Manu

Manus are sort of the base model manasaputra—if you’re jaded enough to call a near-perfect enlightened being “base.”  Each one acts as a spiritual guide to a particular race, attempting to quietly smooth the path to enlightenment for that species.  (Interestingly, the two examples Bestiary 5 gives are humans and basilisks, which makes me wonder what a really one-with-the-universe basilisk would look like.  “To turn others to stone…you must be as the stone.  Deep, right?”)

Obviously, as lawful good creatures who keep a very light touch on the cosmological steering wheel, most manus are better for role-playing encounters than combat ones.  They’re good for dropping subtle riddles, pointing out more fruitful paths of action, and watching over a race’s sacred sites (likely driving away despoilers with aversion).

Of course, enlightenment is a journey…and one race elevating itself over another can have profound consequences, even unintentionally.  A manu-guided race’s path to enlightenment might lead to closed borders at a time when PCs need to get to the heart of their lands, pacifism when PCs need to rally the race against a common enemy, evangelism in a realm already torn by religious strife, or any number of other consequences.  PCs who are too forceful in pursuing their mission might find a manu taking an interest.  And any actions that risk despoiling a race’s ancestral birthplace or that could lead to a genocide will receive a manu’s full wrath.

The creator of the Way of the Willow is being hounded by hobgoblin mercenaries and harpy bounty hunters.  A manu believes the Way may be an important step in mankind’s evolution…but for it to spread, it has to survive.  The manu quietly and subtly pushes a party of adventurers into the path of the fugitive sage.

Adventurers exploring a machine cyst come across a manu.  The manasaputra is fascinated by the clockwork creatures, seeing in them the germs of a new kind of life that may be worth fostering.  Charged with eliminating the clockwork menaces, the adventurers must convincingly demonstrate that the constructs have no souls and are a plague upon the surrounding area, or they risk conflict with the curious manu.

Hunted from world to world by medusa fangships, the last lashunta nation makes landfall on Erem.  The striking-looking aliens are shepherded by a charismatic guru—actually, a disguised manu willing to risk his own enlightenment to see the lashunta survive.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 5 163

I'm sooo behind on reader mail  (Sorry, Scott from Phoenix!)  Though I did answer acanofjars’s query re: what I thought about Bestiary 6 back here.

An anonymous reader wrote:

I'm running a campaign with a lot of undead.  Got any good adventure seeds for that?

Sure.  First thing to do is try searching the “Undead” tag on the Blogger version of this site.  (I was a lot less rigorous with my Tumblr tagging early on.)  That’s every undead seed I’ve written.

Here’s a fresh freebie: A lot of game worlds explain the abundance of old ruins and the prevalence of the Common tongue on some vast empire—echoing the far-reaching impact of Rome in our own world.   But what if that empire was an undead one—not a nightmare realm of slaughter and excess, but a functioning imperial state?  Such an empire could have spread far before it was pushed back…and in its wake left garrisons who refuse to lay down their arms, cults of death who romanticize the old ways under the empire, necromantic books and formulae for young wizards and alchemists to stumble upon, pollution in the blood and rivers to foster young sorcerers, haunted bathhouses, undead tax collectors, ossuaries…you get the idea.

(This answer was inspired in part by Ruth Downie’s novels about the Roman medicus Ruso, which I’m currently audiobooking, and Crystal Frasier’s really nice write-up of the Infinite Ossuary in Pathfinder Adventure Path #115: Trail of the Hunted.)

Also, if you have around $40 lying around, the D&D 3.5 book Libris Mortis is definitely a go-to resource, with tons of hooks.  (Pathfinder’s undead material is scattered throughout several books, whereas Libris Mortis is a one-stop shop and quite good overall—which explains why it’s held its value—and you can easily adapt it to Pathfinder rules.)  And while it’s for a different game system, Dark Ages Vampire wouldn’t be a bad choice either if you run across it in a used book store, just for all the ideas.

Finally, primeval-atom wrote:

You named dropped Anne Carson. Ok. That’s awesome.

Ha!  Anytime.  In fact, it’s not even the first time I’ve done it.  (Looking back, that was a doozy of an entry—one of a connected string of entries exploring the formian race, plus lots of reader feedback and my own rambling.  Worth checking out if you’re a newer reader. Especially if you want links to the best essay about Orson Scott Card ever.)

I had spring on the brain last Tuesday, so my radio show had lots of spring-y tunes.  Hope you like it!  (Also, where the hell was I for Stornoway in 2010?  Because holy God I am obsessed right now.)  Stream or download the entire show till tomorrow (Monday, 05/08/17) at midnight.

Maharishi Manu

Hey!  It’s our first mana…manasa…manasap…manasaput…*deep breath* psychic reincarnated Hindu mythology-inspired Positive Energy Plane kinda-angel dude!!!

Pathfinder’s manasaputras are inspired by the ten sons Brahma created from his mind—according to Wikipedia, the name in fact means “mind-born son.”  In Pathfinder’s default cosmology, they are outsiders associated with reincarnation and the path to self-perfection.  Lawful good beings based on the Positive Energy Plane, manasaputras are benevolent and compassionate but remote and monastic—their touch upon the multiverse is light, and they are more interested in giving mortals tools to solve their own problems rather than wading in to render judgment or do battle.

That is a very quick gloss for a very complicated group of outsiders.  Spend some time with the Bestiary 5 entry to learn more—in fact, you’re probably going to want to read it twice.  Suffice it to say that the Positive and Negative Energy Planes have always been the z-axis to the Elemental Planes much simpler x/y grid.  Similarly, manasaputras sit above the typical good vs. evil tug-of-war for souls; their goals are more mysterious, more esoteric, and more concerned with cosmic truths than cosmic scoreboards.

Manus tend to have entire races for their portfolios; rishi manus have entire worlds.  Maharishi manus are the greatest of these.  This means they have accessed deeper truths, attained higher levels of self-perfection, and likely tend to larger portfolios—not just planets, but epochs as well (as is evidenced by their mastery of time-based special abilities.)  They say little (usually in riddle form) and act rarely, so when they do it is a momentous event.

Adventurers wish to destroy a succubus-wrought artifact that preserves the youth and beauty of the user for an ever-escalating terrible price.  The aging touch of a maharishi manu is required to weaken the object enough so that it may be destroyed.

Worlds with several satellites are often tended by a maharishi manu, a being with the foresight to observe a dozen moons (and their inhabitants) as well as the spiritual journeys of those on the planet below.  On the world of Beryl, adventurers discover their maharishi manu has left his post.  He has decamped to the moon Heliodor, where he has created a paradise full of creatures and races whose evolution he has personally overseen.  Unfortunately, this has not only left Beryl and its other moons untended, but also drawn the attention of the vile sahkils, who have begun building a chittering army on Heliodor’s dark side.

A bythos and a maharishi manu are playing chess.  Actually, they are attempting to repair a rent in the fabric of time, but they disagree on the precise means to go about this.  The resulting spirited debate (spirited for an aeon and a manasaputra, this is) is perceived by mortals as a game of chess that causes episodes of déjà vu and even timequakes across the world.  Adventurers might wish to pause the game, make sure one of the players wins, or even challenge the outsiders themselves, depending on their end goal.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 5 164

Alphabetical tidbit: Did you notice that the manu comes before the maharishi manu in Bestiary 5?  Not sure if that was intentional or not.