Rules Index | GM Screen

Occult Adventure Seeds

Source Occult Adventures pg. 222
The following adventure seeds play on the elements and themes integral to occult adventures.

A Brace of Imps

Source Occult Adventures pg. 223
Rumors of the corpses of strange creatures appearing for sale in the city are confirmed with the display of a brace of dead imps in a local market. Where are they from, and why are they here?

Discovery: The characters overhear the rush of fear and excitement when the corpses of two imps appear for sale in a local bazaar. It is soon revealed that the source of the corpses is a local ragpicker with some knowledge of the occult, who discovered the imps discarded behind an old lodge building of a defunct fraternal society. Soon, another pair is discovered, and more pairs follow on its heels. What could be causing their appearance, and who is killing them two at a time?

Adversary: The imps are actually the messengers of a powerful devil once in league with the defunct secret society. A sorcerer recently took up residence in the old lodge, and the imps began appearing with tempting offerings from their diabolical master. The sorcerer slew the daily emissaries and disposed of their bodies. Their master is angered by the spellcaster’s violent response to his daily demands, and soon more powerful forces well out of the sorcerer’s league may appear to exact revenge. Can the PCs come to the sorcerer’s aid, or are they already too late?

Further Adventures: The PCs may gain a new ally in the form of the sorcerer, or a powerful antagonist if she takes the devil’s bargain. Does the ragpicker know more than he is willing to admit? What dark secrets does the lodge hold that the devil may seek for himself ?

Feast of Souls

Source Occult Adventures pg. 223
With alarming frequency, the rising of the morning sun reveals multiple brutal murders from the night before, and the victims’ souls, now separated from their mortal vessels, have failed to answer their bereaved relatives’ calls during seances. Someone, or something, is harvesting the souls of the deceased before they can reach their ultimate reward.

Discovery: The PCs encounter two competing seance circles that seek to uncover the murderer and the fate of the victims’ souls. But both groups’ ambitions are murky, and their combativeness threatens to rip the community apart. The PCs enter this chaotic scene as desperation sets in among the victims’ families, who only want the comfort of knowing their relatives’ souls have found final rest.

Adversary: The seance circles began with good intentions, but one of them is unwittingly the pawn of a night hag, unknowingly concealing her dread ambitions. The night hag has extorted the local thieves’ guild to gain its services by holding its leader hostage with her dream haunting ability. The guild is now murdering innocent victims so that she can bind their souls to her heartstone. She has also extorted a talented spiritualist in service to one seance circle to use his phantom in place of the rival circle’s summoned spirits, sabotaging the group closest to discovering the terrible secret behind the murders by spreading disinformation and deceit. The PCs must reveal the truth behind these proceedings by exposing the fraudulent spiritualist or infiltrating the thieves’ guild to discover the identity of the true mastermind behind the murders, before they can finally shatter the hag’s heartstone and bring rest to the souls of the dead.

Further Adventures: Destroying the hag’s heartstone frees the bound souls within, but did the hag have a deeper, more insidious motivation than the mere collection of souls for profit in the evil planes? Perhaps she had captured the spirit of a powerful, corrupt entity that now threatens the city with darker strife after gaining its freedom. The PCs have brought peace to the community for a time, but at what price, and what deadly machinations await?

Golem’s Revenge

Source Occult Adventures pg. 223
Years ago, a vicious purge sought to wipe the poor and wretched from their homes in the city’s slums, until a mysterious creature came to their salvation. Now, a generation later, the bodies of city authorities are left broken on the slum’s streets for all to see.

Discovery: The PCs are called on to investigate the murders and find the corpses brutally smashed and savagely disfigured in ways hardly possible for mortal man. Locals suspect a dimwitted strongman from a traveling freak show, but the true culprit is a deadly clay golem once built for protection.

Adversary: The secret society responsible for the original purge is planning another. They decided it would be truly poetic if the same protector that stopped the previous purge became the spark for the new one. Using the awaken construct spell, the son of the purge’s original architect awakened the old protector, whose creator had since died of old age, and convinced it that he was its father. After sending it out to commit murders of authorities and build anger against the slums, the young aristocrat plans to betray the golem and come out of that betrayal as the hero who stopped the murders, as he leads a second retributive purge of the slums.

Further Adventures: The PCs may defeat the golem, but unless they uncover the true plans of the secret society, they haven’t thwarted the new purge. Will the PCs come to the rescue of those who cannot protect themselves? Convincing the golem of the truth might net the PCs a powerful ally, but if they destroyed it, they might need to find the old golem crafter’s notes and try to teach themselves the occult rituals he used so they can fashion a new golem, if they are to have any hope of defeating the cult’s foul undertaking.

Lost Souls

Source Occult Adventures pg. 224
When a wise and benevolent ruler mysteriously falls unconscious and begins to waste away, turmoil erupts throughout the land as various factions vie for power.

Discovery: The ruler’s regent, a skilled spiritualist, desperately seeks the PCs. The PCs must take a dangerous psychic journey to the Ethereal Plane, the Dimension of Dreams, or both, in order to find the monarch’s errant mind or soul and bring it back before the body dies and the land is divided by strife. If the PCs perish while on this journey, their bodies suffer the same fate as the ruler.

Adversary: The ruler has no desire to return to the sorrows of life on the Material Plane, and opposes the PCs at every turn. On the Ethereal Plane, the ruler’s spirit makes a procession toward Heaven accompanied by the spirits of loyal knights. The procession visits the ethereal versions of three places significant to the ruler in life. If the characters travel to the Dimension of Dreams, these places are idealized memories rather than ethereal haunts. Regardless of the reality the PCs visit, the ruler resists them. The characters must learn the true reasons for the ruler’s sorrow and convince the mind or soul to return to the body. Along the way, they may clash with the ruler’s champions as they seek to accomplish their goals.

Further Adventures: If the ruler’s coma was result of the dark arts or an attempted assassination, the true culprits may lurk in ambush for the characters as they voyage through these strange realms. And as the characters explore, they find the processions of other rulers heading toward Heaven or Hell. Are these events all somehow connected?

The Menhir

Source Occult Adventures pg. 224
Every generation, the people of a village on a windswept moor venture out to a solitary menhir, where they join hands and say old words in a language that’s been passed down from generation to generation. Farther from this place, in a hidden hillside glen, is a smaller circle of stones—one for every generation— with human bones buried below, the remains of offerings.

Discovery: The PCs stop at the village during the course of their adventures. During their stay, the villagers welcome them and throw a feast, declaring one PC to be the “monarch” of the harvest and a villager the PC’s symbolic “consort.” During the night, the villagers make a clumsy attempt to abduct the honored PC and bring him to the menhir (if they fail to abduct the PC, they snatch a second villager instead). The villagers abandon their homes and gather around the menhir, chanting words in a forgotten language. The chosen monarchs are within the circle, seemingly unharmed. If the PCs don’t interfere, the next day the king and queen are simply gone, and the villagers claim ignorance of their whereabouts and seem reluctant to investigate.

Adversary: A psychic ghost or aberrant horror bound to the menhir manifests every generation to feed on the offerings provided by the villagers. When the being feeds, the menhir glows with a soft golden radiance, and the land for miles around becomes rich and fertile for a whole generation. If the PCs stake out the menhir during the night of the sacrifice, they have a chance to fight the creature, and if they rescue the sacrifices, the creature comes after them.

Further Adventures: Creatures of psychic power are attracted to a ley line passing through the menhir. Following the ley line leads to other villages with their own menhirs; those that were denied their sacrifices are now surrounded by dry and desolate land where nothing lives. Ley lines lead from these menhirs as well, on and on throughout the world. Generation after generation, the beings bound to these menhirs feed and grow more powerful. How can the PCs release the common folk from these mysterious horrors?

Mind Trap

Source Occult Adventures pg. 224
The PCs find a remarkable amount of success during their exploits, but all is not as it seems.

Discovery: After concluding a previous adventure, the PCs celebrate a job well done. During their revelry, they meet a woman who is excited for their success and invites them to her villa. She offers comfortable beds, fine foods and drinks, and the run of her abode. She tells them they are welcome to stay as long as they like, if they help her with a simple task.

Adversary: The woman is actually the consciousness of an ancient being imprisoned within an immersive mindscape. It long ago stopped trying to escape its mental prison, and now all it wants is some companionship. The PCs were unknowingly drawn into the consciousness’s mindscape at some point during their previous adventure, and are now trapped there with it. The consciousness creates whatever the characters desire, weaving a compelling tapestry of experience at first indistinguishable from the material world. Eventually, the characters figure out that wealth, fame, and fortune are falling into their laps just a little too easily and realize they must find a way out of the mindscape.

Further Adventures: The PCs might decide to destroy the mindscape—perhaps by traveling to the Dimension of Dreams, and possibly even freeing the ancient consciousness in the process. Other trapped creatures might exist inside the mindscape, and freeing them might provide the characters with future contacts or adversaries.

The Order

Source Occult Adventures pg. 225
Following a series of disasters or a virulent plague, the desperate populace places its faith in a fanatical faction of an otherwise reputable church. With great resources now at their disposal, the zealots promise to undo the curse by appeasing the gods through punishment of evildoers and heretics.

Discovery: “Witch hunters” begin an inquisition and arrest anyone who dabbles in magic or the supernatural, including clerics of other faiths. The PCs enter the scene when the witch hunters attempt to arrest them or their allies, or when family members and close associates are captured by the order.

Adversary: Outwardly, the leader of the order, the Truthseeker, appears to be its most rational and penitent member. In truth, this person is a psychic tyrant who uses his abilities to read minds and expose enemies of the order. In short time, the splinter faction becomes a powerful cult as the Truthseeker trains the witch hunters to read minds and tell the future. The PCs might simply rescue their allies from the order, or they might expose the Truthseeker.

Further Adventures: As the Truthseeker’s cult gathers power, how does the original church respond? How many cities and towns has it infiltrated, and how readily does it swell its numbers? Did the cultists cause the tragic events that led to their rise to power? Even if the PCs stop the Truthseeker, is another cult member ready to take up the mantle?

Portrait of Evil

Source Occult Adventures pg. 225
The PCs are tasked with looking into a series of disappearances in a major city. During their investigation, they accidentally come across evidence that implicates a local noble. While the evidence is conclusive in their eyes, it’s inadmissible to the local courts, and they soon find themselves at odds with the accused. The PCs are unaware that their suspect is the owner of a soul portrait.

Discovery: As the PCs delve into the background of the accused, they learn that despite her youthful appearance, she is well into her seventies. Further research reveals that a series of her acquaintances, competitors, and family members disappeared in the years following her thirtieth birthday. Detailed investigation discovers the accused’s obsession with a portrait commissioned in her late twenties, a portrait that some visitors describe as a vision of a rare and radiant beauty, and others speak of only in haunted whispers.

Adversary: The accused noble is defended by a legion of mercenaries who are too powerful for the PCs to assault directly. The soul portrait prevents divinations that would reveal her true nature, projecting the image of her innocent younger self. While the PCs are sure she is the cause of the disappearances and other crimes, the noble deflects any blame by means of her sizable wealth and perceived charitable nature. When the PCs truly become a threat to her, the noble attacks those closest to them using various forms of harassment and torture. The PCs have to contend with a foe empowered by the (mistaken) belief that she can suffer no consequences from her actions. Eventually, unless the PCs find a way to catch the accused in a situation where her portrait can’t protect her, they are forced to take the law into their own hands.

Further Adventures: When the accused is defeated, her image moves to the background of the soul portrait, and the PCs are left with the unsavory task of deciding what to do with the artifact. Less scrupulous PCs may decide to take it for themselves, commissioning an artist to add their likenesses to the canvas, having learned of the powers bequeathed by the portrait. PCs with stronger morals might seek to destroy the artifact, but will soon learn that only the owner of a soul portrait can destroy it— and at the high cost of another’s life.

Archives of Nethys

Rules Index | GM Screen