The godsmouth heresy pdf download

Creature: The ancients left a guardian, an iron cobra, in this vault to guard their treasures. The serpentine construct hides behind the sarcophagus until a creature steps foot in the vault, at which point it strikes. Iron Cobra. Development: The vault was looted long ago, and contains only one thing—an ornately carved stone sarcophagus about a foot from the north wall. A DC 20 Knowledge arcana or history check recognizes runes and carvings of ancient Thassilon on the sarcophagus.

The stone coffin holds an extraordinarily well-preserved human man with dark hair, a high forehead, and expressive brows. He wears robes of a deep emerald, and a medallion of a seven-pointed star around his neck. The body is preserved by a gentle repose effect from the medallion he wears—if the medallion is removed, the effect ends and the cadaver begins to decay normally. Anyone approaching the solitary monolith in the middle of the room can hear sibilant whispers, seemingly from out of the air, though no words can be understood.

The strange gray mist lingers near the stone, and nothing short of a gust of wind spell can dissipate it. The mist feels cold and clammy, but has no other effect. They appear as hairless, malformed corpses with gray-green, pustule-covered skin and oversized jaws that make them seem more beast-like than humanoid, but they retain their human intelligence.

Risen from corpses sworn to the sin of gluttony, the festrogs are consumed with ravenous hunger. Svilennius discovered two ancient undead in the ossuary and used his wand of command undead to befriend them and convince them to stay here to help guard his lair, though they give the stone pillar in the center of the room a wide berth. Svilennius regularly supplies the festrogs with relatively fresh corpses to satiate their ravenous hunger, but they gain no. Kennels CR 3 This room is a charnel house of blood, bones, and scraps of rotten flesh.

Strange runes have been sloppily drawn on the walls using some dark brown pigment. A moss-covered stone monolith stands in the center of the room, wreathed in gossamer wisps of gray mist that seem to congeal around the crumbling stone.

The symbols on the walls can be identified with a DC 20 Knowledge arcana check as ancient Thassilonian runes of gluttony and necromancy. The inhabitants of. Festrogs 2.

Guardpost CR 2 Two alcoves flank either side of the corridor here. Creatures: Svilennius has posted four skeletal archers to guard the hallway, two in each alcove. They open fire on any living creatures that approach within range of their darkvision 60 feet , switching to their scimitars when opponents enter melee range.

The skeletons fight until destroyed. During Combat The foul undead try to trip the nearest living creature so they can feed, focusing their attacks on one opponent at a time.

Morale The festrogs fight until destroyed. Heavy black curtains drape the wall of this chamber, and a thick layer of dust carpets the floor. Two sets of stone double doors stand in the east and west walls. He keeps the layer of dust on the floor undisturbed by using the secret door in area 23 if he needs to venture out of his lair, and has hung thick draperies on the wall to conceal the door to area 25 a DC 15 Perception check to notice the door while the curtain is in place.

The stone door to the west is one solid featureless piece except for a strangely shaped depression in the middle, and can only be opened with the key from area See area 3 for details on opening these doors.

Trap: Svilennius has also placed a trap on the door to area 25 in case anyone should discover it. The target must make a DC 12 Fortitude save or be sickened for 1d6 rounds from this effect. Anyone who becomes sickened from this effect is also exposed to filth fever DC 12 Fortitude save negates. Feed Su When a festrog inflicts bite damage on a living creature, the festrog feeds on the flesh and gains 5 temporary hit points.

This increases its speed to 50 feet. Development: The menhir in the middle of the room is actually a magical portal to the Dark Forest, a vast and impossible cavern far beneath Kaer Maga see pages 56—57 of City of Strangers. How this portal functions is left to the GM to devise—simply touching the monolith might be enough, or a complex magical. Three large glass vats stand against the eastern wall, filled with bubbling green fluid. Floating within the vats are three grotesque objects—putrescent corpses, tubes and wires embedded in their rotting flesh, their skin discolored with decay and chemical stains.

The original purpose of this plain stone room has been lost to history, but numerous footprints have disturbed the dust covering the floor. The alchemical treatments used in their creation makes them resistant to both physical damage and positive energy, granting them a higher natural armor bonus and channel resistance.

They attack anything entering the room other than Svilennius or Esme. Alchemical Skeleton. The insane alchemist Svilennius Tripe uses this room as his laboratory, where he works frenziedly to perfect his process of creating alchemical undead minions. So far, most of his efforts have ended in failure—his few successes now guard the approaches to his lair, or are stored in the secret catacombs area Once created, his undead minions obey him for a few days before he must use magic either his wand of command undead or an unreliable alchemical substance with similar effects to reestablish control.

Svilennius spends the vast majority of his time here, obsessively rereading his notes and adjusting his equipment to fine-tune his alchemical processes. He leaves the lab only to acquire fresh corpses from the crypts above for new experiments, or to catch a few hours of sleep when exhaustion finally takes its toll.

Otherwise, he is resting in the bedroom area 28 with his zombie bride Esme. Svilennius is a hunchbacked, haggard-looking man in his 30s, with black hair starting to turn gray. Svilennius has repeatedly tried and failed to reproduce the process, and the disposal pit near his lab is f illed with the remnants of his failures.

His continued lack of success has driven him to new heights of obsession and madness, and the deranged ex-cleric now believes that the priests of Pharasma in the ossuary above are secretly sabotaging his efforts.

If disturbed, Svilennius orders Mr. Marrow to show intruders out of his lab. If the PCs refuse, Svilennius orders one of the vat zombies to attack; the creature bursts through the glass walls of its vat a free action in a f lood of pungent alchemical compounds and charges the PCs.

Svilennius then turns to face the PCs with a snarl, hurling curses as well as bombs at them for daring to interfere with his work. Secret Stair A stone staircase fills this small chamber, curving up in a spiral to disappear through the ceiling. The stairs lead up 60 feet to a tiny chamber behind a secret door. While the door is easily visible from this side, a DC 30 Perception check is required to notice it from the other side.

The door opens onto the upper, active level of the Godsmouth Ossuary. The Pharasmins have never found the secret door, and Svilennius uses these stairs to access the ossuary and steal the cadavers he needs for his grotesque experiments. Laboratory CR 4 The acrid stench of chemicals and reagents fills this chamber, and the walls are marred by strange stains and scorch marks. Several tables are scattered about the room, covered in a bewildering plethora of glassware, alembics, retorts, tubes, simmering cauldrons, and smoking beakers full of brightly colored liquids.

Scattered pages of written notes in a crabbed hand lie strewn about the chamber. A large alcove in the northwest corner contains a bookshelf groaning under the weight of heavy, dusty tomes and scrolls. Speed 30 ft. Before Combat If he hears intruders approaching, Svilennius drinks his shield extract. During Combat Svilennius orders Mr. If forced into melee, Svilennius drinks his mutagen, increasing his Strength and natural armor at the expense of his intellect, then drinks one of his potions of enlarge person.

Morale If reduced to fewer than 10 hit points, Svilennius drinks his expeditious retreat extract and tries to flee through area 26 or one of the other exits likely by jumping down the shaft to area 11 to escape the ossuary.

He refuses to be captured and brought before the church of Pharasma for justice, so if cornered, he fights to the death. Development: The corridor between areas 27 and 28 is interrupted by a foot-square pit over area A DC 10 Perception check notices a narrow, 3-inch-wide ledge that runs along the western edge of the pit; a DC 15 Acrobatics check is required to cross it. Anyone falling into the pit falls 20 feet to the floor of area Wooden boards that can be used to bridge the pit are stored in area A DC 20 Perception check finds a secret door in the western wall just south of the alcove.

This door leads to area 29, where Svilennius is slowly building up his undead army. In addition, the alcove holds the books and notes of the Chymists of Life in Death.

The entire collection is worth gp to an alchemist or arcane scholar, but the church of Pharasma considers the books heretical and attempts to confiscate the proscribed texts if they learn of their existence.

If necessary, the church is willing to pay up to gp to keep the books out of non-Pharasmin hands. Doctors and priests alike were unable to cure the disease, and gave Esme less than a year to live.

Unfortunately, upon her arrival there, Esme soon realized that she had neither the time to advance her studies to the point where she could save herself, nor the money to pay for some magical necromantic cure or solution.

It was there that Esme met Svilennius Tripe, newly banished from the church of Pharasma and eagerly throwing himself into both his obsession with the undead and his new alchemical work.

However, Svilennius thought he had found a solution, if not a cure, in his researches—Esme was doomed to die, but Svilennius believed that he could alchemically reanimate her with her intelligence and personality intact. With no other choice, Esme agreed. As her blood flowed out of her body, Svilennius infused her veins with his profane chemicals, converting her living tissue into an alchemical mockery of life.

The process complete, he sat back to wait. According to his research, it would only be hours before Esme awoke to her new unlife, but 3 days later her corpse still lay unmoving on his worktable. Of late, Svilennius has begun to resent her, a constant reminder of his failure to replicate his own success. More often he ignores her, except for those periods of depression when he comes to seek comfort and inspiration in her arms.

Forbidden from leaving the catacombs and mostly left to her own devices with only the companionship of her mindless undead handmaidens, Esme has grown increasingly bored, and is beginning to think she might be going insane.

Though her relationship with Svilennius has not yet deteriorated to the. Bedroom CR 3 This large chamber has a vaulted ceiling, and unlike the rest of the ossuary, bears a distinct impression of habitation rather than abandonment. Lit candelabras reveal old tapestries hanging from the walls to ward off the subterranean chill, and a threadbare carpet covers the floor.

Shabby furniture—a few chairs and tables, an armoire, and a dresser—flanks a large canopied bed in the center of the room, topped with satin sheets and a heap of lumpy pillows. Most of the furnishings here were scavenged from the trash heaps and from select tombs of the aristocracy, giving the room an air of faded, decaying ostentation.

Two long wooden boards lean against the south wall to the right of the entranceway, used to bridge the shaft between this room and area But Esme is no normal woman—she is a magus zombie, a rare undead creature who has retained her intelligence and spellcasting abilities, even though her physical body has died and been animated as a putrid, rotting zombie.

A native of Korvosa, Esme was afflicted with a magical wasting disease that rotted her flesh and gave her the appearance of a decomposing corpse, even though she. Esme was once a beautiful young woman, but her skin is now rotting and putrid, and her once-lustrous blonde hair rank and lifeless. Her clothing and jewelry are formal dresses and accoutrements stolen from corpses by Svilennius—once fashionable, but seeming garish and vulgar on her decomposing body.

Esme is accompanied by her handmaidens Lulu and Fiona, two clacking, mindless alchemical skeletons that Svilennius created for her under her command due to her Command Undead feat , also dressed in tattered burial finery. If unaware of intruders, she is considered indifferent. She can likely hear the sounds of combat in area 27, however, and her first impression is probably that the PCs are invaders in her home. Esme is considered unfriendly in this case, and unless they can convince her otherwise with a successful Diplomacy check, she responds appropriately, ordering her handmaidens to attack while she casts spells see Tactics.

Nevertheless, Esme can be reasoned with, so this does not have to be solely a combat encounter. See Development on page 27 should the PCs talk with Esme rather than fight her. Esme Verisi. Before Combat If she hears the sounds of combat, Esme casts mage armor from her scroll.

She casts cause fear on anyone attacking her from a distance such as another spellcaster and uses her scroll of ghoul touch against any foe who gets past her handmaidens. Esme uses her spells as long as possible but if forced into melee combat, she screams curses at her attackers, swinging wildly with her dagger and fists. Morale Esme fears death, or at least destruction, and begs for her un life if reduced to 11 hit points or fewer.

Trap: A macabre gate made of bleached bones blocks the tunnel to the south. The gate has no obvious handles or hinges, and acts as a trap for anyone who does not know the secret of opening it. When touched, the gate forms a sharp bone spear that attacks that creature.

The trap can be bypassed by channeling positive energy within 30 feet of the gate, which deactivates the trap for 1 minute and causes the gate to swing open of its own accord. Otherwise, the only way through the gate is to disarm the trap with Disable Device which is how Svilennius got past it to the explore the tunnel beyond. During Combat Lulu and Fiona are unarmed and fight with their claws. Morale The skeletal handmaidens fight until destroyed.

Development: If the PCs talk to Esme or if she surrenders, the PCs may have a moral quandary on their hands, as she is not evil and is not directly responsible for the missing bodies.

She is undead, however, and the church of Pharasma would destroy her for that fact alone, evil or not. If given a choice, Esme begs to be allowed to escape, and even offers to help the PCs in return. If they have yet to finish exploring the ossuary, Esme can tell them something of the rooms, though she was seldom allowed out of the areas claimed by Svilennius as his lair.

She is very familiar with areas 22—30, but has also been in areas 8, 11, 19, and 20, and she might be able to give some hints about what the PCs will encounter in those areas. For further repercussions of saving Esme, see Concluding the Adventure. This narrow shaft drops straight down into the earth. Just beyond the shaft to the north is a secret door connecting to the Crypt of Pharasma area It is well hidden, requiring a DC 25 Perception check to find.

Svilennius is unaware of the existence of this door. Repeated lines of footprints mark the dust on the floor of this crypt, all leading to an alcove in the northeast portion of the chamber. The burial niches lining the stone walls are empty save for ancient scraps of yellowed linen. At the far end of the chamber, a gate apparently crafted of bleached bone blocks an exit out of the tomb.

The Thassilonian priests of Pharasma used this hidden annex to their own crypt to conceal certain bodies from the eyes of the Runelords. Creatures: Svilennius uses this crypt to house the vanguard of his nascent undead army—such as it is. He hopes to one day stock the tomb full of undead minions, but to date his experiments have seen more failures than successes, and only four alchemical skeletons stand here ready to do his bidding. The skeletons stand motionless in the four central alcoves until living creatures enter the catacombs, at which point they emerge to attack.

Once the PCs have defeated Svilennius Tripe and his undead minions, they can report their success to the church of Pharasma. If Svilennius escapes, the PCs may finish their explorations, but will have to report failure to the church.

Once the PCs have completed their job in the ossuary, there are several possibilities for further adventure— the PCs doubtless found entrances to lower levels of the ossuary, which they may explore on behalf of the church of Pharasma, or they might want to venture even deeper into the many subterranean regions beneath Kaer Maga.

The PCs could also follow up on any of the mysterious clues or inscriptions they discovered in the ossuary. If they survived, the tengus Izzik and Skezza might know of additional dungeons accessible from the cliff face.

If the PCs spared the goblin snake Yrix or the dark creeper Falk, either might have information on other hidden catacombs to explore.

The monastic librarians of the Therassic Spire see page 18 of City of Strangers would no doubt be very interested in the contents of the Ancient Archives area 13 and might be willing to hire the PCs to find and explore more Thassilonian ruins beneath Kaer Maga. If any of the PCs are alchemists themselves, they might be interested in using the ancient texts of the Chymists of Life in Death see area 27 to create their own alchemical undead.

Learning the secret formulae should take considerable time and effort, and would obviously be opposed by the church of Pharasma, should they get wind of it. If a PC is successful, it is left to the GM to detail the alchemical processes involved, as well as any repercussions that might result from using such forbidden knowledge. Or perhaps they are interested in the preserved body found hidden in the secret vault area The identity of the dead man is left for the GM to develop—he could be a servant of one of the runelords, an ancient priest of Pharasma, or even an explorer from centuries ago who somehow got trapped in the crypts.

Lastly, if the PCs did not kill Esme Verisi, they could take it upon themselves to help her start a new life in the city. Though undead, Esme is not evil, and if allowed to live, she is contrite about her actions in helping Svilennius. Perhaps she can carry on his work in a place more suited to such researches, such as among the necromancers of Ankar-Te. The Godsmouth Heresy references several creatures, factions, and locations within and beneath the city of Kaer Maga.

Much more detail on these can be found in Pathfinder Campaign Setting: City of Strangers, but the following glossary provides a brief description of these terms. Ankar-Te: A district of Kaer Maga known for its necromancers and the undead servants that openly walk the streets. Caulborn: A race of telepathic historians and prophets, the oldest known inhabitants of Kaer Maga.

Council of Truth: An organization of spellcasters, engineers, and sages who sought to unlock hidden truths and universal secrets, but mysteriously disappeared years ago. The Dark Forest: A huge subterranean chamber holding a thick tangle of woods, inhabited by a diminutive people known as the Khaei, and home to the legendary dullahan called the Dark Rider. Iridian Fold: A mysterious group of men who always travel in pairs—one swathed in veils, the other in elaborate lacquered armor and chained at the neck and chest, though apparently not quite a slave.

Runelord: One of the seven rulers of the ancient Thassilonian Empire. Prison Levels: The subterranean dungeon that held dangerous and important prisoners when the entire city of Kaer Maga served as a Thassilonian prison.

The Still Place: A subterranean level of undead constructed to guard the sealed entrances to the underground city of Xavorax. Thassilon: An ancient empire that once encompassed all of Varisia and was ruled by seven Runelords dedicated to the seven rewards of rule now known as the seven great sins of the soul. Thassilon collapsed during Earthfall. The Therassic Spire: With collections dating back to the Empire of Thassilon, the great library of Kaer Maga is believed to be the oldest repository of knowledge in Varisia.

Undercity: The shallowest underground level below Kaer Maga, often erroneously assumed to include all of the subterranean chambers hidden beneath the city.

Wormfolk: A somewhat derogatory Kaer Magan term for nagas, who have a strong, though low-key, presence in the city. Xavorax: Known as the City of Silence, this is the stronghold of the caulborn and their vampire compatriots, situated far below Kaer Maga, where they sought sanctuary from the cataclysms of Earthfall.

Rune guardians are animated constructs from ancient Thassilon, created by the runelords to guard laboratories, ossuaries, and repositories of lore. As such, there are seven varieties of rune guardian, each recognizable by its shape—that of the Thassilonian rune representing that specific sin and arcane school. The emissary can use that power once per day. Fleanetha added it Jan 11, Steven Simmons added it Mar 05, You have godsmouyh have at least 1 chronicle assigned to a vigilante PC by August 17 in order to keep playing it.

These encounters make sense and can lead to further adventures. Yet when the PCs venture below the closed-off sections of the crypt, what they find may be more than they bargained for. Open Preview See a Problem? Pathfinder Modules 1 — 10 of 43 books. This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are as essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website.

It has been your support, financial and otherwise, that has allowed this site to become what it is today. By using our website you agree to our use of cookies. Donald Henry rated it it was ok Dec 13, The emissary can use that power once per day. Visit our Beautiful Books page and find lovely books for kids, photography lovers and more. Rigby added it Dec 26, Though this adventure is set in the frontier region of Varisia in the Pathfinder campaign setting, it can easily be adapted for any game world.

Although these little menaces are always fun to play, it is nice to have a change of pace when you are a 1st level adventurer. Another godsmoutth that this adventure has going for it is the fact that several encounters can turn into roleplaying encounters rather than combat encounters. The email listed on the Read Me page is a much more reliable way of getting a hold of me. Book ratings by Goodreads. Game Weight: 0. Tags separate by space :. User Information. Add a copy to your collection Record information Record a play.

The Godsmouth Heresy Average Rating: 7. Browse 2 Images » wrong image? Reynolds James L. Wesley Schneider James L. Publisher: Paizo Publishing. Year: View Corrections Link Image. Product Code: PZO ISBN No items found. No images found. No videos found. No threads found. No posts found.