And this about Golarion:  As many as several aspects of technology and civilization have progressed, in the richest countries here and there, since Aroden died.

This is not really what you would expect to see as the result of there being a planetwide apocalypse, many countries and trade routes disintegrating, and also, just saying, the god of civilizational progress dying.

In today's Golarion the printing presses in Taldor and Galt and Tian Xia are crude things, used more for single news-broadsheets printed once a day than for bookbinding.  The previous price-competition point was Scrivener's Chant, not monasteries; and most people rich enough to afford books in the first place, would like nice Scrivened books rather than messy inkstained printed books.  But those printing presses exist, and as books move into new genres like 'romance novel' the people who read those new genres are willing to tolerate some inkstains.  Only in the last century has it become so.

This isn't normally what you'd expect about a planet in which it has been eight thousand years since the Age of Darkness ended, where literacy existed and also the study of mathematics advanced enough for topology through those eight thousand years.

Why then?

Obviously, because the net weight of gods was against it, before -- while prophecy was unshattered; but now, prophecy is lost, and whatever weight of divine action was holding back the technological tide, it is no longer considered sustainable at a worthwhile cost.

And this about Golarion:  As many as several aspects of technology and civilization have progressed, in the richest countries here and there, since Aroden died.

This is not really what you would expect to see as the result of there being a planetwide apocalypse, many countries and trade routes disintegrating, and also, just saying, the god of civilizational progress dying.

In today's Golarion the printing presses in Taldor and Galt and Tian Xia are crude things, used more for single news-broadsheets printed once a day than for bookbinding.  The previous price-competition point was Scrivener's Chant, not monasteries; and most people rich enough to afford books in the first place, would like nice Scrivened books rather than messy inkstained printed books.  But those printing presses exist, and as books move into new genres like 'romance novel' the people who read those new genres are willing to tolerate some inkstains.  Only in the last century has it become so.

This isn't normally what you'd expect about a planet in which it has been eight thousand years since the Age of Darkness ended, where literacy existed and also the study of mathematics advanced enough for topology through those eight thousand years.

Why then?

Obviously, because the net weight of gods was against it, before -- while prophecy was unshattered.  But now, prophecy is lost; and whatever weight of divine action was holding back the technological tide, it is no longer considered sustainable at a worthwhile cost.

And this about Golarion:  As many as several aspects of technology and civilization have progressed, in the richest countries here and there, since Aroden died.

This is not really what you would expect to see as the result of there being a planetwide apocalypse, many countries and trade routes disintegrating, and also, just saying, the god of civilizational progress dying.

In today's Golarion the printing presses in Taldor and Galt and Tian Xia are crude things, used more for single news-broadsheets printed once a day than for bookbinding.  The previous price-competition point was Scrivener's Chant, not monasteries; and most people rich enough to afford books in the first place, would like nice Scrivened books rather than messy inkstained printed books.  But those printing presses exist, and as books move into new genres like 'romance novel' the people who read those new genres are willing to tolerate some inkstains.  Only in the last century has it become so.

This isn't normally what you'd expect about a planet in which it has been eight thousand years since the Age of Darkness ended, where literacy existed and also mathematics advanced enough for topology, through those eight thousand years.

Why then?

Obviously, because the net weight of gods was against it, before -- while prophecy was unshattered.  But now, prophecy is lost; and whatever weight of divine action was holding back the technological tide, it is no longer considered sustainable at a worthwhile cost.