Some Gnoll Opponents for PF 2e

The island of Ursino (not-Corsica) on Verra has a bunch of gnolls. The gnolls are cursed mercenaries who were brought in as exiles from the Temmeno Empire (the not-Ethiopian Empire) over a generation ago by the Banco di Asmodeo to exert the banks control over the island and beat back swarms of the undead. A few missed payments, broken promises, and angry contractual negotiations later, and they're now organised into roving bands threatening the inhabitants of Ursino and are looking for a way off the island to go back home. 

These gnolls are sort of based off of the buda spirit from Ethiopia, tho' only very loosely, and with any anti-semitic elements totally scrubbed. Buda accusations IRL can be used for anti-semitic purposes, but are used more widely to handle breakdowns in social relations. For more see Hagar Solomon's book The Hyena People: Ethiopian Jews in Christian Ethiopia, Tom Boylston's "From sickness to history: evil spirits, memory and responsibility in an Ethiopian market village", and this book chapter about a recent contemporary buda crisis. The part that particularly interests me about budas is their use to express the anxieties of subsistence farmers about integration into the market economy, which is very on-theme with Verra's focus on the 17th century emergence of global capitalism in a fantasy context.

So these gnolls are bad people who have practiced cannibalism and been cursed by the Hidden God to take hyena features for it, one of a larger class of beast peoples originating in this way. They reproduce by spreading the curse - making other people eat dead bodies so that they in turn become gnolls. Ultimately, their goal is not to wipe out the inhabitants of the island or whatever, but to get a few ships and either the crews to operate them or knowledge of how to sail them themselves, and then to go home (where, truthfully, they will be no more welcome; the Temmeno don't want cursed cannibal mercenaries they've already exiled coming back)

There are three gnolls in Pathfinder 2e as it exists: one level 2, one level 3, and one level 4. I wanted PCs to be able to fight gnolls right from the start of the game, so I created a bunch of -1, 0, and 1 level gnolls, which will be especially helpful once the PCs hit levels 2-4 and I can send big hordes of the low level ones after them. I created these gnolls using the PF Tools Monster Builder, and I think there are a few typos where I forgot to change gear or names on powers, but the numbers should all be right.

So with that long introduction, here are some low level gnoll opponents for you to use.

Anyhow, enjoy!

A Brief Response to My Last Article

Sorry, for some reason my ability to comment on my own posts has been missing this past month and a half, possibly due to Blogger's new interface. I'm still sorting out the details.

Rather than leave people hanging, I thought I'd respond using my ability to post.

Pilgrim's Procession said:

Very interesting, if a bit problematic. Perhaps a little too protestant for a game set in fantasy italy. Placing legalistic religions (most notably Judaism, and ostensibly Catholicism) in league with devils and Pantheistic religions (Hinduism and Buddhism) in league with demons seems a little over the top. As a protestant I'd agree that these are false philosophies, but it seems a little rude.

(I hope I haven't misunderstood you, please forgive me if I have)

My inspiration for these was mainly various controversies surrounding Augustinianism in Christianity, rather than to draw parallels between other religions and the positions of the devils & demons. The Augustinian focus is probably what you're picking up as Protestant here, tho' I personally am more familiar with the Catholic and secular philosophical legacy of his work than the Protestant reception.

Angels are broadly Bonaventuran, a robustly mystical late Augustinianism. You can read his mystagogical work "Journey into the Mind of God" here. I think you could also portray them within the normative theology of Eastern Orthodoxy, particular its mystical tradition as expressed by the Philokalia. 

The other thing I'd emphasise is that there are multiple churches in Verra following the angelic account of the Hidden God. There are equivalents of Catholic, Calvinists, and Hussites mapped out in setting as major religious factions, and all associate most strongly with the angelic hierarchy. Most of the Sufi equivalents in setting are also associated with the angelic hierarchy.

The devils are inspired by divine command theory, and a very loose reading by Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and Marsilio Ficino, both of whom emphasise the majesty of God and His distinction from His creations. I also took a bit of inspiration from the Islamic folk tale where Shaitan's sin is to refuse God's command to bow before Adam and to insist that it is only correct to offer obedience to God. 

(Fun historical fact: Pseudo-Dionysius invented the word "hierarchy". Giorgio Agamben writes about how this goes from a theological to a secular concept in The Kingdom and the Glory)

The demons are basically a mishmash of all of the above with the neo-Platonic concept of henosis and some of the claims of libertinism made against the Carpocratians, Borborites, and other early antinomian sects.

Anyhow, I hope that clears things up. My own religious upbringing is as a neo-Thomist Catholic, tho' I am an atheist currently and have been for several decades.

Angels, Devils, and Demons in Verra

One of the things that will feature quite a bit in the Verra campaign are devils and demons. The sovereign of Urbino (fantastical Corsica), the island the campaign is starting on, is the Banco di Asmodeo (the Bank of Asmodeus), a fantasy parallel to the real Bank of St. George. The paramount god in Verra is the Hidden God, a fantastical parallel to YHVH, so I thought it was probably worth explaining why and how demons and devils have cults of worshippers and what those worshippers think they're getting.

Angels

Devils and demons in Verra are basically an alter-angelology to the traditional angels. The angelic and devilish hierarchies each claim to be the true messengers and interpreters of the otherwise inscrutable will of the Hidden God, and that the other side is deeply mistaken, to the point of near-blasphemy. 

Angels stress the goodness of the Hidden God's will, both in Its role as the determiner of what is good and in its role as the force that actively realises that goodness in conjunction with the free will of sentient beings. While bad things might happen to people, these are part of a larger, indescribably complex, plan for realising the maximal goodness of the world. 

They also believe that what the Hidden God finds "good" is univocal with, or roughly equivalent in meaning to, what an ordinary speaker means by the term. So long as one faithfully believes in the Hidden God and tries to follow and realise its desires as communicated by its church (which church is a difficult question the angels refuse to answer), one is guaranteed salvation.

Devils

Devils disagree, obviously. They believe that the power of the Hidden God is not constrained by mere mortal conceptions of "goodness". Good and evil are terms that mortals apply to try to rationalise the Hidden God's divine will-to-power, an insult to Its omnipotence and omniscience. The Hidden God is "good" insofar as it determines utterly what is good simply by willing it, without reference to fleeting mortal illusions about what that might look like. 

In fact, devil theologians hold that God's goodness is not necessarily comprehensible to mortals, and that what they call good are at best superficial conjunctions with a deeper, more comprehensive, and more worthy notion that exists within God's mind. The best mortals can hope for is to follow God's commands (as transmitted by the devils) whether they understand them fully or not. To obey these commands is the surest route to salvation, while refusing them is a guarantee of damnation.

The devils see themselves as taking God's night-inscrutable desires and translating them into senses comprehensible to mortals, which they structure as laws, agreements, contracts, and other strictures which bind mortals' behaviour. Most mortals will of course fail to uphold the law that allows them even the briefest and most superficial alignment with God, and thus will be damned.

Without devilish intervention the only punishment the wicked dead receive is separation from God for eternity, but this is too abstract for most mortals to serve as an adequate incentive. So the devils take on the onerous duty of punishing them in more vivid ways that terrify them into obeying the will of God. They see the angelic hierarchy as shirking their duty to God in this respect, and are appropriately contemptuous of them for it.

In addition, the devils must ensure that this system of rules is truly effectively sorting out the wicked who deserve damnation from the innocent who deserve salvation, and thus must often tempt mortals to disobey the same system that they ultimately enforce.

Angels and devils fight one another in the spiritual realm, not in warfare but in complex theological confrontations taking place in synods called by one side or the other. While the angels win slightly more of these synods and councils than the devils do, the devils remain a significant minority party and their prerogative over the damned is unquestioned and frankly, unwanted, by the angels.

The devils are led by Asmodeus. His most prominent cult is the Banco di Asmodeo in the Broggian city-state of Gorga, which uses debts, contracts, wages, taxes, and other financial mechanisms to create an economic system for regulating lives. The cult believes that the organising logic of what some future philosopher will call "capitalism" is the earthly representation of the sublime nomological structure that best aligns humanoids with God's will. They are most certainly cruel, but each cult member - typically chosen from the most elite families in Gorga - knows that what they are doing is God's will, and that they will be rewarded for their service with salvation.

Demons

Demons believe that the separation between the Hidden God and Its works is a paradoxical illusion - how could a ubiquitous being not be found equally in every object that exists? Moreover, God is omnipotent and capable of changing anything and everything at each and every moment. Therefore, everything they desire, everything they do in pursuit of those desires, must possess the Hidden God's sanction, and in fact, be a part of the Hidden God Itself.

The demons assert that "good" and "evil themselves are inadequate terms for the Hidden God's will - that a being capable of anything and knowing everything must know both everything called "good" as well as everything called "evil", and clearly it must encompass the power to do both, and much more. In fact, insofar as the Hidden God encompasses all possible things within itself, it must necessarily be both good and evil. 

The demons are content therefore, to act on their desires, which are intense, and insatiable. If God did not want them to, It would simply sate the urges that drive them to do horrible things, or stop them from accumulating personal power, or it would never have allowed them to exist in the first place. Within this, a particularly powerful subset of demons are actively interested in seeing where the limits are on what God will allow them to do, and consider themselves explorers of possibility. 

While this is often as horrible as one might imagine, the most notable example of a demon and its cult in Urovia is Demogorgon. The Demogorgon cult claims that the arch-demon will transport the soul of any of its worshippers to a paradise it has built to store them upon their deaths. Thus, true believers can commit whatever blasphemies and crimes they please against the laws of God and country without consequence (and it encourages them to exercise their imaginations). So, while their cult is small and disorganised, outlawed in every place that knows of its existence, Demogorgon's followers tend to be particularly malign, committed, and willing to give their lives to advance the cult's goals, secure that they will go to paradise after death.

Verra: Ancestries, Nations, Languages, Religions

Broggia is fantasy 17th century Italy, and it's where the start of the Verra campaign is going to be set. The campaign will take place on the island of Ursino, which draws elements from early modern Corsica under the Bank of St.George. The equivalent of Catholicism is the Holy Krovian Occulted Church, which worships the Hidden God.

Broggia is part of humanity's heartland, so there are few demihumans, but the neighbouring state of Verloi (Savoy) is host to the largest populations of elves in southern Urovia, and the Canton of Serich is the southernmost of the dwarven communes in the foothills of the Bol mountains of central Urovia. Here's a few details useful for creating PCs:

Nationalities, Ancestries and Languages

Allowed PC Ancestries	NPC Only
Humans (incl. half-elves and half-orcs)	Hobgoblins
Elves	Dhampir, Vampires, and Tieflings
Dwarves	Ghouls and Gnolls (Both caused by curses)
Goblins	Orcs

Places to Be From	Language	Description
Canton of Serich	Dwarven	Autonomous dwarven mountain commune
Duchy of Burgunta	Broggian	Wealthy, artistic police state; the oldest university in Urovia
Duchy of Montero	Broggian	Impoverished, honourable, wracked by civil war
Duchy of Verloi	Haranais	Home to most of the elves in southern Urovia
Empire of Yadia	Castido	The most powerful state in the world; vast overseas empire
Kingdom of Haran	Haranais	Scientific, cultural and magical powerhouse
Krovian Papal States	Broggian	The religious centre of the world; city of monumental ruins
Province of Ursino	Broggian	Chaotic backwater; owned by Gorga; valuable resources
Reggio Nerrali	Broggian	Multicultural pirate and criminal haven; subjects of Yadia
Republic of Gorga	Broggian	The wealthiest city in the world; run by the cult of Asmodeus

Other Major Nations	Languages	Key Features
The Berenthian Union	Anthic	Island kingdom ruled by a ghoul queen
The Emirate of Kanna	Alav	Trade entrepots ruled by sorcerers
The Free Provinces of Vroostland	Nedens	Pirates and imperialists
The Holy Krovian Empire	Larnic / Czeyenk	Disintegrating through civil war
The Kingdom of Ulthend	Ulthendic	Brutal northern orcish military
The Sultanate of Chekevana	Thultikanish	Cosmopolitan eastern empire

Other Languages	Description
Abaki	Most widely known Arkheshi language. Spoken by the Ten Islands Alliance.
Barbelo	The language of demons, devils, and the like.
Carcano	The Urovian elvish dialect. Related to the ancient tongue of dragons.
Dwarven	Spoken in dwarven communes, descended from ancient Giantish
Farishtan	A major trade language of central Ethia. Used widely in magic.
Gargansh	The main goblinoid language in Urovia and Rafiya.
Gellasian	Greek-equivalent. Used widely in magic and philosophy.
Krovian	Latin-equivalent. The language of religion, science, and often magic.
Pturian	Extinct lizardfolk language. Mostly known by scholars.
Rathulusk	Language of ancient orcish pagans in northern Urovia and Ethia.
Suluuran	Most common language in western Rafiya.
Temmenic	Most common language in eastern Rafiya.

Religion

The Holy Occulted Church (the Krovian Papacy) is the oldest and most widespread human church worshipping the Hidden God. Most humans in Broggia are members. In broad strokes, it’s organized like Catholicism with priests, monks, nuns, bishops and a pope, except all offices open to both genders. Most of its priests can perform a few magical rituals but are not spellcasters. Spellcasting is mainly the responsibility of specialized orders, and the church has orders that produce champions, clerics, and monks. There are no alignment restrictions on belonging to any the churches of the Hidden God.

The Society of Mattens are scholars, seers, and missionaries who contest the mortal enemies of the faith. They are famous as their debaters, historians, theologians, lawyers, diplomats, and spies. Most members are clerics.

Divine Font	Heal
Divine Skill	Society
Divine Weapon	Dagger
Domains	Ambition, Knowledge, Perfection, Truth
Spells Granted	1st: Charm 3rd: Mind Reading 4th: Suggestion

The Friars Minor of the Rule of Liddora (Liddorans) are a popular group of mendicant friars and mystics who wander Urovia (and further) helping the poor and innocent. Most members are either clerics or monks.

Divine Font	Heal
Divine Skill	Medicine
Divine Weapon	Staff
Domains	Family, Healing, Protection, Travel
Spells Granted	1st: Longstrider 2nd: Animal Messenger 4th: Shape Stone

The Office for the Expulsion of Anathemas is a militant order charged with the exorcism, banishment, and destruction of undead, fiends, and abominations who challenge the church’s rule. Most members are champions, though they do have a few clerics.

Divine Font	Heal
Divine Skill	Athletics
Divine Weapon	Battleaxe
Domains	Destruction, Might, Sun, Zeal
Spells Granted	1st: True Strike 2nd: Enlarge 4th: Weapon Storm

The Cabernensians are the largest Disputant sect with councils of presbyters across northern Urovia and overseas. They’re fantasy Calvinists. Their presbyters (elders) are clerics, and they are starting to train champions.

Divine Font	Heal
Divine Skill	Society
Divine Weapon	Halberd
Domains	Cities, Fate, Perfection, Wealth
Spells Granted	1st: Soothe 3rd: Enthrall 6th: Phantasmal Calamity

The Ummah of the Final Revelation is the state religion of the Emirate of Kanna, the Sultanate of Chekevana, and much of near Rafiya and Ethia. It’s fantasy Sunni Islam. Much like the Holy Krovian Occulted Church, they have holy tariqa (orders) composed of murids who specialise as champions, clerics and monks. 

The most common tariqa encountered in Urovia are the piratical Baddawiyah murids from the Emirate of Kanna who master the wind and sky. Most members are clerics or champions.

Divine Font	Heal
Divine Skill	Society
Divine Weapon	Scimitar
Domains	Air, Moon, Sun, Water
Spells Granted	1st: Gust of Wind 2nd: Faerie Fire 4th: Aerial Form

The Servi di Asmodeo are the only cult of devil worshippers operating openly in Urovia. Membership is only open to members of the Broggian upper classes and is centred in the city of Gorga. The cult is firm believers in the Hidden God, etc., they simply think Asmodeus represents Its true will more than the orthodox church. They’re in control of the world’s most powerful bank (the Banco di Asmodeo) and have a concordat with the Krovian Papacy, though the circumstances of how they got it are very murky. They believe in the binding force of law over more abstract notions of justice. They produce champions, clerics and monks, just like the Holy Occulted Church but are not suitable for PCs.

Outside of the Hidden God, most elves, goblinoids and dwarves worship deified versions of the primordial dragons, spirits, demons, and giants (the so-called “Visible Gods”), as do smaller, mostly-rural human communities in close contact with them. They are known collectively as “pagans”. The priests of these religions are druids, not clerics. The most prominent of these cults in southern Urovia are that of Vorkallian the Father of Flame, an elvish dragon cult centred in Verloi, and the cult of Uker-Nahosh, the giant ancestor of southern Urovia’s dwarves. Almost all barbarians and druids in southern Urovia are members of one of these two cults.

Campaign Setting WIP: Verra

I'm starting up a Pathfinder 2nd Edition campaign, and have nine people potentially interested in playing (probably ending up with a core group of 4-5 regular players and another 4-5 occasional players). So I needed a P2 campaign setting. I decided to go with something early modern, and "Verra" (an allusion to the Latin words "veritas", "vir", and "terra") is the result. I'm going to show a few pictures from my work-in-progress.

Verra is a combination of ideas from several settings I've created over the years, some of which I ran campaigns in, and some which never get off the ground. Elements of Moragne, Emern, the Wolf Sea, and Feuerberg / the Old Lands all recur, with Feuerberg, as the most recent, having the greatest influence.

Verra is an early modern setting paralleling our own early-to-mid-17th century, one of my favourite time periods for games. You have full plate, guns, the birth of modern science, the emergence of the second wave of colonial empires, megacorporations, the emergence of the novel and mercantile capitalism, etc. It's when we first start calling people "adventurers" historically, IIRC.

The isle of Ursino. 10km hexes.

The campaign is going to be set on the isle of Ursino, which is loosely inspired by early modern Corsica. The entire island was created a million years ago when a dragon of titanic proportions died in the ocean and its bones and back sticking up above the sea became a mountainous island. The island was settled in successive waves of peoples, including the ancient Pturian serpent men, the Xarxean elves, and the Krovian Empire. They mined the dragon's bones and body for magically potent substances and raided the ruins of preceding empires.

About 150 years before the campaign begins, the last king of Ursino attempted to gain immortality through lichdom. The ritual worked, but led to the death / undeath of everyone in his capital (the grey dead forest in the southwest), the excommunication of the king himself, the depopulation of most of the island, and the cessation of diplomatic relations with the major powers of Urovia.

The Kingdom of Ursino's end left an opening for the devil-run Banca di Asmodeo, the most powerful institution of the nearby Magnificent Republic of Gorga. They spent astonishing sums of money buying land rights, bribing monarchs for recognition, and outfitting a fleet that relieved the struggling remnants of the kingdom that had held on in the north-east of the island. The Yomishtan Pope refuses to recognise their claim to sovereignty over the island since the Banca di Asmodeo is ultimately run by heretics but everyone else does. The BdA now controls the lucrative trade in draconic remnants.

The local nobility are still not completely happy about the bank's rulership. There are lots of nationalists who want one of their own to ascend to the throne. Some are desperate enough to conspire against the bank, especially with the Serene Republic of Nerral or the Verenigde Vroost, other major maritime powers who are interested in mining the dragon's remains. This has been intensifed in recent years as gnollish pirates have begun occupying the the western swamps and raiding across the mountains to attack the mining communities. It's felt that the bank only cares if their financial or political interests are at stake.

Tombalberi is the town in the northeast. 10km hexes.

Tombalberi ("Tombtrees") is the main port and settlement on Ursino. It's a large walled town of approximately 15,000 people. It's the centre of the Banca di Asmodeo's power on the island.

I created this map using: https://watabou.itch.io/medieval-fantasy-city-generator

I'm planning a session zero to bring as many of the potential PCs together to create characters, so we'll see what people come up with. I'm expecting a fair number of pirate-types.