Introduced in Rage of Elements, the Ardande Geniekin exists in a strange place in the history of Pathfinder as a real-world game. Following the OGL controversy of early 2023, Paizo chose to move away from the OGL and SRD which have fueled Pathfinder since its first printing. In an attempt to detach itself from anything created by Wizards of the Coast and to leave absolutely no room for WotC to claim intellectual property rights to Paizo’s work, Paizo has made massive changes to their world and their cosmology, starting with Rage of Elements. While it still contains OGL 1.0a, Rage of Elements may be the last main-line Pathfinder rules supplement to do so.
Among those major shifts is the addition of the Plane of Metal and the Plane of Wood. Previously, Golarion followed the long-standing DnD cosmology of four elemental planes. Along with these new planes (described as long-lost returning planes in the in-world lore) comes two new versatile heritages: the Ardande Geniekin and the Talos Geniekin.
