Characters / Pathfinder Adventure Path Strange Aeons

The characters of the nineteenth adventure path, Strange Aeons.

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Haserton Lowls IV

• Big Bad: Nearly every bad thing that happens in this Adventure Path, especially to the players, can be traced to him.
• Dual Boss: He's fought together with Ariadnah at the end of the Adventure Path.
• Evil Is Petty: Why'd he summon Xhamen-Dor and become an avatar of a Great Old One? Because he wanted to force people to acknowledge a theory of his.
• Fusion Dance: By the end, he has merged with a portion of the remains of Xhamen-Dor into a being called the Star Seed.
• Humble Goal: Lowls doesn't seek wealth or power, both of which he was born into. Instead, he's devoted his life, squandered his fortunes, been indirectly responsible for many deaths, and nearly delivers Golarion to Xhamen-Dor and Hastur, all in pursuit of recognition from the academic community.
• Know-Nothing Know-It-All: Desperately wants to be acknowledged as an academic, but is considered a hack by true scholars.
• To Serve Man: By the time the players encounter Lowls back, he is in the process of being consumed by Xhamen-Dor so it can restore itself with the full power of a Great Old One.

Winter Klaczka

Race: Changeling

Class: Cleric of Pharasma

Alignment: True Neutral

• Black Cloak: Her artwork depicts her with a black cloak.
• The Leader: Winter has become the survivors’ de facto leader with her common sense, calm demeanour, and honest desire to see everyone make it out of the asylum alive.
• Promoted to Playable: It's suggested that a PC who falls to the horrors of Briarstone Asylum can be replaced by Winter, if the player so wishes.

Ratch Mamby

Race: Ratling

Class: Sorcerer

Alignment: Chaotic Evil

• Defeat Equals Friendship: If reduced to fewer than half his hit points, Ratch Mamby yields and offers to answer any questions that the players might have.
• Flunky Boss: He's protected by two dire rat guards and supports them with spells from the rear.
• Mr. Exposition: Ratch is the Briarstone inhabitant who knows the most about the Tatterman and is willing to tell the players in exchange for his life.
• Rat Men: Comes with the territory of being a ratling (rat-like humanoids).

Eliege Losandro

Race: Oneirogen

Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

• Dream Weaver: Losandro releases vestiges of her own thoughts and dreams, as well as manifestations of strong psychic presences from elsewhere.
• Flawed Prototype: Losandro is the prototype of Zandalus’ oneirogens in the asylum, although she doesn't function correctly as he intended.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Losandro's attempt to free Zandalus from his nightmares, although successful and enabling him to speak again and sleep peacefully for the first time in decades, also did something far worse. No longer restrained to dreams, the Tatterman took hold of Zandalus’s mind and, by night, slipped into the real world.

Ulver Zandalus

Race: Human

Class: Psychic / Expert

Alignment: Chaotic Evil

• Brainwashed and Crazy: Zandalus used to be a bright artist until he was captured by a drug cult sworn to the King in Yellow and exposed to both potent hallucinogens and intense psychological torture.
• Demonic Possession: The Tatterman has gained control of not just his sleeping body, but also his waking form, by the point the players encounter him.
• Mad Artist: He gained a reputation as the mute asylum inmate who draws startling visions of his nightmares, with powerful impressions of spiraling skies and vast, dead cities.
• Tragic Villain: Despite being seen as the architect of the Briarstone uprising, none realise that Zandalus is just as much a victim of the Tatterman as the rest of the inmates. Zandalus knows that he's a prisoner within his body and every time he falls asleep, the Tatterman speaks and acts through him, building a cult to Hastur.

The Tatterman

Race: Doppelganger

Class: Sorcerer

Alignment: Chaotic Evil

• Expy: Of Slenderman+Freddy Kreuger.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: The Tatterman is the very first foe encountered in the adventure path, and you are not supposed to defeat him at this point yet.
• Monster Progenitor: The Tatterman is the source of all the ghouls and doppelgangers in the asylum.
• One-Winged Angel: Destroying the possessed corpse of Ulver Zandalus does not destroy the Tatterman and will cause him, no longer chained to the Dreamlands, to emerge in his true form and attack the party.
• Real After All: Many among the asylum staff believe that the Tatterman is just a ghost story that has carried on and spread through the patients like an illness. Let's just say that they are far off from the truth.
• Sealed Inside a Person-Shaped Can: The Tatterman is directly tied to Ulver Zandalus and his consciousness. For the most part, the Tatterman is locked away in the Dimension of Dreams, and can influence only Zandalus's thoughts. The Tatterman can't manifest on the Material Plane while Zandalus is conscious, but when the cult leader sleeps, the Tatterman can haunt the halls of Briarstone Asylum. If Zandalus is killed, the Tatterman can freely walk the waking world.
• Serial Killer: He’s turned Briarstone Asylum into his personal killing ground.
• Starter Villain: The main villain and Final Boss of the first adventure of the campaign.
• Was Once a Man: The Tatterman's victims suffer terrifying transformations: any who restrained their desires were transformed into ghouls; any who sought to be something else became doppelgangers; others underwent even stranger changes.

Cesadia Wrentz

Race: Human

Class: Rogue

Alignment: True Neutral

• Da Chief: She's the founder of the Sleepless Agency and makes sure that her field agents are always fully prepared for the tasks she assigns them.
• The Leader: Cesadia is concerned about the things going on in Thrushmoor, and frustrated that she seems to be the only person in a position to address them. However, since any sense of leadership in the town has collapsed, the responsibility has fallen to her.

Nemira Lowls

Race: Human

Class: Sorcerer / Aristocrat

Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

• Astral Projection: Nemira Lowls can project her spirit outside of her body, and uses this to experience the world beyond her attic prison.
• Fighting a Shadow: At night Nemira can appear to the players in her spirit form. If she is reduced to 0 hit points in her spirit form, the incorporeal form immediately returns to her body. If the players spend multiple days exploring Thrushmoor, this encounter can be a recurring event each night until the players come to the Iris Hill's attic to kill her for good.
• Madwoman in the Attic: She has been confined to the attic in Iris Hill for the last 20 years. Her condition, combined with long years of isolation, has left her unhinged.
• Murder the Hypotenuse: When Nemira suspected that her husband knew of her secret relationship with Clymes Prett, they used an occult ritual to infect him with a deadly wasting disease.
• Was Once a Man: After delving into lore that should have been left alone, Nemira Lowls was transformed into an eldritch monstrosity.

Tilsitari

Race: Soulsliver

Class: Rogue

Alignment: Neutral Evil

• Kill and Replace: Tilsitari has impersonated and killed the real Barawyn Cesyll and assumed her role as second-in-command Constable.
• Mirror Monster: She can assume the form of anyone who looks into a mirror in which she resides.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: She's an extradimensional shapeshifter called a soulsliver from the realms between dimensions.

Melisenn Kororo

Race: Human

Class: Cleric of Hastur

Alignment: Chaotic Evil

• Daddy's Little Villain: She was her adoptive father's apprentice in the Cult of Hastur and learned how to manipulate others from him more than anyone else.
• Professional Butt-Kisser: Melisenn craftily praised Count Lowls' genius while the academic community generally mocked him for his superficiality and intellectual dishonesty.

Skywin Freeling

Race: Halfling

Class: Swashbuckler

Alignment: Chaotic Good

• The Captain: She captains the ship Sellen Starling.
• Nice Guy: Skywin is good-hearted, has a reputation for fairness and directness and tends to ignore past misdeeds when hiring crew.
• Private Military Contractors: Skywin is willing to take a lower fare, or even to let players come for free, as long as they agree to fight if the ship is threatened.

The Yellow King

Race: Human

Class: Aristocrat / Bard

Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: The Yellow King is prone to using large words, and he speaks of specialised subjects as if his audience were experts.
• Split Personality: The Yellow King is a fragment of Lowls' personality that remained behind in the Dreamlands when he left it.

Abdul Alhazred

Race: Human

Class: Diviner / Loremaster

Alignment: Chaotic Evil

• Affably Evil: Although his alignment is Chaotic Evil, he is polite to the party and is willing to offer his help if given gifts.
• Power Born of Madness: With Abdul’s insanity came power, including the ability to travel far beyond Earth.
• Public Domain Character: Yes, this Abdul Alhazred is the same character created by H. P. Lovecraft.
• Resurrective Immortality: Alhazred has been constantly reborn as a middle-aged man following his increasingly rare deaths.
• Virtual Ghost: The Mad Poet who inhabits the Reflective Oasis of the Dreamlands is only a fragment of the real Alhazred's psyche that lived on past the real Alhazred’s death.

Miacknian Mun

Race: Human

Class: Alchemist

Alignment: Chaotic Evil

• Artificial Human: Mun has made three hollow ones to serve him. They are alchemical constructs made of rags of skin with some of the memories and characteristics of their creator, and easily can be mistaken for him.
• Mad Scientist: He's a deranged alchemist with a reputation for human experimentation and necromantic research. In this case, it's strongly suggested most of his madness is caused by exacerbating outer factors; Lowls condemned him to the depths of the Mysterium to slowly go insane, and it's strongly suggested a child of Shub-Niggurath has been feeding away at his mind.
• Tested on Humans: Mun has been secretly inviting colleagues from across the region, ostensibly to study at his laboratory, but actually to provide him with test subjects to perfect a way of growing a second skin upon derros. These friends go in, but never come out.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Mun is known in Cassomir as a generous benefactor who tirelessly works to enhance the shipbuilding process through his alchemy.

Kaklatath

Race: Yithian

Class: Expert

Alignment: Lawful Neutral

• Body Surf: Kaklatath spent millennia exploring Golarion through the eyes and bodies of thousands of people.
• Grand Theft Me: Although Kaklatath's body is that of an old slave woman, the mind is that of a yithian ambassador who came to Golarion tens of thousands of years ago.
• Mr. Exposition: Kaklatath has a vast knowledge that will help the players in their pursuit of Count Lowls.

Biting Lash

Race: Gnoll

Class: Ranger

Alignment: Neutral Evil

• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Biting Lash loves her eagle. If it is killed, she becomes demented and fixated on taking revenge.
• Only in It for the Money: She doesn’t know much of Lowls’s plans, and doesn’t particularly care. Her main motivation to assist the deranged count was financial.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: 'Biting Lash' is only her nickname; her real name is not known.
• Praetorian Guard: Biting Lash has an all-female cadre of bodyguards selected for their prowess in combat.
• Properly Paranoid: Biting Lash is rightfully paranoid. She knows that holding onto significant power draws the attention of those who want to snatch it, and she has every intention of keeping what she’s built. Biting Lash has seen scores of allies, enemies and friends killed by escaping slaves, by jealous rivals, and by family, and she doesn’t intend to become anyone’s victim.
• Right-Hand Attack Dog: Kahree serves Biting Lash as a sentinel, always alert and ready to defend her or her property.

Mother Grim Moon

Race: Ash Giant

Class: Cleric of Groetus

Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

• Cast from Hit Points: Mother Grim Moon has the unique means to substitute her own health and sanity in place of material components for her spells.
• Mad Oracle: Her sanity has been slowly eroding.

Upianshe

Race: Human (Ghost)

Class: Magus

Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

• Really 700 Years Old: Her ghost has spent millennia haunting Neruzavin.
• Unfinished Business: As a spirit, she is bound to where she died until her tethers to the past are cut and her future purpose is clear.

Weiralai

Race: Denizen of Leng

Class: Cleric of Hastur

Alignment: Chaotic Evil

• I Shall Taunt You: During combat, Weiralai verbally jabs at the players, vacillating between boasts of her immortality and painful threats.
• The Man Behind the Man: In Thrushmoor, she was Lowls’s silent muse, subtly coaching him when he encountered obstacles and subversively guiding him down the road of occult scholarship that would facilitate Hastur’s dominion of Golarion.
• Not Quite Dead: If the players kill her in Thrushmoor, she'll reappear in Leng and be narrowly able to escape back to the Material Plane.
• Power-Upgrading Deformation: Her devotion has changed her physically, causing her horns to grow to enormous size and her mouth to become impossible to conceal beneath the layers of yellow silk that she usually wears.

Xhamen-Dor

See the page for Great Old Ones.

Cassilda

Race: Human

Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

• Action Girl: Cassilda has a respectable CR 22 and it is recommended for the DM to make her an ally throughout the adventure if it becomes too difficult.
• Adaptation Expansion: In the original The King in Yellow, she was only known as a character in the titular play.
• Cool Crown: Cassilda's Imperial Diadem, which contains the memories and personalities of Yhtill’s population.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Though this is not officially part of the adventure, she is willing to sacrifice her life to destroy the Imperial Diadem and restore the city of Yhtill if Hastur is destroyed.
• Many Spirits Inside of One: Cassilda absorbed the tortured souls of her people into herself, preserving their essence so that her city and its people might one day be restored.
• Mr. Exposition: Cassilda is more than willing to impart her history and that of the Pallid Mask, though only from her perspective, as well as the location of the three nexuses that are connected to Thrushmoor.
• Pimped-Out Dress: She wears an exquisite gown of white, gold, and purple.
• Resurrective Immortality: She is difficult to destroy, even for Hastur. Upon her death, she is painfully reborn in her palace at the heart of Carcosa.
• Sole Survivor: Cassilda is the only resident of Yhtill who escaped being consumed by Carcosa.
• Volcanic Veins: Black and gold etchings run the length of her arms in rows of symbols and runes.

Pallid Mask

Race: Great Old One (avatar)

Alignment: Chaotic Evil

• Mouth of Sauron: The Pallid Mask speaks on Hastur's behalf and conveys a sense that the King in Yellow is, indeed, well aware of the players.
• No Face Under the Mask: The Pallid Mask's mask is literally his face, a hard white shell connected to softer tissue underneath.

Erich Zann

Race: Human

Class: Bard

Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

• Barrier Warrior: He's the author of the masterpiece Fugue de la Rue d'Auseil, which creates a hemispherical field that hedges out outsiders, aberrations, and undead.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Lakronis has stolen a large portion of Erich Zann’s memories.
• Magic Music: Back when he was still on Earth, Erich has already tapped into a form of primal magic.
• Monster Lord: Erich once commanded the Leng ghouls by appealing to their love of knowledge.
• Public Domain Character: He's the same character created by H. P. Lovecraft.
• The Speechless: Erich Zann is unable to speak.
• You Can't Go Home Again: Erich Zann has been utterly removed from Earth’s temporal continuity.

Armel

Race: Ghoul

Class: Barbarian

Alignment: Chaotic Evil

• Arc Villain: He's the main bad guy the characters has to face off in the fourth part of Black Stars Beckon, and is not connected to the main Big Bad at all.
• Large and in Charge: Armel is an enormous ghoul, overweight even for his 9-foot-tall stature.
• Pride: Armel's reputation and pride may be challenged in front of witnesses. Players can exploit this trope by suggesting that he demonstrate that he is the most dangerous creature in all of the Paris nexus by fighting them on his own. However, this is not easy and Armel is no fool.
• Tyrant Takes the Helm: Armel seized power over the Leng ghouls of Paris during Erich Zann's absence. The Leng ghouls who have embraced civility, as well as the unfortunate human refugees here, suffer under his tyranny.

Ariadnah

Race: Human (Lich)

Class: Witch

Alignment: Chaotic Evil

• Doomed Hometown: Ariadnah was a descendant of the Lacksong clan on the present-day territory of Ustalav, and is bitter over the expulsion of her people from their native lands when Ustalav was founded.
• Dual Boss: She fights the players alongside the Star Seed.
• Evil Old Folks: She still looks like a normal old woman.
• Familiar: Ariadnah is accompanied by a sycophantic ratling familiar she calls Yonah.
• Religion of Evil: She encouraged the people living near the Star Stelae to worship them, all while slowly invading their dreams and twisting their faith to serve her own dark ends.
• You Can't Go Home Again: Trapped in Carcosa, Ariadnah seeks to use Carcosa’s link to Thrushmoor to return to Golarion and finish what she began so long ago.

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