[[quoteright:342:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/screen_shot_2014-01-22_at_11_17_06_am_989.png]]
[[caption-width-right:342: [[labelnote: Seventh Chronicle of Saint Ferais, Dragon Slayer]]Born of tainted womb and dragon lust, the Beast did crawl forth, shrieking and [[PsychoElectro spitting lightning]] and [[ImAHumanitarian eating of its week-dead parent's flesh]]. Blood-born and twisted, terrible and enraged, even the [[EvilOverlord promised centuries of cruelties and slaughter]] would never quell the shattered paragon's bloodlust. And the [[GodOfEvil Lord of Agonies]] smiled. Here was [[DarkMessiah his will made flesh]]. And so he gifted the Beast with two natures, to spread terror and pain, [[DarkIsEvil shadow and suffering in mortal guise]], [[GeniusBruiser mortal cunning in dragon form]], this despoiler, this [[AnimalisticAbomination abomination]], this Beast called Kazavon.[[/labelnote]]]]

''TabletopGame/{{Pathfinder}}'' is much DarkerAndEdgier than most ''Dungeons and Dragons''-based worlds, [[NightmareFuel and it SHOWS.]]

'''As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked [[Administrivia/SpoilersOff as per policy.]] Administrivia/YouHaveBeenWarned.'''
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[[folder:Rise of the Runelords]]

Paizo’s first Adventure Path [[EstablishingSeriesMoment set the (dark and edgy) tone]] for all ''Pathfinder'' stories to follow.

* Burnt Offerings
** The “Monster in the Closet” encounter in Part Two. [[LaughablyEvil You know those goblins]] [[HarmlessVillain that all]] ''[[HarmlessVillain Pathfinder]]'' [[MinionWithAnFInEvil players laugh at]]? [[NotSoHarmlessVillain One of them]], cornered, starving and going crazy, ''[[ImAHumanitarian eats someone's]] [[FacialHorror face off.]] [[HarmfulToMinors In front of his young son.]]''
** Yet another instance of [[SurprisinglyCreepyMoment startlingly disturbing goblins]] comes in Part Three, in Area A17 of the Glassworks. With Lonjiku Kaijitsu being the DeadGuyOnDisplay, the goblins tried to copy their boss’s masterpiece with the dismembered corpses of the Glassworks’ staff.
** Also in Part Three is Koruvus, a goblin hero who got lost in the Catacombs of Wrath and drank from a fountain of unholy water. The text is rather vague as to what happened to him, save that he was mutated into an insane monstrosity. [[BodyHorror Then you]] [[GlasgowGrin see his]] [[MultiArmedAndDangerous artwork.]]
* The Skinsaw Murders
** The fate of the Skinsaw Man’s victims, especially Katrine Vinder and Banny Harker. Both were subject to a CruelAndUnusualDeath, and Harker’s body was [[BodyHorror horribly mutilated]] by the murderer.
** Habe’s Sanatorium is a BedlamHouse run by two {{Mad Scientist}}s and their hired tiefling thugs, and its occupants include a crazed, blade-obsessed wererat and a man well on his way to becoming a ghoul.
** Your Lordship’s handwritten notes to the PC he’s obsessed with. Whether he’s a {{Yandere}}, a GreenEyedMonster, or hell-bent on murdering you, knowing that the murderer wants ''[[TheFourthWallWillNotProtectYou YOU]]'' is more than a little unnerving.
** Foxglove Manor. You know a place is bad when the house isn’t just haunted, but a ''lich’s SoulJar'', albeit one created accidentally. In terms of pure horror (both in-your-face and the [[FridgeHorror fridge variety]]), the haunts here (and their history) are only topped by the ones in Spires of Xin-Shalast. Oh, and did we mention the [[BodyHorror rats?]]
* The Hook Mountain Massacre
** Really, ''everything'' in this chapter. You want specifics? [[YouDoNotWantToKnow You really don’t]], but if you insist…
** The Graul Farm almost surpasses the ruin of Fort Rannick in terms of [[HillbillyHorrors grotesque ogre antics.]] Almost. From the [[FatBastard morbidly obese]], [[ILoveTheDead necrophiliac]] and [[VillainousIncest incestuous]] [[EvilMatriarch Mammy Graul]]; to the various [[BodyHorror ogrekin deformities]]; to the horrific and cruel traps; and finally, the [[GiantSpider giant freaking ogre spider]] they keep in the basement; the ogrekin of the Graul family give the players their first taste of the [[ChaoticEvil savage depravities]] of ogrekind.
** The ogre attack on Fort Rannick, and the carnage the [=PCs=] walk in on. One ogre is making dough from [[{{Squick}} the guards’ entrails]], one wears a bunch of dead minks in place of his severed jaw, one writes graffiti using a beheaded corpse as a brush, one enjoys playing with the corpse of a cleric of Erastil, and there's the [[BadBoss absolutely]] [[AbusiveParents brutal]] ways that Jaagreth Kreeg maintains control over his clan. The [=PCs=] are given plenty of opportunities to punish them; after seeing all this, they may very well take them.
** The flood. Besides the danger of a young girl getting eaten by a gigantic snake, there’s also the sudden appearance of [[EldritchAbomination Black Magga]].
** The fate of Avaxial in Skull’s Crossing. The pit fiend has been trapped here for millennia, and his life force has been slowly draining away (in game terms, he has 19 negative levels; one more will kill him). And even if the [=PCs=] decide to save him (when it’s in their best interest to [[MercyKill put him out of his misery]]), the text states that he may very well come back to [[UngratefulBastard murder them]] for finding him in such a humiliated state.

[[/folder]]

!!Everything Else

* Lamashtu: besides being a goddess of monsters and nightmares, there's all the horrifying details surrounding her progeny and worshipers. For example, Lamashtan priestesses who give birth to children blessed by their goddess do so by letting their offspring tear their way out of the womb.
* More fun in this vein are [[MeaningfulName the Motherless]], Tieflings [[HumanoidAbomination with Qlippoth heritage]]. They're implied to eat their way out in childbirth, with invariably fatal results.
** Similarly, tieflings with Daemon sires have some terrifying food for thought. Normally, Daemons hate the idea of mortality in any form, to the point that some horsemen specifically forbid their worshippers from procreating, as the resulting creation of souls slows down their goal of omnicide. So why do [[MeaningfulName Grimspawn]] exist? Because Daemons hate mortals so much, they are all too willing to either [[ColdBloodedTorture horribly experiment on mortals so that they conceive]] or simply [[ChildByRape overpower them and impregnate them by force.]]
* Also Zon-Kuthon, god of pain, who preaches torture, mutilation (of both oneself and others), and dismemberment of living victims ([[FateWorseThanDeath who are kept alive as long as possible]]). Zon-Kuthon brutally tortured and flayed ''his own father'' until he was a broken and twisted slave.
** And why is he such a monster? He is presumed to have met ''[[EldritchAbomination something]]'' which either corrupted or possessed him. Before that event, he was quite nice.
** Zon-Kuthon's appearance is a nightmare in itself, due to his mad devotion to self-mutilation and his divine resistance to injury and harm. He was once one of the most beautiful gods around, but now... he doesn't have lips anymore, revealing his teeth in a hideous grimace; his left eye has been gouged out and replaced with a chunk of crystal; what's left of his face is twisted into tortured leers by the hooks and extreme piercings pulling at his skin; a halo of metal spikes is embedded in his cranium, pulling his torn skin into a bloody sunburst; the back of his skull has been carved out to expose his brain; metal spikes are threaded under the skin of his arms; finally, most of his abdomen is just... gone, and black metal censers swing from chains attached to rings set around his exposed, bloody ribs. Understandably, even his worshippers prefer to just depict him as a gaunt man with a single major wound.
** His champion as well, the great blue wyrm named Kazavon. He took over the Hold of Belkzen disguised as a human, then he went UsefulNotes/VladTheImpaler on everyone. Besides that mess, there's the fact that, [[SoulJar in a way]], ''he's still alive.'' [[DismantledMacGuffin Bringing together]] the [[ArtifactOfDoom Relics of Kazavon]] will resurrect the dragon and... well, that's just one more way that [[CrapsackWorld Golarion is screwed]].
** One of his rituals, reserved for only the luckiest of Kuthites, is known as the [[SuperFunHappyThingOfDoom "Joymaking"]]. It consists of the Worshiper having their limbs and non-vital organs amputated so that they remain a helpless head and torso, destined to live the rest of their lives as the subjects of limitless torture.
* ''Carrion Crown'' is a swift trip into the horror genre. What does it start with? A haunted prison, what else!
* Scared of HillbillyHorrors? ''Pathfinder'' takes the tropes and applies them to not one, but ''three'' kinds of giants.
** First up, there's the ogres, from their first appearance in "The Hook Mountain Massacre". They're hideously deformed, rampantly incestuous, sadistic, murderous, [[ImAHumanitarian cannibalistic]] monsters whose "society" revolves around essentially nothing more than food, sex and torture. Their idea of games include mig-a-mug-tug (grab each other by sensitive spots and yank as hard as you can; first one to collapse in pain loses) and man-swords (smash two humanoids together until they've been crushed to a pulp). Their genes are so polluted that not only are "ogrekin" invariably distorted and grotesque-looking, the ogre's genes effectively destroy the bloodline -- an ogrekin can mate with humans, but nothing in their family tree will ''ever'' resemble a human again. Worse still, the rampant inbreeding ogres practice can eventually lead to them devolving into "degenerate ogres", creatures so foul and hideous that ''[[EvenEvilHasStandards even other ogres]]'' think of them as primitive monstrosities. To say nothing of the mutations that can plague given clans, like the Shaggras, whose whole bodies are covered in carpets of thick, greasy, rank PrehensileHair.
** Then there's the hill giants, who are less incestuous, but still rampant cannibals, brutes and barbarians.
** The marsh giants, meanwhile, are believed to have been hill giants... once. Now they're something so foul even ogres regard them with fear. They basically practice all of the same horrors as ogres, but with their own horrors on top of it. For example, not only do females spend so much time chewing on toxic mushrooms to enjoy the drugged out states that ensue they invariably either neglect their children or retard them with their poisoned milk, fathers and mothers typically ''eat'' their children, since their barbaric form of animism preaches that offspring are parasites of the soul. They also worship Dagon, adding some Lovecraftian cultist action to the mix.
* The Qlippoth are ''Pathfinder'''s answers to the Obyriths. They are [[EldritchAbomination horrifically alien elder fiends]] -- so old that when the oldest race in the cosmos, the Proteans, started to explore the multiverse soon after their creation, ''[[TimeAbyss the Qlippoth were already there]]'' -- that once ruled the Abyss before the coming of demonkind -- and they want it ''back''.
** They are so horrible in form that [[BrownNote even looking at them causes various neuroses]], and with the [[DemonLordsAndArchdevils qlippoth lords]], their hideousness is so extreme that it somehow has ''physical'' effects on the viewer, some of which can be fatal. Bestiary 2 implies that they may be foreign to the multiverse itself, and Bestiary 6 states outright that they are [[TimeAbyss reality's oldest form of life]]. Fortunately, they mainly just want to kill all demons and take the Abyss back. ''Un''fortunately, to exterminate demons they need to get rid of all sin, and to do this they have decided to [[OmnicidalManiac kill all mortals]]. To this end, they explicitly ''prefer'' to [[WouldHurtAChild kill children and pregnant women]].
* ''Pathfinder'' explicitly includes many creatures from the Literature/CthulhuMythos as part of its settings. Hounds of Tindalos, dimensional shamblers, gugs, denizens of Leng and their spider enemies, moonbeasts, shantaks, nightgaunts, shoggoths, elder things, flying polyps, bholes, mi-go... the list just keeps going on, and even includes some of the Great Old Ones and Outer Gods, like Hastur, Shub-Niggurath and Cthulhu himself.
** ''Bestiary 5'' adds the deep ones, of Innsmouth infamy. Deep ones who are explicitly capable of granting divine spells when they grow powerful and big enough. It's even worse if you happen to be a hybrid -- the good news is that you have free will and won't be forced into an AlwaysChaoticEvil alignment by your transformation into the fishy side of your heritage. The ''bad'' news is, that's because the transformation actually ''kills you''-- horribly -- and then reformats your body into a deep one who simply does not care about anyone you, the previous owner of its body, were close to, only their ReligionOfEvil. And it happens quite quickly, when you're 60. Oh, and it's implied they're the source of much of the aformentioned marsh giants' genetic pollution and mental degeneracy.
* Kytons, in ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'', were traditionally a minor fiendish race of minimal importance, chain-wrapped gaolers who dwelt upon the LawfulEvil planes of Acheron and Baator. In ''Pathfinder''? Kytons are a race of sadomasochistic artists of BodyHorror, [[Film/{{Hellraiser}} Cenobite]] expies who rule the Plane of Shadow. And as they are now a major fiendish race, they now have a whole hierarchy of progressively more powerful, twisted forms, all the way to [[DemonLordsAndArchdevils Kyton Demagogues]].
* Similarly, ''Pathfinder'' abandons the mercenary war-profiteering Yugoloths of ''TabletopGame/{{Planescape}}'' for its own dark entities, the Daemons. Born as the embodiments of mortal deaths of all kinds -- old age, murder, insanity, poison, pollution, etc -- and ruled by the Four HorsemenOfTheApocalypse, these NeutralEvil fiends have but a single goal. Stemming back to the very depths of D&D Character Alignment lore, these monsters want but a single thing: [[OmnicidalManiac the extermination of all life]]. They want to kill all of the gods, all of the planar races, all of the mortal races -- they just want to kill and kill until there's nothing left but their own kind. And then, when TheMultiverse is empty of all life except Daemonkind, they will turn on each other until only a single last solitary Daemon survives. That Daemon will bask in the utter emptiness... and then kill itself, as with nothing else to distract it, the fiend's hatred of its own existence is all that it has left to sate.
** To drive the difference between the yugoloths and daemons home; in D&D, demons and devils are mostly concerned with fighting each other and yugoloths will act as mercenaries for either side -- while there's some suggestion they're the real puppet masters behind the Blood War, they're mostly an afterthought as far as fiends go. Compare ''Pathfinder'''s Daemons, who are so evil and so dangerous that demons and devils will put aside their differences with each other and even with ''celestials'' to fight daemonic threats.
** The Four Horsemen alone are worthy of an entry. They are the most powerful daemons in existence, meaning that they are the apex of what it means to be daemon-kind. They are powerful, cruel, and utterly relentless. Urgathoa, one of the most powerful goddesses in ''the entire setting'', is wary of them, even as they allow her to live in their plane of Abaddon. She has good reason to be; The Four are notorious for ChronicBackstabbingDisorder, even among the divine. So how come they aren't wiped out yet? The answer is two-fold: on top of being [[CantKillYouStillNeedYou smart enough to be useful to other gods,]] each of the horsemen are utterly terrifying in their own right. To wit;
*** Apollyon, [[{{Plaguemaster}} Horseman of Pestilence]], came into power when his predecessor went missing in the Maelstrom. What followed could only be described as a massacre as Apollyon [[OneManArmy tore through all challengers for the title of Horseman.]] His violence did not cease after he gained the title, though; the most notable part of his wardrobe is a cloak made from [[GenuineHumanHide dozens of angels]] that failed to slay him. On top of being a brutal combatant, he is also the divine equivalent of a bioterrorist, creating numerous plagues and viruses that kill in multitudes.
*** Charon, [[EvilOldFolks Horseman of Death]], practically owns the River of Souls in all but name. His Thanadaemons offer safe travel around the mind-breaking torrents, but there's [[DealWithTheDevil always some sort of a price.]] He is the only Horseman of Death there has ever been, having fended off all other would-be usurpers. He brokered the deal with Urgathoa and Zyphus to live in their plane of Abbadon, keeping a close eye on both deities as they dwell there. A shrewd deal-broker and tactician, he is also a wicked inventor, once creating a device so powerful and efficient in exterminating life that it ''[[EvenEvilHasStandards horrified and repulsed Asmodeus.]]'' He acts the part of the most reasonable Horseman, being open to deals with mortals and far less likely to kill them outright, but this is a deadly ruse - Charon is ''every bit'' as murderous and hateful as his kin, he's just more patient. Each and every service he renders or deal he makes, no matter how benign it seems, is one tiny step closer to [[OmnicidalManiac the end of everything]].
*** Szuriel, [[SociopathicSoldier Horseman]] [[BloodKnight of]] [[GeneralRipper War]], rents out her daemonic armies to other fiendish purposes: in return, her armies get to [[YourSoulIsMine eat the souls of their enemies.]] She has experience with armies, as well: before her ascension to godhood, she betrayed the church she worshiped as a mortal after she was excommunicated. How bad was the betrayal? She had ''every single member of her former faith'' '''[[CruelAndUnusualDeath crucified]]''' as she crowned herself [[GodSaveUsFromTheQueen empress of the nation.]] Even after her assassination, she still has a loyal army willing to fight to the death... and for it. When she sells her armies' services to mortals, she drives her hapless clients to genocidal excesses against their enemies before betraying and massacring them. Szuriel, her cults, and her armies all work to devolve every war they start or enter into torture, murder, atrocity, and finally [[FinalSolution genocide]].
*** Finally, Trelmarixian [[RedBaron the Black]], [[InsaneEqualsViolent Horseman of Famine]], was a mortal tiefling who managed to kick off a [[ApocalypseWow Class 5 apocalypse,]] causing everyone on his planet to starve to death, himself included. His madness persists even after his expiration, as he [[HorrorHunger personally devoured his predecessor]], Lyutheria the Parasite Queen, just as he became her most trusted harbinger. But even as he bears the title of Horseman, Lyutheria lives on in his mind, exacerbating his madness and corrupting him even further.
** Practically all of the Daemonic deities are bad news, but Folca is particularly nasty. He’s the Daemonic Harbinger of [[PaedoHunt Strangers, Sweets, and Abduction]]. He’s practically the patron deity of pedophiles in Golarion. [[FromBadToWorse But we’re not done with him yet]]; in order for his worshippers to receieve any fiendish boons from him, they have to [[HarmfulToMinors stalk a child, make them witness a horrifically brutal event]], [[MoralEventHorizon or worse]], [[WouldHurtAChild assault a child themselves]], [[ParanoiaFuel and tell the poor kid]] ''they’ll come back for him next''. Last but not least is his artwork in The Book of the Damned: he’s pretty much [[Franchise/TheSlenderManMythos The Slender Man]] but with a bloody sack to carry around kids... that he doesn’t need, since the hands of those kids he kidnaps [[BodyHorror bulge out of his skin]]. Oh, and he carries around pieces of candy to lure kids in. [[SchmuckBait Go ahead. Take one.]]
* We all know the derro: insane dwarf equivalents, they were already freaky enough to get even the Drow {{squick}}ed out about them. When ''Pathfinder'' gets its hands on them, what more can it do? Well, for starters, it can make them degenerate expies of the worst interpretations of TheGreys, with luminous eyes and frazzled hair, complicit in cattle mutilation and kidnapping. And the worst part? Now, they ''live right under cities''. Not to mention the unfortunate fact that those victims they return don't remember their own absence but for bad dreams...
* The third-party book "Path of War" gives us the Black Seraph discipline, a fighting style where literally anything goes. Attacks include kicking enemies in the guts to make them nauseous, snapping their tendons so they can't escape, and launches a flurry of blows that will not only kill them, but mess up their body to the point where revival would be impossible as [[BodyHorror they are too badly mangled to survive.]] Now let's say it loud: [[YouAreAlreadyDead Omae wa]] [[Manga/FistOfTheNorthStar mou shindeiru.]]
* Far out in space (but not nearly far enough) is a galaxy-spanning empire known as the Dominion of the Black. Even the ''[[EldritchAbomination mi-go]]'' [[HorrifyingTheHorror don't go into the Dominion]], and even the Outer Gods call them enemies. These beings are creators of synthetic plagues and generators of monstrous aberrations who regard humanoids as a [[HumanResources handy source of spare parts.]] Their usual method of space travel is to crash-land their living ships on the destination world and leave the ship to go insane as it slowly decays. They enslave worlds in order to harvest organs from fleshfarms or draw psychic energy from entire plantations of brains-in-a-jar. They worship annihilation as if it were a god -- their religious festivals involve a fleet hanging around outside a black hole's event horizon, intoning hymns of praise as the most devout of the pilgrims hurl themselves in. So far, they haven't paid much attention to the technologically backward, undesirable planet known as Golarion. ''So far.''
* The planet of Aucturn, in general. This dark planet is a gigantic living being, populated by beings usually associated with the Cthulhu Mythos and/or the Dominion of the Black. Dark cities and cathedrals dot the planet, all dedicated to Dark Forces. A valley, full of sickly, cloying mists, is called "The Loving Place". So called because it's just about the one place on the planet where the denizens are unlikely to eat, sacrifice, or simply murder travelers. What the dwellers have in mind ''there'' is ''[[FaceFullOfAlienWingWong so]], '''[[BoldlyComing so]]''' [[MarsNeedsWomen much worse]]...'' speaking of which, the planet ''itself'' is possibly pregnant, too. There's a gigantic bulge on its surface that is thought to be a mountain-sized tumor, but which may very well be a swelling where something awful is gestating under the planet's surface. And Aucturn's coming ''ever'' so closer to Golarion...
* ''Ironfang Invasion'', while boasting a more classic variety of evil, certainly has its fair share of spine-chilling moments:
** Why don't we start with the beginning of the adventure path, where the players' current abode (and possibly hometown) is suddenly and brutally invaded by an army of hobgoblins? The entire encounter is designed to be ''impossible'' to win: the best the party can do is run and hide in the nearby Fangwood Forest as their homes and livelihoods are burned to the ground. Furthermore, if some of the players decided to be ''from'' Phaendar, it's very likely that their friends or loved ones are either dead or have been taken as slaves, making this a hell of a PlayerPunch. YouCantGoHomeAgain, indeed.
** After living off the land for days to weeks and doing their best to evade the various Ironfang patrols after them -- which is in and of itself a pretty harrowing experience -- the party will have to deal with the BountyHunter Scarvinious. Simply put, this guy is bad news. His camp is called "Camp Red Jaw" because his predecessor had his jaw ripped off by Scarvinious' father for failing to capture the fugitives. Scarvinious ''took'' the jaw, attached it to a pole and uses it as his standard. Oh, and he's a monstrous sadist, preferring to take his victims alive so he can torture them for as long as possible before they finally die. His tent is called the "hut of screams", and it's ''made of flayed humanoid skin''.
* That's a really pretty coin you have there. Oh, what's that? You stole it from Erebus, the Third Layer of {{Hell}}? That means that [[DemonLordsAndArchdevils Mammon]] gets to pay you a visit through the coin. Don't try getting rid of the coin by ingesting it, though. [[DemonicPossession Mammon can get around that too]]...
* The Sahkil species of outsiders are this trope incarnate. Once Psychopomps devoted to the natural order of life and death, the sahkils fled to darkest reaches of the ethereal plane where they stalk the denizens of the material plane. Their time there has transformed them into [[BodyHorror something horrific]], with each form varying from entities such as the maggot-infested nucols to the gigantic skull-bearing kimenuhls. These mutations are deliberate, of course, as [[EmotionEater they thrive off of the continual terror of their prey]]. But the worst part of them is that they have ''friends'', ranging from the omnicidal daemons and divs to the pain-loving kytons.
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