Lipika

Most aeons are experienced by mortals as avatars of contrast and opposites: light and darkness, beginnings and endings, freedom and fate, and so on.  Closer in apprehension to the Monad itself, lipikas know that these opposites are merely points along the same rippling sine wave of existence.  Moreover, lipikas are the Lords of Karma and the guardians of the Akashic Record, ensuring that the psychic truths of every moment are faithfully recorded and that karmic cleansings or stains are properly apportioned. 

But since the Lords move in mysterious ways, that means powerful adventurers can easily fall afoul of them.  Lipikas have their own imperatives and their own agendas—as Bestiary 5 says, “A lipika is just as likely to chastise a righteous person for her charity and goodness as it is to scold an evil creature for its misdeeds.”  All adventuring parties will know when they encounter a lipika (at least at first) is that karma is being adjusted…but not how, why, or where they fall in the accounting.

Adventurers raise a sunken island nation, capturing the imagination of the multitudes and royalty alike.  After helping to reactivate the risen capital city’s power system, the sellswords are on hand as their lord uses genie wishcraft to build a bridge of crystal and song to connect the island to the mainland.  Just as it is about to be completed, a lipika arrives to shatter the bridge, broadcasting visions of future disasters rippling across the multiverse due to the karmic resonances the wishcraft bridge is destined to transmit.

Seeking satori, a member of an adventuring party (likely a druid, monk, mystic theurge, or samsaran) discovers he must first defeat a lipika.  Worse yet, he must do it one-on-one (though his adventuring companions can certainly ward off the Advanced time elementals (see The Tome of Horrors Complete), time and occult dragons, and lesser aeons that might accompany such an august creature).  If the seeker of wisdom has been both dutiful in his studies and in leaving himself open to revelation, he will glean that the “defeat” does not have to be through single combat, but perhaps through the casting of spells and their opposites, a dreamscape philosophy debate, or by beneficially altering the karma of another.  That said, a lipika will likely try to provoke a physical confrontation first, if only to more quickly weed out the unready and karmically stained.

If there is a psychic record of the entire multiverse…might there not also be a psychic eraser?  This is the argument of the sage Algernon Absalos…or at least it was, before he was torn apart in his own study by ravening hounds of Tindalos.  His notes and papers postulate a kind of anti-lipika, to whom the Akashic Record is merely a slate that must eventually be erased.  Adventurers who explore further may find themselves being admonished by the fiery-winged exscinder archons…a sure sign they are on the path of some essential truth…or some truly foul lie.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 5 8–9

In our world, Lipikas are also the Lords of Karma, but details on where they come from are obscure to the casual Googler.  The name is Sanskrit, and I’ve seen them variously described as gods, devas, and angels.  They’re apparently important in Theosophy, but that is a subject I know zero about…and searching Wikipedia left me, if anything, knowing even less than when I started.

What would a lipika listen to?  With that sine-wave bass, Pogo of course.

Edit: Apologies to my Blogger readers.  Once again you are getting this link late.

Tuesday night I took advantage of UMD being on spring break to play songs that were longer than usual and world beater/Irisher than usual.

Enjoy new music from WHY?, Diet Cig, Sinkane, and Fleet Foxes; anniversary flashbacks to U2, Arcade Fire, and LCD Soundsystem; and some surprises.

Click here to stream/download, don’t panic at the IRS intro PSA, and enjoy!  (Link good till tonight (Monday, 03/27/17) at midnight.)