The Golarion Gazette

Over the past few months, immigration into Golarion from the Forgotten Realms has skyrocketed as Forgotten Realms adventurers flee attempts by government to expropriate their adventuring earnings. “They tried to tell me that I have to give up a fifth of all treasure I loot,” said orc fighter Varkan Morgok. “They said would only do that to adventurers make lots of treasure. But I am just third level and they do that to me too. I find portal to new land. They don’t take treasure there. I get to keep stuff I take.” Even though authorities walked back their plans following public outcry, trust has been irrevocably broken.

Nations and organizations from the Mwangi Expanse to the Stolen Lands have opened their arms to welcome the new immigrants, and many immigrants have reported being overwhelmed by the differences between the two worlds. “Back in the Forgotten Realms, I made a pact with Zargon the Returner to give me the power to mess with people’s minds and blast people with eldritch energy,” said human warlock Sarina Parker. “But I tried to look for a patron here, and none of them do the eldritch blasting thing anymore.” Heralds of traditional patron deities for adventurers are out in force attempting to woo new immigrants to their side. Several deities have begun offering new-worshipper incentives that provide supplicants with the ability to recharge multiple focus points in one rest, an ability previously accessible only at very high service tiers.

One of the most popular destinations for new arrivals to Golarion is the small port town of Otari on the Isle of Kortos, listed as an area “recommended for new adventurers” by the Pathfinder Society. New arrivals report being told by unknown individuals that they will get plenty of treasure if they board boats headed to Otari. “We’ve had half a dozen boatloads of people come here the past month, apparently being told that they could solve some sort of riddle and get rich,” said Vandy Banderdash, a high priestess of the local temple of Sarenrae. “There’s barely enough room for all of them in the temple. I can’t believe I made up that stupid coin puzzle,” Banderdash said.

Khoumrock Blackthane, a former adventurer who has taught many of the new arrivals, says that he is concerned for their ability to survive Golarion’s dangerous dungeons. “While attacking three times in the row might have been the best strategy in the Forgotten Realms, Golarion’s monsters aren’t as easy to beat that way,” said Blackthane. “We’ve been trying to place new immigrants with established Golarian adventurers who can teach them how to use tactics such as flanking and demoralization.” The transfer of knowledge is two-way, as Forgotten Realms adventurers are also known to favor improvised actions that don’t conform to traditional textbook strategies. “One of the adventurers I taught told us a story about how he grabbed an enemy’s helmet and turned it around so the enemy couldn’t see,” Blackthane said. “That’s not the kind of thing you normally see in Golarion.”

Academics have also taken interest in the immigration wave. “We’ve found that when these immigrant adventurers do try to explore outside well-trodden areas, they often encounter very powerful groups of monsters, which break the normal encounter-scaling pattern,” said Andrew Jalamari of the University of Korvosa. “And based on our interviews with the immigrants, the encounter scaling effect likely did not exist in the Forgotten Realms, or at least the range of encounter strength was much wider there.” Jalamari suspects this may mean that the encounter scaling phenomenon may be an artifact of adventurer behavior rather than monster behavior, but as of yet the true significance is still unknown.