How old do you think Golarion is?


Lost Omens Campaign Setting General Discussion


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So the timeline before the Earthfall is intentionally left very vague but I was wondering if anyone knew if there was any hints about it or if anyone has any good speculation about it.

I was reading through Fists of the Ruby Phoenix and

FotRP:
Syndara has been trapped for 300000 years due to subjective time
and I thought that was crazy since it is has only been 10000 year since the Earthfall and got me thinking about if that is enough time to live through the Age of Creation itself.

Liberty's Edge

IIRC Golarion is younger than Earth. Not sure that helps though.


Spoiler:
I suspect the key phrase here is "subjective time." Time passed on another plane doesn't necessarily equal time passed in Golarion.


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Bearing in mind that something which is true for Earth does not necessarily have any bearing on Golarion, where humanity was intentionally raised up as a civilization by the alghollthu. Nevertheless, if we compare that time scale to Earth's own history, it is possible, but unlikely that 300,000 years is enough to extend back as far as the Age of Creation.

On Earth, the oldest example of an anatomically modern human dates back about the same time scale of 300,000 years, although mind you behaviourally modern humans are only thought to have appeared some 50,000 years ago. Human civilization on Earth overall is probably like 10,000 years old just to throw a ballpark, but we've been around for a lot longer.

On Golarion, the first major human civilization ended around 10,000 years ago, obviously picking up an early head start from the alghollthu and who knows, possibly Golarion a full-on older planet than Earth. Nevertheless, humans as a species are known to exist as far back as the Age of Serpents. We have no data for when the first Golarion human appeared, though we do have reason to suspect that the presence of humans on Golarion, Androffa, and Earth are linked somehow, so I wouldn't be surprised if there was a relevant time scale--though we do know that Androffa is the oldest of these.

Regardless, the Age of Serpents on Golarion begins with the rise of the first mortal civilization, the serpentfolk. We have no way of knowing how long their empire lasted, nor how long the subsequent Azlanti empire lasted, but if we dust off the Earth numbers and pretend they might be valid, the Azlanti Empire probably didn't happen before behaviourally modern humans (unless alghollthu created behaviourally modern humans on Golarion, throwing all our guesses out of the window), so 50,000-10,000. We know that humans of some description were kept as naga slaves during the Age of Serpents, but there's no way to know what kind of humans these were.

To favour the odds toward the Age of Creation being within 300,000 years of the modern day, let's cram everything into as short of timescale as possible, and say that the humans of the Age of Serpents were already evolved to behavioural modernity by the beginning, so for our make-believe numbers happened no more than 50,000 years ago. That would mean 300,000 years would certainly include some percentage of the Age of Creation. On the other hand, the question asked if this character could have lived through the Age of Creation, so let's get the big numbers.

Life on Earth is around 3.5 billion years old. 3,500,000,000. The Earth itself is about another billion on top of that. Even if we go on a technicality that the Age of Creation began with the first life-sustaining planet and that planet was Earth, then 300,000 years old would not be enough to have lived through 1% of 1% of the Age of Creation.

Mind you that the Age of Creation actually begins with the creation of the Great Beyond and the gods, which likely happened no later than the creation of the Universe, so the minimum length of the Age of Creation is over 13 billion years.

TL;DR - Could somebody 300,000 years old have seen the Age of Creation? Sure, maybe even catch the tail end of the War in Heaven before Rovagug destroys everything and Golarion is split in half by Sarenrae.

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On the other hand, as Gisher has pointed out while I've been typing, this character could have been born 10 years ago, his circumstances mean that he has experienced a much faster time stream than the rest of the universe.


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For what it's worth, Raven Black is absolutely right, according to the Rage of Creation myth, Golarion is believed to be the youngest of the three planets mentioned. Its civilization is older, but in the period of time after the War in Heaven, it was still considered the least of the three worlds.


Gisher wrote:
** spoiler omitted **

Oh for sure, probably phrased it clumsy but I was just thinking if that time was spent on the Material Plane how far back it would have gone.

Spoiler:
He was only in there for 300 real years

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