Harrowstone NPC personalities / motives


Carrion Crown

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The Exchange

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Mortagon - love your work! Some stuff here will fit directly into my run (we're in HoH now), others will after with a little work.

a sign that I actually read parts of it in detail:

Minor correction... Lorne Maltroy lists a Potion of polypurpose panacea in his gear. You might want to switch that to a scroll, as it can't actually be made as a Potion - it's a personal spell like shield

and you might want to add in a note that he has a spellbook in his gear.

a gift for you - I changed up the False Crypt some for my game if you want feel free to use it

False Crypt:

THE FALSE CRYPT
The false crypt mentioned in the professor’s journal is located in the northeast corner of the Restlands, near the junction of the paths known as the Eversleep and the Black Path. The crypt itself is a freestanding granite mausoleum, the roof of which is decorated with a pair of leering gargoyle statues, along the front of the stone building were weathered stone carvings depicting symbols of Ustalavic national pride. A single stone door with a rusty looking lock sits in the mausoleum’s south facade, but an examination of the lock (DC 12 Perception check) reveals that the lock is broken, its clasp melted by acid and then put back into place so that to casual observation the lock appears intact. (Professor Lorrimor used a few vials of acid to disable the lock several weeks ago, then arranged it upon his exit to look like it had never been broken.)
No one but professor Lorrimor has been into these chambers for several decades, and his tracks remain obvious in the dust and dirt of the floor to anyone who makes a DC 15 Perception check. A DC 18 Survival check allows a character to follow the faint line of tracks across the outer room to the right hand door, and thru it to the single large sarcophagus that sits in the deepest part of the crypt. It is within this sarcophagus that the hidden cache the professor wrote about is located.
Within the first chamber, a flight of stone steps leads down into the cold earth to a large chamber almost devoid of contents—no dead are interred here, though Church records report that the crypt was one of the first filled in Ravengro’s early days. Two stone statues of armored humans face each other across a room tiled with a mosaic of the large owl sitting on a tree branch. The two doors ahead each have a chain motif stretching across them, though they have no lock and indeed are surprisingly easy to open (outward, into the outer chamber).

TRAP: Detect DC 28, Disable DC 28, Bypassed with the phrase “The Owl of Wisdom” in Ancient Osirioni.

A special Glyph of Warding has been set into the mosaic on the floor. Triggered by crossing the floor, it will effect anyone in the room, casting Modify Memory (Will Save DC 16 negates) to implant the false memories of searching a small chamber thru the doors ahead, and after discovering only a crypt with old bodies without anything of value, the memory of exiting the room and closing the door. Multiple persons will all have EXACTLY the same memory each time they try to cross the room (and fail the Will Save).

In the inner crypt the symbolism on the walls turns strange. Each door has an inscription in Ancient Osirioni (Linguistics: DC 20, “What do you seek?”) etched into them that is visible when they are opened (on the inside of the door). Burial niches to left and right are empty, showing no signs of ever having had anything placed in them. Carvings of sphinxes, pyramids, burning eyes and suns adorned the walls and ceiling, scattered almost at random around the room. On a raised dais against the back wall, below the carving of an especially large pyramid with an eye adorning it’s cap stone, is a large stone sarcophagus (in the Osirion fashion – “mummy case”).
No one but professor Lorrimor has been into this chamber for several decades, and his tracks remain obvious in the dust and dirt of the floor to anyone who makes a DC 15 Perception check. A DC 18 Survival check allows a character to follow the faint line of tracks to a single large sarcophagus that sits in the deepest part of the crypt. It is within this sarcophagus that the hidden cache the professor wrote about is located.
Creatures: a Giant (Medium) Iron Cobra has been left here as a “Guard” on the equipment left here. A member of the Order of the Palatine Eye would know a code phrase to bypass the guardian. ("Who seeks knowledge within this sepulcher?" spoken in Ancient Osirioni).
Treasure in racks hidden within the sarcophagus: a case of ten silver arrows, a rack holding four sun rods (one empty slot), six flasks of holy water, a case of ten +1 bolts, another case holding five +1 ghost touch bolts & two +1 undead bane bolts (three missing bolts), a padded wooden rack holding five potions of cure light wounds and two potions of lesser restoration, a stack of scroll cases holding: a scroll of detect undead, two scrolls of hide from undead, a scroll of protection from evil, and a thin darkwood case decorated with an image of a scarab with a single eye glaring from its back. The darkwood case is worth 50 gp, and contains three objects of interest—a spirit board with a brass spirit planchette, and four iron and glass vials containing tiny, churning clouds of vapor. The vials sit in velvet-lined indentations to the left of the spirit board and planchette, along with six empty indentions.

Notes: The Guardian is loaded with Cure Light Wounds potions as a poison vs. undead (to fight the WW), that way "innocent grave robbers" would suffer less damage and likely flee where Undead would be harmed even more.


I figured the Order of the P.E. would guard the crypt - with something the members would recognize and be able to by pass.


nosig wrote:

Mortagon - love your work! Some stuff here will fit directly into my run (we're in HoH now), others will after with a little work.

** spoiler omitted **

a gift for you - I changed up the False Crypt some for my game if you want feel free to use it
** spoiler omitted **...

Thanks :)

Love your take on the crypt. My players haven't investigated it yet so I'll definitely borrow some of your ideas. As for polypurpose panacea I am aware that it's a personal spell, but I just forgot when I wrote up his gear :P. It's inconsequential anyway as he left right after the funeral.

Dark Archive

Like I said up thread, God Bless Mortagon! Thank you, remarkable stuff!!

The Exchange

from one of the Harrowstone threads I saw a suggestion to change out the BBE in Haunting... and it really appealed to me.

Changing up the BBE in HoH:

Someone in one of these threads suggested making Vesorianna the BBE instead of the Splatter Man, and frankly that is appealing to me a lot. Most of the time I have been reading thru the write-up of the Prison I keep thinking to myself how even before the riot/fire/etc. this was an EVIL place, run by EVIL (with a capital "E") people.

Executions are excepted and expected. Mass murderer? Execute them and send their soul to The Lady to be judged. But... branding? Regular systematic torture of prisoners? Tossing a prisoner into the furnace? So many things stacked up to make this a very nasty place even before it burned down.

Then I saw the suggestion that Vesorianna was actually a very Evil person and was controlling the Warden and thru him many of the guards... and had an inspiration. Vesorianna = Evil Witch = BBE.

This appealed to me. In this version, Harrowstone wasn't ORIGINALLY an Evil place, it grew into one. This is still a work in progress, but I am running it like this...

With the use of Charm spells, and Hexes, the witch Vesorianna gained control of the Warden and thus Harrowstone. Once in control, she began corrupting the institution and the people associated with it, creating ever greater evil in the world. This process was stopped only by the riot and fire, and the death of everyone involved. In Death, the Warden saw what they had become and vowed to set things right. To contain the evil and prevent it's release into the world...

In death, Vesorianna's spirit still haunts the Harrowstone, keeping the spirits of the prisoners trapped here. Only the Warden was keeping her in check, preventing her from spreading her evil even farther...

So, when the Way removed the Warden, she was free to set in motion a plan to gather the powers of each of the strongest of the Spirits - the ones she could not directly control. After she gained control over the spirits of all the prisoners she could move out from the prison ...(insert Master Villain Speech here) ... From the "Destruction" of each Haunt she not only prevents them from manifesting again, she gains powers as each of their haunts are defeated by the PCs... gaining some of each of the haunts abilities...

When the players ultimately learn that they have been making the BBE stronger by defeated her rivals... From each of the prisoners they defeat she gains abilities and power...

So, how does that sound? So far it is working out great. The players have explored the two upper floors of the prison, and picked up a bunch of clues which will in the end tell them that Vesorianna is behind it all, and they have been actually working for the wrong side...

When they come to the "final confrontation" with the Splatterman, he summons Celestial Dolphins as his opening... and I'm hoping one of the players goes "Wait, you can't summon Celestial creatures if you're Evil... What the heck?"

Then they get to talk to Professor Hean Feramin, AKA the Splatterman.

Story from Professor Hean Feramin:

Long ago, I was Professor Hean Feramin, a celebrated scholar of Anthroponomastics (the study of personal names and their origins) at the Quartrefaux Archives in Caliphas. Yet a friendship with someone I believed to be a beautiful woman twisted and warped my studies. Lilith took a great interest in my work, and her flattery blinded me to her evil. I failed to realize that she was in reality a succubus, a demon from the north, from the World Wound.

And my life became a repeat of that old story where a bookish academic is led to evil by a pretty face. Not that it excuses my actions in the later part of my life, I merely relate it to give you background for our current state of affairs. With the subtle guidance of Lilith, I tried to enhance the power of my familiar thru arcane means. And birthed a minor demon, a creature called a quasit, from a sliver of my soul as it brushed against the fabric of the Abyss. It might have been due to the wound to my soul I had suffered creating the familiar, or perhaps it was the quasit that controlled me from then on, or perhaps I was a willing participant in my heinous crimes. I really do not know, and in the end it really didn’t matter. I did many terrible things – many I shudder to remember.

I became obsessed with the power of a name and how it could be used to terrify and control. Soon enough, my reputation was ruined, I’d lost tenure, and everyone in my life had deserted me. In the end, even Lilith… though I see now that that was because her evil work was done. I only had my familiar, that evil sliver of my soul was my only companion and see now how it guided my actions from then on. I’d developed an uncontrollable obsession with studying the imaginary link between a person’s name and what happens to that name when the person dies. That is madness, and I really don’t know if it was my madness or something from outside of me, but it consumed me.

In time, after many horrible acts on my part, I was caught, and for my terrible crimes, for the hideous things I had done, I was sentenced to die in this place. And I came here – only to find a greater nest of evil than I could have created. Institutional evil, run on a grand scale. This prison was an EVIL place, run by EVIL (with a capital "E") people.

Executions are accepted punishment and expected for many crimes. Especially my crimes. Mass murderer? Execute me and send my soul to The Lady to be judged. But... branding? When did we as a society start branding prisoners? Regular systematic torture of prisoners? Dropping prisoners into an oubliette, then regularly dumping feces onto them? Public punishments meted out in seemingly random fashion, in front of many other prisoners, in order to maximize the terror and pain inflicted. Tossing a living helpless prisoner into a furnace as a form of execution? As a punishment for “being a difficult prisoner”? And all of it watched with sadistic glee. In fact, it appears that much of it was perpetrated just to provide entertainment for one person. Only evil societies can justify this sort of thing. So many things stacked up to make this a very nasty place even before it burned.

But the true Evil of the place was hidden. Only to be discovered after death. Because even in death we are all trapped here. Unable to move on, to join the river of souls on the journey to The Lady to be judged and sent to our final reward. I don’t know how it was done, or in fact how it still is done… but everyone who dies here stays here. Perhaps some faction of Necromancers have created it as a giant spirit trap, intending to harvest the soul energy from those trapped here. Perhaps it’s something left from the age of the Whispering Tyrant. Whatever it is, it is still working.

And after the fire, when we discovered we were all trapped, we could still feel Her here. It seems even in death we couldn’t escape Her gaze, we still provided Her sadistic enjoyment. We were all held in our little cells, trapped individually. All of us but the Warden, who patrolled the halls and keep us in our places. But then came the day when he was gone and the bonds that held us here started to loosen. We could move about in the prison. It seemed that soon we would escape in a flood to make our way to The Ladies Judgement. To the River of Souls we all see above us. Only She blocked us, and She was weakening.

But it seems She has found Mercenaries to aid Her. And with each of us they destroy She grows stronger.

Sovereign Court

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Thanks for updating this, Mortagon! I'm just starting to run Carrion Crown and all that you've collected gives me some great info.

I decided to give out a rumor that Jorfa was a famous smith in the River Kingdoms, but refuses to talk about her past. So, it's odd that she ended up in Ravengro. I made her the sister-in-law of the Mosswater Marauder. After her sister's murderer was caught and brought here, she traveled to Ravengro to make sure the man was finally put to death for what he did. She ended up staying so long waiting for his death that she decided to start up a smithy. After the fire, she assumed the justice was served, but she'd come to like the town and its people, so she stayed. This way, she can also provide a bit of background and a personal connection to the criminals for when the PCs do their research.

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