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Thank you! I wasn't planning on playing an immortal, much less one that lives to watch the end of the universe... I was just confused by the fact that you can't throw a stone in Golarion without hitting an immortal or an undead, despite the existance of powerful groups explicitly dedicated to their extermination...
I've got a few points to contribute here.
One, a lot of the immortals have reasons why they get away with it. Artokus, inventor of the Sun Orchid Elixir actually had an understanding with the psychopomps. Before prophecy broke, his eventual end was known, and that was good enough. It's no longer known, but he's also still in talks with them, and doesn't exactly seem keen on living forever. The Whispering Tyrant's soul cage is suspected to have Urgathoa's protection. Baba Yaga refuses to become a deity, but she could, and it's a heck of a trump card to be able to pull if pushed to it, so she probably just gets left alone.
Two, part of the issue with undead is that it's an endemic problem. It's not that any one undead is a huge problem, but it's something that spreads, adds up, and is a problem that exceeds the extraplanar forces capacity for intervention. Pharasma telling followers to destroy undead doesn't count against that intervention. But a powerful inevitable or psychopomp stepping in to meddle, that's probably reserved for special cases or when mortals seek out their aid. Stepping in to wipe out an entire nation or planet of undead? That'll result in massive blowback from all the cosmic forces in opposition to your faction.
Three, the length of time these things are an issue at is a little vague. Golarion's history stretches back about 10,000 years, and we only have a tiny handful of entities that have been around for more than half of that. That's not long cosmically speaking, and even somebody around for all 10,000 years is only taking 250 soul-cycles out at a very rough 40-year average. Just keeping immortality out of reach for most people and setting the occasional example might be enough (even if admitting that would defeat the purpose).
My question about Groetus wasn't so much about the survival of PCs, but about the survival of anybody else... The Pathfinder Setting is BIG, and I had trouble picturing Groetus having the power to erradicate the Elemental Planes, much less the Material Plane, or to defeat the Outer Gods.
Well, assuming the accuracy of the Windsong Testament (which is explicitly not necessarily accurate) and other similar things, Yog-Sathoth would certainly be exempt from the destruction. But Groetus isn't taking on all the planes and gods at their prime, more just cleaning up the scraps. Everything is going to be really, really run down by that point. This is a point in time where the power of the gods is meaningless, when even the heavy-hitters like Pharasma are no more. Maybe it's all feeding Groetus for that big final cleanup.
The setting's lore is not clear on all this stuff being factual though. The faiths of what are generally agreed to be some of the oldest deities disagree on what exactly happened in the past, and a lot of what happens in the future is taken from Pharasma. It's also taken from Pharasma before prophecy broke, which might be an even bigger deal than she's letting on. Or maybe she's the one who broke it to avoid what she saw, we don't know.
(Putting on our Doylist hats for a minute, the setting wants to not have too many immortals running around, but it's nice for a high fantasy setting to have at least some of them. It also needs a big grand scheme for why the gods are doing anything and what's up with mortal life, etc. But since it only matters for "why the gods are doing what they're doing", it only needs to be a plausible explanation of behavior, not something set in stone.)
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True immortals do not exist in this setting.
Sure, creatures/entities that have no ticking time-bomb in the form or aging or "natural death" due to all the normal stuff exist and yeah, there are powerful magics that can bring you BACK to life (or unlife) but in terms of actual immortality which means you WILL and CANNOT die, that isn't REALLY a thing. Everything can be killed or destroyed, the most powerful deities can kick the bucket if they are betrayed or make the wrong move.
That's just semantics though, I guess, and doesn't really address the topic at hand, but it's all I really have to contribute as I'm no real loremaster, the setting lore never really hooked me nearly as much as the sandbox elements of it and the overall vibe of what is all supposed to be possible.
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1. I think that the Sun Orchid Elixir has been ignored because it is "only just" 3000 years old.
When talking about the time scale of immortals that get attention from inevitables, I think that is on the end of "dangerous new internet fad". That is still at the range where some long lived creatures are going around normally. It isn't something you might need to do something about, 'yet', since the problem might take care of itself, given time.
I mean, I am still expecting Razmir to try to kick their door in at some point. Someone is going to kill the goose that laid the golden egg. All it takes is one bad catapult or fireball shot at the wrong building when sieging a place for the elixir.
The elixir is a temporary fix that only gives some time on the clock. It isn't a permanent solution, and it requires careful cultivation and processing techniques known to maybe one person. That is the kind of thing that is very, very easily lost.
There are a few possible reasons.
One big one is limited resources. It's a big universe, and Law is stretched kind of thin.
Additionally, Maruts fall under Aeons now, and those are hard to get a read on. They look at a much bigger picture, and intervene based on that.
Consider which behavior produces the more desired outcome (reduction in the number of people extending their lives): going after only the most egregious cases, or going after a carefully curated selection that's hard to predict? In the former case, it becomes standard advice. "You'll always have to worry about Pharasmins, but after a thousand years, expect a big statue to try to blow you up, so get ready." In the latter, cultures get a story about the wicked magistrate who flooded a village to hide his crimes, but had the judgement of Axis descend on him and expose what he'd done before executing him.
Personally, I just take the view that whatever the current state on Golarion is, it's considered as good as can be expected. Geb is a massive sore spot that can't be dealt with, and Artokus may be helping half a dozen people extend their life annually, but he's also stabilizing an entire region (net benefit to law). There's no other widespread, systematic immortality to be quashed, while other planets probably have some inventor peddling soul-bound consciousness uploads to stop before it gets too far.
Or you can view it as an inconsistency, and ignore some facet for your games.
Personally, my view on any one "immortal" in particular being "ignored" isn't that they're being ignored. It's more that the Marut have other bigger fish to fry. They have to pay attention to the whole cosmos, not just the little corner of it that we (as players) are aware of. They have limited resources and whole multiverse to watch over. Some beings that are near deity level in power probably get ignored because realistically the Marut would lose more than they would stand to gain by trying to take down such beings. Others are so low on the list that because they aren't very powerful, impactful, or perhaps haven't even lived past whatever the acceptable length of time it (and I don't think the "acceptable length of time" is necessarily whatever your ancestry's "natural" life span is).
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the sort of setting we have on pathfinder that deals with ancient dead civilization can only exist in a post apocalyptic setting so you need to have a limit on immortals because otherwise you need to explain why the world hasn't been flooded by immortals by now, So many forms of undeath, of placing souls in constructs and general paths to eternal youth, but that said I feel a little conflicted because it feels like the world is deliberately designed to be in a state of permanent stasis which can give a feeling that ours actions don't matter as much.
The Lost Omens (the era) are specifically designed so that PCs actions actually matter.
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Well, the Marut profile mentions stuff that is far less radical than the Sun Orchid Elixir as being enough to trigger their intervention... "Extraordinary but natural means of cheating death, like murdering an entire starving town to save oneself or foreseeing and avoiding one's death via divination, are sometimes also punished."
I understand that Baba Yaga or the Whispering Tyrant would be hard to beat, being on the "kill demigods" scale of power. And, if Artokus has a deal with the psychopomps, then the Inevitables would defer to their authority... but the level 12 Lich in the Bestiary, the guy from the River Kingdoms who keeps coming back thanks to Reincarnation or the Vraxeris guy who keeps cloning himself should have been targeted and erased long ago...
I guess the most rational answer would be to assume that the Marut's profile vastly exaggerates how easy would be to trigger their intervention....
I think the wording is used just so that GMs can use Maruts however they like, even for targets that do not seem to deserve their attention.
It does not mean Maruts will go after any and every person fitting the description.
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The question of whether/how effective maruts were and whether all immortals lived in fear of the inevitable (heh, pun) marut attack is actually a one I had way back in 3.5 before Pathfinder was a thing. With how much the Great Beyond has developed since then. On some level it feels a bit strange that they still exist when psychopomps are a big thing now, without some kind of bonus lore explaining how/why they pick what mortals have deserve a visit.
Like, psychopomps are part of an enormous bureaucracy that covers a lot of tasks, from guiding the daily inundation of mortal souls shuffling off their mortal coil, sorting those souls to their afterlives, and stamping out infestations of undead where they can. If they can't get around to every immortal creature this century, that's just business. Maruts are incredibly cool, thematically (the 'inevtiability of death' made literal in the form of a relentless pursuit hunter whose leaden footfalls never quicken or slow as they march to your demise, who in 2e pre-master could not be killed by any means short of blasting with a spark of pure chaos) but they leave some open questions about the universe.
Perhaps even an answer to one of those questions is that immortality just isn't that cosmically difficult to attain, and thousands of would-be immortals perish every year as the inevitables do brutally efficient work, and all those immortals who remain in the setting are just those whose time either has not come up yet, have escaped notice, or were simply too powerful to be practical to hunt.
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Funny scene popping into my head--a small contingent of psychopomps are tasked with keeping observation on an immortal. They are not to interfere because this immortal has a fated encounter and so are not projected to die before then. A marut rolls up on assignment and they try to warn it. The marut, of course, is as stoic and unwavering as the face of death itself (ironic considering who it's talking to) and refuses to be deterred from its assignment. The psychopomps sigh and watch as the marut is resoundingly defeated. It rebuilds itself in the aftermath and they politely refrain from explicitly saying "We told you so."
I wonder if maruts are going to be a thing going forward.
This is actually a really good question for the whole cast of inevitables. Like 'divine constructs of pure cosmic law who enforce those laws with mechanical precision and whose nature is inevitable' is kind of a specific order and were already before the OGL debacle kind of a grey area in terms of how they were addressed. I'll admit I've never had much actual use for inevitables in the game yet, but I've always thought the concept behind them was pretty cool, so I'd be sad not to see some kind of body of divine construct enforcer of pure cosmic law (even if pure cosmic law no longer has an alignment component) remain in the game and/or lore in some form.
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One, a lot of the immortals have reasons why they get away with it. Artokus, inventor of the Sun Orchid Elixir actually had an understanding with the psychopomps. Before prophecy broke, his eventual end was known, and that was good enough. It's no longer known, but he's also still in talks with them, and doesn't exactly seem keen on living forever.
As the person who wrote the Artokus Kirran article for Lost Omens Legends, I want to say that QuidEst did an excellent job explaining Artokus's special circumstances.
Some more details:
1) Artokus initially struck a deal with a local priestess of Pharasma that he would only keep manufacturing Sun Orchid Elixir until Thuvia was able to stand on its own financially without him. Alas... the elixir trade is still the bulk of the Thuvian economy.
2) The Church of Pharasma is still honoring the deal that the one local priestess made three milennia ago, despite the fact that prophecy has broke and no one knows when Artokus will die anymore.
3) The Psychopomp that Artokus meets with is Tosof, Pharasma's parole officer for mortal immortals like himself. The eagle-eyed will also note that Tosof appears in the Old Mage Jatembe article of Lost Omens Legends as well.
Hmm
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I rather like that, as with any bureaucracy if you can go through the right channels and sign the right forms you can get a special limited time exemption.
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One, a lot of the immortals have reasons why they get away with it. Artokus, inventor of the Sun Orchid Elixir actually had an understanding with the psychopomps. Before prophecy broke, his eventual end was known, and that was good enough. It's no longer known, but he's also still in talks with them, and doesn't exactly seem keen on living forever.As the person who wrote the Artokus Kirran article for Lost Omens Legends, I want to say that QuidEst did an excellent job explaining Artokus's special circumstances.
Some more details:
1) Artokus initially struck a deal with a local priestess of Pharasma that he would only keep manufacturing Sun Orchid Elixir until Thuvia was able to stand on its own financially without him. Alas... the elixir trade is still the bulk of the Thuvian economy.
2) The Church of Pharasma is still honoring the deal that the one local priestess made three milennia ago, despite the fact that prophecy has broke and no one knows when Artokus will die anymore.
3) The Psychopomp that Artokus meets with is Tosof, Pharasma's parole officer for mortal immortals like himself. The eagle-eyed will also note that Tosof appears in the Old Mage Jatembe article of Lost Omens Legends as well.
Hmm
As a person who got that book primarily for the Artokus Kirran section, thank you! Old Man Jatembe is the other mortal-immortal that came to mind, but I didn't know enough about his situation to comment, so I appreciate the Point Out action.
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The truth is, when dealing with taking immortals out, there's almost literally no rush. Inevitable (as a species name or a regular concept) doesn't imply a specific timetable - in some ways, it's the opposite. When it comes to making sure that immortals actually die, they either a) will be there when you're ready to deal with them or b) won't because the matter will have taken care of itself while you've been working on other projects. So it's fine either way. Everything will get sorted out in the end.
The truth is, when dealing with taking immortals out, there's almost literally no rush. Inevitable (as a species name or a regular concept) doesn't imply a specific timetable - in some ways, it's the opposite. When it comes to making sure that immortals actually die, they either a) will be there when you're ready to deal with them or b) won't because the matter will have taken care of itself while you've been working on other projects. So it's fine either way. Everything will get sorted out in the end.
In the grand scheme most immortals are not really immortal. If you are a being that has been around for millions (billions in the case of Pharasma) of years, some dude living an extra thousand is pretty much nothing. One could have as head canon that any immortal that a Marut leaves alone is one whose immortality isn't so sure proof that they won't eventually die, even if it takes a few thousand years.
Well, the Marut profile mentions stuff that is far less radical than the Sun Orchid Elixir as being enough to trigger their intervention... "Extraordinary but natural means of cheating death, like murdering an entire starving town to save oneself or foreseeing and avoiding one's death via divination, are sometimes also punished."
I understand that Baba Yaga or the Whispering Tyrant would be hard to beat, being on the "kill demigods" scale of power. And, if Artokus has a deal with the psychopomps, then the Inevitables would defer to their authority... but the level 12 Lich in the Bestiary, the guy from the River Kingdoms who keeps coming back thanks to Reincarnation or the Vraxeris guy who keeps cloning himself should have been targeted and erased long ago...
Well, highly consumptive methods will always get someone's attention, adn that actually would be a "disturbing new fad" it if caught on.
Using divination probably also ticked off inevitables in other ways. "ruining the course of fate", and all that order stuff, back when prophecies still mattered.
Liches... honestly, I am getting more and more skeptical about whether they are ACTUALLY immortal anymore in this setting. They don't grow old or risk death from basic assaults... but I think they rot.
Between demi-liches and the new 'hunger for knowledge' mechanics, I think they are seen as just being in a slow state of decay. Heck, I think that might be the view inevitable take on all undead under the current mechanics.
On a side note, there is a chance that the inevitable never actually ignore any immortal. But I mean...by definition, you could put every single immortal on a waiting list and say "I will get around to it eventually". If they don't last long enough for you to get to them on the list, then they were never actually a problem to begin with.
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If I ever meet an Inevitable, I fervently wish it will be with my Human Metal Kineticist armored in gold and red.
MC Inventor?
What leads you to think liches rot?
I would argue that an accident like becoming a demilich on a long enough time scale is the same thing as fate. You either are destroyed a lich or unlive long enough to see yourself become a demilich--however long that happens to be for you, personally.
... Unless maybe there are other types of lich you can devolve into that are neither demi nor bone dust, but some distinct third thing.
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I would argue that an accident like becoming a demilich on a long enough time scale is the same thing as fate. You either are destroyed a lich or unlive long enough to see yourself become a demilich--however long that happens to be for you, personally.
... Unless maybe there are other types of lich you can devolve into that are neither demi nor bone dust, but some distinct third thing.
Losing one's soul cage as a lich would be a big mistake to begin with, but the fact that they can usually destroy themselves to reform next to it means it's usually a resolvable problem. I don't really expect liches to last a million years if not killed, undead or not, but I wouldn't expect demilich to be a very common failure mode.
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PF2 implies much more carelessness in becoming a demilich than the PF1 description did. Which involved much more apathy. For me, becoming a demilich (in PF1) seemed like on a long enough time scale the outcome that would happen to any lich that didn't find a way to ascend beyond it's current position (see Tar-Baphon). In PF2, I would however agree that it would be very rare for a lich to become a demilich as it would require much more carelessness than seems reasonable.
It was different when "I've spent the last 1000 years using Astral projection from my private demiplane" would be enough to turn a lich into a demilich. Now the requirement that one loses their phylactery makes it a lot less likely. "Where's my phylactery? With my body, back on that little blue planet. I should go back there some day."
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N.B. Liches have soul cages now, not phylacteries. Which makes the Demilich process even clearer- you have literally misplaced your soul, which you wrenched out of your body in the first place in order to become a lich.
Having "some part of who you are" be defined by "your soul" makes sense, since that's why Liches want to keep it in a little box anyway instead of letting it wander off.
The other thing about Liches is that every undead has a "Undead Hunger" that threatens to destroy them if they don't sate it enough. For vampires this is blood, for ghouls flesh, but for Liches their hunger is for *knowledge*. There's that one Windsong Testaments story where Shyka ends a powerful Lich by giving the Lich unfettered access to Shyka's archives, and after the Lich learns everything there is to know, the Lich voluntarily ends its existence.