GM Bold Strider's PFS 00-07 Among the Living (Inactive)

Game Master rpblue

Known as the Grim Harvestman, the Harbinger of Unexpected Tragedy, and Most Hated Rival of Pharasma, the godling Zyphus holds dominion over unexpected death. His cults, though small in number, have spread throughout Golarion and seek to extend his glory from their graveyards and barrows. True believers of Zyphus teach their followers that souls who perish by accident do not travel on to Pharasma’s Boneyard in the Great Beyond, but are instead captured by the Grim Harvestman and malignantly absorbed, making their deity ever more powerful. Most of the Zyphus cults remove themselves from civilization, orchestrating small accidents and disasters to feed their master’s will. A few overtly assault the establishment, planning and executing large events such as ferry sinkings, mass fires, and building collapses.

Never before has a Zyphus cult planned an event that could unexpectedly wipe out a city, a region, or even a whole country. Until now.

Bodriggan Wuthers was an orphan of unknown ancestry, found 20 years ago on the doorstep of the Pathfinder Lodge of Taldor’s capital, Oppara. He was raised in an orphanage, but the Taldan Pathfinders made it a point to look in on him from time to time, encouraging the boy’s curiosity and pushing him toward the life of the vagabond scholar. They got what they desired. When Wuthers turned 16, he left the orphanage behind and traveled to Absalom to join the Pathfinder Society. After a few years of training and following Venture-Captain Eliza Petulengro, Wuthers settled easily into his routine, traveling Avistan and Garund seeking greater glory for himself and the Society through treasure hunting. He quickly made a name for himself, battling through a host of demon-possessed apes in the Screaming Jungle at age 18 to recover the Garls Harp, an Azlanti musical instrument thought lost to time and memory. His tale of that find saw his first of many reports appear in the Pathfinder Chronicles and his fame as a Pathfinder was sewn into the fabric of the Society.

Unfortunately for Wuthers, that fame drew unwanted attention. A cleric of Zyphus, a Taldan named Fel Bustrani, saw in the young Pathfinder an opportunity for his own glory and for the glory of the Grim Harvestman. He contacted Wuthers a year ago and regaled him with an amazing story of a lost artifact of Zyphus, known as the Zyphus Stone, that was ritually sealed in an underground tomb by descendants of Lost Azlant when Oppara was nothing more than an indigenous fishing village on the River Porthmos. Bustrani told Wuthers that the stone was a “living artifact” designed to bring Zyphus’s faithful back to life if they died in service to their Grim god. In truth, the descendants of Lost Azlant who buried the stone knew the terrible powers it held, knew it could populate the world with zombies, but hid it hoping to later study its terrible power. They buried one of their own with the stone to see what would happen after prolonged exposure to its magic. The Azlanti never returned for the artifact, but the young man left behind was twisted into a horrible caricature of humanity—a rotting, disease-filled Zyphus zombie with the power to raise regular zombies by feeding on corpses.

Bustrani invited Wuthers to return to Taldor’s capital and help the cleric access the stone’s resting place, known as the Chamber of the Stone, which Bustrani recently located beneath Oppara’s famed House of the Immortal Son, an opera house that was once a temple to Aroden. Misleading Wuthers by posing as a cleric of Irori, the cult leader and the Pathfinder quietly gained access to the opera house’s cobweb-filled storage area and began digging, convincing the management of the Immortal Son that a find of this caliber beneath their theater would put nobles into seats for years to come. It took quite some time to dig through the bedrock beneath Oppara, but three months ago they finally punched through the last few inches and became the first living beings to gaze into the Chamber of the Stone in more than 6,000 years. The chamber’s only resident was the Azlanti that had been left behind, sprawled across a raised dais beside a huge block of stone in which had been carved the symbol of Zyphus: a heavy pick made of a femur, skull, and rib. Assuming the Azlanti was a preserved corpse, Wuthers approached the stone and immediately began sketching and documenting the find. Bustrani allowed the Pathfinder a few moments of glory, more to keep his attention averted than anything else, and then uttered the phrase the Grim Harvestman had revealed to him in a dream. The phrase, a garbled mishmash of various ancient tongues, brought the stone and the Azlanti zombie to life. When the chamber filled with green light and the zombie climbed to its feet, Wuthers knew he’d been betrayed. Before he could reach for a weapon, the cleric of Zyphus struck him down with the heavy pick he’d used to clear the chamber’s tunnels. He ordered the Zyphus zombie to feed, and in minutes Wuthers rose again as something terrible.

With the first phase of his mission complete, Fel Bustrani contacted his cult confederates hidden throughout Taldor and summoned them to him. Their time had come. Using the Zyphus zombie, the unwitting employees and actors of the House of the Immortal Son, and their Zyphus-granted zeal, they would spread unexpected death throughout Oppara, Taldor, and beyond. They would turn the world into zombies and dance in the glory of their all-powerful god.