Welcome back to Fiction Friday, the third part of my regularly scheduled Pathfinder 2e content. In these posts I’ll be focusing on the narrative side of this week’s topic, with either an adventure seed and some sample characters making use of the Workshop Wednesday content, some short fiction, or both!
This week I looked at the Corrupted Relic, an inherently customizable statblock with built-in narrative potential and a good way to deliver powerful loot to your party. On Wednesday I wrote up a handful of alternate corrupted relic statblocks spanning a range of low-to-mid levels, which also played a bit with the proposed ideas about how the spirits inhabiting the relics work.
So today, I’m going to elaborate on those particular spirits, the relics they wielded, and how you might build a sidequest around the entire encounter!
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Grigore Otvos, The Man Who Saw Too Much
In the darkest depths of Ustalav, one can find many unspeakable terrors. The nation’s subjugation by the Whispering Tyrant has left indelible marks on it, leaving behind terrible monsters. But worse that monsters, perhaps, are those mortal races who seek knowledge while denying it to others—and denying life to those who would share their secrets.
Grigore Otvos was one such man. A Varisian man who worshipped The Lady of Graves, he saw it as his mission to track down the true headquarters of the mysterious cabal of cultists in Ustalav who secretly gathered and hoarded knowledge for themselves which could help the people in need. Armed with only his sharp mind, he sought out knowledge of the group who existed not only in secret, but who worshipped the very god of secrets himself. By poring through the letters of academics who died in “accidents,” journals of Pathfinders who traveled through Varisia, and by interrogating everyone he could find who might know anything, Grigore learned the name of the cult of Norgorber: Anaphexia.
He learned their base of operations: a monastery once dedicated to his own deity, now supplanted by divine saboteurs. He even learned how to enter their ranks, a secret they reveal to few, and became one of them. His vast knowledge provided the cult with secrets even they hadn’t yet discovered, and he found himself gaining favor with them. Before long, they even gifted him with a magical pair of glasses: a relic of great power, if only he could unlock its potential. None in the organization had managed, but soon after receiving his gift he began to manifest powers from it which sharpened his mind—and which helped him keep his own existence a secret.
With this, he decided that his time had come. He would break free from the Anaphexia and bring their order down in the only way that would truly defeat them: by shining light on the secrets they kept.
If he had waited long enough to unlock more of the relic’s power, he might have succeeded. Instead, his flight from the monastery was discovered, and assassins hunted him down. Chasing him through the nearby mountains, he tried to hide, but was shot as he crossed a narrow bridge and fell hundreds of feet to the rocks below.
The assassins were unable to retrieve the glasses, but the organization was satisfied with the fact that their secret died with Grigore. He would never bother them again.
Silvia Antia, The Blindly Faithful
Silvia Antia was a rare thing: an upstanding, righteous Chelaxian noble. When she came of age, rather than participating in a society that she detested, she volunteered herself for service in the Mendevian Crusades, fighting demons in the Worldwound to buy a future for the rest of the world. Empowered by her faith in Iomedae, she fought hard, and defended those around her.
When the Wound was finally closed and the crusades finished, she stuck around to help clean up the remaining demons, but before long her sense of justice pulled her towards another crusade. This time, she joined the Knights of Lastwall, trading demonic foes for the undead. Over time, though she never grew strong enough to fight the truly great monsters, she proved instrumental in many battles, once again defending her allies and striking down foe after foe who harmed her friends. Before she knew it, her blade—an old, weathered cold iron longsword that had served her throughout all her battles—began to revert back to pristine condition, and displayed special powers that elevated her even higher in her battles.
Unfortunately, the life of a crusader is a deadly one, and Silvia had devoted hers to two. Surviving even one was a miracle, and when the Whispering Tyrant rose again and laid waste to the surrounding land, she and her comrades soon found themselves caught behind enemy lines.
They fought to the last. Silvia fought, even as blood and sweat ran down her face and blinded her, guided by her faith. Blinded though she was, her blade never once touched one of her fellow knights, and every swing felled another foe. But even her divinely appointed strength couldn’t hold out forever and she fell—but her noble spirit soon rose, perverted by the energies tainting the land into a being that blindly lashed out at any living creature, thinking that she was sensing the undead. But even in her maddened, blinded state, her conviction to her allies held true: she never once turned her blade on a Knight of Lastwall, in life or in undeath.
Giallath, Soul of Avarice
The land of Ravounel was not always the independent country it is now. During the time it was still governed by Cheliax, there lived a jeweler in Kintargo. He was an unknown, forced to live in poverty and slave away under a master who saw no value in his apprentice’s attempts to express himself.
Also in Ravounel, in the coastal caves near Kintargo, was Giallath, a brine dragon. He had no interest in the nations of the lesser species, and cared only about the protection of his own territory and the accumulation of his own wealth. That is, until one day when the jeweler stumbled upon his cave.
Giallath had killed many who had dared enter his cave, seeking to pilfer his riches, so when he returned to find a single human handling his jewels and gold, he was prepared to exterminate him. But Giallath was shocked when, instead of fear, the human showed only exuberance, even at the appearance of a dragon. He eagerly introduced himself as a jeweler, and asked for the dragon’s permission to work some of his treasure into jewelry for the dragon to wear. He didn’t care about compensation, he only wanted to work with fine materials to make a piece that he truly cared about.
Against his better judgment, Giallath allowed the jeweler to take some meager treasure—a small amount of gold and small gemstones. His gamble soon paid off, as one week later the jeweler returned with the finest ring the dragon had ever seen. The dragon was so pleased with the new addition to his hoard that he gave the jeweler even more materials to work with, which he happily accepted.
Unfortunately, rebellion in Kintargo soon broke loose, and the jeweler was unable to leave the city before his life was tragically cut short. This was all unknown to Giallath though, who didn’t concern himself at all with the goings-on of the kingdoms of the lesser races. He furiously believed that the jeweler made the ring only to get more treasure out of him, and then he took it and ran.
Unfortunately, for his part, Giallath was so entranced by the ring that rather than leaving it behind in his hoard to go out and hunt, he instead remained in his hoard, jealously guarding it from any who might enter—even at the eventual cost of his own life as he wasted away. But his spirit was so determined to protect his hoard that, rather than moving on, it inhabited the ring, and now comes out to defend his treasures from opportunistic graverobbers.
Discussion
So, each of these NPCs have an associated relic from the prior post, and now we know a bit more about them as characters and what their relics represented. So let’s talk about how they lend themselves to actual play.
Grigore’s is, again, the most straightforward. He is a tortured, malevolent spirit who might have been as corrupted by his relic as he has corrupted it. An item of the Mind and Shadow aspects, granted by Norgorber himself, can be a powerful and sinister thing—or it might be a relic from Pharasma, whose monastery it was before the Anaphexia took over.
In either case, coming across old signs of a struggle, such as dried-up bloodstains on a bridge and maybe a crossbow bolt sticking out of it, might be enough to prompt players to search the ravine below. In doing so, they find the glasses, which then manifest a mad, vengeful spirit who attacks them, leaving behind the glasses when it is defeated. At this point, the players can easily enough figure out what the relic is and how to use it, which will likely soon garner the attention of the Anaphexia, opening the door to plenty more adventuring dealing with the secretive cult.
Silvia’s story also makes for a fairly straightforward encounter, but there are a few wrinkles. For starters, if you are running a Knights of Lastwall-themed game and the players are part of the order, you don’t even necessarily have a fight on your hands, assuming they all proudly display their affiliation. If they don’t, then Silvia’s reactions to some Knights traveling with (what she thinks are) undead could complicate things, and getting attacked by those same Knights might just lead to some serious spirit-rage. If I were to go back and revise her statblock, I might give her a retroactive “anger” buff where if she’s attacked by someone wearing KoL heraldry, she gets temp HP and gets the Elite template added to her or something.
As for being a quest, it’s quite simple to have the remaining Knights of Lastwall send the party out on a quest to retrieve the holy sword of the martyr Silvia, especially if the party are members. While the recovery of the sword itself doesn’t prompt further adventures, it does confer a sort of legendary status on the one who wields this blade associated with a hero of the order, which can open the door to quite a bit of further play.
As for Giallath, we have the least straightforward encounter. You can still just fight the spirit, but then you miss out on the big reward, so as a GM you should definitely signpost it somehow. Demonstrate that Giallath is still intelligent and capable of being negotiated with, as well as the fact that the ring itself seems to be simply a focus for the spirit’s power. Perhaps that’s a good use of a Recall Knowledge reward?
Convincing the dragon is likely the hardest part, as he’s seemingly been burned before, but the party (especially if you’re running a converted-to-2e Hell’s Rebels campaign) can explain the circumstances of the jeweler’s demise to him to mollify him. In any case, make sure the players have plenty of ways to learn the truth of this particular corrupted relic in order to get the most of it—and then continue to play Giallath as a greedy, avaricious being who constantly orders his bearer to fetch more treasure and tithe a good portion of it to his old hoard (perhaps while also just giving the players a lot more rewards to compensate) and see how things go!
That’ll be all for this week. I’ll see you again next week with more content.
Sustain a Spell 