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So what is her problem with clone then since it basically same thing(only diffrence is body)?
The "If Pharasma has decided it's your time" clause in Clone, Resurrection, etc. is basically to signpost to the GM "you are allowed to shut this down through divine fiat if you think this is getting out of hand" in a place where the GM can point to it in the book if the players object that their Clone shenanigans are getting out of hand. Like the PCs should clearly not be able to resurrect absolutely anybody, and "Pharasma says no" is why you can't guarantee why you can't resurrect whoever had that skull you found to ask them questions.
I would flavor it via "Pharasma can't object to anybody living past their prescribed expiration" since Prophecy can no longer be trusted, but there might be some cases where it can.
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That is not true. I would be very interested to see where your claim that she ‘invented the concept of mortals’ comes from. My understanding is that the First World was the original experiment by many of the gods - not just Pharasma - and the concept of souls and primessence (is that the correct term?) was created when the gods realized they needed a balance to the chaos of the Maelstrom and the growing demonic plane. The First World was the experiment that made them come to this understanding. Giving mortals the choice to decide where they would end up was a compromise between all the gods.
Once again, Trip.H, I’d be interested to see where you’re getting that information because I might need to rethink my multi-planar campaign if you have information that I’m missing about the Golarion setting.
This is spread out a bit, and I want to clarify this was not Phar alone, and is often credited in ways like "primordial deities."
But 100% yes. The concept of a mortal soul, mortals themselves, and the whole life-death cycle, was an invention of the gods. POSIWID (The purpose of a system is what it does) and all the gods benefit from Pharasma's system feeding them souls. We can easily say that the outcome of this soul cycle feeding the gods is "why" it was invented.
https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/First_World
https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Soul
I did learn/re-learn just now that apparently Gnomes made the switch from immortal fae to mortal beings because Pharasma waved her hand in an act of collective punishment and made it so. In hindsight, something like that would need the intervention of a rather "Big Gun" god to change the fundamental nature of a whole species like that.
Kinda wild to think about all the gnomes that had their immortality taken away like that, and that Phar is capable of doing it to other fae species if she wants. Don't try to copy her River of Souls idea guys, else she might enslave your entire species in her soul-cycle and give yall the Bleaching. Yikes.
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I wonder if James Jacobs or another staff could help clear up any of your issues or concerns regarding Pharasma?
Oh, I think the oft-overlooked tyranny at the heart of the pathfinder cosmos is actually great, and part of why so many rich stories can emerge from it.
I'm merely making observations and clearing up errors so misinfo doesn't get repeated and make it harder to find real info.
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where do you take it from that pharasma endorses such contracts?
She does maybe not care in particular about them - because that only makes your soul take another route to oblivion
In the end, the stream of souls continues unburdenedThe difference is that (lets go with the devil magic powers) whoever did sell their soul ends up as asmodeus pawn or fuel for a while, after which everything continues as it would have anyway
Pharasma doesnt forbid those contracts because they have little to no influence on the penultimate outcome
But it is hard to imagine that she endorses them
(I mean, I could see why she would do it, if the soul goes straight to hell she doesn't have to deal with it)She considers soul contracts valid reason to claim the soul, even when the ethos of the mortal does not match the plane. (I'm guessing this is why souls start their time in hell being tortured, great way to make people super evil) Her direct agents hand these mortals to devils and gods for promises made by mortals during their life. That's what it means to officially endorse something like that. If she did not endorse slavery, all those contracts would be considered invalid in her court and ignored.
Note that this entire notion of respecting contracts over matching soul ethos does absolutely throw the true importance of ethos matching into question. If souls can be made to align after they arrive, that invalidates a whole lot of the supposed "need" for the current system's methods.
We also know thanks to Belcora, that one can promise the soul of another to a devil in exchange for ___. Anyone with physical control of another person (like their child) could literally hand that person to the devil, claim the reward, and end the contract.
Considering something or straightout endorsing it are still two different things. Do you have a direct source on the Psychopomps delivering those souls? I was always under the impression that, since they are marked to go to a specific place anyway no interference was required.
The important thing of pharasma is tha souls go to a place they can reasonably be to 'live out' their existance and become quintessence by some point. Her point of view is probably like 'well, you made a deal to go there, so you go there' while for everybody else she takes care of the service that they go where it would fit best.
And looking up Belcorra - I admit to not knowing the AP - seems to be a unique cultist/ghost. A unique adversary who does really bad things on a (comparatively) small scale has little influence on the general dealing of things.
But a unique cultist/ghost who does some really f%+&ed up stuff is an excellent plothook and adversary for a group of players.
And she was ultimately defeated by a group of adventurers, so there was little actual damage done
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So here's the thing: Pathfinder, and by extension Golarion, is a made-up world where the gods are real, and magic is a fundamental part of existence. That sort of thing changes how religion and faith works on a deep, fundamental level, and it gets worse if you approach it from an omniscient perspective as a writer of a fantasy world or a reader of a fantasy world.
Keep in mind that no one who lives in Golarion exists in a reality where they can pick up the books we create about Golarion. They don't have those resources, and it's not really appropriate to assume everyone who lives on Golarion has read every book about Golarion that has been published.
As for Pharasma... the key there is to remember she's not human, nor does she have a human mind. She is, as are many deities, unknowable by human minds, including those that invent her. That's part of the mystery and terror and beauty and problem with matters of belief and mythology when they're presented as fantasies by a content creator, and not presented as guesswork from an in-world author.
My own personal take about the OP's question (and this, I MUST STRESS, is my take alone and IS NOT MEANT to be "canon" for Golarion in any way):
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Belcora made a contract where her side of the bargain was to deliver a mortal soul to a devil. The devil is stuck, not wanting to return to hell without the soul, but is already a century ish beyond how long he thought this would take.
The contract itself is presented as a valid arrangement, and Pharasma will not interfere if the players deliver a descendant of the promised soul to the devil to get him to go away and skip violence.
So when people claim that all mortals are fairly judged before Phar's court, this is one more reason why that's not true. Devils can take you straight to hell before you are even dead, and Pharasma still chooses to send no-contract souls that match ethos of "Lawful Evil" to specially that same plane that poaches mortals like this.
This is not a secret revelation, but it's easy to overlook.
Think about all the crazy cults of golarion offering sacrifices to their dark gods. Phar has a crazy amount of knowledge to know that souls are constantly being traded and bypassing her system in this way, but she does not take action on the back end to punish these gods.
It's rather narrowly limited to messing with the system and river itself that'll piss her off and provoke a reaction / punishment.
Uh, or you can rob a tomb and get cursed by her directly. Already almost forgot that's still a thing. Yup, that's Pharasma.
While this appears inconsistent, it's exactly how a tyrant operates. It's not about the mortals themselves and their outcome, it's about Phar being in control, and appearing to be in control. Devils of Hell show their submission to Phar by policing the river and keeping it safe from fishers, all the while they pilfer and poach as many souls directly from the material realm as they can. (I think the "loophole" is that the devils can say "a mortal did it" when a cultist hands a child to a summoned devil)
That kind of contradictory norm is suuuuper common once you start looking for it.
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Uh, or you can rob a tomb and get cursed by her directly. Already almost forgot that's still a thing. Yup, that's Pharasma.
Any god can curse you at any time. Abadar can curse you for stealing, Arazni can curse you for wronging someone as can Calistria, Asmodeus can curse you for trying to get out of a contract, Cayden Cailean can curse you for being a coward, Erastil can punish you for laziness, Irori can curse you for being unflexible, Rovagug can punish you for building something, etc.
These acts of Divine Intercession are extremely rare, and we have rules for them mostly to allow the GM to apply them when they make the story more interesting. Pharasma isn't going to curse everyone who disrespects the dead any more than Abadar is going to curse everyone who steals or Asmodeus is going to punish everybody who is trying to wiggle out of a contract. These things happen thousands of times a day on millions of different worlds without the Gods intervening, but they could if they (read: the GM) really wanted.
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The Laws of Mortality differ from Earth's atheism anyway, and are closer to misotheism (belief in and hatred of deities). Ezren, for example, is listed as an atheist, yet believes creatures called gods exist and do divine deeds. And he dislikes how worship of them & the contention from that has lead to personal woe. So he might better be called anti-theist (against theism/worship of gods; though often in our world read as anti-religion or gnostic atheism).
As for Golarion atheists who disbelieve in gods, thinking it's all a scam with gods being fictional, they'd become enlightened after death and have some pondering to do. And atheists who against our definition do believe in gods, but that they aren't godly enough so want nothing to do with them, they'd adapt to whatever data they learn. Much like for Earth's atheists, of which I'm one, there'd be a diverse array of answers/philosophies/personalities with most simply accepting what is and moving on with their lives. Think of how many patients with a fatal diagnosis become exemplars of calmness and inner peace, handling their finite future better than most everyone around them. And I know many who dread the thought of an infinite lifespan so not only accept death, but embrace that they will die (just for most not yet!). Sure, there'll often be phases as one adjusts, much like with grief, but ultimately most kinda have to acknowledge that what is is, and it'd be the same in Golarion.
Or maybe this will spark a GM's adventure idea for some grand mortal revolt against the cosmos, extrapolating from what NPCs have tried already. Though we as objective viewers know that that too will ultimately prove fruitless, and any Golarion immortals will cease to be, both in their world and in ours once heat death arrives.
Cheers. :-)
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I think atheism in Golarion is more like "as I go on with my day, and do the things I need to do, and then the things I want to do, at no point do Gods enter my thoughts, and I am not less happy, successful, etc. because they do not." Like in Pathfinder you can't really disagree with "the Gods exist" because it's just a fact that they do, it would be like saying "there's no such thing as a scorpion."
Atheism in Pathfinder should be akin to "I do not benefit from checking my boots for scorpions, because I live my life in a way where I do not run into scorpions" (e.g. they don't live in the place I do because of climate, I don't leave my boots outside, I wear sandals instead of boots, or I am immune to scorpion venom for whatever reason, etc.) So the atheist in Golarion should be someone who does not see benefit in celebrating the Gods, participating in religion, fearing the gods, etc. so they just don't do those things. There might be religion-adjacent community events that they might participate in for the community, but not the religion.
The interesting thing about Rahadoum is that it is a mix of that kind of atheist, and the misotheistic kind. People in Rahadoum disagree with each other about a great number of things, so why not this? Some Rahadoumi folks will believe that celebrating the Gods because they are powerful is ridiculous, but they would also believe that objecting to Pharasma's judgement is ridiculous because she is, in fact, very powerful. You just treat the experience like "the dragon has asked you to relocate your chickens, because the coop you have built is an annoyance to the dragon" you understand that this is something you should just go along with, since you have a good idea what the alternative is like and it's worse.
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I think atheism in Golarion is more like "as I go on with my day, and do the things I need to do, and then the things I want to do, at no point do Gods enter my thoughts, and I am not less happy, successful, etc. because they do not." Like in Pathfinder you can't really disagree with "the Gods exist" because it's just a fact that they do, it would be like saying "there's no such thing as a scorpion."
Atheism in Pathfinder should be akin to "I do not benefit from checking my boots for scorpions, because I live my life in a way where I do not run into scorpions" (e.g. they don't live in the place I do because of climate, I don't leave my boots outside, or I am immune to scorpion venom for whatever reason, etc.) So the atheist in Golarion should be someone who does not see benefit in celebrating the Gods, participating in religion, fearing the gods, etc. so they just don't do those things. There might be religion-adjacent community events that they might participate in for the community, but not the religion.
The interesting thing about Rahadoum is that it is a mix of that kind of atheist, and the misotheistic kind. People in Rahadoum disagree with each other about a great number of things, so why not this? Some Rahadoumi folks will believe that celebrating the Gods because they are powerful is ridiculous, but they would also believe that objecting to Pharasma's judgement is ridiculous because she is very powerful. You just treat the experience like "the dragon has asked you to relocate your chickens, because the coop you have built is an annoyance to the dragon" you understand that this is something you should just go along with, since you have a good idea what the alternative is like and it's worse.
Dragons forcing the relocation of chicken coops...So that's why eggs are so expensive!
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Treerazor also respawns even if he's killed. And has yet to truly die. Says so in his own entry.
He's likely to die next month, for keeps.
But there are two basic problems with this approach:
- Literal gods do not have stats specifically so that they cannot be killed by anything except the story.
- While this is a game with a lot of combat rules, reaching for violence is not the best answer for everything.
Like if a dragon decides to talk to you instead of just smashing something and eating your livestock, that's a more powerful thing showing you respect, and the best response might *not* be "violence."
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There'd also be the question of how much does one consider one's essence to actually be part of one's identity. It's not under your control, not even subconsciously, so why should someone care what happens to it? It's less you than your body which you can interact with, and people deal with losing that already. Reusing your essence is akin to corpse robbing. Sure it might feel icky to consider, but if it was commonplace would you really be put out? And your essence will literally help reality continue.
I think the dragon analogy holds. The deities can't make you worship them (well, without magic), but they sure can bully you and your essence around wherever they want. And since you lose your identity after death. Meh.
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Very likely, but the point stands of how many years it took for one adventuring party to finally finish him off for good.
Only a few years. I first created him back in 1989 or thereabouts, and ran the adventure I wrote around him, which was also titled "The Secret of Deathstalk Tower," a few years later in college and the group of PCs took him out then.
On a more serious note... the whole point of Spore War is that it's the one where the PCs confront Treerazer and kill him or get killed trying.
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You are comparing souls with eggs and livestock? as if having your souls turned into planar mortar is some small favor?
You're right, from an atheist perspective eggs are more important than souls. Eggs can become poultry or breakfast, and both are useful to a living person. Souls have minimal value to a living person- you can't even tell that you have one or if there's anything wrong with it.
Atheists are specifically people who should not be worrying very much about souls.
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You are comparing souls with eggs and livestock? as if having your souls turned into planar mortar is some small favor?You're right, from an atheist perspective eggs are more important than souls. Eggs can become poultry or breakfast, and both are useful to a living person. Souls have minimal value to a living person- you can't even tell that you have one or if there's anything wrong with it.
Atheists are specifically people who should not be worrying very much about souls.
That can ridiculous thing to say since all things that related with your personality and consciousness are part of the soul other can easily see that when removal of the souls basically turn you into corpse even if they are atheist
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What empirical evidence could one (say, a leading academic in Rahadoum) collect that confirms the existence of the soul or its effects? Like presumably with plane shift and observation we could observe shades in the river of souls being processed in the boneyard, but it's entirely valid to view those as the echo of a person and not anything intrinsic or important to the individual that created the echo. Like plainly ghosts exist, but they are distinct from the person they resemble.
Like couldn't any magic that affects "the soul" be instead interpreted as magic that affects the mind or the body instead? You could certainly render someone akin to a corpse with the right application of chemicals or specific kinds of brain damage.
A valid read from a Golarion atheist is that the thing that leaves your mortal shell and passes through the river of souls to be judged by Pharasma is not, in fact, you. It is simply a reflection or an echo that marks your existence. You could even go to the boneyard and interview shades and they would tell you that the fragmented dream-like memories they experience feel like a different person was involved in those.
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I might have to be with Vasyazx on this one--it doesn't take high level magic to know that you have a part of your anatomy called the 'spirit', or at least no higher than knowing you have an appendix. In a world with a tangibly provably afterlife (albeit, the proofs for this are almost exclusively the domain of high level magic and typical divine in nature), it wouldn't make sense to not be concerned with your soul.
Where I differ is that I feel like in Rahadoum there's probably a basic class on the nature of the soul/afterlife/cosmos that teaches citizens, "So lots of religions tell you that if you worship the gods, you will go to a good afterlife. Good news is, we've confirmed that if you're a good person you'll still have a pleasant and happy afterlife, and if you live an uncomplicated life you'll probably be sorted by a psychopomp official without a god ever personally taking an interest in your case." I mean, maybe Pharasma still literally has to rubber stamp every single soul that passes through and personally transform them, but for most I think that's that.
Sure, I would expect Rahadoum of all places to foster the occasional dissident who'd rather stopper up the whole machinery of the cosmos in protest that the gods were ever involved at any stage. These plausibly are those who have read up on their Geb and believe Pharasma is lying about the cosmos collapsing. Lots of people believe lots of things for a variety of reasons. I just wouldn't expect them to be super common vs. the peasant Rahadoumi farmer who wants to live a simple life and knows that when they pass on their soul will end up on a pleasant farm somewhere up the great mountain of Heaven, probably well away from anybody who believed they had to bow to Erastil to get there (it's supposed to be a pleasant place for both of them, after all)... unless maybe by chance they cross paths and realize both their respective authorities lied to them a little bit about what the other was like, and then perhaps they start meeting each other for coffee and eventually it turns serious one day when they each catch themselves thinking that this man has such handsome eyes... wait where was I again?
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A valid read from a Golarion atheist is that the thing that leaves your mortal shell and passes through the river of souls to be judged by Pharasma is not, in fact, you. It is simply a reflection or an echo that marks your existence. You could even go to the boneyard and interview shades and they would tell you that the fragmented dream-like memories they experience feel like a different person was involved in those.
Okay, that's a fair point. I still lean on the side of knowing enough about the soul to take a vested interest in its health, but that's a fair enough point.
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"all things that related with your personality and consciousness are part of the soul"
-citation needed
Don't we have counterexamples of soulless creatures?
Hasn't there been magic which duplicates an individual's personality & consciousness? And stores it. As PossibleCabbage noted, it's really, really hard to verify "soul" is more than a useful analogy for the self, which the mind on its own suffices to explain.
And there seems a difference between souls & essences in Golarion, where in Rahadoum they might think of the transition to being a soul (or mind) another phase before the perma-death of being transformed into essence. Wherever that essence goes, it isn't you (except with some distinct narrative choices making exceptions for individuals). And essence might be thought of some element for the mind much like matter particles for the body. And some planar creatures have physical bodies made of that essence, so now there's this odd conversion immaterial soul to material bodies which can be explained by calling essence another kind of material.
Oh boy, philosophical conferences must get crazy on Golarion! And that's even before adding in specific gods (some of whom might misinform) and the whole shebang outside their knowledge too. And what's Baba Yaga, with her exposure to Earth philosophies and a 40 Int (!) (PF1, +15 in PF2 until updated). She's going to have extrapolated more than we're capable of, even with our objective campaign books. (In Reign of Winter, I had it so she understood the underlying d20 nature of reality, though she didn't connect it to dice, rather to a platonic substrate.)
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An important thing about metaphysics in a fantasy world to feel "real" to me is:
- very few people know the "actual truth" of anything.
- many people have extensive theories to explain various magical phenomena.
- these theories mostly disagree with each other, but they all have supporting evidence.
Like the average person on Golarion should have no idea what happens when they die. The actual role of religion in the game world should focus more on "what you should do when you're alive" than anything that might happen after.
Like I'd be happier if there were wildly different notions of the afterlife that populate through the various communities of Golarion. Like why shouldn't someone believe that a giant ghost bear carries them off to her den when they die?
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What empirical evidence could one (say, a leading academic in Rahadoum) collect that confirms the existence of the soul or its effects? Like presumably with plane shift and observation we could observe shades in the river of souls being processed in the boneyard, but it's entirely valid to view those as the echo of a person and not anything intrinsic or important to the individual that created the echo. Like plainly ghosts exist, but they are distinct from the person they resemble.
Like couldn't any magic that affects "the soul" be instead interpreted as magic that affects the mind or the body instead? You could certainly render someone akin to a corpse with the right application of chemicals or specific kinds of brain damage.
A valid read from a Golarion atheist is that the thing that leaves your mortal shell and passes through the river of souls to be judged by Pharasma is not, in fact, you. It is simply a reflection or an echo that marks your existence. You could even go to the boneyard and interview shades and they would tell you that the fragmented dream-like memories they experience feel like a different person was involved in those.
They can do quite a lot actually
They can create clone and then kill themselves to personally experience process of body hopThey can die and personally visit boneyard and then get ressurected via ritual
They can remove their souls and put into soul jar soul cage or construct
all above overall confirm connection between your soul and personality since moving your soul would also move your pesonality alongside it
Shade are diffrent matter in that case since we know that they are metaphysically fully cut from prevous peson they were since spell they react towards specifc peson no longer recgonize them as such (ressurection and clone) and we can say that anything is shared between them besides some unclear memories but i suppose process of turning souls into shade already would make some people have deep aversion towards afterlife in general
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I'm pretty sure it's been established that if you die and visit the boneyard, you don't actually remember your time in the boneyard.
It's like getting drunk, your metaphysical brain forgot to record and store your time there. You did as you'd do, but you can only make educated guesses to the sort of thing you'd do.
Now, planehopping to the Boneyard is a different matter.
I suppose your companions can summon your own sprit via Call Spirit to confirm you presence in boneyard or you can send another person there via plane shifit or projection to talk with you pesonally and confirm that as well
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the entry for homunculus does a pretty good job of showing what happens in golarion if a creature is created with no (not enough) soul. They just can't have proper agency, autonomy, desire, etc. If by common chance the death of the creator imparts a bit more soul to get past that "enough" line, then the homunculus can become more of a proper person.
Welp, it was worse / more grim than I remembered.
This doesn't result in a truly soulbound homunculus (see sidebar), since only a fragment of the soul is left behind, but this is still enough to grant the homunculus a greater personality, free will of its own, and perhaps most importantly, the ability to speak. Over time, a few of these “awakened” homunculi even go so far as to become convinced that they are the reincarnation of their prior masters, although their actual personalities never quite reach the depth and complexity of a truly living creature. They are, at best, caricatures of the master, and at worst, they become awful, bitter-minded parodies of life itself. Still, a free-willed homunculus might pursue studies in its creator's class, becoming a unique creature with the abilities of that class if time and fortune permit.
It's still kinda bizarre to claim that any golarion native would insist on the soul being an irrelevant or dismissable part of everyday life/health.
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I suppose your companions can summon your own sprit via Call Spirit to confirm you presence in boneyard or you can send another person there via plane shifit or projection to talk with you pesonally and confirm that as wellI'm pretty sure it's been established that if you die and visit the boneyard, you don't actually remember your time in the boneyard.
It's like getting drunk, your metaphysical brain forgot to record and store your time there. You did as you'd do, but you can only make educated guesses to the sort of thing you'd do.
Now, planehopping to the Boneyard is a different matter.
It'd be great if you could throw references to where that's coming from. With giant and long running settings like this, there's no way details that small have been 100% consistent, but it still helps to see how exactly it was depicted and how recently it was printed.
In the Spiral of Bones comic, Valeros remembered it fine, and there was no provided "exception" to make that happen.
He also died via stabbing at the end, to send him and the Wiz soul to the boneyard, but talked them into outright resurrecting him with no further complications/strings.
So it seems even the average psychopomps & judges can perform that feat from the Boneyard side of things.
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Don't fey lack souls? Or is that a D&D holdover stuck in my mind?
(Heck, I think AD&D elves lacked souls too, with Raise Dead not working on them, only greater magic. Quite old memories I'm drawing on for that one so add those grains of salt.)
Souls could still be re-interpreted as minds (agents) imprinted on essence (a substance), with there being no soul on its own, separate from either. A homunculus isn't getting enough essence to frame its mind, and other extrapolations can cover gaps. There are examples of agents without essence and of essence w/o agency, but are there examples of souls without essence or a mind? Don't souls always retain some residue of the mind which had been contained in that dollop of essence?
That's persnickety, yes, but no more than on Earth where some distinguish one's spirit from one's soul, with mind as a third entity. Unsure how one could parse that, yet it matters to them. *shrug*
Oh, and in Tian one might expect more variance in interpretations & manifestations.
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It's fascinating how strong some of the feelings are around this setting. Reading posts with just so much raw contempt for certain fictional background characters is really interesting.
I guess it's a testament to the overall setting itself that people let themselves get that invested.
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Don't fey lack souls? Or is that a D&D holdover stuck in my mind?
There were some early indications of that which have since been overturned by the River of Souls article in Pyramid of the Sky Pharaoh. Fey are created from bits of soulstuff shedding into the First World when souls traverse into the Universe from their birthplace (or recycle-place) in Creation's Forge.
Fey have souls, they're simply not part of the cycle of souls because the First World was a giant public beta environment cut off from the rest of the cosmos. If a fey dies in the Universe, it's soul goes on as normal to the Boneyard.
This of course means that the lore suggesting that gnomes who immigrated to the Universe gained souls and were trapped in the cycle of life and death are outdated. It doesnt seem like any new lore on why the gnomes emigrated in the first place or what happened to turn them humanoid has been published since.
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The whole point of the afterlife in Golarion is that each soul ascends to one of two fates—reward or punishment. Pharasma is the manifestation of how that fate plays out for every soul; whether she knows it before hand or makes that decision on the spot is something no one, likely not even her, knows for sure, but as with every other mortal, an athiest's soul will either be rewarded or punished in the afterlife. And as with all souls, the exact details vary from soul to soul.
THAT SAID...
While I still stand by what I said in the above quote, in those 13 years, a lot has changed—including my role at Paizo. The company is MUCH bigger than it was 13 years ago, and I'm no longer the creative director of it all—there's far too much for one person to cover in that role at Paizo's scale of being a small company in a niche industry but simultaneously one of the biggest proverbial fish in that industry. Today, we've got multiple creative directors, creative officers, and creative leads who all work together to create Paizo's products. It's a more inclusive and more diverse method but it's also one that's a bit less efficient, and results in no one person really being in the position of being able to off-the-cuff "issue canonical proclamations" about any of the settings we produce.
My advice for folks who are deep-diving into topics like this is to chat with others, look over the things we've said before in print and in public or online, and then decide what's best for your personal game. I've tried to step back from issuing large world-building things like the one above and prefer to let these discussions play out among folks as they have been, but since I know once you say something online it's there forever, I felt the need to step in and provide some context to the above.
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becoming fay seems to be best option here since it allow you preserve most your individuality and remain independent from gods overallThis is actually the opposite impression that I get from the description of souls that become fey (or fae). I could be misremembering, but typically once a soul lands on the First World it transforms into a typical example of a random fey creature. Fey are supposed to have free will, sure, but further going off the fact that fey who die on the FW similarly transform, often not retaining much similarity of personality, I think going to the First World means embracing the logical extremes of the notion that there is no permanent, unchanging state of the self.Assigned to the First World in Pharasma's judgment immediately reincarnate as a type of fey whose behavior aligns with the soul's mortal personality Such souls retain more of their mortal memories than shades of other planes but not enough to recall their mortal lives
Seems that your full pesonality and part of your memories still remains so its better deal than becoming shade
Incidentally, I was in my copy of Planar Adventures looking for other references to fey and souls and found this passage.
"These newcomer souls do not spend time as petitioners [shades]; instead they immediately incarnate as fey creatures, and sometimes retain memories (but not class features) of their previous lives. What sort of fey the soul incarnates as seems random, determined as much by the desire of the soul's Eldest patron as by the capricious nature of the plane itself." [emphasis mine]
Perhaps you have a newer source, but Planar Adventures remains one of the most comprehensive 'new' sources that I know of for this kind of lore barring individual articles from different adventures (such as the Sangpotshi article in Season of Ghosts), so it seems as though becoming a fey involves relatively little self-direction and not much identity retention.
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They can do quite a lot actually
They can create clone and then kill themselves to personally experience process of body hop
They can die and personally visit boneyard and then get ressurected via ritual
They can remove their souls and put into soul jar soul cage or construct
all above overall confirm connection between your soul and personality since moving your soul would also move your pesonality alongside it.
One thing I would observe is that if your experiments require ninth tier spellcasting, the number of people on the planet of Golarion who can actually manage that level of magical skill is pretty small, and they might not be willing to work together.
Like Golarion is a place where heads of state are like 12th-16th level and might not have peers where they can go on dangerous adventures to explore the limits of reality. PCs could certainly do it, but PCs are by nature exceptional.
Like "hey let's go to the Boneyard and interview some Psychopomps to write a paper" is a thing I wouldn't bat an eye at if it was a player who wanted to do that, but I'm wouldn't be sure there's anybody currently walking around on Golarion who has done that, what with two of the most powerful spellcasters running around being undead.
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Oh, Yowzers, I almost didn't notice James' visit above. I love coming up with my own little lore conclusions that fill in the gaps between what it official and what may have been deprecated or has been implied but never said. Occasionally it creates conflict when something is published down the line that doesn't fit into the neat arrangement I had, but that's the cost of doing business in headcanon.
Right now since I'm (still) looking forward to possibly running Season of Ghosts this year, I'm illustrating my own takes on the contrasting roles of the River of Life and the River of Souls. So far I've taken to calling them the "Twin Rivers of Creation" and working with the idea why one might be more or less popularly known in some regions than the other. I'm liking the theory that they aren't nearly as sharply distinct rivers as different philosophies like to treat them--when they know about both courses at all.
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They can do quite a lot actually
They can create clone and then kill themselves to personally experience process of body hop
They can die and personally visit boneyard and then get ressurected via ritual
They can remove their souls and put into soul jar soul cage or construct
all above overall confirm connection between your soul and personality since moving your soul would also move your pesonality alongside it.One thing I would observe is that if your experiments require ninth tier spellcasting, the number of people on the planet of Golarion who can actually manage that level of magical skill is pretty small, and they might not be willing to work together.
Like Golarion is a place where heads of state are like 12th-16th level and might not have peers where they can go on dangerous adventures to explore the limits of reality. PCs could certainly do it, but PCs are by nature exceptional.
Like "hey let's go to the Boneyard and interview some Psychopomps to write a paper" is a thing I wouldn't bat an eye at if it was a player who wanted to do that, but I'm wouldn't be sure there's anybody currently walking around on Golarion who has done that, what with two of the most powerful spellcasters running around being undead.
Ressurecction ritual and Planar Servitor avalible for anyone who is expert in religion and don't require you to be caster at all so you dont need to be high level or caster to acess it and plane shift is seventh not ninth tier and there is other of planar travel measures there. Only high level ritual here is clone but it dont required you to be caster as well. We also dont know number of high level characters at all and some AP provide pretty bug numbers of them in some cases
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I think one of the stickiest problems with Golarion afterlife comes down to a major idea-reality disconnect.
It is that "afterlife" is just an outright misnomer in the world of (/beyond) Golarion presented by the text.
A mortal's death is a big deal transition, but by every metric earthlings care about, a petitioner is very much alive.
Having a physical form made of soulstuff instead of atomic matter is a rather tiny detail that does not cause any physics problems for the petitioner. Leaving their mundane body to rot, any petitioner can travel to Golarion and could more or less resume their old life. (But they'd get swarmed by Phar's enforcers for attempting it.) There is no written "sickness" or "decay" issue that makes it impracticable/impossible. Undead have that whole hunger thing caused by normal souls/bodies being re-wired for negative energy, but there's no "reason" why petitioners can't be free to live as they choose.
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This "not really an afterlife" issue means that there's a writing disconnect/problem where considerations of what happens / should happen to people who are petitioners on a wide systemic scale is/will continue to get mismatched with what is naturally written any time a story zooms in to the point that petitioners are getting names.
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I think I can evoke this problem/dissonance with constructed, but accurate, nonsense:
"Petitioners are all dead, but if you kill them, they die."
Mortal souls are super alive in their own right, but depending on which side the writer's PoV is currently positioned, the writing will treat petitioners as already dead (and therefore "having 0 agency is fine, actually") or the writing will remember that petitioners are just baby outsiders who are not used to their bodies being made of soul-stuff.
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Valeros can die, kidnap his nosoi via mug, and that's "real." But that level of agency and autonomy, which afaik is canon, clashes with how the writing treats petitioners as a whole via Pharasma's systems.
This is how mortals in Golarion's cosmos can accidentally end up existing for the sake being harvested/assimilated/consumed by the gods without their consent. And how Pharasma can accidentally end up a petty tyrant who claims ownership over every mortal soul, even transferring ownership of souls who are pure of virtue to devils of hell because of a single low moment where they signed a contract, likely without the "informed" half of informed consent.
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(And while I'm a big fan of your morally upstanding "duty" type gods, like Anubis who only puts the heart on the scale and removes his judgment from the proceedings,
flawed, "petty tyrant" gods like Zeus are amazing for making interesting narratives and settings. It's not "bad" if Pharasma is a tyrant who does collective punishment (earth war crime) upon whole species.
It forces people to not take anything for granted; you cannot trust the morality of a god above you to be righteous, you cannot autopilot your morality by serving/obeying a god. You must engage with the situation happening around you and flex your own judgement muscles, as scary as that can be.)
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I think there's also a disconnect in how your shade is in no sense "you" after it has gone through Judgement, but Judgment happens at the pace of plot.
Someone could die and not face judgement for 10,000 years and the post-hoc explanation for that is "Pharasma knew that someone was going to come along and resurrect that person in 10,000 years" so she delayed acting. Since the Gods are played by the GM (or other author), any sort of "the GM models omniscience by simply changing things behind the scenes to justify whatever actions the PCs decide they want to do" is reasonable. So you won't get a PC rushed to judgement when their compatriots are likely to resurrect them when they are able, but it will certainly happen to, say, a murder victim where "resurrect the victim and ask them what happened" would short-circuit a mystery the GM is planning.
So from the perspective of respecting the agency of petitioners, the best thing to from their perspective is "forestall judgement as long as possible" since up until their judgement they are essentially the same person and can be resurrected. So we'd need to figure out how to allow judgement to work at the pace of plot (sometimes it takes hours, sometimes it takes millennia) while keeping this in mind. A "Good Place- 'When You're Ready'" door could suffice, I suppose, but doesn't really explain why certain people would be judged immediately.
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Absolutely, this is one of first ~problems that naturally grows out of the "not an afterlife" seed issue.
Like a lot of those resultant "fruit" problems, this one could be more or less "fixed" by an extra dictum from Phar. But because the seed issue is still there, any "fix" is a false one that can only make things "fair enough," you cannot genuinely fix a systemic issue by patching over the end-result.
Example Phar rule "fix":
"All petitioners are judged expeditiously, but after judgement, all petitioners experience "the waiting span" where they live within the Boneyard for a standard lifetime of their species. While the official claimant god or plane is eager to take their soul, this step delaying the proceedings ensures that..."
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But but the problem with "you're judged immediately, but you have to wait for it to take effect" is that a person could die, be resurrected, and then their actions post-resurrection could take into consideration their judgement or perhaps reverse the judgement. Like you could be a villain who post-resurrection becomes a saint or vice versa.
Like redemption is supposed to be possible in Golarion, albeit difficult, and the opposite is all-too easy.
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It wouldn't be a "final" judgement in that case, and would be a waiting time for new evidence, resurrection, etc.
Trying to put the waiting time before the trial of the soul would conflict w/ too much existing canon I think, but it is certainly more intuitive to do it that way and have a standard time delay before the trial itself.
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Yeah, "A Good Place" nailed a best-case scenario for the ultimate end IMO, but the writers had to tweak the flow of time itself for plot reasons via "Jeremy Bearimy". And the show Lucifer pretty much had to wrap the plot up as death more and more became a different kind of life. Having a fleshed out afterlife kinda lessens the solving of murders which formed the original premise. The stakes of season 1 means so little in light of the final seasons. Kind guy got murdered? Good for him! He gets to "live" quite well now.
There's a razor's edge Paizo has had to walk for decades, finessing one way or the other as suits the plots of each AP touching on that while trying to retain the gravitas of mortal doings for all the other APs. We've already kinda lost eternal reward/punishment if oneself isn't oneself anymore. Not that I'm going to encourage rigor as if there's a correct answer when current narrative needs override past "truths" (and IMO must & should).
Which is to say, Golarion's cosmos has a bit of Jeremy Bearimy vibe to it. There might be some "dot on the i" adventure someday totally disconnected from previous metaphysics. And I'm totally fine with that, as long as its narrative pays off.
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This is how mortals in Golarion's cosmos can accidentally end up existing for the sake being harvested/assimilated/consumed by the gods without their consent.Such a accurate description of the issue I have with the setting , I just wish the atheists would put a little bit more of a fight than dying and accepting your fate.
Yup, I resonate with that quite a lot. Kinda hard to fight a system of control/consumption you have no awareness of though.
Learning that the whole point of your existence was to be melted down into essence for the benefit of another is pretty rough, and that's without the degree of betrayal that a god-faithful person might feel when they learn that every suffering person in existence, every child who sh.ts themselves to death from cholera, is suffering because having "free will" and being hands off ensures the soul grows nice and plump before harvest time.
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To apply that to Golarion stories in a healthy way, imo it works best if there's an underground & secretive group trying to A: spread the truth that petitioners are healthy outsiders "wrongly" forced into Phar's judgement, and B: to find/develop a safe harbor for escapee's to live w/o Phar's agents chasing them, and possibly even orchestra underground-railroad style escapes from the river / rescue the Hunted from Abaddon.
Basrakal makes for the perfect safe harbor destination away from Phar, as they are already under the shadow of the maelstrom explicitly to avoid the gods' reach. You can also amplify the Proteans as a faction and make them more involved and in direct opposition to Phar's system. A still-acting "inside the system" god that makes for a potential ally would be Milani. Any herald of a former or dead god also makes for a great "subvert Pharasma to help mortals" candidate, but the core of any of these stories would be secrecy & deception.
Pharasma has the power to wave her hand and end/punish all involved, so everything revolves around information, and how that faction is perceived. A "victory" could be to gather & frame some unholy materials so that the investigating psychocomps think a cell was some group of soul-burning necromancers, and avoid being IDed as river-fishing for the sake of freeing people from the cycle. Even simply downplaying the scale of an operation could make the difference between needing to catch-kill a single Marut to avoid them reporting back, or a whole cadre of endgame outsiders arriving w/ a "lowly" L15 Marut as the tracker.
This "wow, my life/faith was based on a lie" type revelation can also make Daemons as a faction 10x more interesting, as they can eagerly offer many of the "horrifying truths" that could in-story genuinely break a character into nihilism, temping the characters as "the only" option that directly opposes Phar's tyranny. Even when a faction is (comically) evil, they can still become much more interesting if they oppose a legit injustice or two. Daemons/Abaddon also have the detail where the corruption of the plane (and it's occupants) appears to have a specific cause that was not there originally, and in theory a daemon without the eclipse's influence would be neutral. Unlike most planes, Abaddon was not "created" by any god, and was more or less discovered by accident as the place where mortals washed ashore from the river. Afaik it was rather blank before the eclipse happened.