dailybestiary:

High-CR aeons are concerned with the great dualities of existence:
creation and destruction, life and death, the peaks and ebbs of karma as it
ripples like a sine wave through existence.

The othaos, being only CR 5, handles a more elemental duality:
light and darkness, protecting the one from the other so that the worlds of
shine and shadow remain in harmony.  If a
mysterious obelisk casts an unnaturally large shadow or outsiders made of light
make an incursion onto the Material Plane, expect an othaos to manifest.

The Spear of Dumar
is an incandescent stalactite of unspeakable size that casts a rosy glow over
the dwarf city below.  It is lovingly
tended by the Glowstones, a sect of earth druids and elementalists, as well as
an othaos that has spent more than a generation inspecting the unique
crystal.  When the Spear of Dumar begins
to dim unexpectedly, the Glowstones recruit adventurers to rule out
sabotage.  They also seek a way to
contain the othaos—the aeon seems mad with grief and has already attacked two
innocent citizens.

The Mirror Plane
actually moves through the Shadow Plane, a ribbon of glowing silver in the
eternal darkness.  Othaoses guard crucial
passages and intersections along this winding road, preventing incursions from
the Shadow Plane onto the Mirrorways, and vice versa.  Owbs are these aeons’ particular foes, and
they will attack anyone who seems marked by their stain—including adventurers
injured in combat by the magical weapons or death throes of the dark folk.

The expansion of the
Incandium, Porthos’s college of magic, has led to an explosion of magical
innovations and curiosities, with recent graduates eager to apply their new
talents for the public good (or at least for public acclaim).  Chief among these are Porthos’s new streetlights—some
magical, some alchemical—which shine brighter than torches throughout the
city.  An othaos takes exception to this
interruption in the cycle of night and day, dimming or consuming every
streetlamp he can find.  With no
Lamplighters’ Guild to pick up the slack, Porthos is facing a rash of muggings,
assaults, burglaries, and attacks from cloakers, gremlins, and other
photophobic monstrosities.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 5
10

I’m no expert in the subject, but I’m pretty sure the othaos
would make a kickass Pokemon.  

Also, I could use an othaos to do something about the
apartment building across the street that has taken a chunk out of my bedroom’s
natural light.

Longtime reader/encyclopedic commenter @dr-archeville gave me the heads-up
about the Pathfinder Second Edition playtest.
I was really hoping this day wouldn’t come anytime soon, but given the
life cycle of the product line—they’d splatted pretty much all the hardcover
splatbooks it seems reasonable to splat—and the general veering of the tabletop world
away from complexity/having a stat for every situation to ease of creation/use,
2e Pathfinder was probably inevitable.  
(The learnings from the development of Starfinder was probably also a
big third factor.)

So naturally I’m a little bit nervous (like Garth in Wayne’s World, I fear change), but of
course I’m excited too.  Any time an
edition switches over, that creates opportunities for hungry creatives like
yours truly—and possibly for many of you out there as well.  

Othaoses are usually seen in Senksen, where they try to find a way to seal the umbral dragons’ Sepulchral Gate and restore the continent to its proper state. They ally most often with the mysterious nerra, though no one knows why.