What do you want from a Lost Omens: The Golden Road?

[The Raven Black]

Beckett99 wrote:

zimmerwald1915 wrote:

keftiu wrote:

Why they keep putting lore in lore books is a mystery for the ages :P

I suppose it's a bit much to expect from a setting that ballooned the length of the Terror from three to forty years, but uprisings don't actually tend to last very long - either overthrowing the government or being suppressed - unless backed far more strongly by foreign powers than Andoran is doing (the Firebrands are a comparative nonfactor and can be discounted). I simply don't buy a long-running Katapeshi Civil War as part of the setting's status quo, as opposed to a brief episode leading to a changed status quo.

The terror wasn't a single uprising it was decades of back to back uprisings happening one after another that the outside world lumped together.

If you mean the French Terror, you might want to check Wikipedia. It was not decades-long.

[Beckett99]

The Raven Black wrote:

Beckett99 wrote:

zimmerwald1915 wrote:

keftiu wrote:

Why they keep putting lore in lore books is a mystery for the ages :P

I suppose it's a bit much to expect from a setting that ballooned the length of the Terror from three to forty years, but uprisings don't actually tend to last very long - either overthrowing the government or being suppressed - unless backed far more strongly by foreign powers than Andoran is doing (the Firebrands are a comparative nonfactor and can be discounted). I simply don't buy a long-running Katapeshi Civil War as part of the setting's status quo, as opposed to a brief episode leading to a changed status quo.

The terror wasn't a single uprising it was decades of back to back uprisings happening one after another that the outside world lumped together.

If you mean the French Terror, you might want to check Wikipedia. It was not decades-long.

He only referred to the Terror and I had forgotten the specific name name of the galtan revolution so I accidentally called the red revolution the red terror in my head

[PossibleCabbage]

Unicore wrote:

Also, revolutionary change in nations happening "on screen," in the hands of heroes, really should be the exception and not a common occurrence across Golarion.

Yeah, it's really a bad idea to insist that most if not all injustices can be addressed by 3-6 exceptional individuals beating up the right people over the course of six months.

[Eeveegirl1206]

keftiu wrote:

For myself, I'd love to just go down the list of nations:

Rahadoum: I'm honestly very happy with this nation; it's one of my favorites on Golarion, and I like that their atheism has been presented as a respectable belief system in 2e materials so far. Seeing Rahadoumi magical studies and nonmagical healing blossom opens up so many interesting characters! I'm also super compelled by the potential for environmentalist plotlines, as characters aid state efforts against desertification; that scares me a lot more than orcs or demons these days, as a Californian. The violent oppression of religion I could take or leave.

Thuvia: Has always felt a little one-dimensional to me (it's the Sun Orchid place!), and it's mercantile wealth has always felt thematically redundant with Katapesh so nearby. I feel like there's a lot of potential to make the individual city-states feel more distinct - have they been written about more somewhere?

Osirion: Hooooo boy. Osirion is my single least-favorite place on Golarion. If you want Fantasy Vikings, you get a lot of variations on that flavor in the northern Avistan, but here Fantasy Egypt literally just is Fantasy Egypt. It's always felt hokey to have an Earth Pantheon here worshiped intact and unmodified, but to have it be in a place full of pyramids and mummies... it feels like a Hollywood set, not a place people live. I'd really like to see this place lean harder into being only three generations free from thousands of years of imperial rule for Ravounel and Vidrian to look to, as a symbol of what nation-building after a revolution really gets going can be like (and don't remind me that the Pharaoh's name is literally the Ancient Egyptian name for Egypt). This is a nation founded with the blessing of the god of magic, a place that birthed one of the greatest necromancers in Golarion's history - let that magical pride be a cornerstone! And if we can see some indigenous archaeology, trying to replace pulpy colonial tomb looting in favor of people reclaiming their own...

It’s worth noting that for land that is “naturally” a “dessert” trying to make it far worse. A dessert is it own unique ecosystem as valid as a forest.

Also Rhamoun was never portrayed all that badly expect for the state enforced antitheism. Much better then Satan worshiping land.

[ornathopter]

A desert is an important kind of ecosystem, but desertification of other ecosystems due to water loss, erosion, etc is still very bad environmentally. I think doing a fantasy version of the environmental restoration efforts underway now could be very fun. And it could be interesting to have a bit of the setting show off the many different kinds of arid ecosystems and drylands that exist, since people tend to assume they're all endless barren sand dunes.

[Morhek]

So War of Immortals has been rough for Osirion, it seems.

War of Immortals:

Thoth got yeeted to parts unknown by Nethys, and Ra, Horus, Maat, Anubis, Osiris and Isis have been banished after saving Osirion from the hag pantheon doing...something. Not dead, but no longer available as options for clerics. On the bright side, it has apparently been confirmed that Apep, Bastet, Bes, Hathor, Khepri, Neith, Nephthys, Ptah, Sekhmet, Selket, Set, Sobek and Wadjet are still around, albeit making up a much-reduced pantheon.

On the one hand, I'm glad that Osirion still has some locally unique gods as an Egyptophile. The Heliopolitan Ennead is in tatters, with only Set and Nephthys left, but the Memphite Triad could perhaps take its place (Ptah and Sekhmet's son Maahes was canonically an Azata Empyreal Lord in the 1e Bestiary). And if Apep is still around to be the serpent who threatens to devour the sun, then he still has Khepri to chase and Set to fight. And in fairness, Ptah didn't sit all that well in a pantheon where Osiris already existed since they have such similar imagery and filled a similar theological niche, but he's not a god most Egypt-inspired pop media tends to focus on, so maybe that gives him a blank canvas to set down new roots in Osirion? People were thrilled in the Casmaron thread to have a new origin for Minotaurs rooted in the Iblydos hero-gods, perhaps a tribe of Apis-worshipping Minotaurs make their homes in Osirion?

On the other hand, I'm not sure how to feel about the whole thing. If this is an effort to make Osirion feel less like it's cribbing from Ancient Egypt, it feels like a half measure. If Paizo just wanted to deemphasise the Egyptian gods because they sit uneasily alongside fictional pantheons, they could have just emphasised Osirion's long post-Pharaonic history - showing Sarenrae, Nethys, Abadar and Norgorber in full Pharaonic regalia would be interesting, and make them feel more incorporated into Osirion as a setting. And if this was a story beat someone at Paizo simply wanted to tell, it feels like a missed opportunity not to make this the core of a one-shot using the new Mythic rules and classes. Someone I was talking with speculated that this has been something in the works for a while and got uneasily folded into Paizo's recent purge of anything remotely WOTC-related, and got overshadowed. I guess my overall feeling, other than mourning my boy Thoth, is bafflement.