Skeletons of Scarwall (GM Reference)

[Bellona]

KSB Snow Owl wrote:

...

... they have buffed with Life's Grace, a Death Ward-like spell that also protects against ability damage/drain from undead attacks ...

...

Bellona wrote:

I did a search for the aforementioned Life's Grace spell and could not find it.

Can someone tell me in which book it can be found, please? Or is it 3PP or something from 3.x?

Follow-up on this question (since the 1-hour editing window has long since passed): I found the spell finally.

Life's Grace is in the Spell Compendium (a 3.5 sourcebook), which explains why I couldn't find it in my search of PF sources. :)

[Stzr]

Hi everyone,

I'm confused about the curate, if anyone could give me some insight...

The thing is: when Rovagug was imprisoned, Zon-Kuthon was still Dou-Bral, right? And I actually thought that explained the fact he helped imprisoning the Beast by planting the Star Towers... But I don't understand how the curate is fitting in all that: why is he a Zon-Kuthon worshiper, why did Zon-Kuthon send a demon to find a substitute after his death and why does they also need to be a Zon-Kuthon worshiper? When and how did the Star Tower become a "Zon-Kuthon's place"? When did the curate come by and why do Zon-Kuthon in his new form still care about keeping Rovagug from returning?

For a bit of context: I was hoping to make the Star Towers a symbol of Zon-Kuthon lost goodness (since it is the last good deed Dou-Bral made before becoming Zon-Kuthon) for an order linked to Shelyn I'm trying to build for my campaign (the parent of one of the PC would have been a member of this order and I was hoping their fate was in some way linked to the tower and/or the brotherhood of bones), but the whole curate thing is kind of muddying the waters for me.

Did I miss some important point here?

Ps. Sorry for my English, I am not a native speaker

[Inspectre]

I don't know how much of this will be as Paizo wrote, since outside of what we have in the Curse of the Crimson Throne, I don't know anything about Zon-Kuthon or the Star Towers. But my sense of what's happened is something along these lines:

Dawn of Time - Rovagug shows up, gets imprisoned eventually, Dou-Bral makes the Star Towers to help keep Rovagug imprisoned. There needs to be someone guarding these towers to keep people from coming in and messing with them, either accidentally or deliberately in an attempt to free Rovagug. So he sets up a Curate at each one before he leaves for the void - perhaps going off to lick his own wounds from the fight with Rovagug, perhaps to go investigate where Rovagug came from and why.

Sometime later, but still really far in the past - Dou-Bral gets corrupted by his experiences in the void/decides to abandon his previous nature/meets something horrid out there in the blackness of space that twists him into a monster before sending him back. Dou-Bral becomes Zon-Kuthon, returns to Golarion. While he is now an evil, sadistic jerk of a god, he still has bits and pieces of Dou-Bral clinging to him, which includes a desire to protect Golarion by keeping Rovagug imprisoned (and self-interest since as one of his jailers, Rovagug is probably coming after Zon-Kuthon first when/if he gets free).

600 Years Ago - Kazavon shows up to Tamrivena after being sent there by Zon-Kuthon in response to the prayers of Mithrodar Adachi. An extremist jerk even by Zon-Kuthon standards, Kazavon bulldozes everything in his way, including as it turns out, the curate at the Star Tower who was minding their own business until Kazavon came along. While they have eternal life - either as set-up by Dou-Bral so they can keep protecting the Star Tower or as a side-effect of the Star Tower's magic, they can still be killed by violence. This leaves an opening in the position of curate, one which Kazavon doesn't care about so he just leaves.

A little less than 600 Years Ago - Knowing that there needs to be a Curate to protect the place, Zon-Kuthon sends one of his current servants, a nightshade named Ildernok, to stand-in as the Curate until some dumb adventurers come by who can fully accept the position.

[Stzr]

Thank you so much for taking the time to answer. Your interpretation is the more straightforward, it just seemed a bit odd to me, because:

1. it would mean that both the tower (which can now only be entered by a Zon-Kuthon priest) and the Curate himself would have been corrupted automatically when Dou-Bral was (so, did all the people who were attached to Dou-Bral instantly switch from "la, la, la, I'm into love, art and flowers" to "rhaaaa, blood, suffering, torture !" ?).

2. in SoS, it is mentioned that the Curate was a demi-demon (or something like that, I only have the French translation). If Dou-Bral chose him, why a demi-demon ?

Still, it seems that you are right, since I found information on another Star Tower that seems to corroborates the idea that the Curates were appointed by Dou-Bral and became evil afterwards:

"Mother Ravel is perhaps the best-known of the ancient curates who still inhabit the Star Towers built by the god Dou-Bral to hold Rovagug imprisoned within Golarion. Her home for the past countless eons is now known as the Tower of Slant Shadows, and is located on the southwestern plains of the shadowy realm of Nidal. Even though she is now thoroughly evil and serves Zon-Kuthon, both she and her patron god still honor the ancient agreement to keep the Rough Beast from ever emerging from his torpor. To this end, she mercilessly slaughters anyone who dares enter, or even approach the tower. Though she is older than almost any other living thing on the planet (except her fellow remaining curates), she is still simply a human, kept from aging a day by the Midnight Lord's grace as long as she remains within the tower and fulfills her duty.(References : Benjamin Bruck, et al. “Chapter 1: Founts of Mythic Power” in Mythic Realms, 14. Paizo Inc., 2013 / James Jacobs, et al. “Nidal” in The Inner Sea World Guide, 136–137. Paizo Inc., 2011)"

I suppose I'll just go with "don't think about it too hard" :)