Where's our shadow pain friends? Not even a mention in the index/ending area but we do get two pages of random coatl gods instead? It's not that they're removed from lore, they're Mentioned, but for a full compilation of the divine it feels strange we'd be missing one entire pretty major species who has noted divinities.
Anyone find any info on them at all?
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I don't know that I'd call the couatl divinities we've heard about several times, but haven't yet gotten a proper deep dive, a "random" inclusion.
Sad to see the velstracs absent and only a random handful of aeons make it in.
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We didn't get Asura Rana, Kishin Oni or Rakshasa immortals either. We did get lot of good amount of new info on obscure demigods, but its still bit sad especially with new changes to rakshasa and oni.
I suppose the coatls mentions slipped my notice; no insults intended there.
I do feel a bit miffed though that the book touted as the Remaster's Gods and Magic has sort of missed the mark when it comes to some pretty significant villainous divinities who could make for some great plothooks.
I'm not sure about the supplemental table; there is a small sort of indexed table before the index that does not include them either.
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Socothbenhoth being, so far, not a discussion topic in 2nd edition has less to do with "casual hook ups" than it does with him being a demon lord who's significantly associated with sexual violence, which is a topic we explored with villians now and then in 1st edition, but is a topic we are not interested in exploring in 2nd edition (and already had started to tone back on in late 1st edition and utilized content warnings more responsibly).
The velstrac demagogues not being a big topic in 2nd edition has more to do with space issues. Divine Mysteries is a big book, but it's not big enough for EVERYTHING, and so Luis and the team had to make decisions about who to include and who not to include. They skewed toward inclusion of content more appropriate for player characters overall, rather than stuff more appropriate for GMs, because player content sells better and is more useful to more people.
AKA At some point we'll get more into the velstracs in upcoming products, but Socothbenoth (and other things directly associated with sexual violence) are being left in 1st edition. If your table is interested in including those sorts of villains, they're still a part of the setting and their lore is still there in older books for you to draw from... just please make sure your fellow players and GM are all comfortable with that content before doing so.
I think a big difference between 1e and 2e Pathfinder is that the latter established a "baseline" for content that they're not going to transgress without specific signposting and a good reason. So there's no reason you can't have "Hellraiser: Golarion Edition" in the game, it's just that you wouldn't want to do that in a "normal" book because the space you would use to advise caution to the reader would be better used for more stuff in theme with the book. If you had a whole book where the various content warnings apply throughout (like a deep dive on Nidal and/or the shadow realm) then that's the best place to flesh out the various Velstracs.
Regarding Socothbenoth, the thing about the Outer Rifts is that the most depraved thing you could ever imagine, there's something in the Outer Rifts that's incredibly into whatever that is (and it might even be incredibly powerful.) It's just that we're not going to talk about 99.9% of them ever in an official capacity.
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The thing about sexually-themed villains is that they're just not interested in doing stuff like that anymore. The early days of Pathfinder were "edgy" in a way that the current iteration has less interest in. All the lore still exists, so you can use those entities if you want, but Paizo isn't going to put them in anything without a compelling reason to do so.
The decision to "do a Hellraiser type AP set in Nidal" is not limited by "well, we can't cross those content lines" because they absolutely could if they wanted to give fair warning and context. It's basically an economic decision about how "this is going to drive away more people than it will attract, and it probably wouldn't sell as well as something more mainstream."
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The decision to "do a Hellraiser type AP set in Nidal" is not limited by "well, we can't cross those content lines" because they absolutely could if they wanted to give fair warning and context. It's basically an economic decision about how "this is going to drive away more people than it will attract, and it probably wouldn't sell as well as something more mainstream."
It's not even an economic decision. It's just that we haven't done an Adventure Path set there yet, in the same way we've not done one set fully in the Linnorm Kingdoms or Brevoy or Nex or Thuvia or Druma and so on. We may or may not do something in Numeria some day, but fears that it wouldn't sell as well as something more mainstream aren't gonna factor into it, really. Especially considering that horror IS mainstream, really.
Season of Ghosts was horror themed, if you want a (fairly recent) PF2 AP along those lines.
Seven Dooms for Sandpoint also had some horror elements. As did Gatewalkers.
It doesn't sound as much that Paizo is actively avoiding "edgy" content (where appropriate), but more likely that it's not an important part of the stories in most of the APs. And they aren't going to add it "just because" or only to be "edgy."
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Spoilering a wall of text as I pontificate about how the world has changed in the 20+ years Paizo has been publishing RPG content (a span of time that, this year, exceeds that in which TSR did the same). And please note, the following is MY take, not an "official" take from Paizo.
As Pathifnder's grown larger and more well-known, the player base has grown as well. This is a GOOD THING for us, because a large base of active players is what keeps a game company going. But that also meant we were expanding as well, and as the player base grew, and as Paizo's resources grew, and as the preferences and interests and sensibilities of the world as a whole grew (I believe, in large part due to the internet making the world a SMALLER place—while there's some gross and dangerous things there, it's made it easier than ever in the history of the world for different people of different backgrounds, cultures, beliefs, values, and situations to come together and share their love of gaming), we grew and changed as well.
Some of the big parts of that growth over the past 20 years is a welcome and important greater awareness of the older stigma people associated with neurodivergency, a much greater acceptance of LBGTQ+ folks (of which I've always been a part of), and less interest in the depiction of sexual violence as part of "entertainment" (just look at the blowback HBO got hit with over the 2010s about the content of several of their shows for an example there). Those are GOOD changes and trends in society, and Paizo has embraced those changes with open arms.
As a result, you won't be seeing us publish content about Socothbenoth like we used to, nor do we casually toss around phrases like "hysterical" or "madman" or lean into stories about slavery. And while Wes has moved on to other pursuits, Erik and I are still here, along with a few others who are fond of the horror genre—but Paizo is a MUCH larger and more diverse company today than it was when we started, and as a result of that strength, we have a much wider and healthier and robust set of interests on the creative team.
So you'll still see us delve into horror themes, and that includes potentially going to Nidal some day, but not to the great length you saw us do in the early years. Those days were important at establishing Paizo, but today Paizo is more than that. And again, that's a sign of growth and strength that I'm thankful for and support fully.
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Is that why Nethys write up in Divine Mysteries doesn’t lean into the older lore about his “madness” through he clearly does see the world through a different lens then most people.
Yup; this is an excellent example of us keeping an established element but treating it more responsibly.
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One thing about evil Gods, specifically, is that when they are prominent, like Lamashtu, there should be at least a single perspective on that deity that a reasonable person could see and think "that sounds like a deity I should follow."
Like Zon-Kuthon tells you to overcome, Asmodeus does bring order, Urgathoa wants you to enjoy your existence, and Lamashtu will accept you for who you are. It's just that they also do other stuff.
Talking about a deity from the perspective of a follower who is not a mustache-twirling villain does make some sense.
I do wonder sometimes if perhaps a good idea could be to simply not touch on the former things while keeping the character. Like Socothbenoth shifting to take his sisters former portfolio and just not talking about his old predilections (which, to be fair, is not something most people are thinking of considering a lot of people these days know him from Owlcat's WOTR game and not from old ttrpg lore, I'd wager).
I completely agree about the shift away from the edginess being good overall. It makes the game more accessible and comfortable for a wider majority, and we're already fighting tooth and nail for every bit of market share we can get here in the Pathfinder trenches.
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Is that why Nethys write up in Divine Mysteries doesn’t lean into the older lore about his “madness” through he clearly does see the world through a different lens then most people.Yup; this is an excellent example of us keeping an established element but treating it more responsibly.From the write up it makes it seem like he has some sort of dissociative disorder is that meant to be correct?
Also how do you think about handling Lamushutu the goddess associated with birth defects, and miscarriages. Whose early lore made many references to forced breeding.
AKA what she wanted to do to Shelryn and Szurial.
Nethys, like many deities, has a mind that works in ways mortals can't understand, so categorizing it is kinda not the point.
Lamashtu is from real-world mythology, and her myths are even more extreme in the real world than what we did in 1st edition. Feel free to use whatever version works best for your game.
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I do wonder sometimes if perhaps a good idea could be to simply not touch on the former things while keeping the character. Like Socothbenoth shifting to take his sisters former portfolio and just not talking about his old predilections (which, to be fair, is not something most people are thinking of considering a lot of people these days know him from Owlcat's WOTR game and not from old ttrpg lore, I'd wager).
I completely agree about the shift away from the edginess being good overall. It makes the game more accessible and comfortable for a wider majority, and we're already fighting tooth and nail for every bit of market share we can get here in the Pathfinder trenches.
In some cases we keep characters and refocus them. In others we don't. If we DO some day do something more with Socothbenoht, we'll do that; refocus him in some way away from the focus on sexual violence to something new that won't make him less evil. I'm not sure right now how best to do that, and haven't put any thought into it because a) he's not a part of any stories the Narrative team is working on for the next few years and b) because I'm no longer the only (or even the primary) lore guy for Pathfinder.
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While I absolutely support Paizo writing their content in the way they want it, I just wish that with the two most abrupt lore changes of the last years, it would have been done in a way where it made sense in the lore.
The first is the abolition of slavery, which happened all at once, all over the world, without a unifying impetus. That was, and still is, very immersion breaking, if one takes into account how long it took for slavery to disappear from the real world and how much effort it took to boot. The writers have since dribbled and drabbled information about individual reasons why slavery was abolished in several of the nations which used it into some sourcebooks, but there was no unifying reason why it happened all at once, which is baffling. I know that the real world reason was that the Paizo writers decided they didn't want to write about the topic anymore, but since the in-lore change is so monumental, everytime I think about it, I feel that the shoe was dropped massively on keeping players immersed in the world, in favor of just not dealing with the topic anymore. I still think we should get at least a few paragraphs in a future book explaining why exactly it happened so suddenly and everywhere at once.
The second is the removal of Drow, due to the OGL crisis. Yep, it was a decision which I also (reluctantly) support, but again we are left with a big break in immersion, at least for the players and GM's who have run many of the AP's where Drow show up in person. Of which I've run quite a few (and am actually still running one, Abomination Vaults). The explanation of "it was snake people all along!" just doesn't work when you personally met and have talked in-game with a lot of Drow. I'm not even sure what the remedy here would be, snakefolk wearing dark elf fleshmasks for s!%+s and giggles?
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(Talked about slavery and drow...)
EDIT: Spoilering to prevent wall of text syndrome...
Sometimes we can't do this, because the need for change brought on by compelling situations in the real world require swift course-corrections in the matter of weeks or even days, when at the best you're talking several months or even a few years for us to do things in a more gradual method.
In these two cases, those changes needed to happen IMMEDIATELY, and we decided that the damage to the in-world verisimilitude was not only necessary but acceptable in order for us to make those corrections. For slavery, the removal of storylines about it helped Paizo correct a lazy bit of trope-wallowing AND to address the capitalization of historical atrocities that are still too fresh in mind. As I feel we've shown in the years since this change, there's a limitless number of other bad-guy stories we can tell that don't involve slavery... or involving rules in the game that some bad-actors can interpret as Paizo condoning slavery as a player option, for that matter. Good riddance to no more slavery stories, I say.
As for the drow thing, I've discussed that at length. The "It was snake people all along!" was a last minute panic comment brought on by the very real existential dread that the loss of the OGL would bring Paizo crumbling down and have me and nearly a hundred other of my friends and coworkers out of a job, combined with the fact that we had no real opportunity or plan in the works for the next few years involving the Darklands in which we could even HOPE to address these changes deliberately (compounded by the fact that we never did a big, significant bit of world-building for the Darklands at all during the entirety of 1st edition's run and instead leaned heavily on the Very OGL 3.5 Into the Darklands and Second Darkness for its support), with one exception—the About-to-ship-to-the-printer final volume of the Sky King's Tomb Adventure Path. So I had to jump in and write an article to revisit the Darklands in a non-OGL way, which required booting an entirely different article out of that volume and moving it into the Player's Guide. Was it ideal? Absolutely not. But was it the best (and really, only) solution at the time? Absolutely yes.
Since then, we've had more time in house to explore the impact of all this on the Darklands and the legacy of Second Darkness, and some of those more graceful lore changes will be finally showing up in Spore War, and we've got some other things in the works to eventually look deeper into the lore of the Darklands in a Remastered Golarion. That stuff is still in the future (remember, we plan years in advance and it's really tough to make changes faster than that), but will provide a more palatable sense of the new lore for what used to be drow and is now something else. It's just gonna take a little longer, and fortunately, making changes like the ones we did above are part of the reason why Paizo's healthy enough that we CAN look at making long term changes like that.
For all of the frustration you might feel at these sudden changes as a customer, trust me... as a content creator, it's much worse—even though I strongly feel that the end results of these changes are 100% a good thing and something that's been a long time coming and, in hindsight, are things I wish we'd never leaned into such support for, naratively, from the start (and by "we" I mean gamers, and from "the start" I mean the 70s when tabletop RPBs began).
And all that said, if in your home game you can't stomach changes like this, the older content is still there and you can always keep using it in your games or to inspire your own campaigns. We make games for everyone to start playing, but all of you individual GMs are the ones who bring those games (and what parts you like and don't like) to your players. It has been and remains one of the central advantages that tabletop RPGs have over computer RPGs. It might not remain an advantage forever (or even for much longer, depending on how aggressive AI content creation grows), but as long as these are games made by humans for humans, it will never go away completely.
TL;DR—I agree that these two changes were abrupt, but they should have happened much sooner in hindsight, and shouldn't have been a part of Pathfinder from the start, but that's the advantage of hindsight.
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there was a first edition Nidal Book, which I really love for it fleshes the land out as a place where people live, breath, love, eat, make merry, have and raise families. Yes, its a land ruled by an evil religion and there are lots of evil stuff, and lots of torture and pain fitting Zon-Kuthon's worship, but also far more then that even among the faithful.
For instance one ritual is the shadowchaining where faithful with animal companions will parade through the streets while townsfolk will kneel and offer various prayers to the animals, they may be bit or clawed at but never killed or seriously hurt, afterwards they are let loose to kill enemies of the faith. This is just a neat little festival, dark and morbid, but also ties into the ancient love of animals that Nidalese of all ancestries have.
However there is also good things in there, lots of ancestries come from the Netherworld as refugees and made Nidal their home, from Kayal to Caligni, to shadow giants and more.
I would imagine that an adventure path set in Nidal would have lots of horror elements, but also be one where players might see the goodness in the Darkness and be about showing that dark is not evil, and exploring the Netherworld and the various shadow creatures there.
As for slavery, while I am not up on if anything replaced it in every evil realm, I vastly prefer the change to Cheliax. Where Cheliax doesn't have slavery but a web of contracts to bind someone with the law. This feels far more devilish and fitting for the nation that worships Asmodeus then slavery as we know it. Keeping a populace controlled through contracts just gives me Hell vibes and I so much prefer that, it also just feels far more fun to play then slavery and gives far more options for stories.
(Talked about slavery and drow...)EDIT: Spoilering to prevent wall of text syndrome...
** spoiler omitted **...
Thank you for the very extensive comment, James. Good to hear that the Darkland issue will be addressed soon.
As for the sudden removal of slavery, I think I want to make it clear, slavery not existing on Golarion anymore is a good thing and very commendable. What rankles for me is that such a monumental event was just declared into existence, without an in-lore explanation how it came about and to boot at the same time, everywhere. I absolulety understand that you guys don't want to write extensively about it, but I still think that at least a short mention somewhere of the inciting incident would be a good thing for the setting.
You'll have to deal with it at the latest when you write your next World Guide when 3E comes out hopefully a decade away, anyway. You might as well rip off the bandaid early and I think the upcoming war between Andoran and Cheliax sounds like a good place to sneak in a reference to the Great Abolishment (or whatever the title of that worldwide event would be), given that Andoran was very much the most prominent anti-slavery nation on Golarion (it's basically their biggest claim to fame with the Eagle Knights in 1E) and Cheliax was one of the biggest slaver nations (and still is so, only that they engaged in some clever rewording and legal shenanigans. They might as well just have renamed it "smavery" and be done with it. ^^).
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I think the in-lore thing about slavery is that the big thing was the PFS event of the Fiendflesh Siege of Absalom wherein any slave who took up weapons to defend the city was given manumission, and after that was all over there were basically no slaves left in Absalom so they had to decide whether to get a whole bunch of new slaves, or just to pay people for the jobs that slaves were previously doing and they picked the second one and banned slavery.
With Absalom no longer being a safe port for slavers (and Andoran being otherwise right in the middle of Cheliax and Okeno) it was extremely difficult for the slave trade, and an industry in the Inner Sea, to continue existing.
The thing I think needs more explaining is why Cheliax stopped it within the country though.
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Age of Ashes had players working to undermine slavery in Katapesh. PFS had players working against the binding of genies in Qadira. The Vidric revolution happened between editions. Andoran's privateering against slavers is pretty classic lore from 1e, as is the fight against the enslavement of Androids in Numeria.
To act like the end of slavery in Golarion came out of nowhere in LO: Firebrands is really, really disingenuous - it was the payoff for a prominent recurring theme in the game.
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Also speaking personally I greatly prefer cheliax without slavery but instead with all these contracts that bind a person. That feels far more like a culture that has been influnced by Hell then just slavery. Both are oppressive, and sure the contracts that Thrune and the other power players in Cheliax write up are filled with so much legalese and fine print that they heavily favor the power players. But in a land where Ravenoul was only able to escape thanks to a legal loophole in their annexation contract at the end of the civil war, this also fits the lore better.
More over there are more options. Now one can play a lawyer character and with some good lawyering rescue people from their contracts. Have players be bound by the contracts to do stuff for them without it feeling like an end.
Katapesh banning slavery is explictly mentioned as a shock, now the pactmasters are strange alien creatures, but a big reason is due to nomadic revolts and conflicts. Conflicts that are still ongoing and are not resolved and probably will be part of the upcoming battle cry.
Abasolom's decision to end slavery is detailed above, and that decimated others.
Vidiran had a revolution and got rid of it.
Oddly Nidal, the nation that got this thread started didn't really practice slavery all that much in 1e from their own book. Most of that was tied to the Darklands stuff and with that retcon I doubt slavery persits. All other forms of oppression, pain, and suffering? sure but slavery wasn't really part of it beyond the whole nation in effect being slaves to Zon-Kuthon.
One of the groups that did get rid of it and I am not sure why are the Orcs of belzkan.
-Also speaking personally I greatly prefer cheliax without slavery-
This specifically is very important to me, who LOVES the vibe of evil, gothic theocracy lead by horrible women but it was hard to feel chill about it when they had slaves. It makes me, a fan of good villains, feel a bit better about liking them.
Unrelated, but is there a canon result to Hell's Vengeance? Is Alexeara Cansellarion fallen or is she dead?
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Age of Ashes had players working to undermine slavery in Katapesh. PFS had players working against the binding of genies in Qadira. The Vidric revolution happened between editions. Andoran's privateering against slavers is pretty classic lore from 1e, as is the fight against the enslavement of Androids in Numeria.
To act like the end of slavery in Golarion came out of nowhere in LO: Firebrands is really, really disingenuous - it was the payoff for a prominent recurring theme in the game.
I would really like it if you wouldn't use words like "disingenuous" to describe someones legit difference of opinion. It makes it out to be that I have some nefarious purpose in wanting lore to have more consistency.
Also, the thing isn't that the abolition of slavery came out of nowhere. It didn't, as you have pointed out quite well above. The problem I see is that it did end 1.) All over the world, 2.) At the same time, 3.) Without an inciting incident.
What PossibleCabbage described above, regarding the manumission of slaves in Absalom, sounds like a plausible scenario, but it would be good to have that confirmed in an official book somewhere. Two or three paragraphs, that's all that would be needed, to give a legit lore explanation which pulls it all together. After that, the topic can finally be laid to rest, lore consistency would be restored and everybody could move on.
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I can’t quite remember which one it was, but i’m pretty sure the manumission of slaves in absalom did get a couple printed paragraph’s in a lost omens book.
Also you have to keep in mind, these events didn’t happen in a vacuum and all likely rippled out and effected each other. In fact think it was also stated in a lost omens book that cheliax’s recent abolition-in-name-only was an attempt to shore up their abyssmal international standing now that emancipation was taking around the inner sea, after it had already taken a significant blows after events like Ravounel and Vidrian seceding , to the point Andoran was smelling political blood in the water.
Plus changes like this can often happen in quick succession in our own world, with many european powers all banning chattel slavery in quick succession, as well as the way jewish emancipation swept across much europe across only a handful of years. Both events occurring in the early to mid 1800’s, which puts Golarion culturally in a pretty good spot culturally to have it’s own liberatory wave.
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Plus changes like this can often happen in quick succession in our own world, with many european powers all banning chattel slavery in quick succession, as well as the way jewish emancipation swept across much europe across only a handful of years. Both events occurring in the early to mid 1800’s, which puts Golarion culturally in a pretty good spot culturally to have it’s own liberatory wave.
That's still over a period of about 50 years and of course in reality it took way longer.
Slavery was super important in Nidal. The novels showcase the Shadow callers purchasing slaves for torture purposes.Zon-Kuthon’s 1E obedience was this
Obedience Persuade a creature to allow you to inflict a small
amount of pain on it. This can be as subtle as thin needles
under the skin or as overt as a lashing with a whip—
whatever the subject agrees to. If you can legally procure
an individual, such as through legalized slavery, you may
use a purchased subject instead. If no suitable individuals
can be located, coil a spiked chain into a nest and kneel on
it, letting your weight sink your knees into the spikes. Whip
your own back while chanting praises to Zon-Kuthon. Gain a
+2 sacred bonus on saving throws against spells that deal hit
point damage.Slavery was less important to the economy of Nidal then it was to its religious practices. Given the whole evil BDSM lead by a Cenobite thing.
Religious rites involving human sacrifice kind of nessitate a disposable population to draw from to get sacrifices from.
Unlike in real life where typically human sacrificial rituals were performed sparingly. Cults devoted to more malign deities practice the ritual far more often then real cultures that had it as an element.
Mostly because it makes them better villains.
Ah. I was searching the Nidal book which was the biggest deep dive we got on them, and the stuff on slavery in there was about the darklands so it didn't seem like it was that much there compared to say 1e cheliax which is interesting. That was what I was talking about that it wasn't there in their deep dive book compared to other lands despite also being an evil land ruled by cenobite lord.
I admit that I do like the Obedience, not the slavery part, but I like that the first part is to persuade someone to inflict pain since he wants you to spread pain.
In cultures that practiced it they were drawn from captured enemy soldiers who would have been enslaved in most other cultures or slaves.Of course sometimes their own children were taken as sacrifices like in Carthage.
On a side note I always would have found it interesting that a god of some kind required human or elven or dwarves sacrifices only to then lavish their souls in the afterlife.
Mesoamerican conceptions of sacrificial rituals had the souls of the sacrificed be taken to some of the better afterlives.
It’s worth noting that more civilized cultures waged their fingers at human sacrifice while essentially performing it.
Like how the Romans used it to smear their enemies only to also commit human sacrifice.
that is true. Though in regards to Carthage there is a huge debate IIRC among historians about the tophets and the nature of the burials and the extent of their sacrifice and if they did it to begin with.
But yea Romans were hypocrits when the triumph concluded with a killing.
There’s an uncomfortable element is that so many “evil cults” in fantasy are based on smear campaigns of minority faiths.Of course lot all of them. I heard about a GM making Zon-Kuthon worship resemble a messed up version of Catholicism.
Thats not cool at all.
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As for slavery, while I am not up on if anything replaced it in every evil realm, I vastly prefer the change to Cheliax. Where Cheliax doesn't have slavery but a web of contracts to bind someone with the law. This feels far more devilish and fitting for the nation that worships Asmodeus then slavery as we know it. Keeping a populace controlled through contracts just gives me Hell vibes and I so much prefer that, it also just feels far more fun to play then slavery and gives far more options for stories.
Sounds like what used to be called "indentured servitude," which I think is fine as long as the servants (slaves) signed their contracts in return for legitimate (or at least "flimsy") consideration.
I also think that "slavery" as punishment for committing crimes is also ok in places like Cheliax.
Slavery based on race or other immutable characteristics is not cool, and I am glad Abrogail II abolished it. Cheliax should be a land of merciless meritocracy, not a land of outright racism.
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The thing I think needs more explaining is why Cheliax stopped it within the country though.
I absolutely GUARANTEE it was a stratagem on Abrogail II's part.
You have the Bellflower Network and the Firebrands advocating for the abolition of slavery for DECADES (if not longer). During that time these two organizations have been telling the folks of Cheliax how virtuous they are in their abolitionist stances and how dastardly the Thrunes were for maintaining the institution of slavery.
Well, now that slavery has been abolished, who's going to be responsible for all these emancipated folks? Who's going to pay for their housing, food, etc?
I think it's natural to look toward the organizations who've been bragging about how much better they were than House Thrune.
That's right...Abrogail II has decided to make these groups pay for taking care of the slaves instead of their former masters. In this way, she is fighting them with economics instead of force.
She's attempting get rid of these groups by bankrupting them since she's had some trouble killing them.
Certainly an out-of-the-box way of thinking on Golarion, but Asmodeus is pretty clever.
We'll see if it works.
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It does feel more thematic for the relatively stable Hell-themed authoritarian country to not have actual slavery, with its inherent violence, but more "indentured servitude" and various contractual shenanigans that make you technically free but for all practical purposes keep you in bondage. It's just that you're no longer buying and selling "a person" but their debts and contractual obligations.
Is that why Nethys write up in Divine Mysteries doesn’t lean into the older lore about his “madness” through he clearly does see the world through a different lens then most people.Yup; this is an excellent example of us keeping an established element but treating it more responsibly.
So I am curious. I know you are a big fan of Lovecraftian themes and stories. Yet one of the big things with Lovecraftian and eldritch stories is madness, going insane, and things beyond man's comprehension. The great old ones and outer gods were mentioned in Divine Mysteries, so it makes me wonder how they and their cults will be handled in the future. :)
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Creative Director
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So I am curious. I know you are a big fan of Lovecraftian themes and stories. Yet one of the big things with Lovecraftian and eldritch stories is madness, going insane, and things beyond man's comprehension. The great old ones and outer gods were mentioned in Divine Mysteries, so it makes me wonder how they and their cults will be handled in the future. :)Is that why Nethys write up in Divine Mysteries doesn’t lean into the older lore about his “madness” through he clearly does see the world through a different lens then most people.Yup; this is an excellent example of us keeping an established element but treating it more responsibly.
For some examples of Lovecraftian themes I've personally put into 2nd edition adventures and how we handle those sorts of things, I'd point you toward:
Abomination Vaults (Nhimbaloth is my own invention but is part of the Lovecraftian mythos of Golarion)
Chapter 5 of Seven Dooms for Sandpoint (presents a group of Azathoth worshiping deros)
Malevolence (Features a Lovecraftian villian of my own creation, but that leans deep into those themes)
Book 3 of Gatewalkers (takes a bit of inspiration from Lovecraft's "At the Moutnains of Madness")
The basic version is: Same as always, but with a combination of content warnings about mental health themes as needed, and simply by avoiding printing things like "madman" or "crazy cultists" or other outdated turns of phrase. Cosmic horror and psychological horror aren't leaving Pathfinder products, though.
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So I am curious. I know you are a big fan of Lovecraftian themes and stories. Yet one of the big things with Lovecraftian and eldritch stories is madness, going insane, and things beyond man's comprehension. The great old ones and outer gods were mentioned in Divine Mysteries, so it makes me wonder how they and their cults will be handled in the future. :)Is that why Nethys write up in Divine Mysteries doesn’t lean into the older lore about his “madness” through he clearly does see the world through a different lens then most people.Yup; this is an excellent example of us keeping an established element but treating it more responsibly.For some examples of Lovecraftian themes I've personally put into 2nd edition adventures and how we handle those sorts of things, I'd point you toward:
** spoiler omitted **
The basic version is: Same as always, but with a combination of content warnings about mental health themes as needed, and simply by avoiding printing things like "madman" or "crazy cultists" or other outdated turns of phrase. Cosmic horror and psychological horror aren't leaving Pathfinder products, though.
Cool. cool. This is something that has in general I wondered about. Cosmic horror and lovecraftian elements are something I like. But some of the language that comes with it, has as someone who is autistic always felt odd. Still glad to see it and I shall check those parts out. :)
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Creative Director
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Cool. cool. This is something that has in general I wondered about. Cosmic horror and lovecraftian elements are something I like. But some of the language that comes with it, has as someone who is autistic always felt odd. Still glad to see it and I shall check those parts out. :)
Fair enough, and a good example why we've taken pains to be more aware and considerate in how we present our content overall. That said, horror's whole point is to challenge and unsettle. It's for sure not for everyone, and we try to note horror themes with content warnings when they appear in our works as well.
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(Talked about slavery and drow...)EDIT: Spoilering to prevent wall of text syndrome...
** spoiler omitted **...