Taldor

This wiki is in support of Kolbrandr's Taldor Pathfinder game.

Recruitment thread can be found here: http://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=175702.0

Characters

Character Creation Rules

Click here to see all of the campaign-specific rules for character building.

Current Characters

Player	PC	PC Description	Cohort	Cohort Description
kckolbe	Larsen Pike	Cleric//Urban Barbarian, Head of an Order of Nethys	Fanchi Ullen	Fighter/Bard, Head of Merchant's Men
Meliai	Esta Avarae	Cleric of Desna/Bard, Leader of The Unblinking Eye	Kale Elissos	Lore Oracle/Rogue, Teacher and Spy
RubySlippers	Lady Lestari Sclerina	Expert//Adept, Devotee of Abadar	None	n/a
gingerscorpion2012	Talietha (Tali) Enel	Half Elf Courtesan / Prostitute / Street Performer / Urban Ranger	UNKNOWN	UNKNOWN
Xerial	UNKNOWN	Inquisitor//Rogue	UNKNOWN	UNKNOWN
Ebb	Ontreus Taliman	Bard//Oracle, Academy Headmaster, Secret Spymaster	Arkal the Beast	Tiefling Barbarian // Sorcerer/Dragon Disciple
Trilogy	Aria	Half Elf Bard//Rogue/Lion Blade	UNKNOWN	UNKNOWN
EroticFantasyAuthor	UNKNOWN	UNKNOWN	UNKNOWN	UNKNOWN
Muse	Narcius Vaughn	Heir to House Vaughn, Duelist	UNKNOWN	UNKNOWN
Callie Del Noire	UNKNOWN	UNKNOWN	UNKNOWN	UNKNOWN
Shaitan	Galen Tel'Fier	Ranger//wizard/chevalier/dragon disciple	UNKNOWN	UNKNOWN
Phaia	Courtesan Madame	Bard/Sorceress	UNKNOWN	UNKNOWN
avorae	UNKNOWN	Kitsune Barbarian//Druid, Member of Wildwood Lodge	UNKNOWN	UNKNOWN

All character information is subject to change without notice. This is just what I've harvested from the recruitment thread. If you want to change any of your own character's information, please do so. Just don't screw up the table formatting, if you please. All character names may eventually link to full character pages, as we've done here with Larsen Pike -- Ebb

Organizations

To create an organization: Beyond that, two main ways to do an organization of yours, /if/ you want to have one:

1) Very simply, take the free leadership feat, take some extra cohort within limits of what you want to deal with and your cha bonus and tada! There you are. Done. Pros: Simple, your cohort and followers are certainly loyal, and the only thing you really have to do is stat the cohorts. Cons: I'm not going to hand you larger resource bases and organizational influence for something like that comparatively speaking.

2) The more involved: Sooo.. see the Varian writeup? Basically that kind of thing but maybe somewhat more depth. I'm going to post a group writeup that is on the opposite side of the scale of super depth. If you want to be especially mega important as a group, aim basically for somewhere in the middle of those two. And how you do it is you put in some stuff on overview, history, strengths, weaknesses, membership, locations even. And as far as membership, certainly you have your cohorts and followers, but you can potentially have other people across a wider organization beyond your followers and cohorts. But, not being cohorts/followers, they can be more in flux/have agendas of their own/so forth. Also, you or another player play the cohorts, these npcs would be played out by me. They're also not people you can just grab for schemes and adventures, they are doing their own thing as part of maintaining your thing (or if a noble family, living their lives). Basically you have to be more reasoned if calling them away for a thing, but you can marshal them for larger gambits, note them for overall plans, etc. Would break down like this: the one person of your level, aka, the person who takes over if you die. Two people of a level below that, i.e. high up functionaries. Four of a level below that. And then however many of the levels below that. So for example, some hypothetical level 14 head of a major royal family would go the one 14th level sort aside from them, then two 13th, then four 12th, then however many of levels below that, within reason. And gestalt similarly, unless you don’t want them to be.

That said, you don’t, good lord, have to stat such people up, just describe them, and note their levels, ala the Varian npc entries. You also don’t have to completely fill that out if you don’t want to. You can also, as someone asked when I was talking this out with them, in fact make them of lower levels than that if you want. And if they just have npc levels, they can be whatever level so long as it isn’t higher than yours.

Similarly if someone in your group is actually an active, notable detriment to it (and kudos to you for including that sort of person), whatever level you like, just not higher than yours.

Pros: I will entirely treat you as having unto a wider resource base and reach of influence for going that way. And you know, levels for you. Cons: More work.

Noble Houses

The great and glorious Noble Houses of the Taldan Empire.

House Avarae

A fledgling, but moral, House.

House Branas

Military backbone of the Empire.

House Durahan

(canonical!) An entire family of monster hunters and adventurers.

House Eiredor

Knights in shining armor.

House Germande

(canonical!): Where the Eiredor are the best of Taldan chivalry, the Germande are the worst, a preening house of puffed up arrogant knights of vastly more ego than any skill at all. Yet every so often the house manages to somehow produce a prodigious enough talent that almost completely justifies such mass delusions of grandeur.

House Merosett

(canonical!): A house that takes Taldor's fascination with the occult all the way to tangible and fearful skill with it. Particularly unfortunate, because House Merosett are rather odious influence mongers in all levels of Taldan society that their greedy, grasping hands can reach, the entire family unpleasant and off putting.

House Pulcher

A small commoner family recently raised up to the royalty by the Grand Prince on not quite a whim, they are completely in over their heads, flailing to hold together and not fall completely into debt and obligation as they try desperately to assert themselves.

House Sclerina

A house of slave traders and hedonists who more than anyone exemplify the worst of Taldor's fallen state (Meliai is being kind enough to work on this one for me actually, yay her)

House Stromford

Strong military House with a tainted past.

House Tarton

A relatively weak House, of craftsmen and traders.

House Varian

Wealth beyond imagining, and attitude to match.

House Vlastos

A once proud and storied lineage that has dwindled through tragedy and degeneration to but three remaining daughters, holding on in the face of absorption and annihilation of their name through ruthless scheming and manipulation and a still potent resource base. With all of the house's wealth between them, the Vlastos daughters seem bound and determined to restore the glory and prominence of their line on the backs of whoever they can suborn.

House Zonaras

A traditionalist family that, in wielding such arcane might as to put the Merosett to shame, might have been a check on them. Sadly the family is self focused on its studies to the point of obsession, having a disconcerting element of being a personality cult to a long dead archwizard Grand Prince besides.

Sentatorial Families

The family Licinianus

A senatorial family so ancient as to be able to trace themselves to the founding of the senate itself. Traditionalist, incorruptible, and stalwart, they are also unfortunately shrill, elitist, classist, strident and pig headedly stubborn, the current family patriarch exemplifying all of these traits. Favouring an invasion of Qadira as far as the great debates, the house's innumerable grudges against the royal families could prevent such a thing from being remotely successful.

House Laeca

The main remaining virtue of the Laeca is that when you bribe them, they stay bribed. This would almost stand them head and shoulders above some of the other corrupt senatorial families, were it not for that they were spectacularly mercenary about finding opportunities to take in those bribes in the first place, for any little thing they can, from political positions, to securing jobs in the bureaucracy, to using their ancient name to promote the businesses of a trading coster. The Whores of the Senate (as they are called) are cheerfully shameless in the extreme, yet wealthy on the scale of a royal family because of it, and vastly influential as a result. They are also somehow the face of the pro Galt invasion party in the Senate, a group of expatriate Galtan nobles having between them coughed up the demanded for bribe to get them to take that stance.

House Armatus

A relatively younger family, originally raised up from a clan of shipwrights who managed a successful innovation on Taldan hull design a few centuries back, the Armatus lost their way in the opulence that many uplifted persons and families do. Yet the most recent generations of the family seem to have reclaimed their spirit of innovation and hard work, becoming something of a voice for bureaucratic reform and social justice in the senate. This is also perhaps why they have been subjected to some ten separate assassination attempts of the leading family members.

House Tjorgrim

A family originating from an Ulfen Guardsman managing to claim the hand of a senator's daughter as his prize on retiring, and founding a family from there. A rare martial family amidst the bureaucratic senate, the Tjorgrim like to see themselves as the Senate's champions and guardians. Standing in the way of that is half the senate viewing them as upjumped half barbarian boors.

Religious Organizations

The Light of Nethys

A slightly unorthodox church dedicated to the god of magic

Other Organizations

Planudes Academy for the Enlightened Arts and Sciences

An upstanding and patriotic school for the education of Taldan's young men and women. Rumors that it serves to conceal a circumspect spying and information brokering ring should be treated as highly suspect.

The Order of the Unblinking Eye

A small underground network of diviners, fortunetellers and spies covertly working to influence society.

The Merchant's Men

The Merchant's Men is a small mercenary company currently under the command of Fanchi Ullen. It is a little over 70 men strong.

127th Cavalry, the Unbearded Legion

The 127th Cavalry was formed during the great expansion of Taldor to provide a singular home to what are effectively the most well known misfits of the Taldan Cavalry.

The Royal Taldan Opera Society

You know what Oppara has? One of the finest Uh, I clearly mean finest Opera House in the Inner Sea region. Yet somehow the forefront of operatic culture is the clearly uninspired drek coming out of Cheliax, or even nightmarish Ustalav. Taldan opera is not getting the recognition it is due, and this clearly needs to change. The society does everything from trying to find new prodigies to put to work in the field, to sabotaging performances, to lobbying Taldor's great bardic colleges to have a more opera focused curriculum (the colleges have responded with very elegant and poetic variations on "Fuck you"). On the one hand, the society is perhaps mildly ridiculous. On the other hand, they have money to burn, noble members and patronage, and an insecure vindictive streak a mile wide.

The Imperial Elephant Breeders

Taldor's sizeable elephant legions are dreaded by its enemies, whether from facing them in battle, or for their being used as a supply chain that has a certain elephant shaped resilience to being disrupted. Those elephants have to come from somewhere, and leaving the task of breeding them to some senatorial or royal family, or even some guild would be putting far too much power and influence into those hands. So the Grand Princes created an organization to function and focus on the sole purpose of maintaining and breeding Taldor's elephants. In answering directly to the Grand Prince alone, the Elephant Breeders have come into a not small degree of power and influence. On the other hand, they're elephant breeders, they don't exactly get a great many opportunities for leveraging it. Still, as an almost world and society apart, and class of bearded unto themselves, the Elephant Breeders of Taldor are a voice impossible to ignore, like the trumpeting cries of the beasts they breed.

The Verduran Druids, aka the Wildwood Lodge

(canonical!) The semi autonomous rulers of the Verduran forest and the millennia ancient pact they maintain with Taldor to this day are one of the nation's few actually living positive legacies. They should really get at least a little bit of some fleshing out.

History

History of Taldor -- Being a timeline of Notable Events in the history of the great Taldan Empire.

Geography

Azlant

Azlant no longer exists, its destruction by a summoned meteor from on high over six millennia ago was a cataclysmic event that basically ended civilization for a while, plunged the world into darkness for an extended period, and a variety of other miseries. It was an impossible civilization of godlike magic and power and sophistication, a (now ruined) continent unto itself, and a modern source of scholarly curiosity to obsession. I mention it largely for that the Taldan ethnicity is the result of Azlanti refugees blending with whatever the local nomads in Taldor were (some Keleshite-ish people or something close enough). Taldor likes to view itself as an inheritor of Azlant (but so do several other nations), and being able to show or claim to Azlanti heritage gets some regard, the main cue for such being purple eyes that show up with varying frequency.

Cheliax

Cheliax is actually nowhere near Taldor, geographically speaking, it's the nation on the far west coast of Avistan, the continent they are both on, with several nations inbetween. They are, besides Taldor, Andoran, Absalom and Qadira, one of the big naval powers of the Inner Sea, and a rival to them in that sense, but it's not like they might invade some day. Country named for its main ethnicity, the Chelish (who by contrast to the skew closer to bronze skin and brown hair of the Taldans, are more pale and sharper featured), who are another descended from Azlanti refugees marrying into the local ethnicity of that particular area. Mentioned largely for that it used to be a vassal state of the great Taldan empire for a good long while before declaring independence some 600 some odd years ago when Taldor was too busy with a devastating war with Qadira to do anything about it. They would go on to gobble up most of the states Taldor founded via either diplomacy or conquest, and even grab the patronage of the church of Aroden, god of humanity, for themselves, becoming the newest great empire of Avistan. They're kind of.. the Holy Roman Empire to Taldor's Byzantium if you want to do rough real world mapping that is not quite accurate. Their entire society was gearing up for the prophesied return of Aroden to the world, who would lead humanity to a new Azlanti style golden age (doing so from Cheliax, of course). Then 100 years ago or so, instead of returning, Aroden died (means unknown), breaking prophecy in general across the world, calamities both metaphysical, physical and political ensuing. In Cheliax, it lead to the empire falling into brutal mutli sided civil war that was ultimately won by the Hell tainted, pacting and worshipping house of Thrune, and the spreading influence of Hell across their lands was the price of the end of chaos and massacre. A variety of vassal nations were not particularly thrilled at the idea of Asmodeus as a state religion, or devils walking the land, and rebellions ensued, vastly reducing the Chelish kingdom in size from a former glory it schemes to reclaim to this day. The two particularly relevant nations that broke off are on Taldor's borders, which leads us to...

Galt

Galt is essentially one neverending Reign of Terror, French Revolution styles, with successive revolutionary governments consuming themselves, backed by a fanatic, frenzied mob of a population. It was Galt where democratic philosophies to rebel against Cheliax with were created, got wildly out of control, and lead to the deaths of some of those very philosophers. The country lurches from one riot to the next, ready to turn on some new scapegoat at any moment, eager to put to use guillotines that trap the souls of those they behead within them. They're to the north of Taldor, and the nation debates whether to try and invade Galt to pacify it or not. A more successful version of Galt is instead...

Andoran

Okay, let me get this out of the way. The more I think about it, the more I dislike Andoran. I put it this way to someone. There's a valid school of thought that complains that fantasy idealizes monarchies, and sure, that is a thing. But Andoran is like some kind of ludicrous overreaction to that. Andoran is basically a whoa idealized version of post Revolutionary War America (even from the colour and pattern of their uniforms), without any of the bad parts. They are the all triumphant designated good guys (whereas by contrast, the lawful good nation of Lastwall is being slowly ground down to extinction without anything to do about it but make the enemy pay in blood for every inch of land they lose, as far as having actual problems and pathos) Hell, the president equivalent (Supreme Elect or whatever) is a Paladin who seems to just breeze through most problems. And why not, Andoran even has direct patronage from the celestials. The only handwave to this society not being so perfectly perfect in every way that Mary Poppins herself would be all "daaaaammn!" is that they treat the fey and their forests like garbage, and even that is somehow only because the government's hands are tied as far as this one eeeeviiil lumber consortium, somehow.

breath

Okay, with all that out of the way. Andoran. Inspired by the philosophers of Galt but of course much more successful (because of course they would be, when does Andoran ever fai- I'm going to stop now, I promise), the People's Rebellion of Andoran threw of the shackles of their infernal masters, forming a free and egalitarian society, so long as you aren't a fey living in Andoran's half of the great Verduran Forest. Defended by a powerful navy, and the heroic order of the Eagle Knights, Andoran seeks to spread their ideals throughout Avistan both overtly and covertly, while trying to end slavery as an institution and making the GM puke in his mouth a little bit (okay, I'll stop now, for realises). They are on Taldor's western border, and other than a duke getting it into his head to try and "pacify" Andoran some years back and his expeditionary force getting wiped out, don't interact /too/ much with Taldor beyond low level intrigues for influence in places like the huge independent trading city state of Absalom, the usual efforts for Andoran to spread their ideology, and both sides keeping a heavy watch on the shared border. That Taldor has a successful centuries old agreement with the Druids and fey of their half of the Verduran that has allowed them to husband it for resources, whereas Andoran is in an expansionist, resource use intensive mode may someday be a flashpoint of conflict.

Don't mind my hating, if you want some kind of positive ties to Andoran, that is actually okay. It will not make me go out of my way to murder circus you.

Qadira

A sort of fusion of the Ottoman Empire, the Caliphate of Baghdad and.. let's just break down and say it is basically fantasy Arabia as my quickest way of summing it up, the autonomous Satrapy of Qadira (technically a vassal of the greater and far off Padishah Empire of Kelesh, but able to basically /mostly/ decide its own policy, and sometimes conquer and rule whole other nations) has been Taldor's most determined enemy for thousands of years, each nation periodically trying to conquer the hell out of the other on land and sea in wars that sometimes last centuries. Current the conflict is just low grade raiding and a cold war otherwise, but no one expects that to last without some resolution, whether a new war or some binding treaty. They worship a more militant and mildly heretical take on Sarenae down there mostly, and that's part of why the worship of Sarenae is banned in Taldor. One of the really big slave owning nations of the Inner Sea (the others being Cheliax and Katapesh. Slavery is certainly legal in other places, Taldor included, but isn't some crucial part of the economy, with vast slave labour forces. Taldor after all has something of a vast semi indoctrinated underclass. Who needs slave labour that badly by comparison?)

They're the southern border of Taldor.

The Padishah Empire of Kelesh

Origin point of the Keleshite ethnicity, there's actually not too much detail on these fellows, other than that they rule a vast empire of many satrapies across the continent of Casmaron, and while including the remnants of fantasy Sumeria, they are basically fantasy Arabia /even more hardcore/. While Taldor's eastern border is not really inhabited to any vast degree, it is technically under the loose control of the Padishah Empire directly (as opposed to being held by a largely autonomous satrapy), and would be an access point for them to invade directly, if they ever wanted to. Part of why there were relatively recent efforts to heavily fortify it.