This adventure path takes place in Golarion, the signature world of the Pathfinder campaign setting—specifically in the Immortal Principality of Ustalav, described as "a fog-shrouded realm of countless horrors, and a once-proud realm that was shattered by the clawed hands of the Whispering Tyrant." You can learn a little more at the Ustalav page on the Pathfinder wiki; this material is considered largely common knowledge and reveals nothing that will particularly disrupt your involvement in the adventure, although you are cautioned not to go delving further into the additional links throughout the page.

Please Note
This game does not have PCs diving straight into combat or a dungeon. Instead, because the theme is horror, it begins with lots of heavy character interaction in order to create tension for later. You should be aware of and fully understand this before applying, so that you don't come in expecting to rush off at breakneck speed. I don't want any players frustrated or disappointed by a slow pace they didn't prepare for.

PCs will begin the game as a closely-associated group of professionals. While it is entirely acceptable that some characters may do most of their work slightly to one side of the team dynamic, all the PCs will know one another fairly well and have a history of some years of working together. At the core of this small organization lies the figure of Professor Petros Lorrimor, a doctor of magic and history who battles against the many evils in Ustalav, generally through the channels of other, better-equipped agents. Previously a tenured instructor at the University of Lepidstadt, in the capital of the Palatinate County of Vieland in northwestern Ustalav, Petros retired to the small farming village of Ravengro in Canterwall to raise his daughter, Kendra, after the death of his wife. Each of the PCs met the professor in a different fashion and forged a strong bond with him over time, and he in turn introduced them all to one another.

Group construction will utilize a pentagram device to help determine strong interpersonal connections between the PCs. For simplicity's sake, each PC should be considered to represent one point of a five-pointed star, meaning they have two lines connecting them to other characters. Thus, each PC is directly linked to, and should be personally invested in, two teammates. These relationships will assist with creating a solid, motivational sense of solidarity that will serve as an anchoring force for the PCs, who should comprise a small force of exorcists, hunters of the supernatural, and similar custodians of normalcy in haunted Ustalav. That means we will need a spellcaster familiar with undeath and possession; someone capable of wielding positive energy in the form of channeling or cure spells; and specialists in protecting these characters while they're getting their work done, as well as minimizing collateral damage and fighting the undead. Consider the melodramatic spiritualist obsessed with Osiriani mysticism—a witch, medium, or occultist who believes her patron spirit to be an ancient Pharaoh; or the quirky exorcist whose grim experiences have forced them to react with a facade of optimism. The hardened vampire hunter with a penchant for the advantages that technological gadgets can bring to their craft, perhaps; or the well-meaning necromancer who takes control of the unquiet dead in order to lay them to rest.

During creation and the initial stages of gameplay, you will have the opportunity to determine, as a group, the nature of this organizational dynamic. Since the idea is specifically to generate a party that functions as a cohesive, reasonably experienced team, that concept should be held firmly in mind during discussion. The end product ought to be a group of five PCs who are well-acquainted, friendly with one another, able to competently work together, and have some shared past that includes and justifies their relationships. It's fine—even encouraged—to do a little behind-the-scenes brainstorming (particularly with the two players most closely connected to you), as well as above-table planning, to outline some specific events in the party's history. However, please limit this to the realm of the reasonable: Your PCs will still be starting at 1st level, and your group has worked together for several years, not decades or a lifetime. You may cite IC points of interest that would fit within those parameters, but it's not fair to expect that you can talk about "that time we fought a lich in Caliphas" and so on.

The "what is reasonable" rule also applies to planning out your characters' advancement: Feat selection should reflect both your available resources and what is reasonable for the setting and character, and although we can certainly discuss it before a decision is made, I reserve the right to disallow any feat at any point (at least temporarily), if I feel it is not currently appropriate for a PC to have it.

For instance, a good argument can easily be made that Power Attack is relatively intuitive, and ought to be available early on to combat-oriented characters, but even something as seemingly mundane as Improved Unarmed Strike just might not be genuinely explicable until further down the line. A good rule of thumb is to consider how "technical" the feat seems, and if it is something that requires a lot of practice and expertise in a certain field, you should consider how well your character qualifies on that basis, rather than just mechanically, before petitioning to take the feat.

This also goes for prestige classes. If you intend to include a prestige class in your plans for advancing your character, that should be brought to my attention in your initial application, so we can discuss the concept and so that I have sufficient time to think about how it can be included in the adventure. Prestige classes do not simply fall from the sky, even if your character is fully qualified to enter them.

Themes to keep in mind include gothic horror and Victorian-era mystery and suspense. In flavor, Ustalav very much resembles the same time period that was home to the spiritualism craze and the great rise of the horror genre, from poetry to short stories to novels. Mesmerism, Faustian pacts, secret societies, and a fascination with Egyptian and Chinese (or, in game terms, ancient Osiriani and Tien) artifacts and history are all components of the eerie atmosphere we want to achieve. Of course, that doesn't mean that elements of newer horror won't play a major role; but these core ideas might help you find a feel for the setting.

If You Need Help
Wondering what to play? Lots of good ideas and helpful processes for both veterans and newbies, alike, can be found here!

Inspiration for characters of gothic horror and mystery can also be drawn from sources such as Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate, Wilkie Collins's The Dream Woman, Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula, Théophile Gautier's The Mummy's Foot, Henry James's The Turn of the Screw, M.r. James's Casting the Runes, Edith Nesbit's The Ebony Frame, Edgar Allen Poe's The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar, John William Polidori's The Vampyre, Red Hook Studios' Darkest Dungeon, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus, Troika Studios' Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, Robert Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray.

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Rules