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According to Erik Mona in Pathfinder Fridays #25 (see link to the YouTube video below), passing the Test of the Starstone makes you a "Living God." Eric goes on to explain that a Living God is a Demigod.
So Norgorber, Caiden Cailean, and Iomedae (and I guess Aroden) were all Demigods at one point.
The thing that gets me is the lore of Golarion and the Pathfinder setting completely skips over the fact they were Demigods first but never explains how they made the transition to full deities...I think.
So, if any one has any sources that discuss their transitions to full deity status, I'd sure like to see any citations to them. Heck, even a good post or two From Erik and/or James would also be appreciated!
Thanks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KcRuA3cY1E
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I think it was mentioned on forum that basically passing test of starstone makes you demigod that has potential to turn into full deity relatively fast (certainly in less than thousand years at least)
I think main observation about that is that you can't pass test of starstone and then go ganking around full deities because they would out power you by a lot.
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I think it was mentioned on forum that basically passing test of starstone makes you demigod that has potential to turn into full deity relatively fast (certainly in less than thousand years at least)
I think main observation about that is that you can't pass test of starstone and then go ganking around full deities because they would out power you by a lot.
Nobody tell Tar-Baphon this. It'll be really funny.
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According to Erik Mona in Pathfinder Fridays #25 (see link to the YouTube video below), passing the Test of the Starstone makes you a "Living God." Eric goes on to explain that a Living God is a Demigod.
So Norgorber, Caiden Cailean, and Iomedae (and I guess Aroden) were all Demigods at one point.
The thing that gets me is the lore of Golarion and the Pathfinder setting completely skips over the fact they were Demigods first but never explains how they made the transition to full deities... I think.
So, if any one has any sources that discuss their transitions to full deity status, I'd sure like to see any citations to them. Heck, even a good post or two From Erik and/or James would also be appreciated!
Thanks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KcRuA3cY1E
Aroden, AFAIK, never passed the Test of the Starstone, he ascended to full on god during the act of raising the Starstone?
Anywho, I could totally see Iomedae starting out a 'lesser' god, and only coming into full 'big 20 / 5 domain' god status after Inheriting a fair chunk of the church of Aroden after he bit it.
But how Cayden and / or Norborger climbed the ladder is less clear. Perhaps some of Curchanos' leftover divine power 'got away' from Lamashtu's digestive attempts, something-something strength and passion, or savagry of the natural world, and got absorbed by these two?
I'm a huge fan of how many different 'types' of gods there are in Golarion.
Always were - Torag, Abadar, Pharasma, Calistria, Gozreh
Born to other gods - Dou-Bral/Zon-Kuthon, Shelyn
Outsider Bigliest - Lamashtu (demon), Asmodeus (devil), Sarenrae (angel), Rovagug (qlippoth)?
Ascended without Starstone - Nethys, Irori, Urgathoa
Ascended with Starstone - Iomedae, Cayden Cailean, Norgorber
Just happened? - Gorum
Sponsored by other gods (seems to result in 'lesser' gods?) - Arazni, Naderi, Kurgess?
It's way cooler to me than just one big divine family like the Olympians, or even two smooshed-together familial pantheons like the Aesir/Vanir.
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Aroden, AFAIK, never passed the Test of the Starstone, he ascended to full on god during the act of raising the Starstone?
My understanding is that touching or interacting with the starstone in some way is what make you a demigod, not the test itself, and that Aroden build the test around the stone when he understood that to make sure that all those who aquire divinity this way would be"worthy". Could you imagine, a stone that make anyone that touch it a demigod, if anyone could have free access to it, half of golarion would be godly at this point, and the whole planet would be a wasteland devastated by all the "gods" warring with each other.
I'm a huge fan of how many different 'types' of gods there are in Golarion.
Always were - Torag, Abadar, Pharasma, Calistria, Gozreh
Born to other gods - Dou-Bral/Zon-Kuthon, Shelyn
Outsider Bigliest - Lamashtu (demon), Asmodeus (devil), Sarenrae (angel), Rovagug (qlippoth)?
Ascended without Starstone - Nethys, Irori, Urgathoa
Ascended with Starstone - Iomedae, Cayden Cailean, Norgorber
Just happened? - GorumSponsored by other gods (seems to result in 'lesser' gods?) - Arazni, Naderi, Kurgess?
If the 1st edition "book of the damned" lore is still up to date, then Asmodeus isn't a devil turned god, he's one of those "god that always were" that was at first wholy order aligned, which then turned to evil because free will is disorderly (but trying to erase it is evil). So he seized hell as his domain, and bent the native outsiders of the place (the devils) to his will. Beelzebuth (or Beelzebub, or Baalzebub, I can never remember exactly how he's called in this canon) likewise isn't a devil, even if he's an archdevil, because he was with Asmodeus even before he turned evil. Not sure what he originally is tho, maybe a fallen aeon, or some outsider specie that ceased to exist when Asmodeus went from LN to LE. The rest of your list seems pretty spot on tho.
The real question for me is Gozreh tho. He's the god of "nature", but he seems to be wholy tied to golarion, so I'd like to know if he's the god of nature in every planet and plane harbouring an ecosystem, or if he's the god of Golarion's nature specifically. If it's the latter, then it's very interesting, because it imply that in some sense, Gozreh is Golarion itself, as to me, a personification of a planet "nature" is a personification of the planet itself. It would also imply that other planets have their own different nature god that embody the planet, and it would be interesting to see in starfinder.
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Aroden, AFAIK, never passed the Test of the Starstone, he ascended to full on god during the act of raising the Starstone?My understanding is that touching or interacting with the starstone in some way is what make you a demigod, not the test itself, and that Aroden build the test around the stone when he understood that to make sure that all those who aquire divinity this way would be"worthy". Could you imagine, a stone that make anyone that touch it a demigod, if anyone could have free access to it, half of golarion would be godly at this point, and the whole planet would be a wasteland devastated by all the "gods" warring with each other.
I'm a huge fan of how many different 'types' of gods there are in Golarion.
Always were - Torag, Abadar, Pharasma, Calistria, Gozreh
Born to other gods - Dou-Bral/Zon-Kuthon, Shelyn
Outsider Bigliest - Lamashtu (demon), Asmodeus (devil), Sarenrae (angel), Rovagug (qlippoth)?
Ascended without Starstone - Nethys, Irori, Urgathoa
Ascended with Starstone - Iomedae, Cayden Cailean, Norgorber
Just happened? - GorumSponsored by other gods (seems to result in 'lesser' gods?) - Arazni, Naderi, Kurgess?
If the 1st edition "book of the damned" lore is still up to date, then Asmodeus isn't a devil turned god, he's one of those "god that always were" that was at first wholy order aligned, which then turned to evil because free will is disorderly (but trying to erase it is evil). So he seized hell as his domain, and bent the native outsiders of the place (the devils) to his will. Beelzebuth (or Beelzebub, or Baalzebub, I can never remember exactly how he's called in this canon) likewise isn't a devil, even if he's an archdevil, because he was with Asmodeus even before he turned evil. Not sure what he originally is tho, maybe a fallen aeon, or some outsider specie that ceased to exist when Asmodeus went from LN to LE. The rest of your list seems pretty spot on tho.
The real question for me is Gozreh tho. He's the god of...
There are many takes on the origin of deities in lore.
According to the Three Fears of Pharasma, Asmodeus was always LE and killed his brother Ihys, the discoverer / inventor of free will who happens to be LG BTW.
Achaekek was originally LN though.
And Desna, Sarenrae, The Bound Prince, Rovagug were also of the first created deities. With Pharasma being the one survivor from the previous existence of reality.
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The Raven has beaten me to the punch on my favourite pastime of bringing the Windsong Testaments into discussions of the early cosmos here, so I'll cut to the other thought I had:
As far as I recall, Asmodeus' followers became the first devils. The original rulers of Hell seem primarily to have been the asuras, whom Asmodeus tricked by using the asurarana (now archdevil) Geryon as an inside operative. It reportedly devoured 812 tyrants of Hell (including velstrac demogogues) to pave Asmodeus' conquest.
Of course, in this version of the myth, Asmodeus was once an empyreal lord, which nicely complicates the origin myths where he is supposed to have been among the first host of the gods. These sources don't necessarily contradict (demigods are still a type of god, after all) but does provide interesting contrast.
Meanwhile among the other archdevils, at least some of them are explicitly fallen angels - Dispater, Mammon, and Baalzebul, with Moloch adding a fallen archon into the mix. The remaining are either unknown (Barbatos), a being created by Asmodeus (Belial, the ex-asura already mentioned (Geryon), and the consciousness of Hell itself given form (Mephistopheles).
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My personal list of core deities by origin goes
The Survivor - Pharasma
The Original Eight - Desna, Sarenrae, Asmodeus, Rovagug (other 4 are non-core or dead)
Early Gods - Abadar, Calistria, Gorum, Torag, Gozreh
Children of the Gods - Dou-bral/Zon*, Shelyn (*Zon-Kuthon is a secret survivor from the previous reality, too)
Ascended Outsider - Lamashtu
Ascended Mortals - Urgathoa, Irori, Nethys?, Iomedae*, Cayden*, Norgorber* (*Starstone; ?-the description of pre-deific Nethys is fascinating)
(of course, the early gods may themselves be children of the gods, but no origin is given for most of them, and for others there are multiple conflicting origin stories)
There are many takes on the origin of deities in lore.
According to the Three Fears of Pharasma, Asmodeus was always LE and killed his brother Ihys, the discoverer / inventor of free will who happens to be LG BTW.
I remember the whole "killed his brother" thing yeah, altho I though that it was his "heel turn", that he abandonned LN for LE at that moment, instead of him always being LE. But isn't the fact that asmodeus was never a devil and wasn't born in hell but merely seized control of it a pretty definitive piece of lore, given that it's half of Baalzebub backstory?
My personal list of core deities by origin goes
The Survivor - Pharasma
The Original Eight - Desna, Sarenrae, Asmodeus, Rovagug (other 4 are non-core or dead)
Early Gods - Abadar, Calistria, Gorum, Torag, Gozreh
Children of the Gods - Dou-bral/Zon*, Shelyn (*Zon-Kuthon is a secret survivor from the previous reality, too)
Ascended Outsider - Lamashtu
Ascended Mortals - Urgathoa, Irori, Nethys?, Iomedae*, Cayden*, Norgorber* (*Starstone; ?-the description of pre-deific Nethys is fascinating)
It isn't outright told, but the article on qlippoth (I think it was in shattered star?) really strongly hint that Rovagug is the mightiest, and perhaps first, qlippoth. Also, I'm almost certain that Sarenrae used to be a "normal" angel before ascending to full godhood, but I don't remember where I saw it.
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The version of the myth you've read looks like Asmodeus' own account given to the angel Tabris in I think the Book of the Damned. Certainly he represents himself in this story as one of two ur-deities, and Sarenrae as an unimportant angel at his brother's side. Strictly speaking since the myths (quite intentionally, I'm given to believe) contradict in places while agreeing on odd details, I don't think we can take any single version if these as the full story.
I don't believe the Three Fears of Pharasma suggests Asmodeus was born in Hell, but certainly seems in that story to have come into existence to be the embodiment of tyrannical order opposite his brother, which corroborates loosely with his own account. Personally, with alignment gone it doesn't matter to me whether he started existence as
LE or landed there eventually, but either way there's nothing to contradict the story of his conquest of Hell.
Meanwhile whether Rovagug was the ur-qlippoth or one of the original gods may be a bit if a semantic distinction. Even in 3FP it's ambiguous whether Rovagug is the being spawned on the great seal, or if that being was consumed by the abyss and became Rovagug. That's part of the beauty of the myth format for this early era of lore
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This adds more credence to Razmir having totally passed the Test of the Starstone, they just haven't gotten around to building statues of him yet.
My notion is that the four bridges (one crumbled) to the Starstone are said in Razmiran to represent Iomedae, Cayden, Norgorber and the fourth fallen bridge Razmir himself, a bridge the other gods knocked down in their attempt to discredit him, because they so feared his power.
Obvious propaganda, but nobody wants to contradict the 'official story' of the guy who burns down cities when he's pissy. :)
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My understanding is that touching or interacting with the starstone in some way is what make you a demigod, not the test itself, and that Aroden build the test around the stone when he understood that to make sure that all those who aquire divinity this way would be"worthy". Could you imagine, a stone that make anyone that touch it a demigod, if anyone could have free access to it, half of golarion would be godly at this point, and the whole planet would be a wasteland devastated by all the "gods" warring with each other.
So, if you watch the entire YouTube video I linked in my OP, here's what I came to understand the Test of the Starstone really consists of:
1. You have to cross the chasm to get to the Starstone Cathedral. That seems pretty straightforward. DDoor, TP, Fly, etc. sounds like they're all acceptable methods to cross. Personally, I thought it would be cool for a group of Goblin heroes to catapult themselves across!
2. You have to "convince" the guardian at the entrance to let you in to the Cathedral to take the Test. Might be a physical challenge of some sort or maybe a Diplomacy check will get you past it. Maybe even a Bluff check to trick the Guardian to look behind itself while you sneak in.
3. Once you enter the Cathedral, the test-taker must go through some sort of maze/dungeon that "tests your character sheet." This is a purely physical challenge. It's also different for every test-taker. I imagine there were a lot of traps and stuff to challenge Norgorber in this part, a lot on monsters to slay for Iomedae, and maybe some riddling contests as well as some storytelling challenges for Caiden Cailean.
4. If the test-taker gets through the dungeon, they enter a chamber in which the Starstone resides. The test-taker then touches it and they are put through another test that "tests your character." That part of the test is not physical in nature - you don't actually go anywhere. It's a test of your mind, so it's a completely metaphysical challenge where your ideals (alignment for one) are tested.
Only after passing all these tests is the test-taker made a Living God (Demigod) by the Starstone.
Clearly, the most important part of the test is the fourth (last) part of the test. I say that because Aroden ascended to Living God status (made clear in the video) AFTER he actually touched the Starstone. All the previous parts of the Test were obviously not there when he raised the Starstone from the sea.