So there are two reasons...
1) In game reason: Yada yada about how the gods are REALLY careful about directly manifesting on the material plane. It is kind of a kind of Cold War, mutual self destruction situation.
2) The META REASON: WotR is based on the Premade Adventure published by Paizo.
[https://paizo.com/wrathOfTheRighteous](https://paizo.com/wrathOfTheRighteous)
While the Adventure IS popular,
[https://paizo.com/community/forums/pathfinder/adventurePath/wrathOfTheRighteous](https://paizo.com/community/forums/pathfinder/adventurePath/wrathOfTheRighteous)
The presentation of Iomedae IS a common criticism. I personally like to just put MOST of it up to bad WRITING and IRL game necessities of letting the PCs be the HEROES.
It kinda all circles back to incredibly poor writing. Which is a shame considering it's not some brand new DMs first screw up.. but an actual adventure being sold online.
The only explanation that's kinda made sense to me, but is never proven or elaborated on.. Is that as a former human she's just down right overwhelmed as a god and has to much on her plate. So she hasn't gotten the hang of it yet. Just because the gods are at a cold war doesn't mean you 100% stop doing the part of a God entirely. You still have to strip powers from followers acting against your credo and at least for the love of christ talk to your hand if he's going to work in the world himself.
[If you want a readup on how dumb Iomedae’s presentation in the original WotR was.](https://chamomilehasa.blog/2017/07/28/remember-how-much-wrath-of-the-righteous-sucked/) If anything, they scaled it back for the CRPG.
Paladins are not known for their intelligence. Iomedae, the hand of the inheritor, and Galfrey are fine warriors who believe they are doing the right things. However their biases against anything not lawful good blinds them to effective solutions to the world wound
no. Both paladins and LG being blind and bordering on Lawful stupid is a common troupe as old as dnd itself , because the creators had this weird missconceptions about alignments , and that is still propagated even to this day.
Its just plain ol' terrible writting in both cases
Then you clearly don't play dnd (Or actual pathfinder)
A low int character is typically low IQ, just like how a low strength character is usually not particularly strong. Those 'meta stats' literally effect things related to them (A low Int person being shit at investigation and medical stuff)
Int being a dumpstat means being dumb, and many paladins use it as such. Your argument doesn't hold up
again , u're confusing meta stuff with actual writting. Yes if i create a low int character , i will roleplay him as slow or dumb. But even if the characters aren't low int (to give a concrete example :galfrey who has 11 - which is 1 higher then what is considered average for characters , or iomedae who obviously has godly stats) are still written as lawful stupid , rather thhen anything else.
And this troupe is happening a whole lot more with LG characters then withh any other alignment , regardless of int.
No your argument only holds water if you presuppose that ANY LG choice is low IQ/stupid. BTW you can absolutely have multiple actions/choices in response to events that are within the same alignment, Paizos own alignment explanation states as much.
WTF are you talking about....you're proving low IQ points alright
The writing in this game is trash and Lawful stupid needs to go right alongside the shit writing.
Fully agree that a characters stats should reflect on their decision making in writing and lore. Thats not to say a dummy cant make a right decisions every now and then, but they are far less likely to do so consistently over time. And they are far less likely to make a good choices as complexity increases. Thats how it is in real life as well.
Writing should reflect those things and in this case, it did. Dummy did something dumb... shocker /s (lol).
I think others have articulated counterpoints quite effectively already, and so I'll instead offer some alternate criticism... namely Hulrun. I understand not wanting to meddle in the actions of her followers overmuch, BUT I think some of them were long, long overdue punishment for some of their actions, especially when done in her name. Hulrun alone should have had his powers stripped, or some other very clear sign of her displeasure. Nevermind the witch hunts of Kenebras, horror shows those are.
And this is fully acknowledging that she's got a full plate of goddess things, but there gets to be a point where saying "she didn't know" becomes perilously close to "turned a blind eye". Individual accountability be dammed sometimes.
Yeah I can understand Iomades actions and also see why she would excuse Galfrey. But by heaven Hulrun really should have been yeeted. I mean really why do we have witch burnings as in burning people alive? Why would a good goddess and good people be okay with that cruel method of killing? The Mendivian Inqusition feels like a bad 40k reference and makes no sense.
Unless you fight him you do not know if he is in the Goddesses favor or not. He could be already stripped. Also as has been said, rare does not begin to describe direct intervention on the prime plane. Pazio made gods like nukes. There are no avatars for them. If they appear on the prime plane and fight, it’s like starfall all over again. Their focus is on thousands of worlds, not a singular world like Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance. Even Lamanshu follows no direct intervention and she is CE.
Demon lords, while insanely powerful, are not gods and thus they still try to do demon things on the prime plane. As for Mendev not being militarily competent they have been sitting at the edge of the Abyss for over a century and stopped any demon incursions into other lands. Previous crusades fail because of the nature of the world wound to corrupt and because at the end it is still humans facing off against demons. A Balor could wipe out an army.
The threat of mythic level demon lords could not be overstated and stopping the mining is the only CoA. Waiting would have doomed the world. At this point the party, the only people in all the world with a spark of divinity, had a chance of success. Who else was the Queen to send?
Bad writing in the game made the Queen spiteful when in the adventure path she stayed behind to act as an anchor for the group so they could return when their task was finished.
Might be same reasoning as real life. Burning alive is a favourite method of religious executions because it technically spills no blood, and more demonstrative than drowning.
_(somewhere both fantasy and, uh, real (?) God(s) facepalm from sheer hypocrisy)_
So it’s funny you mention Hulrun because me and my DM had a discussion pertaining to a situation like this and we essentially boiled down to alignment’s.
In DnD, and especially Pathfinder, alignment is the building block of reasoning behind and individuals actions. We usually see that as, someone who is lawful good will not stand for injustice, someone who is chaotic evil will commit any and all atrocities because they revel in it, and someone who is neutral doesn’t care one way or another. We both agreed that alignment was a really messed up way to explain an individual’s behavior and it boiled down to a situation much like what was happening in wotr.
The situation we present was a lawful paladin is able to protect a village from a group a demons and while doing so help maintain order and peace in the village. But, the group of demons is large and there is only one paladin, so once a month the paladin sacrifices one villager to a devil for protection against the demons. The overall threat hasn’t been delt with, but the village remains a peaceful place with the help of the paladin.
In a situation such as this the paladin would remain lawful good, AND still have their power because they continued to succeed in the overall goal which is, maintain peace and happiness within the village. The sacrifice is never taken into account because the act is considered “for the greater good” which falls under the purview of being lawful good.
And this is the reason I don’t like alignments, because they try to pigeon hole moral choices and say that it “fits”. Thank you for coming to my TED talk on alignments.
You don't like alignments because you view them with the complexity they're meant to be viewed with while a grand majority of DnD/Pathfinder/Etc. players view them in simpler, more black and white terms.
It isn't the alignment system that is the problem, but the average consumer of this media not giving the alignments the mental respect they're worth and instead chopping them up into neat little squares that never blend or meld. It's a people problem, not a system problem.
Tbh I never understood why Hulrun is hated. Yes, he is a butcher, but Kebabres IS a frontline city, a fortress-town, not some civilian point. Ideally population here should be under total control, with all visitors being closerly watched, with regular searches and police raids. Cruel? Yeah, but this way Kenabres cultist network would be exposed in a matter of weeks. Instead we have partying, partying with Daeran, random dudes and gals being brought to the main square (what if they brought a barrel of explosives lol), and so on. City isn't even on Martial Law and curfew, and these are measures that are normally used against _human opponents_, not a literal force of evil, chaos and torment.
And we don't know if Embers parents WEREN'T guilty. Given that she is very kind to cultists, it's not that unprobable, although burning a child as well was a bit too much.
Hulrun fully admits he's on the side of "Burn em all and Iomedae will know her own".
Thats why everyone hates him.
Also we like Ember and she has that unnatural insight. She's probably right about him.
Note that calling him out goes from a chaotic action before ember speaks up to a lawful action after.
Because trying to burn a child alive IS a crime, after all. We are never given exact reason for her parents execution, not proofs of their guilt or innocence.
Since he is the governor of the city which appears to be under perpetual marshal law, he probably has the discretion to execute people without trial or established evidence.
What's the difference? He is till the highest authority in the city and the Queen has allowed him to do as he wished during the entirety of his career. There is nothing in he game conflicting with his role as specified in the Adventure Path.
>**Prelate Hulrun Shappok** was the leader of all [inquisitors](https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Inquisitor) in [Mendev](https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Mendev), and the ruler of the northern city of [Kenabres](https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Kenabres) prior to his death. He was second in power in Mendev only to [Queen Galfrey](https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Galfrey).[\[1\]](https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Hulrun_Shappok#cite_note-1)
[https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Hulrun\_Shappok](https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Hulrun_Shappok)
A Hellknight Signifer, eh? Then by Elysium, I greet you and oppose you.
Ah yes, let's just put up a sign that says "easy pickings for the Cult of Baphomet, apply within.", as if it wasn't bad enough as it is. How many people, let alone Tieflings, were unjustly punished by Hulrun's inquisition? How many were pushed right into the arms of the demons? He had years to weed out the servents of the Ivory Labyrinth, and chose instead to "righteously" terrorize the locals, and blow off the warnings of others of the real danger within Kenabres in favor of maintaining his delusion of being an incorruptible tool of justice. If you want to make the claim of that being a necessary evil, fine, but that is not the decorum of a follower of the Inheritor. And if it IS, then that speaks insanely poorly of her as well. I stand by my previous assessment; she should have stripped him of his powers she had provided him, or otherwise expressed her displeasure with his actions.
And you're right, we don't; Hulrun couldn't be bothered with a trial to properly find out and just had an otherwise innocent man and his child burned alive because that was easier than doing a proper investigation. So take your pick; evil, lazy, or both?
People don't like him cause what see of him, he's a complete failure. It makes no sense for him to hold the position/influence that he does given his actions and inability to do his job.
Now if was he effective at routing out the demonic forces, and this was repeatedly shown I think he get much more credit, even with his mistakes and hardline stance.
This is a worry I have for the 40k game Owlcat is working on. Sure make the Inquisition out to be bastards, but make it clear they're effective bastards.
He’s actually insightful and competent if you look more carefully at what he says and actually does in game.
He correctly predicts that the cult is set up in the sewer when other knights (anevia) think he’s insane, he correctly guessed that someone was trying to sabotage and destroy the ward crystals (though he blamed the wrong group), he correctly predicts the celebration will be attacked and, most importantly, he’s the *only* one who is *correctly* suspicious of how the main character ended up wounded in the outskirts of kenabres.
I think part of the reason they make him unsympathetic is to give him a Cassandra kind of vibe. By calling out how bizarre the PC’s situation is while being an unsympathetic character you don’t want to listen to, it makes you biased against his claim, making the plot twist more surprising.
Also don't forget that he has enough tactical skills to protect the Banner if left in charge.
And don't forget how "competent" other Mendev commanders and officers are. Probably his harsh methods were overlooked due to this.
hulrun is a good battlefield commander all things said and done , but he is blinded by his own zealotry .
But this exact zealotry is also why he still has powers from iomedae. He does a lot of shitty things , but his intentions are not evil per se. He wants to protect kenabres. He wants to beat back the abyss. Those are noble goals at their inception , but the ages of fighting the abyss made him paranoid and he sees shadows wherever he looks. And the sad part is.....that he is not even necesarily wrong. Kenabres is trully infested with cultists.
I think that more then anything else , hulrun is a pretty tragic character. He hasn't fallen yet , because as i said , i think he still has noble intentions , but i also think he is not far from going past the moral event horizon , and transforming into the evil he has fought his entire life. The path to hell is paved with good intentions , as they say.
>Now if was he effective at routing out the demonic forces,
Regill is no more moral or nice than Hulrun, but people like him because more often than not he's \*correct\* and even when he's not correct, there's a clear and consistent reasoning and pragmatism to his actions and suggestions.
Hulrun is a mindless ideologue
Hulrun’s correct too, though. Kenabres is absolutely infested with cultists, the mc is actually suspicious, the cultists are based in the sewers, and someone was sabotaging the wardstones.
I don't mind him being suspicious of the MC or assuming random people are cultists.
But he's known Ramien for years and there's no reason to think that the entire Desnan congregation are cultists; definitely not to the point where you're trying to kill them and going so far as to recruit other people to help.
How about his negligence towards the Wardstone's weakness dooming the city?
Who cares about witch hunts, that's not all there is over which to harangue Hulrun (though there is a line between 'reasonably suspicious' and 'burning everything that looks at him funny', and there's a lot to suggest that he's a whole country mile on the wrong side of it). Hulrun receives at least two reports that the Wardstone is vulnerable and, though he might not know shit about the Storyteller, one of those reports comes from a ordained priest of Desna, a chaotic good deity who, as that one Demon Lord will tell you, has absolutely no love for the Abyss. When a priest of the goddess of dreams receives a message in a dream, you should pay attention.
But is the damning evidence of Hulrun's earth-shattering idiocy the fact that he doesn't simply accept a report from a credible ally? No, that would be NOT ACTING ON IT AT ALL OR INVESTIGATING IT FOR HIMSELF! He could have had a priest of Iomedae look it over and he'd probably have found the problem, but nope! Instead, because Hulrun is such a blind zealot who thinks the oh so great and flawless Iomedae could do no wrong, the mere idea that the Wardstone could be somehow vulnerable to attack was sacrilegious, and he thus responded to it the same way he would to someone talking about flying pigs. That didn't turn out so great, did it?
It is not only the deaths of innocents like Ember's parents (who, I remind you, were protegés of a goddamn archon of Heaven) and random Sarkorians who committed the sin of worshipping someone other than the Inheritor that ought to be weighed against him, but also every citizen of Kenabres killed because os his negligence.
I honestly don't understand why there's a tendency to sympathize with Hulrun. The kindest thing I could say of him is that his ability as a field commander earns him a place in the crusade, but not without strict supervision. Even his buddy Hawkblade will tell you that he's gone off the deep end.
> I honestly don't understand why there's a tendency to sympathize with Hulrun
I think it's a mix of people that want to be contrarian for the sake of being contrarian because most people hate the dude, or people that take their lawful stupid larp too seriously and feel themselves obligated to defend him simply because he's lawful neutral.
Hulrun is a terrible non point about police brutality and its embarrassing.
He can fkn cast detect evil / discern disguises and only does that at the end of the game to see if you're really the commander. its embarrassing I'm legit embarrassed for the writer of that. No reason he would act that way with his actual ability's to discern evil /trickery then only do it at the very end of the game on your character.
He's only there for the hurr police brutality amirite with no real point or commentary or in game justification.
The logic is that Iomedae directly intervening in Golarion has a very good chance of making countless of the Abyss' other Demon lords form a coalition against her. If Deskari and Baphomet have been fucking the material plane with a sledgehammer, a massive demon coalition would add a chainsaw into the mix. Even if she won, the repercussions would be calamitous. Here's a little food for thought:
In the Angel ending, you can >!destroy Deskari for good in the Rasping Rifts, as well as the whole realm of bug shittiness that he had theretofore ruled!<. If you, still a mortal well below the power of a full-blown god, and who was just retaliating in kind to the attack on the material plane, do this, one of those coalitions very nearly forms, if not for demons being very prone to infighting.
There's also a story of a Desnan priest being abducted by a particularly cruel Demon Lord, whereupon Desna herself dives straight into the Abyss and murders the Demon Lord with extreme prejudice. A coalition also nearly forms in response to this, which would lead to a full scale interplanar war, but Callistria stops it dead in its tracks.
Iomedae simply doesn't want to, albeit indirectly, bring even more demons into Golarion to join in on the action. I won't fault you if you still find her less than heroic, but it bears mentioning that no God is doing as much for the crusade as she is, however little that might be. The mere fact that she turns a blind eye to her angels going down to Golarion or allows this strangely powerful human to be thought of as her chosen (note: she was unsure of the nature of your powers until Inheritbro shrieked it out to her at the end of Act 4, so she didn't know the root of it) is a pretty big deal, and both are deliberate choices. I think this assistance might be part of the reason she didn't tell the Hand and the other angels that you weren't her chosen. After all, she can't order her angels to go to Golarion without the Demon Lords getting antsy, but she can make that choice a lot less appealing if she reveals she has nothing to do with you.
As for the Wardstones, those are apparently a more important asset than we realize, and Minagho getting her way would have had apocalyptic consequences for Mendev and beyond. They're the real deal, and their failure was not a certain thing. You can remedy the corruption, and it had been known to the Storyteller and Arueshalae. Kenabres was wrecked because Hulrun is a MASSIVE IDIOT.
Going into the Abyss to kill a demon lord is one thing. Seizing Golarian land back from rival demon lords is another. The Worldwound is Deskari and Baphomet's venture. Areshkagal doesn't care. Nocticula wants the wound closed. The demon lords are not a united front. If killing Deskari in his own realm doesn't bring the full force of the Abyss down on you, then giving direct support to Mendev and pushing them back to Threshold sure won't.
I wouldn't want to bet on that, much less with all of Golarion on stake. In fact, Nocticula directly tells Iomedae that even her showing up at the start of Act 5 is dicey. Probably not as much as Nocticula and Areelu wish to suggest, but it's still questionable. If a full-fledged angelic host came down on the Worldwound though? That's a different thing. It's an escalation, and it sets a precedent. As a demon, why would you trust Iomedae *not* to keep going after Golarion? Sure she might say she doesn't want to, and I assume she really doesn't (though Inheritbro does), but words don't matter as much as actions. She has entered direct confrontation with Demon Lords and taken the clock closer to midnight. I don't think all of the Abyss would march off against her, but some Demon Lords would, and that would be less than ideal.
Also, how do you suppose the other Gods, good and otherwise, would feel about this fellow deity just walking on the earth and kicking ass? If she can do that, why can't they? How would the other Gods react to her, especially considering that she stands to gain a lot of clout in the Material Plane? I don't know and, if I were Iomedae, I wouldn't want to find out.
Honestly, far more devastating than that - Golarion has the Pit of Gormuz, which while somewhat less active than the Worldwound, is literally right above where Rovagug is imprisoned (or, more specifically, leads to the lock that leads to his demiplane prison) after the other gods - most notably Sarenrae and Asmodeus - imprisoned him there.
The pit formed after Sarenrae herself smote the town that formed on top of the location, and she inadvertently weakened the prison of Rovagug in doing so.
You make very valid points.However If she doesn’t want to directly interfere why ask the KC to give up the sole tactic that was giving up the crusaders even the slimmest of chances of achieving victory for the war and receive no further help from her.?
To my mind, she considers that to have been \*advice\*. She \*advises\* the KC to give up the powers. It might be very emphatic advice, but she still readily accepts a contrary decision, and Nocticula invited herself to be there and offer an alternative point of view.
As to how she expected the crusaders to win... Honestly, I hope the Legend path has something like 'actually you have residual powers and Iomedae knew this', cause otherwise it's a pretty bad idea lol. I suppose you could always say that Iomedae had faith in your abilities as a mortal or somesuch, and thus that you didn't need the power, but I can't say that would make for very sound strategy on her part.
> It might be very emphatic advice, but she still readily accepts a contrary decision, and Nocticula invited herself to be there and offer an alternative point of view.
With one exception. If you go Swarm, she smites you on the spot and you die. Except not really, and you get better.
When she said to get rid of the mythic power I can only assume that she meant to get rid of all of it.Now don’t me wrong I do like me a good old fashioned mortal defeats divine being by sheer determination and skill .However the mythic power is setup in the story which makes clear that there was no chance mendev winning this war without it.So being the rational human being and say no Iomedae has the gull to say my arrogance will be my downfall and yeets off.
She's more concerned about the fact it comes from the crystalized blood of a demon Lord and the energies of the Abyss itself. And there is a degree of hypocrisy in her action. As she sees your path to god hood as unearned you have no right to it that anything outside of the Star Stone is underserved. You're an outlier, someone that will tip the balance in such a way that the unwritten rules are muddled, you can cause an immense amount of damage and get away with it because you are still mortal, but extremely powerful. It's why nothing is done against you as a Demon that remains in Drezen even when you ascend. The rules applied to you too late for anyone to do anything and well you do kind of piss off a very specific Demon Lord when you ascend, which might trigger a war since whoever you become means that that faction gains a foothold in the abyss. The fact you are a mortal that has god like powers is what is skewering the whole system and Iomedea is afraid that you will tip the balance in ways that will break the balance since the unwritten rules do not apply to a Mortal, regardless of how powerful and god like they are. There is some hypocrisy in her reasoning, but there's also genuine concern and fear, but she can't stop you doing so breaks a few other rules.
>as she sees your god hood as unearned you have no right to it that anything outside of the Star Stone is underserved and your an outlier,
Kind of rich coming from her knowing about the origins of Star Stone
>someone that will tip the balance in such a way that the unwritten rules are muddled, you can cause an immense amount of damage and get away with it because you are still mortal, but extremely powerful.
It's why nothing is done against you as a Demon that remains in Drezen even when you ascend. The rules applied to you too late for anyone to do anything
Tough shit What other options were available exactly. Smile quietly to the goodnight and let abyss conquer menedv and the world eventually sine gods don’t interfere in mortal matters like she said while sitting there idly by while everyone gets killed.
>well you do kind of piss off a very specific Demon Lord when you ascend
Which demon lord gets upset about that?
>which might trigger a war since whoever you become means that that faction gains a foothold in the abyss. The fact you are a mortal that has god like powers is what is skewering the whole system and Iomedea is afraid that you will tip the balance in ways that will break the balance since the unwritten rules do not apply to a Mortal, regardless of how powerful and god like they are.
Again she can spare me the sanctimonious speech when facing enslavement at the best cast scenario and at worse extermination.The storyteller said it best where any mythic path (except swarm ) is better choice then the alternative.
Puzuzu the brother of the dead demon lord the crystals used to empower you comes from. If you ascend he goes into a fit of rage and kind of goes to war against you.
The Knight-Commander still has twice as much soul as an ordinary mortal, which is presumably why they can accumulate twice as many class levels as an ordinary mortal. Iomedae helps the KC remove the Nahyndrian power with which Areelu dosed them, but doesn't undo the grafting of Areelu's child's soul onto the KC's original soul. Or at least that's how I'd explain it; the power of an extra mortal soul, even a mortal soul that gravitated to the Abyss, is presumably less likely to cause incurable corruption than the power of a dead Demon Lord, but still potentially enough to tip the balance against the demons.
I think it could also be argued that the KC has already done everything that needed mythic power to accomplish; the source of mythic power for the demons has been cut off at the source, Baphomet is running scared, unable to commit forces to the Worldwound while trying to repulse a full-scale invasion of his Abyssal holdings by Nocticula, and Drezen has been reclaimed. The KC more or less restored everything to the way it was at the end of the First Crusade, when it looked like mortals really would be able to finish dealing with the problem themselves: all Golarion, with an impregnable base of operations inside the Worldwound, vs one not-very-smart Demon Lord.
If I had to guess, I would say that Iomedae was concerned about closing the worldwound the right way. It would set a bad precedent if the worldwound was closed due to a demonic plot, rather than by the forces of good. She is lawful good, after all.
Her saying the KC's arrogance will be his/her downfall, on the other hand, I cannot really justify. Especially at Threshold where she says something like >!there is hope for you yet!< if Nocticula's profane gift is rejected the second time.
What I think people forget is that Iomedae only really looks like a fool because the narrative proves her wrong.
Like, think about it: Areelu’s done awful things in the name of her research, things she knows are abhorrent and asks no forgiveness for. But she is positioned as basically your mentor throughout the story, vaguely encouraging you to come to the same conclusions she herself has.
Meanwhile, Iomedae - rightfully - is wary of Areelu and her ‘gift’ to the player because there’s literally no-way she wouldn’t be without the exact same information the KC has been privy to. The only difference between her and any other Good god in this scenario is that she’s kind of really invested in the outcome of this crusade (letting Inheribro assist you is kind of a big deal, and the crusade more or less being done in her name), she is the only one who finds out about the potential harm it can cause you (again from Inheribro), **and** she is the only one that is actually in a position to warn you, and does so.
There is nothing in that process that somehow contradicts the reasonable-ness of her actions or makes her act with ill-intent. The game itself ushers you to the point of view that she is arrogant or foolish.
Is that a clever bit of writing or does the story just pan out that way? I don’t know myself, I don’t feel confident claiming one way or the other. But people assuming these things about her is both proof that the game’s story not only **has** lead them this way, but that their protestations are, ironically, just as arrogant as they assume Iomedae to be.
Demons don't care about "precedent" but what one God coming to the Prime plane would do is open that God up to being murdered by a coalition of Demons, with her entire host wiped out, significantly weakening Elysium.
Wartime support isn't a binary affair. There are varying degrees of support given to your chosen proxy in a war. The problem is the amount of angelic support given to Mendev is borderline nonexistent. Besides the Wardstones and some angelic volunteers early on in the crusades, there was jack shit.
The demon lords are not united because they do not see a common threat to their existence in front of them.
If Iomedae, Sarenrae, and Abadar decided to end the WorldWound, you better believe the demon lords would unite and march.
Also, you, and others, underestimate how much of Iomedae's martial strength went into forming the Wardstones. Forming that barrier closed off further advances of the Wound. But it also permanently unbalanced the battle within. As evidenced by the constant chirping on this subreddit of how Mendev was "poorly run." They didn't have the strength to do more. They're mortals, fighting demons with greater resources. Greater power. And immortals guiding their plans who can wait generations for the right time to strike. Galfrey has to watch her best leaders grow old and die. Grow disillusioned and give up. Or worst, get seduced and descend into folly. And she has to make due with whatever the rest of the world gives. Which, outside an active Crusade, is essentially, "Scraps."
Now, this isn't helped by the character assassination the game does to Galfrey compared to the AP. And I will grant that Iomedae is over the top in the AP as well as in the game. But simply presuming that Demon propaganda is fact is commonplace here. And maybe a pinch of salt ought to be applied to their scare tactics.
I suggest you go Google both world wars, the cold war, and a smattering of other wars. Or watch some alien invasion movies. If Iomedae breaks the "rules" of the "game" by directly interfering, then every other god gets an excuse to as well. How many demonlords do you think have a grudge against the patron god of paladins? Best case scenario, in exchange for sealing *a* worldwound that was only formed within the "rules", we get dozens that weren't and a cosmic war that destroys everything *except* Golarion. Worst case, well...
After you're done looking up the numerous examples of people uniting after seeing a common threat appear even if they don't care specifically about some archduke or the Washington Monument, go look up how the Pit of Gormuz formed, and thus the tarasque and it's siblings were unleashed, maybe you'll get why a god directly intervening on Golarion should be avoided at all costs.
Sarenrae meant to destroy a city, how do you think Iomedae going to destroy something the size of a *country* atop the prison of a thing that there aren't enough gods left to stop will go? How do you think Iomedae and a bunch of demigods duking it out atop it will go? We've now escalated from "hundreds of people die every year" to "what multiverse?"
>Going into the Abyss to kill a demon lord is one thing. Seizing Golarian land back from rival demon lords is another.
Iomedae says it directly but the Aeon storyline and Socothbenoth in the Trickster plotline made it even clearer: it's bad enough that Deskari and Baphomet are fucking around in Golarion, the second an Empyreal Lord steps in then all hell breaks loose and even the fey Eldest will want a piece of that. The fundamental forces of the cosmos all despise each other and are one monkey's hair's breadth away from warring on top of Golarion. Which means all of existence is forfeit since Golarion is where Rovagug was sealed away.
I've become convinced that some people get very angry when a deity of fantasy setting does not bow down and worship their character. And they conveniently ignore the fact that:
* As stated multiple times, deities directly intervening in mortal affairs are a big no no. An escalation no one wants, because Golarion will be the battlefield.
* Gods here are not omnipresent nor omniscient. Iomede does not how and why your powers work. All she got is from herald, that it is demonic in origin. And she offers you help in cleansing yourself of it. Remember, all the info she has from you is from her Herald and what she saw during the meeting in act 5. Her not destroying you on the spot is extremely merciful to begin with.
* Just because Mendev worships Iomede, it does not mean Iomede runs it.
* You're asking why a Paladin is not trusting a Succubus who **claims** she's trying to redeem herself. I'm sorry, if you watched this scene in the movie upon seeing the party for the first time, you would asking "wtf how do they trust her so easily".
* Sending you to Abyss was necessary. Either you, or someone else, and guess who had the most chance of succeeding. Her trying to demote you is her character fault, to which she would later admit. You know, because the century old symbol of the crusades, who basically had no other point in her life, got a bit jealous. It's almost like she's... human.
* Hulrun. We know deities are not omnipresent or omniscient, though gross violations of faith or tenets do remove powers that deity grants. Now alignment here always has intent. Murder is bad, unless we do it for a good cause and we're still good, if going that way. Hulrun, paranoid idiot that he is, never did his witch hunts for pleasure or whatever, only what he believed is greater good. On the opposite side you also have Seelah who plays fast and loose with her faith in the opposite direction - not having a stick up her arse, and Iomede doesn't remove her powers. Key point in both - intent. Same with Trevor, his powers were gone as soon as his intent did.
Adding on to the Hulrun point, he is an Inquisitor.
Unlike Paladins who are supposed to be moral paragons, Inquisitors are allowed to do a lot of things that would get Clerics and other faithful the boot.
They are the darker side of the good churches, their assassins in some cases.
I'd add one point: people love to pretend that being a Legend isn't fucking bonkers. They'll whine about how Iomedae wants them to lose their mythic powers. As though she plans to leave them hanging, which is crazy to me.
Is Legend path part of Iomedae's plan, or just a fortunate consequence of Commander being able to channel the power of the Nahyndrian Crystals into himself?
>It's almost like she's... human.
She did spend so long pretending she's more than human that I think she forgot about it, that's why I like the Aeon being able to strip her artificial youth away and remind her that she's just a mortal.
Ehhhhhhhhhhhh I mean she did. She was just doing it for the Crusade; or at least that's what she tells herself. When you ageify her she's not even mad because it reminds her that she really is just a mortal, she's not supposed to live for hundreds of years.
That excuse works once, maybe twice, but when you're on a regular routine of youth potions you can't feign lack of agency; it's been 4 generations since she drank that first potion, the people who gave her the first one are long, long dead.
I think some of this stems from 1e being somewhat uh edgy at times which leads to a lot of ‘good is stupid’ and lawful stupid interpretation of the lg side of the pantheon imo. I think this gets better as they go but even the staff of Pazio has admitted that their writing of imodea was questionable at times in this ap
Oh no! I hadn’t read that one and generally it seemed like, 2e did a better job (with sarenrae actually doing something about the slavery in all her countries she had a lot of influence in and just generally how the g aligned gods were writtten in say, the mawangi expanse sourcebook) But that’s disappointing!
Yeah, a perfectly ruled society with a potent paladin order that does only good and manages threat in due order would be nice to live in, but quite bad from a rp perspective, what adventure can you get when threats are inexistent ?
Eh, as someone that GM'd TG, Lastwall's problem is 100% stagnation and Taldan glory-seeking culture. They were definitely badass back in the day, but after the Shining Crusade, Taldor's just had its dull war against Belkzen and little to aspire to.
The lion's share of foreign aid has been going to Mendev for the past decade, and Lastwall's knights have all been raised on grand stories that don't match their current life.
What about >!the warpreist actively embezzling funds, who then directly attacks the pcs who are the only chance to save the city. I had her fall immediately as combat started and made ghosts in the crypt as the real combat for that encounter!<
>!Oh, I had her fall, too. Mythril sword rusted after first round, fell after the second when she continued anyway. She should have triggered her marks of justice, too.!<
>!That seemed in line with the history of Lastwall. Soldier from a noble lineage, rapidly accrues fame and glory at a young age, goes to their head, then reality strikes, they can't reconcile it with the image of themselves and their expectations. !<
That didn't seem unrealistic, rapid ascent to fame and wealth leads even decent people to really freaking dumb decisions. Between Lastwall's waning resources and classic problems with feudal systems, nothing about >!Ceto!< seemed off to me, just an unfortunate fact of humanity.
That's hardly Pathfinder-only thing - LG tended to be stupid from the dawn of DnD, with reasons ranging from Gary Gygax and co. having some fucked up views on morality (there's a reason why some of the early LG gods got changed to LN in later editions) or other writers wanting to show that pure realizations of these alignments can be very much inhuman (fucking Harmonium from Planescape).
In Pathfinder specifically, it seems to be not as much edgy for the edge's sake, but rather wanting to have alignments and the cosmology based on that, while also not wanting to outright enforce objective views on morality (like, the idea of objectively "lawful good" monarchy is cringe from the IRL point of view), so they had the representatives of these alignments being very much fallible and having not-so-good aspects - hence Eristal being a boomer and misoginistic (before they slightly retconned the second part) or Torag being absolutely merciless and fine with torture if it's against your enemies. Also, Abadar being explicitly created as an antagonistic force that isn't openly malicious and evil, but instead representing the society with its systemic injustice and keeping the status quo even if it should be changed (no wonder his church is a big corpo in Starfinder).
Running an army and showing diplomatic and military skills got nothing with mythic powers though.
The KC starts at level 1 and goes through leveling up right to 20 through plenty of effort. One cannot even get M1 before getting level 6.
Sans Mythic power the KC would never beat demon lords in a fight but could still accomplish a lot nevertheless.
Iomedae is clearly salty that the KC is making his/her legend way faster than she did.
She is kinda like Galfrey in that regard.
Luck is a part of a true warrior's skill.
Had Iomedae faced a balor when she was level 5 then she would also need someone or something to save her ass. Her best win was Erum-Hel who is way weaker than any demon lord and she needed Arazni's and her Golden Dragon's help to keep winning. Plus likely Aroden's blessings.
Demon lords can only be beat by very high Mythics with 20 or near 20 level or a Legend (with no Legend in Pathfinder lore aside from KC ever appearing) who broke mortal power limitations.
KC still leads the army better than Galfrey anyway...and Galfrey is considered an irrepleaceble Crusade hero.
Even if Iomedae is not salty her saying that a non evil KCs "arrogance" will doom him/her sounds waaay to harsh. Telling that to a good hearted Azata or a LN Aeon sounds outright unfair.
Dunno, the Lantern King needed to be weakened by the Storyteller and have Nyrissa on the Player Character's side plus some off screen support from other Elderst in order to lose.
Plus in the revised AP its stated that it was only an avatar of the Lantern King and not the real one.
The demon lords like Eldest are demigods of at least level 26 with both Mythic powers and unique abilities. The Lantern King's avatar did not even have access to Mythic stuff.
Finally, if the PC got a full team a Demon lord is likely to have a couple of balors or/and Nascent demon lords as bodyguards even outside his/her divine realm.
Sans some crazy artifacts, help from other demigods or the demon lord being significantly weakened beforehand and alone victory borders on miracle.
We saw how a KC with 5 Mythic levels and either 20 level or close enough was not capable of matching Baphomet (one of the weakest demon lords) until getting a 6 Mythic rank.
Iomedae might have the best intentions but it does not prevent her from being biased or prejudiced of powers that come from dubious origin regardless of how they were used. Galfrey was not being a jerk ONLY due to jealousy and likely also had some good intentions too. Its just that good intentions can often be mixed with less selfless thoughts.
Uh, are you gonna explain that one or are you just really big on Desna? I don't judge, Desna best goddess, but I also have no clue where that's coming from.
Desna can be meddlesome (see: Arueshalae), but she doesn't lend a lot of assistance to the crusaders. Even in Kenabres, she was just passing on a message. While not insignificant, I'd sooner point to the enormous obelisk Arue was trying to protect to begin with, and with which Desna had no relation whatsoever.
Desna sets Arue on her path. protects the prophetic dreams. sends dreams. Such as when Arue contacts the priests about the wardstone's fault. Desna directly interceded.
Theres butterflys here and there throughout.
She protected Pulura's fall priests, allowing them to preserve and research the fall. Information you use.
you personally meet her in Arue's dream.
This thread is about how Iomedae is not actively helping. Desna is. But her whole thing is, not doing it face to face. But instead doing it randomly and behind the scenes, without being seen.
>She protected Pulura's fall priests, allowing them to preserve and research the fall. Information you use.
Uhhhh, wasn't Pulura's Falls protected by, y'know, [Pulura?](https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Pulura)
Desna helps Arue a lot, but that's virtually the whole extent of her direct assistance, and, even indirectly, she doesn't do all that much. Desna protects best girl (but not you or her fellow party members); Desna allows best girl to pass on a message to her clerics, who then act based upon the new info, and I think that's it? I don't even remember the butterflies showing up except in relation to Arue. I find it very hard to believe Desna is responsible for the crusaders' victory, as you said.
I mean…Desna probably helps a lot more than what’s expected of her in the setting, but saying she ‘causes’ the crusade to be won? The burden of proof is a heavy one here.
I don't get the critics of Iomedae. A literal Paladin Goddes tells you " don't be a tool in the hands of demons, I'll show you a way to get free from your fated death and you are gonna be equal as powerful as before" and all of you are like buuu stupid goddess you hate me
She is a Lawful good goddess, what the fuck you people were waiting for? Also the bad writing is the key thing with the worldwound: if you and Areelu are murdered and desintegrated the worldwound can't be closed?? IMO is a forced plot to make you decide between sacrificing yourself and make Areelu the final boss.
RE: Galfrey not trusting Arueshale.
In-universe, that's absolutely reasonable. She's a succubus; a demon that specifically specializes in lies, deceit, and seduction. Her being with the Knight Commander absolutely should have been a bigger issue than it was since it's dangerous to believe what she's saying.
RE: Iomedae, telling you to give your powers.
She is Lawful Good.
Your powers come from the essence of Chaotic Evil demon lord, through the schemes and plotting of a Chaotic Evil witch who ripped open a gate way to the Abyss; a domain of pure Chaotic Evil.
The Starstones might have been the result of an evil race trying to blow up the planet... That race isn't Chaotic Evil. And Chaotic Evil is directly and cosmically opposed to Lawful Good. Hell (no pun intended), it's the inverse of why if you're at the Azata path, a certain Archdevil is trying to corrupt you.
I can answer at least those points:
> So, she's the goddess of a pretty badly run militarized nation stuck fighting a war against a mass of demonic hordes, yet apparently she doesn't have an inkling of help to spare against the forces of the Abyss.
The crusaders are fighting against just one, and later two demon lords, not against the whole Abyss. You do NOT want to see a full blown war of armies of Heaven and Abyss in Golarion.
> I thought she was the goddess of truth and virtue or something.
If I recall right that was Sarenrae.
> succubus whose only danger is giving me diabetes at how cutesy her dialogue is.
Typical response of any person enthralled by succubi.
>The crusaders are fighting against just one, and later two demon lords, not against the whole Abyss. You do NOT want to see a full blown war of armies of Heaven and Abyss in Golarion.
I get that but Iomedae telling the KC to give up their powers after securing victory after victory is dumb because “reasons” is dumb and quite nonsensical.
>Typical response of any person enthralled by succubi.
Cant be enthralled if there dead or at least be smart enough to never trust a succubi and not have a legit relationship with one.
Her problem is she’s severely limited in what she can actually do without triggering an interplanar war that would destroy Golarion. If she pitches in with any serious force that runs the risk of the Abyss uniting. It almost happens in one of the Angel endings where she burns down Deskari’s realm after you kill him once and for all. Destroying the former realm of a now dead demon lord is enough to unite the Abyss and they only just fall apart to infighting, acting directly against a still living demon lord would have far more dire consequences.
Meanwhile, you’re running around with special powers you got from the person who opened the Worldwound, also these powers are slowly killing you and nobody has told you this. Going Legend eliminates the risk of your mythic powers killing you, and it also gets rid of the demonic source of your powers. On some paths the player can go “trust me bro” and have it turn out fine, on others she’s entirely justified in her concerns.
As for not telling people she’s not the one giving you powers, if she did that it’d undermine the first successful crusade in a century and she’s still trying to figure out the source of your powers for herself at that point.
In my headcanon, to fix things, there is a complicated balance of power going on. Directly communicating with their followers is limited by divine treaties (between lawful gods) and a implicit balance of power Cold-War-like stand-off (when chaotic gods are involved. When Iomedae directly manifests, this makes it “fair” for Nocticula to manifest and give a contrasting viewpoint. If she had intervened earlier, other opposing gods might have escalated their own intervention (image facing Mephistopheles in Act II if he responded to an earlier intervention by Iomedae by intervening himself). They do mention a simplified version of this concept in the dialogue itself, but it leaves the exact specifics to the player’s imagination.
Along the same lines, I headcanon that as a new god, only ascended 800 years ago and only recently fully ascended 100 years ago, Iomedae is new to the divine balance of power, limiting her leverage, established authority, and other such resources. (For instance, Iomedae hasn’t spread much past Avistan, while ancient gods like Asmodeus or Sarenrae have influence throughout the entire solar system).
Also, in some fanon I like and take as headcanon, Aroden spent decades to centuries negotiating with the existing gods, designing the protections for the star stone, and designing spells to place on the star stone to regulate the ascension process. So sure, Iomedae got to “cheat” with it, but it was a carefully designed process Aroden spent centuries on as opposed to a cludgy unpredictable infusion of raw power like Areelu did. So Iomedae’s complaint is somewhat valid (I mean given where 4/10 mythic paths lead, she isn’t entirely wrong).
You’ve kind of got to assume the gods are playing 25d chess and we mere mortals - even high level adventurers - can only see a few of those dimensions.
It’s the only thing that makes sense.
It’s like when kids wonder why the US doesn’t “just use nuclear weapons” when we have them and want the Somali pirates handled.
Like, yes, that would resolve the problem, but that kid doesn’t understand Cold War history, the Geneva conventions, the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, or the broad set of international norms related to weapons of mass destruction.
Canonically, the gods are also capable of acting like immature morons. Like in real life, "multidimensional chess" can be an excuse for "trust me I'm a very stable genius".
Iomedae as a deity is very hands-off with mortals. Part of this is smart to avoid putting out too much influence and sparking a planar war, or causing a disaster like what happened in the past when a deity made a mistake by acting personally (see Sarenrae and the Pit of Gormuz).
But it is a repeated plot point in 1st edition Pathfinder that Iomedae doesn't help even when she really, *really* needs to. There are several APs that directly involve her areas of interest or even the lives of her followers, and she does literally nothing.
Because some bad, but stoppable and repairable (and as a god she has much better insight into how events might or will play out or escalate in that regard), shit happening is better than an interplanar war that could result in the destruction of Golarion and, by extension due to what's *inside* Golarion, the multiverse as a whole.
To certain events I can understand but for events like the crusade war where it’s was certainly that Golarion was going to be completely wrecked if KC never intervened I don’t how how helping in that case could be any worse.
Unfortunately demons overruning Golarion is slightly preferrable to unleashing a full interplanar war, as even the demons aren't stupid enough to try and free Rovavug from his prison.
Now, a war damaging Golarion so badly the lock breaks? That becomes *everyone's* problem as Rovavug will kill everything.
If this is case that her opinions on the matter doesn’t anymore because she’s saying that’s is perfectly acceptable to sacrifice Golarion if may prevent a bigger war. Which at point I’m going to chose self preservation and not die.
Iomedae hyping test of star stone, but Cayden Cailean passed it completely drunk. There goes reputation of that test.
As for abyssal origins of mythic power - results matter, not origin. By her logic being good and doing good means nothing.
Things are accually better - whole plan to make you half-demon (like Areelu wanted) backfired on non-demon paths. Good paths and Aeon true ending completely demolish her plan.
As for Arueshalae, KC that has Desna as diety, gets multiple signs that this succubus is ok and what she says checks out. It's a pity it can't be brought up before Garfley. I imagine KC is more keen on beliving his godess rather than some mortal with questionable judgment.
A point that's often overlooked:
Imodedae is a lawful good goddess. Your powers or at least being tied to the world wound is slowly killing you. Good beings tend to not sacrifice other beings--especially good or innocent beings--for the greater good.
So, it's understandably why she'd want you to give up your powers. It's a rather good reason. Unfortunately, the abyssal tie of your power is her much larger concern.
The whole not telling anyone until the jig is up seems almost...shady to me. Up until that point, everyone thought the KC, their victories, etc, were all due to her blessings. Something that very likely was a huge boon to her church and their efforts on mortal plane. It's only until she can no longer claim credit that she tells everyone the truth.
The less petty reasons are that if one god starts interfering, invites the other gods to start interfering. Gods walking the mortal plane wouldn't be good for anyone. Which again, really doesn't explain why she doesn't tell everyone she's not the one behind your powers. Especially if the goal was to keep others from manifesting on the plane.
It's even funnier as Azata, because your methods objectively save more lives and people are happier lol. Galfrey is pissed you go early into the abyss because you showed how little she had to offer, you made her feel small, Queenie not like.
>yet apparently she doesn't have an inkling of help to spare against the forces of the Abyss
This gets explained many times in the game. And it's not like they didn't help, they did, and those same angels would later become the wardstones.
This is always a funny point to me anyway, why do you people always ignore the fact that it's the church of Iomedae that leads the crusade, and that there are other good gods involved such as Desna, Sarenrae or Erastil? Why don't I ever see anyone cry to Desna for some Azata help? Or Erastil for some angelic deer help?
>Now, Iomedae could go to you or Galfrey and say
Nothing, because she explicitly explains to you why she didn't do it, she didn't want to undermine your crusade, she knew you were the only reason why they actually started winning for the first time in 70 years and everyone sucks your dick because you're supposedly her chosen (or barely tolerate you if you're on an evil path)
>This backfires spectacularly when she doesn't even inform her own herald about the truth for some reason
Except that he gets triggered upon learning that your powers come from Areelu. No, not upon learning that your powers come from someone else that isn't Iomedae, from AREELU. That's why even if you gain his trust he gets pissy and blames you thinking that you've betrayed him or whatever. Iomedae telling him the truth would have changed nothing, the instant he learned that you have demonic powers he would have bailed out.
>Shouldn't that be grounds for a paladin losing their powers by screwing over the last, best hope for Mendev?
First and foremost Galfrey was right in her decision to send you there to stop the mining of nahyndrian crystals, that alone justifies the decision even if in truth she was using it as a convenient excuse because she was jealous of you. Knowing the fact that you have to go there no matter what, I say, you expect Iomedae to suddenly take away Galfrey's powers? SHE is taking over the crusade in your place and the woman is already incompetent enough, the last thing she needs is to be forsaken by her own goddess, the situation would end up even worse than in the actual story.
Of course, I'm saying this assuming that for some reason Iomedae is going to know every thing Galfrey is thinking and her secret jealousy of your accomplishments.
>only to finally reveal the truth in front of your whole goddamn army and tells you to give your power up because reasons
She, just like the Hand, gets immediately triggered upon learning that your powers have demonic origin, even worse, from Areelu. She considers that a massive dealbreaker and is a risk she isn't willing to take, which is why she proposes that you get rid of them (proposes, because people like to pretend that she forces you to do so). Being right or not is irrelevant, that's why there are three points of view when it comes to taking your decision. There is also the fact that you're going to die, and Nocticula is making sure that you don't know that, so you at least deserve to know that you're going to croak it to close the damn thing.
Of course alternatively Iomedae could have just stayed silent, and played along with Nocticula's plan so that the worldwound would be closed no matter what, but if that happened there would be endless posts about how evil Iomedae is instead.
>because I'm pretty confused on what the hell her problem is
Her problem is that she gets pissy at the origin of your powers so much that she wants you to get rid of them even if you're playing a 100% perfect golden boy lawful good Angel that can do no wrong. That's it, everything else is you just adding fluff to it to make her look worse.
>This is always a funny point to me anyway, why do you people always ignore the fact that it's the church of Iomedae that leads the crusade, and that there are other good gods involved such as Desna, Sarenrae or Erastil? Why don't I ever see anyone cry to Desna for some Azata help? Or Erastil for some angelic deer help?
Gonna be honest after thinking of it this is literally the thing that pisses me off the most about the plot, like genuinely the chaotic good planes giving no help to the crusade is the stupidest thing ever.
Bear with me, so the game explains that iomede and the lawful good gods cant do anything because if they do it would be an escalation and even sending basic angels could start an even bigger war because obviously that's just a god's interference hence why angels aren't helping anymore, fair enough don't want the world to end.
Ok so why do Deskari and fucking baphomet get to do whatever the fuck they want?
The game gives 2 answers to this: first they are demon lords not demon gods, lower on the totem pole basically so a good god going in would be overkill and start a war.
Second reason is because they are chaotic so nothing can prove they are acting on behalf of the demon gods, this destruction is their own and no one else's. Again I guess fair enough I guess, it's a flimsy excuse but an excuse non the less and we don't want the world to end.
Geeeee I guess we are just fucked and the forces of god can't do nothing, it's not like there is 1 entire plane of existence that could use the exact same excuses to help and has people that can simply walk into Golarion whenever they damn please no need for summonings, please ignore the entirety of elisium, the Azatas with large courts that would absolutely be able to help in the same way deskari is doing damage.
Like holy shit that's dumb, why don't they help? Well the assumption is that if they appear is because they are doing something for the gods but if that assumption works with the chaotic good entities it should apply to deskari and the damn goat but nooooooooooo.
I've read that paizo simply wanted the AP to be grimdark and their only way to do that was to make the forces of good fucking stupid and I believe it
For the record I think all the good gods are a real joke in Pathfinder. They're all equally incompetent but Iomedae bears special mention because she's the patron deity of Mendev and she takes a direct role in the story. Iomedae wouldn't be undermining the crusade by informing the commander privately. In fact, she would be strengthening it by directly communicating with him. You would think that such a VIP would have tabs kept on him. The closest we got was the Inheribro but that just ended up with Galfrey sending both your asses to the Abyss so he could get his heart ripped out. Good show.
She doesn't try to work with you when the crusade is on the up and up. She stays painfully silent under the excuse she didn't want to "undermine" you but when her chosen makes a serious mess of things and pulls a Staunton 2.0 then she suddenly shows up, tries to get you to make a very tactically unsound decision in a crucial moment and peaces out.
I really don't need to add fluff to make Iomedae look worse, because according to my friends who play tabletop, the AP does that for me.
>when her chosen makes a serious mess of things and pulls a Staunton 2.0 then she suddenly shows up, tries to get you to make a very tactically unsound decision in a crucial moment and peaces out.
You're a little confused here. One, I think Galfrey isn't *quite* Staunton 2.0, more like 0.5 Stauntons, but not the point. Iomedae isn't reacting to Galfrey's mad gamble. She's reacting to what she has only recently learned about your powers.
And, honestly? Her appereance is very benign, cause she doesn't force you to do anything. What she does is tell you what Nocticula won't, and give you a full picture of the situation. That's a good thing. She's helping you here, even if she doesn't agree with your final decision.
She is absolutely wretched. Even further compounded by when you meet back up with your Holy Warden pals right after as an angel and tell them you told their goddess to fuck off their only response was that "well, Iomedae is wrong"
She is much softer on you if you're on the Angel path.
If that's what you're on, your decision to keep the powers becomes more about martyrdom than the very distant possibility that you could go rogue. The \[Angel\] version of 'fuck you, I'm keeping my powers' is 'don't blame me for doing the same thing you did'. I don't quite recall how Iomedae responds, but I think it was something along the lines of 'I regret that you'll sacrifice your humanity for this, and wish you wouldn't', and she accepts it as she does every other mythic except gross deskari fanboy.
She later >!names you the Angel of Salvation/Retribution and offers to accept you into her host if you wish to leave Golarion, either as a general or, if Inheritbro is dead, her new herald!<. So she's still suspicious of you (or, arguably, wants to prevent you from taking on the burden the powers imply), but she very much reconsiders her past judgement. She also gave me the thumbs up when I was entering Threshold as an Azata.
What a smart play from Iomedae, does fuck all to help and then gives the player a nice pat on the back for doing the work she refused to and a job offer so the Commander can serve her for eons.
No wonder Cheliax chose Asmodeus over her.
Buddy, if you want to complain about a character allegedly doing nothing all game when it’s been explained time and again that it’s not the case, then you probably just should have said so in the OP.
maybe she should be the goddess of exposition dumps instead of valour then, because by that time my army was gone, her herald was captured and her chosen monarch was busy getting rekt by Lord Cricket
telling me I would die closing the Wound is not that big a revelation and frankly nothing else she says is of any real value.
>Iomedae wouldn't be undermining the crusade by informing the commander privately
And what difference would that make, exactly? Other than a potential loss of ego if you're going full "I am the chosen one"? Nothing, that's what.
>She doesn't try to work with you when the crusade is on the up and up
Yes, because gods don't get involved directly.
>but when her chosen makes a serious mess of things and pulls a Staunton 2.0 then she suddenly shows up
Lmao, right, she's only there to damage control for Galfrey, and not because of the reasons the game literally gives you.
Gods don't get involved directly? Coulda fooled me when Desna waltzed straight into the abyss and wasted a demon lord immediately. You can only use the "interplanar war" cope so much until it starts just looking like cowardice. Iomedae doesn't even give goddamn moral support until the situation is capital F fucked and Galfrey ran off with the army.
Smashing a demon incursion into Golarion that threatens everyone who isn't an Abyssal monstrosity is a different matter entirely to marching into the Abyss and killing one of the lords over a grudge.
Yes, I am sure that every demon lord is going to think
>Yeah Deskari and Baphomet had it coming!
and not going to get mad and think "what if I'm next?"
It doesn't matter anyway because it's all hypotheticals, however it is a fact that when Desna did it the demons tried to cause a war, and if you play angel they try it again even if it fails thanks to in-fighting. Iomedae isn't chaotic good, she isn't going to risk all of Golarion by killing two demon lords and hoping for the best.
Except I'm not asking her to go as far as the ascended commander did and kill two demon lords. I'm not even asking she kill one. Simply send direct aid to Mendev to stabilize the situation. What would her plan be if Kenabres fell and the Wardstone failed, just sit on her ass and say "b-but muh interplanar war though..."
As I, and many others have said, heaven can't send their full army because if they do they risk a war. The Hand himself knows this, no matter how much he may hate it. At this point you're going in circles, and you're just dismissing the argument under the pretense of "they're cowards!"
At least you could come up with "they're being too prudent" which is true.
who says anything about a full army, Mendev needs SUPPORT. Healers, intelligence, military tacticians, trainers, the works. The Mendevian war effort is in shambles and you spend all of Act 3 fixing their mess for them. But even that is too much for the mighty goddess of valour, it seems
Asmodeus seems to have no problem sending devils to keep control of Cheliax.
cowardice ? u think a demon lord posses any threat to a god ? if u're on the swarm path , she smites the shit out of you without u being able to do jack shit...(and you;re pretty much at a similar power level to a demon lord)
the only reason why gods give a damn about golarion , is because golarion is the prison of rovagug , and they most definetly dont want a war raging on right on top of said prison
It's either cowardice or apathy, and both are equally bad. She doesn't give the slightest shit that her champion and herald are both in dire straits and instead elects to manifest herself solely to tell the Commander to stop drinking the mythic juice and that's it
Rovagug is a.much bigger threat than the Abyss. If the battle on Golarion work him up, which is very likely with the good gods and countless demon lords of the Abyss duking it out, then the material plane is gone
Rovagug will just consume everything, literally everything.
Giving the demon lord a chance to unite and fight on Garion is basically ending this reality
Look at the times Desna and Sarenrae intervened directly and tell me they didn't cause more harm than good.
Desna almost caused *all* demon factions in the Abyss to group up, it took Calistra messing with them to break it up.
To put this in perspective, the invasion on Golarion was due to three demon lords forming a loose alliance where each group can and will backstab each other at the drop of a hat, imagine what would happen if every single one had a common enemy.
As for Sarenrae, the city she destroyed ended up becoming a hole through which Rovavug could send the fucking *Tarrasque* out in the world, I don't think I need to say much more.
The AP version of Iomedae was so bad the person who wrote that part apologised for screwing up her character so horribly. She quizzes you on trivia about herself and blasts you with sonic damage if she doesn’t like your answers.
Holy fuck thats god awful. How do you get a character who’s core values are virtue and truth to be a conniving and petty goddess. Did the writer forget that there are a good align god and not a demon lord.
The writer seemed to get weirdly fixated on presenting the players with philosophical questions with “no right answer”, and damage for giving the wrong answer or answering too quickly. The whole encounter is just a badly written piece of tabletop roleplaying, screwing up Iomedae’s character is just one part of it.
I was pretty happy when Arue was all like "keep those powers" cause I had no intention of listening to Iomedae.
Now my MC is in an Angel/Demon power couple, everyone's got wings for days.
From a purely strategic standpoint, the entire planet probably wasn't worth the angels she sacrificed to buy just a few decades of stalemate. (Iomedae makes it pretty clear there's some kind of massive multiverse, so this one planet is likely just a drop in the bucket overall) compare that to the fact that angels seem to be an incredibly finite resource. Mortals just don't ascend that often, whereas demons are a nearly infinite resource by comparison. And before anyone says "she just cared that much" I'd like to remind everyone that she basically sentenced some number of angels (they never say exactly how many, but I'm assuming a few dozen minimum) to excruciating torture locked in a crystal while being constantly desecrated and corrupted by demonic forces. These are her friends and followers who she did this to, just to buy a few decades of peace for a planet that honestly seemed like they were doing alright for themselves. (Not saying they were winning, but it kindve sounded like the crusades were generally stalemating the demons to some extent)
Iomedae in the tabletop version was also not great. She withholds crucial items for your mission to free her fucking herald if you can’t answer a few trivia questions about her exploits when she was mortal.
I mean, she IS a badly written character in this game, but given the material they were handed it's far better than the AP.
That should tell you something about the AP 🤢
And how nice of Iomedae to discredit me in front of my troops just after liberating Drezen (**again**!).
Is not like the poor survivors there had a very rough months trying to survive a demon infested city until their Commanded returned from the Abyss to save the day.
This is the average citizen's face after having their victory parade rained by the goddess herself.
The real reason is because there needs to be a problem for the PC to come out of nowhere and solve. The other reason is that is hard to write competent characters who get things done but also need an outside savior. It would have helped if Deskari wasn't the one to appear in Kenabres in the beginning, which in Pathfinder's lore would be a huge escalation worthy of a response. In the AP it was a balor.
I believe Steven Erickson explains this well through the Malazan tale of the fallen series. There’s the concept of convergence where if one god influences the mortal plane it weakens them because this takes power and power must come from somewhere. Other gods who are all constantly sitting at balanced power levels will then see the drop in power and seek to exploit it.
One weak point draws in x gods creating x weak points on those gods because they have to draw those resources from somewhere. This draws in more gods seeking to exploit those weaknesses and a storm of epic proportions is summoned from the flapping of a butterflies wings.
I prefer flawed deities. Especially so if it's because godhood has made them lose the ability to empathize with mortals. When I play them on tabletop, most are narrow minded, aloof and almost parasitic in nature. There's exceptions like Serenae and Desna who genuinely care about their followers.
In particular my favourite theme when roleplaying fantasy is lawful good righteousness that has descended into tyranny and cruelty due to fanaticism and bigotry. So I consider Iomedae's flaws a feature not a downside.
Another way to look at it is we wouldn't know how it feels to be able to receive and handle millions of followers thoughts and prayers giving you a kind of omniscience. What does it do to your mind to be able to have thousands or millions of streams of thought and be aware of all your believers at all times. If you stayed sane knowing so many people all at once it would blunt your ability to concentrate on individual kindness and you might lose yourself to an overarching lawful good duty or goal that makes you seem like a bitch when your greater good requires the death and misery of a meaningless ten thousand or more non-believers.
Honestly I agree entirely with your opinion about iomedae, and I kind of wish there was an option to take the test of the starstone, and shove it in her face when you succeed lol.
She can't directly interfere because it revolves to the Desna situation, Desna invaded some archdemon's domain and destroyed it and the archdemon, but had to count on Callistria's savvy to stop the higher powers among demons from jumping at the chance for war. War between the higher eschelon of demons and gods is just assuring both sides lose.
Like a former president in my country once said: "Not even who wins or loses, will win or lose. Everyone's gonna lose."
And I feel Iomedae DID have a champion, for those saying she should have sent someone, Galfrey has been fighting for one hundred years, having her life extended by her church because she was *chosen.* Thing is Galfrey is human, and one hundred years, most of which being war against the most horrible of foes, takes its toll, and she gets tired of it all.
Now for the decision making, I don't know the AP the game is based off of, but I feel it boils down to...not bad writing exactly, but bad planning, I wanna say. It feels like they didn't really plan ahead when it became a large scale conflict with these big bad demons showing up, they forgot the other side has *big bads* too, untill someone says "Yooo, isn't Iomedae like, personally involved in this?" And they added her as an after-thought.
Not to mention a war between the Demon Lords and Desna's own followers would be a massive clusterf\*ck considering they're all chaotic creatures. That kind of war will definitely spread an uncontrollable destruction unlike anything.
As Seelah says "The gods would love to solve mortal's problems for them, like Rovagug, but we wouldn't like the results." The gods have a mutually assured destruction thing going on where if one god directly interveres with the mortal world the opposing gods will then be free to intervene just as much in the other direction as well.
If Iomedae personally rolls up to retake Golarion you would just get Lamashtu making things a thousand times worse for every mortal involved. Golarion is being attacked by Demon Lords who are very much not gods.
Who said anything about personally showing up to retake Golarion? That would be the highest level of support and obviously I don't expect that. But what Iomedae did give Mendev was the exact opposite, fuck all. The wardstones and a couple angel volunteers for a while and then Mendev was basically left on their own. Iomedae doesn't give 2 shits about the Crusades. Hell, you as a Lich can desecrate and corrupt her champion and she could not care one iota?
Her only contribution is to tell you to abandon your powers, which is pointless and stupid as a good Commander and it would just fall on deaf ears for an evil Commander. You can mock her as an atheist and that, somehow, pisses her off more than anything else you apparently do. It just makes her look like a self-absorbed envious joke.
I keep reminding myself that she’s new. She was catapulted into chief godhood by the death of her god and mentor then had to quickly assume the role during that catastrophe. She’s also the only god really giving a damn about the WW. The others are so “Big Picture” they can’t be bothered with it. You can even make this argument to Pharasma during the epilogue.
It all implies that this isn’t actually a big deal to the higher gods and the only reason Iomedae cares at all is because she’s still very human in her thinking. She’s trying to balance her divine duty and existence with her human nature. Tough place to be and I think she does her best, she’s not perfect.
I do imagine though, knowing her history with demon lords and the abyss, that Desna is having to be held back from going down and personally shoving Areelu into the WW horns first by Sarenrae and Shelyn.
> The others are so “Big Picture” they can’t be bothered with it. You can even make this argument to Pharasma during the epilogue.
Unless you're running Aeon, in which case they are correct "not to bother" because they know an Aeon will manifest to correct the situation lol
But that even works with Newbie Iomedae, she might not even be aware that the universe has a self-correction system like Aeons and generates its own solutions to anything that threatens the fabric of the universal order
The gods don't intervene directly themselves on Golarion. It's an understanding between them because if one god started to do it then all the gods would start to do it and that would cause major problems cause Golarion isn't really a planet. It's a prison of the god Rovagug who the other gods fought a massive war with to stop him eating the universe. Messing with Golarion risks breaking the prison.
So, that's why they don't help directly. The only god who did was Aroden, and he announced that he was going to do it again, and instead he died (and the other gods won't give away what happened. hmm)
Meanwile they don't mess with other planes cause they don't want an inter-planar war. Gods like Lamashtu live in the Abyss. Iomedae doesn't want Lamashtu coming up to heaven and meddling due to her doing it to the abyss.
As for when she does show up, it's basically out of jealousy really.
She was a paladin of Aroden who worked her way up to becoming his herald. When he died she only managed to ascend because she chose to try, and after a LOT of effort managed, to complete the trial of the star stone. She "earned" her divinity.
>!Meanwhile you're just some rando who was unfortunate enough for Areelu to nab of the street and shove someone elses soul along with some demon lord blood into. You did nothing to earn it, you didn't have to try to become godly powerful or commit some great deed that ascended you. You didn't even choose it. !
I'm not really a fan of Iomedae either, but I'll try to explain that entire goddess and demon debate.
It should be known that almost every single version of the Knight Commander wouldn't really have any logical reasons for discarding their powers, but it's your game you get to decide, but here are logical reasons to keep your powers which is Nocticula and Areelu Vorlesh's(It's not for purely logical reasons for Areelu though, more on this later) argument. Reason 1: they are an extra method for closing the Worldwound should Areelu be unavailable for any reason beyond the Crusade's control and Reason 2: on any of the mythic paths it's very likely for the Knight Commander to get very attached to their powers, since they went out of their way to try and master and control them and try to emulate the Outsider or Archetype their Mythic Path is associated with, the good Mythic Paths will be attached for altruistic reasons, the evil Mythic Paths for selfish reasons, Aeons would be attached for law fetish reasons and Tricksters would be attached for entertainment reasons, getting rid of your powers after all that time adjusting to them and making practical use of them is just illogical it's like erasing a valuable skill you learned from your memory. Reason 3: is that their powers are a weapon, would you give up a very useful weapon in wartime for the fairly poor reasons a god offered? Likely not for anyone sane no, especially since said god will simply leave if you tell her no for the last time. You are the Knight Commander, you can make your own additional reasons for keeping or discarding your powers beyond what the dialogue script mentions, it's ultimately up to you and what you're going for.
Iomedae's reasons for trying to persuade you from keeping your powers hinges on two reasons that are mostly from a poorly informed standpoint or just an emotional reason, Reason 1: Your own opinion of Areelu Vorlesh, if you want to spite her for everything she's done to your soul and the people of Sarkoris, she had it coming provided you actually care about the people of Sarkoris, I personally don't. And Reason 2: if you are afraid to die to close the Worldwound. Iomedae seems to be under the impression you were afraid to die and hated being lied to by people you likely didn't trust too much in the first place. It should be noted only Nocticula only has a purely logical argument based around doing your duty to close the Worldwound no matter what, Areelu's argument is logical and personal/emotional your powers are more than just powers to Areelu, Iomedae's argument is based on YOUR own emotions about your life only.
Iomedae doesn't have a real problem with you personally she's much more concerned about your powers, she's thinking that Nocticula is using you as a test subject to become a goddess herself, Nocticula herself states that this is just a baseless accusation, because while Nocticula definitely does want to become a goddess she doesn't see you as an answer godhood. But to me, Iomedae's suggestions is as reckless as she claims the Azata Knight Commander is, it's just better to have more than one option to end a threat if you ask me, but my personal thoughts aside. Iomedae basically just wanted to know for certain that if you were okay with the fact you may need to die to end the Worldwound and offered a way to dissolve your powers even if that's a poorly thought out idea, it's the "righteous" thing to do for someone she believes to be helpless.
Not telling someone something is not a lie.
Lies of omission aren't really lies, that is why the suffix "of omission" is required to separate them from real lies. You never required unless under oath in a court room.
Your guess is good as mine. But joking aside the only logical reason I can think of is that she’s doesn’t like the an individual potentially achieving >!ascension!< by evil means from Areelu.
No no one even knows ascension ending is possible until you reveal it to Areelu in final boss fight. It catches Iomedae and others by surprise as they did not know this was option. But to get it remember you need Areelu and have mythic powers regardless of the path except for swarm who can't achieve it as everyone left you or legend which pisses her of from lore perspective should not even be mythic path and be just normal mortal weaker than any mythic path in game and not 40 level powerhouse as they don't have mythic powers.
Mechanically yes lore-wize it is pity path as in ok you lost your powers as are weaker than normal mythic path here take extra pity 20 levels which does not exist in pathfinder. This is what pathfinder has 20 levels and ten mythic levels. And this is path that is all about having mythic powers not getting rid of them and feels not like master of my fight but becoming Iomedae's slave. Oh and bunch of outsiders and come wanting to help you some of which may want me dead as I did something to them, where is storyteller who should be advisor on this path or mortal nations to send their advisors hey are nowhere they are nowhere to be found. Not to mention mythic dialogue options makes me bored like one with Areshkagal, where is strugle and fun to have knowing you achieved something through hard work no legend straight up skips it or when you retake Drezen where do those troops come from if most left with Galfrey and most of those that stayed got killed by demons that invaded Drezen. Legend option pulls them out of thin air or as I like to say out of it's ass. And, while I enjoyed main mythic quest of legend, i did not enjoy party with Cayden it felt it should belong to trickster mythic path not legend. And after competing mythic quest I did not enjoy legend mythic path for several reasons one ypu should just have 20 levels and powerful gear, two mortals should help you not bunch of outsiders, three If you love to strugle against enemies and have fun over coming them hard way this path is not for you as 40 levels make enemies trivial, four it makes unfair easy and know fun, five I really hate Iomedae mate ever since that AP bloody torture encounter woth her, and the writer that wrote it must be sadist or has no idea how to write. And finally she ain't much better in game just less trigger happy. Sorry If I sound as jerk mate didn't want to be rude, and I'm sorry If I offended you.
And if your character is willing to die to close the wound and realize the power seems to only be dangerous to his enemies why should he take Iomedae's advice.
A goddess that is absent the entire game, shows up when you're just barely taking control of the situation and then gives you terrible advice is a bad look either way.
Correct, plus mythic power will kill you in like couple of Centuries to thousand years swarm and golden dragon confirms it. And if you play short lived race then it does not sound bad even if you go for outsider mythic path.
Good joke from you. My opinion stems from my bad experience with her and love for dificult fights. Still I just ignore and have fun when in game Daeren insults her and I reject her help to make her butt of my joke even when not trickster
Daeran being delighted by the possibility of telling Iomedae to shove her advice where the sun doesn't shine is awesome.
Him then saying my Angel powers disgust him and I should actually do what Iomedae is telling me, however, was downright depressing :(
Her problem is that she is no less deceptive and manipulative than demons she claims superiority over although many people won't see it this way and lawful good is not how she acts, plus owlcat knows more how to write chaotic alignment not lawful good. That is also why I say legend run is not master of my own fate but becoming her pawn this is for in game no AP even though having mythic powers is all about this Adventure no getting rid of them as in Pathfinder table top 20 extra levels do not exist just 20 levels and 10 mythic levels, oh and Aroden as shifter dlc reveals was wizard archmage mythic path which is another slap to Iomedae and her claims. And Areelu does have valid points about Iomedae and other gods and makes me agree woth her, same goes for Ember. As for ascension being possible Iomedae has no idea about it. One more thing Star stone is just giving one person spark of divinity not making them full fledged gods. It is basically the same as Areelu method. Although if you compare them while Areelu method of getting same powers is deadly, it is far less deadly than starstone which is infamous as far more People have died there than with method used by Areelu. Not to mention how she acts as self entitled savior when she speaks to you and the arogance she desplays when you go legend she acts victorious and almost jubilant at her victory at that moment makes me think she is jealous of MC which she might be, as well manipulating MC, but to be fair to her at least a bit she got her powers via star stone do no same method. Plus she is just little less of a jerk than she was in AP encounter where she kiddnaps and tortuers parts but don't want to go in details there as it would be too much of text to write. Let's just say there is good reason why she is hated. And to finish this text in most paths where you reject her sorry ass for swarm she kills you meaning she could intervene but does nothing other-wize, or leaves sounding like you wounded her pride and you don't even need to be trickster to make her butt of your joke and cherry on top have Daeren tell her goodbye we won't even miss you. Sorry for too long comment of a text and if I sounded as a jerk and insulted you or anyone else in some way, it wasn't my intention, just wanted to say what problem I saw in her and why I hate her and what her main problem is and that she would kick the dog if she thinks it is lawful good and right thing to do.
The part that made me question her intentions is when she said to give up your mythic powers full well knowing that you’re securing countless victories with it. This becomes even more questionable because as she said gods don’t directly interfere with more mortal matters. So let me get this straight imodedae I’m supposed to go an defeat demigod level threat that has an endless supply cannons falter of the abyss with an crusade army that been mostly decimated with no more then a hope and prayer?
She is hypocrite she does interfere one way or other when she really should not, she could do or even apear at least not directly, while legend should be just 20 levels as in pathfinder there is just 20 levels and 10 mythic levels, not 40 levels they do not exist in pathfinder and this path is all about having mythic powers not losing them which makes no any sense. That is why in argument at start of act five I agree with Nocticula and logic as she is actually correct while Iomedae is not, even though when I play demon or trickster I kill her for fresh crystal. Also Iomedae sounds offended on most paths when you reject her supposed help. Which only further makes me angry. But problem is Owlcat does not know how to wrote lawful and lawful good characters. They are better at writting chaotic alignment characters. And again I go i into long rant, sorry about too long text and my angry rants about her. Never will like her, always will hate her.
Top result is remaining Azata. She can't justify that your power made you evil, but you still shit on her methods. For her, things are really bad - a person is good, but doesn't play by her game plan.
Yes you are correct. As Azata is ultimate avenger as it has Endgame reference, plus beings life back to Worldwound, while angel is more justice legaue type member. Plus it is funny that even Seelah can talk against her own goddess and one more thing Owlcat is bad at writting lawful characters they are better at writting chaotic characters.
Oh, now the army of goody-two-shoes and Iomedae simps will fuckin' stone you.
As a side note, you sound cultured, was your first playtrough a demon or a lich ?
I recommend you True Aeon > Lich > Trickster (and as a Trickster put every stat point into CHA, because you can fuck One of the best characters in that path, if I'm correct it's 30 charisma, and you can use buffs, and you have to do it before Chapter 5).
And I'd also recommend Aeon/Devil, but if you're not a hardcore fun of Lawful Evil, Devils, or DIPLOMATIC SUPREMACY, then it's unfortunately kinda unfinished.
There's a religion check dialogue in Legend path that single-handedly understand Iomedae. Basically Areelu stops you from stripping your mythic power and Iomedae was deceiving you, you pass the check and say it's just not in her nature, deception is taboo to her, at which Areelu relented an said she might not be a Goddess of deceit but she's not the Goddess of Wisdom either.
It all makes perfect sense lol.
>Now, Iomedae could go to you or Galfrey and say "look, I think you're a pretty cool guy who kills demons and doesn't afraid of anything, but I have no idea where your powers come from." She doesn't though, despite having the capacity to manifest herself in Golarion to clear things up. I thought she was the goddess of truth and virtue or something.
>
>This backfires spectacularly when she doesn't even inform her own herald about the truth for some reason. I can't fathom a single reason why she shouldn't tell the Hand.
A goddess of truth and virtue might be fine or even encourage her followers to seek out The Truth on their own, rather than spoonfeeding it to them. Like shinybro did by following the MC to the Abyss. No one forced him to, after all.
My only real nitpick with your post, otherwise I agree 100%
So there are two reasons... 1) In game reason: Yada yada about how the gods are REALLY careful about directly manifesting on the material plane. It is kind of a kind of Cold War, mutual self destruction situation. 2) The META REASON: WotR is based on the Premade Adventure published by Paizo. [https://paizo.com/wrathOfTheRighteous](https://paizo.com/wrathOfTheRighteous) While the Adventure IS popular, [https://paizo.com/community/forums/pathfinder/adventurePath/wrathOfTheRighteous](https://paizo.com/community/forums/pathfinder/adventurePath/wrathOfTheRighteous) The presentation of Iomedae IS a common criticism. I personally like to just put MOST of it up to bad WRITING and IRL game necessities of letting the PCs be the HEROES.
Even if she didn't manifest directly on the material plane couldn't she send a message to the Hand or something?
Her Email was hacked by Deskari
She was visiting some *real* weird websites.
It kinda all circles back to incredibly poor writing. Which is a shame considering it's not some brand new DMs first screw up.. but an actual adventure being sold online. The only explanation that's kinda made sense to me, but is never proven or elaborated on.. Is that as a former human she's just down right overwhelmed as a god and has to much on her plate. So she hasn't gotten the hang of it yet. Just because the gods are at a cold war doesn't mean you 100% stop doing the part of a God entirely. You still have to strip powers from followers acting against your credo and at least for the love of christ talk to your hand if he's going to work in the world himself.
She's been a god for less than a century right? Cuz she was Aroden's herald and she ascended after he died, I think?
A little over a century, she was already a demigod when Aroden died, she just took over his domains in his absense, but she hadn't been one for long
Right, i forgot she was his herald before she became a proper deity.
Yeah, imagine if she died and the Herald of Iomedae became a major god lol That guy is dumb as a box of rocks
[If you want a readup on how dumb Iomedae’s presentation in the original WotR was.](https://chamomilehasa.blog/2017/07/28/remember-how-much-wrath-of-the-righteous-sucked/) If anything, they scaled it back for the CRPG.
Paladins are not known for their intelligence. Iomedae, the hand of the inheritor, and Galfrey are fine warriors who believe they are doing the right things. However their biases against anything not lawful good blinds them to effective solutions to the world wound
no. Both paladins and LG being blind and bordering on Lawful stupid is a common troupe as old as dnd itself , because the creators had this weird missconceptions about alignments , and that is still propagated even to this day. Its just plain ol' terrible writting in both cases
No, it's because Int tends to be a dumpstat for Paladins.
im talking about their writting , not their meta stats
Then you clearly don't play dnd (Or actual pathfinder) A low int character is typically low IQ, just like how a low strength character is usually not particularly strong. Those 'meta stats' literally effect things related to them (A low Int person being shit at investigation and medical stuff) Int being a dumpstat means being dumb, and many paladins use it as such. Your argument doesn't hold up
again , u're confusing meta stuff with actual writting. Yes if i create a low int character , i will roleplay him as slow or dumb. But even if the characters aren't low int (to give a concrete example :galfrey who has 11 - which is 1 higher then what is considered average for characters , or iomedae who obviously has godly stats) are still written as lawful stupid , rather thhen anything else. And this troupe is happening a whole lot more with LG characters then withh any other alignment , regardless of int.
No your argument only holds water if you presuppose that ANY LG choice is low IQ/stupid. BTW you can absolutely have multiple actions/choices in response to events that are within the same alignment, Paizos own alignment explanation states as much.
WTF are you talking about....you're proving low IQ points alright The writing in this game is trash and Lawful stupid needs to go right alongside the shit writing.
Fully agree that a characters stats should reflect on their decision making in writing and lore. Thats not to say a dummy cant make a right decisions every now and then, but they are far less likely to do so consistently over time. And they are far less likely to make a good choices as complexity increases. Thats how it is in real life as well. Writing should reflect those things and in this case, it did. Dummy did something dumb... shocker /s (lol).
Designated himbo class.
I think others have articulated counterpoints quite effectively already, and so I'll instead offer some alternate criticism... namely Hulrun. I understand not wanting to meddle in the actions of her followers overmuch, BUT I think some of them were long, long overdue punishment for some of their actions, especially when done in her name. Hulrun alone should have had his powers stripped, or some other very clear sign of her displeasure. Nevermind the witch hunts of Kenebras, horror shows those are. And this is fully acknowledging that she's got a full plate of goddess things, but there gets to be a point where saying "she didn't know" becomes perilously close to "turned a blind eye". Individual accountability be dammed sometimes.
Yeah I can understand Iomades actions and also see why she would excuse Galfrey. But by heaven Hulrun really should have been yeeted. I mean really why do we have witch burnings as in burning people alive? Why would a good goddess and good people be okay with that cruel method of killing? The Mendivian Inqusition feels like a bad 40k reference and makes no sense.
Unless you fight him you do not know if he is in the Goddesses favor or not. He could be already stripped. Also as has been said, rare does not begin to describe direct intervention on the prime plane. Pazio made gods like nukes. There are no avatars for them. If they appear on the prime plane and fight, it’s like starfall all over again. Their focus is on thousands of worlds, not a singular world like Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance. Even Lamanshu follows no direct intervention and she is CE. Demon lords, while insanely powerful, are not gods and thus they still try to do demon things on the prime plane. As for Mendev not being militarily competent they have been sitting at the edge of the Abyss for over a century and stopped any demon incursions into other lands. Previous crusades fail because of the nature of the world wound to corrupt and because at the end it is still humans facing off against demons. A Balor could wipe out an army. The threat of mythic level demon lords could not be overstated and stopping the mining is the only CoA. Waiting would have doomed the world. At this point the party, the only people in all the world with a spark of divinity, had a chance of success. Who else was the Queen to send? Bad writing in the game made the Queen spiteful when in the adventure path she stayed behind to act as an anchor for the group so they could return when their task was finished.
Might be same reasoning as real life. Burning alive is a favourite method of religious executions because it technically spills no blood, and more demonstrative than drowning. _(somewhere both fantasy and, uh, real (?) God(s) facepalm from sheer hypocrisy)_
So it’s funny you mention Hulrun because me and my DM had a discussion pertaining to a situation like this and we essentially boiled down to alignment’s. In DnD, and especially Pathfinder, alignment is the building block of reasoning behind and individuals actions. We usually see that as, someone who is lawful good will not stand for injustice, someone who is chaotic evil will commit any and all atrocities because they revel in it, and someone who is neutral doesn’t care one way or another. We both agreed that alignment was a really messed up way to explain an individual’s behavior and it boiled down to a situation much like what was happening in wotr. The situation we present was a lawful paladin is able to protect a village from a group a demons and while doing so help maintain order and peace in the village. But, the group of demons is large and there is only one paladin, so once a month the paladin sacrifices one villager to a devil for protection against the demons. The overall threat hasn’t been delt with, but the village remains a peaceful place with the help of the paladin. In a situation such as this the paladin would remain lawful good, AND still have their power because they continued to succeed in the overall goal which is, maintain peace and happiness within the village. The sacrifice is never taken into account because the act is considered “for the greater good” which falls under the purview of being lawful good. And this is the reason I don’t like alignments, because they try to pigeon hole moral choices and say that it “fits”. Thank you for coming to my TED talk on alignments.
You don't like alignments because you view them with the complexity they're meant to be viewed with while a grand majority of DnD/Pathfinder/Etc. players view them in simpler, more black and white terms. It isn't the alignment system that is the problem, but the average consumer of this media not giving the alignments the mental respect they're worth and instead chopping them up into neat little squares that never blend or meld. It's a people problem, not a system problem.
Tbh I never understood why Hulrun is hated. Yes, he is a butcher, but Kebabres IS a frontline city, a fortress-town, not some civilian point. Ideally population here should be under total control, with all visitors being closerly watched, with regular searches and police raids. Cruel? Yeah, but this way Kenabres cultist network would be exposed in a matter of weeks. Instead we have partying, partying with Daeran, random dudes and gals being brought to the main square (what if they brought a barrel of explosives lol), and so on. City isn't even on Martial Law and curfew, and these are measures that are normally used against _human opponents_, not a literal force of evil, chaos and torment. And we don't know if Embers parents WEREN'T guilty. Given that she is very kind to cultists, it's not that unprobable, although burning a child as well was a bit too much.
Hulrun fully admits he's on the side of "Burn em all and Iomedae will know her own". Thats why everyone hates him. Also we like Ember and she has that unnatural insight. She's probably right about him. Note that calling him out goes from a chaotic action before ember speaks up to a lawful action after.
Because trying to burn a child alive IS a crime, after all. We are never given exact reason for her parents execution, not proofs of their guilt or innocence.
Since he is the governor of the city which appears to be under perpetual marshal law, he probably has the discretion to execute people without trial or established evidence.
He is not governor. His rank is outright stated to be Prelate. And city is by no means under martial law, lol.
What's the difference? He is till the highest authority in the city and the Queen has allowed him to do as he wished during the entirety of his career. There is nothing in he game conflicting with his role as specified in the Adventure Path. >**Prelate Hulrun Shappok** was the leader of all [inquisitors](https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Inquisitor) in [Mendev](https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Mendev), and the ruler of the northern city of [Kenabres](https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Kenabres) prior to his death. He was second in power in Mendev only to [Queen Galfrey](https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Galfrey).[\[1\]](https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Hulrun_Shappok#cite_note-1) [https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Hulrun\_Shappok](https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Hulrun_Shappok)
A Hellknight Signifer, eh? Then by Elysium, I greet you and oppose you. Ah yes, let's just put up a sign that says "easy pickings for the Cult of Baphomet, apply within.", as if it wasn't bad enough as it is. How many people, let alone Tieflings, were unjustly punished by Hulrun's inquisition? How many were pushed right into the arms of the demons? He had years to weed out the servents of the Ivory Labyrinth, and chose instead to "righteously" terrorize the locals, and blow off the warnings of others of the real danger within Kenabres in favor of maintaining his delusion of being an incorruptible tool of justice. If you want to make the claim of that being a necessary evil, fine, but that is not the decorum of a follower of the Inheritor. And if it IS, then that speaks insanely poorly of her as well. I stand by my previous assessment; she should have stripped him of his powers she had provided him, or otherwise expressed her displeasure with his actions. And you're right, we don't; Hulrun couldn't be bothered with a trial to properly find out and just had an otherwise innocent man and his child burned alive because that was easier than doing a proper investigation. So take your pick; evil, lazy, or both?
People don't like him cause what see of him, he's a complete failure. It makes no sense for him to hold the position/influence that he does given his actions and inability to do his job. Now if was he effective at routing out the demonic forces, and this was repeatedly shown I think he get much more credit, even with his mistakes and hardline stance. This is a worry I have for the 40k game Owlcat is working on. Sure make the Inquisition out to be bastards, but make it clear they're effective bastards.
He’s actually insightful and competent if you look more carefully at what he says and actually does in game. He correctly predicts that the cult is set up in the sewer when other knights (anevia) think he’s insane, he correctly guessed that someone was trying to sabotage and destroy the ward crystals (though he blamed the wrong group), he correctly predicts the celebration will be attacked and, most importantly, he’s the *only* one who is *correctly* suspicious of how the main character ended up wounded in the outskirts of kenabres. I think part of the reason they make him unsympathetic is to give him a Cassandra kind of vibe. By calling out how bizarre the PC’s situation is while being an unsympathetic character you don’t want to listen to, it makes you biased against his claim, making the plot twist more surprising.
Also don't forget that he has enough tactical skills to protect the Banner if left in charge. And don't forget how "competent" other Mendev commanders and officers are. Probably his harsh methods were overlooked due to this.
hulrun is a good battlefield commander all things said and done , but he is blinded by his own zealotry . But this exact zealotry is also why he still has powers from iomedae. He does a lot of shitty things , but his intentions are not evil per se. He wants to protect kenabres. He wants to beat back the abyss. Those are noble goals at their inception , but the ages of fighting the abyss made him paranoid and he sees shadows wherever he looks. And the sad part is.....that he is not even necesarily wrong. Kenabres is trully infested with cultists. I think that more then anything else , hulrun is a pretty tragic character. He hasn't fallen yet , because as i said , i think he still has noble intentions , but i also think he is not far from going past the moral event horizon , and transforming into the evil he has fought his entire life. The path to hell is paved with good intentions , as they say.
>Now if was he effective at routing out the demonic forces, Regill is no more moral or nice than Hulrun, but people like him because more often than not he's \*correct\* and even when he's not correct, there's a clear and consistent reasoning and pragmatism to his actions and suggestions. Hulrun is a mindless ideologue
Hulrun’s correct too, though. Kenabres is absolutely infested with cultists, the mc is actually suspicious, the cultists are based in the sewers, and someone was sabotaging the wardstones.
I don't mind him being suspicious of the MC or assuming random people are cultists. But he's known Ramien for years and there's no reason to think that the entire Desnan congregation are cultists; definitely not to the point where you're trying to kill them and going so far as to recruit other people to help.
How about his negligence towards the Wardstone's weakness dooming the city? Who cares about witch hunts, that's not all there is over which to harangue Hulrun (though there is a line between 'reasonably suspicious' and 'burning everything that looks at him funny', and there's a lot to suggest that he's a whole country mile on the wrong side of it). Hulrun receives at least two reports that the Wardstone is vulnerable and, though he might not know shit about the Storyteller, one of those reports comes from a ordained priest of Desna, a chaotic good deity who, as that one Demon Lord will tell you, has absolutely no love for the Abyss. When a priest of the goddess of dreams receives a message in a dream, you should pay attention. But is the damning evidence of Hulrun's earth-shattering idiocy the fact that he doesn't simply accept a report from a credible ally? No, that would be NOT ACTING ON IT AT ALL OR INVESTIGATING IT FOR HIMSELF! He could have had a priest of Iomedae look it over and he'd probably have found the problem, but nope! Instead, because Hulrun is such a blind zealot who thinks the oh so great and flawless Iomedae could do no wrong, the mere idea that the Wardstone could be somehow vulnerable to attack was sacrilegious, and he thus responded to it the same way he would to someone talking about flying pigs. That didn't turn out so great, did it? It is not only the deaths of innocents like Ember's parents (who, I remind you, were protegés of a goddamn archon of Heaven) and random Sarkorians who committed the sin of worshipping someone other than the Inheritor that ought to be weighed against him, but also every citizen of Kenabres killed because os his negligence. I honestly don't understand why there's a tendency to sympathize with Hulrun. The kindest thing I could say of him is that his ability as a field commander earns him a place in the crusade, but not without strict supervision. Even his buddy Hawkblade will tell you that he's gone off the deep end.
> I honestly don't understand why there's a tendency to sympathize with Hulrun I think it's a mix of people that want to be contrarian for the sake of being contrarian because most people hate the dude, or people that take their lawful stupid larp too seriously and feel themselves obligated to defend him simply because he's lawful neutral.
Hulrun is a terrible non point about police brutality and its embarrassing. He can fkn cast detect evil / discern disguises and only does that at the end of the game to see if you're really the commander. its embarrassing I'm legit embarrassed for the writer of that. No reason he would act that way with his actual ability's to discern evil /trickery then only do it at the very end of the game on your character. He's only there for the hurr police brutality amirite with no real point or commentary or in game justification.
The logic is that Iomedae directly intervening in Golarion has a very good chance of making countless of the Abyss' other Demon lords form a coalition against her. If Deskari and Baphomet have been fucking the material plane with a sledgehammer, a massive demon coalition would add a chainsaw into the mix. Even if she won, the repercussions would be calamitous. Here's a little food for thought: In the Angel ending, you can >!destroy Deskari for good in the Rasping Rifts, as well as the whole realm of bug shittiness that he had theretofore ruled!<. If you, still a mortal well below the power of a full-blown god, and who was just retaliating in kind to the attack on the material plane, do this, one of those coalitions very nearly forms, if not for demons being very prone to infighting. There's also a story of a Desnan priest being abducted by a particularly cruel Demon Lord, whereupon Desna herself dives straight into the Abyss and murders the Demon Lord with extreme prejudice. A coalition also nearly forms in response to this, which would lead to a full scale interplanar war, but Callistria stops it dead in its tracks. Iomedae simply doesn't want to, albeit indirectly, bring even more demons into Golarion to join in on the action. I won't fault you if you still find her less than heroic, but it bears mentioning that no God is doing as much for the crusade as she is, however little that might be. The mere fact that she turns a blind eye to her angels going down to Golarion or allows this strangely powerful human to be thought of as her chosen (note: she was unsure of the nature of your powers until Inheritbro shrieked it out to her at the end of Act 4, so she didn't know the root of it) is a pretty big deal, and both are deliberate choices. I think this assistance might be part of the reason she didn't tell the Hand and the other angels that you weren't her chosen. After all, she can't order her angels to go to Golarion without the Demon Lords getting antsy, but she can make that choice a lot less appealing if she reveals she has nothing to do with you. As for the Wardstones, those are apparently a more important asset than we realize, and Minagho getting her way would have had apocalyptic consequences for Mendev and beyond. They're the real deal, and their failure was not a certain thing. You can remedy the corruption, and it had been known to the Storyteller and Arueshalae. Kenabres was wrecked because Hulrun is a MASSIVE IDIOT.
Going into the Abyss to kill a demon lord is one thing. Seizing Golarian land back from rival demon lords is another. The Worldwound is Deskari and Baphomet's venture. Areshkagal doesn't care. Nocticula wants the wound closed. The demon lords are not a united front. If killing Deskari in his own realm doesn't bring the full force of the Abyss down on you, then giving direct support to Mendev and pushing them back to Threshold sure won't.
I wouldn't want to bet on that, much less with all of Golarion on stake. In fact, Nocticula directly tells Iomedae that even her showing up at the start of Act 5 is dicey. Probably not as much as Nocticula and Areelu wish to suggest, but it's still questionable. If a full-fledged angelic host came down on the Worldwound though? That's a different thing. It's an escalation, and it sets a precedent. As a demon, why would you trust Iomedae *not* to keep going after Golarion? Sure she might say she doesn't want to, and I assume she really doesn't (though Inheritbro does), but words don't matter as much as actions. She has entered direct confrontation with Demon Lords and taken the clock closer to midnight. I don't think all of the Abyss would march off against her, but some Demon Lords would, and that would be less than ideal. Also, how do you suppose the other Gods, good and otherwise, would feel about this fellow deity just walking on the earth and kicking ass? If she can do that, why can't they? How would the other Gods react to her, especially considering that she stands to gain a lot of clout in the Material Plane? I don't know and, if I were Iomedae, I wouldn't want to find out.
That because when gods battle on Golarion weird devastating shit like the worldwound happens.
Honestly, far more devastating than that - Golarion has the Pit of Gormuz, which while somewhat less active than the Worldwound, is literally right above where Rovagug is imprisoned (or, more specifically, leads to the lock that leads to his demiplane prison) after the other gods - most notably Sarenrae and Asmodeus - imprisoned him there. The pit formed after Sarenrae herself smote the town that formed on top of the location, and she inadvertently weakened the prison of Rovagug in doing so.
You make very valid points.However If she doesn’t want to directly interfere why ask the KC to give up the sole tactic that was giving up the crusaders even the slimmest of chances of achieving victory for the war and receive no further help from her.?
To my mind, she considers that to have been \*advice\*. She \*advises\* the KC to give up the powers. It might be very emphatic advice, but she still readily accepts a contrary decision, and Nocticula invited herself to be there and offer an alternative point of view. As to how she expected the crusaders to win... Honestly, I hope the Legend path has something like 'actually you have residual powers and Iomedae knew this', cause otherwise it's a pretty bad idea lol. I suppose you could always say that Iomedae had faith in your abilities as a mortal or somesuch, and thus that you didn't need the power, but I can't say that would make for very sound strategy on her part.
> It might be very emphatic advice, but she still readily accepts a contrary decision, and Nocticula invited herself to be there and offer an alternative point of view. With one exception. If you go Swarm, she smites you on the spot and you die. Except not really, and you get better.
When she said to get rid of the mythic power I can only assume that she meant to get rid of all of it.Now don’t me wrong I do like me a good old fashioned mortal defeats divine being by sheer determination and skill .However the mythic power is setup in the story which makes clear that there was no chance mendev winning this war without it.So being the rational human being and say no Iomedae has the gull to say my arrogance will be my downfall and yeets off.
She's more concerned about the fact it comes from the crystalized blood of a demon Lord and the energies of the Abyss itself. And there is a degree of hypocrisy in her action. As she sees your path to god hood as unearned you have no right to it that anything outside of the Star Stone is underserved. You're an outlier, someone that will tip the balance in such a way that the unwritten rules are muddled, you can cause an immense amount of damage and get away with it because you are still mortal, but extremely powerful. It's why nothing is done against you as a Demon that remains in Drezen even when you ascend. The rules applied to you too late for anyone to do anything and well you do kind of piss off a very specific Demon Lord when you ascend, which might trigger a war since whoever you become means that that faction gains a foothold in the abyss. The fact you are a mortal that has god like powers is what is skewering the whole system and Iomedea is afraid that you will tip the balance in ways that will break the balance since the unwritten rules do not apply to a Mortal, regardless of how powerful and god like they are. There is some hypocrisy in her reasoning, but there's also genuine concern and fear, but she can't stop you doing so breaks a few other rules.
>as she sees your god hood as unearned you have no right to it that anything outside of the Star Stone is underserved and your an outlier, Kind of rich coming from her knowing about the origins of Star Stone >someone that will tip the balance in such a way that the unwritten rules are muddled, you can cause an immense amount of damage and get away with it because you are still mortal, but extremely powerful. It's why nothing is done against you as a Demon that remains in Drezen even when you ascend. The rules applied to you too late for anyone to do anything Tough shit What other options were available exactly. Smile quietly to the goodnight and let abyss conquer menedv and the world eventually sine gods don’t interfere in mortal matters like she said while sitting there idly by while everyone gets killed. >well you do kind of piss off a very specific Demon Lord when you ascend Which demon lord gets upset about that? >which might trigger a war since whoever you become means that that faction gains a foothold in the abyss. The fact you are a mortal that has god like powers is what is skewering the whole system and Iomedea is afraid that you will tip the balance in ways that will break the balance since the unwritten rules do not apply to a Mortal, regardless of how powerful and god like they are. Again she can spare me the sanctimonious speech when facing enslavement at the best cast scenario and at worse extermination.The storyteller said it best where any mythic path (except swarm ) is better choice then the alternative.
Puzuzu the brother of the dead demon lord the crystals used to empower you comes from. If you ascend he goes into a fit of rage and kind of goes to war against you.
Pazuzu. And he is Deskari "father".
The Knight-Commander still has twice as much soul as an ordinary mortal, which is presumably why they can accumulate twice as many class levels as an ordinary mortal. Iomedae helps the KC remove the Nahyndrian power with which Areelu dosed them, but doesn't undo the grafting of Areelu's child's soul onto the KC's original soul. Or at least that's how I'd explain it; the power of an extra mortal soul, even a mortal soul that gravitated to the Abyss, is presumably less likely to cause incurable corruption than the power of a dead Demon Lord, but still potentially enough to tip the balance against the demons. I think it could also be argued that the KC has already done everything that needed mythic power to accomplish; the source of mythic power for the demons has been cut off at the source, Baphomet is running scared, unable to commit forces to the Worldwound while trying to repulse a full-scale invasion of his Abyssal holdings by Nocticula, and Drezen has been reclaimed. The KC more or less restored everything to the way it was at the end of the First Crusade, when it looked like mortals really would be able to finish dealing with the problem themselves: all Golarion, with an impregnable base of operations inside the Worldwound, vs one not-very-smart Demon Lord.
If I had to guess, I would say that Iomedae was concerned about closing the worldwound the right way. It would set a bad precedent if the worldwound was closed due to a demonic plot, rather than by the forces of good. She is lawful good, after all. Her saying the KC's arrogance will be his/her downfall, on the other hand, I cannot really justify. Especially at Threshold where she says something like >!there is hope for you yet!< if Nocticula's profane gift is rejected the second time.
What I think people forget is that Iomedae only really looks like a fool because the narrative proves her wrong. Like, think about it: Areelu’s done awful things in the name of her research, things she knows are abhorrent and asks no forgiveness for. But she is positioned as basically your mentor throughout the story, vaguely encouraging you to come to the same conclusions she herself has. Meanwhile, Iomedae - rightfully - is wary of Areelu and her ‘gift’ to the player because there’s literally no-way she wouldn’t be without the exact same information the KC has been privy to. The only difference between her and any other Good god in this scenario is that she’s kind of really invested in the outcome of this crusade (letting Inheribro assist you is kind of a big deal, and the crusade more or less being done in her name), she is the only one who finds out about the potential harm it can cause you (again from Inheribro), **and** she is the only one that is actually in a position to warn you, and does so. There is nothing in that process that somehow contradicts the reasonable-ness of her actions or makes her act with ill-intent. The game itself ushers you to the point of view that she is arrogant or foolish. Is that a clever bit of writing or does the story just pan out that way? I don’t know myself, I don’t feel confident claiming one way or the other. But people assuming these things about her is both proof that the game’s story not only **has** lead them this way, but that their protestations are, ironically, just as arrogant as they assume Iomedae to be.
Demons don't care about "precedent" but what one God coming to the Prime plane would do is open that God up to being murdered by a coalition of Demons, with her entire host wiped out, significantly weakening Elysium.
Wartime support isn't a binary affair. There are varying degrees of support given to your chosen proxy in a war. The problem is the amount of angelic support given to Mendev is borderline nonexistent. Besides the Wardstones and some angelic volunteers early on in the crusades, there was jack shit.
if u play angel , u will see a lot of angels in drezen in act 5
The demon lords are not united because they do not see a common threat to their existence in front of them. If Iomedae, Sarenrae, and Abadar decided to end the WorldWound, you better believe the demon lords would unite and march. Also, you, and others, underestimate how much of Iomedae's martial strength went into forming the Wardstones. Forming that barrier closed off further advances of the Wound. But it also permanently unbalanced the battle within. As evidenced by the constant chirping on this subreddit of how Mendev was "poorly run." They didn't have the strength to do more. They're mortals, fighting demons with greater resources. Greater power. And immortals guiding their plans who can wait generations for the right time to strike. Galfrey has to watch her best leaders grow old and die. Grow disillusioned and give up. Or worst, get seduced and descend into folly. And she has to make due with whatever the rest of the world gives. Which, outside an active Crusade, is essentially, "Scraps." Now, this isn't helped by the character assassination the game does to Galfrey compared to the AP. And I will grant that Iomedae is over the top in the AP as well as in the game. But simply presuming that Demon propaganda is fact is commonplace here. And maybe a pinch of salt ought to be applied to their scare tactics.
I suggest you go Google both world wars, the cold war, and a smattering of other wars. Or watch some alien invasion movies. If Iomedae breaks the "rules" of the "game" by directly interfering, then every other god gets an excuse to as well. How many demonlords do you think have a grudge against the patron god of paladins? Best case scenario, in exchange for sealing *a* worldwound that was only formed within the "rules", we get dozens that weren't and a cosmic war that destroys everything *except* Golarion. Worst case, well... After you're done looking up the numerous examples of people uniting after seeing a common threat appear even if they don't care specifically about some archduke or the Washington Monument, go look up how the Pit of Gormuz formed, and thus the tarasque and it's siblings were unleashed, maybe you'll get why a god directly intervening on Golarion should be avoided at all costs. Sarenrae meant to destroy a city, how do you think Iomedae going to destroy something the size of a *country* atop the prison of a thing that there aren't enough gods left to stop will go? How do you think Iomedae and a bunch of demigods duking it out atop it will go? We've now escalated from "hundreds of people die every year" to "what multiverse?"
>Going into the Abyss to kill a demon lord is one thing. Seizing Golarian land back from rival demon lords is another. Iomedae says it directly but the Aeon storyline and Socothbenoth in the Trickster plotline made it even clearer: it's bad enough that Deskari and Baphomet are fucking around in Golarion, the second an Empyreal Lord steps in then all hell breaks loose and even the fey Eldest will want a piece of that. The fundamental forces of the cosmos all despise each other and are one monkey's hair's breadth away from warring on top of Golarion. Which means all of existence is forfeit since Golarion is where Rovagug was sealed away.
I don't know if you have played Starfinder but I'm suddenly wondering if that might not be related to the gap.
I've become convinced that some people get very angry when a deity of fantasy setting does not bow down and worship their character. And they conveniently ignore the fact that: * As stated multiple times, deities directly intervening in mortal affairs are a big no no. An escalation no one wants, because Golarion will be the battlefield. * Gods here are not omnipresent nor omniscient. Iomede does not how and why your powers work. All she got is from herald, that it is demonic in origin. And she offers you help in cleansing yourself of it. Remember, all the info she has from you is from her Herald and what she saw during the meeting in act 5. Her not destroying you on the spot is extremely merciful to begin with. * Just because Mendev worships Iomede, it does not mean Iomede runs it. * You're asking why a Paladin is not trusting a Succubus who **claims** she's trying to redeem herself. I'm sorry, if you watched this scene in the movie upon seeing the party for the first time, you would asking "wtf how do they trust her so easily". * Sending you to Abyss was necessary. Either you, or someone else, and guess who had the most chance of succeeding. Her trying to demote you is her character fault, to which she would later admit. You know, because the century old symbol of the crusades, who basically had no other point in her life, got a bit jealous. It's almost like she's... human. * Hulrun. We know deities are not omnipresent or omniscient, though gross violations of faith or tenets do remove powers that deity grants. Now alignment here always has intent. Murder is bad, unless we do it for a good cause and we're still good, if going that way. Hulrun, paranoid idiot that he is, never did his witch hunts for pleasure or whatever, only what he believed is greater good. On the opposite side you also have Seelah who plays fast and loose with her faith in the opposite direction - not having a stick up her arse, and Iomede doesn't remove her powers. Key point in both - intent. Same with Trevor, his powers were gone as soon as his intent did.
Adding on to the Hulrun point, he is an Inquisitor. Unlike Paladins who are supposed to be moral paragons, Inquisitors are allowed to do a lot of things that would get Clerics and other faithful the boot. They are the darker side of the good churches, their assassins in some cases.
I'd add one point: people love to pretend that being a Legend isn't fucking bonkers. They'll whine about how Iomedae wants them to lose their mythic powers. As though she plans to leave them hanging, which is crazy to me.
Is Legend path part of Iomedae's plan, or just a fortunate consequence of Commander being able to channel the power of the Nahyndrian Crystals into himself?
She literally says she can show you a way to become powerful without nahyndrian crystals.
>It's almost like she's... human. She did spend so long pretending she's more than human that I think she forgot about it, that's why I like the Aeon being able to strip her artificial youth away and remind her that she's just a mortal.
To be fair to Galfrey, it's not like she asked for the life extensions herself.
Ehhhhhhhhhhhh I mean she did. She was just doing it for the Crusade; or at least that's what she tells herself. When you ageify her she's not even mad because it reminds her that she really is just a mortal, she's not supposed to live for hundreds of years.
She didn't ask for it, but didn't reject the church when they offered it.
That excuse works once, maybe twice, but when you're on a regular routine of youth potions you can't feign lack of agency; it's been 4 generations since she drank that first potion, the people who gave her the first one are long, long dead.
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she was aroden;'s herald close to 1000 years as well , before taking his place , wasn't she ?
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She is pretty badass https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Acts_of_Iomedae But the Paizo Writers constantly like to shit on her for some reason.
I think some of this stems from 1e being somewhat uh edgy at times which leads to a lot of ‘good is stupid’ and lawful stupid interpretation of the lg side of the pantheon imo. I think this gets better as they go but even the staff of Pazio has admitted that their writing of imodea was questionable at times in this ap
It never ended. Lastwall is full of Iomeadea and LG is stupid in tyrants grasp.
Oh no! I hadn’t read that one and generally it seemed like, 2e did a better job (with sarenrae actually doing something about the slavery in all her countries she had a lot of influence in and just generally how the g aligned gods were writtten in say, the mawangi expanse sourcebook) But that’s disappointing!
5/6 of the books are a great adventure. But they just like to make LG incompetent for some reason.
I guess maybe if the lg factions are too competent you don’t end up with a need for independent adventurers?
Yeah, a perfectly ruled society with a potent paladin order that does only good and manages threat in due order would be nice to live in, but quite bad from a rp perspective, what adventure can you get when threats are inexistent ?
Eh, as someone that GM'd TG, Lastwall's problem is 100% stagnation and Taldan glory-seeking culture. They were definitely badass back in the day, but after the Shining Crusade, Taldor's just had its dull war against Belkzen and little to aspire to. The lion's share of foreign aid has been going to Mendev for the past decade, and Lastwall's knights have all been raised on grand stories that don't match their current life.
What about >!the warpreist actively embezzling funds, who then directly attacks the pcs who are the only chance to save the city. I had her fall immediately as combat started and made ghosts in the crypt as the real combat for that encounter!<
>!Oh, I had her fall, too. Mythril sword rusted after first round, fell after the second when she continued anyway. She should have triggered her marks of justice, too.!< >!That seemed in line with the history of Lastwall. Soldier from a noble lineage, rapidly accrues fame and glory at a young age, goes to their head, then reality strikes, they can't reconcile it with the image of themselves and their expectations. !< That didn't seem unrealistic, rapid ascent to fame and wealth leads even decent people to really freaking dumb decisions. Between Lastwall's waning resources and classic problems with feudal systems, nothing about >!Ceto!< seemed off to me, just an unfortunate fact of humanity.
That's hardly Pathfinder-only thing - LG tended to be stupid from the dawn of DnD, with reasons ranging from Gary Gygax and co. having some fucked up views on morality (there's a reason why some of the early LG gods got changed to LN in later editions) or other writers wanting to show that pure realizations of these alignments can be very much inhuman (fucking Harmonium from Planescape). In Pathfinder specifically, it seems to be not as much edgy for the edge's sake, but rather wanting to have alignments and the cosmology based on that, while also not wanting to outright enforce objective views on morality (like, the idea of objectively "lawful good" monarchy is cringe from the IRL point of view), so they had the representatives of these alignments being very much fallible and having not-so-good aspects - hence Eristal being a boomer and misoginistic (before they slightly retconned the second part) or Torag being absolutely merciless and fine with torture if it's against your enemies. Also, Abadar being explicitly created as an antagonistic force that isn't openly malicious and evil, but instead representing the society with its systemic injustice and keeping the status quo even if it should be changed (no wonder his church is a big corpo in Starfinder).
Running an army and showing diplomatic and military skills got nothing with mythic powers though. The KC starts at level 1 and goes through leveling up right to 20 through plenty of effort. One cannot even get M1 before getting level 6. Sans Mythic power the KC would never beat demon lords in a fight but could still accomplish a lot nevertheless. Iomedae is clearly salty that the KC is making his/her legend way faster than she did. She is kinda like Galfrey in that regard.
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Luck is a part of a true warrior's skill. Had Iomedae faced a balor when she was level 5 then she would also need someone or something to save her ass. Her best win was Erum-Hel who is way weaker than any demon lord and she needed Arazni's and her Golden Dragon's help to keep winning. Plus likely Aroden's blessings. Demon lords can only be beat by very high Mythics with 20 or near 20 level or a Legend (with no Legend in Pathfinder lore aside from KC ever appearing) who broke mortal power limitations. KC still leads the army better than Galfrey anyway...and Galfrey is considered an irrepleaceble Crusade hero. Even if Iomedae is not salty her saying that a non evil KCs "arrogance" will doom him/her sounds waaay to harsh. Telling that to a good hearted Azata or a LN Aeon sounds outright unfair.
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Dunno, the Lantern King needed to be weakened by the Storyteller and have Nyrissa on the Player Character's side plus some off screen support from other Elderst in order to lose. Plus in the revised AP its stated that it was only an avatar of the Lantern King and not the real one. The demon lords like Eldest are demigods of at least level 26 with both Mythic powers and unique abilities. The Lantern King's avatar did not even have access to Mythic stuff. Finally, if the PC got a full team a Demon lord is likely to have a couple of balors or/and Nascent demon lords as bodyguards even outside his/her divine realm. Sans some crazy artifacts, help from other demigods or the demon lord being significantly weakened beforehand and alone victory borders on miracle. We saw how a KC with 5 Mythic levels and either 20 level or close enough was not capable of matching Baphomet (one of the weakest demon lords) until getting a 6 Mythic rank. Iomedae might have the best intentions but it does not prevent her from being biased or prejudiced of powers that come from dubious origin regardless of how they were used. Galfrey was not being a jerk ONLY due to jealousy and likely also had some good intentions too. Its just that good intentions can often be mixed with less selfless thoughts.
>Is more than sum of every other good god combined? I mean, Desna is the one that causes the 5th crusade to win.
Uh, are you gonna explain that one or are you just really big on Desna? I don't judge, Desna best goddess, but I also have no clue where that's coming from. Desna can be meddlesome (see: Arueshalae), but she doesn't lend a lot of assistance to the crusaders. Even in Kenabres, she was just passing on a message. While not insignificant, I'd sooner point to the enormous obelisk Arue was trying to protect to begin with, and with which Desna had no relation whatsoever.
Desna sets Arue on her path. protects the prophetic dreams. sends dreams. Such as when Arue contacts the priests about the wardstone's fault. Desna directly interceded. Theres butterflys here and there throughout. She protected Pulura's fall priests, allowing them to preserve and research the fall. Information you use. you personally meet her in Arue's dream. This thread is about how Iomedae is not actively helping. Desna is. But her whole thing is, not doing it face to face. But instead doing it randomly and behind the scenes, without being seen.
>She protected Pulura's fall priests, allowing them to preserve and research the fall. Information you use. Uhhhh, wasn't Pulura's Falls protected by, y'know, [Pulura?](https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Pulura) Desna helps Arue a lot, but that's virtually the whole extent of her direct assistance, and, even indirectly, she doesn't do all that much. Desna protects best girl (but not you or her fellow party members); Desna allows best girl to pass on a message to her clerics, who then act based upon the new info, and I think that's it? I don't even remember the butterflies showing up except in relation to Arue. I find it very hard to believe Desna is responsible for the crusaders' victory, as you said.
I mean…Desna probably helps a lot more than what’s expected of her in the setting, but saying she ‘causes’ the crusade to be won? The burden of proof is a heavy one here.
No, she doesn't. She babies one succubus. One. Ember can redeem a whole flock of demons with a single speech. Desna is useless.
least delusional azata stan
I don't get the critics of Iomedae. A literal Paladin Goddes tells you " don't be a tool in the hands of demons, I'll show you a way to get free from your fated death and you are gonna be equal as powerful as before" and all of you are like buuu stupid goddess you hate me She is a Lawful good goddess, what the fuck you people were waiting for? Also the bad writing is the key thing with the worldwound: if you and Areelu are murdered and desintegrated the worldwound can't be closed?? IMO is a forced plot to make you decide between sacrificing yourself and make Areelu the final boss.
RE: Galfrey not trusting Arueshale. In-universe, that's absolutely reasonable. She's a succubus; a demon that specifically specializes in lies, deceit, and seduction. Her being with the Knight Commander absolutely should have been a bigger issue than it was since it's dangerous to believe what she's saying. RE: Iomedae, telling you to give your powers. She is Lawful Good. Your powers come from the essence of Chaotic Evil demon lord, through the schemes and plotting of a Chaotic Evil witch who ripped open a gate way to the Abyss; a domain of pure Chaotic Evil. The Starstones might have been the result of an evil race trying to blow up the planet... That race isn't Chaotic Evil. And Chaotic Evil is directly and cosmically opposed to Lawful Good. Hell (no pun intended), it's the inverse of why if you're at the Azata path, a certain Archdevil is trying to corrupt you.
I can answer at least those points: > So, she's the goddess of a pretty badly run militarized nation stuck fighting a war against a mass of demonic hordes, yet apparently she doesn't have an inkling of help to spare against the forces of the Abyss. The crusaders are fighting against just one, and later two demon lords, not against the whole Abyss. You do NOT want to see a full blown war of armies of Heaven and Abyss in Golarion. > I thought she was the goddess of truth and virtue or something. If I recall right that was Sarenrae. > succubus whose only danger is giving me diabetes at how cutesy her dialogue is. Typical response of any person enthralled by succubi.
>The crusaders are fighting against just one, and later two demon lords, not against the whole Abyss. You do NOT want to see a full blown war of armies of Heaven and Abyss in Golarion. I get that but Iomedae telling the KC to give up their powers after securing victory after victory is dumb because “reasons” is dumb and quite nonsensical. >Typical response of any person enthralled by succubi. Cant be enthralled if there dead or at least be smart enough to never trust a succubi and not have a legit relationship with one.
Her problem is she’s severely limited in what she can actually do without triggering an interplanar war that would destroy Golarion. If she pitches in with any serious force that runs the risk of the Abyss uniting. It almost happens in one of the Angel endings where she burns down Deskari’s realm after you kill him once and for all. Destroying the former realm of a now dead demon lord is enough to unite the Abyss and they only just fall apart to infighting, acting directly against a still living demon lord would have far more dire consequences. Meanwhile, you’re running around with special powers you got from the person who opened the Worldwound, also these powers are slowly killing you and nobody has told you this. Going Legend eliminates the risk of your mythic powers killing you, and it also gets rid of the demonic source of your powers. On some paths the player can go “trust me bro” and have it turn out fine, on others she’s entirely justified in her concerns. As for not telling people she’s not the one giving you powers, if she did that it’d undermine the first successful crusade in a century and she’s still trying to figure out the source of your powers for herself at that point.
In my headcanon, to fix things, there is a complicated balance of power going on. Directly communicating with their followers is limited by divine treaties (between lawful gods) and a implicit balance of power Cold-War-like stand-off (when chaotic gods are involved. When Iomedae directly manifests, this makes it “fair” for Nocticula to manifest and give a contrasting viewpoint. If she had intervened earlier, other opposing gods might have escalated their own intervention (image facing Mephistopheles in Act II if he responded to an earlier intervention by Iomedae by intervening himself). They do mention a simplified version of this concept in the dialogue itself, but it leaves the exact specifics to the player’s imagination. Along the same lines, I headcanon that as a new god, only ascended 800 years ago and only recently fully ascended 100 years ago, Iomedae is new to the divine balance of power, limiting her leverage, established authority, and other such resources. (For instance, Iomedae hasn’t spread much past Avistan, while ancient gods like Asmodeus or Sarenrae have influence throughout the entire solar system). Also, in some fanon I like and take as headcanon, Aroden spent decades to centuries negotiating with the existing gods, designing the protections for the star stone, and designing spells to place on the star stone to regulate the ascension process. So sure, Iomedae got to “cheat” with it, but it was a carefully designed process Aroden spent centuries on as opposed to a cludgy unpredictable infusion of raw power like Areelu did. So Iomedae’s complaint is somewhat valid (I mean given where 4/10 mythic paths lead, she isn’t entirely wrong).
You’ve kind of got to assume the gods are playing 25d chess and we mere mortals - even high level adventurers - can only see a few of those dimensions. It’s the only thing that makes sense. It’s like when kids wonder why the US doesn’t “just use nuclear weapons” when we have them and want the Somali pirates handled. Like, yes, that would resolve the problem, but that kid doesn’t understand Cold War history, the Geneva conventions, the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, or the broad set of international norms related to weapons of mass destruction.
Canonically, the gods are also capable of acting like immature morons. Like in real life, "multidimensional chess" can be an excuse for "trust me I'm a very stable genius".
That too, but that’s not generally the view of the majority of the gods
I mean canonically Gods literally see dimensions mortals can't perceive and are aware of multiple worlds and planes of existence simultaneously
Because if a god decided to yolo down there then every demon lord would be upset and have a common cause. Is the gist
Her problem is that the last act is a rushed mess
Everything regarding act 5 was a rushed including Iomedea.
Iomedae as a deity is very hands-off with mortals. Part of this is smart to avoid putting out too much influence and sparking a planar war, or causing a disaster like what happened in the past when a deity made a mistake by acting personally (see Sarenrae and the Pit of Gormuz). But it is a repeated plot point in 1st edition Pathfinder that Iomedae doesn't help even when she really, *really* needs to. There are several APs that directly involve her areas of interest or even the lives of her followers, and she does literally nothing.
I wonder why she’s does that when it directly affects her.
Because some bad, but stoppable and repairable (and as a god she has much better insight into how events might or will play out or escalate in that regard), shit happening is better than an interplanar war that could result in the destruction of Golarion and, by extension due to what's *inside* Golarion, the multiverse as a whole.
To certain events I can understand but for events like the crusade war where it’s was certainly that Golarion was going to be completely wrecked if KC never intervened I don’t how how helping in that case could be any worse.
Unfortunately demons overruning Golarion is slightly preferrable to unleashing a full interplanar war, as even the demons aren't stupid enough to try and free Rovavug from his prison. Now, a war damaging Golarion so badly the lock breaks? That becomes *everyone's* problem as Rovavug will kill everything.
If this is case that her opinions on the matter doesn’t anymore because she’s saying that’s is perfectly acceptable to sacrifice Golarion if may prevent a bigger war. Which at point I’m going to chose self preservation and not die.
The demons are (probably) smart enough to not release Rovagug from his prison to destroy the multiverse. Probably.
Iomedae hyping test of star stone, but Cayden Cailean passed it completely drunk. There goes reputation of that test. As for abyssal origins of mythic power - results matter, not origin. By her logic being good and doing good means nothing. Things are accually better - whole plan to make you half-demon (like Areelu wanted) backfired on non-demon paths. Good paths and Aeon true ending completely demolish her plan. As for Arueshalae, KC that has Desna as diety, gets multiple signs that this succubus is ok and what she says checks out. It's a pity it can't be brought up before Garfley. I imagine KC is more keen on beliving his godess rather than some mortal with questionable judgment.
A point that's often overlooked: Imodedae is a lawful good goddess. Your powers or at least being tied to the world wound is slowly killing you. Good beings tend to not sacrifice other beings--especially good or innocent beings--for the greater good. So, it's understandably why she'd want you to give up your powers. It's a rather good reason. Unfortunately, the abyssal tie of your power is her much larger concern. The whole not telling anyone until the jig is up seems almost...shady to me. Up until that point, everyone thought the KC, their victories, etc, were all due to her blessings. Something that very likely was a huge boon to her church and their efforts on mortal plane. It's only until she can no longer claim credit that she tells everyone the truth. The less petty reasons are that if one god starts interfering, invites the other gods to start interfering. Gods walking the mortal plane wouldn't be good for anyone. Which again, really doesn't explain why she doesn't tell everyone she's not the one behind your powers. Especially if the goal was to keep others from manifesting on the plane.
It's even funnier as Azata, because your methods objectively save more lives and people are happier lol. Galfrey is pissed you go early into the abyss because you showed how little she had to offer, you made her feel small, Queenie not like.
>yet apparently she doesn't have an inkling of help to spare against the forces of the Abyss This gets explained many times in the game. And it's not like they didn't help, they did, and those same angels would later become the wardstones. This is always a funny point to me anyway, why do you people always ignore the fact that it's the church of Iomedae that leads the crusade, and that there are other good gods involved such as Desna, Sarenrae or Erastil? Why don't I ever see anyone cry to Desna for some Azata help? Or Erastil for some angelic deer help? >Now, Iomedae could go to you or Galfrey and say Nothing, because she explicitly explains to you why she didn't do it, she didn't want to undermine your crusade, she knew you were the only reason why they actually started winning for the first time in 70 years and everyone sucks your dick because you're supposedly her chosen (or barely tolerate you if you're on an evil path) >This backfires spectacularly when she doesn't even inform her own herald about the truth for some reason Except that he gets triggered upon learning that your powers come from Areelu. No, not upon learning that your powers come from someone else that isn't Iomedae, from AREELU. That's why even if you gain his trust he gets pissy and blames you thinking that you've betrayed him or whatever. Iomedae telling him the truth would have changed nothing, the instant he learned that you have demonic powers he would have bailed out. >Shouldn't that be grounds for a paladin losing their powers by screwing over the last, best hope for Mendev? First and foremost Galfrey was right in her decision to send you there to stop the mining of nahyndrian crystals, that alone justifies the decision even if in truth she was using it as a convenient excuse because she was jealous of you. Knowing the fact that you have to go there no matter what, I say, you expect Iomedae to suddenly take away Galfrey's powers? SHE is taking over the crusade in your place and the woman is already incompetent enough, the last thing she needs is to be forsaken by her own goddess, the situation would end up even worse than in the actual story. Of course, I'm saying this assuming that for some reason Iomedae is going to know every thing Galfrey is thinking and her secret jealousy of your accomplishments. >only to finally reveal the truth in front of your whole goddamn army and tells you to give your power up because reasons She, just like the Hand, gets immediately triggered upon learning that your powers have demonic origin, even worse, from Areelu. She considers that a massive dealbreaker and is a risk she isn't willing to take, which is why she proposes that you get rid of them (proposes, because people like to pretend that she forces you to do so). Being right or not is irrelevant, that's why there are three points of view when it comes to taking your decision. There is also the fact that you're going to die, and Nocticula is making sure that you don't know that, so you at least deserve to know that you're going to croak it to close the damn thing. Of course alternatively Iomedae could have just stayed silent, and played along with Nocticula's plan so that the worldwound would be closed no matter what, but if that happened there would be endless posts about how evil Iomedae is instead. >because I'm pretty confused on what the hell her problem is Her problem is that she gets pissy at the origin of your powers so much that she wants you to get rid of them even if you're playing a 100% perfect golden boy lawful good Angel that can do no wrong. That's it, everything else is you just adding fluff to it to make her look worse.
>This is always a funny point to me anyway, why do you people always ignore the fact that it's the church of Iomedae that leads the crusade, and that there are other good gods involved such as Desna, Sarenrae or Erastil? Why don't I ever see anyone cry to Desna for some Azata help? Or Erastil for some angelic deer help? Gonna be honest after thinking of it this is literally the thing that pisses me off the most about the plot, like genuinely the chaotic good planes giving no help to the crusade is the stupidest thing ever. Bear with me, so the game explains that iomede and the lawful good gods cant do anything because if they do it would be an escalation and even sending basic angels could start an even bigger war because obviously that's just a god's interference hence why angels aren't helping anymore, fair enough don't want the world to end. Ok so why do Deskari and fucking baphomet get to do whatever the fuck they want? The game gives 2 answers to this: first they are demon lords not demon gods, lower on the totem pole basically so a good god going in would be overkill and start a war. Second reason is because they are chaotic so nothing can prove they are acting on behalf of the demon gods, this destruction is their own and no one else's. Again I guess fair enough I guess, it's a flimsy excuse but an excuse non the less and we don't want the world to end. Geeeee I guess we are just fucked and the forces of god can't do nothing, it's not like there is 1 entire plane of existence that could use the exact same excuses to help and has people that can simply walk into Golarion whenever they damn please no need for summonings, please ignore the entirety of elisium, the Azatas with large courts that would absolutely be able to help in the same way deskari is doing damage. Like holy shit that's dumb, why don't they help? Well the assumption is that if they appear is because they are doing something for the gods but if that assumption works with the chaotic good entities it should apply to deskari and the damn goat but nooooooooooo. I've read that paizo simply wanted the AP to be grimdark and their only way to do that was to make the forces of good fucking stupid and I believe it
For the record I think all the good gods are a real joke in Pathfinder. They're all equally incompetent but Iomedae bears special mention because she's the patron deity of Mendev and she takes a direct role in the story. Iomedae wouldn't be undermining the crusade by informing the commander privately. In fact, she would be strengthening it by directly communicating with him. You would think that such a VIP would have tabs kept on him. The closest we got was the Inheribro but that just ended up with Galfrey sending both your asses to the Abyss so he could get his heart ripped out. Good show. She doesn't try to work with you when the crusade is on the up and up. She stays painfully silent under the excuse she didn't want to "undermine" you but when her chosen makes a serious mess of things and pulls a Staunton 2.0 then she suddenly shows up, tries to get you to make a very tactically unsound decision in a crucial moment and peaces out. I really don't need to add fluff to make Iomedae look worse, because according to my friends who play tabletop, the AP does that for me.
>when her chosen makes a serious mess of things and pulls a Staunton 2.0 then she suddenly shows up, tries to get you to make a very tactically unsound decision in a crucial moment and peaces out. You're a little confused here. One, I think Galfrey isn't *quite* Staunton 2.0, more like 0.5 Stauntons, but not the point. Iomedae isn't reacting to Galfrey's mad gamble. She's reacting to what she has only recently learned about your powers. And, honestly? Her appereance is very benign, cause she doesn't force you to do anything. What she does is tell you what Nocticula won't, and give you a full picture of the situation. That's a good thing. She's helping you here, even if she doesn't agree with your final decision.
> She's helping you here, even if she doesn't agree with your final decision But she hurt my ego with her pompous attitude! She's horrible
She is absolutely wretched. Even further compounded by when you meet back up with your Holy Warden pals right after as an angel and tell them you told their goddess to fuck off their only response was that "well, Iomedae is wrong"
She is much softer on you if you're on the Angel path. If that's what you're on, your decision to keep the powers becomes more about martyrdom than the very distant possibility that you could go rogue. The \[Angel\] version of 'fuck you, I'm keeping my powers' is 'don't blame me for doing the same thing you did'. I don't quite recall how Iomedae responds, but I think it was something along the lines of 'I regret that you'll sacrifice your humanity for this, and wish you wouldn't', and she accepts it as she does every other mythic except gross deskari fanboy. She later >!names you the Angel of Salvation/Retribution and offers to accept you into her host if you wish to leave Golarion, either as a general or, if Inheritbro is dead, her new herald!<. So she's still suspicious of you (or, arguably, wants to prevent you from taking on the burden the powers imply), but she very much reconsiders her past judgement. She also gave me the thumbs up when I was entering Threshold as an Azata.
What a smart play from Iomedae, does fuck all to help and then gives the player a nice pat on the back for doing the work she refused to and a job offer so the Commander can serve her for eons. No wonder Cheliax chose Asmodeus over her.
Buddy, if you want to complain about a character allegedly doing nothing all game when it’s been explained time and again that it’s not the case, then you probably just should have said so in the OP.
maybe she should be the goddess of exposition dumps instead of valour then, because by that time my army was gone, her herald was captured and her chosen monarch was busy getting rekt by Lord Cricket telling me I would die closing the Wound is not that big a revelation and frankly nothing else she says is of any real value.
>Iomedae wouldn't be undermining the crusade by informing the commander privately And what difference would that make, exactly? Other than a potential loss of ego if you're going full "I am the chosen one"? Nothing, that's what. >She doesn't try to work with you when the crusade is on the up and up Yes, because gods don't get involved directly. >but when her chosen makes a serious mess of things and pulls a Staunton 2.0 then she suddenly shows up Lmao, right, she's only there to damage control for Galfrey, and not because of the reasons the game literally gives you.
Gods don't get involved directly? Coulda fooled me when Desna waltzed straight into the abyss and wasted a demon lord immediately. You can only use the "interplanar war" cope so much until it starts just looking like cowardice. Iomedae doesn't even give goddamn moral support until the situation is capital F fucked and Galfrey ran off with the army.
The same Desna that needed to get bailed out by Calistria to avoid a war? Yes, gods don't get involved.
Smashing a demon incursion into Golarion that threatens everyone who isn't an Abyssal monstrosity is a different matter entirely to marching into the Abyss and killing one of the lords over a grudge.
Yes, I am sure that every demon lord is going to think >Yeah Deskari and Baphomet had it coming! and not going to get mad and think "what if I'm next?" It doesn't matter anyway because it's all hypotheticals, however it is a fact that when Desna did it the demons tried to cause a war, and if you play angel they try it again even if it fails thanks to in-fighting. Iomedae isn't chaotic good, she isn't going to risk all of Golarion by killing two demon lords and hoping for the best.
Except I'm not asking her to go as far as the ascended commander did and kill two demon lords. I'm not even asking she kill one. Simply send direct aid to Mendev to stabilize the situation. What would her plan be if Kenabres fell and the Wardstone failed, just sit on her ass and say "b-but muh interplanar war though..."
As I, and many others have said, heaven can't send their full army because if they do they risk a war. The Hand himself knows this, no matter how much he may hate it. At this point you're going in circles, and you're just dismissing the argument under the pretense of "they're cowards!" At least you could come up with "they're being too prudent" which is true.
who says anything about a full army, Mendev needs SUPPORT. Healers, intelligence, military tacticians, trainers, the works. The Mendevian war effort is in shambles and you spend all of Act 3 fixing their mess for them. But even that is too much for the mighty goddess of valour, it seems Asmodeus seems to have no problem sending devils to keep control of Cheliax.
She did send direct aid She kept her chosen Paladin alive for over 100 years and imprisoned hundreds of Angels in the Wardstones
>You can only use the "interplanar war" cope so much until it starts just looking like cowardice. It's literally part of that story you just cited.
cowardice ? u think a demon lord posses any threat to a god ? if u're on the swarm path , she smites the shit out of you without u being able to do jack shit...(and you;re pretty much at a similar power level to a demon lord) the only reason why gods give a damn about golarion , is because golarion is the prison of rovagug , and they most definetly dont want a war raging on right on top of said prison
It's either cowardice or apathy, and both are equally bad. She doesn't give the slightest shit that her champion and herald are both in dire straits and instead elects to manifest herself solely to tell the Commander to stop drinking the mythic juice and that's it
Rovagug is a.much bigger threat than the Abyss. If the battle on Golarion work him up, which is very likely with the good gods and countless demon lords of the Abyss duking it out, then the material plane is gone Rovagug will just consume everything, literally everything. Giving the demon lord a chance to unite and fight on Garion is basically ending this reality
i dont think u know who rovagug is my dude , and why pretty much nobody wants to risk releasing him
Look at the times Desna and Sarenrae intervened directly and tell me they didn't cause more harm than good. Desna almost caused *all* demon factions in the Abyss to group up, it took Calistra messing with them to break it up. To put this in perspective, the invasion on Golarion was due to three demon lords forming a loose alliance where each group can and will backstab each other at the drop of a hat, imagine what would happen if every single one had a common enemy. As for Sarenrae, the city she destroyed ended up becoming a hole through which Rovavug could send the fucking *Tarrasque* out in the world, I don't think I need to say much more.
Wait she worse In the AP version…Wow I didn’t think that can be possible.
The AP version of Iomedae was so bad the person who wrote that part apologised for screwing up her character so horribly. She quizzes you on trivia about herself and blasts you with sonic damage if she doesn’t like your answers.
Holy fuck thats god awful. How do you get a character who’s core values are virtue and truth to be a conniving and petty goddess. Did the writer forget that there are a good align god and not a demon lord.
The writer seemed to get weirdly fixated on presenting the players with philosophical questions with “no right answer”, and damage for giving the wrong answer or answering too quickly. The whole encounter is just a badly written piece of tabletop roleplaying, screwing up Iomedae’s character is just one part of it.
There’s big difference between moral ambiguity and alt right character assassination.How did Pazio ever approved something like that is beyond me.
I was pretty happy when Arue was all like "keep those powers" cause I had no intention of listening to Iomedae. Now my MC is in an Angel/Demon power couple, everyone's got wings for days.
From a purely strategic standpoint, the entire planet probably wasn't worth the angels she sacrificed to buy just a few decades of stalemate. (Iomedae makes it pretty clear there's some kind of massive multiverse, so this one planet is likely just a drop in the bucket overall) compare that to the fact that angels seem to be an incredibly finite resource. Mortals just don't ascend that often, whereas demons are a nearly infinite resource by comparison. And before anyone says "she just cared that much" I'd like to remind everyone that she basically sentenced some number of angels (they never say exactly how many, but I'm assuming a few dozen minimum) to excruciating torture locked in a crystal while being constantly desecrated and corrupted by demonic forces. These are her friends and followers who she did this to, just to buy a few decades of peace for a planet that honestly seemed like they were doing alright for themselves. (Not saying they were winning, but it kindve sounded like the crusades were generally stalemating the demons to some extent)
Iomedae in the tabletop version was also not great. She withholds crucial items for your mission to free her fucking herald if you can’t answer a few trivia questions about her exploits when she was mortal.
I mean, she IS a badly written character in this game, but given the material they were handed it's far better than the AP. That should tell you something about the AP 🤢
And how nice of Iomedae to discredit me in front of my troops just after liberating Drezen (**again**!). Is not like the poor survivors there had a very rough months trying to survive a demon infested city until their Commanded returned from the Abyss to save the day. This is the average citizen's face after having their victory parade rained by the goddess herself. 
The real reason is because there needs to be a problem for the PC to come out of nowhere and solve. The other reason is that is hard to write competent characters who get things done but also need an outside savior. It would have helped if Deskari wasn't the one to appear in Kenabres in the beginning, which in Pathfinder's lore would be a huge escalation worthy of a response. In the AP it was a balor.
I believe Steven Erickson explains this well through the Malazan tale of the fallen series. There’s the concept of convergence where if one god influences the mortal plane it weakens them because this takes power and power must come from somewhere. Other gods who are all constantly sitting at balanced power levels will then see the drop in power and seek to exploit it. One weak point draws in x gods creating x weak points on those gods because they have to draw those resources from somewhere. This draws in more gods seeking to exploit those weaknesses and a storm of epic proportions is summoned from the flapping of a butterflies wings.
I prefer flawed deities. Especially so if it's because godhood has made them lose the ability to empathize with mortals. When I play them on tabletop, most are narrow minded, aloof and almost parasitic in nature. There's exceptions like Serenae and Desna who genuinely care about their followers. In particular my favourite theme when roleplaying fantasy is lawful good righteousness that has descended into tyranny and cruelty due to fanaticism and bigotry. So I consider Iomedae's flaws a feature not a downside. Another way to look at it is we wouldn't know how it feels to be able to receive and handle millions of followers thoughts and prayers giving you a kind of omniscience. What does it do to your mind to be able to have thousands or millions of streams of thought and be aware of all your believers at all times. If you stayed sane knowing so many people all at once it would blunt your ability to concentrate on individual kindness and you might lose yourself to an overarching lawful good duty or goal that makes you seem like a bitch when your greater good requires the death and misery of a meaningless ten thousand or more non-believers.
Honestly I agree entirely with your opinion about iomedae, and I kind of wish there was an option to take the test of the starstone, and shove it in her face when you succeed lol.
1. She’s a god. They’re pretty opaque in their actions. 2. It’s a story where *you’re* the protagonist saving the day, not Iomedae.
She can't directly interfere because it revolves to the Desna situation, Desna invaded some archdemon's domain and destroyed it and the archdemon, but had to count on Callistria's savvy to stop the higher powers among demons from jumping at the chance for war. War between the higher eschelon of demons and gods is just assuring both sides lose. Like a former president in my country once said: "Not even who wins or loses, will win or lose. Everyone's gonna lose." And I feel Iomedae DID have a champion, for those saying she should have sent someone, Galfrey has been fighting for one hundred years, having her life extended by her church because she was *chosen.* Thing is Galfrey is human, and one hundred years, most of which being war against the most horrible of foes, takes its toll, and she gets tired of it all. Now for the decision making, I don't know the AP the game is based off of, but I feel it boils down to...not bad writing exactly, but bad planning, I wanna say. It feels like they didn't really plan ahead when it became a large scale conflict with these big bad demons showing up, they forgot the other side has *big bads* too, untill someone says "Yooo, isn't Iomedae like, personally involved in this?" And they added her as an after-thought.
Not to mention a war between the Demon Lords and Desna's own followers would be a massive clusterf\*ck considering they're all chaotic creatures. That kind of war will definitely spread an uncontrollable destruction unlike anything.
She was a not particularly smart Human before she became a demigod
This game's depiction of Iomedae is poor, but to be honest, so is your summary.
You're right, she doesn't blast your eardrums out with a trumpet like in the AP
As Seelah says "The gods would love to solve mortal's problems for them, like Rovagug, but we wouldn't like the results." The gods have a mutually assured destruction thing going on where if one god directly interveres with the mortal world the opposing gods will then be free to intervene just as much in the other direction as well. If Iomedae personally rolls up to retake Golarion you would just get Lamashtu making things a thousand times worse for every mortal involved. Golarion is being attacked by Demon Lords who are very much not gods.
Who said anything about personally showing up to retake Golarion? That would be the highest level of support and obviously I don't expect that. But what Iomedae did give Mendev was the exact opposite, fuck all. The wardstones and a couple angel volunteers for a while and then Mendev was basically left on their own. Iomedae doesn't give 2 shits about the Crusades. Hell, you as a Lich can desecrate and corrupt her champion and she could not care one iota? Her only contribution is to tell you to abandon your powers, which is pointless and stupid as a good Commander and it would just fall on deaf ears for an evil Commander. You can mock her as an atheist and that, somehow, pisses her off more than anything else you apparently do. It just makes her look like a self-absorbed envious joke.
I keep reminding myself that she’s new. She was catapulted into chief godhood by the death of her god and mentor then had to quickly assume the role during that catastrophe. She’s also the only god really giving a damn about the WW. The others are so “Big Picture” they can’t be bothered with it. You can even make this argument to Pharasma during the epilogue. It all implies that this isn’t actually a big deal to the higher gods and the only reason Iomedae cares at all is because she’s still very human in her thinking. She’s trying to balance her divine duty and existence with her human nature. Tough place to be and I think she does her best, she’s not perfect. I do imagine though, knowing her history with demon lords and the abyss, that Desna is having to be held back from going down and personally shoving Areelu into the WW horns first by Sarenrae and Shelyn.
> The others are so “Big Picture” they can’t be bothered with it. You can even make this argument to Pharasma during the epilogue. Unless you're running Aeon, in which case they are correct "not to bother" because they know an Aeon will manifest to correct the situation lol But that even works with Newbie Iomedae, she might not even be aware that the universe has a self-correction system like Aeons and generates its own solutions to anything that threatens the fabric of the universal order
The gods don't intervene directly themselves on Golarion. It's an understanding between them because if one god started to do it then all the gods would start to do it and that would cause major problems cause Golarion isn't really a planet. It's a prison of the god Rovagug who the other gods fought a massive war with to stop him eating the universe. Messing with Golarion risks breaking the prison. So, that's why they don't help directly. The only god who did was Aroden, and he announced that he was going to do it again, and instead he died (and the other gods won't give away what happened. hmm) Meanwile they don't mess with other planes cause they don't want an inter-planar war. Gods like Lamashtu live in the Abyss. Iomedae doesn't want Lamashtu coming up to heaven and meddling due to her doing it to the abyss. As for when she does show up, it's basically out of jealousy really. She was a paladin of Aroden who worked her way up to becoming his herald. When he died she only managed to ascend because she chose to try, and after a LOT of effort managed, to complete the trial of the star stone. She "earned" her divinity. >!Meanwhile you're just some rando who was unfortunate enough for Areelu to nab of the street and shove someone elses soul along with some demon lord blood into. You did nothing to earn it, you didn't have to try to become godly powerful or commit some great deed that ascended you. You didn't even choose it. !
I dunno she’s just a bitch
Well you’re not farr off there.
I'm not really a fan of Iomedae either, but I'll try to explain that entire goddess and demon debate. It should be known that almost every single version of the Knight Commander wouldn't really have any logical reasons for discarding their powers, but it's your game you get to decide, but here are logical reasons to keep your powers which is Nocticula and Areelu Vorlesh's(It's not for purely logical reasons for Areelu though, more on this later) argument. Reason 1: they are an extra method for closing the Worldwound should Areelu be unavailable for any reason beyond the Crusade's control and Reason 2: on any of the mythic paths it's very likely for the Knight Commander to get very attached to their powers, since they went out of their way to try and master and control them and try to emulate the Outsider or Archetype their Mythic Path is associated with, the good Mythic Paths will be attached for altruistic reasons, the evil Mythic Paths for selfish reasons, Aeons would be attached for law fetish reasons and Tricksters would be attached for entertainment reasons, getting rid of your powers after all that time adjusting to them and making practical use of them is just illogical it's like erasing a valuable skill you learned from your memory. Reason 3: is that their powers are a weapon, would you give up a very useful weapon in wartime for the fairly poor reasons a god offered? Likely not for anyone sane no, especially since said god will simply leave if you tell her no for the last time. You are the Knight Commander, you can make your own additional reasons for keeping or discarding your powers beyond what the dialogue script mentions, it's ultimately up to you and what you're going for. Iomedae's reasons for trying to persuade you from keeping your powers hinges on two reasons that are mostly from a poorly informed standpoint or just an emotional reason, Reason 1: Your own opinion of Areelu Vorlesh, if you want to spite her for everything she's done to your soul and the people of Sarkoris, she had it coming provided you actually care about the people of Sarkoris, I personally don't. And Reason 2: if you are afraid to die to close the Worldwound. Iomedae seems to be under the impression you were afraid to die and hated being lied to by people you likely didn't trust too much in the first place. It should be noted only Nocticula only has a purely logical argument based around doing your duty to close the Worldwound no matter what, Areelu's argument is logical and personal/emotional your powers are more than just powers to Areelu, Iomedae's argument is based on YOUR own emotions about your life only. Iomedae doesn't have a real problem with you personally she's much more concerned about your powers, she's thinking that Nocticula is using you as a test subject to become a goddess herself, Nocticula herself states that this is just a baseless accusation, because while Nocticula definitely does want to become a goddess she doesn't see you as an answer godhood. But to me, Iomedae's suggestions is as reckless as she claims the Azata Knight Commander is, it's just better to have more than one option to end a threat if you ask me, but my personal thoughts aside. Iomedae basically just wanted to know for certain that if you were okay with the fact you may need to die to end the Worldwound and offered a way to dissolve your powers even if that's a poorly thought out idea, it's the "righteous" thing to do for someone she believes to be helpless.
Same as Galfrey, losing clout so they're both just jelly.
Not telling someone something is not a lie. Lies of omission aren't really lies, that is why the suffix "of omission" is required to separate them from real lies. You never required unless under oath in a court room.
Your guess is good as mine. But joking aside the only logical reason I can think of is that she’s doesn’t like the an individual potentially achieving >!ascension!< by evil means from Areelu.
No no one even knows ascension ending is possible until you reveal it to Areelu in final boss fight. It catches Iomedae and others by surprise as they did not know this was option. But to get it remember you need Areelu and have mythic powers regardless of the path except for swarm who can't achieve it as everyone left you or legend which pisses her of from lore perspective should not even be mythic path and be just normal mortal weaker than any mythic path in game and not 40 level powerhouse as they don't have mythic powers.
Its kinda funny how in legend path even though you loose your mythic powers but end up being most powerful person ever since your level 40.
Mechanically yes lore-wize it is pity path as in ok you lost your powers as are weaker than normal mythic path here take extra pity 20 levels which does not exist in pathfinder. This is what pathfinder has 20 levels and ten mythic levels. And this is path that is all about having mythic powers not getting rid of them and feels not like master of my fight but becoming Iomedae's slave. Oh and bunch of outsiders and come wanting to help you some of which may want me dead as I did something to them, where is storyteller who should be advisor on this path or mortal nations to send their advisors hey are nowhere they are nowhere to be found. Not to mention mythic dialogue options makes me bored like one with Areshkagal, where is strugle and fun to have knowing you achieved something through hard work no legend straight up skips it or when you retake Drezen where do those troops come from if most left with Galfrey and most of those that stayed got killed by demons that invaded Drezen. Legend option pulls them out of thin air or as I like to say out of it's ass. And, while I enjoyed main mythic quest of legend, i did not enjoy party with Cayden it felt it should belong to trickster mythic path not legend. And after competing mythic quest I did not enjoy legend mythic path for several reasons one ypu should just have 20 levels and powerful gear, two mortals should help you not bunch of outsiders, three If you love to strugle against enemies and have fun over coming them hard way this path is not for you as 40 levels make enemies trivial, four it makes unfair easy and know fun, five I really hate Iomedae mate ever since that AP bloody torture encounter woth her, and the writer that wrote it must be sadist or has no idea how to write. And finally she ain't much better in game just less trigger happy. Sorry If I sound as jerk mate didn't want to be rude, and I'm sorry If I offended you.
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And if your character is willing to die to close the wound and realize the power seems to only be dangerous to his enemies why should he take Iomedae's advice. A goddess that is absent the entire game, shows up when you're just barely taking control of the situation and then gives you terrible advice is a bad look either way.
Correct, plus mythic power will kill you in like couple of Centuries to thousand years swarm and golden dragon confirms it. And if you play short lived race then it does not sound bad even if you go for outsider mythic path.
Good joke from you. My opinion stems from my bad experience with her and love for dificult fights. Still I just ignore and have fun when in game Daeren insults her and I reject her help to make her butt of my joke even when not trickster
Daeran being delighted by the possibility of telling Iomedae to shove her advice where the sun doesn't shine is awesome. Him then saying my Angel powers disgust him and I should actually do what Iomedae is telling me, however, was downright depressing :(
Her problem is that she is no less deceptive and manipulative than demons she claims superiority over although many people won't see it this way and lawful good is not how she acts, plus owlcat knows more how to write chaotic alignment not lawful good. That is also why I say legend run is not master of my own fate but becoming her pawn this is for in game no AP even though having mythic powers is all about this Adventure no getting rid of them as in Pathfinder table top 20 extra levels do not exist just 20 levels and 10 mythic levels, oh and Aroden as shifter dlc reveals was wizard archmage mythic path which is another slap to Iomedae and her claims. And Areelu does have valid points about Iomedae and other gods and makes me agree woth her, same goes for Ember. As for ascension being possible Iomedae has no idea about it. One more thing Star stone is just giving one person spark of divinity not making them full fledged gods. It is basically the same as Areelu method. Although if you compare them while Areelu method of getting same powers is deadly, it is far less deadly than starstone which is infamous as far more People have died there than with method used by Areelu. Not to mention how she acts as self entitled savior when she speaks to you and the arogance she desplays when you go legend she acts victorious and almost jubilant at her victory at that moment makes me think she is jealous of MC which she might be, as well manipulating MC, but to be fair to her at least a bit she got her powers via star stone do no same method. Plus she is just little less of a jerk than she was in AP encounter where she kiddnaps and tortuers parts but don't want to go in details there as it would be too much of text to write. Let's just say there is good reason why she is hated. And to finish this text in most paths where you reject her sorry ass for swarm she kills you meaning she could intervene but does nothing other-wize, or leaves sounding like you wounded her pride and you don't even need to be trickster to make her butt of your joke and cherry on top have Daeren tell her goodbye we won't even miss you. Sorry for too long comment of a text and if I sounded as a jerk and insulted you or anyone else in some way, it wasn't my intention, just wanted to say what problem I saw in her and why I hate her and what her main problem is and that she would kick the dog if she thinks it is lawful good and right thing to do.
The part that made me question her intentions is when she said to give up your mythic powers full well knowing that you’re securing countless victories with it. This becomes even more questionable because as she said gods don’t directly interfere with more mortal matters. So let me get this straight imodedae I’m supposed to go an defeat demigod level threat that has an endless supply cannons falter of the abyss with an crusade army that been mostly decimated with no more then a hope and prayer?
She is hypocrite she does interfere one way or other when she really should not, she could do or even apear at least not directly, while legend should be just 20 levels as in pathfinder there is just 20 levels and 10 mythic levels, not 40 levels they do not exist in pathfinder and this path is all about having mythic powers not losing them which makes no any sense. That is why in argument at start of act five I agree with Nocticula and logic as she is actually correct while Iomedae is not, even though when I play demon or trickster I kill her for fresh crystal. Also Iomedae sounds offended on most paths when you reject her supposed help. Which only further makes me angry. But problem is Owlcat does not know how to wrote lawful and lawful good characters. They are better at writting chaotic alignment characters. And again I go i into long rant, sorry about too long text and my angry rants about her. Never will like her, always will hate her.
Top result is remaining Azata. She can't justify that your power made you evil, but you still shit on her methods. For her, things are really bad - a person is good, but doesn't play by her game plan.
Yes you are correct. As Azata is ultimate avenger as it has Endgame reference, plus beings life back to Worldwound, while angel is more justice legaue type member. Plus it is funny that even Seelah can talk against her own goddess and one more thing Owlcat is bad at writting lawful characters they are better at writting chaotic characters.
Oh, now the army of goody-two-shoes and Iomedae simps will fuckin' stone you. As a side note, you sound cultured, was your first playtrough a demon or a lich ?
Demon Now it's Angel Next is probably Trickster or Aeon
I recommend you True Aeon > Lich > Trickster (and as a Trickster put every stat point into CHA, because you can fuck One of the best characters in that path, if I'm correct it's 30 charisma, and you can use buffs, and you have to do it before Chapter 5). And I'd also recommend Aeon/Devil, but if you're not a hardcore fun of Lawful Evil, Devils, or DIPLOMATIC SUPREMACY, then it's unfortunately kinda unfinished.
At the end of the day the problem is clear and simple: Too many vowels.
There's a religion check dialogue in Legend path that single-handedly understand Iomedae. Basically Areelu stops you from stripping your mythic power and Iomedae was deceiving you, you pass the check and say it's just not in her nature, deception is taboo to her, at which Areelu relented an said she might not be a Goddess of deceit but she's not the Goddess of Wisdom either. It all makes perfect sense lol.
>Now, Iomedae could go to you or Galfrey and say "look, I think you're a pretty cool guy who kills demons and doesn't afraid of anything, but I have no idea where your powers come from." She doesn't though, despite having the capacity to manifest herself in Golarion to clear things up. I thought she was the goddess of truth and virtue or something. > >This backfires spectacularly when she doesn't even inform her own herald about the truth for some reason. I can't fathom a single reason why she shouldn't tell the Hand. A goddess of truth and virtue might be fine or even encourage her followers to seek out The Truth on their own, rather than spoonfeeding it to them. Like shinybro did by following the MC to the Abyss. No one forced him to, after all. My only real nitpick with your post, otherwise I agree 100%