|
Hello all,
I have been playing pathfinder from the very beginning. Ive ran many of the campaigns as a GM and totally loved the lore. Today I read for the first time 2e and to be honest I was shocked by some of the changes and or modifications.
Getting to my main question. Ive always enjoyed the Empire of Cheliax. I noticed there was not a Cheliaxian ethnicity in the main core rulebook. Was this purposely removed from the game? Or I guess the root of all Cheliaxians is from Taldor I guess...however, I thought they had become their own distinct ethnic group by now.
Creative Director
|
| 13 people marked this as a favorite. |
It was removed because it's not really an ethnicity; it's a nationality. Their ethnicity is Taldan. We DID add in one that got missed in 1st edition though, the Nidalese. (Both of these are errors that we didn't want to correct without doing a new edition or a new version of the main Campaing Setting book—like how we forgot to include Shoanti in the first hardcover book and added them in to the 2nd one.)
We had a thread on this before where it was established that they’re not meaningfully distinct from Taldan folk.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Wait, wasn't etnicity culturally dependant? It is how people identify based on shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups such as a common set of traditions, ancestry, language, history, society, culture, nation, religion, etc.
And speaking of ancestry, weren't they an unspecified mix of mainly Taldan and Azlanti? Not a specefic ancestry, but still worth mentioning.
Yawar,
Humbly
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
Golarion ethnicities, because of the nature of trying fit stuff in a setting book rather than the fractal complexity of reality, are actually more like a meta-grouping of people in a language group. Taldan is not like Greek, or French (which are modern ideas for the most part anyway), and much closer to all speakers of a Romance language, etc. Or all Christians in Europe in 1000AD, etc, etc, etc. Broad strokes that get more detail when you get a setting book on a specific subject.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
There's is a good point that someone has brought up that ethnicity can be things like a national identity. Ethnicity is (very broadly) a national or cultural tradition.
In theory every country would have it's own ethnicity, with other ethnicities existing for large sub groups that appear within those places. Like you might have a Cheliaxian Halfling ethnicity because it would be very different from other Halflings.
But all of that would be very complex.
I disagree with the idea that Cheliaxians not meaningfully distinct from Taldans as an ethnicity, but I don't really need it written in a book either.
IMO, lumping the Cheliaxians in with the Taldans is a bit like lumping the USA in with the UK. Sure, our country was derived from those, but we've got distinct differences.
It's important to think of ethnicity and nationality as not mutually exclusive, IMO.
You can be born in the United States but raised from a young age elsewhere, and be a US national but culturally identify with another group. Naomi Osaka represent someone with a complicated national, ethnic, and cultural identity. Descendant of Haitian and Japanese background, but raised in the US.
A theoretical person could be like Naomi and be a national of another country but raised in the US. They could identify culturally as American by virtue of living there even if they're not a citizen.
So American could be both your nationality and ethnicity. And I would say that's true of many (if not most) Americans. You could also have a complicated ethnic identity like many people in Southwest US where you might identify as combination of American and Mexican.
But all of this is too complex for a game, so I understand why some things are omitted.
Edit: You can also break down some ethnicities further, like you could argue being from a certain city or even from a certain neighborhood can represent an ethnicity. Such as being from Compton as a sub-section of being from Los Angeles (technically county, but I'm not sure if people there really distinguish between a greater metropolitan area vs specific city boundaries).
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
I definitely don't think it was intended to be interpreted as a person from Cheliax and a person from Taldor are not meaningfully different in experience and context.
not really an ethnicity; it's a nationality
Is telling us that nationality is still meaningful as a distinction, it's just not the same distinction as how Pathfinder defines ethnicity.
I think think it was intended to say that Pathfinder's definition of ethnicity covers people from a broad region with similar language and some culture touchstones they share across different places of origin.
Cheliaxians and Taldans speak Common, were part of Old Taldor, and worshipped Aroden a lot. But an individual person is likely to define themselves as from Westcrown or Oppara, etc in-universe.
| 7 people marked this as a favorite. |
That Chelaxians are their own distinct ethnicity distinct from Taldans always struck me as essentially Chellish propaganda anyway. Avistan is pretty tiny, so if we established that every nation of sufficient size gets its own ethnicity that's going to be trouble when we end up fleshing out Tian Xia or Casmaron which are easily 5x the size of Avistan.
That nations consist primarily of a single ethnicity with fantasy races sprinkled in gets into weird ethnostate territory that's pretty uncomfortable (appropriate for Nidal, which is inherently uncomfortable) anyway.
Yeah, Chelaxians are basically a subgroup of Taldans now (except for the Nidalese), which fits pretty well with the previous lore in my opinion given that Cheliax was an empire that split off of Taldor's. As others have noted, Pathfinder ethnicities are pretty broad anyway.
I wouldn't be surprised if those distinctions were explored more in specific setting books though; for example Lost Omens Mwangi Expanse describes the humans of that area as Bekyar, Bonuwat, Caldaru, Lirgeni, Mauxi, Sargavan, Uomoto, Vidric, and Zenj rather than "Mwangi, Garundi, and Taldan".
One more thing I want to point out: it was asked above whether the Chelaxian ethnicity was supposed to originate from a combination of Azlanti and Taldan ancestry. This is close but not quite--in fact, that descrption actually more closely matches the origins of Taldan , albeit with the Taldan half of that equation standing in for the people's which lived in the region of modern day Taldor when Azlanti refugees arrived. According to sources which may no longer be accurate, these people may have been Keleshite in origin.
The same sources suggest that Chelaxian was originally a combination of Azlanti heritage with Ulfen, but this baffles the imagination, given my current understanding that the last population of Azlanti had mingled into the Taldan people long before Taldor conquered and settled the region of modern day Cheliax. Aside from that, the centre of Ulfen blood is two whole demographic groups north on the other side of modern Varisia, and Ulfen raiding does not seem sufficient to make up the difference, even if that practice were in full swing by this point.
I would perhaps understand if Azlanti survivors from Thassilon mixed with Ulfen and moved down the coast but I know no evidence for that yet--and on the other hand I seem to recall survivors of Thassilon became the Varisians
I'm pretty sure Shoanti and Varisians descend from the people who were there before the Thassilonians, though I vaguely recall something saying they had some Thassilonian ancestry as well.
As for the origins of Chelaxians, I always just assumed that there were people related to the Ulfen in that region who became their own distinct culture due to contact with Azlanti refugees, and were "Taldanized" millennia later when Taldor expanded into that region.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
"We're the true heirs of Azlanti" definitely felt like a lie Cheliax was involved in spreading to make them seem more special. Cheliax is canonically invested in "altering the official records for state purposes" but we needn't do that uncritically in the sourcebooks.
I'm pretty sure Shoanti and Varisians descend from the people who were there before the Thassilonians, though I vaguely recall something saying they had some Thassilonian ancestry as well.
When Xin and his folk arrived to found Thassilon, the land was already inhabited by Varisians and Shoanti.
Ah, it appears I recalled one of the details wrong! Thank you for your corrections.
"We're the true heirs of Azlanti" definitely felt like a lie Cheliax was involved in spreading to make them seem more special. Cheliax is canonically invested in "altering the official records for state purposes" but we needn't do that uncritically in the sourcebooks.
Valid point--I do like the idea that any seeming conflicts regarding the lore of Cheliax can be written off as products of Cheliax's propaganda machine--much the way conflicting stories about which god arose in the multiverse first can be attributed to Asmodeus' creative interpretations of the truth (in as much as something as flexible as myths told about the gods can be compared to the historical record of modern nations, anyway!)
As an aside, I do one to throw one correction of myself in here--there indeed was a rather historically significant Ulfen raid on one region of Cheliax back when it was only a loose collection of Taldan settlements and a fort at Corentyn. This shows that Ulfen raiding was already well into full swing by this time.
While this point in history is long after the Azlanti ethnicity apparently vanished (with one notable exception), it does show that Ulfen raiders could have had an influence on a Chelaxian identity, particularly if drawing from real life, where Viking-established colonies appeared far outside their homelands, settling and intermarrying with the local population.