Within the existing context of the setting, though, that would transform orcs overnight from "oppressed underclass" to "scheming villains."
Revolution Don't you always become the thing you fight?
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Taking an oppressed underclass and reinventing them as the oppressors has some... real world connotations that I would prefer to avoid.
But that said, I've decided I'm just going to sit out on further Apostae speculation until we eventually learn the SF team's official plans.
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Within the existing context of the setting, though, that would transform orcs overnight from "oppressed underclass" to "scheming villains."
Unfortunately not unheard of in the real world for the oppressed to become the oppressors as soon as they gain power.
The oppressed want at any cost to resemble the oppressors.
Even avoiding modern comparisons, we can still look at the French Revolution: they executed 16,000 "counter-revolutionaries" while the rebels were in power, even inventing the guillotine to make it faster and more "humane" than beheading with a sword or axe. History is littered with revolutions that are as bad or worse than the status quo; they're just exchanging one in-group with another.
I think orcs taking over drow areas of control with merciless (but ostensibly egalitarian) corporate ideology is a great idea. Apostae is not supposed to be a nice place, and demons still have an interest there. They can still have a different variety of oppression:
"We abolished indentured servitude! Here's your biweekly paycheck for 1,000 credits!"
"Okay and here is your 1,000 credit bill for rent, food, and air!"
"Oh, you want EXTRA money for incidentals and medical bills? Well in our corporate utopia, you have the choice of getting a loan or working off-the-books overtime... You know we do need a blood scrubber for Demonic Ritual Wednesdays."
The stereotype of orcs is that they're dumb followers. Making them savvy capitalist jerks is a good change.
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Taking an oppressed underclass and reinventing them as the oppressors has some... real world connotations that I would prefer to avoid.
But that said, I've decided I'm just going to sit out on further Apostae speculation until we eventually learn the SF team's official plans.
It can, in my opinion, be avoided by having a significant bloc of orcs also act in ways that aren't scheming and backstabbing, and make it clear that the orcs who have embraced the corpo lifestyle have chosen that path and they suck.
Have orcs who formed labor unions with their xulgath co-workers and oppose the villainous orcs, whom they see as class traitors! We all lift together!
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I really want a gruff, rebellious, battle-hardened, full-orc, union leader background.
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It would be par for the course if the indoctrination/training that the Oligarch Elves gave their orcish ancestry minions also gave them the same tools to become middle managers DESPITE efforts to minimize such by lore.
After all, Oligarchs love to cut them their corners, and oh hey, that person's doing a good job promote them so we can terminate/promote the person above them to a better position.
Disturbingly close to RL corporatism, but believable.
Especially when those 'uplifted' middle managers start to hit the transparisteel ceiling.
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Correct me if I'm misunderstanding something but it seems to me that a lot of people are approaching the problem as if there's going to be a diegetic, story development change. IE, the drow are going to be overthrown and replaced in universe as a storyline development.
From my read of the situation, not only is that not going to be the case, it literally can't be because the issue at hands' legal nature.
When the change comes, whatever new species or group that gets slotted in as the oppressive corporate overlords of Apostae will, from an in universe perspective, have always been in that role and the drow will have never existed.
Now personally my suggestion would be to still have them be an off shoot of elves - the Elven Diaspora Article from, was it Horizons of the Vast or Fly Free or Die? One of those mentioned a few offshoots of elven society that could have come back to the pact worlds to occupy Apostae during the gap. Combine that with, no more matriarchy(which pathfinder drow shouldn't have had to start with) & changing Houses to Corporations, and that should be enough to have them legally in the clear.
Do not make it orcs, though. My first SF character was a half orc who's backstory was defined by growing up under drow oppression. Don't mess that up for me.
Drow don't have to vanish until they move Starfinder from OGL to ORC, which probably isn't going to be soon. Pathfinder 2e had to move ASAP to protect the company from existential OGL threats, but Starfinder is a lot less financially important and at a different point in its lifecycle so they can afford to coast on the untrustworthy OGL detente currently in effect.
Maybe they'll coast indefinitely! People talk about when will SF2 happen, but there's also the possibility that due to lower profitability it just never gets a big revision and it's in declining cash cow mode for the next 3-5+ years until they shut it down. Starfinder sales/interest almost certainly aren't at their previous peak, and that peak was only achieved due to the launch timing between PF1 exhaustion and PF2 pending. Unless they think a SF2 revision will catch enough excitement to grow it again, rather than slow or plateau the decline, they may not make the investment.
In any case, if they move to ORC and lose the drow, you'll also lose alignment and chromatic dragons and some basic rule elements that exist in SF1 but never did in PF2 and therefore aren't being remastered away because they were already dealt with. There's also a chance that the drow get a SF2/ORC revision rather than are deleted as they are in PF2 ORC products.
Note in James Jacobs' comments on how the drow are being treated in 2e remastered he emphasized that he as the Pathfinder creative director was empowered and made the choice of how to protect the company from OGL issues related to drow by retconning them out, that specific choice wasn't compelled by legal advice or upper management. He could have done a bunch of changes that altered them enough to be at less litigation risk but that would also break their connection to DnD drow "feel" and presumably cause fan outrageous/disinterest due to that.
The Starfinder team could decide to take the other path, and do a big revision that keeps some elements of what used to be drow while losing a lot in order to seriously degrade continuity with DnD drow. Will fans be happier with that than other options? Will they accept the Gap as an explanation to paper over the existence of NuDrow in Starfinder, and will they accept why they're NonDrow now when in OGL they were just Drow? Some will, some won't, some are always mad about something.
(Except me. I'm happy and supportive about everything. Great jobs all around at all times, Paizo! 10/10 no notes.)
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It's not that hard to skirt around copyrights if you really want to.
TES dunmer are an offshoot of elves that had their skin changed to dark grey/black & eyes turned red via divine curse, have a society structured around great houses, have a slave-based economy, are convinced of their own racial superiority, and have a spider goddess as one of the more important entities in their religion.
Despite all of that, Bethesda has remained unsued over this since 94 because they took away the matriarchy, didn't make them subterranean, gave them a unique aesthetic in terms of dress & architecture, got way ahead of the curb on the "they don't have to be evil" mindset, and called them dunmer.
Starfinder's drow are, by virtue of the setting, basically a name change away from being legally in the clear. After that it's just a matter of untangling their history from Golarion drow to fit in the new continuity & potentially coincidentally, they've already seeded some alternatives for themselves.
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A few minor things from me:
1 - I love the orcs living in this horrible, oppressed state, with leaking air tents on the surface of a massive dungeon-world. I would hate for that to be changed.
2 - Scheming mega-corporations doing horrible things while on-top of a mega-dungeon is COOL.
3 - I like keeping the fate of the Ilee a mystery.
Basically, I like everything about Apostae.
If we are swapping out the Drow as the masters of these mega-corps, I'd humbly suggest the Svartalfar.
The creatives posts in this thread certainly lead me to believe that the move is going to be inventing something new to occupy the space rather than slotting in an existing group the way Pathfinder is doing with the serpentfolk.
Which, on that note, I wonder if this means we're any more likely to get playable serpentfolk in Starfinder. Not occupying the drow's role, but just, existing.
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The creatives posts in this thread certainly lead me to believe that the move is going to be inventing something new to occupy the space rather than slotting in an existing group the way Pathfinder is doing with the serpentfolk.
Which, on that note, I wonder if this means we're any more likely to get playable serpentfolk in Starfinder. Not occupying the drow's role, but just, existing.
we've got reptoids.
in fact...
THEY ARE RIGHT BEHIND YOU!!!
We got Lashuntas as well, which can be your Drow replacements, with a subspecies becoming evil and corrupted.
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I just don't want the people already playing drow PCs (like me) to be left high and dry by whatever the Starfinder team decides.
Pathfinder 2e has the advantage that before they made the announcement drow weren't playable as characters, they just showed up as NPCs that could easily be retconned. People weren't invested in them the same way they are in Starfinder. There's been a LOT of Starfinder PC drow fanart too from a casual glance, so I feel like I'm not alone in feeling worried about the eventual fates our precious edgy space-elf OCs...
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I don't think Paizo will knock on your GM's door during a game to forbid you to play a Drow :P
My suggestions would be: lashunta nephilim (what planar scions, or at least tieflings and aasimar, are getting renamed as; I specifically mean tieflings here). Some variant lashunta subgroup who are mostly blue/gray/purple with pale hair due to genetic mutation or magic exposure, overwhelmingly damaya due to social pressure, and likely to be antagonistic due to intracultural competitiveness having first become normalized, then gone haywire to the point that backstabbing and undermining rivals became the order of the day. Elven nephilim (see previous explanation). In that order.
You see: making them lashunta would maintain the tie to Castrovel while distinguishing them further from drow. Giving them all some degree of fiendish ancestry/alteration would be evidence that the fiends have been working on them since the Gap (as per Embroi)...or they could have just become a bunch of plutocratic cutthroats all on their own.
Here's an idea: Make it a bit of a Darklands melting pot. Xulgaths are already there, and hryngars (that's what they're called now, right?) would make a decent fit for a corporate hellscape planet.
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Here's an idea: Make it a bit of a Darklands melting pot. Xulgaths are already there, and hryngars (that's what they're called now, right?) would make a decent fit for a corporate hellscape planet.
heckuva a idea.
maybe *something* chewed up all the NOW UNNAMED inhabitants, and it's a floating rock of death. the largest dungeon imaginable. and for some reason, it's off of its orbit...
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Here's an idea: Make it a bit of a Darklands melting pot. Xulgaths are already there, and hryngars (that's what they're called now, right?) would make a decent fit for a corporate hellscape planet.heckuva a idea.
maybe *something* chewed up all the NOW UNNAMED inhabitants, and it's a floating rock of death. the largest dungeon imaginable. and for some reason, it's off of its orbit...
The Abomination Planet AP Collect all 180 hardcore books covering over 1000 levels to explore... That still doesn't qualify as the largest dungeon imaginable, for that we need Carl Sagan to describe the page count.
The stated intention from Paizo is to keep as much of the vibe and thematic/story elements of Apostae intact as possible and replace the drow with another ancestry via a retcon.