Pathfinder - Module - The Harrowing.pdf - Modules - cinciol11

By Crystal Frasier

a pathfinder rpg adventure for level 9

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the

Harrowing

t he forei gn trad er

The Midnight Circus

The Demon's Fen

1 square = 5 feet

1 square = 10 feet

The Prophet's Garden

The Manmolds

1 square = 5 feet

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the

Harrowing

Credits

Author • Crystal Frasier

Cover Artist • Kieran Yanner

Cartography • Robert Lazzaretti

Interior Artists • Yngvar Asplund and Dmitry Burmak

Original Harrow Deck Art and Concepts • Kyle Hunter

Creative Director • James Jacobs

Senior Art Director • Sarah E. Robinson

Managing Editor • F. Wesley Schneider

Development Lead • Mark Moreland

Editing and Development • Judy Bauer, Christopher Carey,

Rob McCreary, James L. Sutter, and Vic Wertz

Editorial Assistance • Jason Bulmahn, Stephen Radney-MacFarland, and Sean K Reynolds

Graphic Designer • Andrew Vallas

Production Specialist • Crystal Frasier

Editorial Intern • Michael Kenway

Publisher • Erik Mona

Paizo CEO • Lisa Stevens

Vice President of Operations • Jefrey Alvarez

Director of Sales • Pierce Watters

Finance Manager • Christopher Self

Staf Acc0untant • Kunji Sedo

Technical Director • Vic Wertz

Marketing Manager • Hyrum Savage

Special Thanks

The Paizo Customer Service, Warehouse, and Website Teams

The Harrowing is a Pathinder Module designed for four 9th-level characters and uses the medium XP advancement track. This module is

designed for play in the Pathinder campaign setting, but can easily be adapted for use with any world. This module is compliant with the

Open Game License (OGL) and is suitable for use with the Pathinder Roleplaying Game and the 3.5 edition of the world’s oldest fantasy

roleplaying game. The OGL can be found on page 32 of this product.

This product makes use of the Pathinder RPG Core Rulebook , Pathinder RPG Advanced Player’s Guide, Pathinder RPG Bestiary , Pathinder RPG

Bestiary 2 , and Pathinder RPG GameMastery Guide . These rules can be found online as part of the Pathinder Roleplaying Game Reference

Document at paizo.com/pathinderRPG/prd .

Product Identity : The following items are hereby identiied as Product Identity, as deined in the Open Game License version 1.0a, Section 1(e), and are not Open

Content: All trademarks, registered trademarks, proper names (characters, deities, etc.), dialogue, plots, storylines, locations, characters, artwork, and trade dress.

Elements that have previously been designated as Open Game Content or are in the public domain are not included in this declaration.

Open Content : Except for material designated as Product Identity (see above), the game mechanics of this Paizo Publishing game product are Open Game

Content, as deined in the Open Game License version 1.0a Section 1(d). No portion of this work other than the material designated as Open Game Content

may be reproduced in any form without written permission.

Paizo golem logo, Pathinder, and GameMastery are registered trademarks of Paizo Publishing, LLC; Pathinder Roleplaying Game, Pathinder Campaign Setting,

Printed in China.

Paizo Publishing, LLC

7120 185th Ave NE, Ste 120

Redmond, WA 98052-0577

paizo.com

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the

Harrowing

…And so the charming Sonnorae braved crumbling towers in this age of endless night,

gobbling up tales and tomes lest they be forever lost. Then into her secret hold she’d

wend, to keep them safe forever more. But careless was charming Sonnorae, and once

behind her, the door did close. Trapped forever and a day, she stumbled into the darkness

of madness and genius and back again, inally taking her beloved tales and whittling mouths

so they might speak and legs that they might walk. But beings of ink, not lesh, were they,

half-formed and illed with hate…

—E xcErpt f r o m V arisian f o l k ta l E

the

Harrowing

Adventure Background

In the Age of Darkness, the Varisian scribes and storytellers

of the Imlios family hoarded knowledge while civilization

struggled for its very survival. Over the harsh centuries, their

line dwindled to a single childless bard: Sonnorae. Fearing

her family’s knowledge would be lost with her inevitable

death, she sheared of a corner of the malleable Dimension

of Dreams and crated her own demiplane in which she

could store the greatest tales of her people, anchoring this

extraplanar archive to her ancestral harrow deck; she named

the demiplane the Harrowed Realm.

Sonnorae, in her old age, retreated into the Harrowed

Realm, where she hoped to live forever with her treasured

tales. Over time, the stories she collected took on physical

form, but these creatures were trapped within the

constraints of their individual stories, ever repeating the

same actions, and struggling to reach the same goals.

Sonnorae’s tales ached to be as real as their creator.

The most powerful among them conspired to overthrow

the bard, murdering her and devouring her body. These

eight Conspirators gained power and free will through

their betrayal, but remained too insubstantial to leave the

Harrowed Realm; instead they became its mad rulers.

The blue dragon Zassrion seized Sonnorae’s impregnable

castle and with it the Harrowed Realm’s only connection to

the real world. Unable to leave his home plane, the dragon

instead exerted his inluence over mortals handling the

very harrow deck to which the Realm was tethered—the

Deck of Harrowed Tales . Zassrion corrupted the deck's

mortal wielders and drew countless humanoids into the

Harrowed Realm, grating their bodies onto his own in

hopes of becoming real and escaping into Golarion.

The current carrier of the Deck of Harrowed Tales and

Zassrion’s latest servant, a Varisian soothsayer named All-

Seeing Hajeck, travels as a fortune-teller with the Umbra

Circus. Days ago, she drew in a well-known scholar of

ancient Varisian folklore, Meloigne Garracy, to sacriice to

her dark master.

The ConspiraTors

The most powerful creatures in the Harrowed Realm

are known as the Conspirators, as each of them played

a role in Sonnorae’s murder millennia ago. Though

they wield considerable inluence in the demiplane,

all are storykin themselves, and thus still live out the

stories prescribed for them. As a result, they haven’t

worked together since their initial usurpation of

Sonnorae’s power, and their inability to cooperate

means they remain in something of a stalemate

regarding overall control of the demiplane. Though

obviously not one of the bard’s murderers, Sonnorae’s

remnant in the Prophet’s Garden still possesses one of

her tokens and some of her powers, and thus is treated

(and sometimes referred to) as a Conspirator herself by

the simpleminded storykin.

Much of the PCs’ adventure within the Harrowed

Realm revolves around obtaining the Conspirators’

tokens: eight nonmagical gems torn from Sonnorae’s

kapenia during her murder. Except from Zassrion

(who kept her kapenia), each Conspirator kept one of

the gems as a trophy, but even ater thousands of years

the lost gems yearn to return to the scarf hanging in

Zassrion’s library. When brought together, the tokens

pull hard, leading the way to the Striding Fortress.

Retrieving Sonnorae’s stolen tokens serves a

secondary purpose: when the jewels are fastened to

her tattered kapenia in area I12 , the restored garment

transforms into a wondrous treasure capable of sending

the PCs back to the Material Plane.

Card : The Uprising (the next Conspirator the PCs

encounter gains the unluck curse as described on

page 557 of the Pathinder RPG Core Rulebook )

motivations for doing so are secondary. The adventure

assumes they ind their way there in search of a lost

Varisian scholar, but feel free to change this as necessary

to better it The Harrowing into your ongoing campaign.

A d v e n t u r e S u m m A r y

Investigating the disappearance of scholar Meloigne

Garracy, the PCs are drawn into the mysterious Harrowed

Realm. Inside, the PCs learn that Meloigne is the prisoner

of Zassrion the Patchwork Lord. The heroes must travel

across the Harrowed Realm to meet its rulers, powerful

beings known as the Conspirators. Tokens from the

Conspirators, originally stolen from the Realm’s creator,

point the way to Zassrion’s castle and the only means of

their eventual escape from the Harrowed Realm.

Introduction

The majority of this adventure takes place in the Harrowed

Realm, and the means by which the PCs get there and their

t h e h Arrowed r eAlm

Originally a corner of the Dimension of Dreams, the

Harrowed Realm was cleaved of and transformed into

a sealed demiplane thousands of years ago. It remains

anchored to Golarion through the Deck of Harrowing Tales .

Much of the plane’s “natural” appearance is stagecrat

and illusion. The sky is a featureless dome painted a faded

blue, while the sun and moon cross through day and night

on massive, mechanical arms. Digging more than a few

feet into the earth reveals moldering planks, decaying

pipes, and eventually cold stone going on forever.

Pathfinder - Module - The Harrowing.pdf

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