History of Golarion

[noodles]

I'm writing out the entire chronology of the Pathfinder RPG setting, because it's never been done. When the game came out, there was a really general timeline of events, but a lot of the items on it were literally just names they were making up on the fly, to be fleshed out later. At this point, I'm finding it useful to find the individual entries on each character event that has since been explored, and writing it all out chronologically as a story. It's for fun, mainly, but I think one day if it's all finished, a GM could read it and get a much better understanding of the setting than stuff in the books will afford.

This is basically a pet project for myself, but a couple of the things from it are good enough that I've been told to share them. I'll share it all eventually, but most of it right now is sort of written like a textbook, so for now I'll leave this post here as a placeholder, so I can put stuff in later without it looking weird. So before I post an excerpt, here's a short-ish summary.

---

The gods appeared as motes of light from the wellspring of creation. From a maelstrom of chaos, they took the raw stuff of potential and erected celestial homes for themselves. They then set about the task of hammering out the laws and material of the universe. When they reconvened, each was the incarnation of an ideal, and they set about the task of pupulating the universe. Rovagug, the Rough Beast, appeared, a horrifying nightmare given flesh. He looked at all of creation and ached to see it undone. He raged across the universe, smashing planet after planet, until a coalition of gods made war with him. Sarenrae, an angel of light, tore open the planet Golarion, and cast Rovagug inside. Then, Asmodeus, the Pince of Darkness, shackled him within, and hid the key in the deepest chambers of Hell. Sarenrae and many of the other gods took a special interest in Golarion, and Sarenrae became the goddess of its sun.



Astronomers name Golarion "the Child". Only scholars of the old tongues know Golarion means "the Cage".

The world was still hot from Torag's forge when the first intelligent life appeared, from deep below the roiling sea and molten earth. After the planet cooled and the sky was sealed off from the Dark Tapestry, and after the gods of nature gave life to the world, those deep minds took the beasts of land and sea as their thralls and made war. When only one race remained, they swam down to their already impossibly ancient cities and waited.

Eventually, the world was ruled by huge reptiles. After humanoids had developed in their shadow, the cleverest of the tiny and weak humans invented the bow and arrow. Erastil appeared, and showed them agriculture, as well as how to topple the thunder lizards that threatened their settlements. Soon, the great creatures were going extinct.

The god of reptiles Ydersius saw this, and was furious. He took his most cunning acolytes, the snakes, and created a new race of champions. The Serpentfolk were tall, smart, and very powerful. They swung swords and weaved sorceries, and soon their empire covered the planet, even other planets. It seemed like their reign would last forever...

[noodles]

Wᴇ have always been here.

Wᴇ remember the darkness at the beginning of time. Saw it, will see it again.

Golarion is ᴏᴜʀ world. The Builders left, and the Keepers are dead. Wᴇ saw our tools crawling profanely across the land, grabbed their minds and brought them to the darkened predawn waves, filled their lungs with glorious ocean and made them breathe, and they saw at once that ᴡᴇ were their masters. Their tiny bundles of synapses could not fathom their own existence, let alone one without ᴜs. Blunt tools, singular purpose.


The others were gone, so ᴡᴇ put our tools back. Most died without a purpose, without a way to survive, and only the fiercest and most fecund still haunt the Deep and the Dark. Wᴇ hung them up where they wait to be used again.

Wᴇ were the only minds, and this was ᴏᴜʀ planet. [was is will be] Others would visit, but never for long.

The beasts grew like a tree, multitudes upon multitudes, an endless fractal branching from a single equation, a simple equation.

Wᴇsʟᴇᴇᴘɪɴᴏᴜʀʟɪɢʜᴛʟᴇssᴄɪᴛɪᴇsᴀɴᴅᴅʀᴇᴀᴍᴏғsɪɴɢᴜʟᴀʀɪᴛʏ

When the beasts made tools, told stories, ᴅʀᴇᴀᴍᴇᴅ, it was not of concern to ᴜs. Animals have animal minds with animal desires. Survival. Pleasure. Power over each other. Even when they received help from an interloper. They conquered the lizards in as many generations as one of ᴜs took to carefully, patiently inscribe, ponder, and understand a single rune.

Then the snakes came.

They had technology not theirs to use, magic not theirs to conjure, and their god came down to lead them in a form of rolling fury. They ate the creatures of the land, of the darkness, even crossed the void and ate the barbarians of Akiton and the elves of Castrovel. Though their desires were animal, their god had imagination.

But he was only a god.

Wᴇ waited, until they had grown turgid and slow and their empire was thin from its pointless quest to consume resources, information, and the slaves they consorted with. Their borders were embattled with the Cyclops nations. It was a game to them. But they were distracted.

Wᴇ looked for the best tools. The snakes had a god, but the humans had many. It would serve ᴜs for a time. We found the best of them, farmers in rudimentary kingdoms, on a bountiful continent they called Azlant. Wᴇ touched their minds, and their resistance was annoying. The greatest of masters is worshiped by choice. We went to them.

Wᴇ ʙʀᴏᴜɢʜᴛ ᴛʜᴇᴍ ɪɴᴛᴏ ᴛʜᴇ ᴡᴀᴛᴇʀ ᴛᴏ ʟᴏᴏᴋ ᴀᴛ ᴜs ᴀɴᴅ sᴀɴɪᴛʏ ʙʟᴇᴅ ғʀᴏᴍ ᴛʜᴇɪʀ ᴍɪɴᴅs ᴀɴᴅ ᴛʜᴇ ʜᴏʀʀᴏʀ ᴏɴ ᴛʜᴇɪʀ ғᴀᴄᴇs sᴛᴀʏᴇᴅ ᴡɪᴛʜ ᴛʜᴇᴍ ᴜɴᴛɪʟ ᴛʜᴇɪʀ ᴡᴇᴀʀʏ ғᴀᴍɪʟɪᴇs ᴀʙᴀɴᴅᴏɴᴇᴅ ᴛʜᴇᴍ ᴛᴏ ᴅɪᴇ ɪɴ ᴛʜᴇ ғᴏʀᴇsᴛ

A delicate tool. But a tool with the most imaginative uses must have imagination of its own.

Some of ᴜs changed our wriggling form into that which could walk among them disguised. But not in hiding.

Wᴇ wore masks. Wᴇ called down lightning with our thoughts and told them ᴡᴇ were their rulers and that the day of their ascension had come. They gaped in uncomprehending awe and did as ᴡᴇ asked. They called ᴜs the Veiled Masters and this was good.

Wᴇ gave them technology to match the snakes, and they built the first city. Abadar met with them, and told them he was proud. He told them about the importance of law, of fairness, of progress. Abadar is a fool who lives in his vast perfect city beyond the heavens and keeps his vault full of reality-shaping playthings and when the entropy at the end of everything comes it will all crumble like everything else.

Wᴇ showed them the runes, the basis of all magic. Their imagination soared and their city became an empire that collided with the slow-breeding snakes like a storm and the empire of Ydersius, with all of its inhabitants so much stronger, so much more intelligent, could do nothing to stop the proliferation of humanity because Ydersius was a god ʙᴜᴛ ᴡᴇ ʟɪᴠᴇᴅ ᴀɴᴅ ᴅʀᴇᴀᴍᴇᴅ ʜᴇʀᴇ ʙᴇғᴏʀᴇ ᴀɴʏ ᴏғ ᴛʜᴇ ɢᴏᴅs ᴛᴜʀɴᴇᴅ ᴛʜᴇɪʀ ғɪᴄᴋʟᴇ ᴀᴛᴛᴇɴᴛɪᴏɴ ᴛᴏ ᴛʜɪs ᴘʟᴀᴄᴇ, ᴛʜɪs ᴘʟᴀᴄᴇ ᴡʜᴇʀᴇ ᴇᴠᴇɴ ᴛʜᴇ ᴍɪᴄʀᴏʙᴇs ғᴇᴀʀ ᴜs ʙᴇᴄᴀᴜsᴇ ᴡᴇ ʀᴇᴍᴇᴍʙᴇʀ ᴛʜᴇ ᴛᴀsᴛᴇ ᴏғ ᴛʜᴇ sᴏᴜᴘ ᴛʜᴇʏ sᴘᴀᴡɴᴇᴅ ғʀᴏᴍ.

The snakes fought in the brave ways animals respect but in the end they crawled into the Dark and pondered why.


The world was Azlanti now. The humans crushed the cyclopes and made deals with the dragons. Their technology and magic became peerless. They went where ᴡᴇ told them to go built what ᴡᴇ told them to build. Even the stars were their home.

The most delicate of tools are the quickest to grow dull.

Wᴇ told them to cease worship of the gods. The power ᴡᴇ gave the Azlanti made such endeavors meaningless. For the first time, they refused ᴜs. Wᴇ called down cataclysms, destroyed cities, over and over. Trying to sharpen the tools. But with their blind allegiance to their gods, and the confidence awarded by their magic, ᴏᴜʀ ᴍᴀɢɪᴄ, they were only emboldened.

Oᴜʀ tools were beyond repair. So ᴡᴇ threw them away.

Wᴇ disappeared from their lands, and eventually, their memory. They spread, and splintered, and warred amongst themselves. Animal things. They fought over what technology to use, and what god to worship, and made many other nations, like Thassilon, a name heard by few and understood by none, Thassilon, a place that came close to understanding but cracked and now only dreams. This was the Age of Legend.

Wᴇ waited until they were at the peak of confidence, at the brink of immortality.

Wᴇ reached far beyond the world, to the diaspora of failed planets in there far-flung orbits. Wᴇ touched them, held them, until ᴡᴇ found the one with the right size, density, and hatred ᴡᴇ required. Wᴇ sung to it, filled it with cruelty and death and the terrible truth of ᴏᴜʀ existence.


Wᴇ called it, and it came. Oᴜʀ ғɪɴᴀʟ ɪɴsᴛʀᴜᴍᴇɴᴛ, so that no human work could rise to the might of Azlant ever again. Wᴇ called it, and gave the world Darkness.

When a human drifts in the ocean, he feels dread. This is not an irrational fear.

It is a memory.

[noodles]

placeholder: The Aboleths pulled a huge asteroid and swarm of meteors out of orbit, filled it with evil magic, and hurled it at Golarion, destroying the civilization of Azlant and most other civilizations on the planet. A dust cloud covered the world in darkness for a thousand years, during which a number of evil forces came into power, and the orcs erupted from the underground to wage endless war on the surface dwellers. Humans were reduced largely to scavengers and led primitive lives filled with constant struggle. The civilization of Azlant and all its technological wonder was largely forgotten, replaced by myth. Once the dust cleared and the sun returned, humans were able to grow crops and effectively restart civilization, entering a sort of bronze age.

Many powerful empires appeared that laid the groundwork for modern countries, and many were beset by cataclysms and powerful monsters, leading to advances in technology and culture. The ruins of Azlant were rediscovered, which captured the imagination of humankind as many tried to emulate it. However, the true light and power of Azlant was gone forever, except in one man: Aroden, the last true-blooded Azlanti, he who would go on to become the god of humanity.

[noodles]

To what, little flower, amounts a human?


They aren't among the strongest. They aren't among the smartest. Why, then, have we inherited the world?

Of course, at first we certainly were stronger and smarter; I remember it seeming that way, at least. But not even the strength of gods was enough to stop the asteroid. To what, then, amounts strength?

Strength to pull the stones until a pyramid casts its shadow over your village? Strength to rule until you are killed or simply die? Strength to have faith so great that rational discourse finds you proudly impenetrable?

If a human is strong, is humanity also strong? If a human is strong enough to dispatch all others of his race, is that race therefore categorically unlikely to survive?

Forgive me, little flower, for I have wandered long, and I would ramble longer still.

I once sang the gospel of Acavna, a goddess of war. I watched the Starstone kill her, saw the molten scars on the moon, and knew it was her blood. I have never known what it feels like to die, but I suspect it is not as terrible as feeling your god die. To believe that all strength is derived from a divine being, to be granted tangible power for your faith, to shape the world with it, only for that power to suddenly, utterly, cease, a light as great as a hundred thousand suns, blown out like a candle.

But I awoke, a human, floating in the flooded ruin of my home, and I was alive, where she, a god, had died.

I felt anger, that I put my faith in something that failed to stop such catastrophe, guilt, that I had survived where countless millions had not, and, floating beneath that terrible darkened sky, gratitude, that a god loved the world enough to die for it. I still worshiped her, for a time. Perhaps I thought that worshiping a god and receiving nothing in return made it the truest religion of all.

I attained magic again, with the help of Jatembe, even magic that can be called divine, but it was power I pulled from the world around me, not power I was given. It was a different sort of power, colder, but I knew no one could take it away from me. I knew something different would be required to survive the, something more essential, and I allowed the testimonies of both angels and demons.


Was it strength that carried us through the darkness? Or is strength itself darker than deepest midnight? I remember the faces of humanity removed from all civilization. I remember the things they told themselves, lies? Or maybe, stories we tell children, about jolly spirits that reward good behavior. Of what nature is the lie that allows us to persist, when everything is gone, even the light of the sun? What does a mother tell a child who just witnessed a man strangle someone to death over a small scrap of food? What does she tell herself? What do you do, when you're trapped in a world of shadow that rewards only the ruthless? How do you hold on, when hope itself withers and blows away like so many leaves in autumn? How could I find peace in anything, when all that I have slowly wilts and fades? When everything dies but me?


Two things happen when a human lets go of hope. First, they are overcome with despair. Then, if they let go of everything, even that all-encompassing misery and fear...

Did you know that ghouls, those single-minded eaters of flesh that still haunt our sewers and graveyards, are actually in full possession of the mental faculties they had in life? Their memories are simply wiped clean, and replaced by hunger. Congregated, they eventually develop culture, even civilization. But a ghoul in its natural state is feral, cannibalistic, unyielding.

And that, you see, is a human that has let go of everything. A beast.


(An aside, little flower, but consider how ghouls, they of slender frame and pointed ears, propagate by an infectious disease that elves are specifically immune to. Elves, who since ancient times have lamented that other races aren't more like them. Just a thought.)

I'm not sure that I was ever a good person. But I know that I believed in good behavior. I emerged from the darkness believing in practicality. After my wife died of old age, I became a master of martial discipline and worked in the employ of countless warlords, and I saw what worked. Human mental health is like balancing a nail. With many humans under one's responsibility, sometimes it is practical to simply carry a hammer. How could I curse that behavior, when there was nothing to be gained by the free and noble? How, after helping build the pyramids and watching the light of civilization return, could I condemn a tyrant? I look at what has been built on the backs of slaves, and I am left with the conclusion that it is indeed evil, but also that it is, or was, necessary. I look at what evil has done and I fear, absolutely fear, that without it, humans would be extinct.


The purest of lovers will not reproduce without lust. Greed is painted as success. And people who are "the best" at a thing are celebrated. What conscientious woodsman doesn't feel gluttony after sinking in to his stockpile of food? What affluent person doesn't feel envy for the more affluent? I traveled to the Mwangi jungles, to see if Jatembe still lived. I saw the flying cities of the Shory, and I knew that goodness had not built them.

Did we then deserve what came next? All that remain of those cities are ruins rent by tremendous claws.

Is there justice on Golarion?


Is our every action held in scrutiny and poured into opposing bowls of some celestial scale? Are our words and deeds collected by a cosmic exchequer, only to be doled out to generations unborn and unaffiliated? In a world where gods are real and magic flows, why is there suffering and starvation? Do the righteous suffer for their own mistakes, or those of their forefathers? Do we doom not ourselves, not our children, but our descendants a thousand years avaunt?

Is success and peace not ours, but earned by ancestors beyond memory? Does anyone truly deserve happiness?

Whose vengeance was this? What sin warranted a second annihilation?


Its form awoke a dim memory. I watched it as it appeared from the east, and I feared that the severed head of Ydersius may have been whispering all along, not where mortals could hear it, but to the Beast itself. Each of the Spawn had taken a form of whirling madness, and each had perished, and when I looked upon the simple, almost natural form it took, I felt in the deepest part of my soul that our doom had finally come, that the world would not be rebuilt after all, that our actions to survive the darkness had too great a price.

A titanic phantom from our past, a thousand times mightier than the god of reptiles vanquished by Savith. It took the shape of a thunder lizard because nothing esoteric was needed to undo all of man's works. Only power, only strength. All of the other Spawn brought about madness in those that witnessed them; the Tarrasque invoked only the certainty of one's own demise.

There is a fear in us so animal that only another animal can conjure it.


Is it by its similarity to us, and therefore its inherent danger, that it breaks down the door to our unconscious mind, finds its kin among the beasts of our deepest dreams, and sends us scrambling backwards with fear, staring into the eyes in the underbrush? Or is it the dissimilarity, that it is nothing like us, and therefore inscrutable; that it is alike to us in that it is a living, breathing creature with the same number of limbs and facial features, and yet so alien as to be wrong, unknowably monstrous but linked in id, in the primal need, the hunger, the killer instinct? Is it for these reasons that there remains a primal fear, a deep-instilled terror, in this world of magic and cities, of the mundane but unyielding creatures with which we once shared the wilderness?

Even I hold close my sword as I cut a path through dark woods.

We blasted it with rays, until it grew a carapace that reflected our magic back at us. We assaulted it with siege engines, until it regenerated flesh faster than our artillery could damage it. We staved off its recovery with fire and acid, until it grew skin that thrived even in lava. We blinded it until it developed senses all over its body. We tried desperately to reach into the will of this seemingly simple engine of chaos, and were met with a hateful intelligence that sent one word back into our minds, loud and large as a supernova, in foulest Aklo: "Disgusting."

Only after years, years of effort, after the entire continent of Casmaron lay in ruin, after Mwangi was once again rendered a dark jungle, after the Tarrasque carried itself like a great striding bird of prey into the heart of western civilization, poised to finally consume the last light of the Inner Sea, and even after a cabal of the most powerful mages in the world managed to, by sheer incomprehensible luck, weave their spells simultaneously past its defenses, and even after the mightiest divine warriors, the swings of their swords guided by the gods, managed to sink their weapons into its vitals, even after the entire planet seemed to conspire against this walking, bellowing error in reality, we only barely managed to claim victory.

After everything, we only just barely managed to stun it long enough to lull it to sleep.


I had remained impartial, you see. When Nex and Geb went to war and annihilated entire armies with a word, I hardly blinked. I accepted the grim reality of the world.

When the smoke cleared and Taldor still stood, I was finally able to take a side.

Humanity.

The one constant was the persistence of humanity, and rebirth of civilization, and in time, civilization always tended towards good, as I believe it always shall. I had seen the greatest acts of selflessness and most terrible acts of evil, but humans, more than elves, or dwarves, or anyone or anything else, always persisted and reclaimed their glory. No dwarves remain in their original home, deep beneath the ground, and half of the Sky Citadels are lost. Elves fled the planet at the first sign of trouble. The original elven capital in Varisia is still in ruins, to the effect that the few surviving wood-elves actively dissuade efforts to resettle the area. Orcs and halflings, hobgoblins, dragons, and the majority of other races never built cities to be destroyed or reclaimed. There is simply no one like us, that plays the song of life on the same strings as us. Humans are unique in their ability to bury themselves in their own grave only to dig their way back out, cursing everyone else all the way, and I love them for it.

Humans are unstoppable.

We survived Earthfall, countless blights and catastrophes, and defeated monsters strong enough to challenge gods. We alone can break the scales of justice. We alone can shatter the condemnation of heaven, can quench the fires of hell. If we remain strong, there is nothing, nothing in our future that will ever stop us. The nature of the lie is irrelevant. If we tell ourselves every day that we will make it, that we will survive one more year, if telling ourselves these things, these lies, makes the journey easier, then it is no lie, it is the light of truth that breaks apart even reality. If we hold on to hope, we will rebuild our glory, again and again, as each iteration is built on the combined foundations of countless generations, firmer; a tower reaching higher, into the dream-filled sky.


It is for these reasons that I wander now along the Inner Sea, helping those I support, never quite denouncing those I oppose. I plant seeds of a new world rather than chopping down the trees of the old. All I want is to leave a positive legacy when I die, and I know I will die, though the most clairvoyant diviners of Pharasma know not what to make of me, and simply look in awe when they try to predict my final judgment, saying one with my power should have nothing to fear from whichever god claims my mortal soul. And really, after all these years, a matter such as curing a child's blindness or redirecting a river is nothing, it requires barely even my attention, and when I do look down from my thoughts I have more recently found people worshiping me. At first I dissuaded them, but if through worship of me they gain power, even if it is simply emotional security, is it malicious for me to allow it? Many of my abilities have manifested without even explanation, as when the field of roses in Cheliax turned white simply from my presence. Even you, little flower, seem to bend eagerly towards me, hanging on to every word that wanders off my lips.

And yet...I do know where that power comes from.

As I travel towards the ocean, I can hear a voice, a song, and it fills me with a warmth, a power I haven't felt in thousands of years. It's her, little flower. Acavna. Her song leads me to the sea. There, I feel, I will meet my fate. Perhaps I may rejoin her at last.

I will leave you now, my friend. I've not much further to travel...and it's time for me to go.

You grow from the dirt, and open your petals to the sky, and wilt, and die, and then you try again. I think you understand more than most creatures that, as long as you live in a world of humans...

You are in better hands than it may appear.

[noodles]

I want to point out that I'm not really expecting anyone to read this stuff, it's more here for storage, but if you do read it, thank you

[PLA]

^ You're welcome. :3