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So since everyone keeps believing that Xanderghul has survived due to cheeky hints about it, let's make guesses about how that might be possible considering at first it seemed like his canon fate was super perma mega death. But I believe we can make guesses on this based on hints in Return of the Runelord.
We know that in Returns, Alaznist ganks him with time travel shenanigans and thus his mythic powers have been stolen by her and he is resurrected by his contingencies in weakned form composed of Shadowstuff essentially making him living illusion until he can recover his power. Assumption for adventure is that if pcs stop his shrines resurrecting him, the players can kill him for real or humiliate him and make him surrender, canon here seems to be fight to death.
Upon death, this is described to happen:
If he’s dead when the rod is removed, a distant sound of the runelord’s scream of agony and despair echoes through the chamber, and the entire temple of the Peacock Spirit seems to shudder as its god’s soul finally moves on to face judgment in the Boneyard. As he dies, his remains transform into a creature of resplendence—the Peacock Spirit itself—and then this too vanishes from the world. With the death of its god, the cult of the Peacock Spirit is no more.
Then later on when players need to recover Karzoug's soul and find his soul has been stolen by daemons from river of soul, they find Karzoug's soul being used on weight to find souls more sinful than him to be sacrificed to Black Sun in abaddon. When players arrive, Xanderghul's soul is being compared with Karzoug and if players don't interrupt the "cutscene", Xanderghul's soul is sacrificed to Black Sun which you think would destroy his soul completely. Assuming players don't rescue his soul so that Pharasma can properly judge it, it would be bit surprising if that was the canon though because its treated as "if players do something we didn't expect them to do, Pharasma approves"
So we are back to question of "how the hell he survived his soul being sacrificed to Bound Prince? He seems to be super mega ultra dead." and I think there are several things that hint at possibility of it DESPITE his soul seemingly being destroyed.
1) His death scene describes his soul moving to Boneyard while his body composed of quasi real shadowstuff transforming into Peacock Spirit and vanishing. While that could be really cool death animation, it does kinda imply something is happening to his body while his soul moves on.
2) His stolen mythic power was supposed to return to him when Alaznist died, so where DID it go?
So as result here is bunch of my crazy theories on what might have happened
a) he split into multiple entities upon his death and only his human soul went to be judged.(his mythic power might have returned to second entity or became its own one as well)
b) being sacrificed to black sun doesn't actually destroy the soul
c) he fooled everyone and the soul that went to be judged was also extremely realistic illusion (aka, something something multiple contingency plans)
d) canon is that he actually got his souls saved and post judgement he retained his memories and ascended
e) Alaznist's time paradoxes caused shenanigans to happen
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Actually just of the top of my head it occures to me the plan was feed his soul to the bound prince to awaken him but whats to say the opposite couldent have happend (Ie Xanderghul turns it around somehow and feeds off the bound princes power in a similair manner that the horsemen do). Or perhaps rather than being consumed the two fused into a single hybrid being
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Easy: In the end, basically nothing that happened in that AP actually happened as you end up undoing all the time-traveling shenanigans that kicked everything off in the first place.
While the PCs might remember killing 'X', that presumably never actually happened in the 'corrected' timeline created by the AP's resolution...
Seriously, don't try to make sense of time travel: You'll just end up with no reasonable answers and a massive headache...
ADDENDUM:
Adding the mandatory quote:People assume that time is a strict progression from cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff.
It's all just wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff...
Looking at the remaster version of the wish ritual...
A crit success of that can do something.
There are still plans, but they're slower motion now than they were after some behind the scenes developments. Stay tuned, but be more patient than you thought you had to be as far as this particular storyline being revealed, I guess.
Sounds like a new Varisia AP may be in the offering sometime in the future. :)
(Yes, I'm aware of the Sandpoint anniversary adventure, I don't think that it will be related to Xan-Xan).
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There are still plans, but they're slower motion now than they were after some behind the scenes developments. Stay tuned, but be more patient than you thought you had to be as far as this particular storyline being revealed, I guess.
Tbh, I just love speculating well in advance before any reveals happen xD Like I figured out we wouldn't hear about this for a year at least
So since everyone keeps believing that Xanderghul has survived due to cheeky hints about it,...
Wait what? Has Paizo ever announced the hints you mentioned? I've never even heard it. When? Where? I'm so curious.
By the way, I have always believed Xanderghul died in Return of the Runelords for good. I thought the developers (perhaps James Jacobs?) decided to remove Xanderghul from the picture entirely because they regarded having Xanderghul survive would seriously hinder Sorshen's plan to redeem Thassilon (since Xanderghul is much more powerful than Sorshen and he is still evil, surely he would have posed a great obstacle to her plan to rebuild Thassilon as she sees fit). Which frustrated me a lot, because I think having more runelords return would make the story more interesting (I personally think having Xanderghul and Krune return as well would be a great idea).
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Wait what? Has Paizo ever announced the hints you mentioned? I've never even heard it. When? Where? I'm so curious.
Not directly but the ending of stolen fate hints at it plus the fact there using him on the cover of one of there new books seems to hint at it.
Edit also James has confirmed in this thread there are plans so there is certainly something going on.