Toggle Theme

Archives of Nethys

Pathfinder RPG (2nd Edition) Pathfinder RPG (1st Edition) Starfinder RPG

Rules | GM Screen

 <- Return to All Rules (Group by Source)
<- Return to Example of Intrigue Spells

All Rules in Example of Intrigue Spells

+ An entry marked with this has additional sections within it.

The Story

Source Ultimate Intrigue pg. 163
Long ago, a powerful hag led a wicked coven that sought to destroy the kingdom of Gaheris. Seeking to turn enemies into allies, the king of Gaheris convinced the two weaker sisters to break their coven and betray their leader. In exchange, he used magic to reincarnate them into humans and married them to two of his most powerful dukes. The hags sealed their elder sister in her shack and burned her alive, only to see her to rise as a powerful witchfire. After weeks of pitched battle with the undead hag that ranged all across the kingdom, the two sisters trapped the witchfire on the other side of a thick wall in the royal mausoleum, and warded it to contain incorporeal entities, believing they had sealed away the menace forever.

Centuries later, a tomb robber accidentally chipped a hole in the wall, allowing the trapped witchfire to escape. Now consumed with revenge, the enraged undead creature seeks out any of her treacherous sisters’ descendants. Given the interbreeding common among the nobility, this includes much of Gaheris’s current nobility. Given her original goal of destroying the kingdom, that suits the witchfire just fine. Using ritual magic born of hatred and well beyond a witchfire’s normal abilities, she called back the souls of her sisters and bound them into black sapphires, allowing her to gain all the powers of a coven and more. Then, she returned to a cave near her old burned-down hut in the swamp and began to enact her vengeance, using mind-controlled minions to burn her targets alive.

The PCs receive a plea from the current king of Gaheris, asking them to investigate the cause of the streak of arson, which has been targeting members of his family. Kyra casts divination with the goal of solving the arsons and Ezren casts vision, hoping to learn about the true source of the arsons.