Crafty Pathmage or Devour in Shadow?

I'd say pathmage is definitely worse. The other one is sort of okay.

I mean I agree Pathmage is worse but DiS is still pretty bad, it feels like something a generic floating-head villain in a forgotten PS1 game would say. You know what I mean?

My votes on the Pathmage. The flavor text on Devour in Shadow at least sounds like something dumb that Geth might say to sound deep or cool. I have a hard believing that large swaths of Otaria have swapped "Get the **** out of here quick!" with "Follow the pathmage!"

Like, let's say that both Kamahl and Jeska were playing on a cliff somewhere as kids when they come across a pack of Blistering Firecat's or some crap. Can you imagine one of them saying "Oh snap! We must be following the pathmage or else we're going to get eaten! Down the hill we go!" No, you can't.....because that would be a dumb thing to say.

That does kinda describe Geth, though.

Yeah, I would definitely say the Pathmage. That just seems like a really stupid saying. "Okay, now, we're going to explore these ruins, but if they start to collapse, follow the pathmage!"

This is one scenario in which having an actual pathmage with you would make sense

Yup. Which would make it even more confusing. "So, wait, should I escape quickly, or should I follow the pathmage?"

Lel I like both of them.

Anything related to idioms and expressions tends to fail. Very rarely is it realistic, just dumb jokes generally relying on stupid puns or "durr hurr is violent and/or dumb"

... This IS Kamahl and Jeska we're talking about. Otaria is populated by morons.

I don't care how much people hate Otaria...Chainer was awesome.

Too awesome to live.

Yeah, Otaria doesn't deserve most of the hate it gets.

Yes, it really does.
Perhaps it's been a bit since you last experienced Karona, but I assure you, everything said about Otaria is deserved.
Including the stuff about Chainer, because he was the one bright spot on the continent. Every other character was either brain dead or boring.

...okay, Braids gets a pass too.

Chainer, Braids, Skellum, and, in my opinion, Ixidor. I enjoyed them all.

And honestly, The Patriarch was a pretty cool character before Onslaught.

It's not that unreasonable as an idiom. "Something attacked us in the forest, so we followed the pathmage and ended up here." sounds slightly dumb, but most idioms are probably things that feel more natural with exposure.

The issues are
a. Would enough people know and utilize the services of a pathmage for it to become a common phrase?
b. It makes it sound like there was actually a pathmage with you. If you say something is 'the dog's bollocks' people are going to assume that it's extremely good and not actually a set of canine testicles. 'Follow the pathmage' is just confusing by comparison.

The dog's bollocks sounds like something is bad rather than good.