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Has it been mentioned anywhere? It doesn't say on the wiki. Also, is their planet even still inhabited or has it long since been abandoned?
As for where they first came from, it's likely whatever the Algollthu language's word for "planet" or "home" or "depths" or "the point of origin" is. I think that planet is long gone though.
This species has been around the galaxy for a loooooong time- they believe themselves to be the first sapient species anywhere and have not yet encountered compelling evidence to the contrary.
Are they older than qlippoth or proteans? Or do they not count outsiders?
It is debatable which is older though I speculate the qlippoth are older. To our limited knowledge of the time before the Age of Creation, the qlippoth and the Abyss itself plausibly existed in some form before it first opened into the rest of the Outer Sphere, making the qlippoth reasonably considered the oldest sapient species in the entire Great Beyond.
Meanwhile the alghollthu are almost undoubtedly one of the oldest sapient inhabitants of the created universe. It is said (mostly by them) that they had already ruled the oceans of many planets (including Golarion) before the gods first turned their attention to it--presumably evolving during an interim point after the gods created the universe but before they had finished making plans for it. Nevertheless, it is strongly implied that various eldritch entities existed in the dark spaces of the void where the gods were going to put the universe before they actually did, so it's not unthinkable to imagine that the first amoeboid alghollthu could have been aberrant microbes from the pre-creation void rather than the first species to evolve in the Material Plane without the gods' help.
Per their own histories, they were sapient before any kind of outsider took an interest in the Prime Material plane. What various outsiders were doing on other planes at the time is hard to say.
Though, to paraphrase Mr. Jacobs- once you go that far back in time things get pretty murky. Pharasma likely predates them, since she was the lone survivor from a previous reality.
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Per their own histories, they were sapient before any kind of outsider took an interest in the Prime Material plane. What various outsiders were doing on other planes at the time is hard to say.
Though, to paraphrase Mr. Jacobs- once you go that far back in time things get pretty murky. Pharasma likely predates them, since she was the lone survivor from a previous reality.
The only things older than Pharasma are referred to as "Those Who Remain", likely meaning the Outer Gods, Great Old Ones, and all that eldritch business. If you include aboleths in that group- which they have a fair amount of similarity to, despite being lawful- it's possible that their species predates even her, if they're the same type of eldritch being as the Outer Gods.
I have difficulty reconciling "The algollthu were sapient before any outsider took an interest in the prime material plane" and "the First World was the Gods' dress rehearsal for the Prime Material Plane, which they abandoned shortly before creating the Prime Material Plane."
Barring some causality shenanigans, someone has to be wrong here.
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I have difficulty reconciling "The algollthu were sapient before any outsider took an interest in the prime material plane" and "the First World was the Gods' dress rehearsal for the Prime Material Plane, which they abandoned shortly before creating the Prime Material Plane."
Barring some causality shenanigans, someone has to be wrong here.
That's the way mythology works. Full of contradictions and mystery and impossibilities.
Per their own histories, they were sapient before any kind of outsider took an interest in the Prime Material plane. What various outsiders were doing on other planes at the time is hard to say.
Though, to paraphrase Mr. Jacobs- once you go that far back in time things get pretty murky. Pharasma likely predates them, since she was the lone survivor from a previous reality.
Not the lone survivor in PF1.
Similar to the highest caste of pitris, twilight pitris are manasaputras whose existence predates the current multiverse. Unlike the solar pitris, these creatures started their path to enlightenment in the preceding multiverse, not some more ancient one. During that indescribable existence, twilight pitris were mortals who ascended to the ranks of manus. Surviving the natural end of their native reality, they endured and were incarnated into the current multiverse as this higher caste of manasaputras.
But maybe the PF2 multiverse is different.
That's the way mythology works. Full of contradictions and mystery and impossibilities.
Is the published lore supposed to be the description of the setting or just the myths that the inhabitants of Golarion have about their world? If sometimes this, sometimes that, is there a way to tell when it's what?
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That's the way mythology works. Full of contradictions and mystery and impossibilities.Is the published lore supposed to be the description of the setting or just the myths that the inhabitants of Golarion have about their world? If sometimes this, sometimes that, is there a way to tell when it's what?
I believe the Windsong Testaments are in-universe myth, with all that entails.
Other sources, like Planar Adventures or Lost Omens Gods & Magic, are more straightforward.
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That's the way mythology works. Full of contradictions and mystery and impossibilities.Is the published lore supposed to be the description of the setting or just the myths that the inhabitants of Golarion have about their world? If sometimes this, sometimes that, is there a way to tell when it's what?
The further back in time something gets, the more mutable it is. The way to tell when it's what is GM's preference.
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1) Its never been stated. 2) they blew up their planet on purpose with glyphs. You can read more about that in their ecology articleLink, or at least a better citation please... I would like to read this...
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1) Its never been stated. 2) they blew up their planet on purpose with glyphs. You can read more about that in their ecology articleLink, or at least a better citation please... I would like to read this...
It is in Ruins of Azlant's first book, into the shattered continent
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I have difficulty reconciling "The algollthu were sapient before any outsider took an interest in the prime material plane" and "the First World was the Gods' dress rehearsal for the Prime Material Plane, which they abandoned shortly before creating the Prime Material Plane."
Barring some causality shenanigans, someone has to be wrong here.
The end and beginning of multiverses happens within the Prime Material Plane. It predates Pharasma. Note that the other survivors (Outer Gods) dwell within the Prime Material Plane.
The First World served as a test environment for the gods to create life and sentience (free will more exactly) in the current incarnation of the multiverse. It was based on what they learned there that the gods created the cycle of souls that launched life on the Prime Material Plane as we know it.
At least that is what I gather from reading the concordance of rivals and the book about the First World and trying to fit it all together.
So potentially the Algollthu developed free will independently of the design of any outsiders, and it came out fundamentally different than what the gods were coming up with (the thing that makes them Aberrations is more "they have weird models of thinking" than "they have weird bodies" after all- all bodies are equally weird.)
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So, did anything create the Algollthu? Or did they just spontaneously form somehow? I know they don't worship any gods but that doesn't mean they weren't created by them.
I would assume that they just developed sapience via random chance. If the First World was created in order to test "free will" before creating things like humans, elves, etc. then there were probably plants, and trees, and bugs and stuff on the prime material plane without the gods needing to create it.
A question I'm pretty puzzled on is "What happens to Algollthu when they die?" Do they enter the river of souls? Does Pharasma judge them? Do they get sent to various afterlives? Or is that graveyard in the Boneyard where the true ardent atheists and failed souls go just chock full or Aboleths? Do they even have souls?
All this is assuming that anything the Algollthu say can be trusted. They could be intentionally lying, or merely embellishing, or they could have forgotten the truth in favor of a more convenient one.
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Where the algollthu came from is unrevealed at this point. As for not trusting them... good advice, but keep in mind that they ARE ancient and DO have long memories, and if they knew some unsettling truth about the prehistory of reality, letting us humans know about it in order to sap our will is exactly the type of thing they'd be into.