The Shadow Under Sandpoint Campaign Begins!

Monday, April 6, 2009

Last Thursday an unlikely group of strangers gathered on the docks of Sandpoint, beginning what will doubtlessly be one of the most unfortunate misadventures in the usually peaceful town's history. This marks the beginning of the Paizo editorial pit's new biweekly Pathfinder RPG Campaign: James Jacobs's The Shadow Under Sandpoint! Watch the calamity unfold with ongoing character reports, missives, comments, journal entries, and sketches on the Shadow Under Sandpoint thread here.

And wish good luck to the people of Sandpoint—they're going to need it.

F. Wesley Schneider
Managing Editor

The Sandpoint Devil

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

The real world is a great resource for monsters. Many of the game's critters come from real-world myth and legend, but one venue that seems to have been largely ignored are cryptozoological accounts. I'm talking about Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster, of course, but also about more obscure creatures like the hodag, Mokele-Mbembe, and the Yowie. And, of course, the Jersey Devil, the inspiration for one of Pathfinder's first new monsters. Rumors and legends of a rarely seen but terrible monster have preyed upon the fears of Sandpoint's populace for decades. The rumors listed below comprise the most common—though oft-conflicting—tales regarding the famed Sandpoint devil.

Bad Omen: It's bad luck to see the Sandpoint devil. Any who do are cursed to suffer an ill fate. Before tragedies, murders, and shipwrecks, it's said the devil flies unseen by all but the doomed through the night sky.

Devil-Spawned: The Sandpoint devil is the son of a widow named Agatha Leeds, a woman who used to live north of town and was said to practice dark magics and consort with evil beings. When she wandered into town round with child, she ignored all questions about her pregnancy. Weeks later, her home was found reduced to cinders with its mysterious owner missing. It wasn't long thereafter that the first sightings of the Sandpoint devil began.

Disappearances: Evidence of Sandpoint devil sightings often disappears before it can be examined. Tracks, bitten animals, weapons dripping with its blood, and similar such evidence simply vanish, no matter how well watched or guarded. In fact, even those who have sought to catch or kill the Sandpoint devil have disappeared without a trace, both during their hunts and in the weeks after returning home from a failed attempt.

Fire Starter: Paintings and reports of the Sandpoint devil mysteriously catch on fire, sometimes burning entire homes to the ground.

Immortal Protector: Some Varisians claim they Sandpoint devil has lived along the Lost Coast for thousands of years, and that it protects the coast's resources from those who seek to exploit the land. Its modern misdeeds are merely its way of fending off the most recent encroachment of civilization.

One of Many: The Sandpoint devil is sometimes seen in the company of other local legends and spooks, most commonly a white stag, the ghost of a young girl, and a zombie with missing feet.

James Jacobs
Editor-in-Chief, Pathfinder

Sandpoint

Friday, June 8, 2007

Last week we showed you the map of Varisia, the region in which the Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path takes place. This week, we're zooming in to focus on Sandpoint, the quaint fishing town that provides the backdrop for the first adventure in the path, "Burnt Offerings." See if you can spot which street names and city features were snatched wholesale from Editor-in-Chief James Jacobs's childhood!

James Sutter
Assistant Editor, Pathfinder

Founded on Murder!

Monday, May 21, 2007

The foundation of a new town is not a matter to be taken lightly, nor one to be funded by one soul. Four powerful families from the city of Magnimar had designs on settling a region 50 miles to the northeast, and rather than work against each other, they consolidated their efforts and formed the Sandpoint Mercantile League. These four families, the Ameikos (glassmakers and jewelers), the Valdemars (shipbuilders and carpenters), the Scarnettis (loggers and millers), and the Deverins (farmers and brewers), sailed north to claim their land after securing the rights from the Magnimar Charterhouse. Yet when they arrived, they found the place already settled by a particularly large tribe of Varisians, who held the region as a traditional place to spend the winter.

Unwilling to change course, the Sandpoint Mercantile League began a series of talks with the Varisians, promising them an important place in the new township. Unfortunately, after a week of talks seemed to go nowhere, an impatient man named Alamon Scarnetti took matters into his own hands. Rounding up a group of his brothers and cousins, the Scarnettis mounted a murderous raid on the Varisian camp, intending to kill them all and leave evidence implicating local goblins for the deed. Yet the Scarnettis, too drunk and overconfident, only managed to kill five Varisians before they were themselves forced to flee, leaving behind three of their own. The incident caused a several-month delay, but eventually amends were made and the town of Sandpoint was born.

Despite these violent first months, in the forty-odd years since Sandpoint was founded, things have been rather calm and quiet. The late unpleasantness, involving Chopper's murderous spree and followed closely by the Sandpoint Fire, constitute the worst thing that's happened to the town. Yet Sandpoint's current mayor, Kendra Deverin (female human aristocrat 3/expert 4), can't shake the feeling that the unpleasantness was but a preamble, and that dark times indeed are coming to her home town.

The excellent headshot accompanying this post is one of several Andrew Hou's worked up for Pathfinder—Kendra Deverin herself. Kendra has served as Sandpoint's mayor for the past five years. Lawmaker, judge, and general peacemaker, she has proven to be both an adept diplomat and stern hand when need be, both skills honed during her youth in Magnimar. With a personal—some say sisterly—style of governing, most of Sandpoint's citizens hold deep respect for their fiery-haired mayor.

James Jacobs
Editor-in-Chief, Pathfinder

The Late Unpleasantness

Thursday, May 17, 2007

Though he's too busy statting up Orcus and Iggwilv for Dungeon 149 to make a post himself, Pathfinder Editor-in-Chief James Jacobs thought you might be interested in a bit of Sandpoint lore he's been working on for "Burnt Offerings":

When Jervis Stoot made clear his intentions to build a home on the island just north of the Old Light, locals paid him no mind. Jervis had already garnered something of a reputation as an eccentric for his one-man crusade to carve depictions of birds on every deserving building in town. Stoot never made a carving without securing permission, but his incredible skill made it a given that if Stoot picked your building as the site of his latest project, you seized the opportunity. Sporting a Stoot soon grew to be something of a bragging point, and Jervis eventually extended his talent to include ship figureheads and even carriages. Those who asked or tried to pay him for his skill were rebuffed, Stoot telling them, "There ain't no birds in that wood for me t'set free," and going on his way. Stoot often wandering the streets for days before noticing a hidden bird in a fencepost, lintel, steeple, or doorframe and securing permission to "release" it with his trusty carving knives.

Stoot's excuse for wanting to move to the isle seemed innocent enough—the place was a haven for local birdlife, and his claim of "Wantin' ta be with th' birds" seemed to make sense. So much, in fact, that the guild of Carpenters (with whom Stoot had maintained a friendly competition for several years) volunteered to build a staircase, free of charge, along the southern cliff face so that Stoot could come and go from his new home with ease. For fifteen years, Stoot lived on the island. His trips into town grew less and less frequent, making it something of an event when he chose a building to host a new Stoot.

Sandpoint was no stranger to crime, or even to murder. Once or twice a year, passions flared, robberies went bad, jealousy grew too much to bear, or one-too-many drinks were drunk, and someone would end up dead. But when body count suddenly began to mount, the town had no idea how to react. Sandpoint's sheriff at the time was a no-nonsense man named Casp Avertin, a retired city watch officer from Magnimar, yet even he was ill-prepared for the murderer who came to be known as Chopper. Over the course of one long winter month, every few days brought a new victim to light. Each was found in the same terrible state, bodies bearing deep cutting wounds to the neck and torso, with both hands and feet severed and stacked nearby and the eyes and tongue missing entirely, plucked crudely from the head.

Over the course of that terrible month, Chopper claimed 25 victims. His uncanny knack at eluding traps and pursuit quickly wore on the town guard, taking particular toll on Sheriff Avertin, who increasingly took to drinking. Many believe that he even took to beating his wife and daughter, and that, in its own way, may have been the genesis of the Sandpoint Fire. In any event, Sheriff Avertin himself became Chopper's last victim, slain when he finally caught the killer mutilating his latest victim in the side street that would come to be known as Chopper's Alley. Yet in the battle that followed, Avertin managed a telling blow against the murderer. When the town guard found the sheriff dead with another victim several minutes later, they were able to follow the bloody trail left by the killer.

A trail that led straight to the stairs of Stoot's Rock.

At first, the town guard refused to believe the implications, and feared that Chopper had come to claim poor Jervis Stoot as his 26th victim. Yet what the guards found in the modest home atop the isle, and in the larger complex of rooms that had been carved into the bedrock below, left no room for doubt. Jervis Stoot and Chopper were the same, and the eyes and tongues of all 25 victims were found in a horrific altar to a birdlike demon whose name none dared speak aloud. Stoot himself was found dead at the base of the altar, having plucked his own eyes and tongue loose for a final offering. The guards collapsed the entrance to the chambers, burned Stoot's house, tore down the stairs, and did their best to forget. Stoot himself was burned on the beach in a pyre, his ashes then blessed and then scattered in an attempt to stave off an unholy return of his evil spirit from beyond the grave. And in the months to follow, Sandpoint did its best to forget the terror, although even today, children who remember the dark times only six years ago sometimes wake with nightmare visions of Chopper hiding under their beds.