...or more specifically, -returning- from such. As I understand it, when a person dies in Golarion, their soul gets in line to be judged at the Boneyard. I also recall seeing that Pharasma's servitors patrol the line to make sure nefarious sorts don't steal waiting souls.
So, in-world, how would Resurrection work? Even if you're a party of good aligned paladins, you're still stealing the soul back from Pharasma...
((I'll reiterate, I'm curious about in-world/lore, not about the crunch of 'should you allow the spell in your game'))
Creative Director
|
| 13 people marked this as a favorite. |
The amount of time it takes for a soul to be judged is variable. In some cases, it's instant. In others it takes weeks or months or years or even centuries or more. To the souls who stand in line, the perception of time passing is different than for mortals—it's simultaneously instant and eternal.
In game play, that means that the actual decision is in the GM's hands—or in the case of a PC, in that PC's player's hands. THEY get to decide if the soul in question has been judged and thus can't be brought back to life via the normal means and instead need a huge quest or a divine intervention to take place. And that choice doesn't have to be made until the resurrection attempt is being made.
When it's an NPC doing the task, no big deal if they waste their time and resources, but if a PC is doing so, it's good for the GM to let the player know if the soul's been judged at some point before any actual resources are expended.
Also, note that a soul can always choose not to be resurrected, and that this choice is DIFFERENT than being judged. As long as the soul isn't judged, they can choose freely if they want to be pulled back to life. Personally, I think it's best to allow the soul to recognize the source of that attempt, otherwise it gets kinda potentially gross for a bad guy to kill someone, then resurrect them right into a prison or worse. And the whole idea of a bad guy that kills, resurrects, kills, and so on over and over and over, while a compelling idea for a horror movie villain, is kinda awful for a tabletop RPG about heroic PCs, in my opinion (since such a fate, if it can exist in game for an NPC, should be something that threatens a PC as well). At the very least, make sure your group is all okay with such a potential fate before including it in your game!
EDIT: As for the notion of "stealing a soul from Pharasma," that's not how it works. Remember, Pharasma is also the goddess of birth and fate. She knows if it's a soul's fate to be resurrected (aka reborn) into life once or a thousand times or more or anywhere in between, and doesn't intervene at all, regardless of who's doing the resurrecting, and it doesn't bother her. She's beyond time, and she knows that eventually all things die. She's patient, but also merciful and doesn't begrudge those who seek methods to extend life beyond death via things like resurrection or Sun Orchid Elixirs or fountains of youth. The main exception here is undeath, because that method is actively destructive to the cycle of life and death in that it corrupts a soul and takes it OUT of the cycle, potentially forever, but even temporarily it's damaging. But when a soul of someone who created a lot of undead (or the soul of an undead creature themselves) finally moves on to the Boneyard, she doesn't hold grudges and lets those souls move on to the afterlife after judgment or be resurrected.
SECOND EDIT: Most of this is not just to build an interesting world, but primarily to enable agency to players of the game. Death is an awful thing to happen to a PC, and if the player wants to keep playing, there should be ways they can come back. At the same time, there needs to be narrative guidelines to explain why Every Single Bad Guy the PCs defeat doesn't just get resurrected by someone. The more that happens, the less death is a factor in game and becomes trivialized. Making resurrection an exception for NPCs and more of an opt-in or opt-out for PCs (resources depending, of course) keeps that from being trivialized. Even then, there are some players who WANT the death of a PC to stick, and that's why the player is the one who gets the say whether or not their PC gets resurrected.
EDIT: As for the notion of "stealing a soul from Pharasma," that's not how it works. Remember, Pharasma is also the goddess of birth and fate. She knows if it's a soul's fate to be resurrected (aka reborn) into life once or a thousand...
How much is this still true in the age of lost omens?
It was/is kinda presented that the gods' collective ability to predict the future has become a mess, if it is still semi-functional at all.
(and that status quo is kind of necessary for storytelling as a concept to work. Omniscience is just anti-narrative.)
Playing through Stolen Fate seems to canonize that the future of mortals is rather unknowable in the current age, even to the entities created just for that purpose. The Norns themselves are unable to see fate anymore, nor can they "manipulate the weave" like they used to.
From my campaign notes, they said they are still able to know / learn of a mortal's "destiny" but even our GM struggled to grok what level of future-insight that even means. The Norns clearly did not posses the kind of insight or foreknowledge they used to, or thought was sufficient.
Canonically, it seems the party for Stolen Fate can genuinely die at any time. They were chosen due to being good candidates, but were also chosen explicitly without any certainty or guarantee.
While tables vary, and Paizo will need to pick a canon outcome, I do not see many tables allowing the Norns to rebuild their control over fate, let alone return the cards which will restore them to their (lost omens diminished) level of power. Everything about giving them the cards seems like a terrible, terrible idea.
No clue if idea of giving the Norns the cards was intended to come across differently by the writers, but I personally had to talk other players down from killing the Norns. And not a single member of the group advocated for giving them the cards. Not one PC thought it was a good idea.
Instead, our party collectively split the deck amongst us to later distribute cards to other people we found worthy / responsible of a power boost. Power to the people, as it were.
|
Creative Director
|
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
EDIT: As for the notion of "stealing a soul from Pharasma," that's not how it works. Remember, Pharasma is also the goddess of birth and fate. She knows if it's a soul's fate to be resurrected (aka reborn) into life once or a thousand...How much is this still true in the age of lost omens?
It was/is kinda presented that the gods' collective ability to predict the future has become a mess, if it is still semi-functional at all.
(and that status quo is kind of necessary for storytelling as a concept to work. Omniscience is just anti-narrative.)Playing through Stolen Fate seems to canonize that the future of mortals is rather unknowable in the current age, even to the entities created just for that purpose. The Norns themselves are unable to see fate anymore, nor can they "manipulate the weave" like they used to.
From my campaign notes, they said they are still able to know / learn of a mortal's "destiny" but even our GM struggled to grok what level of future-insight that even means. The Norns clearly did not posses the kind of insight or foreknowledge they used to, or thought was sufficient.
** spoiler omitted **...
It's still true. Pharasma being able to know when and how a creature will be resurrected or not is a different thing entirely from prophecy and telling the future.
(As a fun aside: The element of "prophecy no longer works" in the game is, to a certain extent, a nod toward the fact the Age of Lost Omens is the first point during the world's history that PCs are in the mix. It's the point where the world goes from being a non-interactive historical narrative exercise in world building to an interactive gaming exercise where the unfolding of current events, aka Adventures, is determined by the players of the game. And players are real good at doing things the GM doesn't expect or can't predict! Getting rid of prophecy in particular is our attempt to make it apparent to players that what happens isn't writ in stone, and for their games, their choices matter. Prophecy takes agency away from characters, and taking agency away from players makes for a less fun game. Also, prophecy as a story element is a pretty tired cliche anyway, and removing it is one way we challenge ourselves to do better. :D)
Woohoo, I'd thought it had been to strip the cliche away and give players agency rather than search for the "right outcome".
I've left a published campaign (w/ a scarcity of other tables to play at) that was too inflexible re: player agency (and almost left another, but we wrapped it up soon). Yes, that falls somewhat on the GMs, but in one instance for example, you could back NPC X, NPC Y, or neither, and no matter which one you picked, each plot thread "corrected" for your choices so you'd get the exact same impact on the campaign world: zero. Oy.
This difference might be foundational to why I've loved Paizo for decades.
Ah, thank you for the clarification. Though I must say, some future-vision being intact and accurate while others are not makes things far less clear, and much more contradictory than before.
I still have some wires crossed, especially due to canon "this happened" events like Sun Wukong.I had thought that Pharasma's ability to know a mortal's future was due to the same power of prophecy manifesting as a big hall of records, where in addition to the big deal future world events, each mortal's life (and death) has it's own text.
Sun Wukong was once a mortal, but snuck inside and erased his own prophecy / record. By removing himself from Pharasma's records, he became immortal.
So are the mortal life texts fundamentally different than other prophecies? Like, the "world events" library was rendered unreliable, but the "mortal life" scripts in the other building are still valid?
Or is it just the death/resurrection specifically that Pharasma knows?
Honestly, I'm struggling to square the PCs in Stolen Fate being genuinely off-script and capable of success/failure, but their deaths were known the moment they were born. That does not seem compatible with any early deaths caused by the events of the Adventure Path.
Including those the PCs kill because they get yoinked into the adventure. Or those people the PCs did not save due to the new fork.
The butterfly effect from Stolen Fate would alter countless death days.
(And we have to use a mammoth of a lampshade and pretend the infinite butterfly effect of Sun Wukong becoming a god doesn't mess with every future death record, ugh.)
From my PoV, I'm stuck with Pharasma's records needing to have intel on every future event perfectly, or else the records would lack the needed info to know the correct deaths.
Even in a "It just works!" Todd Howard-style hand-waive, the outcome just doesn't compute for me.
Scene: Pharasma notices a whole shelf of death records with the same future time, sighs at the mass-causality event, and flips one open.
will die in AoLE year: XXXX
Cause of death: Home planet smashed by Rovagug's right hindlimb.
and then Phar freaks out to prevent that record from happening.
But that's not possible, because if she could prevent it, then it wouldn't have manifested as a record.Her own power has rendered her powerless.
No matter how close to omnipotent, if the mortal death records are correct, then she herself is subject to that certainty as much as mortals are. Once a death event is read, literally no one in the universe can have agency anymore, every butterfly-connected event to that mortal's end is locked in and certain.
But Sun Wukong can erase his name?
Am I crazy, and am missing something?
(If Sun got immortality before prophecy was broken, and death records are now uncertain, all these issues vanish. Even Pharasma gains a chance to avert certain deaths and their associated events.)
Pharasma has it rough. She's both a literal character in the setting with her own motivations, personality, and goals but also more explicitly than anyone else a vehicle for delivering non-diegetic features into the game world. Pharasma can allow/deny resurrections because it creates an in setting reason for resurrections to fail, or for resurrections to succeed without having to wonder if angry psychopomps are going to knock on the PCs' door.
You can see shades of this with some of her other policies and actions too.
But it does have the downside of sometimes making her feel very arbitrary and sometimes even capricious... with the setting itself sometimes seeming to vacillate on whether she's allowed to be arbitrary and opinionated or whether she's just Objectively Correct about most things and everyone else just has to deal with it (the former makes room for better storytelling, but eh).
... As an aside, suddenly picturing like a post-endgame probably-extremely mythic level heist campaign where the goal is to steal the unstealable and bring back the soul of someone Pharasma has decided had hit their resurrection limit. I realize that doesn't comport with how a lot of people view Pharasma but I also think it sounds kinda fun.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
...
I'm not James and not an expert, but it's possible where this goes wrong is trying to apply rational logic to a situation where rational logic doesn't hold as much sway as you'd prefer.
For example, in the question of how could Wukong do something that Pharasma could not by erasing his name from the records, he's the trickster god, not her. I wouldn't expect this to be a matter of raw power but rather of narrative relevance. Of course a trickster god gained immortality by doing trickster things, it's what tricksters do. And one might argue that "But Wukong wasn't a god when he did that" except well, no, but actually yes? A cursory glance at mythology shows it's full of gods who paradoxically created themselves.
And this is assuming that the myth told about Wukong's exploits in erasing his name are 100% unaugmented truth, unlike most myths in the setting. This is the only story I know of which even mentions Pharasma having actual written-down records, so any assumptions based on the existence of these records may also have to contend with the question "why should erasing his name do anything to stop him from dying, anyway?" - and the answer again seems to be as much because it's symbolically significant as it would be about any tangibly existing magical record with power over mortal fates.
But then James may be here tomorrow to lay out the exact parameters of the Death Records and how they interact with the universe, so take this with a grain of salt, too.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
(Sun Wukong and death records)
Sun Wukong almost certainly erased his name before prophecy was broken, because Aroden only kicked the bucket a hundred and some years ago. So it's pretty clear the records weren't immune to tampering before prophecy was broken.
But you're only making the assumption that Pharasma's records are a big list of when everyone in the entire universe is fated to die as actual-factual set-in-stone prophecies. There are a lot of things Pharasma's records could be, so long as Sun Wukong erasing his name from them means that the Tian Xia gods can't remove him from existence. (Maybe an older version says something different; I'm not going to track down every lore entry for Sun Wukong.) Sun Wukong also learned the secret to immortality from Irori prior to the gods deciding he needed to go, so it's possible the gods had to resort to a more esoteric execution method, and Sun Wukong's name-erasure stopped that while his regular immortality is what was preventing a quick lightning bolt. In Journey to the West, he had a whole slew of types of immortality.
There's definitely nothing I've seen before that would indicate to me that Pharasma couldn't have chosen to alter the time and manner of somebody's death before Aroden bit the dust.
"But if there was a prophecy/fate/whatever for somebody's death and Pharasma could have changed that, that means it's not real, certain prophecy/fate/whatever?" Sure. Prophecy before the Age of Lost Omens is generally described as "reliable". Pharasma herself deciding to intervene is the kind of thing that invalidates a lot of reliable things.
Some of this seemed genuinely benign or even pro social, in a "prevent everyone from damaging reality via fate powers" manner. But it also meant making sure everything went to the god's plan, to snip people out of existence simply for being there/alive when that was not the plan. So for a time, mortals could exceed their death times, but once the Norns caught up to them, an act of retro-causality would make it appear that the plan had never been escaped from.
(This is honestly a very clever and non-problematic way to square that small deviations can happen, and even persist for unknown time frames, without such deviations breaking all of prophecy via butterfly effect.)
During the campaign, the players are able to do an example of this in a very minor way. They can grant a non-person representation of an idea (The Betrayer) to gain a real life as a mortal, free to have agency of her own.
If the players do this, The Betrayer becomes a mortal, and reality itself warps to backfill an appropriate present moment for her. She spontaneously gains not just a mortal's soul-body duality, but a history, a birth mother with continuity of heritage going back who knows how long. A feat of retro causality. Done by a L20 mortal with a heap of super secret Norn-derived knowledge of fate's mechanisms.
The Norns can be inferred to be capable of at least this much.
Yet, it's a critical plot point that the Norns are dis empowered, so much so they didn't just make the cards. They also poured their power/divinity into making tools to increase their ability to edit the weave of fate.
With these tools, they constantly make edits as the players can, to keep everything in alignment with the gods' plan.
But that post-prophecy + tools was not enough for the Norns, so they depleted their power even more to create the deck of destiny.
Creating a schism in pre and post prophecy can do wonders for handwaiving impossibilities like Sun Wukong, because otherwise yeah, you kind of have to say the text itself is no longer literal, which would throw literally everything into unreliable doubt territory. Which would kind of be a disaster for narratives to function inside the setting.
Pharasma can allow/deny resurrections because it creates an in setting reason for resurrections to fail, or for resurrections to succeed without having to wonder if angry psychopomps are going to knock on the PCs' door.
Except that psychopomps can and do get angry at the party for resurrections any time the GM wants them to. Whether or not an attempt by an NPC or PC aligns with the god's plan is unknowable to the mortals. That's the problem with destiny, it's all about perfect future-vision that removes agency in direct proportion to how complete/capable the future-vision is.
The issue is not about Phar preserving the sanctity of life & death, though showing personal selectivity in exceptions does make the issue of hypocrisy / favoritism unavoidable. Her being able to personally intervene if an attempted resurrection is detected is totally fine, that doesn't cause insurmountable narrative problems.
The core issue imo is that Stolen Fate canonizes what my pf inexperienced butt could have only have said was implied prior.
That fate/prophecy is all about personal control, for the course of the future to go according to Pharasma's plan.
The Norns do not care about mortal well being*, they do not snip people out of existence to prevent them from inflicting their future harms upon the world.
The Norns explicitly do not care if the party is evil and abuses the power of the cards. They selected powerful mortals with the best chance to achieve their goal, to do their bidding.
Pre-prophecy, the Norns constantly edited reality itself any time events deviated from the plan. The Norns were one part of *how* prophecy could function. Any time something began to fork away from what was written in Phar's archives / weave of fate (two manifestations of the same thing), the Norns used reality warping powers, editing the physical manifestation of fate's threads, to invoke a retro-causal edit. Making it so that the universe was always on that "correct" path. For the Norns, this power is mostly messing with mortal threads, editing individual lives so they will have always been the person to enact the "correct" future.
It is implied that even back then, this power was still finite, and they had to use as much insight as they had on mortal destinies; They would consult as much of the weave as they could to make the smallest edits that would result in the biggest shifts toward getting fate back on track.
So if a village was written to die to mudslide, but some local wizard destined to fail taps some "unplanned" ability and redirects the mudslide, yeah. The Norns would make the minimum needed edits to correct things. Such as editing the wizard into being someone who himself "chooses" to inflict the mudslide upon the village to prevent him from stopping it. If he was supposed to himself die, then at minimum, some Final Destination stuff will hound him until he dies. Or until the Norns decide to escalate their efforts to kill him, such as calling in an outsider enforcer to directly kill him.
While this reality-warping power is quite limited post-prophecy, the Norns seemed to us to be more upset by their inability to read the weave, which relied upon fate(prophecy) being intact. Now, everything is a chaotic jumble of competing maybes. So they have to constantly argue and bicker amongst each other to decide what to do with the limited power they have, to decide what is right, what use of their power creates the best outcome.
Now that I think about it, Stolen Fate has been released, and the age of lost omens is still ongoing. So there is a lot of the "canon ending" already set in stone by Paizo. No matter what the players choose, and no matter what the Norns attempt, fate/prophecy is still broken.
At least at our table, much of their talk revealed they see their impartial edits to fate as required, not of their own personal preference. One of the PC arguments that had an effect upon them was that their edits to avert disasters was dis-empowering mortalkind from being able to save itself, and requiring more divine intervention due to this fomented weakness. That the clear differences with post-prophecy mortals being agents averting disasters was proof of the harms done by fate-editing. (The gods want as many souls to go through the cycle as possible, so the Norns' duty did roughly align with more total people living in the golarion system)
As can be pointed out to them, now that prophecy is dead, every bit of influence & power they have exerted since has been of their own free will. The Norns spent an eternity as cogs with 0 agency, so much so, that they never paused to evaluate their own acquisition free will; they simply continued on inertia to attempt to do what they saw as right.
The Norns *have* been acting in what they thought was a pro-social manner, even when they are not following some set script. Their plan to restore prophecy itself was enacted because of the belief it would result in a better outcome for everyone, mortals included. All the death and harm caused by the events of the campaign was unintended, and undesired.
Other details can be used in the discussion. The notion that it has been X years of broken prophecy, yet not once before now was fate/causality as a concept put in magical danger. Moreover, fate was only threatened because of the Norns unscripted action to return things to their old norm.
And if one group of mortals can police the antagonist despite the power imbalance, that further evidences that novelty of mortal free will is not the problem in this equation.
The players are able to talk the Norns into changing their ways to a large extent. One of their prior human helpers is the GOAT-Ghost of the campaign and did at least as much to save the day as the Norns. Their most recent human helper is the one that took advantage of the Norns removing all their godly power to put into McGuffins, and stole the cards, twice.
So the Norns are understandably ornery and mistrustful of mortals, but can be talked into leaving the new post-prophecy norm as it is. Even be talked into *not* sending other agents to kill the PCs and reclaim the cards, lol.
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I think a lot of the fun of in-game myths like wukong becoming immortal is that they DON'T make sense. It hints that these stories are something mortals tell to explain something, and the "Real" events may be different.
Perhaps wukong didn't just delete his name from a book, he used supreme trickery on a cosmic scale to make it so his name was never real, and that's much harder to communicate.
Perhaps this is bias on my end, because in my setting I enjoy mixing the way TTRPGs normally do gods, and adding this unknowable aspect on top. My fave little tidbit is introducing doubt as to whether mortals actually ascend, or if their acenction has produced something that thinks it's the mortal.
(Yes i stole this from swamp thing)
many quite interesting things about Stolen FateIs it really presented in the AP as a deity's plan, or is it what is fated to be, independently of any deity's preference ?
I kinda want to buy the pdf myself now so I'm not coming at this from a player PoV.
The pre-prophecy status quo was definitely of Pharasma's design.
If there is a middle-man deity in-between Phar and the Norns, that's imo irrelevant.
(there was, it used to be Aroden.)
My interpretation of the conversation was that the Norns were the fate-fixers created + assigned to that specific locality. They are for sure attached to Golarion itself in a metaphysical manner (so if it's even possible to kill them, that would likely create a disaster of its own), and it's unclear how big their jurisdiction is/was.
It could be a small as just that one planet, or much larger.
Imo, it's implied other mortals throughout the universe have their own version of the Norns who used to fix fate. Though Golarion exceptionalism likely means that our native trio was much busier than most...
In the same way mortals cast spells by harnessing the external and universal magic that's just background radiation of the universe, the Norns tap into the weave of fate, manifesting it into physical form (literal threads) so they can observe and edit it. Imo this "physical manifestation" would also be how things like the death records work, and how Sun could erase himself from death's claim.
The weave of fate is also the same power/mechanism that all Harrowers tap into. The AP also reveals that at least some of the modern Harrowers trace the practice back to former Norn helpers who were in the room with them.
After that, it seems like all manipulation was done by the deck/pocket dimension itself. The deck never gained verbal sapience, but it seemed to be working toward reassembling itself. It is possible the GM missed a line that the portals were the Norns (somehow) acting at a distance, but that was a specific question we asked. At our table, it was the deck/realm that maximized our success chances by creating the right portals, at the right times, etc, etc.
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
> But Sun Wukong can erase his name?
> Am I crazy, and am missing something?
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Sun Wukong looked about himself furtively,
then snuck out of the chamber on his tip
toes. He contained himself for twenty
paces before he burst out cackling and
ran off.
Pharasma faded into view with a smile.
She crossed the chamber and gently closed
the 'edited' book. All was proceeding
according to her plan...
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
In other words (Spoilers for Stolen Fate AP)
Tldr; jumping through hoops to demonize Pharasma
FFS, I'm not demonizing Pharamsa.
I am explaining the magical metaphysical mechanisms and history that have always been there, but are more openly discussed by the AP.
If pointing out that yes, she is the architect who set the rules, created their enforcers, etc, "demonizes" her from your PoV, that is your value judgement.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
FFS, I'm not demonizing Pharamsa.
I am explaining the magical metaphysical mechanisms and history that have always been there, but are more openly discussed by the AP.
If pointing out that yes, she is the architect who set the rules, created their enforcers, etc, "demonizes" her from your PoV, that is your value judgement.
Norns aren't her enforcers though? They tend to fate but do not have any innate connection with Pharasma, she didn't create them or set them to task and it's not mentioned or implied anywhere that she did. The Stolen Fate situation has no bearing on Pharasma or the Afterlife and is basically just a non-sequitor you brought in to be like "Actually she kinda sucks huh?"
Norns aren't her enforcers though? They tend to fate but do not have any innate connection with Pharasma, she didn't create them or set them to task and it's not mentioned or implied anywhere that she did. The Stolen Fate situation has no bearing on Pharasma or the Afterlife and is basically just a non-sequitor you brought in to be like "Actually she kinda sucks huh?"FFS, I'm not demonizing Pharamsa.
I am explaining the magical metaphysical mechanisms and history that have always been there, but are more openly discussed by the AP.
If pointing out that yes, she is the architect who set the rules, created their enforcers, etc, "demonizes" her from your PoV, that is your value judgement.
Media Rez seems to have a correct read of the situation. The norns are fey, rather than psychopomps - who are the servants of Pharasma. The Lady of Graves really only has ‘control’ over fate by being able to see when is the correct time for someone to die. That way she knows when their souls should be moved on or when they should hang out in the Boneyard waiting to re-enter the Universe.
The Norns "tending to fate" is not some unknowable, nor "value neutral" thing, and explaining what that means in-world is how that connects to Pharasma.
And yes, the Norns are "enforcers" of fate. They (literally) sniped threads and killed people if that would get things back on the correct path.
Because the effects of Aroden's not-death messed with the Norn's "fate" as much as "prophecy," we have *another* point of confirmation that Aroden's not-death affected a universal / shared component of reality.
That same component of reality was needed by Pharasma for her prophecies, we already know that.
The detailed example of the Norns can offer a much more clear understanding of that component of reality, and what the effects are.
As the Norns whinge about, the conceptual ability to read the future with certainty is not intact anymore.
In addition to her prophecies, Pharasma's death predictions would also be affected by this change. That's the entire crux of the "leap" I'm trying to make here. That *all* future-sight certainty has been damaged to the extent that accurate death-times from birth are not doable anymore, Pharasma included.
I've got some OCR software on my computer, so I might as well get & cite the direct text.
Wow, this is waaay more clear on the implications than I expected. And there's literally an "argument points" mechanic, which explains some things in hindsight, lol.
Quick summary of the below:
Yes, the Norns are attempting to lock-in a single future path for all of Golarion, and this is explicitly stated to remove free will from everyone (in Golarion).
They actually came to the tree after Aroden's not-death with this goal in mind; they leeched it's/golarion's power for a boost to their fate-restoring efforts.
The Spinning Hall has been home to the Harrowing Three for over a century. Once prophecy broke at the dawn of the Age of Lost Omens, the norns fell into a depression. They spent several months in this room futilely attempting to read the future but found themselves unable to do much more than see their own short-term fates. The thousands of threads in this room are the result of these hopeless attempts.
Rather than invest the power of their triumvirate in themselves, the norns invested it into the Spinning Hall, making this chamber the nexus of their strength. The norns empowered the room instead of gaining the elite adjustment, enabling it to tap into the innate power of Svaryr. This additional power allows the norns to perform particularly powerful rituals, including the ones required to create the Deck of Destiny and to bind Zellara. The Spinning Hall’s ceiling rises to a height of 100 feet.
When the PCs finally enter this chamber, proceed with Debating the Harrowing Three.
Debating the Harrowing Three
As the PCs enter the Spinning Hall, the Harrowing Three welcome them from where they sit upon their thrones. Assuming the PCs don’t immediately attack, the norns give raspy chuckles before they begin to speak. They talk one at a time, but switch between speakers every few words, making for a disorienting, eerie pattern.
“Ah, the great heroes. We are pleased that you have finally made your way to us, as we foresaw that you would. We’re sure you’re wondering why we’ve called you here. We have a proposition for you. My sisters and I are not wont to leave the safety of this chamber, but we are in need of powerful beings such as yourselves. You have been fated to gather the scattered cards from a very particular deck. A deck that we worked tirelessly to create since the dawning of this Age of Lost Omens. You did well to gather what cards you could, but now the Betrayer has taken them all. You will seek her out, reclaim what was taken, and return the cards to us so that we might restore what these Lost Omens stole from us. You might ask why you would do such a thing for us. We are prepared to explain your fate if you wish.”
The Harrowing Three know that the PCs are their best chance for reclaiming the Deck of Destiny and sealing the fate of Golarion to restore the power of prophecy. The norns hope that simply asking the PCs to seek out the cards Raven stole is enough, and if the PCs agree without requiring more from them, proceed to this campaign’s climax, as detailed in Chapter 3.
If the PCs do wish to know more, the Harrowing Three are prepared to present their reasoning for the creation of the deck—indeed, they’re almost eager for the chance to explain what they see as the most glorious plan for righting the cosmic farce that the past century has wrought. They spend several minutes sharing the following information and points with the PCs. While this adventure assumes the Harrowing Three get a chance to present all of their arguments first, it’s possible that some PCs might chime in or even begin debating these points in earnest. If so, feel free to jump into Arguments against Destiny on page 49 as needed. This debate could just as easily be a back-and-forth exchange rather than a simple matter of both sides presenting their arguments one at a time.
The Harrow Reading: The Harrowing Three begin by explaining their plan. They created the Deck of Destiny in hopes of performing the greatest harrow reading reality has ever known. This reading would read not the fate of a single person, but of all of Golarion at once. Performing this reading would seal the fate of Golarion and all those who dwell here, again making reality predictable. Prophecy would return, allowing not only the Harrowing Three but anyone to predict their fate with certainty. The norns note that if the PCs decide that destroying the Deck of Destiny is for the best, they’ll find the process difficult, for they claim the only way to destroy the deck is to use it for its intended purpose: perform a harrow reading for all of Golarion.
Importance of Prophecy: The norns then explain that the return of prophecy would be for the best. Uncertainty is a frightening, dangerous thing. The Harrowing Three argue that knowing what will happen is always better than not knowing. They believe that everyone would prefer to be ready for the next natural disaster, death in the family, or life-changing accident, and that all beings deserve the option to be ready to deal with such issues before they come to pass. Others would live easier lives knowing who they might marry, whether or not they might have children, what job they will have, and so forth. Removing the stress that rises from uncertainty would lead to happier lives for all. Even knowing something bad can still make a person happy because they can plan for this event rather than live in fear of the unknown.
Importance of Order: As the norns continue, they note that the return of prophecy is also a step toward order within the universe. Golarion will be but the first step toward a perfect future, for as they note, “free will leads to chaos.” Anyone can make decisions with far-reaching implications. Entire civilizations have been lost due to a single choice. Restoring prophecy minimizes harm. Rather than worrying that some errant choice could spiral into a chaotic aftermath, the norns argue that anything and anyone could be controlled and maintained.
Illusion of Choice: From here, the Harrowing Three look to appeal to the PCs more directly. They begin by noting that the free will they’ve had up to this point has been false, or at least, not as free as they’ve believed. From the day they were born, the PCs had decisions thrust upon them. They didn’t choose where to be born or to whom they were born. They didn’t decide the people they met as they grew. There were countless factors in their lives that were determined without their input. The norns note that there’s no such thing as true free will; no one was ever given full control of their lives and choices and thus cannot claim that they’ve ever had true free will at any point in their lives.
The norns continue by arguing that even if the PCs believe they have free will, there’s no way for them to truly know if that’s actually the case. No one, not the PCs, not the norns, not even the most powerful gods, has the means of seeing every single possibility of every single choice. That means that even when the PCs make a choice, there’s no way to have made it truly unrestricted. There are factors and possibilities for every choice the PCs have ever made that they’ll never know about. Without complete freedom, they cannot have true free will. The PCs might believe or feel that they’ve made decisions themselves, but there were always other factors in play. The norns note that locking in someone’s destiny doesn’t change that feeling. They will play out their lives believing they’ve made decisions themselves. If that’s already how people live their lives, why would reestablishing prophecy and fate change how people continue to live?
Finally, the Harrowing Three mention that the PCs had no problem with living a fated life up to this point. They moved through Svaryr believing that the only way to reach the norns was to collect the objects to break the seal and enter the Spinning Hall. If the PCs were truly free to choose as they wished, would they have not found a different way in? They could have broken the seal some other way. They could have found some method of retrieving the objects without killing the norns’ servants. They could have even ignored the norns entirely and simply put in the
_______
There is no evidence to suggest that Pharamsa ordered the Norns to concoct this scheme. For all we know, she is not aware of it.
We do not need the Norns to point their fingers and say "Pharasma did it" to be able to connect fate as a mechanism to prophecy & Aroden, as well as the architect above him, Pharasma.
My own argument is based on the direct canon observation that that Aroden's not-death affects future-vision as a concept for everyone, mortals and divine beings. It's like that bit of "what if" fiction they published about Nethys blowing up the shared universal magic when attempting to create a new magic tradition/flavor; that change/loss effects everyone who tries to tap into it.
While dense with neat lore, this side-bar interrogation fussing over Stolen Fate details is just a distraction from that core change to reality that happened when Aroden not-died.
The Norns, who use terms/mechanisms like "fate" that are not 1:1 with "prophecy" are still rendered blind to the future after Aroden's disappearance.
My argument is that Pharasma's ability to be certain about mortal death times is / should be similarly broken. Even if she is the architect of the system, she still taps into "foresight" the same as any god/norn/etc. We already know her prophecies don't work anymore, lol! It's not some giant leap to say that yes, that also applies to her mortal death predictions.
Direct quotes:
The norns continue by arguing that even if the PCs believe they have free will, there’s no way for them to truly know if that’s actually the case. No one, not the PCs, not the norns, not even the most powerful gods, has the means of seeing every single possibility of every single choice. That means that even when the PCs make a choice, there’s no way to have made it truly unrestricted.
Even the most powerful gods presently lack the ability to be certain anymore.
Including Pharasma? Until I have reason to think she gets a special exemption, then yes, even her, lol.This reading would read not the fate of a single person, but of all of Golarion at once. Performing this reading would seal the fate of Golarion and all those who dwell here, again making reality predictable. Prophecy would return, allowing not only the Harrowing Three but anyone to predict their fate with certainty.
Pf2 shares my exact writing/novelist claim that predictability, future-certainty is anti-free will (anti narrative). The existence of an accurate future-prediction is metaphysically and literally, what removes the ability to express free will. Free will is defined by possibility, variability, choice.
This also confirms that such prediction is presently impossible.
Add in the "even the most powerful gods," and we get the outcome that scripted mortal death times are no longer accurate.
|
Creative Director
|
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
Can confirm. The villains of Stolen Fate that set this all in motion are:
The fact that there IS no "locked in stone fate" for anyone in Golarion is in fact one of the main points of this Adventure Path. Even when villains like these norns try to break those rules, they can still be opposed by those who want to stop them.
The fact that Pharasma is (among other things) a goddess of fate doesn't mean she's the one pulling the strings in this Adventure Path. That said... it strikes me that this Adventure Path would be a really fun one for a cleric of Pharasma to play in, as it'd give that character a different vibe than the standard "Pharasma cleric wants to fight undead" thing that tends to be the norm. This would be a new norm, perhaps. Dare I say... A NORN NORM?
All that said... please don't lash out and attack each other here. Let's keep the discussion to game stuff and not insults.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Yeah. Pharasma doesn't know precisely when people will die anymore- we have had that explicitly confirmed with the psychopomps no longer knowing when Artokus will die. Once someone is dead, she does know if they will be resurrected.
Edit: Ninja'd by James Jacobs- an honor. XD
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Oh, that reminds me, I'm confused where the assertion that Aroden is an agent of Pharasma in matters of prophecy comes from? Is it just because he died when prophecy stopped working, or is there more to that lore tidbit that's not commonly known? Like, Tian Xia also lost prophecy but they didnt have an Aroden. It seems more to do with the loss of the Seal rather than one random god on one random (if statistically outlying) planet, so while Aroden is a prophecied deity, I don't feel like he's got all that much to do with fate outside of that.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Yeah. Pharasma doesn't know precisely when people will die anymore-
James' "it's still true" upthread seems to suggest the opposite.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
Yeah. Pharasma doesn't know precisely when people will die anymore-James' "it's still true" upthread seems to suggest the opposite.
That was in response to Pharasma still knowing when/how they'll be resurrected, not when/how they'll die.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
How I understand Pharasma's future sight is that she previously knew exactly what was going to happen, but in the Age of Lost Omens that's not the case anymore. For example, when someone casts augury or similar fate-related spells they usually have a failure chance. That wasn't the case before.
I think Pharasma still sees the future, but what she sees isn't set on stone. Like James said, the reason is that its in the Age of Lost Omens when PCs can finally begin to interact with the setting unlike before where most of the lore is background that led to the current events, so if Pharasma knows or doesn't know when someone is going to die or resurrect is effectively at GMs discretion. Do your PCs want to resurrect an ally or someone that died? Its up to the GM if was judged or not. Do you want your BBEG to be an ancestral monster that was defeated 5000 years ago but that somehow resurrected in the current day? Its up to the GM if was judged or not. Even if in that last example the monster in question would have died before the Age of Lost Omens, its entirely possible that Pharasma knew something about it before and it didn't matter much to her or she knew and for whatever reason she knew that would also lead to something else which has to happen for whatever godly reason. As I said, deities are narrative tools so I wouldn't be bothered to think the reasoning behind their actions.
Its not like the PCs can go and ask her directly in normal situations anyways.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Do you have their email?What happens when someone time-travels from lost omens to before Aroden's death? Do they create a zone of non-prophecy while they're in the past or do they become ruled by prophecy while in the past?You'd have to ask Shyka or Yog-Sothoth about that.
Your keyboard would melt trying to type the symbols, if your mind hadn't already. Maybe tag them in a TikTok instead.
Personally, I think it's best to allow the soul to recognize the source of that attempt, otherwise it gets kinda potentially gross for a bad guy to kill someone, then resurrect them right into a prison or worse. And the whole idea of a bad guy that kills, resurrects, kills, and so on over and over and over, while a compelling idea for a horror movie villain, is kinda awful for a tabletop RPG about heroic PCs, in my opinion
At the very least, that should not be a default option allowed to every evil cultist or mad inquisitor that happen to have access to a moderately leveled cleric. It should probably be a specialized niche ritual only available to certain groups.
The scenario described seems more like a daemon or velstrac worshiper thing- Tenderizing the soul before they offer it to their masters. It seems like too inefficient for devils, and too much effort for demon worshippers.