Pathfinder Adventure Path #198: No Breath to Cry (Season of Ghosts 3 of 4)

5.00/5 (based on 3 ratings)
Pathfinder Adventure Path #198: No Breath to Cry (Season of Ghosts 3 of 4)
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After making an astounding discovery in the ruins of an old monastery, the heroes of the town of Willowshore return home to face the coming of winter. As unusually powerful storms, an increased number of hauntings, and other strange supernatural events continue to build in town, it becomes apparent that the troubles facing Willowshore are far greater than originally thought. But now, at last, the heroes know what they can do about it. The source of their home town's troubles lie beyond, in other realities and dimensions, but the truths the heroes are destined to learn there will shock them to the core!

No Breath to Cry is a Pathfinder adventure for four 7th-level characters. This adventure continues the Season of Ghosts Adventure Path, a four-part monthly campaign in which a band of adventurers must protect their hometown from supernatural peril. This adventure also includes articles about the sinister fiends known as nindorus and the exploration of other realities, new magic items, rituals, and strange supernatural powers to discover, and a mix of brand new monsters to threaten your PCs.

Each monthly full-color softcover Pathfinder Adventure Path volume contains an in-depth adventure scenario, stats for several new monsters, and support articles meant to give Game Masters additional material to expand their campaign.

Written by: Dan Cascone and Eleanor Ferron, with Jeremy Blum, Dana Ebert, Joshua Kim, and Michelle Y. Kim.

ISBN-13: 978-1-64078-551-9

The Season of Ghosts Adventure Path is sanctioned for use in Pathfinder Society Organized Play. The rules for running this Adventure Path and Chronicle Sheets are available as a free download (860 KB PDF).

Note: This product is part of the Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscription.

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5/5


Favorite AP to date!

5/5

More complex, and probably more work for the GM to run than prior adventures in this AP. It is full of fantastically troubling events, fun set pieces, and creative use of non-combat subsystems. There are some great potential twists, should things really go off the rails, and some satisfying payoffs to previously laid plans. It's hard to say too much more without spoiling key aspects. Great adventure with a fantastically written Toolbox.


A new standard for 2e APs

5/5

This adventure path feels like the one I've been waiting for. The attention to detail, the charm and flavor of Willowshire and its traditions, the excellent and often horrific art, the novel and entertaining game structure tying in various subsystems, and the twisting but coherent plot all make me excited at the prospect of running it. I especially appreciate that the antagonists of this book all have nuances and ambitions aside from "being evil" or "killing the PCs". The backmatter about nindorus is also fantastic. I'd recommend this to any adventuring party, even those just starting out in Pathfinder 2e.


Paizo Employee Sales & eCommerce Assistant

2 people marked this as a favorite.

Announced for December! Product image and description are not final and may be subject to change.


Sounds nice!


Nindoru are new, right?

Paizo Employee Creative Director

18 people marked this as a favorite.
keftiu wrote:
Nindoru are new, right?

Yup.

Spoiler:
I wanted a new type of chaotic evil fiend for this Adventure Path that wasn't demons or qlippoth, which don't really match the themes I was going for in a Shenmen Adventure Path.

And since Shenmen isn't based on a specific real-world analogue, but is more (like Ustalav) a synthesis of horror from all across Asia (like how Ustalav is but for Europe & the USA), I decided to build something brand new and that wasn't direclty tied to a real-world evil spirit/demon mythology*, and worked with Kent to get some amazing concept art done. You've seen some of his concepts recently for our new dragons. I hope to be able to share some nindoru concept art as we get closer to Season of Ghosts's release date later this year.

*But that still comes from a place that I hope feels like it COULD have come from a real-world evil spirit/demon mythology.

This volume has a 6 page article about them, but we'll have 8 nindorus with stats in all spread out across books 2–4.

Dark Archive

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Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

I do love that both this and stolen fates introduces new fiends I wasn't expecting :O


2 people marked this as a favorite.
Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Pathfinder Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber
James Jacobs wrote:
keftiu wrote:
Nindoru are new, right?

Yup.

** spoiler omitted **

Interesting. With sahkils being NE and velstracs being LE, a horror-themed CE fiend type does seem to be missing.

Grand Archive

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

Funnily, Google "autocorrected" nindorus into "Landorus", the pokemon, when I googled to see if this was an existing creature. xD


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Dragonchess Player wrote:
Interesting. With sahkils being NE and velstracs being LE, a horror-themed CE fiend type does seem to be missing.

It's also got me wondering what exactly the plan for the "classic" fiends is, especially with alignment finally getting the Old Yeller treatment.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

9 people marked this as a favorite.
SpaceDrake wrote:
Dragonchess Player wrote:
Interesting. With sahkils being NE and velstracs being LE, a horror-themed CE fiend type does seem to be missing.
It's also got me wondering what exactly the plan for the "classic" fiends is, especially with alignment finally getting the Old Yeller treatment.

Their role is unchanged. Demons will still be about using sin to destroy and corrupt mortals and be evil. Devils will still use law and pedantry to dominate and be mean. Daemons will still be out to eat every soul and be sinisterly nihilistic.

Just because we're no longer using 5 adjectives doesn't change what the creatures those adjectives did the day before will be doing the day after. There'll be some new rules to codify it as needed, but the in-world effect will be invisible to those living there and dealing with demons and the like.


James Jacobs wrote:
keftiu wrote:
Nindoru are new, right?

Yup.

** spoiler omitted **

Would you please briefly tell us why you chose this name (nindoru)? I cannot find the myth origion of it.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

5 people marked this as a favorite.
Astro- wrote:
James Jacobs wrote:
keftiu wrote:
Nindoru are new, right?

Yup.

** spoiler omitted **

Would you please briefly tell us why you chose this name (nindoru)? I cannot find the myth origion of it.

Spoilering to avoid saying too much out in the open about these critters for anyone who might be playing the campaign...

Spoiler:
I made the name up, drawing upon sounds and constructions from several different languages, but wanted to specifically NOT go with a real-world mythological origin for them. Since Shenmen draws inspiration from so many different regions, I didn't want these new fiends to feel overly tied to any one real-world source.

I went through a lot of different "nonsense" words based on multiple languages, but ended up with one that I hope FEELS right without feeling too specific, if that makes sense? Same for their role in the setting, which is something that was inspired by multiple real-world beliefs but also had a big dose of my own imagination.

And on top of that, our in-house concept artist Kent knocked it out of the park in coming up with themes on how these fiends would look, particularly the inclusion of corrupted butterflies (the butterfly is a symbol of change and cyclic life), broken weapons and limbs (to symbolize how they take the familiar and break it and make it worse), and various elements of cages (to symbolize the old 'trapped soul' trope).


James Jacobs wrote:

Spoilering to avoid saying too much out in the open about these critters for anyone who might be playing the campaign...

I see!

:
This name DO feels chaotic: doesn't match the pronunciation of any East Asian language that I know of. If that's what you want, you get the point;

For the butterfly part, does the idea comes from the Butterfly Lovers?

Paizo Employee Creative Director

3 people marked this as a favorite.
Astro- wrote:
James Jacobs wrote:

Spoilering to avoid saying too much out in the open about these critters for anyone who might be playing the campaign...

I see!

** spoiler omitted **

Spoiler:
That's unfortunate, but I did my best and didn't have pushback on the name, so I guess it not being something that matches any East Asian language pronunciation is just gonna have to be viewd as "It's an English word that, if the adventure were published in another language, would need to be translated as best as possible, phonetically." Not the best solution, alas.

The butterfly part is more from all sorts of butterfly symbolism and corruption of that tradition, plus my own imagination.


James Jacobs wrote:
Astro- wrote:
James Jacobs wrote:

Spoilering to avoid saying too much out in the open about these critters for anyone who might be playing the campaign...

I see!

** spoiler omitted **
** spoiler omitted **

Well...what is done cannot be undone...

Liberty's Edge

2 people marked this as a favorite.
Astro- wrote:
James Jacobs wrote:

Spoilering to avoid saying too much out in the open about these critters for anyone who might be playing the campaign...

I see!

** spoiler omitted **

Spoiler:
It's been a long time since I took Japanese in high school, but I'm pretty sure you could at least spell it in hiragana, and it sounds about right for pronunciation to my (now uninformed) ears. Is anyone more familiar with the language to be able if it works in Japanese?

2 people marked this as a favorite.
Arcaian wrote:
Astro- wrote:
James Jacobs wrote:

Spoilering to avoid saying too much out in the open about these critters for anyone who might be playing the campaign...

I see!

** spoiler omitted **
** spoiler omitted **

It does work indeed!:
While it isn't a real word in the language, it does sound like a plausible one in Japanese based on the syllable/morae structure and phonemes/phonology used.

Also, "nindoru" looks similar to actual words (e.g. ninja, ningyo, ninjin, ninzoku, midoru, odoru, etc.) and names (e.g. Nindo) in Japanese, so...

Carry on,

--C.

P.S. Based on both the premise & excellent player's guide, my groups & I have high hopes for this adventure path! (^_^)♡

Dark Archive

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Arcaian wrote:
Astro- wrote:
James Jacobs wrote:

Spoilering to avoid saying too much out in the open about these critters for anyone who might be playing the campaign...

I see!

** spoiler omitted **
** spoiler omitted **

I mean, its one of those words you could spell with hiragana, but it sounds off somehow. Like "you can spell it with alphabet, but it sounds like non sense". Like it could be like romanization of word from another language? Like to me it sounds like it could be "nindoll" or "nin-dollar" :'D (But then again I sucked in learning japanese last time I tried)

Like... Thing is that lot of kanji have different pronunciation based on context. You can see them playing it up for comedy or coolness factor in lot of japanese media where character's name can be read in completely different way when spelled with kanji. You can even spell same name with different kanji but people could take different reading from it.


Psiphyre wrote:
Arcaian wrote:
Astro- wrote:
James Jacobs wrote:

Spoilering to avoid saying too much out in the open about these critters for anyone who might be playing the campaign...

I see!

** spoiler omitted **
** spoiler omitted **

** spoiler omitted **

Carry on,

--C.

P.S. Based on both the premise & excellent player's guide, my groups & I have high hopes for this adventure path! (^_^)♡

Well...

"Ninja" is those local Janpanese understand its meaning, but never say the word in that way.

Very, very, very brief explaination is that: The kaiji for "ninja/shinobi"(忍者) is pronounced close to "ninja", but in reality it is pronounced as "shinobi" according to the Japanese pronunciation.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Astro- wrote:

Well...

"Ninja" is those local Janpanese understand its meaning, but never say the word in that way.

Very, very, very brief explaination is that: The kaiji for "ninja/shinobi"(忍者) is pronounced close to "ninja", but in reality it is pronounced as "shinobi" according to the Japanese pronunciation.

* We're starting to tread a lil' off-topic here...:

According to my Japanese colleagues, players, and students, 忍者 is correctly read as "ninja" (that second kanji is key to its reading); "shinobi" would be 忍び (the び part is necessary when differentiating it from the verb "shinobu" => 忍ぶ; by itself, 忍 is the name Shinobu).

Back on topic...

Would the title of this volume (No Breath to Cry) be a hint to there being a yuki-onna in the adventure? (In some parts of Japan where she is regarded negatively, draining the vitality of her victims by stealing their breaths is one of her abilities, so...) This is the winter volume of the adventure path, and the yuki-onna has yet to debut in P2, so...

:D

Carry on,

--C.

@Astro- : Hey, I'm not going to derail this thread further by pursuing this tangent * here; I was just answering Arcaian's query in the spoiler in my original post. However, if you'd like to follow up on this with me, feel free to PM me -- no pressure to do so, though. (^_')=b
(Note: If you do, it may take me little bit of time to respond to you; my apologies.)

Paizo Employee Creative Director

8 people marked this as a favorite.
Psiphyre wrote:

Would the title of this volume (No Breath to Cry) be a hint to there being a yuki-onna in the adventure? (In some parts of Japan where she is regarded negatively, draining the vitality of her victims by stealing their breaths is one of her abilities, so...) This is the winter volume of the adventure path, and the yuki-onna has yet to debut in P2, so...

That's an interesting idea, but no... it's a specific reference that will be more clear once that adventure is out. Once that's out and if folks don't pick up on it I can chat more about it, but all four of the titles are VERY specifically chosen for specific reasons.


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Pathfinder Adventure Subscriber

No cost too great,
no mind to think,
no will to break,
no voice to cry suffering.

would be really funny if the title was a reference to hollow knight haha. Cant wait for this book to come out.


3 people marked this as a favorite.

File for this download seems to be having problems. Won’t download at all for me.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, PF Special Edition Subscriber

Echoing AnimatedPaper's comment, the zip is 1KB in size.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

Yeah, its 145 bytes in size. Mysterious...


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure, Lost Omens, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Same, both single file & file-per-chapter versions are ~150 bytes for me :(


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

same here, cant even download it


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

Adding to the list of people having issues with the download.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber

Same

Shadow Lodge

Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

No file… looks like a system error or maybe it’s a ghost file.?


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Same here; no files. Should we report it somewhere else?


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Same problem here.

Shadow Lodge

Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Pathfinder LO Special Edition, PF Special Edition Subscriber

Same.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

I heard someone got physical book. What's in toolbox?


2 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Shea Hoarfoot wrote:
No file… looks like a system error or maybe it’s a ghost file.?

a season of ghosts file even


Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Rulebook Subscriber

I was having the same problem, but just checked and it's fixed for me. Hopefully it's fixed for everyone else too.


Having the same issue as many others, download is 1kb.


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

Looks like the download gremlins have been exorcised. This file is clean.


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

<checks> Nope, still a 145kb file.


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber

It's showing on my downloads page as a 62.22MB file, but when downloaded, it's still the 145 bytes zip with a non-functioning PDF.

RPG Superstar 2014 Top 32

I can get the chapter version to download, but the single file is still messed up.


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Alright, seems to have been fixed for me.


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, PF Special Edition Subscriber

Working for me now as well.

Grand Lodge

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Try clearing the cookies before you download.

Horizon Hunters

...toolbox spoilers?


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Adventure Toolbox:

There's 2 new rituals, 4 level 9 unique items, and mechanics for giving the party special powers for a portion of the adventure. All of these besides the items kinda spoil the plot of the adventure so I'm not going to go into detail.

For the creatures:
Akashti (Sobbing Nindoru) - Level 10 Fiend
Kagekuma (Lurking Nindoru) - Level 8 Fiend
Nopera-bo Impersonator - Level 6 Aberration (Comes in three varieties: Martial, Skilled, or Spell Impersonator, depending on who they are impersonating)
Shimmertheif - Level 7 Beast
Silsyche - Level 6 Kami Spirit

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