Something disturbing about Pathfinder's cosmology

[Soarel]

Pathfinder's Bestiary 2 features a lot of monsters that seemed like they'd make awesome opponents but went mostly unused in the official content. A great example here is the qlippoth, Paizo's reimagining of the Obyrith demons from 2e.

I haven't forgotten them though, and have used the qlippoth numerous times in my Andoran campaign as a sort of ultimate evil, worse than demons, Outer Gods, or Zon-Kuthon. Too bad Paizo didn't do the same.

We're finishing the Andoran campaign soon and I thought I'd finish it off with an encounter with a qlippoth lord who's on the verge of becoming a demon lord. However, while re-reading the Qlippoth entry I came across this paragraph, which implies that there is much about Golarion's cosmology we don't quite know:


Some believe that the qlippoth come from an unknowable realm on what might be described as the “outside shell” of the Outer Sphere, but if the qlippoth are to be taken as indicative of what order of existence rules in such a realm, it is a good thing indeed that this outer realm is so impossibly distant.

Dear Aroden, if you're still alive, help me.

[Soarel]

Follow-up! Follow-up!

I checked up to see if there was any more information on the qlippoth, and sure enough, in one of the adventures from the Shattered Star path, there's an article on them. I found what I was looking for there, and it's worse than I thought…


Some particularly blasphemous tomes and ancient parables whisper of supposed truths that could drastically change the nature of how the world's faiths regard the qlippoth race. These whispers state that the Rough Beast Rovagug is, in fact, the mightiest of all qlippoth, and that he is thus the most ancient and most powerful of all the gods. Certainly, the fact that it took many of Golarion's most powerful deities, working together, to imprison the Rough Beast in the non-space known as the Dead Vault located at the heart of Golarion itself lends credence to the fact that Rovagug is powerful indeed. If he is in fact also a qlippoth (as his shape certainly suggests to those who compare his image with the creeping horror of most qlippoth), it is both a comfort and a disquieting notion that he lives on in a prison dimension linked somehow to the very core of the world. One particularly mad philosopher, a woman whose name is now lost, even theorized that the Great Beyond was an impossible coil, and that the mythical "outer shell" beyond the Outer Sphere was in fact the realm known as the Dead Vault wherein Rovagug had been imprisoned, which would mean that the entirety of the Great Beyond was itself contained within the core in which Rovagug now dwells.

I don't know of any god in Pathfinder that can help me now.

[BWR]

I'm just seeing echoes of Tharizdun, ancient Baatorians and the Far Realms here.
Nothing new under the sun, I suppose.

[Psyren]

It's just Far Realm (aka Dark Tapestry in Golarion) stuff. Most settings have a Lovecraftian corner and this is it.

[Gildedragon]

That might explain the test of the starstone.
the impenetrable keep... the malleable reality... the gained (stolen) divinity prize...