Pathfinder - Module - Carrion Hill.pdf - Modules - annet.farren

C arrion H ill

module

By Richard Pett

A PATHFINDER RPG ADVENTURE FOR LEVEL 5

CARRION HILL

Crown

Manor

Slipper

Market

Rupman’s

Va t

Crove’s

Asylum

Elm Wa y

Church

Slipper

Market

A11

800

feet

A10

A12

Sunless Grove

CARRION HILL

Crown

Manor

Slipper

Market

Rupman’s

Va t

Crove’s

Asylum

Elm Wa y

Church

Slipper

Market

A11

A10

A12

Sunless Grove

module

™

CARRION HILL

CREDITS

Author : Richard Pett

Cover Artist : Dan Scott

Cartography : Rob Lazzaretti

Interior Artists : Hector Ortiz, Tyler Walpole

Editor-in-Chief : James Jacobs

Editing and Development : Christopher Carey, Sean K Reynolds, and James L. Sutter

Editorial Assistance : Jason Bulmahn and F. Wesley Schneider

Art Director : Sarah Robinson

Managing Art Director : James Davis

Publisher : Erik Mona

Paizo CEO : Lisa Stevens

Vice President of Operations : Jefrey Alvarez

Corporate Accountant : Dave Erickson

Director of Sales : Pierce Watters

Sales Manager : Christopher Self

Technical Director : Vic Wertz

Events Manager : Joshua J. Frost

Special Thanks : The Paizo Customer Service and Warehouse Teams

Carrion Hill is a Pathinder Module designed for four 5th-level characters. This module is designed for play in the Pathinder Chronicles campaign setting, but can

easily be adapted for use with any world. This module is compliant with the Open Game License (OGL) and is suitable for use with the Pathinder Roleplaying Game

and the 3.5 edition of the world’s oldest fantasy roleplaying game.

The OGL can be found on page 29 of this product.

Paizo Publishing, LLC

7120 185th Ave NE, Ste 120

Redmond, WA 98052-0577

paizo.com

Product Identity : The following items are hereby identiied as Product Identity, as deined in the Open Game License version 1.0a, Section 1(e), and are not Open Content: All trademarks, registered

trademarks, proper names (characters, deities, etc.), dialogue, plots, storylines, locations, characters, artwork, and trade dress. Elements that have previously been designated as Open Game

Content or are in the public domain are not included in this declaration.

Open Content : Except for material designated as Product Identity (see above), the game mechanics of this Paizo Publishing game product are Open Game Content, as deined in the Open

Gaming License version 1.0a Section 1(d). No portion of this work other than the material designated as Open Game Content may be reproduced in any form without written permission.

GameMastery are registered trademarks of Paizo Publishing, LLC; Pathinder Roleplaying Game, Pathinder Chronicles, Pathinder Companion, Pathinder Modules, and Pathinder Society

Printed in China.

module

CARRION HILL

ALK, IF YOU WILL, THE CLAUSTROPHOBIC ALLEYS OF

T H E T AN G L E , T H E MID D E N S T ON E V A T S O F T H E F I LT H ,

AND THE COBBLED WHITE ROADS AT THE SUMMIT

OF AN ANCIENT HILL. KNOW THAT THIS IS BUT THE

LATEST OF CITIES TO CROWN THIS SUMMIT, A MONUMENT

TO THE ILTH AND GRIME AND WASTE OF CIVILIZATION.

THE CITY WAS BUILT UPON THE BATTLEIELDS OF HISTORY

PAST, FOR MANY HAVE SOUGHT TO CONTROL THIS KEY

FEATURE, THIS LONELY HILL IN A SEA OF MUD AND MIRE.

ONLY ITS NAME HAS REMAINED CONSTANT THROUGH THE

AGES—CARRION HILL.

CARRION HILL

ADvENTuRE BACkgROuND

More than ancient battles and conquered cities lie buried

beneath the twisting streets of Carrion Hill—more even

than the ghouls and slithering and crawling things that

hunt these subterranean byways and haunt the dreams

of those who dwell in the sodden structures above. The

most dangerous thing buried under Carrion Hill is

neither ghost nor demon nor unborn plague—it is the

forbidden knowledge of those who irst chose the site as

their home. Knowledge of terrible things that may predate

even the gods themselves. Knowledge that neither book-

burning crusades of the pious nor passage of ages can

ever consume.

When the irst Varisians led the fall of Thassilon to

colonize lands that would one day become Ustalav thousands

of years ago, they found a wild region ripe for settlement

and development, a place far from the towering monoliths

and skeletons of the decadent Thassilonian empire. Yet as

they explored this new realm, they could not know of the

dark forces that had long before claimed this region as their

own. Those who settled to the north, south, and west found

diferent ghosts and demons to vex them, but those taking

up residence in what would eventually become the county of

Versex found perhaps the oldest lingering evil of them all.

Led by prophets and champions of Desna and guided

by ominous visions from their goddess of dreams, the

Varisians threw down and drove out the evil tribes of the

region and tore down the bloodstained standing stones

and dark altars they had erected. Along the southern

banks of Kingisher River, in the swampy region known

as the Wrythe, the Varisians confronted the last and

worst of the savage cults, and learned that the tribal

leaders were something more than human—they were

the spawn of one of the alien gods and lunatic priestesses,

grown huge on blood and eager to open portals to the

Dark Tapestry and call in their father, Yog-Sothoth, from

the outer darkness to crush these upstart foes. Yet the

Varisian host struck before this incantation could be

completed. Unable to defeat the mightiest of the spawn

of Yog-Sothoth, they managed the next-best thing—they

banished the abomination through an ancient portal

into the outer darkness. The Varisians seized the hill

upon which the battle had taken place and founded a city

there to guard against the Old Cults’ return.

Yet since this hill was well defensible and surrounded

by enough good farmland to support a city, it was much

coveted as well. No sooner had one group claimed the hill as

their own and raised their own city over the ruined corpse

of the one previous than another group claimed it as their

own. Varisian traditionalists, Kellid barbarians, Taldan

crusaders, mercenary armies, bandit kings, orc warlords,

undead armies of the Whispering Tyrant, and more have,

at various times, claimed Carrion Hill as their own, each

group rebuilding the city as they preferred, and each adding

another layer of grime over the site’s ancient history. By the

time the Whispering Tyrant conquered Ustalav some 1,500

years ago, memories of the Old Cults that once held the

site sacred had been forgotten in the face of Tar-Baphon’s

overwhelming evil. And in the modern age, 15 centuries

later, those memories have become obscure legends.

Yet still they lurk in Versex’s desolate wilderness. The

Old Cults remain strong today, their strength dependent

upon strange cycles that follow the movement of stars

above and the shiting of unseen inluences in the

Darklands below, and the workings of the Old Cults and

the inluence of their alien gods can still be felt.

Those ancients who irst ruled Carrion Hill raised great

basalt towers and dug vast chambers to hold their lore in

enormous libraries of carved stone tablets and timeless,

magically preserved tomes. The Varisians, seeing much to

remind them of the magic and libraries of Thassilon, were

quick to destroy these blasphemous repositories when they

found them, yet they were just as quick to build over those

ruins. In their haste to do so, most of the hidden chambers

of the Old Cults were missed. The location of one such

ancient site is known today as the Sunless Grove, all that

remains of the site at which the spawn of Yog-Sothoth was

banished so long ago.

Exploration of the underground labyrinths below

Carrion Hill has long drawn adventurers in search of

hidden treasure, yet the dangers below are not insigniicant.

Recently, one such foolish group stumbled into the

Sunless Grove only to switly succumb to the ghosts of the

place. Just one of the adventurers, a ighter named Oleg,

escaped death and returned to the streets above, yet he did

so without his sanity. Oleg switly fell into the care of one

Waldur Crove, the warden of Carrion Hill’s oldest asylum.

And with this event, Carrion Hill unknowingly enabled

what could well become its latest doom.

Waldur Crove was the leader of a group dedicated to

the Old Gods—the Keepers of the Oldest. Armed with

directions to the Sunless Grove, Keeper Crove and

his allies found the site much as Oleg’s mad ravings

described. Ater defeating some of the monsters in the

tunnels and allying with others, the Keepers of the Oldest

contacted the ancient ghosts of the Grove. Using a ritual

from a blasphemous book called the Pnakotic Manuscripts ,

they trapped the angry ghosts and the proceeded to use

them to attempt a dangerous ritual. The Keepers hoped

to force open the portal to the Dark Tapestry and learn

great and terrible secrets from those that dwelt beyond.

Yet the Keepers were matched in their insane brilliance

by their foolhardy ignorance. They opened the portal, but

all that came through was the long-imprisoned spawn of

Yog-Sothoth, atrophied and ruined from its 2,000 years

of limbo between the stars, but still a monstrous danger.

Pathfinder - Module - Carrion Hill.pdf

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