I think there should be one in 2e.
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Neutral splatbook and it's just titled Book.
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The Concordance of Rivals would like a word with the OP.
"The Concordance of Rivals is one of three legendary books compiled by the angel Tabris, along with the Book of the Damned and Chronicle of the Righteous, that purportedly contain all knowledge in existence."
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Specifically, the Concordance of Rivals
It took Paizo a bit longer to come up with interesting ideas but they eventually got around to making the book :)
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I do not feel strongly one way or another about this.
Should something be done about this?
All I know is my gut says maybe.
Book of the Just Chillin'
Deeds of the Indifferent
Legends of the Non-Commital
Don't be a centrist do noing is why.
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Actually I think the Neutrals on the Good-Evil axis are the people who have things in their existence far more important than devoting yourself to harming or protecting the innocent.
Be it Nature, the cycle of Life and Death, Magic, War, Civilization...
Neutrality does not mean not committed to a cause. Pretty much the opposite I think.
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I will say I think that Concordance of Rivals, while housing some of the most interesting lore in the setting, does suffer a bit more for having to cover four types of outsiders than, say, Chronicles of the Righteous did.
Not divving up the Empyreal Lords based on the angel/archon/agathion/azata distinction didn't really matter but putting aeons, inevitables, proteans, & psychopomps in one book when they're distinctly different things left no one with room to breath. Especially with the psychopomps getting a disproportionate amount of focus.
That being said I recognize that aeons, inevitables, & proteans are probably all too thin to hold up their own books - or at least, Paizo's interest in the is too thin to sustain a book for each. If I could go back & change it I probably would have pulled the psychopomps out & given them their own book, a Book of the Dead or something, & have Concordence of Rivals focus on the other three, give them a bit more space to breath without having the Boneyard choke them out.
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The neutral book was called Champions of Balance.
We could have a law book (the Writ of Order) and a chaos book (the Songs of Chaos) and a final book based on true neutral (the Tome of Balance)
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That being said I recognize that aeons, inevitables, & proteans are probably all too thin to hold up their own books - or at least, Paizo's interest in the is too thin to sustain a book for each. If I could go back & change it I probably would have pulled the psychopomps out & given them their own book, a Book of the Dead or something, & have Concordence of Rivals focus on the other three, give them a bit more space to breath without having the Boneyard choke them out.
I would gleefully write an entire book on proteans, just saying. ;)
Axiomites likewise. I had such fun with them in CoR.
That being said I recognize that aeons, inevitables, & proteans are probably all too thin to hold up their own books - or at least, Paizo's interest in the is too thin to sustain a book for each. If I could go back & change it I probably would have pulled the psychopomps out & given them their own book, a Book of the Dead or something, & have Concordence of Rivals focus on the other three, give them a bit more space to breath without having the Boneyard choke them out.I would gleefully write an entire book on proteans, just saying. ;)
Axiomites likewise. I had such fun with them in CoR.
Well I hope you get the chance one day. I'm personally more interested in either of them than psychopomps.
That being said I also wish you had gotten the chance back in 1e because I prefer that setting & I'm not a huge fan of the reframing given to aeons in 2e to move them out of the TN spot & group them with axiomites/inevitables. I understand why it was done from a business perspective, but I'm sitll not a fan of that decision.
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I'm not a huge fan either, I liked there being two TN outsider groups, one that was all about the living and the other mostly about the nonliving, but JJ explained their decision somewhere that made quite a lot of sense and works for me.
Basically, and excuse me for paraphrasing, he said that they were the new LN outsiders because they were concerned so much with the universe ticking over so nicely and efficiently, and in perfect balance. Psychopomps don't care where souls go, as long as they get to where they're most like, while Aeons were concerned with ensuring everything was cosmically balanced, which felt more like a lawful than neutral thing.
For my personal head canon I have Aeons taking the LN spot mostly because that's what the cosmos needs right now. Proteans do a good enough job of spreading chaos, so Aeons step in with their creations to counteract that while it's needed. Monad is still TN, after all, even in 2E.
Okay, I can see the spin there. It's not an entirely invalid argument though I think it harkens back to the alignment debates where it becomes a little arbitrary where one draws the line. I think there's a distinction to be made between order & balance and that trying to maintain balance between the alignments is a valid(if alien) interpretation of TN to act in counterpart to the equally valid "don't really care as long as the thing happens" interpretation.
Of course, the other reason the decision was made - and I've seen Jacobs make posts to this effect as well - is the same reason so many creatures are getting name changes; they want to move aeons into the LN space to fill out & kinda take over for inevitables because inevitables are a WotC thing that can't be used in other media where the OGL doesn't apply, and folding aeons into that spot made more sense than coming up with a whole new one or expanding 1e's axiomites.
I also recall, but don't have the energy to go look up right now, seeing a post, I believe in the old ask JJ thread, where he was asked if we'd be seeing more on Aeons - this would have been 2013/14ish as if I recall correctly it was somehow in relation to Wrath of the Righteous - but his answer was that while aeons weren't being written out, the plan at the time was to focus on psychopomps as the main TN outsiders with the impression I got, and I could be misremembering this, being that the reasoning was that either he personally or the dev team as a whole, didn't find aeons particularly interesting in comparison.
Which, if he's 100% genuine in his explanation for the chance to LN - and that explanation isn't mutually exclusive with the business reason - that could be why he wasn't interested in them at the time; he just didn't see them as distinct enough from inevitables.
Anyway my personal headcanon is that the change didn't happen & it's pretty easy for me to stick to that because I don't play 2e. It's just unfortunate for me that any forthcoming lore is going to be made with the assumption that it did, so I'll have to account for that to incorporate it.
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"I HAVE NO STRONG FEELINGS ABOUT A BOOK ONE WAY OR THE OTHER!!!"
"I HAVE NO STRONG FEELINGS ABOUT A BOOK ONE WAY OR THE OTHER!!!"
When I saw your name I honestly thought you created your account just for this post. Imagine my surprise to learn you've been around for a while. Hats off for your post, it got a good laugh out of me
Actually I think the Neutrals on the Good-Evil axis are the people who have things in their existence far more important than devoting yourself to harming or protecting the innocent.
Be it Nature, the cycle of Life and Death, Magic, War, Civilization...
Neutrality does not mean not committed to a cause. Pretty much the opposite I think.
Which is the problem. The definition of Good and Evil. The other causes you mention can be included into the Good Evil axis. Or left as neutral. Or they are their own separate axis. Its all very messy. Depends on your philosophy or whatever the game designer is trying to do.
