Night of the Pale

Monday, December 19, 2011

Night of the Pale is mentioned on page 249 of Pathfinder Campaign Setting: The Inner Sea World Guide. We are advised it is a night of morbid revelry, as people wait indoors for the ghosts of last year’s dead to pass by their homes.

Creative Director James Jacobs wrote the description below of the Night of the Pale and beneath that you’ll find a special Pathfinder Society Chronicle sheet you can download and apply to a Pathfinder Society character.

Illustration by John Gravato

Not all of Golarion’s holidays and festivals are times of rejoicing and delight. Holidays worshiped by dark and sinister cults and religions tend to be hidden affairs, their rituals and ceremonies involving cruelties and vile practices that send shivers of fear through gentler society. Scholars suspect that the Night of the Pale—a holiday that traditionally takes place on the last day of the year, the 31st of Kuthona—has links to several sinister religions, but today no one church has specific association with the event. Nonetheless, the Night of the Pale is an event that many look forward to all year, whether in fear or excitement.

On the Night of the Pale, it is said that the ghosts of those who died during the previous year manifest upon the world and come to visit the homes they lived in during life. Although some might think that the chance of seeing even the shade of a dearly departed one might be a blessing, the Night of the Pale is not a time for tearful reunions, for these ghosts, tradition says, do not return out of love for those they left behind but out of darker compulsions. Lingering jealousy, unfinished arguments, or the simmering need for revenge are said to be what compels the dead to return to torment the living on the Night of the Pale.

The evening of this night in many communities is celebrated by a morbid feast, the food prepared with themes revolving around graveyards, the dead, and other spooky traditions. This feast, on one level, helps the celebrants to make light of their fears while sharing good company with similarly nervous neighbors, but at another level is believed to placate vengeful spirits as toasts are raised to the memories of the recently departed. These feasts include retellings of favorite memories of the departed, in hopes of reminding the approaching ghosts of brighter and kinder memories than those that compel them to return. The feast always ends at least an hour before midnight in order to give participants time to return home, decorate doors and windows with salt and other trinkets taken from the feasting table (salted bread baked into crook-like shapes are a favorite, as these can be hung from doorknobs and eaves) to ward off evil spirits, and hide in their bedrooms until dawn. Brave youths and adventurers often deliberately stay out after midnight, either to dare the ghosts to challenge them or simply for the thrill of bucking tradition. Every Night of the Pale, it seems, there are disappearances among those who stay out after midnight, although whether these vanishings are the result of dissatisfied locals taking the opportunity to run away from home, murderers or wild animals or other mundane dangers, or the vengeful spirits carrying off their victims depends upon the circumstances.

The morning after a Night of the Pale is also the first day of the new year—a time that many celebrate more as a relief for surviving the night before than in anticipation of what the new year might bring, although regional preferences for how this day is celebrated vary enough that no single tradition holds over the other. Save, of course, the lingering fears of what dread spirits might come knocking upon warded doors one year away...

As always, I am interested in reading your thoughts on future holiday write-ups and boons. This is especially true in regard to the various equinoxes and solstices.

Download the Night of the Pale Boon! - (111 KB zip/PDF) This Boon is no longer available as of 1/9/12.

Mike Brock
Pathfinder Society Campaign Coordinator

Golarion Day: Chopper's Revenge!

Thursday, January 13, 2010

Last week, with the first installment of Golarion Day, I put out a call for everyone to start sending in ideas for future blog posts. Those requests are pouring in, but it's gonna take a few weeks for us to sort through them and match requests to the right content and all that. But keep the suggestions coming!

This week, though, I thought I'd show off a bit of my office Sandpoint campaign. This game's one of the largest I've ever run—the initial goal was to have it be a game that the entire editorial pit could take part in as a team-building exercise. But as we've hired more folks, and as friends of current players have joined, the size of the group has exploded into an intimidating group of nine players. The campaign itself is called The Shadow Under Sandpoint. You can check out the campaign journal over on our boards—it's generally only a few game sessions behind where we're at.

Illustration by John Gravato

One of the tricky things about such a large group, of course, is designing encounters that challenge the group. You can't just boost the CR of the bad guys and make them individually tougher, because that'll only mean that the bad guy will have a much better chance to kill a few PCs before he's defeated—you don't want to kill PCs in every fight, since that's a downward spiral. Instead, I've found that having one particularly tough boss monster surrounded by lots of less powerful minions works really well—gives everyone in the party someone to face off against, but also lets me have big key encounters with major bad guys.

Such was the case several months ago, when I knew the PCs were going up against the ghost of an infamous local murderer named Jervis Stoot. Old Stoot (known as Chopper back during the height of his murdering days) is part of Sandpoint's history, and those who've played in "Rise of the Runelords" have probably heard his name. He was never a villain in that Adventure Path, though, so that made him a perfect source for a logical foe for the PCs to face in this campaign.

So when I designed Stoot, I made him a ghost that would provide a challenge to the party (they were all about 4th or 5th level at the time), but who also had some built-in options to call upon allies. Giving him a new ghost ability that allows him to summon birds and command avians made sense (he was a Pazuzu cultist back in the day, after all!). The fight ended up playing out over two sessions—one atop the old light while Stoot had possessed the town sheriff, and then a second after they defeated the possessed sheriff and chased the ghost back to his island den to finish him off. In both cases, I threw in some bird swarms to help amp up the terror and mayhem, resulting in what normally would have been a CR 8 encounter, but when you have nine players, that's what you gotta do!

(And don't tell my players, but they've not seen the last of old Stoot's ghost yet! That's why I'm not listing the way in which you can permanently put Stoot to rest, after all...)

In any event, if any of you are playing a game set in Sandpoint, or if you're looking for a cool, flavorful ghost to use, I thought for today that I'd throw Stoot's stat block in for folks to check out. You'll note I did something a little weird with this ghost—he should normally only have two special ghost abilities, but I gave him three—corrupting touch, avian mastery, and malevolence. In order to balance things, I also gave him an additional weakness and nerfed his malevolence ability. In other words, feel free when you're making villains up for your home game to fiddle with the rules!

JERVAS STOOT CR 6
XP 2,400
Male human ghost rogue 5
CE Medium undead (incorporeal)
Init +7; Senses darkvision 60 ft.; Perception +13

DEFENSE
AC 19, touch 19, flat-footed 15 (+5 deflection, +3 Dex, +1 dodge)
hp 61 (5d8+35)
Fort +6, Ref +7, Will +2
Defensive Abilities channel resistance +4, evasion, incorporeal, rejuvenation, trapfinding, trap sense +1; Immune undead traits
Weakness avians

OFFENSE
Speed fly 30 ft. (perfect)
Melee corrupting touch +6 (6d6; Fort. DC 17 half)
Special Attacks avian mastery, malevolence 1/day (DC 17), sneak attack +3d6

STATISTICS
Str —, Dex 16, Con —, Int 12, Wis 13, Cha 20
Base Atk +3; CMB +3; CMD 16
Feats Combat Reflexes, Dodge, Improved Initiative, Toughness
Skills Bluff +11, Climb +8, Craft (woodcarving) +9, Craft (metalworking) +9, Escape Artist +11, Knowledge (local) +9, Knowledge (nature) +6, Perception +13, Sense Motive +9, Stealth +15
Languages Common, Thassilonian
SQ fast stealth, surprise attack

SPECIAL ABILITIES
Avian Mastery (Su) Stoot can command and influence all normal birds as if via dominate animal at will. He can control any number of birds within a 60-foot radius in this manner. Once per day, he may cast summon swarm as a spell-like ability to summon a swarm of crows (treat as a bat swarm sans the wounding ability).
Weakness to Avians (Ex) Damage inflicted on Stoot from any avian's natural attacks is resolved as if he did not possess the incorporeal defensive ability. This includes creatures that have assumed the form of an avian.

James Jacobs
Creative Director

DISCLAIMER: I know how much fun some folks have checking our work on stat blocks, but since I'm more or less copy/pasting these stats directly from my campaign notes without going back to give them the same level of checking I'd give something going into print... there might be an error in there somewhere! (This is also an excuse for me to see how harrowing it is to format a stat block for a blog post... wish me luck!)