#omnipath

 We’ve got another one of those archetypes that is a complex concept tied up in setting, and especially Adventure Path lore, that Adventurer’s Guide is so very fond of, helping to fill out character concepts that have become available in the world after the first 100 volumes of APs have become the past in the latest days of First Edition.

In this case, we’re looking at a group of fast-talking thieves that serve the Council of Thieves from the city of Westcrown, acting as representatives, blackmailers, and manipulators for the council.

However, there is more to them than meets the eye, for part of the initiation to become a brazen deceiver is to be exposed to a fragment of shadowy power that is tied to the plot of the Council of Thieves Adventure Path, which I won’t spoil here.

Suffice to say that these mystic criminals are capable of supernatural feats, though it may vary whether they started out knowing magic, or if their shadowy spellcraft is tied entirely to the power that now sits within them.

 Adding magic to their skills at oratory, these mystics can make even the most outlandish lies seem somewhat plausible, and are quite skilled liars and sneaks even when not using a performance.

They are also skilled at blending their magic and performances together seamlessly, making it hard to notice their casting, or using performance to maintain their spells.

Whether it is a shard of a shadowy demon or some other shadow power, these bards instinctly learn various shadowy spells, ranging from weakening foes to traveling short distances through shadow, seeing through or obscuring with shadow, and even conjuring or evoking half-real shadow energies as attacks.

Insidious in their lies, these bards have un uncanny knack for deception beyond their other abilities.

Interested in a stealthy bard with versatile shadow spells and the ability to lie their way out of any situation? This archetype may be for you. I recommend a high-dex stealthy build, able to distract and disrupt foes with their spells. That being said, don’t forget to diversify beyond debuff and control.

 Honestly with their shadow powers, I feel like “brazen deceiver” is kinda a weak name for the archetype, but what’s interesting is that the source of this power, despite its nature, does not affect the morality of the recipient. With that in mind, one could come up with any number of reasons why this power exists, anything from simply training to be a shadow-wielding liar to any number of shadowy patrons.

  Foul telepathic influences like the sinister omnipaths have pulled the strings of the surface world for generations, but secret ways to fight back have been crafted by those in the know, such as the way of the shadow-liar, figures that can feed even the most outlandish false information to these piscine puppetmasters with ease.

 Always, the party’s patron has interacted with them through a proxy who comes and goes from the shadows with uncanny ease. However, one fateful mission has forced the party to come to the realization that their missions have all been lies, fabrications that were strangely believable at the time.

(Illustration by Yigit Koroglu comes from the Paizo Blog and is © Paizo Publishing.)

The last year or so has been pretty good to aboleths—their schemes are the focus of the Ruins of Azlant Adventure Path, they got a full-fledged ecology in the same, and psychic monsters and psychic magic in general have been on the upswing since the release of Occult Adventures and the Occult Bestiary.  

One of OB’s contributions was the omnipath, the information-sharing/communications network (with a dash of spying and possession) of the aboleth race.  It was also one of our first indications that the race (known as othagu or alghollthus, depending on what source you’re reading) included more phenotypes than the tentacled fish form of the aboleths and the veiled masters.  Omnipaths resemble eels, but with a horrific set of multiple jaws nested inside each other, like something from the Alien franchise.  They have equally horrifying powers: an eidetic memory, the magic of a 15th-level psychic, a touch that can turn skin transparent and vulnerable, psychic tail rays (because why not), and a telepathic mesh that allows an omnipath to share sensations and possess victims with alarming facility.  They are, in short, bad news.

If you’re an aboleth fan, omnipaths make an excellent high-level contribution to the family tree. If you’re not, they could still be useful in your campaign, either as one-off aquatic/subterranean monsters or as part of some other cabal.  Iku-tursos and siyokoys are both good options to pair omnipaths with in Pathfinder.  And in D&D (particularly 2e AD&D Spelljammer) the neogi race may have bred omnipaths to combat the threat of illithids, or developed them in some sick collaboration with the mind flayers.

The mysterious and seemingly utopian kingdom of Ildevania is protected by the Queen’s Mantle—a phrase meant as a metonym for her power and authority, but that also nods to the very real mesh of telepathic energy she shares with her trusted agents, the Footmen.  Adventurers discover that many of the Footmen are actually omnipaths and their thralls.  Is the country’s utopian peace worth the dark bargain the queen has made?

Adventurers manage to subdue the saboteur Renoir and shut the Cypher Gate, sealing in the dread energies he meant to unleash.  His capture also reveals the very real threat of the aboleth nation lurking far below the canals of Vinchenza, City of Spices and Spies.  Incensed that Renoir shattered the Calling Crystal that allowed Vinchenza’s fleet captains to speak over long distances, the Doge’s Council wants adventurers who can do the same to the aboleths—by gutting their omnipath network like so many eels.

A spiritualist unlocks a dark secret from an adventurer’s past: She was an omnipath in her past life.  Moreover, that omnipath’s mother is still alive…and seeks to make contact with her lost daughter, in whatever reincarnated form she now takes. The adventurer must wrestle with what to do with this information, investigate what new insights or powers her heritage might unlock…and face the possibility that this is all a complicated aboleth plot.

—Occult Bestiary 38–39 & Bestiary 6 204–205

In most cases, divine power is granted as a great boon to mortals as an act of graciousness from divine beings. However, other times such gifts are given specifically because the being in question lacks agency, rather than possesses it in abundance.

The Moaning Diamond, The Garnet Brand, The Untouchable Opal, and The Gasping Pearl, four artifacts of immense power over the four elements that serve as the prison of the four goodly elemental lords, whom were bound within by their evil counterparts. Though trapped, the legacies of these powerful beings remain, and some, namely Lysianassa, Empress of the Torrent, seem to be able to reach out to sensitive, morally-aligned minds, in hopes of being freed.

These so-called Pearl Seekers, should that respond to this call, become blessed with divine might just as any paladin might, but their power reflects both the watery nature of their trapped patron, and her trapped status, only able to give out power in a limited capacity. In theory, one could design equivalents for the other four elements, but we’ll get to that later.

In any case, these watery paladins eagerly seek to understand where their visions and powers come from, and once they learn the truth, seek to free her, or at least fight against evil creatures of water until an opportunity to do so arises. Outside of the Golarion setting and multiverse, however, they might simply be the devotees of some telepathic, aquatic divinity that, for a change of pace, is actually completely benevolent.

 As implied by their contact with The Gasping Pearl, these paladins have higher than average psychic sensitivity, and can make use of both occult mysticism, and sense the presence of psychically resonant auras nearby by focusing.

As they grow in power, they gain a divine mastery of aquatic environments in generally, notably able to channel pulses of energy to heal or command creatures of the water both mystic and mundane. Later on, they gain the ability to swing and throw weapons underwater with ease, and can command water currents to return their weapon to them after a throw.

Due to the trapped state of Lysianassa, these paladins do not have full access to the wide array of spells associated with paladins, but rather, cast their spells spontaneously with the knowledge of a few spells. However, they do benefit from being able to learn a variety of watery spells, namely those that use water to facilitate movement, take on a watery form, surround oneself in a mass of water to move, attack, and protect, gaining each of these spells natural. Additionally, they can also choose to learn spells that channel a high-pressure blast of water to force one or more foes back.

Finally, these paladins universally have a mount in the form of a hippocampus,increasing their mobility greatly underwater.

Looking for a paladin for your underwater adventures with a hint of “secrets of the depths”? This archetype might be what you’re looking for. With their selection of abilities, they can piscine creatures into allies, and fight normally underwater, including with thrown weapons, so by all means, go for that as well. The biggest trick with the archetype, however, will be picking out spells, and surviving underwater. You’ll want to pick spells that are very general-use, since you can’t change them out willy-nilly each day. Thankfully you get ride the waves and seamantle as bonus spells, but unless you’re playing an aquatic race, you’ll want a mundane alternative if a dispel-happy foe shows up. Blood of the Sea and Aquatic Adventures have you covered there.

 As I mentioned before, the other three goodly elemental lords in theory might indeed have equivalent scions trying to find them as well, but there is also a lot of suspicion to be thrown on this archetype by others, even in the core Golarion setting. For while there is no doubt these paladins are good, it is often difficult to say what the true nature of the being they are in contact with actually is, at least, not without extensive knowledge checks. As such, they may unfairly have their loyalties questioned by those who know enough to know that their power does not come from a contemporary god, but not enough to know who the patron actually is.

  Not all algolthuul enclaves are sinister manipulators. Some have embraced a The Light in the Deep, and battle against their kin, calling upon goodly mortals to take up a sacred mantle to beat back the aboleths, veiled masters, and omnipaths that seek to bind the world to their whim. In doing so, they open the connection between such mortals and their god, who blesses them with holy, watery might.

 Veran the Harpoon is named not for the weapon he wields, but the speed at which he enters battle using his siphon, the cecaelia warrior rushing by foes using his siphon, only to throw his current-guided starknife back into the fray, recalling it again and again as foes approach his location, only to rush away again, and he does not do so alone, commanding the fish around him to also strike.

Combining Mass Spectrometry-Based Phosphoproteomics with a Network-Based Approach to Reveal FLT3-Dependent Mechanisms of Chemoresistance. Pugliese, et al., Proteomes doi: 10.3390/proteomes9020019.

By [email protected] on September 4, 2015

Intel Omni-Path Architecture (Intel OPA) is gearing up to be released in Q4’15 which is just around the corner! As we get closer to our official release, things are getting real and we’re providing more insight into the fabric for our customers and partners. In fact, more Intel Omni-Path architectural level details were just presented on August 26th at Hot Interconnects. Before I talk about the presentation, I want to remind you that this summer at ISC ’15 in Germany, we disclosed the next level of detail and showcased the first Intel OPA public demo through the COSMOS supercomputer simulation.

For those who didn’t make it to Frankfurt, we talked about our evolutionary approach to building the next-generation fabric. We shared how we built upon key elements of Aries* interconnect and Intel® True Scale fabric technology while adding revolutionary features such as:

Traffic Flow Optimization: provides very fine grained control of traffic flow and patterns by making priority decisions so important data, like latency sensitive MPI data, has an express path through the fabric and doesn’t get blocked by low priority traffic. This results in improved performance for high priority jobs and run-to-run consistencies are improved.

Packet Integrity Protection: catches and corrects all single/multi-bit errors in the fabric without adding any additional latency like other error detection & correction technologies. Error detection/corrections is extremely important in fabrics running at the speed and scale of Intel OPA.

Dynamic Lane Scaling: guarantees that a workload will gracefully continue to completion even if one or more lanes of a 4x link fail, rather than shutting down the entire link which was the case with other high performance fabric.

These features are a significant advancement because together they help deliver enhanced performance and scalability through higher MPI rates, lower latency and higher bandwidth.  They also provide for improved Quality of Service (QoS), resiliency and reliability.  In total, these feature are designed to support the next generation of data centers with unparalleled price/performance and capability.