Shadowed Keep on the Borderlands Campaign Guide About the Campaign If all goes well, the party will investigate the massacre of a merchant’s party, explore an Inside the Guide: abandoned keep and delve into a dwarven hall. The successful party will have the op- tion of picking an additional adventure if they choose to. Characters surviving the Keep Paizo & Pathfinder 2 should reach third level, with fifth and seventh in reach if the party continues on. Rules are entirely from the Pathfinder Core Rulebook (except for traits). If it’s in the The Party 3 Core Rulebook section of the Pathfinder PRD, it should be fine. Karlae & the 4 Arthfell Forest This is my first go at GMing. Feel free to point out mistakes: important ones as they happen in Game Play; others more likely via the Discussion thread. Also use Discus- Olfden 5 sion and IMs to let me know about things that aren’t working or concerns you have. I’d Swallowfeld 6 prefer to work through those as best we can, rather than something festering and a player quitting in frustration. Arthfell Groups 7 IronFang Keep 8 Golarion 9 GolarionTimeline 10 Gods & Religion 11 Village of Hommlet 12 Play By Post 13 Glossary 14 Character Sheet 17 NPCs 19 Campaign Log 20 What Are We Doing and Why? Things people often wonder about me. I wanted to recapture some of the fun of table-top roleplaying. But things are a bit more difficult than they were back in the day. Priorities have changed and we have a bit more perspective and maturity (perhaps more of the former than the latter…). Time is both our most precious resource and the hardest to pool. So, I decided to shoot for a Play by Post game. We’ll use a message board structure where I will post as the Games Master (GM) and you (the Player) will post in response as the charac- ters. This should allow everyone to participate as their schedules allow. It won’t be perfect, but I think it will work overall and the game will progress somewhat steadily. Paizo & Pathfinder World of Warcraft –like, came out backlash for 4th Edition: in fact, in 2008. it’s already being abandoned as they are developing Dungeons and 4.0 also had a much more restric- Dragons Next, which is essentially tive version of what had been the fifth edition. Many former D&D Open Game License and third players are playing Pathfinder. party product dried up, relatively Aside from the similarity to speaking. But the strength of the 3.0/3.5 rules, the shelves of re- OGL was that it could be used source books that players owned forever. So people kept playing were still useable with a little work. 3.0/3.5 and new products kept Gary Gygax created Dungeons and coming out for it. D&D 4.0 was D&D was in danger of disappear- Dragons and founded TSR. He actually competing against itself in ing when Wizards purchased TSR was actually forced out of his own D&D 3.0/3.5. for $25 million in 1997. Wizards company and TSR, nearly bank- had previously hit it big by creating Paizo had been contracting with rupt, was bought by Wizards of the Magic: The Gathering. They Wizards of the Coast to publish Coast in 1997. Three years later in scored again in 1997 by introduc- Dragon and Dungeon magazines, but 2000, D&D Third Edition (3.0) ing the Pokemon Trading Card Wizards ended that agreement in was released to succeed AD&D Game. The success of those games 2007, bringing both in-house as on 2nd Edition. and the D&D brand name led the -line mags. Most of the folks running Paizo mega-company Hasbro to buy (the company that created Path- Paizo produced OGL products Wizards for $325 million in 1999. under the Game Mastery line, in- finder) worked for Wizards of the The OGL was a community driven cluding game mats for miniatures Coast and were key figures in the concept. Hasbro runs Wizards and the like. In 2009, with a roster development of D&D 3.0. This much more like an IBM-type cor- of D&D 3.0 talents, they launched version utilized what is now the poration, wanting 100% of the the Pathfinder RPG, which has standard format of the d20 System. profits, even at the expense of been commonly referred to as It also incorporated The Open D&D popularity. Thus, the OGL version 3.75. It is seen as what Game License (OGL). In a nut- was terminated and in 2009 they D&D 3.5 would have evolved into shell, third party developers could stopped selling pdf products had Wizards not decided to scrap produce products using the D&D through other vendors. Paizo/ the existing game and go more system without paying for use of it. Pathfinder have benefitted from MMORPG-like. The market was flooded with the ‘open approach’ in contrast to modules, campaign books, rules Pathfinder has been very success- the current marketing of D&D. changes, you name it. Some was ful in the declining market of pen In November of 2011, Paizo an- bad, some was good. But it result- and paper RPGs. Some of their nounced they are developing a ed in a surge of popularity for products are outselling Wizards of Pathfinder MMORPG, while D&D. the Coast’s and there is quite a bit D&D Next (i.e., Fifth Edition) is of third party material for the Only three years later, a revised in the works from Wizards. version came out, D&D 3.5. Pathfinder RPG. More than there Among other things, this allowed has been for official D&D. Wizards of the Coast to publish a Each Pathfinder book (and there whole new set of rulebooks, mod- are new ones monthly, including ules, etc. A lot of D&D 3.0 players their signature Adventure Paths) were pissed. But even more so are available in both print and pd when D&D 4th Edition, a major form, which has proven popular. overhaul to make the game more Wizards has received considerable The Party Beau Trill— Born a Chelaxian slave, this halfling was liberated by Andoran knights while visiting Almas. He was taught by acolytes of Desna and became one of her clerics himself. Finding freedom a new way of life, he searches for both lost treasures and his sister Amelia, who the knights could not save. Darpan— This human monk hails from the continent of Vudra. He came to Avistan as assistant to a swami who then passed on. Roaming this new world, he went westward from Absalom and found himself in the Darkmoon Vale region. Petracleus— Heir to a large barony, the human named Araneus Chrome III, Petracleus escaped a peas- ant uprising one step ahead of the pitchforks. He eventually returned home, only to find burnt out ruins and no signs of his family. But realizing how poor the ‘have-nots’ lived, he forsook his noble birth, changed his name to Petracleus and earned a living by his sword arm. Shane Greenbottle— This halfling druid is, literally, a tree hugger. He loves to climb trees. He pre- fers to spend his time in the wilderness: this is no ‘urban druid.’ Wix Knickershins— Third son of a barely noble human family, Wix was basically ignored and en- joyed causing mischief around the house. He also learned some skills not quite normal for his standing. Final- ly tiring of his trouble causing, his family sent him off to become a priest. Since he is now a rogue, he clearly had other ideas. Shadowed Keep Karlae Siegfrost Karlae was the leader of the Azure Guard, the most successful adventuring com- pany in Andoren history. After the group disbanded, she remained in Olfden and now plays an important role in nearly all town matters. It is well known that she stood tall in the Night of Silver Blood. She is also a semi-retired Pathfinder and still assists the Society. In addition to magical research, her most common activity is hiring non-members to perform a wide variety of tasks, such as this one. You answered a call for adventurers and Karlae met you at the Silver Bulette Inn, located in the city of Olfden. You must have had all the right answers, as the five of you have been given a commission on behalf of the Pathfinder Society. The Arthfell Forest Olfden Swallowfeld Shadowed Keep The Arthfell Forest of Western Andoran was once part of the same forest as its better known northern counterpart, Darkmoon Wood. Due to its relative paucity of darkwood, it has been much less heavily harvested by the Lumber Con- sortium than the Darkmoon and was home to the Forest King, Narven. Another reason the Arthfell sees fewer axes is because of the Shadow Pack, a group of lycanthropic druids who violently protect the forest. This sometimes puts them at odds with another faction, the FangWatch. The Watch is much more moderate and primarily patrols the northern part of the Arthfell. Thatch Wormtar leads a band of hobgoblins in the northern part of the forest. They occasionally cause problems, though they aren’t strong enough to make much of an impact. Olfden is the largest city nearby. To the west are the Aspodell Mountains, Piren’s Bluff and the Chelaxian Border. Baron Harald Klaustad, a noble who sided with neither Cheliax or Andoran during the Revolution, rules Piren’s Bluff, which plays a valuable role in keeping Cheliax out of Andoren.