I'm looking to foreshadow soul anchors earlier than recommended by the book. My table's PCs are researching it, as they've learned about it from after-death experiences. I'd like them to get some general knowledge about soul anchors and how they could be used as artifacts.
One of the uses they'll discover is making genus locii, Barzillai Thrune's plan. But what other uses could ritual magic put to soul anchors? Reincarnation without a spell? Increasing knowledge through awareness of past lives?
Isn't the soul anchor the reason the the Temple Hill Slasher retains his memories in the Abyss (there is a variant Babau in Demons Revisited for him)
Or do certain powerful being retain memories anyway? I don't know much about the Pathfinder afterlife
Yes, it is.
The two ways I foreshadowed it:
1) The paladin in our group realized at some point that she had been reincarnated from a past life. Due to her closeness to the soul anchor, she started getting flashbacks from multiple past lives she had lived. The player had also (not realizing the very nice AP tie-in) thought that she might have been evil in her original life, and during an out-of-game discussion said something about maybe having been a hag. She turned out to be Nasperiah's mother who couldn't protect Nasperiah from the mean streets of Vyre. This helped the party really personally invest in the soul anchor story.
2) The warpriest in the party also had a death experience where after he was raised he remembered living 30+ years in heaven, which gave him the mental benefits of being middle-aged, without the physical penalties. The party knew this was strange, and this also spurned on the soul anchor research.
Mahathallah wants to rebuke death, so if they are researching these artifacts, you might want to have one of your more cowardly PC's be approached by a cultist or have a dream where they are promised extra knowledge beyond death.
Yes, it is.
Ok I wanted to clarify before considering further.
It seems like it is used by people who want to try and get around mortality. And it is also used without knowledge or intent such as with the professorSo there could be people with unusual memories as mentioned. Or there could be some kind of evil outsider that is from an old hero who wanted to carry on the fight with his knowledge so travelled deliberately to Kintargo to die. Perhaps something linked to pride
I do like the suggestion made about a character having flashbacks of previous lives. I have a player who has a really weird multiclass and the aim to make it an even weirder tri-class (witch, Sensei monk, magus). He has his own mechanical reasons for doing this and does not care to try and given any kind of story . This works really well (also an elf with warrior of old)
Can someone please remind me where in the city is closest to the anchor? I don’t have the books to hand
As a further aside - this getting round death is an intriguing potential link in for my character with the red mantis background. It really would go against their credo
These are good options! Wish they worked at my table, but they'll work well for others. Keep 'em coming! At my table, the party found Blosodriette in her lair and killed her in an epic level 1 fight. The cult of Mahathallah is no more, requiring but one raid. They do, however, retain the copy of The Mysteries of Salaur from killing them off.
The past lives thing is interesting--I'll use that after the next character death. The first PC to die had an experience of his soul powering the soul anchor during book two, and had some memories of past lives.
My current plan is that Menotheguro, the aboleth of book three, hoped that the Drowned Eye was a soul anchor. While it's excited to make use of its necromantic powers, it sent the skum to go looking for the soul anchor (and to keep them out of harm's way of the uncontrolled undead he was creating). So his notes will be about the Drowned Eye and its wards, but also about his tests to discover if this is a Soul Anchor, and thus, what it could do.
I'm thinking some ritual uses of the soul anchor could be:
[1] create a genus locii
[2] reincarnate with a chosen body or magic jar effect transplanting your consciousness, i.e. a form of immortality
[3] powerful commune with other plane effects (your consciousness actually go to the other plane for your research)
[4] intelligent undead creation?
[5] some sort of skill or ability bonus from past lives (as in the middle age ability bumps without the negatives of an aging physical body)
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In my game I tossed in a few more instances of minor characters that died coming back as outsiders with memories they shouldn't have. I used this for a sorts of little effects.
By the end of the campaign a lot of "dead" characters were showing up under increasingly dubious conditions. My intention was to have this be a point of interest for Rexus (who had the secondary goal of wanting to know if it might be a way to speak to his parents again), who would task the players with bringing him any information regarding this phenomenon they could, and that leading to him getting more knowledge about the soul anchor.
For instance, I tossed in a Procyal Agathion who was a former cleric of some Good faith (he didn't remember much about his past but enough to know that he was deeply involved in activism within the city). In past this was because I wanted an excuse to put one of those guys in my game, but I ended up tying it to how Mangvhune retrieved his dagger from the Temple of Shelyn after the PCs have it to them (killing several dogs the players had rescued and a priest in the process).
Given that my party also had a deeper relationship with Luculla and she escaped by duping them into thinking she was an innocent victim, I planned to have her make an appearance in the Temple of Asmodeus as a victim of one of the villains there, giving the PCs a chance to get a hint about Barzillai having located the soul anchor and slaughtering its guardians, and maybe learning a bit more about the anchor and the cult through her corpse.
One other more drastic example I used was that when one of my players died and requested a class swap to oracle, they took the possessed curse and I had them possessed with the soul of Ba, the Wizard from the original Silver Ravens (at least I think that's his name. I don't have my notes handy). He offered the occasional cryptic insight through empathic signals about certain details only the original Silver Ravens would know, and also served as a moral compass for the PC.
I had planned to do a similar thing with a different player in a second run of the AP, except they were a witch and I was going to have their familiar be Brakisi (the Silver Raven that murdered Ba), albeit with seriously fragmented memories. Gradually as the game would progress, he'd remember more and have a more vested interest in redeeming himself through his PC.
Another fun one that can be useful in the murder mystery segments of the AP (or any time the PCs encounter a dead body in Kintargo) is to have the Speak With Dead or similar spells work unusually well at key opportunities, not necessarily to give the player more answers about the murder itself, but to hint to them that dead souls here have something odd going on with them. For example, maybe they make a request for the PCs to deliver reassurances you a loved one when they shouldn't be able to.
At least, those are some of the examples of ones I tried. For the most part they worked out pretty well I think. My party tended to need more guidance generally so I leaned a lot on NPCs giving overt plot hooks to them, but as time went on I found it was quite effective as a way of foreshadowing things as well, particularly for the players/PCs with solid knowledge about the implications of the anomalies I was showing them (i.e. "Hey that's not how that spell works!").
Speak with Dead working differently in Kintargo is a very cool idea. Consider that stolen.
This worked like a charm. Tied the encounter in as foreshadowing.
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...have the Speak With Dead or similar spells work unusually well at key opportunities...
I did this today and it worked amazingly well! I read the description of the spell out loud so that everyone knew how it worked so that I (hopefully) wouldn't be interrupted by players "correcting" me in what it can do.
We were at the end of book 5, after the PCs learned about the Soul Anchor and tried to Raise Dead the NPCs the slasher had killed. They failed the caster-level check required by his assassin ability so the group was thinking the NPC didn't want to come back or something.When I had the head move, look at the PC she knew and say "what's going on? I feel weird." (or something like that) the looks on the player's faces were amazing!
Thank you for this suggestion, even though I used it really late in the game.
Resurrecting this thread for an additional purpose: I have a player who's interested in getting the soul anchor early, about book 4. What would a PC be able to do with access to the soul anchor? They've been looking for it for a long period of time.
This would be a rogue inquisitor.
Resurrecting this thread for an additional purpose: I have a player who's interested in getting the soul anchor early, about book 4. What would a PC be able to do with access to the soul anchor? They've been looking for it for a long period of time.
This would be a rogue inquisitor.
Hm, now there's a curious thought... What they could do with it is one thing, but how they'd get to it in the first place is a whole problem on its own...
If I recall correctly, by the start of book 4 Barzillai and his agents have already cleared out the location and Barzillai has placed his heart in the anchor. Finding the anchor before then would mean that the PCs would come face to face with Anagondun well before they're ready to face him, and even if they can deal with him, the fact that they'd find Barzillai's heart would mean that they could preemptively remove a sizable chunk of the remainder of the AP...
In order to avoid that, you'd perhaps need to establish either that Barzillai hasn't cleared out the area yet (in which case the party would come face to face with Mahathallah's cult, who might be capable of diplomacy), or that he's wiped out the cult, but hasn't gotten around to performing the ritual so there's no heart and the Soulbound Fane is effectively empty for that brief in-between period.
Assuming you have a solution for that or use one of those two, Book 6 already mentions a few interesting things about what happens when in the proximity of the Soul Anchor (check out page 38). It does mention that these are due to Barzillai's heart having an influence, but that specific detail could be ignored. Notably:
- Living creatures receive glimpses of memories from past or potential future lives.
- Undead remember moments of their previous living existence.
- Creatures touched by the Soul Anchor retain their memories and class levels after death (including if they eventually become outsiders).
-When the corruption from the anchor explodes, those in the vicinity receive a whole flood of visions and also potentially some power.
In practice, you could translate this to reproduce a few broad effects:
- Enhance divination and memory-based magic so that it can apply to different periods in people's lives, be it past or future. This could be used to learn story beats and also to be forewarned about certain things to come even much later. If used intelligently, it could also be used to get around normal divination blockers.
- Enhance abilities involving communing with the dead or bringing them back to life.
- Provide an easy way to alter things about characters on a fundamental level, effectively allowing them to retrain without the normal costs involved.
- Grant them some bonus resource relating to insight about certain details of the future or past. You could translate this into giving them Inspiration (as in the Investigator ability) or Hero Points that can be used in certain situations.
I'd probably slap some ritual rules on there to prevent them from abusing it too much, or use some other way to limit their access (if the cult is still active, I imagine they wouldn't let anybody walk in and use it for just anything). Either way once Book 4 gets good and going they shouldn't really be able to use the Soul Anchor too much if at all, lest it derail the rest of Barzillai's plot post-mortality.
I've decided that the souls of the original ravens have been splintered into the PCs my group has created, giving them memories of the past and a reason to care about the OG ravens.
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I've decided to apply the Research mechanic for Infernal Contracts to finding the Soul Anchor and to researching what it can do. In the interests of providing more oomph to the cult of Mahathallah in book two, I've had that mechanism be The Mysteries of Salaur, which the PCs can find in the
“All you see is illusion. All you know is fiction. All you are is lies.” —The Mysteries of Salaur
Description: “Widely copied and traded among Mahathallah’s Qadiran followers, this encyclopedic tome focuses on the cultivation of hallucinogenic plants, particularly bloody methods of haruspicy, interpretations of dreams, and predictions of cosmic alignments. Any character who succeeds at a DC 20 Knowledge (arcana) or Knowledge (nature) check realizes that several of the purported facts are entirely fictional. A successful DC 25 Wisdom check, however, reveals numerous metaphor-coded prayers and rites to Mahathallah hidden among the fictions, including the process of preparing adyton. Salaur herself, a Keleshite mystic born in 1500 ar, is said to have found a way to preserve her body in a state of near death so her mind can eternally explore the halls of the Adyton.”
Source: Book 2
The Mysteries of Salaur (CR 12)
KP: 40
Complexity and Specialized Skills: Linguistics DC 38, Knowledge: religion DC 36, Craft: Writing DC 36, or Wisdom DC 25
Unique Feature: Metaphoric. The metaphoric nature of the text makes it rather vexing to the logical mind. The researcher constructs their meaning of the text through their particular reading of it rather than translates or decodes its only meaning. This feature adds 4 to its KP, adds layers of benefits (see below), increases the specialized skills DCs and adds a Wisdom ability check option (see above), and modifies the rules for research successes and failures (see below).
First Mystery (30 KP): Learn various metaphor-coded prayers and rites to Mahathallah, including how to make Adyton and to gain access to Create Drug spell. Dusting one’s eyes with the drug allows a temporary trancelike state that permits projection of one’s consciousness a permanent mindscape manifesting as a vast, labyrinthine temple that floats in a balmy, sunless expanse. While the nature of the adventure resulting is up to the DM, it will typically involve trading mysteries and praising Mahathallah with worshippers of Mahathallah, and creatures like bone devils, cabal devils, undead, and sahkils on pilgrimage. At this stage of understanding, the researcher can gain only general knowledge about soul anchors and not how to use them or the location of one. Mahathallah controls this mindscape and prevents those with such knowledge from sharing it without their knowledge.
Second Mystery: Transcendence (15 KP): Learn how to preserve your body in a state of near death so your mind can eternally explore the halls of the Adyton.
Third Mystery: Apotheosis (0 KP): Learn how to project your consciousness to the section of Adyton’s halls dealing with Soul Anchors. Mahathallah favors you with the location of one Soul Anchor and knowledge of how to use it, but worshippers of Pharasma are struck with a no-save insanity spell.
To research it: Succeed in a check to do damage to its Knowledge Points
Time: 8 uninterrupted hours per attempt.
Bonuses:
• Up to three people can aid another for a +2 each at DC 10. Failure is -2. [Rules say two can aid, but I’m making it three because otherwise one PC has nothing to do]
• Each prior attempt +1 cumulative to rolls
Success on research roll: Altered due to the nature of the text
• Polymaths: 1d12+Wis KP damage (if you can attempt any Knowledge check untrained, such as a bard, loremaster, or skald)
• Gurus: 1d8+Wis (e.g. wisdom-based casters, worshippers of Mahathallah)
• Novices: 1d6+Wis KP damage for all others
• Scholars: 1d4+Wis KP damage (e.g. alchemists, arcanists, investigators, wizards)
• Critical success threat: double damage if succeed on second roll (no extra time)
Failure:
• Natural one: fail and increase KP +1d8
• Fail twice in a row: you cannot access the next benefit until you gain a level. You may continue to research up to that KP.
Source: Using the Infernal Contract system of Book 5, rather than the more general library research system of Intrigue rules