - should they be of the appropriate mindframe.

Demons quickly overran much of the Abyss, sticking to the upper levels. The defeated Qlippoth were forced to retreat further down the Abyss, though there are areas even further into the Abyss that even the Qlippoth dare not tread in. As demons are made from the souls of mortals, and the demons took what the Qlippoth view as rightfully theirs, Qlippoth wish to destroy all mortals so as to stop any further creation of demons. If successful, they would be able to retake the Abyss and return existence to the primordial state in which the Qlippoth lived for uncounted aeons before the Maelstrom's incursion.

As Rovagug is the most powerful of the Qlippoth, he is in the best position to destroy the Material plane, and thus mortals - which is exactly what he attempted to do. This is different the the daemons of Abbadon, who wish to see all life in the multiverse extinguished because they are, essentially, hardcore nihlists who do not see value in it.

Pathfinder has for the most part tried to come up with interesting lore for all of the Evil outsiders, even the ones that seem generic and boring.

[Ventnor]

Arcaian wrote:

Rovagug is the most powerful of the Qlippoth. These are the original chaotic evil outsiders, and the original inhabitants of the Abyss. When the Proteans of the Maelstrom dug too deep, they breached into the Abyss, and where the two planes met creation occurred that was not instantaneously destroyed. This formed the material plane, and other Gods created mortals. The Qlippoth were for the most part content to fend off attackers into the Abyss and rule their realms there until the Daemons established a foothold and the Horsemen began experimenting on mortal souls in the Abyss. The Abyss is a semi-sentient plane, almost like a creature, and responded to the souls of mortals by transforming them into demons - should they be of the appropriate mindframe.

Demons quickly overran much of the Abyss, sticking to the upper levels. The defeated Qlippoth were forced to retreat further down the Abyss, though there are areas even further into the Abyss that even the Qlippoth dare not tread in. As demons are made from the souls of mortals, and the demons took what the Qlippoth view as rightfully theirs, Qlippoth wish to destroy all mortals so as to stop any further creation of demons. If successful, they would be able to retake the Abyss and return existence to the primordial state in which the Qlippoth lived for uncounted aeons before the Maelstrom's incursion.

As Rovagug is the most powerful of the Qlippoth, he is in the best position to destroy the Material plane, and thus mortals - which is exactly what he attempted to do. This is different the the daemons of Abbadon, who wish to see all life in the multiverse extinguished because they are, essentially, hardcore nihlists who do not see value in it.

Pathfinder has for the most part tried to come up with interesting lore for all of the Evil outsiders, even the ones that seem generic and boring.

Basically, Rovagug is an old man who wants those darn kids to get off of his lawn.

Incidentally, he considers the entire multiverse his lawn.

[Dave Justus]

Why does he want to destroy everything?

Because it is there.

[PossibleCabbage]

I mean, what else besides "ruin all the things" is the chaotic evil big bad supposed to want?

[CorvusMask]

I think it might just be his instinct, qlippoths seems to honestly act on instinct most of the time despite being intelligent. Like he is essentially primal personification of destruction itself

[Slim Jim]

Most have not heard the news that Rovagug will stop wrecking things after he has smashed the last subwoofer'd hatchback in the multiverse.

Poor guy has sensitive hearing, and only wants a decent night's sleep.

[OmegaZ]

The head-canon I like is that Rovagug is the manifestation of divine war. When the primordial gods were initially fighting over quintessence, their mutually-assured-destruction conflict birthed Rovagug into existence. Then they realized that all-out war was a bad idea and teamed up to defeat the Rough Beast, locking him away at the center of Golarion.

This would help explain why the gods rarely take direct action and instead use intermediaries (heralds, clerics, divine servants, etc.) to achieve their goals. Its better to play Civ against each other than actually flip the table and start fighting directly because that's how Rovagug gets out.

[Rob Godfrey]

He/It is an eldritch abomination of the Cosmic horror school, he/it may have reasons, but a mortal would be insane to grasp the merest edge of those reasons. Or because world ending super deities are cool.

[TriOmegaZero]

Who hasn’t felt the rush of excitement at causing destruction? Especially before you were socialized to feel guilty? Rovagug is that turned up to epic proportions, with no cause or capability to be socialized to confine the destruction to approved actions.

[Xenocrat]

I like Rovagug as a partial solution to the problem of scale in Pathfinder and the number of outsiders in the outer planes.

I see that the latest consensus estimate of the number of galaxies is 2 trillion, which makes it pretty weird how small the populations of various planar cities are, since we know at least three galaxies are populated (Earth's, Golarion's, and and Androffa's) and that Golarion's is swarming with mortal life. Either a vanishingly tiny percentage of petitioners grow up to become outsiders, outsider immortality is even more of a joke than we thought because even outsider the Abyss they are being fed into some sort of constant meat grinder to keep their numbers down, there are separate outer planes for each galaxy (or some sort of perception veil that keeps an extraplanar travel from interacting with 99.99999999999999% of reality), the setting is really poorly thought out and makes no sense, or some of all of the above.

I like to think Rovagug wiped out mortal life in 99% of the galaxies before the other gods agreed to risk their own lives to stop him, leaving a measly 20 billion galaxies' flow of souls to have to explain away. Hopefully the Elohim and Aeons are taking a while to reseed the the dead galaxies with new life so that rent prices in Dis and the City of Brass don't get even worse and Paizo doesn't have to publish them with a dozen extra zeroes on their population numbers in 2e.

[Chakat Firepaw]

Xenocrat wrote:

I like Rovagug as a partial solution to the problem of scale in Pathfinder and the number of outsiders in the outer planes.

My assumption is that the outer planes as a whole are simply incredibly large. Not, "man that's big" large or even "infinitely large" large but at least as large as the continuum¹. The outer planes we see in the Pathfinder setting are just a tiny fraction of what's out there which makes the population density very low over all.

Why aren't people finding those other outer planes? Because travel through the astral involves directions that are as much conceptual as anything else, you get to Heaven by going half-way between honour and justice then taking a turn towards caring. It's kind of hard to get somewhere out blortways if you don't have the idea of blortness.

There are probably enough travelers who manage to get sufficiently lost that they go from one 'cluster' of outer planers to another that an outside observer would notice the occasional out of place bit, (e.g. a religion on one world using the names of some evil (near-)gods from a distant cluster as the 'many names of evil' in their dithiestic faith).

This is close to "separate outer planes for each galaxy," but combined with what you get with a random start in Risk.

1: That's the number of irrational numbers, which may or may not be the next larger number after infinity.

[GM Rednal]

For what it's worth, I think it's also noted once or twice that a lot of the outer planes are basically subjective - humanoids would mostly see other humanoids, but other creatures might see things more like themselves in the same "area". So there might be far more facets of a lot of areas that simply can't be accessed that easily.

[Yqatuba]

I just thought each outer plane was infinite, as well as possibly the Prime (Planar Adventures just says "immeasurable"). Also, with the possible exception of Axis none of the planar cities take up anywhere near all or even most of the plane, and there could well be an infinite number of cities. As for how many petitioners survive to become outsiders, it probably depends on the plane. I imagine Abaddon has the highest mortality rate as the petitioners are basically used by the daemons as target practice and only those who survive this become daemons themselves.

[Xenocrat]

Yqatuba wrote:

I just thought each outer plane was infinite, as well as possibly the Prime (Planar Adventures just says "immeasurable"). Also, with the possible exception of Axis none of the planar cities take up anywhere near all or even most of the plane, and there could well be an infinite number of cities. As for how many petitioners survive to become outsiders, it probably depends on the plane. I imagine Abaddon has the highest mortality rate as the petitioners are basically used by the daemons as target practice and only those who survive this become daemons themselves.

If Dis only has 10 million inhabitants and its importance to the second layer of Hell has been accurately stated the population of devils is so many orders of magnitude too small that I can’t really conceive of it. There are apparently more gods originating from Golarion than devils.

Similarly the idea in the recent Asura article that there are “millions” of them total in Hell, which is supposed to be a impressive given their limitations. Even as a small population and with few petitioners increasing their numbers, surely that should be trillions.

[Yqatuba]

I honestly think a lot of it is just the writers lacking sense of scale.

[GM Rednal]

Either that, or maybe very few souls actually become outsiders (excluding demons, anyway). Most probably remain Petitioners and eventually fuse with their plane.

[Yqatuba]

If we assume Golarion is the only inhabited planet then the numbers sound reasonable. Considering there are numerous populated worlds (as Starfinder shows) it's way too low however. That said, even if there are about 2 trillion galaxies it's hard to say what would be a reasonable amount of inhabitants as I would guess the VAST majority of solar systems have no inhabited planets.

[PossibleCabbage]

Aren't the Planes infinite? I just figured all the people from other galaxies just end up in a different part of heaven, etc.

[GM Rednal]

Most of the planes (in Pathfinder lore) are not infinite. I think only the Maelstrom is truly, genuinely infinite in size, as noted in The Great Beyond. Other planes sometimes have a kind of limited infinity, for whatever sense that makes - their edges are wrapped together, kind of like a world.

Size is pretty weird in the outer planes, and in part their very existence is subjective to the viewer. There are places you can't normally get to no matter how you travel, and realities could very well exist side-by-side.

This is actually kind of important in the cosmology. XD Basically, each plane (except the Maelstrom, which is more like primordial chaos and doesn't fit into the rules of the other planes) is as big as big as it can be based on how many souls are there to build it. This suggests a de facto maximum size based on how many souls are entering and how much of the plane is being consumed by the Maelstrom, recycling the souls that make up the plane and allowing them to be born again in the cycle of souls. (<- The Maelstrom eating planes it touches is canon, by the way.) If your plane has more souls adding to it than are recycled, the plane grows. If you have fewer people coming in, you shrink.

I don't know if this next bit is true, but my suspicion is that the larger a plane is, the more places the Maelstrom touches it and the faster it's consumed. This would automatically lead to a balance where each plane grows to a balance point between growth and consumption and more-or-less stabilizes. Hence, fixed size.

The Abyss is the only place that miiiiiight be kind of free from at least some of this. o_O It's kind of weird, too.

[PossibleCabbage]

I mean, it's consistent with known physics if the universe (the one we live in) is infinite (we just have bounds on the *observable* universe) so it's conceivable that the universe that Golarion exists in is also infinite, which would sort of necessitate the planes being infinite.

So I figure the best answer is "no one (except possibly Pharasma) knows how big the planes are."

I mean "heaven being infinite" doesn't mean that it's not at risk of being consumed wholly by the maelstrom, it just means that this is harder to wrap your head around (which is appropriate for this sort of thing, I feel.) I mean, the number of positive integers is the same as the number of positive integers divisible by nine (specifically the cardinality of the relevant sets), and the latter is obviously a proper subset of the former.

I mean, if we want to make the maelstrom much larger than other infinite planes, just declare it contains an uncountable amount of stuff. Heaven probably literally counts every soul, rock, tree, etc.

[Yqatuba]

What about the Prime? Considering Earth supposedly exists in the same universe as Golarion I would guess it's the same size as the real life universe, which we don't know whether it is infinite or finite, mainly because we can't see past a certain point due to light not reaching Earth yet. At the smallest it's about 13.7 billion light years across.

[avr]

Starfinder suggests that there are many inhabited worlds, but few enough that a war with a dozen on a side is a big deal. That means a few hundred tops IMO, with the majority of those not inhabited in the era of Pathfinder.

[Xenocrat]

avr wrote:

Starfinder suggests that there are many inhabited worlds, but few enough that a war with a dozen on a side is a big deal. That means a few hundred tops IMO, with the majority of those not inhabited in the era of Pathfinder.

Starfinder suggests that there could be more than a billion inhabited worlds in that galaxy. (If at least 1% of the stars have a single inhabited planet.) None of these civilizations will meet more than a tiny fraction of the others before they go extinct.

[PossibleCabbage]

I would think that a war with one planet on each side would be a huge deal. Planets are huge! Billions of people can fit on just one of them!

[mardaddy]

I'm sorry, are we trying to discover logic in an irrational mind?

Rovagug obviously has a deranged compulsion generated by not getting what it wants or thinks it deserves. Denied what it believes to be the "natural course of events," the resulting trauma to Rovagug's malleable mind has scarred the over-emotional entity to the core of its very being and given Rovagug a life goal. The entity now believes the entire universe owes it what it was denied and is to blame that things are not the way it believes is the right way. Convinced its purpose is to now set things right, Rovagug destroys everything, even if that means generating its own humiliation and slow self-destruction as by-products.

TLDR: Try and deny an irrational mind of what it believes is its purpose, pop some popcorn and see what happens.

[Dracala]

Does Rovagug even need a Purpose? Its the Largest of a group that is the Literal embodiment of Primordial Chaotic Evil.... Since when does Chaotic Evil Need a purpose? Hasn't Chaotic Evil always been seen as the alignment that does whatever it want whenever it wants?

[Ryze Kuja]

Rovagug is angry because he's got all them teeth but doesn't have any hands to hold a toothbrush.

[Texas Snyper]

Ryze Kuja wrote:

Rovagug is angry because he's got all them teeth but doesn't have any hands to hold a toothbrush.

I heard it was because of his enlarged medulla oblongata.

[quibblemuch]

I heard he stumbled onto a "should my paladin have fallen" argument thread on the messageboards and decided "Yup. It's all gotta go."

[DungeonmasterCal]

It all comes down to a lack of fiber in his diet. Everything hinges on that.

[quibblemuch]

DungeonmasterCal wrote:

It all comes down to a lack of fiber in his diet. Everything hinges on that.

Of course!

*dumps a ridiculous amount of Shredded Wheat down a hole to the center of the planet*

Wait. What's going to happen when he's not constip--?

*literal s*~* hits all the fans in the universe*

[DungeonmasterCal]

Ha!!!

[quibblemuch]

You go your whole life thinking something is a figure of speech and it turns out to be a literal apocalyptic prophecy...

[Phillip Gastone]

Then it turns out it is divine and becomes The Great Almighty Poo.(Conker joke)

[Thanateros]

Yqatuba wrote:

Is it explained anywhere WHY he (Rovagug) wants to destroy everything?

One of my favorite explanations for the motivation of a deity who wants to destroy everything is that he/she/it perceives the multiverse as ugly, and longs to return to the Absolute Tranquility which preceded the creation of the ugly multiverse. Perhaps Rovagug had wanted to purge only a portion [albeit a very large portion] of the multiverse prior to his imprisonment, but his imprisonment is what tainted him with a hatred of the entire multiverse. Perhaps Asmodeus was aware that such would happen.

Purgation of ugliness as a motivation opens the possibility of a sect of heretical clerics/paladins who act in Rovagug's name and who do perceive and value some beauty in the world but primarily fixate on purging the parts that they find ugly; such clerics/paladins could perceive themselves as "Good", though victims of their purges would obviously disagree.

[TOZ]

I'm now imagining a Rovagug cult meeting with victims lined up. "Does this one spark joy? No?" *stab*

[Marie Conan]

TOZ wrote:

I'm now imagining a Rovagug cult meeting with victims lined up. "Does this one spark joy? No?" *stab*

It is the greatest thing.