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Like it is not surprising that "you got godstuff on you and now you glow funny, we should lock you up while we figure out what's going on" polls well in Rahadoum, since the people in the diegesis are not privy to the game mechanics.
I think in a lot of countries on Golarion if your neighbor started glowing after a god died, you would be very concerned about that. The difference between one place and another is that the State might not be equipped to intervene in "mysterious glowing neighbors" in most places, but in Rahadoum it is.
But this is a clear case of "you haven't done a crime or anything, we just want to understand what's happening and make sure you're not contagious."
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And as to why there isn't another atheist country with a better representation....my honest response is because it doesn't seem likely unless it's institutionally enforced. Any country that has religious freedom is probably not going to be majority atheist (especially in Golarion). And even if you had a city where that happened to be the case, it's unlikely to the defining feature.
Rahadoum is an anti-theocratic (if that's even a thing) country, but it's basically still just a theocratic country if you consider how theocratic countries behave and equate the Laws of Mortality as a "religious belief".
You're fixated on the idea that Rahadoum is atheist/anti-theist/misotheist. We're fixated on the fact that they persecute people (sometimes for things that happen to them beyond their control, see Godsrain consequences) and don't have freedom of religion.
The fact that all nations are run by institutions is precisely why Rahadoum pings so hard on my yikes meter.
It is entirely arbitrary / writers choice that Rahadoum became anti-theist, and it is by writer's choice that they are colored as "bad" because of this choice. You can claim that Rahadoum's bad because they persecute people, but in fact this is not how it's presented. The (very real) injustices of Rahadoum are presented as extensions of this anti-god stance. There's not a corrupt tax system that hurts some subset of citizens, no hurtful conscription, etc. Not even a people-pleasing corrupt demagogue with political power.
It's entirely written so that Rahadoum's "badness" is because of their rejection of the gods. This is the only way writers can say some belief or idea is "bad;" they write various harms to be as directly resultant of the idea as possible.
Rahadoum is as "anti-theism is bad" of a writer thesis as it gets.
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Despite the yikes & hypocritical writing, it's an unrelated face-palm that the thesis rings incredibly hollow.
All institutions cause harm, and it's naive to pretend that the religious orders are clean. In order to say "Rahadoum is bad because they harm the innocent Oracles" that harm must be greater than the other institutions that don't get the same "bad" label. (hence, hypocritical)
This is why Rahadoum's backstory matters. How many innocent Alahazras would it take to reach the level of harm caused by the oath wars? Nations do not get to just blip from war-devastation into a perfectly morally just society, even if Paizo is pretending they can with all the slavery poofing. It sucks to deal with relativism, but it is reality.
It is incredibly wrong to execute people for spontaneously manifesting diving magic, but that still exists within a wider context, where red mantis assassins are apparently still attacking them for being kicked out of the country.
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You cannot ignore that Rahadoum is presented as bad *because of* their "irrational anti-divine" institution, to a comical degree. I cannot find a single wiki-visible (non-slavery) harm this nation is supposed to do / have done that's not in the name of keeping the gods out.
Yet there is plenty wiki-visible info that informs that Rahadoum is under constant subversion / attack from religions and their agents.
It already stretches belief that "Foreign faith practitioners are welcome in Rahadoum, however, as long as they do not proselytize or perform religious rituals" yet children manifesting divine magic are considered as good as dead via the Pure Legion.
Another quick quote while I'm here on the Pure Legion: "Since the Godsrain, a radical faction of the Pure Legion focused on eradicating the newly created "rainblessed" has emerged, calling themselves the "Restoration Regiment"."
So no, it's not the law of the land that Godsrain splashed people are to be killed.
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But this is a clear case of "you haven't done a crime or anything, we just want to understand what's happening and make sure you're not contagious."
"the rest of Rahadoum believes these people are criminals akin to clerics of any faith, regardless of the involuntary nature of this divine power" does not really read like "we're only locking you up for your own good while we figure out what to do" (which still isn't really a great stance).
It always seems like whenever a fiction setting has a group of hyper-atheists there's some contingent of players that aggressively latch onto them like this.
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It always seems like whenever a fiction setting has a group of hyper-atheists there's some contingent of players that aggressively latch onto them like this.
Like the thing about antagonists, is that the GM has to inhabit them in order to pilot them, so trying to make their perspective more nuanced and understandable is natural.
Like the thing about Rahadoum as a hyper-atheist fascist state is that it's boring and one-note. They, as should every fantasy nation, be considered holistically as a place with lots of different people that don't necessarily agree with each other, and who spend more time thinking about things that will never affect the PCs (the weather, local sports, what's for dinner, etc.) than anything of interest to the PCs.
Like there's a general trend in PF2 (a good one) to think of places from the perspective of someone from that place for whom all of this is just normal and understood. The basic nature of the "I had to flee Rahadoum because I randomly gained divine power through no fault of my own" is a story from the outsider perspective and it's annoying.
There's been a large problem specifically with northern Garund that these places mostly had a premise and no depth, and just like Thuvia needs to have more going on than "it's where the Sun Orchid Elixir is", and Osiron needs to have more going on than "It's Fantasy Egypt", Rahadoum needs to have more going on than the mean ol' Pure Legion.
Like a valid read on Rahadoum is that they're attempting to implement Marx's thesis that's basically "if we just make sure everybody has a good life, we will remove the sorts of things that drive people to religion (alienation, hopelessness, etc.)" I mean, if nothing else, Rahadoum is likely the place in the Inner Sea where standards of Public Education are the highest.
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But this is a clear case of "you haven't done a crime or anything, we just want to understand what's happening and make sure you're not contagious.""the rest of Rahadoum believes these people are criminals akin to clerics of any faith, regardless of the involuntary nature of this divine power" does not really read like "we're only locking you up for your own good while we figure out what to do" (which still isn't really a great stance).
It always seems like whenever a fiction setting has a group of hyper-atheists there's some contingent of players that aggressively latch onto them like this.
We are not just looking at this from an in-world PoV, but from a writing perspective.
It is a choice to write that as canon.
And I will criticize the choice not for Rahadoum to have a negative reaction to the Godsrain, but for it to be that needlessly over the top.
Fantasy settings waaaaay over-use execution to begin with. Exile / banishment was far more common, and for good reason. For starters, how exactly do you expect someone who knows they would be killed to respond? And to what extremes they will go to get away with it? Now flip that to banishment.
Yeah, execution would generally be reserved for actual "has happened" acts of harm by foreign bodies, such as secret cultists caught in the act. Can't exactly "banish" them back to their home base without risking more harm.
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The moment Rahadoum knows that the rain-splashed folk are not conspiring with gods/churches, it would be absurdly over the top "bad land evil" for the writer to have execution as even something worth considering.
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Rahadoum wants no religion. This isn't just about the state churches but about all religious people. This includes a kindly priestess of Shelyn who is preaching on the virtues of love and mercy, a wandering desna priestess guiding people through the desert, A priest of Cayden Caillan who operats a caravansea taverna for people to get some drinks and a respite through the desert. Someone who is telling the stories inspired by Grandmother Spider is bad because of harm.
There are many deities whose "church" is highly disorganized if one can even call it organized to begin with. Desna and Shelyn and Cayden Caillian come to mind right away but also many empyreal lords, a fair number of the mwangi and tian xia gods.
You seem to think religion == oppression, but faith is not. That religions by their nature are harmful. of course there is no actual definition of religion that can be defined, it is a know it when one sees it. One of the frameworks that Religion for breakfast taught me was that when looking at religious traditions remember the Three Bs, Belief, Behaviors, and Belonging. Not all traditions put emphasis on Belief, some focus much more on behaviors and belonging though all three are emphasized to some degree it is just a matter of where the focus is. Ethnoreligious groups exist in real life and in Golarion. There are a number of cultural deities that are associated with ancestries like the Anadi and Grandmother spider, or the Kitsune and Daikitsu, Just to name a two, should their cultural practices be removed tied to these deities.
Moreover in Golorian deities and other divine beings are real. It is not a matter of belief. No amount of belief in if Pharasma is real or not, or if she is just a strong mage will change the fact that when you die she and her ushers are presiding judgement over your soul. Sarenrae exists, Desna exists, Asmodeus exists.
Moreover it isn't the only land that is atheistic or doesn't focus on the worship of deities.
There is druma with the prophecies of Kallistrade which while they do have religious members, many don't follow any deity. Though one can make a very good argument that the Kalistocrats are practioners of a non-theistic religion.
Abaslom famously has the Grey Cloaks who are atheistic and there probably are many who are atheistic.
Plenty of Atheists exist in the riverlands, but of course that is a land of wannabe rulers and tyrants but hey a ruler can be as nice as they want to be in the land that they carve for themselves there.
There is the land of Bachunan which complicated. It is an oppressive government that came about following a revolution, but as Grandmother Pei gets older younger revolutionaries are changing things for the better. More religious freedom has been allowed which means traditional deities are seeing a resurgence but many are still atheists. You got people like the nine stripe tigers and their leader Suokasu who has closed down labor camps, freed political prisoners, and so on. So things are improving.
Finally the Laws of Mortality and Atheism in Divine Mysteries are in different pages and more over they have different edicts and anathamas. Atheism has none for both edicts and anathamas while the Laws of Mortality have:
Edicts challenge religious power and the spread of religion, expose and eradicate hidden worship, provide a peaceful and autonomous society in which the people are cared for through social infrastructure
Anathema worship or swear an oath by a deity or religion, solicit or receive divine or religious aid, take a side in conflicts between religions
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The moment Rahadoum knows that the rain-splashed folk are not conspiring with gods/churches, it would be absurdly over the top "bad land evil" for the writer to have execution as even something worth considering.
I think legitimately this is just a way to foreground the basic issue with "Rahadoum just has a problem with Clerics and actively religious people, right? My Divine sorcerer can cast heal all day and not get in trouble, since I'm not in service to any Deity my powers just come from someplace." Since part of the premise of Rahadoum is that this is the place where Divine magic isn't available, so they had to learn science. But Divine Magic probably should be available from Sorcerers, Witches, Oracles, and Summoners since none of those classes require obedience to any deity.
There's probably an adventure they plan on someday in Rahadoum that involves some moderation of the country's policies, since the PCs generally leave Golarion a better place than they found it. It's just that until they write and publish it, we have to leave Rahadoum as the mean and scary atheists so that the adventure works.
Like as a thought experiment, if Rahadoum actually allowed whatever religious people they wanted inside the country, they just didn't allow you to build a temple or to proselytize in public places, what would change other than "Rahadoum is less able to be a villainous actor in a story"? Rahadoum has been ardently atheist for like two thousand years, the average Rahadoumi citizen probably doesn't have that much interest in "so, what's Desna like?" since their entire existence has been filled with other stuff to care about instead.
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The way Rahadoum welcomes and hires "faithful" like druids draws a clear line.
Rahadoum reject religions. This is why foreigner faithful can visit, but their symbols stay home. A religious symbol is a canonized artifact representing that religious order.
Even if the random worshiper is on the very bottom of the church's totem pole, they are still a member of that exact institution.
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The way religions and churches hijack benign faith and twist it into real harm is legendary-level Earth lore.
This is getting heavy, but in the modern zeitgeist, the amount of harm and needless blood shed directly by churches twisting their faithful is massively underestimated and not talked about.
The Catholics were crusading from the 1000s all the way up until 1717. Crusading, as in, fully organized warfare. This excludes the small stuff. And excludes all the violent pogroms, witch hunts, etc.
The crusades are just the sub-set of "direct orders from the church" mass violence campaigns they did.
And yeah, countless benign faithful Catholics were turned into pillaging monsters by their church. Without the church's orders, we can easily say these people would have just remained home on their farm and otherwise not gone to war.
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As I mentioned however many rants ago, you cannot be "free from" religious pressure while others are "free to" proselytize at you.
It's well known that the foreign faithful in Rahadoum will do their own worshiping with the doors shut. This is not prevented nor persecuted, because the people of Rahadoum are still free from those religions.
It's not about banning the expression of personal faith, it's about the rejection of religious institutions and the gods that dictate their rules.
A Rahadoum citizen can make their own "good luck dance" and as far as I can read, it's not a problem. The moment he does some god-salute or draws a god's symbol, everyone freaks out.
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Ahh dude, you are giving me so many ideas for plot hooks and the like.
For starters, how many players take that Pilgrim's Token feat to tie-break initiative rolls?
It'd be perfect "oh shit" to have a party that ends up in Rahadoum, likely by unintentional AP teleportation, get patted down and have their forgotten symbol get discovered as contraband and kick off a verbal encounter.
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Due to there being so many non-god ways to access divine magic, and I'm guessing that the Pathfinder Society canonically operates in Rahadoum, it's kinda required that Rahadoum has a system to allow some Divine casters, even if it's guests-only.
Normal citizens wouldn't have any clue about which tradition fuels a spell anyways, so they'd just need some paperwork to get pre-approval from the few that would check.
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(This is why I think writers have to be absurdly careful with character backstories like Alahazra's, because you "lock in" those specific events as canonical. It's already stretching belief that IDing the magic of a wealthy trader's daughter as Divine type was a death-sentence. Any further "refinement" to Rahadoum's characterization likely will make those events seem even more extreme / incongruous. Paizo does have the secret weapon of "change" though, so it'll work to say that Rahadoum used to be that paranoid/murder happy)
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It does nag at me that Rahadoum is labeled atheist when it's more misotheist/anti-latarist. But again, spellcheck doesn't recognize those words so they're not useful outside specific academic circles. And here, where we had to teach each other. So I understand the choice from a creator's perspective.
It's also from a creator's POV that I accept that we've seen plenty of authoritarian theocracies (many that front as good in ways that might maybe should make earthling believers take note). Overzealous theocracy is a major trope in speculative fiction/RPGs, so it's a fresh twist to see an anti-theocracy in a world w/ tangible gods. Why anti-theocracy rather than just atheist? Atheism doesn't drive stories on its own. And in a cosmos with participatory gods, it's hard to justify any flavor of atheism without some overreaction at its origin. (Which we've seen on Earth w/ revolutions.) God-magic has really, really useful aspects so such a land has to throw the baby out w/ the bathwater. Has to want to. Icky, but quite human. And unstable IMO, but history unfolds as it will.
And if a peaceful land, (yay, atheism FTW!) devs would have had to slap a hurricane or demon-hole into the heart of the country! (Oh, crap, why'd Paizo do that to the atheists?!) Every country in Golarion has active strife or subterfuge, wilderness or wonder making it fitting as the centerpiece of a PC campaign. "Mecca of Science"* wouldn't spark an adventure, nor would the threat of environmental collapse. Thus the overzealous enforcers, and the potential for an underground humanistic movement. Essentially Rahadoum is in the newbie, angry atheist stage, feeling betrayed by its religious upbringing. We'll see how it matures when it recognizes the pluralistic world it lives in. And game theory.
On Golarion, the noteworthy utopia we have where humanity flourishes has an authoritarian enforcing it w/ (formerly?) nefarious methods. (I might be missing some utopia in Tian or beyond. And I do wonder what's become of the dragon & his island of high-level powerhouses since PCs, I believe canonically, altered his outlook.) So yeah, stories of danger & secrets to be told there too.
Note: Religion for Breakfast, mentioned above, is a comparative religion YouTube channel. Highly recommend if interested in such topics from a scholarly perspective.
*Yes, I know what I did there.
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Rahadoum is what I would describe, religiously anti-theistic. They're not atheists who don't want to worship the gods, they're actively antagonistic or even full-on violent to any sort of divine magic; the fact they're willing to persecute people who manifested power after getting rained on during the Godsrain shows that it doesn't matter if you worship a god or not, the populace (largely thanks to the Pure Legion who are certainly the most extreme followers of the Laws of Mortality) are ready to see you punished for being a "God-slave".
Speaking of Pure Legion, that lovely paizo blog short story we had a while ago featuring a Pure Legionnaire demonstrated that they're kinda ready to just start cutting down anyone who seems remotely theistic; it literally featured a Legionnaire questioning a Druid that her nation hired, who saved her life, while keeping a hand on the pommel of her blade, just ready for an excuse to use it and all because Druidism looked a bit like praying in her eyes.
Please do not look at Rahadoum as the atheist nation, that's simply not what they are.
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I don't know how to say this delicately or nicely, but the impression I get of some particular individuals complaints, is that they're upset Atheism doesn't have a representation as a country that is some Utopian paradise. And they're upset that a representation that uses the word atheist (which isn't really atheist at all) is part of an oppressive government.
In a world in which many governments are oppressive, or ineffective.
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While I appreciate the opportunity to hammer this point home, it sucks to be mischaracterized so badly.
I take no issue with Rahadoum having serious problems, nor if it was a corrupt disaster of a state. The issue is opposite of "having good representation."
The issue is that Rahadoum echos RL anti-atheist propaganda to a T.
I take issue with how is it written so that Rahadoum's anti-religious stance is specifically to blame as the "source of badness" in the country. This makes the writing itself an "anti-atheist thesis."
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What you are neglecting to see is that there is a whole lot of gap between "some utopian paradise" , "a place with it's own problems like any other," and "kills teenage girls for pinging divine magic."
It's a writing choice to present Rahadoum as extremely anti-religious as they have.
Religious violence is something that still haunts Earth to this day. And in that world, all claims to the existence and destination of a soul are unproven.
Golarion is a world where your soul only goes to one destination.
If you are a child born to worshipers of two different gods, you cannot "serve" both after death. The gods will bicker over which one gets your soul in Phar's court, and that's that.
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It is a rather insulting writer choice that in a world of gods and monsters, the one nation characterized for its religious violence and oppression is itself anti-religious, when historically it has been people of one faith killing another.
There is no social harm more closely tied to being done by religion, than the religious persecution of others. Heresy, apostasy, witchery, blasphemy, and all the other inquisition-style crimes were and are very real. These "crimes" conceptually require a religion and it's doctrines to be violated in order to exist. Golarion has to invent the tiniest of magical anomalies to even make this persecution story possible ffs.
To take that specifically-religious harm and write that the one group definitionally anti-religious would be *worse* at this kind of oppression than the places with a state religion is a seriously offensive choice to people who know even a little history.
Golarion already pretends / lampshades that the modern day god-worshipers are unrealistically benign, and Paizo has been washing out the little religious violence that used to be relevant to the setting.
And that lamp shading makes this "nope, if you manifest divine magic in Rahadoum, those atheists are gonna kill you" a rather unexpected sucker-punch to many readers.
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The two-faced hypocrisy of the writing is very insulting to anyone who has had to deal with, let alone be victim of, persecution for their own irreligiosity IRL. Even in the USA, its common for kids to legally be kicked out of their homes at their 18th birthday (or illegally before then) because they refuse to conform religiously.
When I read Rahadoum's entry as: "Desert nation unified by a humanistic worldview and rejection of religion."
I do not expect to find it to be a nation where there are regular pat-downs for religious symbols, and teenage girls are killed for pinging divine magic, etc. It's an insult to the term humanism to describe it that way (labels have meaning Paizo! Don't use that word if you don't know what it means!).
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It's fine to make Rahadoum a Soviet style totalitarian state that uses claims of "freeing from godly slavery" as cover for top-down authoritarianism.
It is not okay to write that Rahadoum is a genuinely bad place *because* they are (genuinely) anti-religion in a world with plenty of religious violence to go around.
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I'm going to go there, and say that it is like writing that the one anti-___ state is a horrible place to live, because they don't have ____ as an institution.
And yeah, the Confederacy had a whole lot of propaganda saying that their particular institution was not only righteous, god-approved, and just, but the Confederacy had plenty of "anti-anti" propaganda; fear-mongering writings and pictures with the thesis that the anti-_____ states were terrible places to live *because* of all the free ____s that could roam around and victimize innocent girls unchecked.
One of these works of propaganda was so successful in convincing the readers viewers of its thesis, that it gave rise to huge amounts of violence, and the ~re-birth of the KKK.
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Basically, you gotta be careful you are not "accidentally" writing real world relevant propaganda by means of your fantasy world building.
Anyone who has dealt with ~persecution for leaving their religion in modern times can tell you that one of the most common slanders against atheists is literally this Rahadoum-style persecution of religious people. It's not a joke, and there are loads of places in the usa where the "benign faithful" will shun their atheist children, taking it on faith that atheists are completely amoral. And they'd easily believe that a nation of atheists would be at Rahadoum's caricature level of anti-religious persecution.
(and yes, using the label "atheist" also says a whole lot about the og authors, and whoever is still within Paizo who refuses to change that smoking gun of a label.)
(Good mini-article about one data point on the usa's serious anti-atheists issues. Note that this is post 9-11, and yet atheists were still dead-last.)
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I don't know how to say this delicately or nicely, but the impression I get of some particular individuals complaints, is that they're upset Atheism doesn't have a representation as a country that is some Utopian paradise. And they're upset that a representation that uses the word atheist (which isn't really atheist at all) is part of an oppressive government.
In a world in which many governments are oppressive, or ineffective.
Here's the thing though, Rahadoum should be seen as a less actively antagonistic country than the likes of Cheliax, Nidal, and Geb. But we have, in terms of the presentation in books many more examples of reasonable people who aren't wholly opposed to their own culture or way of life in each of those three places than we have about Rahadoum.
Part of that, of course, is that the northern coast of Garund is somewhat under-represented in Pathfinder adventures, but this is an opportunity! Every country, no matter how unusual they are, should have reasonable people who are more interested in reforming their own country than "drastically upending their civilization."
Like people in Rahadoum should be proud of the fact that matters of public health and public education are managed with the interests of the general public in mind, rather than the competing interests of deities. It's a better system to have a public clinic you can go to in order to get treated for your injuries than to have to go to a temple for this.
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I used the term 'scientific method' specifically, because a lot of people seem to mix up science with technology - Rahadoum heavily emphasises technology, the use of consistent, well documented methods to achieve reliable results not hinged on singular people. However, they reject the scientific method because that's about removing bias from your observation and this is a very biased nation! The moment anything remotely divine occurs they immediately label it as something to remove and that's not scientific at all.Not that I'm trying contradict, however I am curious where the bits about rejecting science come from for Rahadoum.
I was under the impression, that because they reject the divine they were more advanced in science/medicine.
But maybe it's that they reject anything that paint divine associated things in a positive light.
There's no reason to mention science at all in that context. They are extremely biased beyond bigotry, but they are neither using nor denying any aspects of science regarding their ideology. Who knows, their courts might have excellent methodology for determining what's divine or not (whether or not their zealous agents abide to a rigorous standard). The hate's separate, and yes, taken to an irrational level that makes them inflict damage on people...which they'd made their ideology to combat.
So yeah, irrational, hypocritical, and many such anti-humanist, arguably religious traits, but not on a topic science addresses. IMO.
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I don't think there's any reason to believe that Rahadoum is a more biased nation than Cheliax or Thuvia or Osirion or Molthune or Taldor. They just have different biases. Everybody generally operates from the assumption that their experience is normal. Nothing about Rahadoum's anti-divine bias gets in the way of anybody doing research, unless that specific research is related to divine things.
Like Rahadoum is entirely capable of discovering antibiotics, the integrated circuit, plastics, or general relativity.
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I don't think there's any reason to believe that Rahadoum is a more biased nation than Cheliax or Thuvia or Osirion or Molthune or Taldor. They just have different biases. Everybody generally operates from the assumption that their experience is normal. Nothing about Rahadoum's anti-divine bias gets in the way of anybody doing research, unless that specific research is related to divine things.
Like Rahadoum is entirely capable of discovering antibiotics, the integrated circuit, plastics, or general relativity.
Exactly.
It's an RPG world made for adventure, not accuracy. Nor is it a thought-experiment extrapolating reasonable scenarios. It's rather an augmented, dramatic, fantastical instantiation of many types of governments. Galt has sustained its "revolution" far beyond reason, the infighting houses of Brevoy should've collapsed in on themselves, there are an absurd number of ninjas & samurai in parts of Tian, and so forth. And so we have this pseudo-Communist misotheist authoritarian country...threatened by devil-worshippers, desert fiends, hurricane-navigating pirates, and insect-themed assassin zealots. Heck, it might be the most stable country in its area, a beacon of human flourishing...when divinity is absent. And giving space to Primal & Occult casters patches up a lot of resource issues.Trip, your feelings are valid of course, but I think it's swaying your reasoning, or perhaps perception. To conflate Rahadoum's absence of gods with Earth worldviews that believe gods are absent is a stretch, and I say this as an advocate for atheism (or anti-theism depending on the news cycle!). If whoever made Rahadoum wanted to slight atheism, then Rahadoum would be a failed state and not have made the progress it has at the pace it has. Rahadoum is an example of "Look what humanity can achieve without religion!" (And that's without giving up magic!) Yes, the moral cost is too high for Earth-humanist standards, but as mentioned, that's true about most of Golarion's countries if not all.
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What you are neglecting to see is that there is a whole lot of gap between "some utopian paradise" , "a place with it's own problems like any other," and "kills teenage girls for pinging divine magic."
No I see it.
The problem is that an atheist country representation, that isn't oppressive, also probably isn't going to be regarded as "the atheist country".
Depending on the poll/source there are many IRL countries with a significant atheist population, Japan is one such example. When I think about Japan, atheism isn't the primary thing I think about. They also don't have any enforced rules on religion.
In my mind, it's honestly not believable to have a majority atheist country that doesn't have it enforced. And that enforcement is why it becomes a problem.
Otherwise, with freedom of religion you will have a mix of belief systems, with it being unlikely that any has a majority unless there is some sort of outside force that encourages or forces belief in a specific type).
In any event, even if we ignore that (because it does get ignored in many places in Golarion), you end up with a country that happens to be majority atheist where that wont be the defining feature and something else is going to be the thing it's actually known for.
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Yes, the moral cost is too high for Earth-humanist standards, but as mentioned, that's true about most of Golarion's countries if not all
This is the point I'm trying to make ultimately.
If you look at basically every country and government on Golarion, they're all pretty terrible.
They're either oppressive or ineffective or should have collapsed a long time ago (with no good explanation for why they haven't).
None of them are "good" in the way I'd typically describe it.
Which ironically, is realistic.
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This RL horror show, still ongoing in 2025, is outright what Paizo presents as what the "atheists" would do if they had a country of their own, execute people for the crime of non/belief.
I don't think the argument that "Rahadoum is presented as the natural outcome of atheism" stands up to scrutiny. I find it particularly strange to say when you're approaching it from a literary analysis perspective - it seems very clear to me that the critique happening here is of the authoritarian response, not the atheism. There's nothing about the rest of the setting that seems to imply this is the only possibility for atheism - there are other polities that are predominantly atheist (e.g. Druma) which don't have this authoritarian response, and there are certainly individual atheists who stand in stark relief from the authoritarianism of Rahadoum - including figures from Rahadoum. I don't see why "Rahadoum's authoritarian and violent response to the Oath Wars as a state, of which there are differing opinions even within the state, is a tragically brutal response to a real problem that metatextually works to invert the typical assumption in fantasy of violent theocracies (of which the Lost Omens setting has many)" isn't a valid reading of the text.
There's interesting space in Rahadoum to expand on - the Sword of Man of the Pure Legion has very significant authority and seems like they're in a position of comparable authority to the legal head of state in many ways. Tension between the Sword of Man and the Council of Elders, especially with the Keeper of the First Law typically being an insecure position, has the possibility for some interesting tension there. But right now, we don't really know almost anything about the state - in nearly 2 decades of the setting, we've not yet had anything that focuses on it to a meaningful degree. There's a lot of space for them to take Rahadoum in different directions, and I think there's some tension between those directions in published books. There's Rahadoum as an authoritarian but not horrific state, filled with intellectuals and the pursuit of human development, with questions about the cost of the violent anti-theism on this state. There's also a Rahadoum that's almost cartoonishly repressive and is basically acting fully as an inversion of your evil theocracy, but this time an evil anti-theocracy. Both of these are present as far back as the Inner Sea World Guide, where we're first really introduced to the nation, but I think the first seems to be a little more where PF2 is taking it; but again, with the lack of detail we have, both are still present. The fact that both of them are present without clarity as to which is more correct is a little unfortunate, I think - it does lend itself to some stereotypes around atheism. When we get Lost Omens: Golden Road, or whatever book fleshes out the area a little more, I think the lack of clarity will go away.
On top of that, I don't think there's a fundamental moral issue with telling a story about an oppressed group who gain power and react to their past trauma by violently imposing restrictions intended to prevent their past troubles happening again. It's a complicated story, for sure - one has to be careful in how one tells it, but I see no reason why this is fundamentally a bad story to tell. It happens in the real world, all too often - exploring how and why is important, I think. Perhaps a little out-of-tone with Golarion as a broader setting, but it's not necessarily a bad direction to take a story.
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One thing I will agree with Trip H, despite mostly disagreeing with his premise, is that Paizo's reaction to some topics which were considered sensitive that brought about (retro)active lore changes is interesting and stands in contrast to Rahadoum.
Phylacteries/Teffelin being an explicit reference to a Jewish symbol of faith and prayer and then being replaced was an interesting one to me. I never understood its controversy, as it wasn't a negative depiction. But it was viewed as troublesome enough that it was deemed to be removed.
Similarly the more misogynistic aspects of Erastil were washed away and while by modern standard it shouldn't be accepted, I always thought it made sense in the context of the communities where Erastil would be most prominently worshipped, certainly when looked at from the view of historical cultures on Earth.
Of course, I don't believe a fantasy world needs to have "all nice wonderful good" elements to player facing options to interact with.
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Rahadoum is not presenting "the natural outcome" of atheism, and I never claimed as such.
The issues and wrongs of Rahadoum are written to all be directly resultant of their atheism. That is a very different claim.
The notion that any number of other outcomes were possible is *why* writing Rahadoum as the nation with the most zealous fascism I've seen in Golarion is such a reg flag.
It is the *only* nation that just uses a real world minority group label, even defying language itself to use that label, and it then presents that label as the unambiguous source of that society's ills.
Writing Rahadoum as a rebuilt blank slate further removes confounding variables.
It's not even written that the Pure Legion is corrupt and defying their own laws, taking bribes, etc. The rules are genuinely as evil as the acts of the Pure Legion makes them out to be, and afaik the public supports it all.
This was purpose-written with laser focus on atheism.
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Trip, you're only painting half the picture, or less.
1. Religion was causing such "untold devastation on the region" that purging religion in a brutal way felt the lesser of two evils.
2. Once purged of religion, humanity flourished.
3. Many of the nation's woes are attributed to divine wrath, not divine lack. That makes a poor case to return to religion.
There's part one, the evil & suffering enacted to enforce misotheism, unfortunately labeled atheism*. It mirrors any other ideological authoritarian regime on Earth, so quite human and plausible. (*sigh*) With the relevance of deities on Golarion, it's also the only practical way to write an "atheist" society. BUT, "atheism" isn't the cause of this situation, it's a backlash against the damage of religious strife. It's that turmoil and suffering that made the new turmoil & suffering seem a practical solution, again, to a religious problem.
Then there's part two, the fruits of this "atheist" society. What's come of discarding religion? Flourishing. They had some issues with a lack of divine magic, but can patch it with primal, occult, and moreover human ingenuity. Apparently magic & other fantasy elements aren't what's stopping Golarion from high-tech development, it's worship. That's about the most pro-atheist sentiment imaginable. Yes, their ongoing grim methodology cannot be discounted, and from a PC-POV is the major adventuring hook. But that's an incomplete picture.
As evil as the Pure Legion is, especially to an idealist and/or earthling, Rahadoum academics might rightfully argue divine religions have still done the greater damage.
Religion causes great problems which enforcing non-religion solves.
Enforcing non-religion has problems. Non-religion itself creates benefits. Ergo, it's the enforcement that's in question, not the lack of religion. Follow with discussion of nanny states, greater good, human proclivities, rational education vs. human failings, and so forth.
That'd be quite an interesting course IMO, though the Pure Legion might frown upon such teaching being zealots and all.
*Perhaps by us more than Paizo! The Inner Sea World Guide says "None" rather than "Atheist", so it's not presenting atheism as an ideology (and shouldn't, since it's not a worldview, only one sliver answering one question.) The Laws of Mortality are one atheistic philosophy, but it's not presented as atheism incarnate.
There's always a chance down the line for Paizo to create an adventure path that will do for Rahadoum what Sarkoris eventually got in the Wrath of the Righteous Adventure Path for PF1e/Owlcat Computer Game. ;p
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Sure, but (and I know a lot of people don't use the words to the same rigor I do) the things you mention are technology, not science. Science is a method, technology is a result, Rahadoum takes 1/4 of the generally accepted paradigm of how magic works and tosses it behind the shed which is scientifically far more harmful than most other nation's biases and that does result them having progressed more in a technological way on account of, well, shooting themselves in the foot magic-wise and forcing them do so.I don't think there's any reason to believe that Rahadoum is a more biased nation than Cheliax or Thuvia or Osirion or Molthune or Taldor. They just have different biases. Everybody generally operates from the assumption that their experience is normal. Nothing about Rahadoum's anti-divine bias gets in the way of anybody doing research, unless that specific research is related to divine things.
Like Rahadoum is entirely capable of discovering antibiotics, the integrated circuit, plastics, or general relativity.
First of all, General Relativity is definitely not technology, it might not even be science, but it's for sure Math.
But I would think that the thing one would do when you're doing science on Golarion is ignore 100% of the accepted paradigm of how magic works, because the sine qua non of science is that it's repeatable and magic is emphatically not that. Magic and Science are generally portrayed as antipodes, in fact.
Specifically the kind of science it is publicly valuable to do is the kind of science that does not require a particular range of magical talent to reproduce.
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In regards to atheism. there have been state atheist countries on Earth, like the soviet union, north korea, china. Furthermore I see a lot of anti-theist rhetoric being colonialist whereby indeginious beliefs aren't respectable and should be eradicated to get rid of all religion. Of course Antitheism by its nature is not pluralistic, other forms of atheism absolutely are pluralistic. If you are enforcing atheism it is just as bad as enforcing another religion.
Atheism can and has been used for harm just as much as religions like Christianity or Islam. and just like how not all Christianity is like fundamentalist evangelicalism not all atheism is like antitheism.
Moreover I strongly disagree with your statement that religion == harm always. sure can religions lead people to harm, yes but so can anything with enough fanaticism. Moreover there are numerous different spiritual traditions both on earth and on golarion. Not all of them are religious exclusive or shaped in the way Christianity and Islam are.
and I am pretty sure James Jacobs or another Paizo Developer can say that Rahadoum was not a "look at how bad atheism is we think atheists suck and here is some propaganda aimed at them." Heck I am pretty sure that they have atheists among there team.
Rahadoum does have other things then just being anti-theist. even the Laws of Mortality which are aggressive for it include this line in the edicts: provide a peaceful and autonomous society in which the people are cared for through social infrastructure.
That is something that they actively encourage, they encourge mutual aid, social welfare and taking care of one another. There is also the fact that Kassi Aziril is one of the greatest doctors in the setting.
Moreover atheists can be found throughout golarion, yes Rahadoum is the main area but its not the only. The problem with any land being the atheist country is it has to be enforced in a world like Golarion where the gods very much are real and people would be free to choose their religion.
While the Golden road hasn't gotten the treatment it deserves, much to my dismay. The land holds potential. and while the oppression by the pure legion is absolutly there, so is the social welfare and advances in medicine.
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Holy crap, you are still refusing to engage with the actual issue and willfully misinterpreting my posts to blow a lot of smoke on irrelevant details.
Atheists are a real world religious group.
Swap Rahadoum being atheist for jewish, and have the Pure Legion enforce Judaism only. With jews hunting and killing clerics of other religions to enforce jewish purity.This would be seen as a 5-alarm-lore-fire in need of immediate changing.
Yes it would, thankfully that's not happening in the lore. I'm an atheist myself, and the idea that you can't use the concept of atheism for an evil in a fictional world is nonsense. Atheism is the term for disbelief of gods and is the simplest choice to use here for Rahadoum even if somewhat incorrect. Using Judaism would be a reference to a specific religion, atheism is a word for a concept, the disbelief of god.
But if its such a sticking point for you, send Paizo your feedback to change the term to something else like Misotheism I guess.
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Holy crap, you are still refusing to engage with the actual issue and willfully misinterpreting my posts to blow a lot of smoke on irrelevant details.
Atheists are a real world religious group.
Swap Rahadoum being atheist for jewish, and have the Pure Legion enforce Judaism only. With jews hunting and killing clerics of other religions to enforce jewish purity.This would be seen as a 5-alarm-lore-fire in need of immediate changing.
Yes it would, thankfully that's not happening in the lore. I'm an atheist myself, and the idea that you can't use the concept of atheism for an evil in a fictional world is nonsense. Atheism is the term for disbelief of gods and is the simplest choice to use here for Rahadoum even if somewhat incorrect. Using Judaism would be a reference to a specific religion, atheism is a word for a concept, the disbelief of god.
But if its such a sticking point for you, send Paizo your feedback to change the term to something else like Misotheism I guess.
Eh. Would probably encourage people to read more dictionaries.
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I know a lot of atheists that would take umbrage with their philosophy being called a religion.
Though as an agnostic, some atheists can go pretty hard toward anti-religion as opposed to simply not participating in religion. An atheistic nation going completely anti-theism is a sentiment I've seen reflected in some atheists. Of course, a good balancing would be to let a faction of more moderate atheists oppose it.
And as I said, letting that faction deal with the vidileths who are trying to guide humans toward this more extreme skew of atheism to let a more moderate form become the new ruling philosophy of Rahadoum would likely be a good adventure to be done. Because frankly, it is canonically being corrupted by Vidileths into a more evil form. So the answer is to deal with the source of corruption. Most satisfactorily if it is done by a predominantly atheistic party.
Note that the most vehement antitheist, Christopher Hitchens, explicitly did not want to eradicate religion through force. He once said that religious folk can play with their toys as long as they don't make him play with their toys. Or of course pass laws based on their toy-playing.
I imagine if the Pure Legion were dismantled, a truce could arise. It'd be interesting to see the benevolent nonreligious and religious combine against the toxic elements in each of their camps. Greater good and all, though then we'd need another source of tension in the region which would spoil such harmony. One thorn in that is Saranrae worship played a major role in the devastation, and she's kinda Good incarnate.
And yeah, Vidileths.
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I had a player who, due to a spiritual experience, truly believed in an Egyptian cat goddess, Bastet perhaps, but maybe the other one. I wish I could ask him (RIP) how he feels about Egyptian religious representation in Osirion. And then there are some of the other Earth-like pantheons too. Would we subtract them too? There's too much wealth of Earth lore, much of it unplumbed, to rob ourselves of it all.
I also wonder if many of those kinda-from-Earth deities are getting killed in the Godsrain to remove more such connections, much like removing other lore/monsters/items linked to specific Earth-only, non-Golarion cultures. A similar removal happened in Forgotten Realms, where in the deep past Baldur's Gate was named after the Earth god kinda trapped on Faerun, not some in-world hero. Lots of miscellaneous Earth lore had merged there, but that disappeared as Forgotten Realms became a formal setting.
Tricky area, wanting to feature lore, but not step on toes. Glad Paizo listens, and tries to hire people from the cultures which have corollaries on Golarion. I guess if Paizo does launch a Rahadoum AP they should hire us atheists. :-) (And OMG, as a consequence of the Godsrain seems the most appropriate time!)
I know a few Kemetics, a bunch of Heathens, and a good number of Hellenists in my discord servers I am part of as I am a polytheist specifically I am a hellenist and venerate principally the Greek deities, though I also venerate various Hindu deities. And I specifically use venerate over believe because believe is a bit odd for me. I believe that all gods and goddesses exist, be it greek, norse, egyptian, hindu, various indgenious and so on. But I worship the Greek deities, they are who I build reciprocity with, who I make offerings to, the holy days I follow are around holy days for them.
As for how pop-culture tends to cover them? eh, they can be fun for entertainment but I haven't really found a game that really captures how I see the Theoi. That said I am still excited for Iblydos, it seems to be one of the few pop culture to cover hero-cults as a concept.
Moreover there is so much from realworld mythologies that taking away would just be bad. To use my religion(Hellenism) Centaurs, Minotaurs, Sirens, Harpies, Cyclopes, Eriynes, and so on. Not to mention for Pathfinder all the Daemons that play a major role in Pathfinder. Even if many of these aren't like in my religion, the Eryines for example are beings I have venerated and given offerings to.
Anyways rambling aside my point is that removing elements from real world religions would weaken things. One of the things that I think many love about the Tian Xia world and character books is how they integrate and use various asian folklore and mythologies to have a fun setting with fun creatures, items, spells, gods, and so on.
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So... when looking at earlier posts, someone mentioned the idea that Pharasma feeds Groetus the souls of atheists in order to stave off the apocalypse?
Where did they get that idea from???
To be honest I've been trying to figure this out myself, but google is useless and all I've found mentioning it are dodgy fandom wikis and forum posts that seem equally unsure of themselves. So I'm curious of the source for that info as well because it would be an interesting read.
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To be honest I've been trying to figure this out myself, but google is useless and all I've found mentioning it are dodgy fandom wikis and forum posts that seem equally unsure of themselves. So I'm curious of the source for that info as well because it would be an interesting read.So... when looking at earlier posts, someone mentioned the idea that Pharasma feeds Groetus the souls of atheists in order to stave off the apocalypse?
Where did they get that idea from???
Oh! I can answer this one!
I'm not sure when's the first time this concept ever entered print, but at the very least it appears as a reference in the Groetus article in Inner Sea Faiths (2016). It probably appeared in an article or setting book before that, but I haven't traced it that far back.
From the section on "Relations with Other Religions" it notes that the 'crystallized souls of true atheists' repel Groetus (it is not clarified what makes a 'true' atheist, but this seems to me an obvious reference to those who reject all afterlives entirely and haunt the Graveyard of Souls, as in other references) - "both incidentally by their proximity, and sometimes directly when the Lady of Graves 'feeds' him the essence of one (although whether this is a literal feeding or a transfer of essence is unknown) to push him away." (p.50-51)
And then as I've noted earlier in this thread, the newer source in Planar Adventures (2018) seems to treat this as more of a whispered rumour than an objective fact, but nevertheless does bring it up in the Boneyard section on Groetus.
Unrelated to that, because I just found this out myself and thought it was interesting, in Inner Sea Faiths, one of the "dooms of Groetus" (i.e. one of the three main ideological sects of his followers) believes that Groetus' role aside from destroying the cosmos is to collect all the greatest essences of the cosmos ("heroes, villains, dragons, earth, fire, and other fundamental concepts") and shelter them through the end-times, distilling them into the raw material to create the next reality and its first gods.
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EDIT: I think I've traced back the earliest mention of Groetus being fed souls to the 2009 "The Great Beyond, A Guide to the Multiverse" written by Amber Stewart--or at least she's definitely referring to this bit of lore in the product thread for that book. I was sure I've read that one, but I can't seem to find it at the moment and I'm not entirely sure I wasn't just borrowing it at the time.
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Neat! I'll have to see about giving those a read sometime, wouldn't mind seeing how the writing about the gods and planes have changed in all those years. Thank you!
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Rahadoum being a fascist theocratic state would be unacceptable because it's putting the (downright cartoonish) evils of that nation at the blame of a real minority group's unique beliefs.
Rahadoum's dogma doesn't really map to any real world minority group though.