Hey Everyone, I’m The-Magic-Sword and you can find me on Reddit, Twitter and the Paizo Forums. The Stream should be starting shortly, I’ll be typing out the minutes and taking screenshots to follow on with the news as best I can! (TMS Note: This is how I’ll say something as myself from here on!)
Here we go! Luis Loza, James Jacobs, John Compton, Vanessa Hoskins, Eleanor (TMS Note: “Smizzo”) Ferron
Highhelm is coming out next month, it's connected to the Darklands via a network of tunnels through the depths– a lot of the guards in Highhelm are there to stop people from going down and stopping things from coming up.
The Dwarven Pantheon is discussed, they’re fully fleshed out in Highhelm from old mentions in Pathfinder First Edition. They’re still talking about Gods a bit, talking about the one who appeared in Knights of Lastwall. “Who among the Gods hasn’t been Cayden Cailen’s Side piece at one time or another.” Volka is the Dwarven Goddess of Marriage and Love, she apparently fangirls over love affairs in the world. If one of her priests messes up love, she smites them hard.
We’re going through the names of the Gods and you can learn all about them in the book. But now it’s time to move on to Sky King’s Tomb.
1-10 AP in 3 parts, it can be 100% underground starting in Highhelm and going deeper and darker into the Darklands. During the Dwarves Quest for the Sky there was a legendary figure ‘Targic’ who in this adventure path you’ll discover his forgotten history. It's a very dwarf heavy AP, but it's not Dwarf only, there are tons of hooks for any PC you’d like to bring in. There’s a lot of interesting new creatures, like a new Algothullu, there’s ‘Ulatkini’ and exploring their culture when they aren’t under the influence of the algothullu
There’s interesting new items, like relics that are Dwarven Artifacts and relatively powerful (TMS Note: Yes, Game Mechanic Relics that grow with you) there are new archetypes, some of them are weird and disturbing, there are stone based archetypes that let you become living stone or use stone in your fighting style. There’s a whole article about the ecology of cave worms
Lookit the baby cave worms! For scale, each of these is the size of a small dog.
“Return to the Darklands” James Jacobs article, when they first started doing Pathfinder stuff they knew they wanted a big underground region, and they came up with the idea of a tiered underworld that they expanded on throughout the end of 3.5 and Pathfinder 1e. A lot of random dungeons connected to the Darklands. They’ve wanted to a Darklands book for sometime because there’s a lot of interesting things, but then the Remaster happened. More than any other part of Golarion, the Darklands are entrenched in the OGL– the creatures and lore. They won’t be able to use those things, so this article is going to talk about what that means in the backmatter of Sky King’s Tomb, updating it for 2e.
It's a fairly brief article, in this article it's revealed that the previous information was from an unreliable narrator (Pathfinder Volum 44) and this is an excuse in-universe for the big changes.
They won’t be doing much with Drow going forward, it's too bound up in the OGL. They’re going to be updating other things and adding new things to the Darklands. 8000 feet down is hollow world stuff that are effectively terrariums built by Vault Keepers, this is discussed in Rage of Elements.
But the bulk of the article is about denizens, Cavern Elves have an ancestral name now, the article gives them an identity “Ayundelar” (sp?) Umbral Gnomes are there too which are inspired by the deep gnomes, they’re both ‘good guys’ for the Darklands. Harengar (sp?)
Previously known as Duergar, the subterranean variant of Dwarves, they’re the Dwarves who decided not to engage in the Quest for the Sky. This one is riding a battle beetle. Paizo has been looking back at slavery in the setting, they had to decide on how to move away from that for these guys. Harengar society is now driven by a pyramid scheme mentality, if they do you a favor, they use the debt of that as leverage for anything you do going forward. So they try to reduce their own upward obligation and increase the number of people who owe them. They will literally raid and kidnap people, then release them to make others owe them, and then raid them again if they don’t honor that debt. The Harengar are constantly maneuvering to not owe others, and make others owe them.
They’re the dwarves who were left behind with nothing by the Quest for the Sky, they are driven by resentment against other dwarves for leaving them behind. They have innate occult magic, and they all have the cantrip sigil, because they’re all marking things as there’s, because their society is so focused on tracking ownership. They have Blood Vendetta as a reaction spell, and a Paranoia spell because they’re always trying to game their relationships.
Drow could not be salvaged because of all the baggage with the OGL and such, so they’re leaving them behind in favor of this elaboration on Cavern Elves. They’ll be taking a more extensive look at them in the future. Serpentfolk are taking the role of villains in the Darklands.
In the old days, they ruled the Darklands. There’s a bunch of still existing cities, that used to be Drow cities, that are now revised to be Serpentfolk cities. Their main role is to plan to come up from below and replace humanity, they’re an organized powerful group who is out to get everyone and are preparing to someday invade the surface. Xernacanan (sp?), previous a massive drow city, is a mystery, the new lore is that no one knows who built it– the Sekmin themselves are afraid of it.
Lost Omens Darklands “Feels Inevitable” but they need to find a good spot on the schedule for it. Jokes about doing three Darklands books, but no. Someday, they will have to deal with that growing avalanche.
If you want to still use Drow at home, they’re not sending anyone to your house to stop you, the existing rules will still be in places like Nethys. But they won’t be focusing on it going forward, they’ll be doing their own thing. It’s tricky and every group will have to decide for themselves. James talks about Shensen who used to be a drow, then she comes back as an aquatic elf via reincarnation, her entry in Firebrands didn’t mention it.
Basically, they’re turning the lights off on the room where Drow would be, in favor of other stuff, but you’re welcome to turn those lights back on yourself. There will be no Drow Ancestry or Heritage, they hope you like what they’re doing with the other stuff in the Darklands.
They found that the revaluation of lore spurred by the remaster did cause them to innovate in response, they can’t just rest on the existing stuff, they need to apply the things they’ve learned and create something new. Originally, they had to balance the existing lore with the new lore, but the necessity gave them freedom to say “If we’re going to change things from the ground up, how can we completely reinvent this for Pathfinder, within the existing canon?” Monster Core will lean heavily on real existing folklore.
Kasish were created by the vault keepers, when you bring one close to another, they react based on what words are on their foreheads.
Because of the changes with Drow and Fleshwarping, you’ll be more likely to see Fleshwarps come up out of the Darklands, Fleshwarps will be tweaked going forward.
They have this town called Umberweb made up of driders, it’ll probably now be a city of Fleshwarps, the changes are allowing them to refocus to lt them make something that makes more sense geographically.
Gunslingers and such would make sense in the clicking caverns, which is a part of the Darklands filled with Clockworks, in addition to being more broadly appropriate. A lot of the technology has filtered to the Harengar (TMS Note: I cannot grok how this word is pronounced and spelled)
Highhlem has a Stalwart Defender archetype all about being tough and tanky, it gives you a stance that gives you temp HP, and then activate further abilities to be tough.
Alright the panel is wrap, and that’s the end of my (TMS’s) Paizocon, I’ll see you all for Gencon’s write-ups in a couple of months. Go check out the Paizocon discord for some more Paizocon fun!