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So, got a little heated on the old Reddit and was curious about how wrong I was.
Commented on a reddit thread and got downvoted into oblivion for saying that Desna, while she has the Moon domain (as Star didn't exist until later) she is not a Moon God.
The conversation was due to Nocticula called her 'that hag the moon' in WotR, the game. I argued that she was, outside of the centaur tribe referenced in The Varnhold Vanishing, not nearly associated enough with the moon to be referred to AS the moon.
Is this wrong? Is Desna an iconic Moon Goddess of Golarion in some writing I'm not familiar with? Is she somehow linked to BEING the moon in a way that Nocticula's comment would make sense?
Tsukiyo, or even Groetus, would be in my mind gods closely enough linked to the Moon to the called it. Even Ketephys is closer.
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I associate Desna with the stars and night sky, and the moon is in the night sky but I dont think of her as the moon goddess in the same way Sarenrae is the sun goddess. Theres too much more going on there for "moon goddess" to encapsulate it. The most clear moon goddess probably would have been the one that died in Earthfall (Amaznen?)
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But on the other hand, Moon IS one of Desna's domains RAW. That DOES appear to be an addition from 2e, however.
The most clear moon goddess probably would have been the one that died in Earthfall (Amaznen?)
Close, Acavna. Amaznen was her husband.
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I associate Desna with the stars and night sky, and the moon is in the night sky
Also in the day sky half the time.
The moon appears to move through the constellations, which is a night sky thing, but it is not unique in this. The sun, the planets, and comets (when they appear) do so too.
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Desna is worshipped as "Mother Moon" by the matriarchal Nomen centaur tribe.
Varnhold vanishing.
The inhabitants of the Moon in "the Moonscar" worship Nocticula and were actively furthering her ends. I would be inclined to say that if they live there, they can claim it for her. If any survive, I wonder what they think of Nocticula's change of heart.
I would like the "The Goddess of the Moon died to save Golarian, but Desna looks after the Moon for her." However, any connection there seems to be headcanon only. "Nocticula is taking over the moon-watch" would also be nice homebrew material.
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I'd think she's primarily a god of celestial bodies broadly and how that's interpreted varies from culture to culture based on what astronomical features (aside from the sun) they rely on or centralize. Desna's big enough and ancient enough and abstract enough that she's kind of worshipped everywhere and in a lot of different ways. To sailors and travelers, she embodies the stars, probably especially whichever ones they use for navigation. To cultures that put more emphasis on lunar cycles and lack a specific moon deity, they come to associate her more with that role.
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Yeah she has the Moon domain probably because Stars didn't exist when 2e came out. It was added in Divine Mysteries and they just didn't change it in the remaster, perhaps due to oversight or it not being that important.
Like the fact Nocticula calls her 'that hag the moon' in the game and this is supposed to be widely understandable to be Desna is, I think, a huge bit of confusion.
My theory was that Owlcat, who had just made Kingmaker, saw the bit in Varnhold Vanishing about the centaurs, didn't investigate beyond that, and assumed her being a personification of the moon was like a wider Golarion thing. The fact it shows up in Varnhold Vanishing and the Owlcat game ONLY makes me assume this has to be the case.
I think if Paizo wanted her to be a Moon God they'd have used her in place of Tsukiyo in that pantheon, as he is very much more localized. The fact its Sarenrae for Sun, Tsukiyo for Moon, and Desna for Stars is pretty blatant IMO that she is not meant to be specifically a Moon God even though she has a connection via the Night Sky.
Being called 'The Moon' isn't something I'd ever have assumed meant 'Desna'.
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The answer is obvious. Nocticula, in her mortal life long before she was a Demon, let alone a Demon Lord, was a Centaur.
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Much though I have enjoyed OwlCat's kingmaker, it's also clear to me that there are a few places where their approach to Golarion's lore has leaned more toward relying on first assumptions rather than the actual meat of Golarion lore. Most offensive to me was depicting Shelyn (or at least her followers in good standing) as petty and shallow and more than a little bloody-minded.
Calling Desna a moon goddess is not as flagrant an oversight as that, but I still consider it largely an error that slipped in while glossing over the richness and nuance of the lore (excepting of course in the case of those cultures where Desna is treated as a designated lunar deity)
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Much though I have enjoyed OwlCat's kingmaker, it's also clear to me that there are a few places where their approach to Golarion's lore has leaned more toward relying on first assumptions rather than the actual meat of Golarion lore. Most offensive to me was depicting Shelyn (or at least her followers in good standing) as petty and shallow and more than a little bloody-minded.
Calling Desna a moon goddess is not as flagrant an oversight as that, but I still consider it largely an error that slipped in while glossing over the richness and nuance of the lore (excepting of course in the case of those cultures where Desna is treated as a designated lunar deity)
I am certain they just were aware of it from their work with Varnhold.
God the way they treated Shelyn made me wanna go on a crusade FOR Shelyn. It was weirdly spiteful of a goddess who is one of the most benevolent and kind deities in the canon. Huge misread of her character.
Desna (IMO) is not a "moon goddess" in the way that Sarenrae is the "sun goddess" (of Golarion). She is kind of tangentially the goddess of the night sky, but more importantly she is the goddess of art, music, beauty, and love.
It would be a bit like saying Cayden Cailean is the god of gamblers because he is somewhat associated with being lucky (for surviving the Test of the Starstone while drunk).
Creative Director
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Gonna spolier this wall of text, but here's why Desna's moon-adjacent and not officially a moon goddess.
When the time came to create Pathfinder RPG, we were nervous about estranging our established 3.5 customers, so we took a minimalistic approach to changing rules too much. That included introducing too many new domains—there wasn't room to add a Moon domain at that time, since we needed that room to shore up other themes that other deities needed (particularly the complication between our Death Goddess being not cool with undead not being supported by the rules), and since as a side-effect of the 3.5 start Desna was more of a luck and travel goddess than a moon goddess, that domain didn't get included—there was no need since we didn't have a devoted MOON deity.
Eventually, that became more and more obvious a missing feature and we brought that domain into the game, but by that point, Desna was already fully formed as one of the core deities and changing her to also be a moon goddess was awkward. And so we introduced several other moon deities along the way.
All of that informed 2E's version of things. There's still no "moon" deity in the core 20, but frankly I kind of like that—forced symmetry is a design choice I often avoid, since that can so-easily lead down the route of having things define each other by what they're not, or by their opposites, and that always kinda felt lazy to me, personally.
Eventually the lack of a core moon deity in the Inner Sea got thematically quantified with the lore addition of Acavna, who sacrificed herself to save Golarion from total destruction during Earthfall. There not being a "replacement" moon deity in the Inner Sea was thematically intended to fit into that theme of loss and sacrifice from her act.
But there are plenty of other moon deities out there today to choose from. There remain the moon-adjacent deities who are associated with the night or outer space (Desna, Zon-Kuthon, Nocticula, etc.) but there are full-fledged moon deities too. The one with the largest spread out there is probably Tsukiyo.
But until we got to that point, we did now and then equate Desna to the Moon for some stuff, as a side effect of her being an outer space goddess.
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Eventually the lack of a core moon deity in the Inner Sea got thematically quantified with the lore addition of Acavna, who sacrificed herself to save Golarion from total destruction during Earthfall. There not being a "replacement" moon deity in the Inner Sea was thematically intended to fit into that theme of loss and sacrifice from her act.
I do find this a really interesting and maybe poetic point. We all know "Our God gave their life for us" is a powerful message. It's a shame she's so unknown among the players, a guardian dedicated to her memory would be my kind of character. However, I mostly play society or GM these days, so I'd never have any real engagement with the concept.
All of that informed 2E's version of things. There's still no "moon" deity in the core 20, but frankly I kind of like that—forced symmetry is a design choice I often avoid, since that can so-easily lead down the route of having things define each other by what they're not, or by their opposites, and that always kinda felt lazy to me, personally.
This is not a bad thing, but I do feel you (the team) have made asymmetry a theme of pathfinder. I think its a good choice as the elephant often forces symmetry across everything. (paladins are the same mechanics for every alignment now) Was it your intention to convey this as a theme of your work? Or just a preference that repeated itself?
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Creative Director
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This is not a bad thing, but I do feel you (the team) have made asymmetry a theme of pathfinder. I think its a good choice as the elephant often forces symmetry across everything. (paladins are the same mechanics for every alignment now) Was it your intention to convey this as a theme of your work? Or just a preference that repeated itself?
It's been one of my personally underlying design and writing philosophies from the start, and one that I've conveyed with mixed success. For example, originally my concept was for the "good" elemental demigods to be all dead, with only evil ones active, in an attempt to give a built-in imbalance to the elemental planes and creatures, since to me, imbalance is more interesting than balance.
It's also a big part of the advice I give adventure writers—avoid symmetrical designs in your dungeons. A symmetrical dungeon map might look appealing to some, but it doesn't to me, and it makes it particularly annoying to adventure in since once players get it, then they only have to explore half the dungeon and then the thrill of discovery is muted for the rest of it. Even if the whole point is to hide a secret room in one half of the otherwise symmetrical dungeon, it's frustrating design because that either ensures the room will be missed, or if it ISN'T missed trains players to waste time searching every square of a symmetrical dungeon for secrets that aren't there.
It's also why we have one god of magic, and not opposing gods of "good magic" and "evil magic."
It's also why I love Hell being so limited in scope compared to the Outer Rifts.
It's also why I made 2 of the 7 runelords be unreplaced for their run, and the other 5 having LOTS of replacements.
There's plenty more examples out there.
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Groetus is not really a moon god. He's specifically the moon overlooking the Boneyard, but not like Golarion's moon or moons in the general.