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.

[vyshan]

So after listening to Mythkeepers video on Thuvia, I been more fascinated by this region. Qadira has long been one of my favorite regions, but the rest of the region I haven't been that interested in, but listening to videos on the lore of other regions and listening to a podcast of Mummy's Mask it has me more interested.

I am curious to see more in general, especially the city states of Thuvia. Beyond that I really want to know what is going in Osirion following the vanishing of their old egyptian gods.

[The Raven Black]

vyshan wrote:

So after listening to Mythkeepers video on Thuvia, I been more fascinated by this region. Qadira has long been one of my favorite regions, but the rest of the region I haven't been that interested in, but listening to videos on the lore of other regions and listening to a podcast of Mummy's Mask it has me more interested.

I am curious to see more in general, especially the city states of Thuvia. Beyond that I really want to know what is going in Osirion following the vanishing of their old egyptian gods.

Not all of the old Osiriani deities disappeared. Only those mentioned by name.

[Eeveegirl1206]

YlothofMerab wrote:

keftiu wrote:

Perpdepog wrote:

keftiu wrote:

There's also always the chance that Thuvia's city-states fall in upon one another like hungry vultures if, say, their immortality elixir fails...

Is that likely? I always understood that the sun orchid elixir was the product of highly advanced alchemy that sort of bleeds over into arcane magic, and doesn't have anything to do with the divine.

It's produced by a single immortal alchemist who has some kind of potentially-fraying agreement with Pharasma; given that we're about to spend a lot of time focused on both war and immortality, seeing something happen with all that feels quite likely, IMO.

Not to mention that the orchids themselves are getting harder and harder to find in the wild. A few fields get wiped out by some godsrain, and you either have to stop harvesting to let them grow or risk losing the species forever.

Basic economics is that you should never rely to much on any one product for most of your economy. When taken away it will lead to issues

Also on antithesiism.

Isn’t Rauhdoum’s anti deity stance fanned on by beings like Aboloths and Asura who use it as one of there base of operations?

They love the idea of mortals who reject gods.

[PossibleCabbage]

Eeveegirl1206 wrote:

Isn’t Rauhdoum’s anti deity stance fanned on by beings like Aboloths and Asura who use it as one of there base of operations?

They love the idea of mortals who reject gods.

There is an internal tension in Rahadoum between a faction of social conservatives who want to expunge anything related to Gods or Religion from their society and a faction of progressives who want to take the energy that would otherwise be dedicated to religion and redirect it towards education, science, engineering projects, etc. for the benefit of everybody. After all, for the money and effort we would have spent to build a temple we could instead build a hospital or a school. Rahadoum exists in a superposition of "extremely enlightened" and "extremely closed-minded" which is probably not indefinitely sustainable.

They're going to eventually have to tackle this internal division in Rahadoum, but there's no actual hurry.

[Eeveegirl1206]

PossibleCabbage wrote:

Eeveegirl1206 wrote:

Isn’t Rauhdoum’s anti deity stance fanned on by beings like Aboloths and Asura who use it as one of there base of operations?

They love the idea of mortals who reject gods.

There is an internal tension in Rahadoum between a faction of social conservatives who want to expunge anything related to Gods or Religion from their society and a faction of progressives who want to take the energy that would otherwise be dedicated to religion and redirect it towards education, science, engineering projects, etc. for the benefit of everybody. After all, for the money and effort we would have spent to build a temple we could instead build a hospital or a school. Rahadoum exists in a superposition of "extremely enlightened" and "extremely closed-minded" which is probably not indefinitely sustainable.

They're going to eventually have to tackle this internal division in Rahadoum, but there's no actual hurry.

There’s definitely something that can be said about a certain type of online Reddit atheists versus normal well adjusted atheists.

It makes sense for the severe anti-deity side to be egged on by entities like the Aboloths and Asura.

[Morhek]

With Paizo phasing out chromatic and metallic dragons, how will their presence be handled along the Golden Road? I'm aware of two major dragons in Osirion, though it doesn't sound too hard to keep the name and plot bunnies they represent and simply change them to primal dragons - Sussurex is already called the "Crystal King" and could be switched from a Blue to a Crystal Dragon, and Asuulek, being interested in a volcano with an extraplanar dimension within, is almost perfect for a Magma Dragon. But blue dragons being more common in the Thuvian desert (especially as guardians/hoarders of the oases) and Katapesh is fairly well established. Do you simply replace them with Cloud Dragons as the closest equivalents? Mirage and Fortune Dragons also sound like ideal inhabitants of vast desert sands that hide ancient treasures. Or is the Golden Road going to find itself populated by a more diverse draconic ecosystem?

[Arcaian]

Morhek wrote:

With Paizo phasing out chromatic and metallic dragons, how will their presence be handled along the Golden Road? I'm aware of two major dragons in Osirion, though it doesn't sound too hard to keep the name and plot bunnies they represent and simply change them to primal dragons - Sussurex is already called the "Crystal King" and could be switched from a Blue to a Crystal Dragon, and Asuulek, being interested in a volcano with an extraplanar dimension within, is almost perfect for a Magma Dragon. But blue dragons being more common in the Thuvian desert (especially as guardians/hoarders of the oases) and Katapesh is fairly well established. Do you simply replace them with Cloud Dragons as the closest equivalents? Mirage and Fortune Dragons also sound like ideal inhabitants of vast desert sands that hide ancient treasures. Or is the Golden Road going to find itself populated by a more diverse draconic ecosystem?

They've previously stated that for major named chromatic/metallic dragons that don't have an obvious creature to be based off of in ORC pathfinder, they'll just make them a custom stat block - for example, Choral the Conqueror won't be statted up as another type of dragon if he returns to Brevoy, he'll simply be a dragon that is red and that has a unique stat block :)