Context Summary

Being a brief summary to enable reading the constitutional convention threads.

WARNING: if you want to write, you want more information than this

This continuity is set in Golarion, a ~D&D world that has an established canon outside of the glowfic community. Glowfic Golarion uses much of the pre-existing worldbuilding, but changes some things if someone had a better idea or just felt like it. if you want to read about some of the specific changes, check this doc.

The recent history of the world goes like this: a hundred years ago, a god named Aroden wanted to incarnate on Golarion and bring an Age of Glory to the world, as was foretold. Instead he died. Prophecy broke, which means that even the gods cannot see the future. A bunch of natural disasters occurred and millions of people died. In one place, a hole was torn out of the world and the hole led directly to the Abyss: the Chaotic Evil plane/afterlife, which is inhabited by hordes of evil, hungry demons. Who started pouring onto the material plane in vast numbers.

And in Cheliax, the country which worshipped Aroden as its own and which was to be the place His kingdom started, civil war broke out. Thirty years of civil war resulted in the victory of the Thrune family, who had made a pact with Asmodeus, the ruler of Hell (the Lawful Evil plane/afterlife). As a result, for the past seventy years, Cheliax has been Asmodean, primary worship of other gods was banned, there were all kinds of super fucked-up laws, and the government spent considerable effort making sure as many of their citizens as possible ended up LE and went to Hell upon death.

Now Cheliax has been liberated by a party of 20th level PCs, who have decided to call a constitutional convention. Most Chelish people have no idea what the fuck is going on or what a constitutional convention even is.

 

Some places, countries, and characters of importance:

Pyramid Scheme is a 1-20 campaign that recently wrapped, whose PCs are the ones that liberated Cheliax. These PCs are also referred to as the tightrope gang. The DM was lintamande; the players were Calima, apprenticebard, Lantalote, nextworldover, and Urock (see below for their characters). 

The Worldwound is that hole in the world that got torn open when Aroden died. For a hundred years, it was being contained, but the area within the containment was getting larger and larger. As of a couple years ago, it was about the size of a largish country, and the forces of several militaries (including Cheliax) were substantially focused on defending the border. Then the tightrope gang closed the Worldwound. (...ok technically it just got moved to another plane, but whatever.) There are still demons around that went through before this, but there are going to be fewer of them over time.

Iomedae is the Lawful Good goddess of defeating evil. Of, specifically, ruthlessly prioritizing and doing the greatest possible good at the least possible cost. She was once a human paladin of Aroden, and she was from Cheliax (albeit before it was an independent country). She is also called the Inheritor, because she inherited many of Aroden's resources and also goals. 

Lastwall is the country that Iomedae founded when she was human. It's kind of a Lawful Good military dictatorship, and the only reason this works is that they have magical verification of alignment. In the last century, they have been mostly focused on the Worldwound and on several other recurring threats. They really hated the fact that Cheliax was Asmodean, but couldn't do much about it for a while, for complicated reasons.

Taldor is not!Byzantium. It used to own Cheliax, centuries ago.

Galt is not!France, sort of. Until ~15 years ago, it was Chelish territory, and was as Asmodean as the rest. Then the Revolution came, they kicked out Cheliax, tried to establish a republic, and then they started turning on each other. In particular, they executed lots and lots of people using magic guillotines, which also prevent the souls of their victims from going to an afterlife (initially intended as a mercy if the afterlife would be Hell). Galt is now ruled by Cyprian (not!Napoleon).

Andoran is Galt's neighbor, which broke away from Cheliax at about the same time. It successfully became a republic. It is aggressively opposed to slavery and tyranny in all their forms, and has a lot of pirates attacking slave ships and the like. Every other country hates this, but Andoran has Felandriel Morgethai, an archmage, and going to war with an archmage is generally a bad plan.

Rahadoum banned the worship of all gods after Aroden's death.

Osirion is not!Egypt, and is a theocracy of Abadar, LN god of trade. Also it’s kind of super sexist. In some versions of glowlarion, Osirion is run by alts of Feanorians and the pharaoh is a Maitimo; in this version, it is absolutely not.

Alfirin was Iomedae’s friend, briefly girlfriend, and less briefly allied archmage, back when Iomedae was human. While they shared many goals, Alfirin also additionally had goals like “get rid of all the gods” and “never die”. She therefore did some fucked up human sacrifice, and built her own braindead god, which could then be her witch-patron. Also she possesses people instead of dying. When it looks like she died, she instead goes and possesses a fetus or newborn child (...I am not sure which). Over many years, she slowly consumes that person’s soul and identity until she has totally taken over their life. (Alfirin was lantalote’s PC)

Catherine de Litran is one of several plausible candidates for True Heir of the pre-Thrune Chelish Throne. She’s from Galt, where her family was very briefly the royal family until they got sent to the magic guillotine, after which point she ended up an exile in Osirion, where she met the rest of the tightrope gang. She became much more plausible as a potential queen of Cheliax once she became a high-level adventurer with several archmages in her party, allies in Lastwall and Osirion, and married to Cyprian, and then she in fact became queen. 

Unfortunately, also she was being possessed by Alfirin and had been basically entirely eaten by then. When the rest of the tightrope gang discovered the possession, they turned Alfirin into a book to verify her intentions, and only turned her back once they decided they could work with her anyway. Also they eventually worked out a way to let the actual Catherine out to talk to people sometimes, but she’s basically a ghost, and also nearly no one knows about Alfirin at all, so there are not exactly many people she can talk to. And so it is Alfirin who is really Queen of Cheliax. (Catherine was lantalote’s other PC)

Élie Cotonnet is a wizard and a Galtan revolutionary. He helped send Catherine’s family to the magic guillotine (...Final Blade, it’s called a Final Blade), and then also ended up in exile to avoid execution. He’s still deeply committed to republican principles tho, which is why there’s a constitutional convention in Cheliax. Also he invented the spell Fabricate, so he is now very rich and causing a lot of economic upheaval. (Élie was Calima’s PC)

Naima is a witch from Osirion, in whose village the tightrope gang first met. She became a witch when she was a widow with a sick baby desperate to save her son, and something reached out and gave her the power to do that. For ages she did not know what the something was, but it turns out that Alfirin’s braindead god… stopped being braindead. And instead became something like a very strange neglected child, who is also a god. Naima is a good Osirian Abadaran who uses the free market to allocate her healing and other spells, with the result that she is now very, very rich. Naima and Élie are married. (Naima was bard’s PC)

Shawil is an inquisitor of Abadar from Osirion. He is married to an Osirian princess, and in general is the one who is the diplomatic link between the tightrope gang and Osirion. Also he’s kind of a troll. (Shawil was Urock’s PC)

Ione Dujardin is Alfirin’s granddaughter from her previous life, Myrabelle. Myrabelle did some superlatively fucked up shit, but the result was that Ione has lots of power. Also she has an eidolon named Varanthe. Varanthe is also referred to as “danger kitty”, and lots of problems that came up in Pyramid Scheme were solved by Varanthe becoming real big and moving the problem to a different location. Alfirin had Ione under some light mind control to keep her loyal, but then it got broken and Ione told the rest of the party about Alfirin. Booking Alfirin ensued. (Ione was nextworldover’s PC)

Paraduchess Lilia Ramona de Montero is Myrabelle’s daughter, Ione’s aunt. Some of the fucked up shit that Myrabelle did involved deeply pretending to be Asmodean to try to see if she could take down the Thrunes from the inside, and, also, getting her daughter to do the same. Lilia became the spymistress of Cheliax and was very helpful to Alfirin’s plans.

Alexeara Cansellarion is a paladin of Iomedae who was in charge of the strictly unofficial Lastwall effort to get Cheliax free of Asmodeus. He is a close ally of the tightrope gang, and he helped them with a whole bunch of their fights and such. Now they have ?rewarded? him by making him a Chelish count and inviting him to the convention.

Alexeara is sometimes referred to (especially out of universe) as "third Alex", because he happened to be the third NPC named "Alex" the party ran into in a single gaming session.

Razmir is a high-level wizard pretending to be a god, who rules a country called Razmiran. Except that actually, the tightrope gang defeated him and told a bard employee of Catherine/Alfirin’s to impersonate him. Not that anyone really knows this.

Rovagug is a Chaotic Evil god, or, uh, approximately so. It really wants to just eat the whole universe. It’s locked up inside the planet Golarion, and ~all the existing gods are invested in it not getting out. The major gods have signed a treaty and have obligations to monitor the planet for break-out attempts. When prophecy existed, they used it for monitoring; now that it doesn’t, they need to use other methods. Which is a large part of why both Abadar and Asmodeus acquired countries after prophecy broke. (Not that, again, people mostly know this.)

Mephistopheles is an archdevil and the personification of Hell itself, who likes secrets and tricky contracts a lot. For a while, he impersonated a bard employee of Catherine/Alfirin’s. Including when the tightrope gang told the bard to pretend to be Razmir, which is how the tightrope gang accidentally handed Razmiran to Meph. 

But he actually wanted something else. It turns out that Meph and Asmodeus made a side-deal, and if Asmodeus ever fails to keep up his monitoring-Rovagug treaty obligations, he would also lose Hell to Meph. So Meph wanted the tightrope gang to take Cheliax away from Asmodeus, and then disrupt Asmodeus’s other monitoring, so that Asmodeus would clearly be in default.

In return, he would make Hell less utterly horrifying. So they wrote up a contract, put in lots of random stuff because that appealed to Meph’s nature as a god of tricky contracts and made it cheaper for them, and vowed secrecy, telling only their lawyers, Iomedae personally, and whoever she designated on her end. And then they went off and conquered Cheliax.

After which they paused for a random time interval that turned out to be about six months, and then attacked the remainder of Asmodeus’s monitoring operations. This had a small but non-negligible chance of, you know, actually letting Rovagug out, and in fact Rovagug’s spawn attacked all over the world, taking advantage of the situation. It worked tho! They won! No one knows what they won, but they did!