Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
I'm not entirely sure if this is the best place to post this, but I've been wondering lately about the design origins of the Qlippoth. They're one of my favorite extraplanar types, and I've always been curious about how these were made for the system. I can't find any articles on it (at least, on the first five pages of the forum & blog search, and google isn't helping much either.) Has Paizo ever been asked this at a Con, or written any blog posts about it?
Full disclosure, though, yesterday I decided to ask a Jewish co-worker how to actually pronounce the name, and that turned into a discussion on how the name was picked, and the real-world origins, and so on. Which, because of what's going on the the world today, turned into a discussion of other stuff. I'd like to be able to tell her the origins of this whole thing, if only for her own peace of mind.
Have you tried asking James Jacobs or others in their AMA threads?
From AoN:
"... qlippoth come from an unknowable realm on what might be described as the "outside shell" of the Outer Sphere..."
From Wikipedia:
"... The Qliphoth/Qlippoth/Qlifot or Kelipot, literally "Peels", "Shells" or "Husks", are the representation of evil or impure spiritual forces in Jewish mysticism..."
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
Java Man - I don't think I know the best place to look for those, lol. I saw one last night, but it was in the off topic forum, and it was full of silly questions. I didn't want to intrude with an actual question. Any guidance in the right direction would be appreciated.
edit: nevermind, that thread is apparently the right one. I'll just go ask there then, lol. Thanks!
VoodistMonk - I saw those, but that's speculation from players, as far as I can tell. I was hoping for something a bit more in-depth, with commentary on how they decided on the actual word "qlippoth"; like, was one of the people working on making new creatures Jewish and they came up with the word, or was it something else?
If you are in the process of investing new husk-ish monsters from the outer shell of the outer sphere, and you happen to know the word Qlippoth means husk/shell... it doesn't matter if you are Jewish or not. All it really takes is a very general knowledge that the word exists.
Maybe they just needed a term setting the new Abyssal monsters significantly apart from demons. So they scanned several mythologies for a fitting word and found "Qliphoth" to be alien and fitting enough. They pillage mythologies all over the world all the time, according to the Bestiaries.
And after picking the name, they picked a theme, intimidating enough to even compete with demons: Simple but scary lifeforms, grown to enormous size and with extra horror effects. Since then, several authors delivered their variant of the theme. The result has little to do with Jewish mythology, maybe because they didn't find the Qliphoth inspiring for fantasy (I don't), maybe because they already made up their mind how the new outsiders should be.
Here's some info about the original mythology https://www.themystica.com/mystica/articles/q/qlippoth.html as the Pathfinder qlippoth don't seem to have much to do with them they probably just liked the name.
Did some beings called "Qipploth" appear in Champions? I think that system used the Sephirot for its planes, so it might be a case of cross-borrowing so common in this hobby.
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
Yqatuba, I think this is exactly what I'm looking for, thank you! My co-worker is familiar with Judaism in general, but not Kabbalah. Partly because Kabbalah is apparently supposed to only be something you start looking at after you turn 40, because you're going to go mad if you don't, due to lack of life experience and preparation. I think that if I can find more sources like this, that might help with some of the concerns she's had, about a great many things, including Lilith (we uh... we talked about that when comparing notes about the new Sabrina show, lol.)
Recent threads in General Discussion
|
