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What have people found interesting so far? Some things I've noticed:
3/4 of the evil elemental demigods have had something seriously bad happen to them. The other isn't mentioned at all.
Economic exploitation/trade of each elemental plane from Universe corps mentioned. Metal - bullish. Wood - bearish.
Astral Planar posses lead by psychopomps that include participation of pretty much everyone but daemons to hunt down soul hunters and kick out mortal meddlers.
Alazhra's back/never left.
Ghostbusters content creators jumping into the Ethereal Plane to record turning the locals into goo so they can upload it for clicks back home.
First World stealing tech instead of (or in addition) kidnapping mortals through portals.
Abaddon: Riders begone, they're still Horsemen here. Harbingers noted to have had high turnover/additions compared to other demigod categories: "Rising harbingers, like Firjadah the Twisted Screen Name or Batwahr the Creeping Fallout, establish themselves as personifications of death related to modern innovations"
Axiomites are of necessity more focused on Axis maintenance than universe maintenance than previously. Lissala has a big Axis district for "neutral" negotiations and arbitration.
Psychopomp ushers get additional responsibilities temporarily (re)assigned based on Universe wars: two ushers we've never heard of are newly responsible for overseeing Azlanti and Veskarium souls killed in the war.
Groetus has dipped pretty far since the end of the Gap and is approaching the Spire.
Nothing meaningful for Elysium, shortest bit.
Heaven tightly restricts tech ("knowledge corrupts"), only allowing trusted archons to have it. Everyone else does things the hard way, and the trade city still specializes in magic.
Hell manufactures starships on Avernus, Mammon may have risen to digital form to follow cryptocurrency evolution, Belial makes tech weapons, Geryon hosts data servers and digital libraries now, Baalzebul hosts a big battle royale. "Post-Gap evidence suggests the existence of a supposed tenth layer of Hell, but such references have been mostly scrubbed by the galactic mind wipe."
Zon-Shelyn is resident in both Nirvana (a newly dark area with strange stars) and the Netherworld. Velstracs are chimping out as a result of the change and doing extra intense body modifications to try to post through it.
Outer Rifts: "In this modern era, many realms have developed within the Outer Rifts related to the technological advancements of the Universe. The partly digitized Dark Lobby is a brutal realm of corridors and semi-digital fiends managed by the demon lord of games, Icarthian. Vast offices and data storage centers house legions of larvae shades chained to desks and forced to stare at unintelligible monitors, all at the behest of Ksedahl, the demon lord of ceaseless employment."
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I was on board right up until "Ksedahl, the demon lord of ceaseless employment." It's about the eye-rolliest epithet I've heard in ages.
The description of the realm was cool.
Oh well.
Sounds like a Demon who loves Karoshi
Also, according to the time travel section, Zon-Shelyn will readily appear as Zon-Kuthon or Shelyn to any followers who can't accept their combination.
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I was on board right up until "Ksedahl, the demon lord of ceaseless employment." It's about the eye-rolliest epithet I've heard in ages.
The description of the realm was cool.
Oh well.
Hmm. A few alternatives, then.
"Demon lord of overwork" is probably the simplest."Of endless hours."
"Of ceaseless toil."
It's certainly a demon lord that's useful to reference. I've got an Eoxian gameshow host who presents risking your life for fame and fortune in a deadly trivia competition as an alternative to the crushing anonymity of working for one of these companies and dying of stress before retirement. Giving him a demonic boogeyman makes that pitch all the more legitimized.
I was on board right up until "Ksedahl, the demon lord of ceaseless employment." It's about the eye-rolliest epithet I've heard in ages.
The description of the realm was cool.
Oh well.Sounds like a Demon who loves Karoshi
Also, according to the time travel section, Zon-Shelyn will readily appear as Zon-Kuthon or Shelyn to any followers who can't accept their combination.
That kinda cheapens the narrative impact of those gods' sacrifice. Maybe Paizo got a lot of pushback from the Gorum fans during the Godsrain, idk.
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I was on board right up until "Ksedahl, the demon lord of ceaseless employment." It's about the eye-rolliest epithet I've heard in ages.
The description of the realm was cool.
Oh well.Hmm. A few alternatives, then.
"Demon lord of overwork" is probably the simplest.
"Of endless hours."
"Of ceaseless toil."It's certainly a demon lord that's useful to reference. I've got an Eoxian gameshow host who presents risking your life for fame and fortune in a deadly trivia competition as an alternative to the crushing anonymity of working for one of these companies and dying of stress before retirement. Giving him a demonic boogeyman makes that pitch all the more legitimized.
Ceaseless toil gets closer. Imo the name really needs to emphasize the wholly unproductive nature of the demon lord's ministrations.
Yes the work is endless, but it's also pointless, simple past the point of mind-numbing, and produces nothing.It's the extension of white collar drudgery into the realm of genuine Evil.
And if the name isn't strong enough (and I argue it's not) , it just sounds silly, banal, and non-threatening.
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I'm not sure what the sin is here and what kind of people end up in this realm. Tech bros demanding (and providing) 80 hour work weeks for shitcos in the delusional pursuit of valuable equity that obviously isn't ever going to happen?
Fast food assistant manager who keeps getting turned over for his general manager franchise ownership application but doesn't quit?
Ununionized game developer who works long hours for subsistence wages for the love of the game?
I guess the special action that activates the mental damage would be something like spending an action doing nothing at all.
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I'm not sure what the sin is here and what kind of people end up in this realm. Tech bros demanding (and providing) 80 hour work weeks for s+#*cos in the delusional pursuit of valuable equity that obviously isn't ever going to happen?
Fast food assistant manager who keeps getting turned over for his general manager franchise ownership application but doesn't quit?
Ununionized game developer who works long hours for subsistence wages for the love of the game?
I guess the special action that activates the mental damage would be something like spending an action doing nothing at all.
Managers who run companies to trap workers with tactics like emotional abuse, unreasonable expectations, false negative references, blacklisting, low wages, holding immigration status hostage, etc. Anywhere people are peeing in bottles because they can't take breaks.
Possibly also people who throw themselves into work in order to avoid their families.
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I interviewed for an Amazon warehouse manager position when I got out of the Army, and one of the interviewers positively seethed when I said I'd follow whatever policies were in place, but lacking any information on that I'd pull a guy for medical treatment or assessment if he claimed he had a sprained hand/arm while working the packing line. I guess he'd be a good candidate.
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I interviewed for an Amazon warehouse manager position when I got out of the Army, and one of the interviewers positively seethed when I said I'd follow whatever policies were in place, but lacking any information on that I'd pull a guy for medical treatment or assessment if he claimed he had a sprained hand/arm while working the packing line. I guess he'd be a good candidate.
Yeah, that sounds like it exactly.
I could see some manager who expects to spend the afterlife climbing the ranks of Hell, carving out his niche of power in the hierarchy, only to end up in Ksedahl's domain because of all the broken promises used to keep people working a few more months.
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I'm not sure what the sin is here and what kind of people end up in this realm. Tech bros demanding (and providing) 80 hour work weeks for s+#*cos in the delusional pursuit of valuable equity that obviously isn't ever going to happen?
Fast food assistant manager who keeps getting turned over for his general manager franchise ownership application but doesn't quit?
Ununionized game developer who works long hours for subsistence wages for the love of the game?
I guess the special action that activates the mental damage would be something like spending an action doing nothing at all.
Managers who run companies to trap workers with tactics like emotional abuse, unreasonable expectations, false negative references, blacklisting, low wages, holding immigration status hostage, etc. Anywhere people are peeing in bottles because they can't take breaks.
Possibly also people who throw themselves into work in order to avoid their families.
Owners who hire an excessive number of part time employees, because it's cheaper to pay 16 people to work part time than it is to pay 8 people to work full time (since that would require benefits in many states).
Cold call centers.
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I interviewed for an Amazon warehouse manager position when I got out of the Army, and one of the interviewers positively seethed when I said I'd follow whatever policies were in place, but lacking any information on that I'd pull a guy for medical treatment or assessment if he claimed he had a sprained hand/arm while working the packing line. I guess he'd be a good candidate.Yeah, that sounds like it exactly.
I could see some manager who expects to spend the afterlife climbing the ranks of Hell, carving out his niche of power in the hierarchy, only to end up in Ksedahl's domain because of all the broken promises used to keep people working a few more months.
Yeah amazon like jobs where they aim for 150% turn over because they don't want anybody getting enough experience so just soullessly grinding down employees toss them out and repeat the process. Having a special hell for that BS seems fitting.
As for the Order of the Eclipse and angels, we do know for certain that (Era of the Eclipse spoilers):
I think it works best as two groups using superficially similar methods with different motives and degrees of how far they'll go. Angels feeling that the "evil power-grabbing censorship" of the Order gives their "holy and benevolent management of knowledge" a bad reputation.
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The partly digitized Dark Lobby is a brutal realm of corridors and semi-digital fiends managed by the demon lord of games, Icarthian.
This makes me laugh the more I think about it.
"Is that a a 12 year old boy with that obsence user name calling me all those racial and religious epithets? Trying to make me lose my cool and lose the game, or make me lose my temper and lose my soul? And is there really any difference?"
I like to imagine the semi-digital fiends have a gamertage floating over their heads and a running score and health/status bar (it may lie) next to it.
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Akashic Record
I have a lot of questions about this realm and am interested in seeing it expanded. The Akashic Sync feat with successes giving out false information tends to imply that the Akashic Record is not 100% accurate or factual. I'm pretty sure I also read somewhere that information on the Gap isn't available in the Akashic Record, so either hidden or redacted.
Who is adding info the the Record, who is fact checking...
New divinities in the Archivists to explore. New planar residents in the Recorders to explore. Possible source of new versatile heritage.
So far we have class features, in Universe organizations, extra-planar locations, feats, spells and magic items all tied to this plane. I suspect we will be getting more info down the road and I am intrigued. The only thing I am hesitant about is its links to real world Buddhism and Theosophy and respect for the differences between the game concept and the real world beliefs.
I think you misunderstand. The failure chance of the feat isn't because the Akashic Record can be wrong. It's because the character using the feat is trying to sift through functionally infinite amounts of information with their very finite mind. The challenge is to just get the knowledge you need without getting it scrambled with countless other bits of unrelated trivia.
In a lot of harsher systems and settings trying to accomplish such a thing wouldn't just risk getting the wrong data but having your conciousness obliterated by accidentally "pouring an ocean into a teacup."