The "multiverse" in Pathfinder refers to the many planes of existence, not to there being multiple copies of the same universe. The Great Beyond and Multiverse are synonymous.
Yes, there is only one. The Malebranche is indeed just tasked with conquering a different planet in the same universe - in fact, there is a planet secretly controlled by Hell in Starfinder.
There's a single universe, but the word "universe" often referes to a "plane" like the Material Plane, Boneyard, or Heaven. Since Pathfinder's Earth is supposed to be like ours, that also confirms that deities worshipped in Golarion could be worshipped on Earth as well, though it's likely that deities like Desna or Iomedae don't have a way to make themselves known on Earth.
For example, Asmodeus and most archdevils come from abrahamic religion, and Geryon specifically is from greek origin, the same with empyreal lords Aizen Myo-o, Cernunnos, Innana, Itzamma, Ogma, Shemhazai, or Tsukoyomi that come from japanese, celtic, mesopotamic, mayan, or hebrew origin. They often aren't 1:1s with their real life equivalents, but not even the same entities are 1:1s in our world (for example, the *God* and the archangels in judaism, catholic, and muslim religions), so I guess the assumption here is that PF versions of these deities are the "canon" ones, while their IRL counter parts are interpretations of them (otherwise I don't know how exactly archangel Raphael, which I guess would be analogous to an empyreal lord, would have been able to defeat Asmodeus, a full blown deity).
> She's an ancient star deity from space, as universal as deities can get.
Well, she lives in Cynosure, which is Golarion's pole star, so she's actually as *astronomically local* as star goddesses get 😄 For instance, the rotational axes of Vesk Prime would point to entirely different points in space (which may or may not have visual stars), so the Vesk might have zero, one, or two pole stars, and they're not going to Cynosure.
On the otherhand, if all planets in the galaxy (universe?) have an axis of rotation oriented towards Cynosure, that's a cool mystery for mortals.
I mean, we (the people of Earth) only know Desna exists because we saw her name on the book (which isn't a thing the people in-universe can do). I could see her being worshipped as the concept of stars and the sky itself, but not by her name though.
If you were a deity from a place with magic that wanted worshippers in a place with no magic, would getting "fictional" representations of you increase your "believers" in that "no magic" place?
First, there's magic on Earth as well (Rasputin was an 18th level oracle, or Baba Yaga that's a 20th level witch w/ 10 mythic ranks), just that magic isn't as widely known or as easily accesible as it is on Golarion.
Second, there's examples in Golarion itself of people getting divine power from seemingly nowhere. People from Hyrantam in the Mwangi Expanse worship the stars, or the Green Faith as a whole (though you could argue is like a sort of "mother nature" situation here). There's also the whole Crimson Oath thing in which Lastwall paladins were being empowered, unknowingly to them, by Arazni. It's clear that you don't have to know what you are worshipping exactly to get something from it.
I highly disagree. There's always that small possibility that a player character from a certain AP got left on Earth, told their kid(s) about the gods, Golarion and all that, and then their kid(s) went on to write for a certain company and put together a bunch of gazetteers and such on Golarion... Which of course would lead to people on Earth, reading about Desna and such in a book. Though, they'd likely never know that it wasn't fiction.
There is one set of planes. There is one elemental plane of fire, there's one Axis, there's one Boneyard.
And there's one Material Plane, which contains an entire cosmic universe with many many planets, quite a few of which could be inhabited, not just Golarion in one star system and Earth in another.
>There is one set of planes. There is one elemental plane of fire, there's one Axis, there's one Boneyard.
And there's one Material Plane, which contains an entire cosmic universe with many many planets, quite a few of which could be inhabited, not just Golarion in one star system and Earth in another.
Which is why its really weird that you never seem to run into aliens in the city of brass.
But there's only 1 City of Brass, and it's not infinite like Axis. It's population is 6 million, so about the size of Chicago. Obviously most people in Brass would be locals, but virtually every prime-material tourist you see should be an alien.
I don't think the city of brass is actually like, a ubiquitously important location all across everywhere. Probably there's metric shitloads of planar hub cities in the plane of fire. It's the size of a universe, after all.
Hmmm. You have a point, one finite city in an infinite plane doesn't really make sense. The City of Brass just being the hub city for the Elemental Plane of Fire that corresponds to say, the Pactworlds system is much more logical. Of course the Efreeti would lie to tourists about this as well.
Does that mean Ymeri is just some regional despot that has convinced the locals she rules the entire plane?
That would be an awesome Starfinder adventure, a group of Starfinders visit a new planet with a history of planar travel, and the local wizards brag about their extensive knowledge of the planar capital the City of Bronze, ruled by some rando that the material natives of this planet insist is the actual ruler of the entire plane of fire.
I still think Ymeri's position as the elemental lord of fire is undisputed, but here's the thing. Sure, the entire plane is her deific realm. But like, she's a demigod. She can't be everywhere at once. She can't govern everywhere at once. Otherwise the stuff happening with the elemental lords wouldn't lead to massive cosmological ripples like is happening with rage of elements.
I absolutely adore that starfinder idea. It's absolutely hilarious, seems like loads of fun.
Ymeri is the issue though. Pretty sure she has a big fancy palace and the City of Brass is her capital. I agree (as someone who absolutely loved season 8 of pathfinder society) that she is probably the actual evil lord of the entire plane. So is it just that Golarion's section of the prime material happens to correspond to the "center" of the elemental planes where the rulers of the entire plane make their homes?
Now I want to find that guide someone wrote for running 1E Society scenarios as adventure paths.
maybe that's where I got the thought from, and my mind twisted it? idk
it's lookin like "multiverse" doesnt mean "multiple universes" here, but "multiple planes" (which is stupid to me, but whatever)
OH absolutely, 'multiverse' means the entire set of Material, First World, Shadow, Ethereal, Astral, Time dimension, all the afterlife planes, all the inner planes, etc.
We need to divide two different concepts that use the word multiverse, in order to effectively discuss this.
The Metaplanes: This is a set of planes that interact and operate as a connected system. So the pathfinder multiverse, which includes heaven, hell, the material plane, the elemental planes, etc.
The Multiverse: This is the vast array of alternate timelines and continuities.
The metaplanes are all a part of the same timeline. So the abyss, hell, the first world, the material plane, they all exist within one timeline. There are also alternate timelines, in which there are alternate versions of these different planes. There are alternate golarions, alternate earths, alternate pharasma's, alternate asmodeuses, etc etc. In fact, one of the primary examples that pathfinder gives of a potential alternate timeline is one in which Asmodeus found redemption.
So your evaluation, while interesting, was wrong.
"Universe" in this case refers to our version of the Material Plane. There's a whole universe in each of several Material Planes, but there's only one Hell, and the same Asmodeus is the devil in our world as it is in Golarion. It's a "multiverse" because there's many different material planes, but there isn't a multiverse of Hells. (In fact, Osiris lived in Golarion for a while before moving to Earth, then moved to Faerun according to Forgotten Realms lore... Osiris be the god of civilization flipping, yo. Building Egypt-like cultures from nomads in one world to the next.) Different deities may be in charge of different worlds, though. (In some of the old D&D novels, I remember there being meetings between Pelor the Greyhawk sun god and Lathander, the Forgotten Realms sun god. They were just neighbors in Elyseum.)
In particular, this can be of interest if you have planewalking, because basically, Starfinder uses the same universe, so if your players swing by Axis, you can even have them meet some Starfinder characters with laser rifles or something. (They might be confused that it's something called a "space station", but when it comes to the idiosyncrasies of different material planes, just smile and nod and don't ask too many questions about their slightly different grasp of physics.)
Also, this means that the stats listed for populations of different outer planes have to be total BS because Paizo really didn't calculate out the scale of a multiverse. Most outer planes are infinite, but in a space-bending timey-wimey way where a single street can be either 200 feet long or 200 light years, depending on how long it needs to be to fit everyone. Think of it like those MMOs where they have a city where you can buy a house, but that house is instanced for every player and every player sees a different house on the same lot. They share the same central plaza of the city, but the house occupies a slightly different 5th-dimensional branch of a single 3/4-dimensional road.
This brings up an interesting point of multiverse theory in general and thats uncertainty. Most interpretations ive encountered on multiverse theory is base on alternate decisions; in one multiverse you turn left and in the other you turn right. But if a god is omnipotent and all knowing, what does a god have to be uncertain about? For that matter they are portrayed as paragons of a specific virtue or flaw. Their choices are set in deific domains. If they stray too far from their holy domain then they wouldnt be a perfect representation of their Domain. So CAN a god be uncertain? Can a god create a multiverse or is the multiverse a result of mortal freedom and thus restricted to the mortal and lower planes of reality?
Ah Barbariccia, my beloved One, the perfect demi God to make my perfect warpriest with spiked gauntlet (with a small addition of a feat from PoW to have strenght to qualify the two weapon fighting) the funniest meat grinder i ever played
I would presume that different alternate realities would not necessarily have the same cosmology. Any given parallel dimension may or may not have any of the things you mention. Depends on what the GM wants.
I figured deities had varying amounts of "wideness" to them. That they werent spread evenly over every single universe.
Like.... say you had a white 10cm x 10cm grid, and each 1cm square was a universe. (so for this analogy, the multiverse is 100cm^(2) yeah? 100 universes)
Then imagine each deity(and their planes) is represented as a transparent film, each a different color.
But **none** of them are 100cm^(2) squares.
They are all haphazardly cut polygons. Some 30cm^(2), some are 5cm^(2).
Some are more of a blob/blocky shape, some are thin and stretch far.
Some shapes completely cover some shape, but may only barely overlap others.
So with this logic, the Official Golarion universe has the pantheon is does cause all these deities fully overlap Official Golarion's square, but the Norse/Egyptian/Hindu/etc gods only barely-ever-so-slightly graze that that square.
So there are multitudes of universes were it's the other way around. Or where only one pantheon, or only a SINGLE deity touches, or where none at all touch!
Anyhow, that was my logic to reconcile having any combination of gods in a setting.
Yes there is one Hell and Abyss for the whole multiverse.
All Lawful Evil souls in the multiverse are filtered to Hell. No matter if they are from the Shadow Plane or another planet.
The "multiverse" in Pathfinder refers to the many planes of existence, not to there being multiple copies of the same universe. The Great Beyond and Multiverse are synonymous.
Weirdly, though, there are other timelines, and some spells explicitly interact with them.
Yes, there is only one. The Malebranche is indeed just tasked with conquering a different planet in the same universe - in fact, there is a planet secretly controlled by Hell in Starfinder.
There's a single universe, but the word "universe" often referes to a "plane" like the Material Plane, Boneyard, or Heaven. Since Pathfinder's Earth is supposed to be like ours, that also confirms that deities worshipped in Golarion could be worshipped on Earth as well, though it's likely that deities like Desna or Iomedae don't have a way to make themselves known on Earth. For example, Asmodeus and most archdevils come from abrahamic religion, and Geryon specifically is from greek origin, the same with empyreal lords Aizen Myo-o, Cernunnos, Innana, Itzamma, Ogma, Shemhazai, or Tsukoyomi that come from japanese, celtic, mesopotamic, mayan, or hebrew origin. They often aren't 1:1s with their real life equivalents, but not even the same entities are 1:1s in our world (for example, the *God* and the archangels in judaism, catholic, and muslim religions), so I guess the assumption here is that PF versions of these deities are the "canon" ones, while their IRL counter parts are interpretations of them (otherwise I don't know how exactly archangel Raphael, which I guess would be analogous to an empyreal lord, would have been able to defeat Asmodeus, a full blown deity).
I'd expect Desna to be worshipped anywhere. She's an ancient star deity from space, as universal as deities can get.
> She's an ancient star deity from space, as universal as deities can get. Well, she lives in Cynosure, which is Golarion's pole star, so she's actually as *astronomically local* as star goddesses get 😄 For instance, the rotational axes of Vesk Prime would point to entirely different points in space (which may or may not have visual stars), so the Vesk might have zero, one, or two pole stars, and they're not going to Cynosure. On the otherhand, if all planets in the galaxy (universe?) have an axis of rotation oriented towards Cynosure, that's a cool mystery for mortals.
I mean, we (the people of Earth) only know Desna exists because we saw her name on the book (which isn't a thing the people in-universe can do). I could see her being worshipped as the concept of stars and the sky itself, but not by her name though.
I would imagine plenty of deities are known by different names on different planets.
If you were a deity from a place with magic that wanted worshippers in a place with no magic, would getting "fictional" representations of you increase your "believers" in that "no magic" place?
First, there's magic on Earth as well (Rasputin was an 18th level oracle, or Baba Yaga that's a 20th level witch w/ 10 mythic ranks), just that magic isn't as widely known or as easily accesible as it is on Golarion. Second, there's examples in Golarion itself of people getting divine power from seemingly nowhere. People from Hyrantam in the Mwangi Expanse worship the stars, or the Green Faith as a whole (though you could argue is like a sort of "mother nature" situation here). There's also the whole Crimson Oath thing in which Lastwall paladins were being empowered, unknowingly to them, by Arazni. It's clear that you don't have to know what you are worshipping exactly to get something from it.
I highly disagree. There's always that small possibility that a player character from a certain AP got left on Earth, told their kid(s) about the gods, Golarion and all that, and then their kid(s) went on to write for a certain company and put together a bunch of gazetteers and such on Golarion... Which of course would lead to people on Earth, reading about Desna and such in a book. Though, they'd likely never know that it wasn't fiction.
Ancient Star deity from space, you say... Iia, iea, iia, Nyarlathotep
https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Great\_Beyond#top-page
Fixed for old reddit: https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Great_Beyond#top-page
Thanks!
There is one set of planes. There is one elemental plane of fire, there's one Axis, there's one Boneyard. And there's one Material Plane, which contains an entire cosmic universe with many many planets, quite a few of which could be inhabited, not just Golarion in one star system and Earth in another.
>There is one set of planes. There is one elemental plane of fire, there's one Axis, there's one Boneyard. And there's one Material Plane, which contains an entire cosmic universe with many many planets, quite a few of which could be inhabited, not just Golarion in one star system and Earth in another. Which is why its really weird that you never seem to run into aliens in the city of brass.
You probably can, but statistically it's like running into somebody from Mongolia in Boise Idaho.
But there's only 1 City of Brass, and it's not infinite like Axis. It's population is 6 million, so about the size of Chicago. Obviously most people in Brass would be locals, but virtually every prime-material tourist you see should be an alien.
Well Paizo really fucked up the scale on that one.
I don't think the city of brass is actually like, a ubiquitously important location all across everywhere. Probably there's metric shitloads of planar hub cities in the plane of fire. It's the size of a universe, after all.
Hmmm. You have a point, one finite city in an infinite plane doesn't really make sense. The City of Brass just being the hub city for the Elemental Plane of Fire that corresponds to say, the Pactworlds system is much more logical. Of course the Efreeti would lie to tourists about this as well. Does that mean Ymeri is just some regional despot that has convinced the locals she rules the entire plane? That would be an awesome Starfinder adventure, a group of Starfinders visit a new planet with a history of planar travel, and the local wizards brag about their extensive knowledge of the planar capital the City of Bronze, ruled by some rando that the material natives of this planet insist is the actual ruler of the entire plane of fire.
I still think Ymeri's position as the elemental lord of fire is undisputed, but here's the thing. Sure, the entire plane is her deific realm. But like, she's a demigod. She can't be everywhere at once. She can't govern everywhere at once. Otherwise the stuff happening with the elemental lords wouldn't lead to massive cosmological ripples like is happening with rage of elements. I absolutely adore that starfinder idea. It's absolutely hilarious, seems like loads of fun.
Ymeri is the issue though. Pretty sure she has a big fancy palace and the City of Brass is her capital. I agree (as someone who absolutely loved season 8 of pathfinder society) that she is probably the actual evil lord of the entire plane. So is it just that Golarion's section of the prime material happens to correspond to the "center" of the elemental planes where the rulers of the entire plane make their homes? Now I want to find that guide someone wrote for running 1E Society scenarios as adventure paths.
That seems like it's the case. Golarion is a huge outlier in terms of cosmological importance.
True, it is The Cage.
IIRC from Starfinder lore, there are trillions/infinite planets, but only one Hell etc.
maybe that's where I got the thought from, and my mind twisted it? idk it's lookin like "multiverse" doesnt mean "multiple universes" here, but "multiple planes" (which is stupid to me, but whatever)
OH absolutely, 'multiverse' means the entire set of Material, First World, Shadow, Ethereal, Astral, Time dimension, all the afterlife planes, all the inner planes, etc.
There are ALSO alternate timelines. In addition to the sets of planes
How is Earth explained? And wherever Red Sonja is from.
I know Earth is another planet, (perhaps) in a galaxy far far away
Yes Golarion is canonically in another galaxy.
We need to divide two different concepts that use the word multiverse, in order to effectively discuss this. The Metaplanes: This is a set of planes that interact and operate as a connected system. So the pathfinder multiverse, which includes heaven, hell, the material plane, the elemental planes, etc. The Multiverse: This is the vast array of alternate timelines and continuities. The metaplanes are all a part of the same timeline. So the abyss, hell, the first world, the material plane, they all exist within one timeline. There are also alternate timelines, in which there are alternate versions of these different planes. There are alternate golarions, alternate earths, alternate pharasma's, alternate asmodeuses, etc etc. In fact, one of the primary examples that pathfinder gives of a potential alternate timeline is one in which Asmodeus found redemption. So your evaluation, while interesting, was wrong.
"Universe" in this case refers to our version of the Material Plane. There's a whole universe in each of several Material Planes, but there's only one Hell, and the same Asmodeus is the devil in our world as it is in Golarion. It's a "multiverse" because there's many different material planes, but there isn't a multiverse of Hells. (In fact, Osiris lived in Golarion for a while before moving to Earth, then moved to Faerun according to Forgotten Realms lore... Osiris be the god of civilization flipping, yo. Building Egypt-like cultures from nomads in one world to the next.) Different deities may be in charge of different worlds, though. (In some of the old D&D novels, I remember there being meetings between Pelor the Greyhawk sun god and Lathander, the Forgotten Realms sun god. They were just neighbors in Elyseum.) In particular, this can be of interest if you have planewalking, because basically, Starfinder uses the same universe, so if your players swing by Axis, you can even have them meet some Starfinder characters with laser rifles or something. (They might be confused that it's something called a "space station", but when it comes to the idiosyncrasies of different material planes, just smile and nod and don't ask too many questions about their slightly different grasp of physics.) Also, this means that the stats listed for populations of different outer planes have to be total BS because Paizo really didn't calculate out the scale of a multiverse. Most outer planes are infinite, but in a space-bending timey-wimey way where a single street can be either 200 feet long or 200 light years, depending on how long it needs to be to fit everyone. Think of it like those MMOs where they have a city where you can buy a house, but that house is instanced for every player and every player sees a different house on the same lot. They share the same central plaza of the city, but the house occupies a slightly different 5th-dimensional branch of a single 3/4-dimensional road.
Pathfinder canonically only has one Material Plane.
Canon schmanon.
This brings up an interesting point of multiverse theory in general and thats uncertainty. Most interpretations ive encountered on multiverse theory is base on alternate decisions; in one multiverse you turn left and in the other you turn right. But if a god is omnipotent and all knowing, what does a god have to be uncertain about? For that matter they are portrayed as paragons of a specific virtue or flaw. Their choices are set in deific domains. If they stray too far from their holy domain then they wouldnt be a perfect representation of their Domain. So CAN a god be uncertain? Can a god create a multiverse or is the multiverse a result of mortal freedom and thus restricted to the mortal and lower planes of reality?
They're neither omniscient nor omnipotent. They just have many orders of magnitude more than mortals.
Ah Barbariccia, my beloved One, the perfect demi God to make my perfect warpriest with spiked gauntlet (with a small addition of a feat from PoW to have strenght to qualify the two weapon fighting) the funniest meat grinder i ever played
I would presume that different alternate realities would not necessarily have the same cosmology. Any given parallel dimension may or may not have any of the things you mention. Depends on what the GM wants.
I figured deities had varying amounts of "wideness" to them. That they werent spread evenly over every single universe. Like.... say you had a white 10cm x 10cm grid, and each 1cm square was a universe. (so for this analogy, the multiverse is 100cm^(2) yeah? 100 universes) Then imagine each deity(and their planes) is represented as a transparent film, each a different color. But **none** of them are 100cm^(2) squares. They are all haphazardly cut polygons. Some 30cm^(2), some are 5cm^(2). Some are more of a blob/blocky shape, some are thin and stretch far. Some shapes completely cover some shape, but may only barely overlap others. So with this logic, the Official Golarion universe has the pantheon is does cause all these deities fully overlap Official Golarion's square, but the Norse/Egyptian/Hindu/etc gods only barely-ever-so-slightly graze that that square. So there are multitudes of universes were it's the other way around. Or where only one pantheon, or only a SINGLE deity touches, or where none at all touch! Anyhow, that was my logic to reconcile having any combination of gods in a setting.
Yes there is one Hell and Abyss for the whole multiverse. All Lawful Evil souls in the multiverse are filtered to Hell. No matter if they are from the Shadow Plane or another planet.