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Warshield73 wrote:Is there anything in the books about when certain species arrived on Palladium and how they got there? I gather from the timeline certain races were not always on Palladium but I can't find when they arrived and if there are legends about how it happened.

I am specifically looking for information on Wolfen but if there is something in one of the books about humans that would be cool to.

Mark Hall wrote:

Warshield73 wrote:Is there anything in the books about when certain species arrived on Palladium and how they got there? I gather from the timeline certain races were not always on Palladium but I can't find when they arrived and if there are legends about how it happened.

I am specifically looking for information on Wolfen but if there is something in one of the books about humans that would be cool to.

In some cases, it's not entirely clear. For example, humans are first noted in the PFRPG timeline (p. 281) about 14,000 years ago, but that doesn't mean that they weren't there before then. Likewise, ogres seem to pop up about 4100 years ago, but, again, they might have existed long before that. Canines are 2354 years ago... but, again, did they ARRIVE then, or have they always lived in the North, and just were ignored? There's not a lot of concrete information.

Warshield73 wrote:I had always assumed PF was made up of two different groups of races. 1) Those created by or brought there by the old ones. 2) Those that arrived by accident or were brought there by deities after the old ones. Is this incorrect?

One of the great legends of the Kankoran is that they were created by the elves in the distant past. For this reason they re­spect elves and will go out of their way to help them.

Prysus wrote:

Greetings and Salutations. Well, there are a few references in the PF2 main book for starters.

PF2, page 277, The Age of Light: "During this period, most of the known modern races are known to have surfaced, including humans, changelings, kobolds, dwarves, gnomes, troglodytes, goblins, hob-goblins, bug bears, trolls, minotaur, and the giant races, as well as a handful of others.
Rifts and ley line activity during this period was roughly equal to that of Rifts Earth; perhaps 10-50% greater. Many of the different races, particularly creatures of magic and supernatural beings, may have discovered the Palladium World through magic and dimensional portals during this period. Some may have been refugees, while others may have been dimensional travelers or wanderers, while still others (like the Gromek of modern times) could have been victims of dimensional anomalies that swept them from their homeworld in other dimensions tot he Palladium world, with little hope of returning."

Note: Off the top of my head, Changelings and Minotaur were both noted as being possible minions and/or creations of the Old Ones, which would make their emergence after the Age of Chaos conflicting.

PF2, page 279, The Age of a Thousand Magicks: "In the north, the first howls of the canine races, Wolfen, Coyle and Kankoran, roared across the frozen tundra ..."
PF2, page 279, The Age of Elves: "In the North, the humanoid canines were forming warrior clans and covering the snow with blood. Ogres also came onto the scene ..."

PF2, page 281, Timeline:
"20,000 years ago - The emergence of humankind."
"12,000 years ago - The Wolfen and other canine races emerge in the Great Northern Wilderness."

Note: 20,000 years ago puts humankind into the Age of a Thousand Magicks, and 12,000 years ago puts Wolfen into the Age of Elves. This would either be a conflict with the previous section, or "emergence"/"emerge" in the timeline may indicates at least tribe-like behavior or noticed by other races.

I'll also note that humans were actually around during The Battle of the Gods (PF2, page 279). That's estimated around 80,000 to 90,000 years ago. This section further supports humans surfacing sometime during the Age of Light.

As noted above by others, there are rumors and theories and legends of Elves creating the Wolfen for the Elf-Dwarf War. There's little pieces here and there, and I believe there's a Rifter article that has that premise. This is going from memory, and I can try to track down some book and page numbers later if you're really interested. However, based on the information in the official material, it doesn't seem probable that Elves created the Wolfen (especially not thousands of years before the war people think they were created for, and indicated before the Age of Elves even began). At most, I'd suspect the Elves may have magically modified the existing races, but I doubt even this is true. More than likely what happened (if anything) is the Elves found them, tried to use them as shock troops (as an example) unleashing the dogs of war, and the other races said: "What is that?! The Elves created an abomination!" To me, saying the Elves created the Wolfen is like saying Columbus is the first person to step foot in the Americas. Some people may think it; but saying, believing it, and/or writing a book/article about it doesn't make it true.

In addition to the Old Ones creating races (and/or just transplanting races from other universes), the Elves and Dwarves summoned a fair bit of minions to help them fight during the Elf-Dwarf War. Some of these are mentioned in Book 9: Baalgor Wastelands (Gosai and Quorian being two races that come to mind).

Goblins, hob-goblins, kobolds, and orcs are distant cousins to Faerie Folk (PF2 page 299 states it as "believed", but Monsters & Animals page 58 lists it as a fact). So if they came about during the Age of Light, then it's probable either Faerie Folk in general arrived during this time (as noted, attracting Creatures of Magic), or the magic of the time may have caused those races to mutate (the Goblin Cobbler specifically mentions that Goblins used to have natural magical abilities, but those are lost).

Anyways, that's all for now. I need sleep. Those are some dates, as well as what we have. The typical answers are: Native to the planet, created (or summoned by) the Old Ones, summoned by the Elves or Dwarves during their war, or the same way all those races get to Rifts Earth? Hope some of that helps. Farewell and safe journeys.

Prysus wrote:

Warshield73 wrote:On a side note I had always thought the humans around during the Battle of the Gods were likely to be True Atlanteans (now maybe Lemurians) who were wiped out and then standard humans came in later. I thought there was something, maybe in Yin Sloth, that I read that indicated that but I couldn't find it.

Greetings and Salutations. I think I recall a reference to True Atlanteans somewhere being wiped out by a plague. Might have been in Yin-Sloth Jungles book, but I don't recall off the top of my head. I can hunt down the details if you're really interested.

However, the humans involved in the Battle of the Gods was the Kawan. The Kawan "never discovered the use of magic." This information can be found in Yin-Sloth Jungles on page 7. The Tezcat are their descendants (Yin-Sloth Jungles, page 18).

Page 7 also mentions how some claim elves created humans through magic (kind of like that Wolfen claim, huh?), and states without question that this is wrong. Then it mentions how they were "free from the influence of the Old Ones," which may indicate humans had been around during the Age of Chaos, just not a prominent or well known race (though could just mean that all races were now free of the Old Ones).

Hope some of that helps. Farewell and safe journeys.

Prysus wrote:Greetings and Salutations. I think I recall a reference to True Atlanteans somewhere being wiped out by a plague. Might have been in Yin-Sloth Jungles book, but I don't recall off the top of my head. I can hunt down the details if you're really interested.

Veknironth wrote:Well, I don't have the books on me but I remember that the elves were created by the Old Ones, and probably the Wolfen. The Elves were the helpers of the Old ones until they joined the Dragons in revolt. The Wolfen were definitely created, but I forget by whom. I know the Wolfen are much younger as a race.

-Vek
"Yin Sloth might have that history."

The Beast wrote:That's actually in the IatEotW book.

Warshield73 wrote:

The Beast wrote:That's actually in the IatEotW book.

What book is this?

Prysus wrote:

Warshield73 wrote:

The Beast wrote:That's actually in the IatEotW book.

What book is this?

Greetings and Salutations. Book 6: Island at the Edge of the World.

Warshield73 wrote:The time scales still mess with me, 70,000 years between human civilizations seems really excessive in a dimension still using medieval tech.

Personally, I always figured the elder races, the Elves in particular as one of the dominant races, kept them as slaves and prevented them from expanding much. The Kawan succeeded because no one else knew about them. And it wasn't until the fall of the Elves and Dwarves that humans were able to start to make some leeway. This probably doesn't help much, but maybe a little?

And since Mark Hall mentions Ogres, my theory for their origin actually went to a human tribe that a Troll decided to help liberate and convinced them to attack their Elf oppressors (the Troll was really just causing havoc). The tribe was turned back fairly easily by the more advanced Elven military and magic. Feeling betrayed, the Elves cursed them to appear as ugly on the outside as they were on the inside. This created the Ogres, and realizing they were tricked is what started the Ogre-Troll feud. But that is just my head canon. Farewell and safe journeys.

Warshield73 wrote:As for the time frame there are a few sort of cataclysmic events that set things back but not that much. I have problems with the long time frames that have been established in the three galaxies / Phase World but those have some technological and magical advancement. This just seems overly stagnant.

Mark Hall wrote:

Warshield73 wrote:As for the time frame there are a few sort of cataclysmic events that set things back but not that much. I have problems with the long time frames that have been established in the three galaxies / Phase World but those have some technological and magical advancement. This just seems overly stagnant.

So, I can't remember if this made it into the published part of Mysteries of Magic or not, but, I do have a theory about the relative stagnation of Palladium, technologically. And that theory is Magic.

So, back in the Age of Light, magic levels were extremely high and, if Rifts Earth is anything to go by, that means a lot of monsters were MDC, while humans, elves, and dwarves remained their squishy selves. The big equalizer was magic. With magic, you could use Armor of Ithan and Fire Bolt to NOT DIE, which established magic, of all sorts, as the premiere technological path for most societies. If you had a kid who was smart as smart could be, you got them into magic. Glimmer of talent? Magic. Talks to rocks? Magic.

But magic tends to be an end unto itself. You don't need to develop the four-field system of agriculture if the Earth Warlock can just cast a spell and make your land fertile. You don't need to work out how to make steel if magic makes your pounded copper blades unbreakable. So, a lot of technological advancements stalled out because no one was working on them... magic was ubiquitous and easy and so no one bothered with the hard work of chemistry, metallurgy, or physics, beyond what they needed to.

Then fast forward to the Millennium of Purification, and, suddenly, there's a lot less magic in the world. There are fewer practitioners of fewer arts, and things that had been magicked away are now staring at you. You've also got an entire society of people who have entirely sworn off magic entirely, and they start looking for non-magical solutions to things. But they have to work out a lot of these problems by themselves, since other people are still using magic. So dwarves start building up the technological base of society out of necessity, because they've already rejected the prime technology of the world.

It is still a REALLY long time scale to work with, but less of a problem once you account for the late start that the physical sciences had on Palladium.

Warshield73 wrote:One of the few times I got to play PFRPG the GM was sending us on a quest connected to the Elf-Dwarf War. I, running the obligatory the Elven Longbowmen. I asked if we would even know anything about an event that ended 8,000 years ago. This still seems odd, even with the long lifespan of an elf.

See you can work the timelines with those things, the problem is it is just so long that even to and Elf, much less humans or dwarves, these events will have no relevance to people leaving in modern times. Put the battle of the Gods say 20,000 years ago, end the Elf-Dwarf War 5,000 years ago then line up everything else after that. All the sudden the development of both magic and tech makes some sense, not perfect but better and now all the sudden all these impossibly ancient events now have some resonance.

Just my opinion, worth less than normal as I don't get to play Fantasy that often.

Mark Hall wrote:

Warshield73 wrote:One of the few times I got to play PFRPG the GM was sending us on a quest connected to the Elf-Dwarf War. I, running the obligatory the Elven Longbowmen. I asked if we would even know anything about an event that ended 8,000 years ago. This still seems odd, even with the long lifespan of an elf.

See you can work the timelines with those things, the problem is it is just so long that even to and Elf, much less humans or dwarves, these events will have no relevance to people leaving in modern times. Put the battle of the Gods say 20,000 years ago, end the Elf-Dwarf War 5,000 years ago then line up everything else after that. All the sudden the development of both magic and tech makes some sense, not perfect but better and now all the sudden all these impossibly ancient events now have some resonance.

Just my opinion, worth less than normal as I don't get to play Fantasy that often.

As always, the fact that elven lifespans are ten times that of humans is illustrative. The Elf-Dwarf War ended, in human terms, 800 years ago... to an extent, it has about as much relevance as the Mongol invasions of southern and western Asia. I mean, sure, some folks are going to know a lot about that, but your average longbow man will be asking "Excuse me, do you know when the elves destroyed Baalgor?" outside of the Circle K.

Whiskeyjack wrote:I'm still positive that I read in one of the books that the Wolfen on Palladium are actually the descendants of a crashed ship from the Three Galaxies. I've never been able to find the reference though, so I can't be sure if it was in cannon or just from a website.

Whiskeyjack wrote:As to development, alongside the use of magic, there is the fact that the world has been basically reset numerous times. Humans emerged 70K years ago, and were ground back to the stone age in a land that was now a magical death trap. The dyvalians once ruled over the entire world for a simple power grab and crushed every kingdom that existed. The Elves and Dwarves obliterated each other and many other races in their war. Gromeks and Giants laid waste to the Old Kingdom before it was the New Kingdom. Kingdoms of Dragonwright warred continuously for what seems like millennia.
Every time the world crawls into a civilized era, it inevitable comes crashing down.

Warshield73 wrote:I have never seen this anywhere but it is my basic premise. I basically have the Wolfen home world of Motherhome as the planet where the Wolfen evolved and then were transported to Palladium by rift, not crashed ship as that would leave to too many problems.

Warshield73 wrote:I agree that they have reasons for this, I just think it works better if there were older races that have been wiped out, with elves and maybe dwarves as the survivors with younger races coming along in the last five to ten thousand years.

Whiskeyjack wrote:I'm still positive that I read in one of the books that the Wolfen on Palladium are actually the descendants of a crashed ship from the Three Galaxies. I've never been able to find the reference though, so I can't be sure if it was in cannon or just from a website.

Whiskeyjack wrote:

Warshield73 wrote:I have never seen this anywhere but it is my basic premise. I basically have the Wolfen home world of Motherhome as the planet where the Wolfen evolved and then were transported to Palladium by rift, not crashed ship as that would leave to too many problems.

Any ship left behind would be seriously degraded and of no use to anyone. It would be regarded as a ruin with strange dead magics inside. Personally I'd put it under a glacier slowly getting crushed.

Whiskeyjack wrote:Dimensional anomalies happen all the time. The excerpt that I read had them slipping completely onto barbarism within a couple of generations. 10 to 15k later, their origin is forgotten even among their own kind. Realistically, remembering that you came from a spacefaring civilization while trying to fight for you life in a frozen wilderness isn't the most important part of your day.
The same premise was used in Battlestar Galactica if I remember correctly.

Whiskeyjack wrote:Dimensional anomalies happen all the time. The excerpt that I read had them slipping completely onto barbarism within a couple of generations. 10 to 15k later, their origin is forgotten even among their own kind. Realistically, remembering that you came from a spacefaring civilization while trying to fight for you life in a frozen wilderness isn't the most important part of your day.
The same premise was used in Battlestar Galactica if I remember correctly.

Axelmania wrote:wow, humans evolved into ogres? I thought it was supposed to be the other way around in 1st ed

Mark Hall wrote:

Warshield73 wrote:One of the few times I got to play PFRPG the GM was sending us on a quest connected to the Elf-Dwarf War. I, running the obligatory the Elven Longbowmen. I asked if we would even know anything about an event that ended 8,000 years ago. This still seems odd, even with the long lifespan of an elf.

See you can work the timelines with those things, the problem is it is just so long that even to and Elf, much less humans or dwarves, these events will have no relevance to people leaving in modern times. Put the battle of the Gods say 20,000 years ago, end the Elf-Dwarf War 5,000 years ago then line up everything else after that. All the sudden the development of both magic and tech makes some sense, not perfect but better and now all the sudden all these impossibly ancient events now have some resonance.

Just my opinion, worth less than normal as I don't get to play Fantasy that often.

As always, the fact that elven lifespans are ten times that of humans is illustrative. The Elf-Dwarf War ended, in human terms, 800 years ago... to an extent, it has about as much relevance as the Mongol invasions of southern and western Asia. I mean, sure, some folks are going to know a lot about that, but your average longbow man will be asking "Excuse me, do you know when the elves destroyed Baalgor?" outside of the Circle K.

SolCannibal wrote:Pretty sure elven lifespan in PF is about 300-400 years. Longer than humans definitely, but not ten times. And even if it were true, some of the timespans of the various eras would still be quite ludricous, somewhere between "before the fall of Rome" and "when people first developed tool-crafting & farming, but no writing yet".

And the even "longer lifespans leading to different time scales" conceit falls apart when one stops to think of the quite humano-centric Western Empire or the Wolfen among others.

Mark Hall wrote:

SolCannibal wrote:Pretty sure elven lifespan in PF is about 300-400 years. Longer than humans definitely, but not ten times. And even if it were true, some of the timespans of the various eras would still be quite ludricous, somewhere between "before the fall of Rome" and "when people first developed tool-crafting & farming, but no writing yet".

And the even "longer lifespans leading to different time scales" conceit falls apart when one stops to think of the quite humano-centric Western Empire or the Wolfen among others.

PFRPG, page 289. Human average lifespan is 60 years.
PFRPG, page 291. Elven average lifespan is 600 years.

600/60 = 10.

Now, they don't age at 1/10th the rate, as shown on page 32, where you're supposed to double the age rolled for elven characters (among others), but, really, this is looking at the race descriptions and doing some elementary school math.