Pathfinder 1E Does Tiamat existsin Golarion?

[Ezequielramone]

I have been reading Inner Sea Gods and in the Dragon's deities section says that Apsu and Tiamat created the gods that created other races.
but I haven't seen something else about Tiamat, she doesn't have an entry in the list of gods neither.
Is this a mistake or something? I am missing something?

 

[Voadam]

She exists.

They use the basically Babylonian version of her with Apsu and Dahak but they don't want to cross over into D&D 5 head IP of WotC. They used her in the beginning of the setting but have consciously decided to de-emphasize her and so only these occasional references are made and she is not considered a major part of the world at current unlike other gods. Originally I think they wanted her left open for you to add in WotC version if you wanted or Babylonian and have her be a minor presence but more recently the trend has been to not mention her at all for the most part and have Golarion be more its own thing.

A little more Golarion info on her can be found in the 3.5 Golarion book Gods and Magic.

 

[Ezequielramone]

that make sense. I don't like the result: a semi official semi real deity.
but I play my way. I have gods and magic but I have read it long time ago and don't remember tiamat.
I'll see what to do with her after reading what says that book.
thanks a lot

 

[Desdichado]

They've done similar things with other mythical public domain figures that are common in D&D and have a very specific D&D incarnation/interpretation that is not public domain--but which they can't help but refer to obliquely here and there regardless: Orcus and Demogorgon.

 

[Ezequielramone]

I sure orcus is on the list. don't remember demogorgon, but I think he is there too, as Dagon and pazuzu.
but even if they are only in the list, you have a nice summary to include it in your campaign. you even have "holy animal" or something like that.
I don't like the result of including tiamat here and there but not in the Dragon's deities section or the deities list.
It's like they don't want to admit tiamat exist.

 

[James Jacobs]

For entities like Demogorgon, Tiamat, Orcus, Pazuzu, Baphomet, and all the rest... if there are actual open d20 game statistics for the characters as they have classically been represented in D&D, then yes, we generally did bring those characters into Golarion (and thus into Pathfinder). Many of these were made available to open gaming via the first Tome of Horrors—that's why you see us and others using Orcus as a fat goat-headed demon man with a death-dealing wand, or Pazuzu as a demon with control over avian creatures, or Baphomet having links to minotaurs.

For others, like Graz'zt, we can't use them at all because there are no open rules for them and they have no real-world mythological basis.

Then there are other long-standing D&D characters (particularly Demogorgon and Tiamat) who ARE from real-world mythology, and thus their names CAN be used in non-D&D products... but their specific D&D incarnations (a two-headed demon with tentacle arms or a five headed dragon) are not open content. If we were to use Tiamat or Demogorgon in a more robust way, we would have to completely build a new design for them—either one based on mythology (which, in Demogorgon's case, wouldn't work since he's only a name—he was never really an actually physically-described entity until the name was picked up for the early RPG as far as I can tell) or one that we made up completely from scratch.

Doing so would officially "overwrite" these characters' long-standing traditions and history and use and appearance in the game... and I wasn't interested in doing that. I wanted to preserve those names and thus those characters for gamers to use in Pathifnder or Golarion games as they see fit—and so you'll see the names mentioned VERY rarely in our products, but never in the context of rules or descriptions. Neither do they have big roles to play in Golarion—Tiamat's role is taken by Dahak, while Demogorgon's is taken by Lamashtu.

It's a pretty simple matter for you to replace Dahak with Tiamat or Lamashtu with Demogorgon in your home version of Golarion, or alternately to drop those two in side-by-side as they exist in your game already, and we didn't do much more with those names in order to allow gamers to do so for their home games.

Hope that clears things up!

 

[Ezequielramone]

For entities like Demogorgon, Tiamat, Orcus, Pazuzu, Baphomet, and all the rest... if there are actual open d20 game statistics for the characters as they have classically been represented in D&D, then yes, we generally did bring those characters into Golarion (and thus into Pathfinder). Many of these were made available to open gaming via the first Tome of Horrors—that's why you see us and others using Orcus as a fat goat-headed demon man with a death-dealing wand, or Pazuzu as a demon with control over avian creatures, or Baphomet having links to minotaurs.

For others, like Graz'zt, we can't use them at all because there are no open rules for them and they have no real-world mythological basis.

Then there are other long-standing D&D characters (particularly Demogorgon and Tiamat) who ARE from real-world mythology, and thus their names CAN be used in non-D&D products... but their specific D&D incarnations (a two-headed demon with tentacle arms or a five headed dragon) are not open content. If we were to use Tiamat or Demogorgon in a more robust way, we would have to completely build a new design for them—either one based on mythology (which, in Demogorgon's case, wouldn't work since he's only a name—he was never really an actually physically-described entity until the name was picked up for the early RPG as far as I can tell) or one that we made up completely from scratch.

Doing so would officially "overwrite" these characters' long-standing traditions and history and use and appearance in the game... and I wasn't interested in doing that. I wanted to preserve those names and thus those characters for gamers to use in Pathifnder or Golarion games as they see fit—and so you'll see the names mentioned VERY rarely in our products, but never in the context of rules or descriptions. Neither do they have big roles to play in Golarion—Tiamat's role is taken by Dahak, while Demogorgon's is taken by Lamashtu.

It's a pretty simple matter for you to replace Dahak with Tiamat or Lamashtu with Demogorgon in your home version of Golarion, or alternately to drop those two in side-by-side as they exist in your game already, and we didn't do much more with those names in order to allow gamers to do so for their home games.

Hope that clears things up!

I can't ask for a better answer. I mean, you did this.
Thanks for the answer and for being in contact with players.

 

[Desdichado]

Tiamat's role is taken by Dahak, while Demogorgon's is taken by Lamashtu.

It's a pretty simple matter for you to replace Dahak with Tiamat or Lamashtu with Demogorgon in your home version of Golarion, or alternately to drop those two in side-by-side as they exist in your game already, and we didn't do much more with those names in order to allow gamers to do so for their home games.

Hope that clears things up!

Huh. I always saw Anghazhan as the Golarion-Demogorgon... although there are also obvious ties to Lamashtu as well.

Interesting.

 

[James Jacobs]

Huh. I always saw Anghazhan as the Golarion-Demogorgon... although there are also obvious ties to Lamashtu as well.

Interesting.

There's parts of Golarion in Anghazan, for sure, as well as some of Ilsidahur (a much more obscure D&D demon lord), but that's mostly coincidental. I created Angazhan originally as a character in the background of one of our early minis products — "Throne of the Gorilla King," knowing that we were going to need some proper nouns of our own in the future. The original concept for Angazhan was basically "What if King Kong were a demon lord?"

Lamashtu pretty much took over Demogorgon's role as the "boss" (such as it is) of the Abyss, and along with it the rule over all demonkind, but I didn't want to just photocopy Demogorgon in place, so she ended up very much becoming her own creature. Which left us with the shocking lack of a dinosaur/jungle associated demon lord. Angazhan was the right choice for those. So... more or less coincidence, I guess.

As I mentioned above, I've tried to avoid a super obvious full-on "replacement" Demogorgon, because in my mind, he DOES exist in Golarion's Great Beyond. He just doesn't have many irons in the fire there—he's got most of his attention turned toward Greyhawk and the (Dungeon revised verson of) Isle of Dread! ;-)

 

[Desdichado]

So... more or less coincidence, I guess.

It all depends on what aspect of Demogorgon's iconic D&D role you focus on, I suppose. The savage jungle patronage? The aquatic aspect? The "prince of demons" aspect (given the balkanized nature of the Abyss, I always thought that title was pretty empty myself, and treated it as such) or the creator of a bunch of kinds of demons and other monsters aspect?

I guess in my mind, the first two always rose to primacy, while in Lamashtu it's clearly the second two that inform her design.

EDIT: Curiously, the image y'all've chosen for Lamashtu looks a lot like the Sabbatic Goat image of Baphomet as drawn by Eliphas Levi, however. Which is a funny coincidence.

As I mentioned above, I've tried to avoid a super obvious full-on "replacement" Demogorgon, because in my mind, he DOES exist in Golarion's Great Beyond. He just doesn't have many irons in the fire there—he's got most of his attention turned toward Greyhawk and the (Dungeon revised verson of) Isle of Dread! ;-)

That reminds me; I recently picked up pdfs of the B/X from dndclassics, and if I was going to do that, I had to pick up Keep on the Borderlands and Isle of Dread. But I also have the Isle of Dread issues from your 3.5 update kicking around on my magazine shelf somewhere. I should dig those out and read them again. I did make a standing offer to my group to run them if we need to take a break from our current game before it finishes. Or in between that campaign and our next one. Since our current campaign is Star Wars and the next projected one is Call of Cthulhu, some really iconic, classic D&D would fit in there quite nicely.