1. On page 53 of Darklands Revisited, there is this sentence:
"The entire urdefhan species is purposed toward the wholesale extermination of other species across the world, for there can be no greater accomplishment than the final extinction of an entire people. Most urdefhans currently remain locked in the depths of the Darklands fulfilling one great endeavor: expunging the last descendants of lost Azlant. Perhaps, when they feel certain they have eradicated the underground remnants of that ancient human empire, they will turn their attention to the human descendants on Golarion's surface."
By "the wholesale extermination of other species across the world", does it mean the extermination of sentient species only, or the extermination of literally all life, including animals, vermin, plants, and microorganisms?
2. By "the wholesale extermination of other species across the world", does it mean the extermination of species on Golarion only, or does it include species on other planets as well? I'm not sure if urdefhans know about other planets or the cosmology though.
3. By "the wholesale extermination of other species across the world", does it mean the extermination of species in the Material Plane, or does it extend to species in other planes as well?
4. Why do urdefhans hate Azlant and its descendants so much? The book didn't mention it at all.
5. On page 53 of Darklands Revisited, there is this sentence:
"Every urdefhan has a third eye, located inconspicuously at the back of its mouth."
I'm not sure if I understood this correctly. So, if an urdefhan wishes to see using its third eye, it has to open its mouth? And if it shuts its mouth, the third eye becomes effectively blind? Since the arts for urdefhans don't clearly describe this third eye, I'm honestly not sure.
6. How do you pronounce "urdefhan"? I'm not sure whether it's a creation of Wizards of the Coast or Paizo, but I honestly don't know how to say it. I'm also not sure if urdefhans appear in Pathfinder Remaster, because I couldn't find them in Monster Core.
Creative Director
|
1) It means they inherent daemonic nihilism and seek to destroy all life, but starting with sapient/sentient life because it's more rewarding to them when their victims are aware
2) It would mean other planets as well if they knew about/could get to other planets, but even then, only once Golarion was done.
3) Same as 2 above, but at some point that just turns them into daemons, narratively, so that's not really compelling from a storytelling or world building angle.
4) That's currently an unrevealed mystery, I suspect.
5) This is a narrative error that should not have seen print. Urdefhans have eyes in their skull eyesockets and normal throats. This would have been erratated out if we did errata for lore, or if we ever reprinted the book.
6) ur-DEAF-an is how I say it. Rhymes with cur-DEAF-fin. I created them for my homebrew back in the late 80s, partially inspired by the ghouls of Fritz Leiber's Nehwon stories. They haven't yet been remastered, but there's no reason why other than that the Monster Core was already full of other creatures.
Huh. So their third eye is located on their neck, and they can freely see using it regardless of whether their mouth is open or shut? I have seen many arts depicting them but I couldn't see an eye on their neck though.
What does cur-Deaf-fin mean? Can you spell the word?
|
Creative Director
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Huh. So their third eye is located on their neck, and they can freely see using it regardless of whether their mouth is open or shut? I have seen many arts depicting them but I couldn't see an eye on their neck though.
What does cur-Deaf-fin mean? Can you spell the word?
No. They have two eyes. One eye in each eye socket. They have no third eye. I guess I should have been clearer in saying, "Urdefhans have eyes in their skull eyesockets and no eyes in their eyeless, normal throats."
If we intend a strange and unusual anatomy of a creature like an eye in their throat, we wouldn't hide that from folks we'd make it a point of the first piece of artwork we show about that creature. Such as what we did with Yamasoth.
cur-DEAF-fin isnt' a word. It's me trying to help you pronounce urdefhan.
If you say the three words "cur" and "deaf" and "fin" together as one word, with the emphasis on the middle syllable DEAF, then that mouth sound should rhyme with the correct pronunciation of urdefhan.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Sigh. I have no idea why Thurston Hillman (the author of Darklands Revisited) said urdefhans have three eyes in the book.
|
Creative Director
|
| 9 people marked this as a favorite. |
Sigh. I have no idea why Thurston Hillman (the author of Darklands Revisited) said urdefhans have three eyes in the book.
Several books in that timeframe came out when we were very understaffed and behind schedule when it came to developing and editing content. That book was so behind schedule, if I recall correctly, that we basically asked him to write the entire thing in an almost criminally short amount of time with little to no outline and then the text was rushed through development and editing (again, if I recall correctly) so it could not be catastrophically late.
The fact that this book exists at all is a miracle brought upon us in large part by Thurston's ability to turn over text in an incredibly short time frame, but we didn't really do a strong lore pass over the text since there wasn't time to do so, and thus some fun ideas (like the eyes in urdefhan throats) that weren't really accurate with the intended creative direction of the lore slipped through is all.
AKA: It's just a mistake; not a rules one and not a grammar one, but a lore mismatch. If you prefer to have your urdefhans with eyes in their throats in your game, by all means embrace it and go for it, but that's not lore that was intended for them.
EDITING to add a bit more clarification, since I don't know that everyone realizes this... Products written for hire like everything Paizo publishes for Starfinder and Pathfinder are collaborations between the author and the lead developer of the project, even when the author is a Paizo employee. In many cases, a developer does some significant rewriting to massage the author's ideas into lore appropriate for the overall creative direction of the game or setting—when we have time, we prefer to work with the author to have them make those adjustments to the text before final manuscript turnovers, but sometimes that timing doesn't work out. Thurston is an amazing writer and a great guy and an incredibly reliable person, which is why we made the decision to have him write this whole book, knowing we wouldn't have time to do a full in-depth development pass, and he knocked it out of the proverbial park, in my opinion. Even if there's a few minor errors in there. I feel like the amount time spent writing about this tiny little error, in fact, is sort of unfortunate, since it's such a small thing in the overall scope of a delightful book.
It's always better to let the little things slide so that they don't ruin the enjoyment of the whole.
