First of all, I'm honestly not sure if this should be here or in the Paizo Products forum. I decided to put it here because I'm approaching the text from an immersionist perspective (has any RPGer used that term in the last decade?), meaning I want to do a deep dive into Nidal as a setting element. Moderators, if it's more appropriate elsewhere, I welcome you moving it!
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I love Geek and Sundry's Knights of Everflame, and in fact just finished watching Season Two. However, I kinda feel like Jason Bulmahn done Nidal dirty. The shadow-hugged land of Nidal is one of my favoritest places in Avistan. I've long adored the velstracs (nee kytons) as proponents of the exquisite enlightenments of pain ~ I see elements of myself mirrored in their personality and exaggerated until horrifying. Zon-Kuthon . . . well, I want to like him, but it feels like Paizo has often tried to stress WAY too hard for li'l ol' masochist me to stress how corrupt, evil, and alien he is for liking pain (this is a large part of why I disliked how Jason portrayed Nidal and the Kuthites in Knights of Everflame ~ I'm not trying to make them good, but I am interested in crafting them as a place and a religion with which good people can interact reasonably). Which is weird, cause the velstracs are perfectly placed in the uncanny valley for me, so I know that Paizo can do it. I'd love to read (and might try to write) a syncretic deity composed of the two siblings (Shelyn and Zon-Kuthon) much like Shimye-Megalla is a syncretization of Gozreh and Desna. Might try to cherry pick a few empyreal lords and kyton demagogues for those devotees to include.
But anyway: when I first read Nidal, Land of Shadows I was ready to hate it. I was bracing myself for a one-dimensional "Hurr, hurr, hurr, see how evil and edgy we are!" realm; what can I say? I'm of such an age that I was escaping from being a not-boy at an all-boys' school by playing D&D and a lot of Word of Darkness at peak-edgelord in the late '90s, so my expectations of such things are low.
But I LOVED the book, finding that it keeps the pre-ouchyouchyfunfun history of the kingdom alive, rounding out the Chronicles of Riddick meets Hellraiser vibe of the place with a settled horselord culture that felt quite real and pastoral vineyard rusticism scattered throughout. It's a nation of fiercely proud people, unbent, unbroken, some of whom still remember that they were that way before the Chained Hooks sunk into their soul-flesh and whom one can easily imagine enjoying a quiet moment with some simple food and a great wine beneath the gloomy sun. The combination even lends itself to an emergent fertile ground for ghost stories.
The cover, by an artist with the wonderful name of Kiki Moch Rizky, depicts the iconic hunter Adowyn, her pet wolf, and the escaped halfling slave bard Lem fighting an umbral dragon, no doubt somewhere deep within the Uskwood. They're intriguing choices, and not what I would have suspected for the iconics that might be presented on this cover. I actually kind of dislike Lem, whose backstory includes an important moment where he burns down his master's villa and then walks away disgusted by the halfling slaves who rushed to rescue their demon-worshipping masters (he's Chelish). It's left a bad taste in my mouth, as it seems to lack understanding of what liberation actually means and a disavowal of the ongoing work necessary to actually build folk a better life. Half-assed and objectifying revolution is oppression in its own way.
Sorry for that aside ~ I'm a bitter ol' anarchist and that comes burbling out sometimes >.< Anyway, I would not have expected either Adowyn or Lem to be on this cover, as they seem not have overmuch to do with the themes of Nidal. Which makes their appearance a good sign that the book will avoid the one-dimensionality I was worried about before my first readthrough. It's a clear message that there will be thematic weight and adventure here for even pretty bright, more traditional (less Gothic/dark) fantasy heroes as well as for, well, Riddick and the like. But come on, there's an iconic FROM Nidal, the iconic villainous inquisitor Zelhara. Why couldn't we see her somewhere in the tableau as well?
Actually, my biggest complaint with this cover image is that the umbral dragon just doesn't feel very umbral to me. It's more like a gray dragon than anything else. Even the wisps of shadow around its mouth read more like smoke than anything. A smoke dragon? A cigarette dragon? The image tells me there's more here than I feared it would be limited to but doesn't evoke any of the actual themes of the realm. They overcorrected with this one and missed a lovely opportunity to concretize a creature that, at least for me, can sometimes be difficult to conceptualize. The umbral dragon is almost queer in that it attempts to straddle seemingly contradictory tropes/themes/archetypes ~ the imposing muscle and maddening treasure hoard of a dragon with the fear of the hidden and the unknown and the lack of safety found in the formless, gossamer shadows. This cover would have been a great place to really help sink that image into many gamers' minds.
Oh, well. The rest of the book certainly makes up for the cover!
P.S., I really like the lead author's name ~ Liane Merciel. It's quite beautiful, and almost Kyoninite in its sound. Ever notice how Kyoninite names seem to mimic some sort of hybrid between Hebrew angel-names and French? Except for the country, of course, which always sounds so Japanese to me. But, yeah, Seltyiel and Merisiel and Tariel (from Knights of the Everflame) immediately come to mind when I see Merciel on a Pathfinder product..... Although I can't help but imagine the book being written by the half-elf Alkenstarian iconic gunslinger, Lirianne, who just seems to always be in it for the wild rides and the gonzo adventures of everything. It's an interesting voice to imagine this book written in....
The next page is a rather pretty map of Nidal. Sadly, I can’t seem to find a picture of it easily on the Internet ~ everything that comes up is either not Nidal or ugly.
One of my favorite things about this map is that they draw images of the common animals on it, presumably in the same reagions where the animals are most commonly found. There’s five of these: a horse north of Edammera’s Folly, a dragon at the rather poorly-named Shadow Caverns, some sort of imp thing outside of Brimstone Springs (a much better name), a vestrac of some sort above Ridwan, and most surprisingly a bison or somesuch in the North Plains. The North Plains, ironically, are in the southwest of Nidal. Presumably, they’re named for their placement in relation to whatever country is south of Nidal ~ the core of Cheliax, the bit of it that hasn’t won its freedom in revolution.
These animal pictures are accompanied by quite beautiful little highly-detailed images of the settlements depicted on the map. These are ornate and specific enough to give you, at a glance, some of the street-level feel of the place which seems like a nice touch that I really enjoy.
I’m often fascinated by the scale of fantasy and scifi realms, especially because it’s so often misunderstood. More importantly, however, it’s one of those things that can really aid immersion into the setting, as we players can analogize what’s going on to very concrete experiences we have and share. In this case, the map covers approximately 120,000 square miles (almost 400 miles by about 300 miles); that’s about the size of, like, New Mexico, Poland, Oman, or the Phillippines. That’s a nice size, not ridiculously large (the most common issue with fantasy maps) nor overly small. Poland was about the same size as this dating back to the 12th century, so (while large) it doesn’t strain credulity for it to be unified as a nation. At the same time, it’s large enough that one could reasonably expect regional differences to have some real weight; I would expect the Atteran Ranches and Ridwan to have distinct cuisines and holidays and clothing styles and things. Recognizable as part of an overall Nidalese culture, and yet distinct from each other.
The Uskwood is between the Sumatra Rainforest and the Virgin Komi Forest in size ~ large but nowhere near unbelievably so, as Earth retains forests in the millions of square miles, even in this age of deforestation. Continuing this trend of lovely restraint and reasonability of size, Usk Lake is only about a third the size of the Great Salt Lake. Nidal is an almost unbelievably believable size.
I decided to Google “Nidal” and discovered that it’s an Arabic word meaning something like struggle, but in more of a competitive or controversial sense than, like, the more famous word “jihad”. It’s used as a given name, carried by everyone from a director of Bulgarian National TV, Syrian and Palestinian politicians, and an Ivoirian singer to a soccer player, the creator of a type of rocket, one of the bombers of the first World Trade Center bombing (in 93), and the Fort Hood shooter. It’s also in the name of one of the Palestinian revolutionary groups ~ the ANO is the Abu Nidal Organization ("Abu Nidal" = "Father of Struggle", I believe?).
Does anyone have any inside baseball on why they chose the name, actually? There is an English adjective referencing nests, the uterus thickening before ovum implantation, neuronal aggregates, infection points, and originations. I’m kind of hoping that was the reason they named it that, cuz the idea of pulling in a random Arabic word for one of the dark/evil countries (no matter how much I love said nation) is kind of . . . icky. Especially since the Avistan cultures that inform most of the human ethnicities in Nidal would indicate something closer to Celtic/Cimmerian, Romany, or maybe French/Italian/Latin influences (kind of in order of strength of influence; that’s Kellid, Varisian, and Chelish in Avistan terms).
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In addition to your in depth study of this book (appreciated), I encourage you to write a review for any Paizo books you read.
Just be sure to type the review in another program and paste it into the text window, as the website occasionally tries to "eat" reviews, and it's a lot easier to copy-paste what you have written rather than have to retype it.
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Let’s Reads rarely have much to say about tables of contents, and I doubt this one will really buck that trend. The credits list no names I recognize as involved in this particular book, and I’ve already mentioned the two names I found most aesthetically interesting (Liane Merciel and Kiki Moch Rizky), though I do enjoy a few bits of names scattered throughout ~ one of the Interior Artists is named Federico and another has the last name Pajaron, while one of the cartographers carries the surname Mammoliti (note to self re: the Omnipresent Inspiration Hypothesis ~ the Most Serene Republic of Mammoli, a pseudo-Italian Renaissance city-state inhabited by loxodons (is there a Pathfinder equivalent?) called the mammoliti, perhaps based on Genoa or San Marino). The rest of the credits are the standard list of Paizo’s general team.
It does list the Starfinder design lead and the Starfinder Society developer, which I find somewhat surprising. I do appreciate Paizo listing as many folks as they do, down to the data entry clerk and the warehouse team. It’s nice to see the workers in the less-glamorous parts of the company getting relatively equal credit.
The chapters seem pretty standard:
Living in Shadow
Gazetteer
Threats in the Gloom
Bestiary
There’s a sizeable content note with specific trigger warnings around what is to be found within the book that will benefit from explicit consent for inclusion. It also includes a sentence driving home that a single person not wanting or having the spoons to play with these themes is a reason to do something else with your game and a pointer to a deeper discussion of consent and horror in Horror Adventures. That discussion, while excellent, sadly doesn’t provide any technologies to negotiate prior consent and monitor ongoing consent, like the system of Lines, Veils, and X and O cards so favored in the storygame scene. I really wish it did. I like how up-front this content notice is, non-apologetic but also sensitive to the realities of players’ various experiences. It does still read very “No Means No” and I prefer to come from a “Yes Means Yes” consent culture. I’m not sure how to put that well in an RPG content note, however, as saying something like “Only play this if everyone at the table is excited to play with these themes” feels a little too close to inviting edgelordiness….
Other than the standard OGL notice, there’s only the standard Pathfinder reference section, listing what are presumably the most commonly-referenced books in the text and giving them little superscript abbreviations to ease reading. Anything not on this list will be spelled out in full when being referenced. Listed are the Advanced Class, Player’s, and Race Guides (cuz duh), Bestiaries 2 through 6 (including 5, which is my favoritest), Occult Adventures (yay! I simply adore what Paizo did with the occult classes), and Ultimate Magic. This is all a very good sign for what is to come.
The next page includes half of a gorgeous blue-hued two-page header image featuring a standardly gorgeous woman with interesting hair looking out over a suitably Gothic-medieval Brutalist city. There seems to be smoke floating through the air, which lends a very atmospheric obscuration to the city but also, well, obscures it a bit. Also, the city is dotted with what might be termite-hills or very large tents, conical spire things that curve out to a slightly wider base than would be expected; what are those? I am jealous of her dress, ridiculously thin as it is (some of the back flourishes appear to be painted on). I would so wear that. She has a bracelet that seems to float at some distance from her wrist ~ I’m going to interpret that as being composed of thin spiky needly things cuz worshipper of the pain god ~ and the blue tone allows the red liquid in and spilling around her wineglass to really pop. There’s nothing in the picture to resolve the question of whether it’s claret or blood, which seems just exactly the right artistic choice.
As the title page for the Living in Shadow chapter, the only text here is the name and an excerpt from the “traditional Festival of Night’s Return sermon”. This is the kind of thing I just eat up; I love it. These little bits of religious microfiction can go a long way to expressing both the grand theological elements of a setting and the social history/people’s history/psychosociology of describing the nitty-gritty details of how the average fantasy-world person views the world.
Two things jump out at me in this sermon, which I love. One is the sentence “Death came to hunt us, and Zon-Kuthon taught us its leash.” The Nidalese are not a people who see themselves as having escaped death, but as having gained the ability to give it orders, to turn it into their cute pet who slobbers up excitedly to greet them when they come home from work. The other is that most of the sermon prides the Nidalese people on surviving Earthfall. These are not empty-headed conquerers-for-conquest’s-sake, like the Necromongers they take so much inspiration from. Though this understanding of themselves can easily provide a pretext for seeking military domination, it is deeper and more self-possessed than that, and can easily be built upon to reach a perspective that can be considered “good” by fantasy RPG standards.
It helps that the sermon reminds me of a Radical Fairy song that I’ve always assumed goes back to the 90s, when AIDS was wreaking havoc in our community (I am too young in both breath and the Radical Fairies to remember those times, but I’ve often listened to my elders who were there for it):
We walked and we walked and we walked and we walked
And the echoes of our cries
Brought us to the other side
We almost died…..
But now we thrive
That is, I think, something I forgot to praise about Nidal ~ while its culture is obviously one built upon and predisposed toward evil, very little of their society and psychology is reducible to evil, allowing players to create believably Nidalese good characters without having to make them Do’Urdenites who unrealistically reject everything about the memescape which formed their understanding of the world.
OK, so now we finally get into the beginning of the meat of the book (what can I say? I’m a bit of a completionist!) Everything starts at the beginning, and the beginning (of course) is Earthfall, that time when a bunch of aquatic tentacley things tried to kill the planet with meteors. It happened 10,000 years ago.
It’s time for another look at the scale of things. Time is a big one in fantasy settings, perhaps largely due to Tolkien’s need to tell an amazing story that stretches over ridiculous amounts of time. If not that, then the roots of the modern fantasy genre being grown at a point in history when we were realizing and grappling with the idea of “deep time”, that evolution and astroplanetary processes required flat-out incredible stretches of years. If not that, then the simple pressures that develop from the need/desire to create myriad little pockets of setting to accomodate a wide variety of genres, stories, and authors.
So 10,000 years ago, in our world and from our perspective, was the time of, for example, Çatalhöyük (Catal Huyuk), famously one of the first ever cities on the Euroafroasiatic tricontinent. This predates writing, and in fact agriculture was the new big technology changing the world. Europe was just leaving the Paleolithic, as Asia Minor was teaching it these new ways. Only about, say, 5 million people existed at the time.
This seems, at first glance, to be a ridiculous stretch of time, but if you consider the length of the nonhuman races, it becomes much more reasonable. I did the math once (like a decade ago, so please forgive if I misremember numbers slightly) and, if we go by the relative ages of majority, elfs would experience history at about 1/7th the rate of humans. That is, elfs take about 7 times longer to reach their adulthood than humans. And the culture as a whole, assuming we can average out this ratio amongst the core PHB races would have a rate of historical change equivalent to just slightly half (2.2). This would mean that Earthfall would happen more like 1430 years ago (or the equivalent of, like, the beginning of the Bengali calendar and the Byzantine-Sassanid War) from the elfin perspective and 4550 years ago from the perspective of the general, multiracial culture. That would make it closer to, like, the origins of Proto-Indo-European and the domestication of pigs/cultivation of rice in China.
Honestly, that still feels like a f### of a long time ago in terms of the multiracial general populace, but it’s not unbelievable if we think of Azlant as being basically the Atlantean precursor to civilization. Humans would consider it unbelievably ancient and it would be a recognizable period to elfs as the precursor to the pseudo-time-period in which their fairy tales are set.
So, that many years ago, the ancient horselords of Nidal found no benefit from their traditional gods in the face of cosmic catastrophe and were offered solace from the Midnight Lord, Zon-Kuthon, son of god of hunters and beasts who turned on both father and sister (goddess of love and beauty) after going too far into the empty spaces between the stars. Now he likes whips and chains and shadows and things. In contrast to the tone of the sermon on the previous page, the text here specifies that they bound themselves in fealty to Zon-Kuthon out of terror and desperation ~ I suspect that any good Nidalese would bristle and stab at this suggestion, should it be made in character!
One of the interesting things about Nidal is that it achieves the trope of the shadowed land at least partly not from some weird magical sky effect but from the thick canopy of the Uskwood’s giant, black-leaved trees, which cover the “glittering shade city” Pangolais. I really appreciate how this image drives home the blend of Gothic and barbarian that gives Nidal its particular flavor.
We are told that Nidal is ruled by the Umbral Court, which is in turn ruled by the Black Triune. This sentence is particularly cute: “They govern in murmurs and feather-light touches, for shouts are unnecessary when every whisper carries the promise of unimaginable pain.” Sure, it’s a weensy bit purple, but it gets across quite beautifully that this is a realm of creeping threat and constant paranoia, rather than the bog-standard military state. The latter would simply bring forth all my anarchist revolutionary desires, whereas the former actually brings chills down my spine with thoughts of Foucault, the closet, and real-life repressions.
Nidal doesn’t feel safe, and part of that is that there is no obvious target to strike against to achieve one’s liberation. Armies can be defeated, despots can be killed, but the uncertain panopticon can never fully be pulled from beneath one’s skin.
The text does note that there are rebellious elements in the nation, but it doesn’t mention any plots or organizations, to its credit. This resistance feels, from this paragraph, more like the refusal of hope to die than it does an organized movement with actual goals and even some faint idea of how to accomplish them.
The page ends with a note that Nidal is the only place on the continent of Avistan (maybe throughout Golarion?) where pre-Earthfall knowledge is preserved. This gives PCs a reason to visit the realm other than “bad guys live here, go kill them”, which is really kind of neat, and adds a third point to the complex nature of what could have been a single-pointed kingdom: Nidal is a land of pseudo-Celtic barbarian horselords worshiping a Pinhead pastiche that have some of the most important libraries on the continent.
Evidently, the Kellid ancestors of the Nidalese were tan-skinned and dark-haired. I’ve been thinking of them as essentially Celtic (though, of course, Golarion and fantasy role-playing generally speaking seems to lack any equivalent of, say, Epona, goddess of horses) but this description, which focuses heavily on their nomadism and mentions so-called shamans (a word I tend to shudder at unless it’s referring to near-Arctic indigenous religions) and warlords as their ruling classes, is bringing a much more Mongolian image to mind that what I’d had previously. The picture of a horselord on this page doesn’t push me one way or the other. She’s a thin woman, presumably human but looking rather elfin, with golden, warm skin, dressed for warmth but not, like, super bundled for snow. Definitely a fur cape, though, and her horse has some nice jewelry (armbands on a horse, though?), including something in its hair that looks like stars against the night sky of its locks. I don’t know how it matches up to other depictions of the Kellids, but I will now be imagining them as a cross between the Celts and the Mongolians ~ maybe something from about halfway, like the Scythians, would be the best model for them.
Despite their spiritual leaders being described as shamans, the ancient Nidalese are described as worshiping both Gozreh and Desna. I’m kind of curious how the otherworldly/altered-state-of-consciousness/animist religion usually intended by the word “shaman” interacts with the more theistic notions of these two gods. Certainly, I have friends whose theologies bridge these two worlds, who will do things like going on trance journeys to the grand fields of night to talk to the butterflies there, but I’m curious how the Old Nidalese used to reconcile them.
I wonder how the Nidalese who have encountered the Bonuwat think of Shimye-Magalla, the janni-like syncretism of Desna and Gozreh they worship… It’d be a cute character, perhaps: the half-Bonuwat half-Nidalese cleric, or oracle, or “shaman”.
I also find myself wondering about preservation of this older religion into Nidal’s more modern spirituality. Do they have “shamans” who follow velstracs using traditional methods of altered states of consciousness and otherworldly travel? Do they use the more institutional, worship-based Kuthite ritual forms to approach the nature and dream spirits of old? I think one thing that would have made me beyond happy would be to see velstracs or demagogues who had started out as such spirits and then had heard the word of the Nine Truths, forsaking their old realms and ways for the Shadow Plane and the ways of pain. There’s (of course) real-world precedent for such things; some of the stories of the djinn involve converting them to Islam.
Anyway, the Old Nidalese preferred to live on the hoof and were well-known as master horse-breeders (shades of Mercedes Lackey ~ I’ve thought about exporting Nidal into a patchwork setting before; maybe Aldea from Blue Rose would share a border and an ethnicity with it?).
That whole life-way ended with Earthfall in –5293 AR, as dust dimmed the sun. The book makes a point of saying that humans could survive such a disaster, but their beloved horses could not and that the Nidalese sold themselves to the newly-returned Midnight Lord in service to their love and devotion for their equine familymembers.
So the previous statement about their maintaining libraries of knowledge from before Earthfall (twice as long before the present day of Golarion as the development of writing is from us) seems almost false. “Almost” because we are told that straggling survivors of Azlant and Thassilon crowded around the Old Nidalese for safety. These would have carried with them the ancient knowledge that Nidal now keeps preserved alongside the few scrolls and painted hides that represent their own knowledge of old.
The “Last Civilization in Avistan” turned inward and insular and isolationist, pursuing ends described as “increasingly inscrutable and arcane”. No doubt that they were busy! Completely overhauling their entire spiritual practice, collating and collecting and making use of the random bits of knowledge just discussed, settling into cities and permanent settlements, and exploring the enlightenments that pain brings ~ there was a lot on their docket.
But the account skips nearly 9600 years of history to the expansionist Chelish attack of 4305 AR (414 years ago, equivalent to about 188 years ago to the culture as a whole and just 60 years ago to the elfs), unprevented by Nidal’s fearsome reputation. It was part of a larger effort that involved also invading Molthune and Varisia. The war between the two lasted 30 years (equivalent to about 14 years to mixed culture, or 4 years to the elfs), until the Black Triune ordered the Nidalese soldiers to stop fighting.
The period known as the Shadowbreak began with the formal acceptance of Chelish conquest in 4338 AR (381 years ago, equivalent to about 173 years ago to the culture as a whole and just 54 years ago to the elfs). This was a time when the Kuthite faith blunted its sharpest cruelties, Nidalese sages began to participate in the overall Avistani academic conversations, and the House of Lies opened its doors to all of the world’s braggarts. More on that institution later!
John Compton wrote: In addition to your in depth study of this book (appreciated), I encourage you to write a review for any Paizo books you read.
Just be sure to type the review in another program and paste it into the text window, as the website occasionally tries to "eat" reviews, and it's a lot easier to copy-paste what you have written rather than have to retype it.
Oh, I never responded to this! >.< I'm sorry, my bad... I would love to write a review ~ mebbe I will once I'm done with this close reading. I'm relatively new to the forums, though; where is the appropriate place to post such a thing?
Head to the product page on paizo.com, click the reviews link below the product info, head to the last page of reviews and click the “write a review” link!
Yeah just remember that review thing times out quick so if you dont' do copy paste of it, you will lose it
Saying that even though it was already said because I've lost many reviews to that ;-;
On side note: I thought by shaman they were referring to shaman class aka communing with spirits and the world. Could be wrong about that though since term has been used in setting before the class was ever a thing
CorvusMask wrote:
On side note: I thought by shaman they were referring to shaman class aka communing with spirits and the world. Could be wrong about that though since term has been used in setting before the class was ever a thing
Oh, I thought the same thing! I just look at that class and see a theological element to it ~ an animist perspective of the individual spirits in things who can be interacted with as friends or community members, as opposed to the cleric's great big gods who require devotion and worship, the oracle's numinous mysteries to lose oneself in, or the druid's wild pantheism. It's how I'm able to understand the difference in-fiction between an Earth-domain cleric, an Earth-domain druid, a stone oracle, and a stone spiritworker....
It's also why I've been thinking I need to write up a pain spirit for the spiritworker a.k.a. "shaman" (tho it does feel odd to want to write 1e content now that 2e's here) to represent the union of Kellid culture and Kuthite theology. Well. velstrac praxis more precisely.
The god of humanity died 113 years ago (the equivalent of about 51 years ago in terms of cultural/historical processing by the multiracial society as a whole, or of about 16 years ago to the long-lived elfs ~ yes, it is very possible that your 1st-level elf PC was born before Aroden’s death), His death brought civil war to Cheliax, in which Nidal; sided with the devil-worshippers of House Thrune. Their victory brought independence, an alliance, and a purging backlash to Nidal. Dissidents and heretics were rooted out and murdered with pain.
The very next paragraph describes Nidal as becoming politically powerful by means of its alliance with Cheliax, as riding their coattails into international relevance. Frankly, I find the idea that this state of things is palatable or even bearable to such a proud people as the Kellid Nidalese ~ the Kellid seem like a fiercely independent people who would insist on being mighty n their own right (or by right of their own thews, perhaps I should say), and millennia spent flinging themselves upon the gentle spikes and hooks of Zon-Kuthon would likely have only exacerbated their self-reliance.
A brief foray into divine history follows. Zon-Kuthon was once Dou-Bral. He and his sister Shelyn (beauty, art, love) were the children of Thron, the Prince That Howls. Their father was a spirit-wolf whose howls praised life, love, and song ~ the very image of the pastoral woodland. But Dou-Bral fought with his sister and fled from her beyond the borders of the planes.
Something waited there for him there that taught him the rapture of suffering in all its forms, the beauty of being maimed, the joy of loss. He took his new name, wounded his sister, and twisted his father into his new herald, now called the Prince in Chains.
Abadar did his favorite thing and developed a scheme to neutralize the cruel god. He offered banishment to the Shadow Plane prison realm of Xovaikain for as long as the sun hung in the sky. In return, Zon-Kuthon would be able to claim a single item from the First Vault. I imagine the Midnight Lord creepysmiling at this offer, and capitulating with an unsettling eagerness.
Earthfall banished the brightness of the sun from the sky, and Zon-Kuthon burst free from his prison and claimed the first-ever shadow from the First Vault. His prison became his new deific realm.
That was when three of the greatest leaders of the Kellid horselords quested for salvation from the spirits, their tribal gods, and Desna and Gozreh. They found a giant cloud covering once-shining green hills, a wicked and foreboding presence that balked the shamans. But the horselords knew that help was needed for their people to survive.
Zon-Kuthon whispered promises of survival in trade for the servitude of them and their descendants. A tear in the world appeared before them, and those quiet offers became screams. The three horselords did what they had to so they, their people, and their horses could live on. Zon-Kuthon crawled into the world, touched them, and evaporated their humanity. Where once three Kellid chieftains sat upon their horses, now the Black Triune were. No longer could they feel anything ~ not the heat of the sun or the varied delectations of a feast or the caress of the river’s waters ~ except for the shocking glory of pain and the slickness of their blood as it spills. They also became the immortal leaders of a new Kuthite theocracy.
In truth, their immortality is important, as Nidalese law consists only of the vague prescriptions of their high holy book, the Umbral Leaves. The Black Triune is their charter, their constitution.
We’re told that some faiths are approved for worship by foreigners, and Asmodeus is name-checked as having small shrines in the realm for that very reason. I hate when some detail like that is dropped, and there’s no specification. Like, I think I get it ~ leaving it open allows more GM interpretation and customization for the specifics of their campaign. Only… it doesn’t allow for such, it more like invites it. GMs can and do change details like that all the time, so I don’t see preserving that functionality as sufficient reason to avoid communicating a more nuanced and specific vision of the setting. Like, there are 130 lawful evil divine beings. I can’t imagine that all of them are accepted within Nidal, and it would reveal something about Nidalese culture to know what they allow and don’t allow.
Next we get a recognition that, well, pain isn’t for everyone, and that in fact entire communities may pay the Midnight Lord no more attention than a Christmas-and-Easter Catholic gives their god. The vast majority of Nidalese do not commit themselves to the spiked chain’s kiss eight times a day.. Folk superstition and, especially, the worship of Desna continue throughout.
I rather enjoy that Desna is the main revolutionary force in Nidal ~ Shelyn would be easy,but it’s established that Zon-Kuthon still loves her in his way. He might enact any number of cruelties upon her and her followers, but he still wants her to succeed. Narratively, this makes it difficult for her to be a good opposition to her brother. And Desna has associations both with Zon-Kuthon’s place of transformation and to the human ethnicity just north of Nidal ~ the Varisians have long been fond of the butterfly goddess...
Next we get a sidebar with yet another pet peeve of mine >.< A description of three powerful, ancient, and mysterious beings (the Black Triune, the three horselords who made that deal with Zon-Kuthon that recreated Nidal in his image) . . . who “hold themselves remote from its day-to-day affairs.” Like, that’s the worst possible way to say that cuz it’s essentially saying “Haha, but you don’t get to see them!” WHy not just say “They only get involved in matters of the highest stakes as regards Nidal, or in the kind of cosmic matters scrutable only by the highest-level adventurers”?
We are told, however, the (possible) classes of the Triune, as well as the suggestion that there are three of them because of the three types of obedience/obedience-related prestige classes. This is almost too neat in that way that AD&D2 is often accused of being grid-filling, but it’s still super-cute. Possibly because the class choices aren’t boring :-D One was a cavalier/sentinel of Zon-Kuthon (capstone obedience ability: blindsense), another was a ranger/exalted of Zon-Kuthon (capstone obedience ability: summon and control an interlocutor velstrac 1/day), and a third was a witch/evangelist of Zon-Kuthon (capstone obedience ability: unarmed strike that does 2d6 nonlethal pain damage per round, nauseates, and gives a +4 bonus to your Intimidate checks against it for 10 rounds, save for half damage and sickened).
While I’m curious about the sentinel’s cavalier order, it’s the witch’s patron that fascinates me more. The Kellid ur-Nidalese are described as having “shamans” ~ presumably, the Pathfinder1 class of the same name (that I have renamed the “spiritworker”) is the best way to represent this religious practice. That class is a hybrid class mixing and matching elements of the witch and oracle classes, so knowing the patron of one of the Black Triune could really flesh out not only that ancient culture’s spirituality but how the Kuthite Reformation blended with, superseded, and appropriated that substrata.
Next comes a description of the Umbral Court, complete with a pointer at Paths of Prestige for the Umbral Court agent prestige class. Court membership isn’t granted to someone merely for having been born to the right family. No, it’s piety to the Midnight Lord and merit that earns one a place in this great group. Their origin as roving proud nomads shows up here, as Court members receive no formal title.
They do, however, receive a ritual that transforms them somehow. The change might be subtle and non-physical, but it can include getting turned into a vampire, shadow creature, shadow lord, or some other mystically empowered and appropriate form. Presumably, anyone who becomes a vampire thereby would become a moroi, the standard European conception of the vampire that’s popular nowadays, though I suppose getting turned into a nosferatu (monstrous and ugly) wouldn’t be too much of a surprise; the jiang-shi (hopping vampire) or vetala (psychic vampire) are, I would imagine, not quite Zon-Kuthon’s bag, baby.
The shadow creature template is pretty bog-standard for D&D3.x, giving expanded vision, damage reduction, spell resistance, and resistance to cold and electricity. Its special lala is that it gains concealment when not in bright light as it blends into the shadows. The shadow lord is, at its base, a pumped-up version of the template with better vision and better defenses. It also means that the creature is incorporeal but only while its moving, including (called out in the Bestiary 4 entry) a very situational deflection bonus to AC. It gets a melee touch attack that can be negated witha Fortitude save and that can do a tiny bit of Constitution damage, as well as a cone of cloying gloom that can blind and slow opponents and a bunch of spell-like abilities (ray of sickening at will; shadow conjuration (shadow creatures rather than fiendish/celestial) and shadow step 3/day; greater shadow conjuration (same) and shadow walk 1/day). Finally, they can open gates to the Shadow Plane (except in normal or bright light) to make it easier for their buds to come to the party, a significant boost to Dexterity and Charisma, and a mighty boost to Stealth. So, yeah, that’s a whole thing.
The first member of the Umbral Court to whom we are introduced is Eloiander of Ridwan (human druid 15), the albino master of the all-albino Shades of the Uskwood (repesented by a feat in the Inner Sea World Guide that adds two mostly necromantic or invisibility-related spells per level to your spell list and removes your ability to cast spells or take wild shapes involving fire), who goes around garbed in a continuously ad-hoc robe woven about his body by a multitude of spiders. Take that, Lolth; maybe you should go to Eloiander for some fashion advice! Eloiander is the answer to my earlier concern about the Kellid-descended Nidalese chafing at the idea of riding Cheliax’s coat-tails. He is whispered to be leading the Shades in sabotaging the diabolist realm. Nothing is said about his motives, but I suspect pride in his people is behind a lot of it.
Following that is his rival, Kholas (vampire sorcerer 14), the official advisor to Queen Abrogail Thrune II. Everything that Eloiander is not ~ urbane, polished, sophisticated, and dedicated to the alliance with Cheliax. No doubt he personally waited, tapping his foot, those three centuries to find out why the Black Triune ordered the nation to surrender. He suspects Eloiander, and would jump at the chance to act on actual proof of his subversion. It would be nice to know his bloodline; I’d guess shadow since he was trained in the Dusk Hall as a shadowcaster, but that’s also kind of boring, y/n? Considering his posting, an infernal, vetsige, or (if he was human before) imperious bloodline might be appropriate, but something like a div, dreamspun, martyred, psychic, starsoul, or even unicorn bloodline might be fun….
The last one for today (more in the next post) is Meleyne the Sun-Dimmer (half-elf bard 9). She does a lot of work souring relationships and burning them down with flames of jealousy and distrust. She is the frenemy with the biting tongue that drips tiny comments all over the place which drown your confidence and allow resentments to slip under your skin. By pushing her victims toward vengeful self-destruction she turns them into instruments of bitter envy. She’s the worst kind of bully and social predator. I have this kind of funny image of her running afoul of a pakalchi sahkil (who specialize in finishing off decaying relationships and, coincidentally, are CR 9) for essentially overworking the sahkil and not letting her have her choice of targets, or of tainting the work by artificially decaying the relationships in question. She’s a good enemy for an Ultimate Intrigue campaign because she likes to target the rulers of good-aligned nations, allowing the PCs to act as defenders of the realm.
Mykos Roarik (male vampire fighter 10) is the member of the Umbral Court who wanders the farthest. What race was Mykos before his Embrace? Presumably human, but why not state it? Deceptively gentle-mannered, he’s the leader of the Adamant Company, a subset of the state army (appropriately called the Adamant Guard) and hires them out to people other than Nidal (the Black Triune? The Umbral Court itself? Who actually is in charge of the Adamant Guard, anyway?) Evidently, the Company’s cruelty is so famous that their mere arrival on the field can cause the enemy to surrender with only one condition: no one, civilian or soldier, will be given over to their uncertain care.
The final member of the Umbral Court we’re given a description of is Virihane of Pangolais (female caligni ranger 8/rogue 2), a lovely (and rare) example of a veiled assassin done up in classic Kuthite goth-y style. I like the spiked steel rings that fringe her veils ~ it’s a detail that can either end up delicate and elegant, or exaggerated and hella metal. She’s a hunter of forbidden faiths, killing their worshipers and taking their stuff, and ties into a relatively weighty plot thread running through the book. Her current quarry is the Harp of Night’s Hope, a relic dedicated to Desna that helps them dream and get rid of Zon-Kuthon’s influence. It’s somewhere in the Uskwood, lost by a worshiper of the night sky who was caught trying to get an umbral shepherd out of a loved one. (That would be a Shadow Plane-based outsider who actually serves the Midnight Lord ~ as opposed to the velstracs who are merely deeply allied with him ~ who look like something out of a Lovecraft story and spend their time possessing people and turning their flesh into dissipating shadow.)
We’re given the details on the occult ritual known simply, descriptively, and effectively as enter the Umbral Court. It’s a big’un, level 8 and requiring 2-7 spellcasters. Oh, and ouch ~ it involves being whipped with a whip made from one’s own skin. That’s a little over-the-top, I’d say, but certainly makes a point! For some reason, I am deeply happy about the inclusion of an Intimidate check as part of the ritual ~ it feels very gratifying and realistic to me that many rituals involve some sort of action covered by a non-obvious skill like this. Why is this ritual possible at close range? That means a 20th-level lead caster can initiate someone into the Umbral Court from half a short city block away!
Backlash causes all involved casters to take a permanent negative level, while failure sends them off to somewhere near Zon-Kuthon’s realm of Xoviakain (on average, that would be 252.5 miles away, which is about the distance between Fremont and Shasta in California) and then get attacked by apostle velstracs. I wonder how often the ritual is failed, and how Nidalese culture processes it ~ is it a sign of the Midnight Lord’s displeasure with the supplicant? With the caster? Is it a test? Is it just something that happens sometimes, a consequence of working with such murky energies? Apostle kytons are powerful beings formed from those who have become infected with the madness of shadows (CR +2 template), either by another apostle kyton or some other source. The example in Horror Adventures uses a human slayer 11 as the base, resulting in a CR of 12. Since three more attack than the number of casters, that would result in a difficult CR 16 to a difficult CR 18 encounter, which doesn’t seem all that hard for spellcasters capable of doing an 8th-level ritual.
The fact that the ritual involves custom tortures derived by reading the target’s mind might make the distance of the ritual make more sense ~ many tortures would only be possible at such a distance (certain humiliations, fears of pursuit, etc.). While being tortured, the supplicant must recite the story of the Black Triune’s meeting with Zon-Kuthon against a background of epic poetry concerning the god’s time outside of reality and what he can do to his worshipers.
There’s this thing in religious studies scholarship that the achievement of altered states of consciousness is one of the main purposes of religion, with the particular state preferred by a religion defining much of how that religion works. This particular ritual surprises me by not going for the endorphin-fueled altered state caused by extended pain but rather the adrenaline of fear (in fact, anyone immune to fear would fail the ritual). Or perhaps it’s something similar to the panikon (panic) sought out by the cults of Pan in ancient Greece who would often get themselves lost in the mountainside forests. It wasn’t the state we call panic they worked with (the freakout when you realize you have no idea how to get back to somewhere safe/familiar), but the state afterwards ~ the wide-open freedom of no expectations.
Anyway, the ritual turns the supplicant’s eyes inky black and renders it immune to shadow spells (though they can lower this as a standard action, if desired). They also gain a bunch of unholy protection: regeneration 5 (“good weapons and spells and silver weapons” ~ is that good weapons and good spells or good weapons and any spells?) and DR 15/good or silver. Finally, they are forcibly turned lawful evil and have a 1-in-4 chance of getting summoned to Xoviakain for eternal torment if they do anything against Kuthite doctrine or dogma.
D&D-style fantasy games often refuse to describe what certain things look like, describing them solely in mechanical terms. The Umbral Courtmember lowering their immunity is one of those things. While this can often reduce games to simple strategy, it also allows players to develop the fiction of their character’s religious practices. What are some possible ways that could look?
We’re also told a little about the Midnight Guard and the Adamant Company. The former is a group of Nidalese spellcasters that serve House Thrune in quelling rebellion and the Black Triune by spying on Cheliax. Liane includes a short shout-out/pointer to her two Nidal-focused novels for more information about the Guard.
The Adamant Company, on the other hand, are pseudo-mercenaries who enforce the will of and loyalty to the Black Triune, with a specific focus on the Uskwood. Mykos Roarik sometimes hires them out to bosses other than the Triune when possible (although there is a slight discrepancy: his description says he does “when otherwise unoccupied” but this says “when resources permit”).
It doesn’t answer the question of the Guard’s, and therefore the Company’s, ultimate commander. Nidal obviously isn’t a feudal state, seemingly run as a nested oligarchy, with a larger group of rather independent agents (the Umbral Court) taking charge of most matters, and a tiny junta (the Black Triune) at the top. But/and many of its structures and institutions, like the Adamant Guard, seem to call for it to either be some form of absolute singular rule (monarchy, despotism, etc.) or to have some sort of governmental level in between the two. Though I suppose a more unified Umbral Court could also be a solution.
Way back in the long-ago time of the Age of Destiny, Azlant maintained a trading outpost in the Mindspin Mountains, no doubt in the region that separates modern Nidal from Molthune or Nirmathas. It was called Calignos, and its seers managed to predict Earthfall, literally a day before the aboleths smashed the asteroid into Golarion. Heeding this prophecy and with essentially no time to think about it, the people of this outpost (which included among their number not only Azlanti humans, but also elfs, gnomes, half-elfs, halflings, and others) did the most sensible thing available to them: they fled underground.
Such a grand impact obviously collapsed the tunnels behind the fleeing Azlanti, who knew little of how to survive in the photosynthesis-lacking Darklands. Magic was their savior, magic and a group of demigods in the Shadow Plane known as the Forsaken, who transformed these primordial humans into the creatures now known as the “dark folk”. Every once in a while, however, a child is born to them, slender and gray-skinned and resembling in many ways the Azlanti race. They are called, with forgotten lack of creativity and vague wistfulness “caligni”.
Many such forsake their people, both socially and physically, and in the latter forsaking many come to Nidal, for its gloom and environs prove quite welcoming to them and their light-sensitive eyes. As Zon-Kuthon and the velstracs reside in the Shadow Plane themselves, Nidalese culture reveres most shadowy entities, and this helps the caligni integrate into their society. One of the greatest tragedies to befall this race is that they rarely breed true. Their children, too often, are dark folk themselves and not proud caligni like their parents. We are not told what happens to these dark children, the heartbreak of their people, but we are told that many caligni who wish for children adopt abandoned infants or steal them either by their own force or that of hired mercenaries.
The Forsaken are described in the very last Pathfinder module to use the 1st edition Pathfinder rules, Cradle of Night. Though they hoped to transcend their status as demideities by explosively harvesting the souls of the caligni, they mysteriously disappeared sometime in the Age of Darkness, which started with Earthfall. Both due to their location aboveground and the more precipitous nature of their own transformation, it seems reasonable to believe that the Black Triune made their deal with Zon-Kuthon sometime relatively significantly before the disappearance of the Forsaken. I do, however, find myself wondering how related the two events are, since they both involve deities from the Shadow Plane and occur at about the same time…
Shortly after the disappearance of the Forsaken, beings known as the owbs appeared and replaced them as the center of dark folk and caligni religion. They seem to have some connection to the Forsaken, possibly as fractured shards of their being, as certain owb can channel the power of the Forsaken to grant clerical spells to their worshipers. They include:
* Enkaar the Malformed Prisoner, neutral evil Forsaken of fetters, lethargy, and physical corruption whose owb prophets cannot be paralyzed and can deform others; Enkaar seems in many ways to resemble the velstracs though Enkaar’s chains are encrusted with rust
* Eyes that Watch, neutral evil Forsaken of feelings of inferiority, felines, and strangers, whose prophets can see without their eyes, which emit dim flames instead
* Grasping Iovett, chaotic evil Forsaken of accidents, parasites, and reckless lust, whose prophets are immune to disease, poison, and grappling and can cause tick-bite-like pustules to erupt on a person’s skin; Iovett’s sacred animal, in fact, is the tick
* Husk, neutral evil Forsaken of emptiness, loneliness, and narcissism, whose prophets are immune to bleeding, disease, mind-affecting effects, and poison and can enshroud their surroundings in silence
* Lady Razor, neutral evil Forsaken of family strife, suspicion, and vengeance, whose prophets can fight with all slashing weapons, even with more than one at once, and can ensure their slices cut vital areas; Lady Razor was the magistrate who forbade showing kindness or mercy to one’s family
* Reshmit of the Heavy Voice, chaotic evil Forsaken of broken things, forgetting, and unexpected violence, whose prophets make everyone around them unusually forgetful and can make objects explode
* Thalaphyrr Martyr-Minder, lawful evil Forsaken of failed heroics, imprisonment and squandered time, whose prophets prevent morale bonuses and can make others slow down; Thalaphyrr guarded the prisons where the Forsaken kept would-be usurpers and destroyers.
That’s . . . well, that’s certainly a pantheon, and suddenly makes me much more interested in the dark folk/caligni, who’d always seemed kind of bland in my previous readings. Their perspectives on things seem beautifully topsy-turvy, even appealing to my Discordianism in its glorification of things like accidents and failure. They certainly bring a flavorful masochism to Nidal that the Kellid inhabitants seem to avoid. I imagine that all of the Forsaken ~ well, the owb prophets who channel their divinity, anyway, as said prophets refuse to allow any of the energy possibly gained by worship to pass through to their patron ~ are allowed shrines within the borders of Nidal.
I kind of wonder if the cataclysm of the Forsaken came when Thalaphyrr somehow failed in its vigil, or has something to do with Enkaar’s resemblance to an antique velstrac.
For the record, caligni racial traits (from Bestiary 5):
* +2 Dex, +2 Con, -2 Int
* 30 feet of speed
* See in darkness
* Light sensitivity
* Explodes in a flash of dazzling light when killed
Yet another group of Azlanti survivors, yet another mysterious Shadow-Plane patron.
Fetchlings, presumably, lived in the homeland rather than some farflung, backwoods outpost like Calignos. A little later to realize what was going on than those mountain-dwelling traders, the ancestors of the fetchlings nonetheless managed to figure out what the flood of meteorites in the sky portended, and took a deal offered by an entity known as the Widow. About whom, sadly, nothing seems to have been written beyond this, which came from Blood of Shadows. In the ten millennia since, these humans were changed and warped by the powers of the Shadow Plane, becoming a new and separate race: the fetchlings.
So now, in the century or two after Earthfall, we have:
* Zon-Kuthon escaping the prison of Xoviakain
* The Forsaken claiming the caligni and then disappearing, only to be replaced by the owb
* The Widow secreting the proto-fetchlings away into the Shadow Plane
* Count Ranalc, a fey Eldest exiled to the Shadow Plane, reaching out to try to influence the Material Plane
Gods. I should deep dive into that time period sometime, cuz tying those four things together could be fascinating! I think Doloras had already freed the velstracs and they’d made their home in the Shadow Plane by then, y/n? Was the Widow one of the things that Thalaphyrr guarded in the Forsaken’s gaols, and the fetchlings her escape plan? Did she date Count Ranalc? What is his relation to the Forsaken, and why doesn’t he have a stronger presence in Nidal ~ he’d make a fascinating Nidalese boogeyman, wouldn’t he?
Anyway…
Thin, fragile, grey-skinned and yellow-eyed, they are plagued by an inverse of the effect that helps the caligni assimilate into Nidalese culture. Their resemblance to Zon-Kuthon causes the average Kuthite to assume a similarity to the Midnight Lord in experience and personality. Though the book only calls out the fear this engenders in the “provincial” ~ who aren’t under the social pressure to at least fake daily devotion that the urban Nidalese are ~ I can imagine that the true believers among the population would end up exoticizing and idolizing them, or stereotypes of them, anyway. Certainly that dualistic approach ~ both racist, but coming at it from different sides ~ is one I would play up if I was in a Nidalese campaign that involved fetchlings.
Mention is made that “fetchling” is considered an insult to these Azlanti descendants, who use an Aklo word (kayal) for themselves. Interestingly, Aklo is closely attached not only to eldritch entities and the Darklands, but also to the First World. It is even called out as having similarities to Gnomish! Considering that fetchlings have no connection to aberrations and other such eldritch entities nor one to the Darklands (which is a caligni thing, and they have their own language), this might point towards an association between Count Ranalc and the Widow.
Fetchling racial traits:
* +2 Dexterity, +2 Charisma, –2 Wisdom
* Native Outsider
* Darkvision 60 feet
* Low-Light Vision
* +2 Knowledge (planes) and Stealth
* Increased miss chance against them in dim light
* Cold resistance 5 and electricity resistance 5
* Disguise self, shadow walk (self only), and plane shift (self only, to the Shadow Plane or the Material Plane only)
They can give up their low-light and disguise self to take others with them through shadows, become better liars and sweet-talkers if they give up the miss chance, or gain spell resistance against light and shadow spells if they give up that miss chance and their resistances. If they don’t want those skill bonuses, they can instead be treated as humans, be fearless, be better liars and sweet-talkers (again, though not as powerfully as the other way….but you can take both!), cast illusion (shadow) spells more powerfully, become an amazing liar (again, this can be taken with the other alternate racial trait), or understand the ways of Golarion better. They can give up (some or all of) the spell-like abilities to replace them with displacement or memory lapse (different racial traits) or gain an unnerving stare.
Of particularly interesting note is the alternate racial trait from Blood of Shadows called “Nidalese Recluse”. This replaces all three spell-like abilities with sanctuary, nondetection (self only), and veil (self only). It definitely underscores the desire of Nidalese fetchlings to avoid attention….
Fetchling favored class benefits are super-broad. I am intrigued by the focus on cold and electricity resistance, I must say, which shows up in like four of them!
After the caligni and the kayal, the last of the races singled out for attention barely counts, in my mind. After all, as far as I know, there’s never been a racial write-up for the velstracs. Especially since there are so many different types with such different statblocks. Here's a list of the twenty types of velstrac (along with the origins of their names):
* Almoners [an official distributor of alms, or charity], who forge the iconic chains of the velstracs
* Anchorites [something like a hermit, only restricted to sometimes a single room and considered dead to the world], converted mortals
* Apocrisiarii [representative of bishops to the secular authorities], who cannot lie and use torture to reduce others to a single truth
* Apostles [carrier of the Word], also converted mortals
* Augurs [Roman diviner by the motion of birds in the sky], the tiny spirits who can be familiars
* Cantors [singer of liturgical music], the scouts and guides
* Ephialtes [early advocate of democracy in 5th c. BCE Athens OR one of the Aloadae or Giants in Greek mythology OR the one who betrayed the Greeks to the Persians at Thermopylae], among the leaders of the velstracs
* Eremites [fancy word for a hermit], the big bads
* Evangelists [one who tries to convert others], the baseline kyton from D&D 3.x ~ also the most commonly found velstrac in their old Hellish home
* Interlocutors [explainer of the government’s views and can also tell the government things from the people], surgeon-sculptors
* Lampadarii [the one who carries the lamp or torch into the church], half-shadow Kuthite fanatics (to my mind, this separates them a bit from the Nine Truths-focused other velstracs)
* Libitinarii [Roman undertaker], the frozen velstracs
* Oitoi [I have no idea], the skeletal velstracs
* Ostiarii [doorman, the first order a seminarian is admitted to after declaring they wanted to be a priest], gatekeepers and emissaries
* Phylacators [I have no idea again], the jailers and executioners
* Precentors [person who leads a congregation in singing of prayers], the storytellers and historians of pain
* Sacristans [protector of the room for keeping vestments and the church], unintelligent slaves
* Sextons [person who looks after church and churchyard, sometimes as bell-ringer and gravedigger], who are extra fanatical about their pursuit of pain
* Suffragans [a bishop subordinate to another bishop], former Joyful Things who join the lampadarii as Kuthite fanatics rather than Nine Truths true believers
* Termagants [ummm...a violent and turbulent pseudo-deity believed by Medieval Christians to be worshiped by Muslims...], who are always pregnant and give birth to abominations
Anyway, it seems that they are uncommon, but easily recognized by the population. Well, I would imagine so! As Zon-Kuthon’s primary agents, their image is no doubt emblazoned across the friezes and mosaics of their temples. I’m imagining, in fact, chains embedded in the actual concrete walls of the temple, hanging between sculpted images above the heads of the congregants. Velstracs likely cavort in the margins of Nidalese illustrated manuscripts, and crude velstrac costumes almost certainly adorn the performers in their morality plays.
This section doubles down on the kayal entry in terms of presenting a division between the upper classes (defined here largely politically, as “the Umbral Court and their agents” rather than by religious devotion) and the majority of the population. The latter, it seems, sees the velstracs as nothing but immensely fearful, while the former mostly see them as an opportunity or a threat. I might be invested in the idea of Nidalese culture being something good characters can reasonably come from and interact with, but this feels like it swings too far. If nothing else, the realm has served the Midnight Lord for twice the length of Earth’s recorded history in objective years and about as long as our recorded history when adjusted for multiracial differences in lifespan. The idea that the general population just cowers beneath an imposed tradition simply doesn’t seem to stand to reason.
Of course, rebels always see the arrival of velstracs as a deep “Oh, f%~&” moment.
Anyway, there's really not much to be said about this little bit. It honestly feels more like fluff added in, mebbe in formatting, to fill out the space.
I'd guess that Count Ranalc isn't particularly relevant in Nidal because he possibly got kidnapped by Nex or whatever happened to him when he disappeared around same time Nex attacked Absalom with shadow monsters :p
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The book does a lovely job of quickly reminding us that the Nidalese people cannot be reduced simply to their religion. They are people, with goals and interests and needs beyond the demanding cruelties of the Midnight Lord. In addition to his priests, the Nidalese count architects, farmers, musicians, and chirurgeons, all seeking to meet those needs and desires.
This is the real start of what I love about this book, as we are given information about Nidalese family practices ~ Earthfall created such intense population pressure that it introduced widespread contraception use to keep families small. After ten millennia (likely experienced as approximately the length of Earth’s recorded history, thanks to the presence of elfs and dwarfs and other folk who live longer than humans), I assume contraception use has dwindled from almost ubiquitous down to common and accepted; similarly, I would assume that the current standard family size of two children has increased dramatically from what it once was. Given the general benefit in agrarian cultures of having more children (they mean more workers, after all), I appreciate the note that this is encouraged by the Umbral Court as a means of control.
I also really love that the text specifically mentions that the Nidalese trend toward smaller families results in a widespread emphasis on fiercely loving one’s children. No doubt a large element of the Umbral Court’s manipulation of the populace, it nonetheless helps deepen the view of Nidalese culture and encourages motivations for its people beyond a simplistic desire to proselytize the ecstatic joys of pain. I would dearly love to see this worked into an adventure (or even a path) ~ great fun can be had by giving the PCs motivation to team up with people they find reprehensible because those people are trying to do something good and understandable that doesn’t negate their usual role as villains.
We are again reminded that true believers are a minority among the Nidalese as they are in any religion. However, this time the paragraph does so without resorting to the image of an oppressed culture cowering under an imposed religion for a ridiculous length of time. Rather, it draws the average Nidalese more realistically. These are simple casual adherents who say their daily prayers and celebrate religious holidays, all without experiencing anything dramatic or intense.
The Umbral Court has, over the millennia, filled every official military and academic position with its agents (and I would assume some are less “agent” and more “lackey”). Some answer is given as to the actual governmental structure of Nidal, as we are told that this allows them control over trade and building, providing a bottleneck on the distribution of wealth and influence. This would seem to indicate that the realm is generally ruled by its soldiers and sages, a military-academic junta. There is no nobility of the sort that tends to mark feudalism, nor are the Umbral Court’s agents function as lords. I’m still not perfectly sure how that would look, but at least I have a vague idea now.
This also provides a mechanism for the continuation of the Kuthite religion in Nidal. The main path through that bottleneck seems to be costly, elaborate displays of Kuthite dedication. This is what gets the casual worshipers to undergo the extreme rites that cement their faith in the Midnight Lord. It is not dissimilar to one of the main ways that Earth cults maintain control over their followers, and one of the methods most easily scaled up to entire populations. In actual play at the table, this can be a way to give PCs the difficult decisions to make that can really drive drama, as well as provide roles for Nidalese that aren’t direct opposition for the party. In order to position themselves to do what they need/want to do (saving innocents, defeating villains, etc.), they may have to impress an agent of the Umbral Court with a Kuthite rite.
Pope Uncommon the Dainty wrote: The Umbral Court has, over the millennia, filled every official military and academic position with its agents (and I would assume some are less “agent” and more “lackey”). Some answer is given as to the actual governmental structure of Nidal, as we are told that this allows them control over trade and building, providing a bottleneck on the distribution of wealth and influence. This would seem to indicate that the realm is generally ruled by its soldiers and sages, a military-academic junta. There is no nobility of the sort that tends to mark feudalism, nor are the Umbral Court’s agents function as lords. I’m still not perfectly sure how that would look, but at least I have a vague idea now. An all-encompassing church-state bureaucracy with no feudal admixture? Examples to look at could include 1st Century Egypt or mid-20th-century Russia.
As for the undefined terms:
"Oitos" is Greek for "doom" or "pain," and shows up as a root in the names of at least three beings in Greek myth. "Phylacter" is also Greek (though the spelling Pathfinder uses seems to have been dog-Latinized), an archaic form of "phylactery," meaning "protectant." Probably refers to their role as guards.
I forgot to mention in my last post that the seeming structure of Nidalese government has probably created something of a blend between the ancient Roman system of patronage and some areas of Europe under the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. This is significant because it can quite shift how one thinks of getting things done in this gloomy land ~ I can imagine that there is quite a vocabulary (of words, body language, and customs) associated with maintaining one’s relationship with whichever specific Umbral agent military leader or academician one usually goes to in order to get what one needs, but that the only accepted way to acquire that relationship is through showy and intense displays of Kuthite religiosity. This results in fun things such as being useful to a specific agent and gaining their patronage thereby is considered corruption by Nidalese culture, unless you arrange to get suspended by hooks in your back or partially flayed as a way of publicly giving them an excuse to make use of you. Moreover, it’s probably likely that the agent has to manipulate or backchannel you into appearing to do it for your own reasons and on your own initiative without appearing to be seeking your aid.
A sidebar addresses the rifts to the Shadow Plane that dot the Nidalese countryside, which allow travel across the veil, but more importantly allow that realm’s inhabitants to come into Nidal. A few specific ones are mentioned:
* The Cathedral of Exquisite Agony in Pangolais has one in its dungeons that doesn’t allow mortals to cross over but only shadow-creatures to come to the Material Plane
* Ridwan has one at its center that leads to the chasm known as the Deeping Darkness
* A storm known imaginatively as the Shadowstorm (I actually kinda like the name) roams around the Umbral Basin
* Blacksulfur Pool, south of Nisroch
* The ruins of a wizard’s lair from centuries ago has one evocatively known as Edammera’s Folly
* There’s one caught behind crystal in something called the Moonless Mirror; like the Shadowstorm it is said to be unstable and flickering
And of course, both permanent and temporary rifts litter Nidal like mouseholes in an old barn. Interestingly, they are opaque from either side ~ inky and diffuse from the mortal side and indistinctly bright from the other, without the ability to see what awaits should you go through.
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I like that the book notes that the lack of showy displays of self-mortification in rural villages isn’t due to a lack of belief or even of faith, but a simple consequence of the relative poverty of village life. Without the money or magics to perform or survive the big shows of pain, the folk out here celebrate much more simply. It gives a reason other than “pain is bad, mmkay?” for a Nidalese character to be a member of a party or show up in a narrative with much less possibility of squicking out those players who might be less comfortable with Zon-Kuthon’s ways.
There’s also more freedom out here from the hierarchy and dogmas of the Zon-Kuthite . . . church? Is there a church? We’re back to the question of the actual structure of religion in Golarion. Is this like a mini-Catholicism? Or is it closer to something like Judaism or Islam, where there is a monotheism but not much of a hierarchy beyond the local or the regional, and it’s all about which teachers you follow or ideas you adopt? Or is it closer to many polytheisms, wherein all the gods are worshipped all the time (although Nidal would be closer to monolatry, considering the Black Triune’s ancient deal, wherein the others would be recognized but only the Midnight Lord actually worshipped) and the priesthood*s* are a collection of religious professionals with specialties ranging from particular rituals or magicks all the way to specific spirtual practices or paths or the ways of individual deities?
Anyway, without Umbral agents barring access to the necessities of life and ambition as much, country Nidalese merely act with the guidance of a local cleric. Actually, I quite like the term vicar for this role, for some reason. It is now, in my head, a Kuthite vicar. They are noted to be either a local zealot or a washout without ambition from the big city. Beyond that, there’ll be a couple of visits from Uskwood druids or shadowcallers every year to snap up youths to train in their ways (with or without consent, of course).
The Umbral Court has once again done a wonderful job of populace control, in that they are known to react with overwhelming force to any hint of sedition and to masquerade their agents as travellers in order to learn of that sedition. This has led to a widespread xenophobia amongst the rural Nidalese, which of course will tend to contain and weaken the rebellious elements of Nidalese society. Considering just how long Nidalese history has lasted, this suspicion of strangers is likely almost reflexive and impossible to shake off.
The clouds which choke off Nidal’s sun aid this effort, as only the efforts of the Uskwood druids keep the people fed. Of course, the Uskwood is a fraction of the territory of the nation, so I imagine that the druids send out parties on a circuit of the land to ensure that the farms can produce enough food for Nidal to remain free from unwanted control by not importing food from elsewhere. This might make an interesting campaign for a party heavy in druids, rangers, hunters, spiritworkers (the so-called “shamans”), witches, or even clerics and oracles with the right domains/mysteries. The PCs could be a group of younger druids, just out of their indoctrination and not yet stuck in their evil ways, overseen by a stern NPC elder whom they have to circumvent in order to be heroes or even antiheroes. In addition to just the general moral dilemmas presented by the situation, the hive or the mi-go (both of whom infest the Uskwood) could work as villains of the campaign. Multiclassing (or the right archetypes) with vigilante could be useful here, too.
One mof my main agenda for fun is immersion, so I simply adore that we are told that wheat and rye serve as Nidal’s staple, as well as fish and gasping white fish.
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The section on the resistance begins with the line, “The Umbral Court does not cow everyone in Nidal.” Frankly, I don’t much imagine they need to ~ they’ve ruled in an unbroken reign for 10,00 years (culturally speaking, again, about 5000 years, the length of Earth’s written history). My assumption would be that the greatest obstacle facing the resistance against the Black Triune would be convincing the Nidalese populace that another way is even possible. Especially with the efforts put in by the Court to ensure and create Kuthite faith amongst the prosperous of their nation, the resistance would likely be recruiting from the poorer and more oppressed people of Nidal. The kind of folk who, even in a setting like Golarion with information technology significantly advanced as compared to most D&D settings, have no idea how other nations work, no other examples other than the eternal reign of the Triune, the Court, and their agents to feed their dreams of freedom.
The rebellion, we are told, is mostly unorganized and composed of tiny cells or even lone wolf freedom fighters. As I supposed in the previous paragraph, dissidence is often associated with foreignness ~ contact with foreign ideas or foreign infiltrators. However, there is also an element of ancient Kellid spiritual traditions resisting the Midnight Lord’s intrusion upon their cultural territory. We were told earlier that the ancient Kellids of the region worshipped Gozreh and Desna ~ it is specifically the latter goddess of dreams and luck who feeds the ranks of the treasonous with oracles and spiritworkers (seriously, those two classes are called out in the text). The region known as the Atteran Ranches, which we will learn more about in the future, is particularly associated with this kind of resistance.
Everywhere but in the Ranches, rebels keep a low profile, performing very minor acts of sedition and only then with caution. The Atteran, however, send enchanted dreams to the Nidalese people, aiming to inspire mass revolt. There is a significant element of religious magical research amongst the Atteran resisters, as well, as they hope to exorcise umbral shepherds from those they possess and to free the Umbral Court from Zon-Kuthon’s influence.
The Umbral Court continues to demonstrate its deviosity when it comes to the relations it fosters with the nations around it. They purposefully keep these relationships full of distrust and fear in order to discourage their subjects from fleeing their borders and means that those who do are often killed or returned by the very lands they thought would provide them refuge.
Cheliax, of course, is a bosom buddy with whom Nidal gets along famously. We are given some idea how Nidal makes its money, exporting ornate silver jewelry, brutal Ridwani blades and dark Ridwani gems, and the exotic fare offered by the Uskwood and trade with the Shadow Plane. It doesn’t sound like the Nidalese are selling to the common Chelish; their brand is high-end and expensive, and support the Chelish taste for conspicuous consumption and finery.
The other thing Nidal exports, again primarily to Cheliax, are people. Workers, such as torturers, shadowcallers, experts in population control, and diplomats for the infernal empire to use in its own efforts across Avistan, Garund, and Arcadia. They also, of course, send much information back to Nidal and serve the Midnight Lord by steering Chelish decisions and policies.
The Mindspin Mountains no doubt give Nirmathas and Molthune quite a bit of relief, as their existence is the primary excuse they use to avoid having much to do with their gloomy neighbor. No mention is made of the dwarfs and other races that inhabit the Mindspin Mountains, which is kind of a shame really. The standard PC-opposition races (orcs, giants, etc.) might be all-too-easy to paint with a boring brush when it comes to their interactions with the Kuthites, but there are many interesting directions a skilled author could take them. Even better, the Mindspin Mountains house dwarfs from Janderhoff ~ with their standard toughness, I can only guess what kind of thing Kuthite dwarfs could get up to, and with a rather interesting racial pantheon to begin with, there's much missed opportunity there, in my mind.
Interestingly, Geb (the Garundi nation of the undead ruled by an ancient lich that’s been at war with the high-magic realm of Nex for millennia, leaving the magic-scarred faux Wild West of Alkenstar as their border) has recently reached out to Nidal. Honestly, if I’m drawing parallels with Earth cultures, this is kind of fascinating, as I often use the following rough equivalencies: Cheliax=Italy+Spain, Nidal=France, Geb/Nex=Ethiopia/Eritrea. I say this is interesting because Italy colonized Ethiopia and (I just recently heard; I’m not sure how much I believe it) played a significant role in the development of Eritrean identity. Anyway, the rumormongers suggest that the delegation has to do with learning Nidalese shadow magics for the benefit of Gebish vampires.
That sounds like a fascinating thing to play with ~ either shenanigans around the negotiations (PCs on one side or the other in a very talky game of political bargaining, or rebels trying to make use of the meeting to further the cause of freedom, or in 2e especially a character who uses this as an opportunity to take character options from both cultures, or a scholarly group who has to reluctantly deal with the politicians trying to sell or prevent the sale of their research, or some other such).
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Pope Uncommon the Dainty wrote: The clouds which choke off Nidal’s sun aid this effort, as only the efforts of the Uskwood druids keep the people fed. Of course, the Uskwood is a fraction of the territory of the nation, so I imagine that the druids send out parties on a circuit of the land to ensure that the farms can produce enough food for Nidal to remain free from unwanted control by not importing food from elsewhere. This might make an interesting campaign for a party heavy in druids, rangers, hunters, spiritworkers (the so-called “shamans”), witches, or even clerics and oracles with the right domains/mysteries. An alternate to your notion would be a party on a mission to do this very thing, traveling Nidal and using both their abilities and their practical knowledge to ensure farm viability, intended to be primarily animal husbandry and crop management, but, of course, being that it's an adventure game, ending up dealing with bandits and monsters and similar 'farm troubles.'
The party can be 100% loyal Kuthites, and yet also be doing, essentially, good works! Cause that's what's needed to keep the country going. (Yes, there are other groups out there hunting down heretics and terrorizing the locals, but that doesn't have to be *your* party's focus.)
Kuthite dogma could even go hand in hand with farm advice, with druids of Zon-Zon noting that birth does not come without pain, and that to make a rose bush thrive, you have to cruelly cut it back. Such with all things. Cut away the excess and let the best in your crop/herd/self flourish. Grow through the pain and become stronger. Please leave a contribution in the alms box on your way out. See you next year when we pass this way again.
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Pope Uncommon the Dainty wrote: The section on the resistance begins with the line, “The Umbral Court does not cow everyone in Nidal.” Frankly, I don’t much imagine they need to ~ they’ve ruled in an unbroken reign for 10,00 years (culturally speaking, again, about 5000 years, the length of Earth’s written history). My assumption would be that the greatest obstacle facing the resistance against the Black Triune would be convincing the Nidalese populace that another way is even possible. Especially with the efforts put in by the Court to ensure and create Kuthite faith amongst the prosperous of their nation, the resistance would likely be recruiting from the poorer and more oppressed people of Nidal. The kind of folk who, even in a setting like Golarion with information technology significantly advanced as compared to most D&D settings, have no idea how other nations work, no other examples other than the eternal reign of the Triune, the Court, and their agents to feed their dreams of freedom. Consider the possibility that the "resistance" is wholly invented by the government as a means of identifying and neutralizing potential deviants.
zimmerwald1915 wrote: Consider the possibility that the "resistance" is wholly invented by the government as a means of identifying and neutralizing potential deviants. Or exists as a 'pressure valve.'
Every system has people who don't play well within it, a clever society might have deliberately crafted 'rebels' who operate, completely unknowingly, under the covert control of the ruling authority, to keep those dissidents firmly under their thumb, and to give their guards, enforcers and investigative forces something to keep them gainfully employed. (99% of said guards, enforcers and investigators having no clue that their own highest ruling authorities actually started the 'rebellion' and are the reason that even when they do succeed in stamping it out, root and branch, it always seems to crop up again...)
It's *going* to happen. People are people. Might as well control where and when and, to a limited degree, how much damage it can do, rather than surrender all control and let it grow on it's own.
Set wrote: zimmerwald1915 wrote: Consider the possibility that the "resistance" is wholly invented by the government as a means of identifying and neutralizing potential deviants. Or exists as a 'pressure valve.'
Every system has people who don't play well within it, a clever society might have deliberately crafted 'rebels' who operate, completely unknowingly, under the covert control of the ruling authority, to keep those dissidents firmly under their thumb, and to give their guards, enforcers and investigative forces something to keep them gainfully employed. (99% of said guards, enforcers and investigators having no clue that their own highest ruling authorities actually started the 'rebellion' and are the reason that even when they do succeed in stamping it out, root and branch, it always seems to crop up again...)
It's *going* to happen. People are people. Might as well control where and when and, to a limited degree, how much damage it can do, rather than surrender all control and let it grow on it's own. One wonders why more countries don't do this.
Or perhaps they all do?
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Many countries probably try, at least to some degree. Keeping control of people whose primary desire is to not be controlled is a bit tricky, though.
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Deadmanwalking wrote: Many countries probably try, at least to some degree. Keeping control of people whose primary desire is to not be controlled is a bit tricky, though. I kind of thought the second Matrix movie might be a shocking reveal that the whole 'we escaped the Matrix and are fighting the machines from outside in the 'real world!'' thing was just a sub-program the machines had set up, and that nobody had actually escaped, they were just playing a virtual game of rebellion the machines had designed, knowing that some minds were going to rebel anyway, and needed this outlet/channel.
The idea has kind of stuck in my head. The evil authority creating it's own faux rebellion. Guy Gisbourne creating a 'Robin Hood' to steal his own tax money (so he can keep it for himself, after scattering a small percentage around to maintain the 'and gives to the poor' illusion, rather than pass it on to higher authorities like he's supposed to).
And then the 'faux' rebellion turns real, when some schmoes recruited to be rebels find out that the lead of the rebellion reports to the evil overlord! (Or a member of the evil authority is 'caught' indiscreetly supporting said rebellion and gets thrown to the wolves by the rest of the evil government, sacrificed as a 'traitor' rather than admit that the whole thing was a sham.)
The onion could have all sorts of layers, just so long as it doesn't get too silly and turn into a bait and switch, or frustrate the players. (For instance, telling the players that the rebellion that they were fighting for was all staged by the bad-guys would suck if they didn't then get the chance to make it real and use the seeds of the bad-guys own fake rebellion to *really* mess up their pretty dictatorship!)
Set wrote: The idea has kind of stuck in my head. The evil authority creating it's own faux rebellion. O'Brien, anyone? This is pretty much his whole schtick. Works like a charm too.
While that all seems theoretically reasonable, aren’t the majority of “rebels” A) Desnan, and B) from outside the country?
SOLDIER-1st wrote: While that all seems theoretically reasonable, aren’t the majority of “rebels” A) Desnan, and B) from outside the country? That's just what they want you to think!
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Y'all have a total point about the rebellion being used in multiple ways by the Umbral Court to maintain their control. It's not an either/or, either ~ the best control mechanisms do so by several means simultaneously (identifying dissidents much like the RCP does in the US, providing a pressure valve, et cetera).
But I was saying something slightly different. Diane di Prima said that the only war that counts is the war against the imagination. The Umbral Court (well, the Black Triune, but I imagine the Court's been around for a good long while) has ruled Nidal for *twice the length of Earth's recorded history.* Even taking into account the effects on culture of having long-lived races like dwarfs and elfs, I would argue that the culture would experience that length of time AS the length of Earth's recorded history.
The Black Triune, with that much inertia alone, has probably won the war against the Nidalese imagination. And that's *without* taking into account the various things they do to spread acceptance of their rule through the populace, including what you describe.
Set wrote: Pope Uncommon the Dainty wrote: The clouds which choke off Nidal’s sun aid this effort, as only the efforts of the Uskwood druids keep the people fed. Of course, the Uskwood is a fraction of the territory of the nation, so I imagine that the druids send out parties on a circuit of the land to ensure that the farms can produce enough food for Nidal to remain free from unwanted control by not importing food from elsewhere. This might make an interesting campaign for a party heavy in druids, rangers, hunters, spiritworkers (the so-called “shamans”), witches, or even clerics and oracles with the right domains/mysteries. An alternate to your notion would be a party on a mission to do this very thing, traveling Nidal and using both their abilities and their practical knowledge to ensure farm viability, intended to be primarily animal husbandry and crop management, but, of course, being that it's an adventure game, ending up dealing with bandits and monsters and similar 'farm troubles.'
The party can be 100% loyal Kuthites, and yet also be doing, essentially, good works! Cause that's what's needed to keep the country going. (Yes, there are other groups out there hunting down heretics and terrorizing the locals, but that doesn't have to be *your* party's focus.)
Kuthite dogma could even go hand in hand with farm advice, with druids of Zon-Zon noting that birth does not come without pain, and that to make a rose bush thrive, you have to cruelly cut it back. Such with all things. Cut away the excess and let the best in your crop/herd/self flourish. Grow through the pain and become stronger. Please leave a contribution in the alms box on your way out. See you next year when we pass this way again.
That's actually pretty much exactly what I was trying to describe, though you developed it much more awesomely than I did. This is exactly the kind of thing I love about Nidal and am occasionally disappointed in people's depictions of it (occasionally even Lianne's in this book). There is no reason it has to be all "Hurr, hurr, hurr, pain is evil. What even is consent? We like bad things cuz a good life is one without pain and we hate that." Instead it can be what you describe, a harsh but ultimately helpful embracing of the painful parts of life, a call to see them as necessary. This hews much closer to my religious understanding informed by the gods I work for and with and who just are my friends and my experiences as a masochist.
tl;dr ~ I would play or run that campaign in the hottest of seconds.
Here's the next installment:
One thing I neglected to mention in my last post is how disappointed I am that the book never explores the possibilities inherent in Kuthite Nidalese dwarfs or orcs or giants coming from the Mindspin Mountains. I imagine that anyone with the ability to drink so deep from the well of pain before being broken (read: Constitution bonus) would be greatly respected in this shadowed land! And dwarfin takes on Nidalese Kuthite praxis, in particular, are fascinating to contemplate! Sigh, another thing to add to my list of Nidalese writing projects.
Anyway, the next thing we’re given is a short, one-page timeline of the past 10,000 years. I have a strange love of timelines; just before they hit the point of trying to include way too much, they can end up helping one see some of the connections between events and trends. They spawn historical hypotheses like few other tools, simply by bringing our awareness to certain things’ proximity to each other.
Earthfall and the Black Triune’s meeting with Zon-Kuthon are the first two events on the timeline. Both have perhaps longer descriptions than I feel is strictly warranted. Chances are that readers of this book know what Earthfall is, and they certainly know the details about the Black Triune from elsewhere in the book. My guess is they decided to flesh it out a bit more here because timelines are the sort of thing people look at to figure out how interested they are in a setting, but it still feels a bit like filler to me.
It seems to have taken three years for surviving Azlanti and Thassilonian intellectuals to make it to Nidal. This sort of thing is the kind more likely to be verisimilitudinous than it seems at first, as one thinks about how long it would take for news of Nidal’s relative prosperity to spread and then for people to make even seemingly short journeys to the realm.
The Black Triune seems to have been trying to consolidate Nidalese government under their direct rule for about 18 years before they invented the Umbral Court, which was also the beginning of the Cathedral of Exquisite Agony and when their ageless immortality became known to their subjects.
The Age of Darkness lasted a thousand years as Golarion’s sky shook itself clean of Azlant’s ash. As I said before, I once calculated the approximate sociohistorical multiplier for a standard D&D world, based on the relative ages of maturity of the PHB races. I might have weighted it according to the racial demographics from the DMG’s settlement rules, but I can’t remember. Anyway, it came out to about 2.2, with elfs becoming adults at literally seven times the age of humans! This means that Earthfall would have been about as distant to the average Avistani at the end of the Age of Darkness as 1565 is to us, and as distant to the average elf as 1877 is to us. Expect more of these conversions as I discuss the timeline.
8918 years ago (experienced as the equivalent of 4054 years ago to the general populace and 1274 years ago to the elfs) the holy city of Ridwan is begun with a shrine overlooking the site of the Black Triune’s bargain. That makes it maybe as old as, like Damascus or Aleppo in Syria or Byblos in Lebanon or Kirkuk in Iraq, all of which are still inhabited. Hell, in the cases of Damascus and Byblos, that might even be true from the human perspective, as those cities are around the 8-9000 year mark!
Velstracs gave the Nidalese memory chains, allowing them to begin building the Cathedral of Embodied Wisdom to house them, 8521 years ago (equivalent to 3873 or 1217 years ago). Intriguingly, that’s only 491 years after the end of the Age of Darkness (or us to 1797, culturally and generally, or us to 1950 for an elf). That . . . actually feels quite right, like just about the right amount of time for the Nidalese to start becoming concerned with losing knowledge of something important.
Nisroch, the main port of Nidal and the most common place to encounter foreigners by far, began 7718 years ago as a simple fishing village. That would be the cultural equivalent of about 3508 years ago, or 1102 if you’re an elf.
5718 years ago (2599 or 817), Nidal became the center of a new type of philosophy, called “physical philosophy”. It was developed by some qween by the name of Irogath of Ridwan, and was all about storing pain somatically in one’s own body so it can be then unleashed into another’s later. This philosophy becomes the main teaching of the Irogath Monastery, and I think is the only specific datum given for the intellectual history of the monk class in Avistan, which is actually kind of exciting. The monk has always been a bit of an odd fit ~ largely due to the Eurocentrism of the average D&D setting, I freely admit. With polytheism reimagined as a bunch of mini-Catholic Churches, the Taoist- and Confucianist-inspired ways of the monk were rarely given the kind of grounding they needed to make sense in the setting. I like this tiidbit, which can give us a jumping-off place to imagine the other monastic philosophies (at least until the Aganhei Pass gets going).
Two entries tell the origin of the haunted place known as Edammera’s Folly (though we are not told why ~ it seems like it should be Mesandroth’s or Fiendlorn’s Folly…) An “archnecromancer” spent 25 years, starting 5141 years ago (2337 or 734 years ago) trying to achieve immprtality before the Shadow Plane consumed the base of one of his towers, flooding it with shadow creatures and causing it to be abandoned.
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Set wrote: {. . .}
The onion could have all sorts of layers, just so long as it doesn't get too silly and turn into a bait and switch, or frustrate the players. (For instance, telling the players that the rebellion that they were fighting for was all staged by the bad-guys would suck if they didn't then get the chance to make it real and use the seeds of the bad-guys own fake rebellion to *really* mess up their pretty dictatorship!)
On the other hand, Earth has examples of rebellions starting out real and then quickly getting co-opted by intelligence agencies (domestic or foreign) and/or corporate interests.
306 years after Edammera’s Folly and 4810 years ago (overall culture equivalent: 2186 years ago / elfin culture equivalent: 687 years ago), the Umbral Court migrates shadow giants from Mitheeriak on the the Shadow Plane into the Ombrefell to live in Nidal. This was only 92 years before Aroden pulled the god-birthing Starstone from the depths and became god of humanity and prophecy. The shadow giants are descended from the shadow gigas (first descendants of the titans) and flat-out refuse to consider the possibility that their ancestors were slaughtered by the velstracs after Doloras released them from their Hellish prison. In more recent history, velstracs have tried to subjugate them ~ when the shadow giants have managed to overcome these attempts, they have literally bathed in the velstracs’ blood (as they do with every fallen enemy they face, of any kind).
Their religion, as described briefly on the wiki, seems to bear some resemblance to Mesoamerican religion with sacrifice and short-stepped pyramids (oh, what I wouldn’t give to find an RPG that depicted Mesamerican religion, including nextlaoaliztli/sacrifice, without branding it evil!); their clergy is evidently made up of members of the spiritworker (a.k.a., “shaman”) class. Some traitorous shadow giants are said to have hooked their wagon to Zon-Kuthon in Xoviakain, so those must have been the population from which the Umbral Court took their elite operatives. Isolationist to the point of only dealing with proven warriors who show them proper respect, they’re used when the Court wants to leave no survivors.
64 years after Aroden did his thing (so 4654 years ago, felt as 2115 years or 664 years), a caligni seer by the name of Fiersythe collects one of the most detailed chronicles of mortal interactions with the Dark Tapestry: the Voyages of the Void. That means that, to the general multiracial populace, the book is about as old as the first Roman temple of Venus is to us, and for the elfs it is about as old as the Golden Bull constitution of the Holy Roman Empire.
Eldith Lorin is founded for river transportation 4531 years ago (2059 years ago/647 years ago). That’s the last of the long-ago events on the timeline. A big gap jumps us to 618 years ago, felt by the culture as a whole as if 281 years ago and by elfin culture as 88 years ago ~ I’m a couple years into my middle age, according to Pathfinder, and my grandmothers are just a bit younger than 88, so this would be about your elf PC’s great-grandparents’ time. This is when some Nidalese attempt to forcibly convert the people of Jol, capitol of Southmoor in the Lands of the Linnorm Kings built upon the once-giant-ruled ruins of Thassilonian Torandey, to the ways of the Midnight Lord. Maybe they’d have succeeded if they tried this in the Kellid Land of the Mammoth Lords instead. The Ulfen tortured them to death ~ one of the nice things about being a Kuthite is that this was probably still considered a win by the proselytizing invaders.
Gawdz, that sounds like a rad historical event to play out! Open call to any DMs who wanna run a campaign set here….
413 years ago (187 years ago/59 years ago ~ so, like, as old as Michigan’s statehood, Oliver Twist, Queen Victoria’s reign, Chicago, Houston, Proctor & Gamble, the telegraph, and the daguerrotype from the point of view of the general population and in your elf’s grandparent’s time), Chelish Emperor Haliad III begins the Everwar, and Cheliax and Nidal battle for 33 years. At the end of those three decades, the Black Triune orders Nidal to surrender, which helps open up Nidalese culture to both moderation and outside influence. Huh. Last month, I attended the San Francisco Dickens Faire in celebration of Christmas ~ after all, the Victorian Era really helped create and shape our image of that holiday. Makes me wonder about the Nidalese relationship to Shadowbreak, and the cultural artifacts which owe their form to this period.
Speaking of, the next thing on the timeline is the opening of the House of Lies in the Uskwood. Shockingly what it says on the tin (sort of a bardic college/school for the best liars in the world), the House was founded but sixteen years into the Uskwood. We’ll obviously get into more detail about the Uskwood in the gazetteer section, but it’s worth noting that it’s a complicated place, with Kuthite druids, two different alien invaders (by the mi-go and by xenomorph expies called the hive), and the House of Lies.
The Chelish Civil War began 118 years ago (felt as 53 years ago to the culture as a whole and 16 years ago to the elfs ~ that’s historically as distant to the modern Golarionian as the Summer of Love, the beginning of the Cambodian Civil War, the Six-Day War, the Nigerian Civil War, Chinese support of the Vietcong and Che Guevara’s execution are to us, and is likely about when your elf PC was born. Nidal backed House Thrune with shadowcallers, velstracs, the Adamant Company, and a quiet purge of any diplomats and dignitaries from any Chelish houses other than Thrune in their borders.
Six years before House Thrune’s victory, in 4634 AR, Shadowbreak ends with a sudden purge of moderate Kuthites in Nidal. They are sent to the Cathedral of Exquisite Agony to suffer for decades and/or to become “repatriated” as velstracs. Historically that would be as far back as, like 1982 is to us (that’s the year I was born!) and only 12 years to the elfs.
42 years ago (think, like, as far back as 2001, or 2014 if you’re an elf) was a Golarionian Jack the Ripper equivalent ~ shadow beasts (the shadow template, I think, is what’s referenced here) roamed the Chelish streets of Westcrown. The vampire and former Pathfinder Ilnerik Sivanshin was supposed to stop or mitigate their attacks with a contingent of shadowcallers and Midnight Guard, but is thought to have encouraged them. Ilnerik shows up in the Council of Thieves adventure path, and I am fascinated by the similarity of his last name to that of the goddess of illusions, Sivanah.
White Estrid, the Ulfen Linnorm King of Halgrim, raided Nisroch with 15 longships fourteen years ago. She then broke through a Chelish blockade at the Arch of Aroden, and sold her treasures in Absalom (possibly leaving her cousin behind?). The combination of cultural elements there ~ Vikings taking things from France by way of Riddick and The Hell-Bound Heart and breaking through a Spanish-Italian naval blockade to sell things in, I dunno, Lankhmar? Sounds epic to me!
The Towers of the Fiendlorn have one last claim to fame: four years ago, one was found in the Umbral Basin, abandoned and somehow warped by the Abyss. An expedition tries to explore it and fails disastrously. This has all the makings of a ghost story that would explode across Nidal, with its mixture of closeness to their ideals and distance from their alignment (presumably matching their lawfulness originally, it is somehow tainted by chaotic energies?)
Who would have expected truth in advertising from the House of Lies?
UnArcaneElection wrote: Who would have expected truth in advertising from the House of Lies?
The best lies are true....
A new chapter means a new, pretty opening page! In the obviously gorgeous art atop the two pages, we see a couple of wagons, brightly lit despite the general gloom in the image, decorated (though not richly) in white and red with flags and banners and awnings. A trail of about fifteen people follow, their postures not as festive as the wagons. I do appreciate that at least one elder is visible among the small figures. The wagon train approaches a city which lies at the end of a winding road between two hills. An odd bright, warm glow from the left intrudes upon the city’s blacks and greys and purples, colors reflected in the giant storm-like cloud above it that appears to be connected to the city in some way by giant chains. The chains dissolve into the cloud atop and have links that appear to be larger than most of the city’s buildings. This procession is being watched by three giant boars and three deers, all six of whom have eyes that glow with a cold blue for some reason.
I like this piece ~ it establishes the overall eerie mood of Nidal but also remembers to assert that there are other aspects to this gloomy realm, as well. We see how present the natural world is, even affected by the spiritual reality of the place. We see the common Nidalese pursuing their own lives, as mundane and comprehensible to us as they, by logic, must be, and even that there is a place for the warm and the festive in Nidal. It is not a one-dimensional place, and we are immediately reminded of that on the front page of the gazetteer.
Below the art on the first page is, of course, a relatively sizeable in-universe quotation. This one is from a Chelish ambassador to Nidal, writing to the person replacing her in her position. It describes Nidal wonderfully as a “strange and old place, capricious in the way that strange old things often are”, which is a lovely British fantasy author way of describing a place. The quotation establishes that even the Chelish fear Nidal, but it also reasserts the beauty of Nidal, and “fascinations that dig into your soul as surely as the Kuthites’ hooks bite into their skin”, as well as the invaluable knowledge shepherded by these ancient masochistic people.
This quotation, more than anything really, is what got me excited about Nidal, pushing past my concerns that its depiction would be one-dimensional, cartoonish, and annoying to me as a lifestyle masochist. But, as Ambassador Thelassia Phandros says, “It is a place, for better or worse, that you will never forget. You can’t. The scars remain forever.”
The actual text of the gazetteer opens up with a reminder of just how ancient Nidal is (a topic I’ve harped on as well throughout this Let’s Read). And yet, unlike might be expected in many other times, that antiquity is not locked away in a book on a shelf or a curio in a vault, but a vital part of what it is to be Nidalese, even today. The book tells us that the poorest of peasants will have an item (a pitcher, maybe, or a necklace) old enough to be in a museum. That’s a part of Nidalese culture that deserves even more attention, I feel ~ the idea that literally everyone has been around objects made as long before them as Jesus was to us, has used and worn these objects throughout their lives. The blend of comfort and caretaking they must feel with the physical objects around them must be intriguing, mixed maybe even to an exotic mindset. It’s a detail easily added into the game as well: the Nidalese fighter and the way she takes care of her sword or armor, or the Nidalese wizard who carries their spellbook roughly over the shoulder but always puts gloves on before turning the pages. Of course, Nidalese occultists would be the pinnacle of such a mindset.
This constant presence of the ancient even affects language and clothing, where the inclusion of centuries-old elements is considered a sign of sophistication. Pangolais’s fashion is even described as “defiant” in its mix of new, daring trends with ancient materials and techniques. This is another interestingly gameable detail, as the reaction of the rest of Avistan to Nidalese clothing must be confused and even stilted.
The final note in the introduction has to do with the homogenizing nature of both Nidal’s historic isolationism and its cosmologically-enforced state religion. Though regional differences do exist ~ a Nidalese could easily tell an Atterani hose-tender from a Pangolaisian aristocrat, for example ~ they tend to be so subtle as to escape the notice of outsiders. This could lead to NPCs (or even PCs!) who have the problematic notion that all Nidalese are exactly alike. Combined with the oddness of their traditional/cutting-edge fashion and distinctly alien philosophy, this probably marks Nidalese as outsiders across Avistan, which could lead to both exoticizing and ostracizing them.
Though I hate to apply the word “Orientalism” to an ostensibly faux-European culture, it seems likely that most Avistani (whose culture has been so shaped by the faux-Byzantine Taldans anyway) might take such an attitude to the Nidalese, and this introduction succinctly lays out the reasons why, without ever mentioning such a thing.
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Pope Uncommon the Dainty wrote: As I said before, I once calculated the approximate sociohistorical multiplier for a standard D&D world, based on the relative ages of maturity of the PHB races. I might have weighted it according to the racial demographics from the DMG’s settlement rules, but I can’t remember. Anyway, it came out to about 2.2, with elfs becoming adults at literally seven times the age of humans! This means that Earthfall would have been about as distant to the average Avistani at the end of the Age of Darkness as 1565 is to us, and as distant to the average elf as 1877 is to us. Expect more of these conversions as I discuss the timeline. Elves not reaching physical maturity until their second century is an artifact of 1E and is no longer true in 2E. The 2E CRB changed that to around 20 years, about the same as every other common ancestry (except goblins).
NECR0G1ANT wrote: Elves not reaching physical maturity until their second century is an artifact of 1E and is no longer true in 2E. The 2E CRB changed that to around 20 years, about the same as every other common ancestry (except goblins). Yeah, but it's an artifact I happen to like :-p Honestly, however, that change stretches my suspension of disbelief some. Without the fallback on historical change happening slower for a significant part of the population thanks to generational dynamics being stretched over greater periods of time, the idea (as an example) that Nidal has had a single, continuous culture ~ let alone a stable government! ~ for twice as long as written history has existed on our planet is almost unbelievable to me.
But, anyway, here's the next installment!
The book continues on to remind us that Kuthite religion is not the only influence on Nidalese culture. It’s obviously a duh, but it needs to be said, both because in-setting, foreigners are likely to think that it is, and out-of-setting players always love to reduce settings to the simple one-sentence introduction we use to aid decision-making. Of course, it then goes on to describe elements of Nidalese culture that are Kuthite, like the politicking of the Umbral Court and the slight difference in holiday celebrations that develop from fear, defiance, or zeal for the state religion.
But then we get a quick paragraph about Nidalese fashion. In terms of ancient Forgite RPG theory, immersionism is my primary creative agenda. A good amount of the juice I get from RPGs comes from feeling like I am deeply embedded in a fictional world ~ yes, I also enjoy Tolkien’s sub-creation theory, despite my polytheism. Fashion is one of those very subtle ways you can communicate culture and history, much like Tolkien’s fictional philology, and so I can become fascinated with the history of fashion in D&D worlds. It helps that one of my current RISK* sweeties, as well as an ex-RISK now-friend sweety of mine, has done deep study on fashion and the development thereof. Their drag, both of theirs, is everything.
Anyway, we’re told that the tension between stoic silence and a joyful quest for pain forms a central organizing factor of Nidalese fashion. They prefer greys and blacks in austere cuts, and express quality and fanciness with the garments’ elaborate structure and architecture, rather than in ornamentation. I imagine this structure is focused on draping and close tailoring, as their love of austere cuts would seem to preclude dramatic silhouettes or profiles. I can fully imagine a Nidalese socialite finding such things as bustles or shoulder pads or hoop skirts gauche attempts to distract from the tailor’s undoubtedly poor mastery of their craft, or at best of the unattractive body of the person wearing the outfit.
This seems to be confirmed by what we’re told of preferences in Pangolais, where silk and lace float off bodies in layers. Nisroch and Ridwan tend towards a more war-like look, giving up the float of those delicate fabrics for stiff leather, either glossy or welted for decoration. It’s a little harder to layer leather, but I can imagine that the higher classes often lean towards less stiff clothing. Buttery garments, one on top of the other, seem much more likely, or even things like suede.
Despite, or perhaps because of, the Nidalese distaste for ornamentation in clothing, they love to adorn their bodies by means of things like piercings, tattoos, brands, and scarification. Of course, the pain involved in these things no doubt help. Nothing is said about Nidalese traditions of these things, in terms of materials or locations or designs. I would imagine that, since the experience is more important than the product for most Kuthites, there isn’t much in terms of cultural trend. Rather, Nidalese body mod culture probably leans much more toward how it often functions in the US today ~ it’s a form of personal expression, with the artistic eye being the primary determiner of things like location, color, material, etc., and designs ranging from those deeply infused with personal meaning to perfunctory designs that the artist can do in their sleep to ridiculous and easy humor.
Nidalese disdain bright colors in general, but especially in gems and jewelry, favoring instead things like moonstones, onyxes, and smoky quartz. It’s not actually mentioned, but I would imagine that a Nidalese would judge aesthetics largely in terms of chiaroscuro and the drama of shapes.
* Romantic, Intimate, Sexual, and/or Kinky, that is.
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The Umbral Court, as with all groups of two or more people, has its divisions and its arguments. They work to hide them from their subjects and foreigners, hoping to build up an image of a cabal unified by their Kuthite devotion and their personal infusion with the Midnight Lord’s power. We are given two examples of their divisions: a political one concerning Nidal’s relationship with Cheliax, and a theological dispute concerning something called the Belevais Doctrine. That latter argument is one of my favoritest things in the book, by the way.
Nidalese city-dwellers and graduates of the School of the Pale Sun in Elith Lorin tend to be super-excited about Nidal’s alliance with the infernalists of Cheliax. The vampire sorcerer Kholas has voiced this opinion more eloquently, louder, and more often than anyone, making him something of the face of this contingent, who wish to expand their nation’s influence across all of Golarion and to bring more and more to the revealing ways of Zon-Kuthon’s pain.
However, Eloiander of Ridwan and the Uskwood druids have argued against them, pointing to the Nidalese’s special status as the chosen people of Zon-Kuthon, exalted in suffering above all the rest of Golarion. Foreigners, they say, mean little to the lord of the velstracs, and extermists (including Eloiander himself) have even gone so far as attempt to sabotage the alliance or make any Chelish in their borders’s stay unbearable.
I enjoy this conflict! It feels very well-placed so that the Cheliax-Nidal alliance can present all the dangers of a unified evil alliance to those games who want such a thing, but which clever heroes like the PCs can sabotage, defeating it by means of subterfuge instead of meeting an overwhelming force head-on. It can also provide a good reason for Nidalese PCs of any alignment to join forces with a party crusading for the forces of good ~ imagine the possibilities of an evil Nidalese Kuthite PC teaming up with a bunch of Iomedaean and Milanite PCs against the devil-worshippers of Cheliax. Even if the party is composed entirely of relatively typical Nidalese, this division can generate any number of plots.
The Belevais Doctrine, as I said, is one of the peaks of this book. It feels very reminiscent of actual theological debate (it would fit in with questions like the medieval European debates around things like God’s ability or inability to create a boulder He can’t move, or whether imagined things have enough reality to be considered moral patients, or whether Jesus ever shat and what that would mean about His blend of divinity and humanity), while also remaining very grounded in the reality of a pulpy fantasy setting. My main metric for such things in recent years is gem fusion from Steven Universe ~ which is clearly an allegory for romance and even sex, allowing the cartoon to comment on such things, but is also alien enough to spawn storylines of its own that would not make any sense if they were about such things. I feel like that’s the kind of allegory that Tolkien would be happy with.
OK, but WTF even is the Belevais Doctrine? It is an answer, the orthodoxy of which has haunted Nidalese theologians for centuries and yet is still very much in question, to a very important question to Nidalese culture: do the undead feel pain as intensely or as loudly, as the living? Adherents of the doctrine claim that pain exists to warn the living of danger or death, and that therefore those who have nothing to fear from most sources thereof, those who are already dead, cannot feel true pain by definition. Certainly, the undead can suffer ~ no Nidalese who can lookout their window would debate that ~ but the Belevais Doctrine seeks to distinguish misery or agony from pain itself. And it is pain that Zon-Kuthon bequeaths as gift to those he blesses.
Velstracs, according to the doctrine, are alone among the races of the Realms Beyond to feel true pain, either because they’ve replaced some skin with that of living mortal beings or simply through sufficient body modification in service to the Midnight Lord. Thus, its believers, believe that undead and non-velstrac outsiders are forever shut out from proper dedicated worship of Zon-Kuthon. The undead are the more politically important and contentious of the two groups, due to the large number of them within the shadowed borders of Nidal.
Belevaisians argue against raising the undead above living worshippers who profess an equal amount of piety in the Kuthite hierarchy, effectively holding them to a higher standard to achieve similar rank. As one would expect, they have made few friends and many enemies amongst the undead population of Nidal.
The fact that these two divisions are largely unrelated gives me intriguing ideas of rather complicated Nidalese political divisions. I’d love to explore them in a campaign someday: Belevaisian isolationists vs. undead-supporting expansionists vs. Belevaisian expansionists vs. undead-supporting isolationists. With four great poles around which to circle and (on the lower side of the scale) dozens of people in the Umbral Court, you can easily keep each faction down to a manageable but easily expandable 10-15 members. Imagine the sociocultural drawing-and-quartering you can put the PCs through, with what they think of as a single, god-given voice pulling them in four different directions!
We next get a list of the Great Kuthite Ceremonies, preceded by a note that everyone in the realm must find some way to join the public celebrations, whether it is performative or not, by dint of the generally oppressive atmosphere of the place. Which is a thing I’m certainly down with; my love for Nidal doesn’t mean I think it’s a nice place to live, nor even does my desire that Nidal be written in such a way that I coud play a good character who doesn’t reject everything about its culture. However, the writing gets a bit lurid and eager to convince us of Nidal’s EEEEVIIILLL for me.
For the 10 days before the first new moon of the new year, communities choose a victim (usually an enemy or prisoner, if they can, though the improperly pious function just fine, and the smaller villages often substitute a pig or a goat or, inviting Umbral suspicion, even an effigy) to lavish with the good life, no luxury denied. They then torture and eviscerate them on the night of the new moon, looking for portents in what are only described as the “ritual’s details.” I think I would choose to interpret that as a combination of, like, ancient Roman haruspicy and some of the things involved in the lead-up and interpretation of Afro-Diasporic sacrifice rituals, looking at like how the animal behaves and gaining knowledge therefrom.
I actually kind of hate this ritual, the Eternal Kiss. For one thing, it seems quite unconnected to anything in Kuthite ecclesiology, theology, or cosmology other than the timing. A shift of even just a handful of words would have been sufficient to shift that, sadly, making it the religion’s effort to learn what the coming year had in store for them. I am fairly certain that wordcount could have been cleared for another sentence giving us a brief description of how the Nidalese Kuthite faithful view the changing of the calendar or the passage of time. The other reason I hate it is because of its resemblance to a lot of Nahua/Azteca human sacrifice rituals involving an ixiptla (a word I’ve seen translated as “deity impersonator”). The issue isn’t taking inspiration or having resonance with Nahua culture ~ that’s something I’d love to see more of, actually ~ but in the text’s attempts to drive home, again, the EEEVIIILLLL of it. If you’re going to do that, it’s probably best to avoid any semblance to actual oppressed/colonized peoples.
The autumnal equinox plays host to the Festival of Night’s Return, which is given the couple of words necessary to tie it into the Kuthite approach to the world. Elements of Beltaine and Burning Man and medieval Catholic mortification of flesh all combine into the description of the holiday. The distinction between rural and urban celebrations is very clear in the Festival of Night’s Return. Out in the country, the villagers flagellate themselves with simple knotted cords or leather straps, causing no more injury than, say, a light-to-moderate SM scene, and the prayers are kept simple, largely similar to those of farmers everywhere, only worded to fit the Midnight Lord’s ways. Bonfires burn effigies of Sarenrae or Shelyn to show their god’s victory over beauty and light. (I’ve said before that I prefer a much more complicated relationship between the two siblings, and I’m frankly kind of surprised that no mention is made of Desna here. She is both an ancestral deity of the Kellid Nidalese and the primary divine agent working to end Zon-Kuthon’s hold over Nidal, after all). As the bonfire dies down and the self-whipping slows, villagers break off in groups or couples to, well, I believe the tasteful way to put it is the way the book puts it: “to celebrate.”
In the cities, Night’s Return is a carnivalesque affair, grand and grim. The Midnight Lord’s pre-dominance permits him to share the flames with no one, not even those he has vanquished. Well, the bones of the previous year’s sacrifices burn amongst the wood, but that’s different. The parade is filled with those who want to attract the Court’s attention or even favor, so everyone seeks to best those next to them, pushing themselves beyond their limits to shows of bloody, grisly devotion amongst the extravagant displays of shadow magic that burst throughout the streets. Here, the holiday drains the energy from all but the masochistic, preventing the kind of eager seeking of the fesh that marks the village holidays.
The third of the Great Celebrations is the one most tied to Nidalese culture, and thus my favorite among them. The first Moonday of Lamashan (mid-autumn, October-ish) remembers the terrible time just after Earthfall. Well, terrible for those without a shadowed god providing for their needs, anyway. Originally, it was celebrated by scavenging the bones of foreigners who’d starved, constructing a ceremonial table from them and serving a harvest feast upon it. Now, the bones are of a community’s dead, stretching back through the long generations, and it is a festival of remembrance of the past and thankfulness to Zon-Kuthon for having protected those ancestors so that they could give birth to those celebrating the rite. Among the Great Celebrations, I envision the Feast of the Survivors to be the homiest of them all, not too far in feel from a Kuthite Thanksgiving, to give a rough analogy. It’s when family members gather to spend time with everyone they love, even the ones they don’t love.
I am always annoyed by fantasy holidays with formulae like these, honestly. I mean, unless Moonday itself is important to the celebration in some way (think “the 7th day” in Abrahamic traditions, or the various associations of the days of the week with the orisha in Ifa and Yoruba-derived Afro-Diasporic traditions, for examples), it’s very much an industrial way of schedule things. As far as I can tell, most pre- or non-industrial festival calendars timed things to the seasons or the position of celestial bodies or the rhythms of agriculture than to any sort of an idea of “weekend” (which is an artifact of struggles against industrial, capitalist bosses).
The last of the Great Celebrations is the Shadowchaining. The first day of Kuthona (early winter, December-ish) hosts a parade of all those with animals magically bound to them, many changed by shadow but also those who are not, flaked by kneeling inhabitants who repeat standard prayers of humility and gratitude. The animals are allowed to hurt those praying, though not to injure or kill them, and then at the end are released to a snarling display of nature red in tooth and claw against some enemy of the faith from outside of Nidal, as the crowd cheers and roars.
Has anyone ever compiled a calendar with all of the various national, cultural, and religious holidays of Golarion, or even just Avistan? There have been so many described, I’m just kind of curious to see what lines up with what….
Pope Uncommon the Dainty wrote: We next get a list of the Great Kuthite Ceremonies, preceded by a note that everyone in the realm must find some way to join the public celebrations, whether it is performative or not, by dint of the generally oppressive atmosphere of the place. {. . .}
For the 10 days before the first new moon of the new year, communities choose a victim (usually an enemy or prisoner, if they can, though the improperly pious function just fine, and the smaller villages often substitute a pig or a goat or, inviting Umbral suspicion, even an effigy) to lavish with the good life, no luxury denied. They then torture and eviscerate them on the night of the new moon, looking for portents in what are only described as the “ritual’s details.” {. . .}
This need not be a terminal accomplishment for a Troll who has the guts.
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UnArcaneElection wrote:
This need not be a terminal accomplishment for a Troll who has the guts.
Somehow, I've managed to never hear about the Augurs (Golarion is bug, y'all). I can totes imagine one in a town along Nidal's border with Varisia, enjoying an honored position as the Eternal Kiss's annual sacrifice.
Actually, Kaer Maga may not be particularly close to the southern border (Korvosa is significantly closer), but this does establish that trolls join dwarves in the ranks of "we know they live near Nidal and they can take more pain than other mortal beings". Why don't we hear more about Nidalese trolls? It just makes sense that they (and dwarfs) would be respected by Kuthites....
***
Albatross is a nice, little town, all cliffs and ports isolated in the mists of Conqueror’s Bay. Imagine the stereotype of the stern yet cozy English fisherman, and that’s kind of the image I get of the Nidalese in Albatross. At the moment, when I think of that image, the primary association I have with it is the installments of Susan Cooper’s Dark is Rising series that were set in Cornwall. Imagining that series in Nidal takes my imagination many intriguing places. The people of Albatross practice a no-doubt homey version of augury, tracking the motions and activities of the town’s namesake birds.
This is where the Umbral Court imprisons its agents who have done something against them but who can’t just be offed. Worse than the questionable nutrition of the town’s flavorless cuisine and the townsfolks’ barely monosyllabic conversation is the prohibition the Court has placed upon hurting the people here. No relief from one’s punishment can be found in sadism here.
Albatross makes me think of nothing more than The Prisoner, that treasure of British postmodern Cold War paranoia. If I were ever to run an adventure in or passing through Albatross, I think this blend of elements ~ Dark is Rising, The Prisoner, France-by-way-of-Conan-and-Hellraiser ~ would be plenty to give it an unforgettably unique flavor.
There’s a caligni druid here by the name of Alkaiva of the Uskwood. She lost a political tussle with Eloiander of Ridwan and was only saved by two of her aunts in the Umbral Court. For some reason, her white wolf is given a name that doesn’t feel very Nidalese to me at all. It doesn’t seem to mimic the linguistic conventions of any of the languages I would expect to feed into Nidalese (French, Gaelic, Scythian, maybe some English, even Greek, perhaps with French, Italian, Spanish, or Latin loanwords from Cheliax). “Xiaq” reads to me as more like . . . Inuit or Tlingit, maybe with some Chinese influence.
It’s actually kind of interesting in an understated way. Famously, Golarion has often felt kind of threadbare when it came to international politics, due to the manner of its development. The many realms were treated as the personal project of the various high-level designers, with a not-insurmountable-but-still-a resistance to encroach on another’s turf. Little bits like a druid of the Uskwood having an animal companion that seems to imply some connection to the Crown of the World, a connection which might maybe have had something to do with her conflict with Eloiander, give DMs a platform to build that international diplomacy for their campaigns.
I would actually absolutely adore playing a Pathfinder campaign of international diplomacy, roaming Avistan and maybe greater Golarion, too, shaping history with our words and relationships.
Alkaiva is given an impressive number of adventure hooks in just 100 words or so ~ everything from her messing around with the town’s augury tradition by using her powers to train the whitr albatrosses to dance, to her having secrets that could damage Eloiander’s political position by revealing that his anti-Cheliax stance isn’t just words, to Eloiander not being okay with leaving her alive.
I recently saw someone describe the Mindspin Mountains as the most Tolkienian area of Golarion. Which, I suppose, might make Nidal Mordor? Regardless, there is a small coal-mining village tucked into their foothills where two rivers converge called Ash Hollow. OK, so Nidal burns coal, evidently. Which changes some of my mental image of its culture ~ I had before imagined them more as something like Westeros or a grim version of Early Modern, Renaissance, or even medieval France and England. Large echoing rooms of castle-stone for the nobles with dramatic fireplaces fighting back any chill while providing a lovely stage for wineglass brooding. But coal shifts that image to one inspired by some years later; now I have to import some imagery of, like, 19th-century London.
Of course, it makes sense that they need coal, since the land is kept in shadow.
Thousands make a pilgrimage to Ash Hollow every year, however, for the Festival of Nigh’s Return, completely changing the town for that week (after all, it increases the population by multiple dozenfolds). They come to gather in the valley and on the hillsides near the mountain Aghor Thal to watch a giant, rose-shaped black iron crucible heated with a massive bonfire. It literally fills a cave mouth. Once it is good and hot at duck, the sacrifices begin and do not end until dawn. Millennia of use has awakened the cauldron as an evil idol served by a group of reclusive ascetics known as the Watchers on the Hill.
The Watchers on the Hill are led by a human oracle named Baegloth, a name which shows up in chronicles written many centuries ago in the founding documents and original historical references to the cult. This has led the villagers to believe that he and the rest of the Watchers are effectively immortal, their destruction only possible by destroying the Black Rose.
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The Atteran Ranches are an area of Nidal that has gotten a bit more attention than a lot of the shadow-hugged nation’s other regions. For one thing, it is set up to very easily produce the sort of good-vs.-evil conflict that appeals to a certain type of gamer, or the freedom-vs.-oppression that does the same for a different type. For another, its heady mix of cowboys, rural horror, paranoia under totalitarianism, religion, whimsy-vs.-suffering, and familial drama gives it a simply enchanting flavor. Should I ever get the urge to play a game inspired by Mercedes Lackey or any number of CW shows, the Atteran Ranches are where I would do it.
The Ranches still practice many of the ancient ways of the Nidalese Kellids before Earthfall, modifying the ten-millenia-old practices to a more settled life between the Uskwood and Barrowmoor. And not just the horse-tending ways, either. We are specifically told that they continue to fight with archaic spear-using styles and practice antique funerary rites. With my immersionist tendencies, I quite appreciate that we are given the names and descriptions of not one but two breeds of horses the people of the Ranches have been husbanding and tending for all these centuries. Nidarrmars have dark hides and a reputation as fast, silent horses calm in the face of danger and easily trained, whereas the dappled grey chiardmars are quick and wild like moon shadows on the grass.
Much to the edification of the urban gossips of Nidal, the Atteran Ranches do indeed harbor Desnan dissidents. Both the family which has given its name to the Ranches as a whole since time immemorial and the Blackraven family have heirs who follow the ways of the Starsong. I really like their names: Daiye and Odarac. Daiye matches the emotional feel of Nidalese culture nicely, and Odarac really feels like a Frankish name of the sort that makes sense for the Kellid ur-culture of Nidal.
Daiye’s father Vaide (another good name!) is trying to cover for them by loudly and clumsily searching for non-existent Desnan agitators elsewhere. Hired Kuthite fanatics who call themselves “dream hunters” have come into the Ranches on his dime. The various clans of the region easily mislead these outsiders, taking advantage of their ignorance of the social landscape and ways.
But everyone knows that this is a situation that cannot hold. Sooner or later, the secret will out and on that day, fates will be settled.
I’ven’t looked at 2nd edition yet, but I believe I’ve picked up that the timeline advanced by ten years, is that so? Does anyone know if they’ve said anything yet about the situation of the Atteran Ranches, then?
We are pointed to other entries in this book to help flesh out the Ranches: Barrowmoor, Ravenscry, the Uthori Steppes, and Whitemound. It seems that a different book, Tombs of Golarion, also has some relevant information, in this case about the Cairn of Attai Horse-Speaker. I appreciate the linguistics there, as Attai could very conceivably be etymologically related to Atteran. These locations feel like a mix of British naming practices (the compound names) and Mongolian linguistics. Mongolian seems like a good mix there, in terms of the ur-culture. It helps keep Kellid from being too reductively Celtic/Scythian wile still having a strong resonance with the idea of a culture of horse-nomads.
Speaking of British-style names, Auginford is a small farming town with a problem. I have always appreciated how Paizo has leveraged its OGL and SRD to be unashamed of including characters mixing and matching and including information from their supplements, helping those bits of crunch actually feel integrated. The aristocratic sheriff Joeen Malsten is a hunter (from the Advanced Class guide), and has been talking with other nearby rulers to try t figure out whether Pangolais should be involved.
A very sort of Lovecraftian structure was revealed outside of Auginford by a rainstorm last year, all green flecks in black stone and patterns that seem to wriggle when you look at them. Its appearance presaged an outbreak of creepy, quiet sounds haunting people’s houses at night. The town’s chickens have been laying leathery-shelled blue eggs filled not with yolks orchicks but stinking slime and the wombs of the livestock have produced strangely-shaped, long-dead offspring.
Barrowmoor (mentioned, of course, in the description of the Atteran Ranches) has a quick description as a collection of charcoal cairns and tombs decorated with flint and braided horsehair. It has a very gothic feel to it, cold winds and a bleak feeling to the description of the land. I think of Scotland for some reason,or maybe i’m mistaking Robert E. Howard for Scotland in my head.
The use of the term “sheriff” in the description of Auginford might give us a little more information about the governmental structure of Nidal. It comes from the term “shire reeve”, a shire being either a district in general or basically equivalent to a county. Pre-feudally speaking, a shire was originally under the rule of an earl, and consisted of a group mof what were called hundreds (each ruled by a constable). A hundred was 10 tithings, and each tithing was a hide,mdefined as an area containing enough arable land to support a single household. I just learned the term for the office, term, or jurisdiction of a sheriff cuz I looked it up, and I just love the word: “shrievalty”. It makes me giggle.
Reeves were responsible historically for keeping the peace on behalf of the king in England and Wales, whereas in Scotland they were (and are) judges. As feudalism centered the idea of the manor, they also assisted the bailiffs (court functionaries), serving as the overseers of the peasants and the work they were feudally bound to perform for the lord of the manor. He also was in charge of selling the produce produced, collecting monies, and paying accounts.
Perhaps intriguingly, they were often peasants chosen once a year, sometimes by appointment from the lord but just as often elected by the peasants themselves. Occasionally, that election was protected from the lord’s veto, even!
What does this tell us about the Nidalese system, described by one commentator on this Let’s Read over at the Paizo forums as an all-encompassing church-state bureaucracy with no feudal admixture perhaps analogous to 1st-century Egypt or mid-20th-century Russia? (and I’ll add as a reminder that it seems to function by means of a military-academic complex.) I’m not overly sure. I like the idea of the shire-reeve being elected by the peasants, and imagining the small-story possibilities of the Umbral Court working to influence an election to get someone who suits their plans better than the alternatives into office. What U.S. citizen doesn’t like a good story of election tampering?
Pope Uncommon the Dainty wrote: {. . .}
I recently saw someone describe the Mindspin Mountains as the most Tolkienian area of Golarion. Which, I suppose, might make Nidal Mordor? Regardless, there is a small coal-mining village tucked into their foothills where two rivers converge called Ash Hollow. OK, so Nidal burns coal, evidently. Which changes some of my mental image of its culture ~ I had before imagined them more as something like Westeros or a grim version of Early Modern, Renaissance, or even medieval France and England. Large echoing rooms of castle-stone for the nobles with dramatic fireplaces fighting back any chill while providing a lovely stage for wineglass brooding. But coal shifts that image to one inspired by some years later; now I have to import some imagery of, like, 19th-century London.
Of course, it makes sense that they need coal, since the land is kept in shadow.
{. . .}
I wonder if the coal is needed for actually keeping the land in shadow? With the effect extended by divine magic, of course -- nevertheless, this brings up an issue that Nidal's air quality might be atrocious (and this would not be at all objectionable to at least most of the Kuthites). (Serious air pollution on Earth goes back into Antiquity, and a Science article from the 1980s or 1990s showed graphs of substantial mercury pollution going all the way back into pre-Roman Greek times, and this article also mentions Ancient Greek and other pre-Roman-equivalent societies making air pollution. So by analogy, air pollution could well be a widespread problem on Golarion, and Nidal could be especially bad if they have coal smoke and add divine magic to keep the smoke from dissipating or raining out so that the shadowing effect persists.)
Pope Uncommon the Dainty wrote: {. . .}
What U.S. citizen doesn’t like a good story of election tampering?
^Win.
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UnArcaneElection wrote: Pope Uncommon the Dainty wrote: {. . .}
I recently saw someone describe the Mindspin Mountains as the most Tolkienian area of Golarion. Which, I suppose, might make Nidal Mordor? Regardless, there is a small coal-mining village tucked into their foothills where two rivers converge called Ash Hollow. OK, so Nidal burns coal, evidently. Which changes some of my mental image of its culture ~ I had before imagined them more as something like Westeros or a grim version of Early Modern, Renaissance, or even medieval France and England. Large echoing rooms of castle-stone for the nobles with dramatic fireplaces fighting back any chill while providing a lovely stage for wineglass brooding. But coal shifts that image to one inspired by some years later; now I have to import some imagery of, like, 19th-century London.
Of course, it makes sense that they need coal, since the land is kept in shadow.
{. . .}
I wonder if the coal is needed for actually keeping the land in shadow? With the effect extended by divine magic, of course -- nevertheless, this brings up an issue that Nidal's air quality might be atrocious (and this would not be at all objectionable to at least most of the Kuthites). (Serious air pollution on Earth goes back into Antiquity, and a Science article from the 1980s or 1990s showed graphs of substantial mercury pollution going all the way back into pre-Roman Greek times, and this article also mentions Ancient Greek and other pre-Roman-equivalent societies making air pollution. So by analogy, air pollution could well be a widespread problem on Golarion, and Nidal could be especially bad if they have coal smoke and add divine magic to keep the smoke from dissipating or raining out so that the shadowing effect persists.) It certainly changes one's mental image of Avistan, doesn't it, this one little detail? I do especially like the idea that the Kuthite clergy use their divine magicks to maintain the clouds of coal-black smoke hanging ominously over the realm, pulling the famous Londonesque pea-soup fog with their miracles from the cold, dewy ground and the genteel streets of Pangolais to install it high above where it can block the light of the hated sun.
As a devotional polytheist (and some of this is culture-specific, rather than derived from a broad theological type or orientation to certain types of praxis), it actually fits more closely with how I understand the complex and ongoing interactions between mortal, immortal, and cosmos. Many types of priest are essentially cosmological handymen, maintenance workers who keep the ma'at, the ollin (yes, those are two concepts from very different places and very different cultures, do please forgive me; I work with both) functioning well so that the world doesn't break down. Importing that and twisting it to a Nidalese context makes mevery happy. Thank you for the idea!
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Blacksulfur Pond is a pretty standard creepy pond. It has no visible inlet and sits in the middle of a hush. It even looks black from a distance, though that illusion is revealed as such with a closer inspection. It is not the water that is black, but the pondbottom itself, a shimmering darkness. It is a dead pond, with no life of any type in it or on it or around it. If you ask the locals, they’ll tell you it’s got a fissure to the Darklands’s gasses, but in truth it’s a portal to a pond in the Shadow Plane, one not very well-known on the other side.
The Umbral Court once watched this portal for incursions, but they’ve been so rare that only Leorel of Nisroch (NE human abjurer 3) guards the pond. And he lives an hour away, without much drive to travel all that way very diligently. I like that he’s an abjurer, quite a bit actually. For one, it’s an all-too-oft-ignored subclass, and I appreciate it being presented here as being tied into the world/situation in a way with more meat than ticking off boxes (like, the “this university needs a professor from every school of magic” thing). For another, it’s not the school of magic I immediately associate with Nidal and its tropes, so seeing abjuration show up here helps imagine Nidal as a place with a complex and verisimilitudinous culture. Makes me want to play an abjurer Umbral agent, actually, with a similar job.
Brimstone Springs is high up in the Mindspins. Tolkien-ish territory, remember? Its named for the sulfurous and brightly colored Soulsheen Baths. As with many such places, they are popular as a cure for many things with all the toxic chemicals in their waters. Yeah, okay, confusing poison for medicine is a little over-the-top “fair is foul”, but it’s also extremely realistic. This is one of the times that restraint would actually make the setting seem more alien and one-dimensional.
The Nidalese especially enjoy immersing themselves in various poison waters that stain their skin yellow and grant them visions of their afterlives if they stay in them for a day. It also decides where they’re going; a drowning devil named Reinoks uses it to collect souls for Infernal Duke Crocell. They’re similarities to certain Hellish places have started to attract a number of Chelish tourists to Brimstone Spring, as well, setting up some nice chance for the isolationists v. Cheliax fans conflict to pop up in an unusual setting where many people would have their defenses lowered. Evidently, they’re featured in the Giantslayer adventure path’s gazetteer of the Minspins. I should read that, because now I really wanna play out an underhanded political adventure or even campaign in Brimstone Springs! The Latinist in me really loves the image of cloak-and-dagger political intrigue among the baths and the wandering steam.
I do wish I knew of even one or two NPCs published here or somewhere else that had yellow skin and knowledge that they would go to Hell when they died. It would make an interesting motivation for a good-aligned Chelaxian, actually ~ they don’t feel the need to be evil because they can rest assured that they will end up where they want to be after death, so they can safely and freely go against the grain of the culture.
The Cairn of Attai Horse-Speaker, the pre-Earthfall chieftain of the Atteran tribe, is said to be marked by an ancient statue and an entrance into the earth somewhere in Barrowmoor. It seems to be detailed in Tombs of Golarion.
The vampiric nobleman Volsazni Dezarr (a name that strikes me as more Varisi than Kellid) keeps a collection of light-related artifacts and holy wonders in the Castle of the Captive Sun, his ostentatiously named country home. His choice of guests is evidently also unusual, but we won’t know any details for some pages, it seems.
57 years ago (the equivalent of about 26 years culturally and only 8 to the elfs), the Order of the Scourge razed Citadel Gheisteno, headquarters of the Hellknight Order of the Crux, to the ground for betraying their founding ideals and the Measure and the Chain. All were killed. Considering that this was only 23 years or so after House Thrune (who, along with Iomedaean knights, helped the Scourge do this) won their civil war, bargaining Nidalese independence for Nidalese aid, I’m kind of surprised that we’re not told of this being a major international incident. By my math, remember, the culture should be reacting as if that civil war had ended only about a decade ago in our terms, and to any elf it would have been the equivalent only like 3 years ago! Even without that math, we can clearly see events from 1997 affecting today’s political situation. And whether the alliance with Nidal is a good thing is still a cause for instability in Nidal, anyway!
Lianne throws in another call-out to her two books set in Nidal, including their protagonists’ hometown of Crosspine in the gazetteer. It’s just a small village on the southeastern border of the Uskwood known for producing lots of arcane and druidic magic-users.
Pope Uncommon the Dainty wrote: {. . .}
The Nidalese especially enjoy immersing themselves in various poison waters that stain their skin yellow and grant them visions of their afterlives if they stay in them for a day. {. . .}
Somebody should tell them that pool has been extensively peed in . . . actually, that might even be technically true . . . .
Pope Uncommon the Dainty wrote: Many types of priest are essentially cosmological handymen, maintenance workers who keep the ma'at, the ollin (yes, those are two concepts from very different places and very different cultures, do please forgive me; I work with both) functioning well so that the world doesn't break down. Importing that and twisting it to a Nidalese context makes mevery happy. Thank you for the idea! And thank you for making me go look up ollin. (I was familiar with ma'at, quelle surprise...) :)
Always fun to learn new things.
Dauphenal Vineyard was founded in the Northern Plains during Shadowbreak by a disgraced scion of a Chelish noble house. We get another fun, immersive detail: Dauphenal grows a varietal of grape known as alvarno, which is probably not fantastical but a reference to alvarinho (a.k.a., albariño). On Earth, alvarinho is mostly grown in Portugal and Galicia, Spain. On Golarion, we are told, it was at the time popular in Cheliax but largely unknown in Nidal.
For the most part, Avistani nations are written in a nice balance when it comes to comparing them to European countries. None can be described well as “fantasy Germany” or “pseudo-Norway” or “faux Andorra”. And yet, many resonate strongly enough with European countries to give players an easy path to figuring out their cultures. Varisia is vaguely Greece if it was populated by the Rom. Taldor is kinda Byzantine. Brevoy is kinda Russian. Nirmathas calls up images of Robin Hood. There two Frances: Galt in an unending revolution and Nidal itself I have often described as France by way of Conan and Hellraiser.
Cheliax, arguably, is in the sweetest spot in this balancing act. It obviously draws on southern Europe,but people have a hard time identifying if it’s Spanish or Italian. This detail of the wine grape tells me that viticulturally Cheliax resembles Spain more than it does Italy. And it’s specific enough that it doesn’t negate the bits of Chelish culture that feel Italian while still flashing out the image of Chelish culture in my head. Well done, Lianne!
Anyway, Dauphenal was an immediate success, showcasing a light but surprisingly nuanced white wine made from the alvarino grapes. Crisp and herbal, Dauphenal wine looks a bit like liquid moonstone, shining gray in the glass, and has notes of pear and lemongrass. This kind of detail is lovely, but I find myself sad that I don’t know the flavor profile of any other Avistani wine. It’s the kind of detail that shines most when it can be compared to other similar details. I want to know how Dauphenal gray (as I call it in my head) matches to, say, a Brevish icewine. This wine maintained the founders family for generations...until they decided to back someone other than House Thrune in the Chelish Civil War. In the aftermath, the Umbral Court took control of the vineyard, causing the quality of the wine to worsen.
The Court’s solution was to bring a Chelish-trained vigneron to operate it. Ylise of the Pale Sun, a NE female druid 3/enchanter 2, graduated from the famous Nidalese universityin Elith Lorin and has managed to restore the vineyard to its former prestige.
Edammera of the Dusk Hall performed his research in a steel-doored tower that has been abandoned for centuries. I remember noting that the timeline didn’t explain why Mesandroth Fiendlorn’s exploits resulted in a tower called Edammera’s Folly. Well, we learn now ~ Edammera was on Mesandroth’s assistants.
The afore-mentioned Elith Lorin is a beautiful 1500-person town on the Usk River, made even more beautiful by Meletir of Nisroch’s statue “The Fountain of Shelyn’s Lament.” I do wish I know what it depicted exactly; I have an idea but only a vague one. After the Everwar, Chelish investors also helped make the city uncommonly gorgeous as they built limestone buildings ringing that marketplace, as well as the ornate Bridge of Vainglory over the river.
Almost all Nidalese trade passes through Elith Lorin ~ Atterani ranchers drive livestock there, the southern plains bring their produce there, and both then flow out west to Nisroch or east to Pangolais. Its port is very busy. Occupying Chelish dignitaries’s mansions have been reborn as offices for state officials and the clerks and legates in their employ. Of course, the west is unruly and all that trade makes Elith Lorin the headquarters for Nisrochite spies and Pangolaise inquisitors, who also make their offices in these buildings. The Eye of Pangolais, a former church dedicated to Aroden, overlooks the town from a northern hill, wreathed rumors of this kind of thing.
What the town is known for across Nidal, however is the School of the Pale Sun on the other side of town. It’s not Pangolais’s Dusk Hall, but it is still a prestigious school for Nidalese diplomats and agents abroad, particularly shadowcallers, choosing its students by means of divination spells. Pangolais and Ridwan provide most of those students. It relies on Chelish faculty to counteract the effects of Nidal’s isolation. Nidalese instructors like Headmistress Virexia of Pangolais (LE human bard (archivist) 7) mostly just make sure there are no traitors among the students while they teach the sneaky and treacherous ways to work for their country.
Helthir of the Midnight Citadel, a LE male human inquisitor 5 (but of what domain or inquisition???), rules the town. He’s filled with devotion to Zon-Kuthon and blood from an old Pangolais family. Most of what he does is to contain Nisroch’s chaos by means of informers and an utter lack of respect for privacy. Only the fetchling ghetto is safe from his reach, but they are just as suspicious as Helthir.
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The Fields of Pain’s Forgetting grow a wide variety of narcotic and hallucinogenic plants, most of which commit the Nidalese sin of dulling or negating pain. All are addictive. Mushrooms are mentioned (of the luminous sort) and poppies (specifically white ones), too, but the most notable among them is flayleaf, a muscle relaxant and analgesic that increases suggestibility and can be made into a very hallucinogenic drink called Riddleport tea. As that suggests, flayleaf is mostly associated with Varisia.
The Umbral Court, who operates the fields by means of the grumpy and jaded Mistress Cultivator Preali Dhat (N fetchling alchemist 4/druid 2 whose anger stems from not being in the Court), loves to mix these drugs with poisonous substances to help them find weakling infidels who try to avoid Zon-Kuthon’s teachings. I imagine these poisons cause particularly spectacular deaths and Umbral agents across the realm have been trained to listen for sudden outbreaks of such deaths, allowing them to locate the users and dealers of these drugs.
I kinda like that Nidal has a War on Painkillers like this. It’s a neat little extrapolation from their premise. I also like Preali Dhat ~ her alignment is a welcome break from the waves of evil and could provide for quite interesting interactions with PCs, and her class combination is both unusual and appropriate.
Of course, there are sometimes uses for removing the touch of the Midnight Lord, and so the Fields’ primary beneficiaries are churches, cathedrals, and the wonderfully termed “independent houses of torture.” Pragmatism wins out every time.
Leading through the Minspin Mountains to Molthune, Ghorvaul’s Crossing is home to an ancient bit of tribal revenge. Enemies of the main Nidalese tribes, the Ehrotai tribe refused to seek refuge with Zon-Kuthon after Earthfall. Their spiritworkers committed ritual suicide, hoping to preserve the mory of their people by becoming ghosts.
Instead, they rose as a multi-limbed monstrosity known as a charnel colossus (CR 19), that did retain their memories and traditions. So that’s nice, at least.
Shadowcallers trade sacrifices for questions. The sacrifices have their bodies and minds incorporated into the Speakers of the Ehrotai, as the colossus is named. Usually, it’s one person per question, but if the Speakers can learn a lot from the person, they might allow more. Giving yourself over to the Speakers is well-known amongst the jaded members of the Kuthite faith as a way to both end their ennui and to have, at least, a novel kind of suffering accompany your death.
The Speakers of the Ehrotai are a wonderful way to keep the Kellid history of Nidal present. It fits right in with the themes and ways of the culture while still allowing for a relationship with PCs other than “kill it!” and provides a nice element for any deep-immersion role-player to include in their character’s backstory. How did their ancestors relate to the Ehrotai 10,000 years ago? This could also provide backstories for ancient Nidalese magic items untouched by the Midnight Lord, which might also prompt involvement with the Speakers, who won’t say anything (such as a command word) without a sacrifice. What are your good-aligned Desnan and Milanite PCs gonna do in that case? How deep is their dedication to revolution? Or just think of what it might mean for the Molthuni, if they ever manage to get it together to invade Nidal? An invasion of Nidal seems like the one story I might tell involving Molthune, which is largely pretty bland in my limited reading of that realm.
Caustic, poisonous crimson smoke that will slay any living creature in minutes and blackened stone walls herald the rich deposits of gems in the Godsblood Crevasse, which cuts through the hissing wastes southeast of Ridwan known as the Weeping Fields. Wow, that’s a region that really calls forth the purple prose and heavy metal imagery, isn’t it? Specifically, the crevasse holds pigeon’s-blood rubies, and its stores (mined by alchemically-petrified skeletons) have seemed inexhaustible for centuries. Surely, it’s a gift from the Midnight Lord! The rubies are the only colored gemstones considered in good taste by Nidalese fashonistas.
Grenda of Elith Lorin, a LE female graveknight fighter 9 and member of the Umbral Court, oversees the bony miners. I bet Preali Dhat hates her for being on the Court. She gets her skeletons, officially speaking, from Kuthites who have sold their labor after death. However, the smoke wears away at them, even through their alchemical processing, and so her overseers are less than strict about their methods of replacing them.
A curiously cold basin of water surrounded by frost blighted plants sits near the outlet of the Usk Lake to the Usk River. Despite the local’s dismissal of fisherfolk stories about seeing ice deep below the surface, this basin hosts a qallupilluk by the name of Kialuk. The qallupillk is based on an Inuit creature, the qalupalik. She’d fought with her sisters over a stolen child and was exiled, travelling south (presumably from the Crown of the World or damn near) til she came here. Several crates of liquid ice stolen from an unlikely Kuthite caravan made her hovel at least livable and intimidated the merrows, scrags, and other monsters of the lake. She is now a petty queen living in fear of running out of the very limited resource that allows her to live and maintain her power. This fear drives her to command her servants to travel Nidalese rivers in search of a replacement, preferably a permanent one.
Kialuk is nice ~ she connects Nidal (somewhat randomly) to the outer world and feels pleasingly like the kind of kids’ TV villainess common to the many cartoons and shows I watched as a child. I simply cannot help but imagine Rita Repulsa’s voice bubbling out from Kialuk’s mouth. Aristotelian ideas of dramatic conservation want me to tie her into Alkaiva of the Uskwood’s winter wolf, but my interest in immersion and mythopoeia would want to resist that as being unrealistic.
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