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What might be an interesting subplot is making Rahadoum have a very anti-Chelaxian focus, since Cheliax is the most prominent Theocracy in Avistan & the two are pretty close to each other in terms of Geography.
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What might be an interesting subplot is making Rahadoum have a very anti-Chelaxian focus, since Cheliax is the most prominent Theocracy in Avistan & the two are pretty close to each other in terms of Geography.
It blows my mind that we haven’t heard more about naval conflict between the two.
What might be an interesting subplot is making Rahadoum have a very anti-Chelaxian focus, since Cheliax is the most prominent Theocracy in Avistan & the two are pretty close to each other in terms of Geography.I don't think Cheliax counts as a theocracy.
Razmir, Mendev, Lastwall--the head of state is also a prominent member of the clergy. Cheliax under the rule of the Glorious Reclaimation would probably qualify as well.
*edit, Mendev probably doesn't count anymore since Galfrey took on a higher calling.The church of Asmodeus is quite powerful in Cheliax, but ostensibly is not the part of the country's rulers. The Imperial Majestrix takes the advice of the Church, but she's steering the ship.
Do you think that distinction would matter to more anti-theist citizens of Rahadoum?
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2e Rahadoum has been described as embracing primal magic to help deal with desertification; there’s a very good short story about a Pure Legion officer being like “Are you suuure this isn’t religion?” to a druid.
I don’t know that I would agree that Rahadoum is a villainous nation; they’ve never had Evil in their statblock, and I think “we don’t do faith here” is an acceptable value for a culture to hold.
"I am merely a practitioner and follower of the Green Faaaaa-FELLOWSHIP! The Green Fellowship, completely legit non-profit organization. Look it up."
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Slavery is evil, in both this world and Golarion, having a different cultural name for taking away someone’s right and humanity doesn’t diminish that.Yeah, but slavery is not different from serfdom. There were nice masters and nice Lords as there cruel masters and Lords, but neither slaves nor serfs own themsleves. Yet I don't see much people complaining about PCs potentially having nobility titles.
Also, while deffinitely evil by today standars, there was a time in which slavery was a "merciful" moral innovation, with the previous alternative being the genocide of the defeated.
I'm really profoundly interested in slavery apologia. Merciful? There's always more options on the table than death or enslavement, and acting like the past was uniformly some brutal, murderous nightmare does no one any favors.
It also doesn't have much bearing on Pathfinder, where slavery is /definitively/ evil. I'm not sure what mentioning this is supposed to inspire - do you expect us to go "You're right, slavery isn't that bad after all"?
Yeah. Often quite pragmatic other options. Exact tribute and leave is a popular one with a very old pedigree. Make a peace agreement from a position of strength. Depose their hostile leadership and install someone friendlier in an attempt to turn them into allies. Incorporate them as subjects into your ancient kingdom. Just let them run. And so on. Most of these (except maybe the ancient kingdom one) aren't locked behind a particular degree of technological or institutional development. There never actually existed a period in human history when the only practicable options for a defeated enemy were genocide or slavery, or a period before that when the only practicable option was genocide.
And to quote myself from... yikes, almost a decade ago on these boards, I feel there are big holes in the argument "I could have killed you, and since I didn't, that makes it okay for me to do X to you instead."
As a minor addendum of interest, although classical writers do give the same explanation you provide for the origin of slavery (that it originated as an alternative to killing defeated enemies), there's no reason to think they knew what they were talking about. Slavery is older than recorded history, already evidently a developed institution in the very first written records of it, and writers of two thousand years ago were not at all close in time to its origins. The fact that it appeared in many diverse societies around the world, both Old World and New, suggests either that it is very, very much older than recorded history or that it has developed multiple times independently. Or both.
We don't actually know whether those origins had anything to do with war and sparing the defeated in order to oppress and exploit them instead of killing them. It is one possible origin. But slavery could just as well have developed out of relationships and hierarchies within communities as out of conflicts between them. Debt, for example, is just as plausible a suspect as war.
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What might be an interesting subplot is making Rahadoum have a very anti-Chelaxian focus, since Cheliax is the most prominent Theocracy in Avistan & the two are pretty close to each other in terms of Geography.I don't think Cheliax counts as a theocracy.
Razmir, Mendev, Lastwall--the head of state is also a prominent member of the clergy. Cheliax under the rule of the Glorious Reclaimation would probably qualify as well.
*edit, Mendev probably doesn't count anymore since Galfrey took on a higher calling.The church of Asmodeus is quite powerful in Cheliax, but ostensibly is not the part of the country's rulers. The Imperial Majestrix takes the advice of the Church, but she's steering the ship.
It blows my mind that we haven’t heard more about naval conflict between the two.Its less likely as time goes on, but I like to think the Navy of Cheliax never really recovered from Skulls & Shackles.
Nidal is pretty much THE Theocracy IMO. Zon-Kuthon might just as well incarnate there, I think it would not change a thing given how most of the people and most of the land are His. Truly the Power of the God.
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I'm hoping to tread carefully here, to avoid moderator ire, but I do want to ask - with the recent discussion on de-emphasized slavery going forward in Golarion as a setting, the Golden Road ends up crying out for an update. This particular corner of the setting has often drawn on both real-world history and sensationalized stereotypes, and as such has prominently featured the practice in multiple nations: Katapesh is arguably the nation most connected to the international slave trade, while Qadira and Rahadoum have it as well (I'm less sure about Thuvia and Osirion, but I believe they do, too), representing the greatest concentration of this topic in the whole world.
I hope that this means we can see a more nuanced and intentional take on the Golden Road, to break from established, ill-advised tradition... but part of me worries it just means we'll see the region less.
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Personally, since I don't want Paizo to scrub slavery from their narrative, but knowing that they are not going to talk about it going forward, I really don't want a Lost Omens The Golden Road as it will likely significantly upset the current cannon of many of those nations. It will make things confusing for my players if there are two versions that they have to remember. YMMV
As an atheist, I especially like the presentation of Rahadoum. As a lover of ancient Egypt, Persia, Babylon, Mesopotamia, etc I love the current cannon for the rest of the countries and I include Qadira in the lot. It feels like it has more in common with the Golden Road than its neighbor Taldor.
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Personally, since I don't want Paizo to scrub slavery from their narrative, but knowing that they are not going to talk about it going forward, I really don't want a Lost Omens The Golden Road as it will likely significantly upset the current cannon of many of those nations. It will make things confusing for my players if there are two versions that they have to remember. YMMV
Canon is some of the dustiest and least-flattering for the Golden Road region, where it isn't just outright barren; I'd welcome a book that tackled both. Katapesh could be much more interesting than "drugs and slave markets: the country," for instance, while Thuvia could use some actual meat on their bones.
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(I'm less sure about Thuvia and Osirion, but I believe they do, too)
As someone that is just about to finish their own little campaign set on Osirion, I can offer some insight! Osirion has participated in slave trade as much as other countries at some point but, in their introduction to the setting, they were depicted as having gone through slave revolts that called for reforms, inspired of course by totally-not-america. After the death of Khemet II, Khemet III took the throne, instituting the Laws of Equitable Use (which restricted slavery as punishment to specific crimes).
Then, the Ruby Prince chartered the Council of Liberated Slaves as a body of deliberation to help advise himself; made up of slaves and children of slaves, and then made sure that five of them had direct access through an election to positions in the Council of Sun and Sky, the actual governing body of Osirion. The current First Speaker (a position that alludes to a Prime Minister of sorts) of the Council of Sun and Sky himself is a former slave, elected through the Council of Liberated Slaves.
As for how I'd like to see them depicted, hmmm. I would like for them to be an emerging power. Osirion is a place of history, of magic — why shouldn't they utilize their own resources for the sake of the country? They have a strong past, erased by imperial powers: Are there no political wings that call for the reinforcement of their identity? It was andorian influence that molded the current political spectrum of the country; it's the pathfinders and the adventurers, and the taldans and chelaxians, and Aspis and whatnot that go marauding around the country, whisking away their history and past. Don't people get annoyed at this?
I've always been so confused about the Pharaoh being considered a divine ruler of sorts. People don't seem to worship him there, so I've been depicting this facet as him being incredibly popular (pff, Abadar is backing MY king, what about yours?). How the osiriani see the Pharoah? Are there relevant diverging opinions? Or being considered a divine ruler means nothing?
How do the people feel about Qadira?
How do the people feel about Katapesh?
Who are the people that live in Osirion?
What is living in Osirion like?
Honestly, with the matters of slavery fading away from the scope of coverage, there's just a lot of space f cleaned up, revised, and newly-developed content. They can make the Golden Road feel alive, exactly as they did with the Mwangi Expanse.
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Thing about Rahadoum is that religious freedom is considered to be one of basic human rights <_<
Like its one thing to have non religious country and have country that bans religion.
The internal tension in Rahadoum, IMO, is between people who believe that keeping religion out is really important and the people who don't bother thinking about the gods but think that "being the idea police" is a distraction and a waste of time and effort.
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Sasha, bless you for that post. I’d love to see Osirion be less Fantasy Egypt and more a living, storied part of Golarion.
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The eugenics undertones of Promise were always there, no?
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Basically Writer A's stance was that you could write a story about Promise and H and fantasy eugenics and have it be Good and Writer B disagreed with that, Writer A eventually left so Writer B's stance is the one they went with, but they remain in touch and Writer A gave their approval for the story as well, so no hard feelings between them.
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Sasha, bless you for that post. I’d love to see Osirion be less Fantasy Egypt and more a living, storied part of Golarion.Yeah, we know it's got pyramids and a pharaoh... okay what else?
In my opinion: magic! This is a nation with Nethys directly tied to its founding, who stomped out the formidable Jistka with their arcane might and gave Golarion both Geb and Nex, two of the most powerful mages in known history... Osirion should be one of /the/ hubs of magical study on the planet. I so dearly with this was Osirion's theme, rather than Hollywood Pulp Egypt. What are the famed wonders of modern Osirion - what have they made in the long ages since their ancient past?
And I am forever going to turn my nose up at the real-world pantheon being there.
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But Sekhmet is awesome ;_;
I know - I pray to her (and Het-Heru, and Bast) IRL!
But it's silly to have your Fantasy Egypt actually just be Literal Egypt, IMO.
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I do find it really strange that everywhere else on Golarion has its own gods, then you go to Osirion and it's like someone was tired of creating gods so they just went "screw it, it's just the Egyptian Ones".
The "fantasy Egypt's" I most enjoyed (MtGs Amonkhet and Warhammer's Nehekhara) had their own unique gods and it made them feel more like their own thing which I enjoyed.
I think a focus on Golarion's deities (like Nethys, as someone mentioned previously) would be really nice.
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We DO have Sun Wukong in pathfinder, i call it bigger dealio "so how come on Odin and Thor are off limits? ;P"
(especially since there are no pathfinder original ulfen gods either <_<)
But yeah I'm bit different category in that I'm bit more "so if the god is basically x, why can't it just be x?"
Like imagine if instead of Cthulhu we had tentacle eldritch deity that is just Cthulhu. So why not Cthulhu instead when Cthulhu is public domain
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Because not everyone likes Lovecraft, I rather see Pathfinder's takes on Eldritch gods than just copy/pasting Lovecraft.
Like WoW did.
Nhimbaloth makes me really want more unique cosmic horror gods from Paizo. I'm no fan of the old racist from New England, but his ideas are fun to riff on.
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The WoW old gods are pretty different in design to things like Cthulhu - they are giant cancers that crashed into the world and infested it, and who created life as we know it by infecting the servants of the titans (who where made of stone and metal) with the curse of flesh.
Bespoke deities inspired by outside sources generally work a lot better than simple copy-pastes, because they integrate better with the worldbuilding and design and aesthetics of the setting.
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Because it runs into potential problems when God X has real life followers; I am glad to see PF's use of Egyptian deities works for keftiu but I would not wager on that being the case for other followers of Egyptian deities I know in RL, and I know rather more Asatru than followers of Egyptian deities (if there is a preferred name for that latter faith in the present day, I am unaware of it, and no disrespect is meant by not using it.)We DO have Sun Wukong in pathfinder, i call it bigger dealio "so how come on Odin and Thor are off limits? ;P"
(especially since there are no pathfinder original ulfen gods either <_<)
But yeah I'm bit different category in that I'm bit more "so if the god is basically x, why can't it just be x?"
To clarify: it /doesn’t/ work for me, and I wish it wasn’t part of the setting.
Some refer to worship of the Egyptian netjer/gods as Kemetic faith or Kemeticism, though it’s not a label I personally use; many of those are aiming for at least a somewhat faithful reconstruction, where I know I’m pretty far off the mark.
If they see them pray to a patron, sure, but if they just...chat with it? It might not even be remarkable. Withes occupy this interesting space where the entities that give them power might be gods or demigods, but their powers are very much non-divine in nature (most of the time) and indipendent from their personal faith. They might not even be aware of who their patron is. There are a number of ways they could make them interact with the Pure Legion, and i definitely expect some diffences of opinion within the order.Which i believe would be a very interesting space to explore.I imagine the Pure Legion takes a pretty dim view of witches. We as players and GMs know there is a difference between worshiping or venerating a deity or pantheon, and entering a pact or agreement or even reluctant service to a patron, but that's mostly because the books tell us this is so, and are even a little fuzzy on that point for the purposes of allowing players to tailor their character how they'd like.
The Pure Legion hasn't got access to those books, and I imagine that, to a lot of them without sufficient magical training, a witch looks like a cleric who prays to a cat, rather than a distinct kind of spellcaster. To be honest there are also very likely to be members to whom that distinction doesn't matter, even though they are aware of it.
Bear in mind that we know that Druids gain their power from nature itself and not directly from any specific entity, yet we know from webfic that Rahadoum is canonically very leery of them as well. I think the distinction 'it might technically not be a god you are in a contract with' doesn't matter as much as 'you are beholden to a non-human entity for your magical powers and we have sworn off allowing higher powers of any kind to influence our lives'.
Now mind you, witches might have an easier time passing themselves as innocently non-divine. Having secret magic knowledge is kind of a witch's thing aesthetically, but I think the attitude of Rahadoum is generally 'if it looks like divine magic or smell like divine magic, it's extremely suspect even though it's actually primal magic, much less if it technically doesn't come from a god, or even it does come from a god but through a contract, not worship.
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"Some may have gotten the impression that our atheism in Rahadoum is outright denial that deities exist. If that were the case, we would not have nor need the Laws of Mortality. The concern has been since their adoption is that mortal beings should not be advancing the agenda of deities, and deities empowering their followers in Rahadoum has been immeasurably harmful to our society.
To avoid the 'slippery slope' argument that some no-scales like to embrace, we had to stop the following of ALL deities -- because if we'd kept the good ones, then the evil ones would go 'See, we're oppressed. We act out from this oppression!'. Likewise the 'good' ones, and those in-between would play a balance-of-power game that would ultimately destroy our country.
We had to make them all go away, as a measure of self-defense. As a kobold, that makes sense to me -- you don't want to keep the danger in your community you take it away from the community and ensure it never comes back. Even if it asks 'nicely' to come back.
ESPECIALLY if it asks nicely.
Whether a practitioner of divine magic from a non-divine source is in contravention of the Laws is something the Legion is tasked with determining, and all the power to them for doing what they can. Hopefully other nations fraught with their own problems turn to their own concerns rather than continuing to insist that we step away from the path that works for us."
...If they see them pray to a patron, sure, but if they just...chat with it? It might not even be remarkable. Withes occupy this interesting space where the entities that give them power might be gods or demigods, but their powers are very much non-divine in nature (most of the time) and indipendent from their personal faith. They might not even be aware of who their patron is. There are a number of ways they could make them interact with the Pure Legion, and i definitely expect some diffences of opinion within the order.Which i believe would be a very interesting space to explore.I imagine the Pure Legion takes a pretty dim view of witches. We as players and GMs know there is a difference between worshiping or venerating a deity or pantheon, and entering a pact or agreement or even reluctant service to a patron, but that's mostly because the books tell us this is so, and are even a little fuzzy on that point for the purposes of allowing players to tailor their character how they'd like.
The Pure Legion hasn't got access to those books, and I imagine that, to a lot of them without sufficient magical training, a witch looks like a cleric who prays to a cat, rather than a distinct kind of spellcaster. To be honest there are also very likely to be members to whom that distinction doesn't matter, even though they are aware of it.Bear in mind that we know that Druids gain their power from nature itself and not directly from any specific entity, yet we know from webfic that Rahadoum is canonically very leery of them as well. I think the distinction 'it might technically not be a god you are in a contract with' doesn't matter as much as 'you are beholden to a non-human entity for your magical powers and we have sworn off allowing higher powers of any kind to influence our lives'.
Now mind you, witches might have an easier time passing themselves as innocently non-divine. Having secret magic knowledge is kind of
Ooh, most valid point! I suppose it would probably come down to whether the Witch is seen using any magic which could be construed as Divine... most particularly healing magic. I imagine that a country which produces superior medical practices (Godless Healing) to compensate for the lack of Divine magic would be likely aware of the association between the two, even if technically 3/4 traditions are capable of healing.
Now to imagine being a religious Druid, an Divine Witch who carries around a 'spellbook' filled with nonsense, and a champion of Nethys trying to make their way across Rahadoum without getting caught or upsetting the authorities!
As an aside note, I don't think we can count on perception of sorcerers, who are both rare enough and multi-tradition enough to have as dubious a grounding as an oracle who spontaneously manifests divine powers without worship and gets mistaken for a cleric. Nevertheless, if you find out you can cast magic, you could do worse than take up an instrument or learn to carry around books wherever you go.