The infernal engine always worked without a problem, so he never had a reason to delve deeper into the dungeon—he just made sure the tieflings who lived down there were kept happy with food scraps and were disciplined when necessary. The Ruins: Of his home, the mayor has little more than tears to offer.
Of course, Aberian adds with only a hint of rue and shame, those tieflings who did serve their 20 year contracts were granted nothing of the sort—they were packed off to parts unknown by Thrune agents, Aberian assumes, to be enslaved elsewhere or simply exterminated. In any case, the Westcrown infernal engine has been in operation for close to 70 years.
The tieflings currently serving there are the fourth generation of Spiral Keepers, and Aberian remembers when Thrune agents arrived to install them and take the old ones away. The knowledge of this creepy tiefling Veladness, locked away for 20 years in Aberian the Nessian Spiral, was yet another reason Aberian stayed out of the inner workings of the place, and left the shipments of food and supplies to the tieflings to his majordomo, Crosael.
If the PCs request aid or some monetary compensation, the mayor is taken aback—he had no intention of paying the PCs anything, especially as he is planning to flee Westcrown and never return. If he is allowed to depart peaceably, Arvanxi quickly flees into the city and makes his way down to the docks, where he pays the first captain he finds a fair amount of 13 Council of Thieves Part 4 of 6 What to do with Arvanxi?
Certainly, the Mayor is a wicked man, and he shows no remorse at his actions; his concerns are only with regret for his own loss and rage at his betrayal and misfortune. Still, he is the lawful head of government for Westcrown—pressed or cajoled, he makes it clear that he is departing the city, under armed escort, immediately upon completion of this interview. Less scrupulous PCs may feel no such dilemma, hoping only to retrieve as much information out of Arvanxi as possible before quickly disposing of him.
In any event, if it becomes public knowledge that the PCs murdered Aberian, they lose 5 Fame Points—while the mayor was a craven, he was the friendliest mayor Westcrown has had since the fall of Aroden, and his murderers are not hailed as saviors. Morale If reduced to 20 or fewer hit points, Aberian drops his dagger and begs for his life, offering all of his belongings as a payment to let him flee.
Unless the PCs arrive on the scene minutes after the explosion unlikely unless they drop everything and teleport directly to the site, since a more traditional journey through the streets presents the PCs with numerous problems as presented in Part One above , the legal residents of these manors have fled their homes, locking them up and seeking shelter with family and friends elsewhere in Westcrown while they hope for the dottari to get the situation under control.
Barricades CR 5 A hastily erected barricade of lumber, wagons, rain barrels, and crates blocks off the street leading into the ruined plaza beyond.
Numerous spears and sharpened lengths of wood protrude through the barricade to aim at the plaza, and a stack of wooden boxes and blocks on the left side allow access to the top of the wall should someone wish to drop down into the plaza on the other side.
Although a jurisdictional nightmare with the Hellknights mires the bulk of the dottari leadership for The Infernal Syndrome the duration of this adventure, and the majority of the rank-and-file guards are busy trying to keep order in the city streets, a token amount of guards has been dedicated to watching the ruins from these two barricades erected across the two surviving streets leading into the Mayoral Plaza.
Creatures: At each barricade, a group of six dottari led by a single captain stand guard. The rank-and-file guards are nervous and jumpy, standing at various points along the length of the barricade in 8-hour shifts. The guards are jumpy and have no real interest in conversing with the PCs, although if the PCs can make them helpful with a DC 14 Diplomacy check, they might be able to give them one or two helpful rumors. More likely, a guard asks the PCs to speak with the lieutenant, who retires to his tent to meet with the PCs in such a case.
In fact, this is the case, for both are dominated by Jerusen, the vampire hidden in area C5. Before he took up residence in the Mhartis guardhouse, Jerusen took the time to seek out several dottari lieutenants and dominate them, giving them orders to volunteer for duty here when the time was right.
In truth, he hopes that the PCs will be confronted by the bone devil that lairs there and that the two will kill each other, solving two problems with one stroke. If he sees the PCs entering area C, though, he excuses himself from duty and moves to aid the master. At the first opportunity after speaking with the PCs, the lieutenant drinks one of his potions of invisibility in order to sneak off to area C to report to Jerusen or his agents in C4, letting the vampire know that the PCs have arrived.
If the PCs discover their dominated condition and confront the lieutenants, they panic and order their dottari to arrest the PCs. The guards, confused and hesitant, can be convinced their lieutenant is compromised if the PCs offer any hard proof or more likely convince the guards with a DC 29 Diplomacy check.
If presented with overwhelming odds or if the PCs convince the guards of the truth, the lieutenant drinks a potion of invisibility, flees to area C4, and waits for the opportunity to speak with Jerusen for new orders. In this case, the enraged Jerusen is likely to simply kill the failed thrall and drink his blood, perhaps even transforming him into a vampire spawn to be sent out to attack the PCs.
Whether or not this occurs before or after the end of this campaign is up to the GM. Word that the PCs slew several dottari reduces their Fame Point total by 1, in any event. The best solution, of course, is to lift the domination effect from the lieutenant, at which point he breaks down in tears and reveals all to the PCs, begging them to travel to the Mhartis guardhouse to destroy the vampire that did this to him.
Once a third guard flees, all remaining guards flee as well. Morale A dominated lieutenant drinks a potion of invisibility and attempts to flee to area C if reduced to 10 or fewer hit points. Much of the manor has been reduced to rubble, although to the east it appears that the ground floor of the house may have survived. Surrounding the crater are five churning pillars of fire, arranged in a pentagram shape around the central crater and each rising from a point about fifteen feet off the ground directly above a scorched pit.
While the roaring of the flames is nearly deafening, no apparent heat radiates from the five towering vortexes. The central crater lies directly above the infernal engine itself in area F37, while each of the pillars of fire churns above one of the five Stygian Pits areas F15, F19, F21, F22, and F Even then, no physical route exists through the solid rock that separates the bottom of the crater and the roof of area F Note that attempts to teleport into the Nessian Spiral expose the PCs to certain dangers as detailed on page The ring of ejecta around the central crater is partially melted but now-cool rock and bits of charred timber.
The sides of the foot-deep crater are steep, and must be navigated with a DC 10 Climb check. On the first failed save, a creature is shaken; the second failed save increases the effect to frightened; and on the third and final failed save, the creature becomes panicked. These states of fear persist for as long as the creature remains in the pit and for 1d6 rounds thereafter. This is a mind-affecting fear effect. The five roaring pillars of fire are manifestations of the raw infernal energies being leached from Liebdaga and transmitted up into the manor ruins.
With nowhere to go and the mechanism used to throttle the energy output destroyed, these raw gouts of flame extend up into the air to a height of feet. The fires themselves create a tremendous roaring Perception checks made to hear sounds suffer a —6 penalty within 50 feet of these pillars and provide normal light to a radius of feet, but strangely, they do not radiate any noticeable heat unless someone approaches within 10 feet, at which point the heat suddenly becomes blisteringly obvious, inflicting 1d6 fire damage per round.
Contact with a pillar inflicts 4d6 points of fire damage, and passing through a pillar inflicts 10d6 points of fire damage. A DC 15 Reflex save halves this damage unless a creature spends a full round in contact with the pillar, in which case there is no save to reduce the effects. The erinyes has taken it upon herself to guard the crater so as to ensure that nothing happens to the intended sacrifice spot, watching carefully for any sign of curiosity on behalf of the numerous mortals who seem so interested in the area.
She lies in wait in the ruins of the manor directly east of the pit, and when she notices intruders approaching the area, she attempts to summon a pair of bearded devils to attack the foes, then hits them with an unholy blight before taking to the air to rain down flaming arrows until the intruders flee or die.
She does not pursue foes beyond the immediate area. In the days before the event, a vampiric minion of Ilnerik Sivanshen, the near-feral but cunning rogue Jerusen, arrived in the area under the cover of a moonless night. He chose the Mhartis guardhouse as his vantage point to lie in wait for the arrival of the PCs, whom he hoped to be able to ambush and murder for his master when they inevitably arrived to investigate the coming explosion. The entire complex appears to be abandoned, but in truth, this partially collapsed guardhouse is far from empty.
At night, Jerusen assumes dire bat form and patrols the skies above the area, flapping silently from rooftop to rooftop, spending much of his time perched in shadows waiting and watching for the PCs to arrive.
As dawn approaches, he generally swoops down to find a victim to feed upon before returning to his lair in area C5. Ruined Corner The eastern corner of this one-story wooden guardhouse has collapsed, exposing a hallway and a pair of storerooms.
The twisted and mangled remnants of what was once an iron gate lie in a heap in the middle of the rubble. When the explosion occurred, much of the Arvanxi gatehouse was propelled into the corner of this wall here. The rubble filling this area creates difficult terrain. If approached at night before midnight, a DC 20 Perception check is enough to notice a thin sliver of light under the door to area C4 and to hear the quiet sound of murmured conversation from beyond the same door.
Storage CR 2 This looks to have once been a storage room, but the collapse of the wall and the door that once provided access to the shelves within has exposed the room to the elements. Judging by the large number of droppings and the musty smell, some form of vermin has already moved in here.
Every evening, the cloud of bats swarms out of the building, a few flashing into oblivion when they flap a little too close to the nearby pillar of fire. The swarm returns at dawn—or sooner, if Jerusen summons them to his side.
If the PCs enter this room during the day, the angry bats swarm to attack, the noise of their thousands of wings and tiny shrieking voices enough to put the dominated guards in area C5 on alert.
Storage The door to this room is barricaded from the inside— opening it requires a DC 24 Strength check. Jewelry, silverware, fine crystal, and all manner of expensive decor is heaped on the shelves here. Several large crates have been used to secure the door from the inside. In addition, the collection of treasure includes a circlet of persuasion, horn of fog, and ring of jumping—Jerusen is unaware that any of these items are magical.
Guardroom CR 6 A pair of double bunks sits against the northwestern wall of this room. A round oak table with three chairs sits in the middle of the room, while a door to the south has been boarded over with numerous planks of wood. Several crates of food and a few barrels of water sit against the walls. The room itself reeks of oil, and the walls and floor of the chamber shine with a layer of the stuff. The walls of this room are soaked with flammable oil. Creatures: A group of four House Mhartis guards, all dominated by the vampire Jerusen, wile away the time in this chamber.
Leaving only when necessary to relieve themselves, the guards have been ordered to watch and protect the only entrance into area C5 during the day and night—but particularly during the day, when Jerusen sleeps. As long as they remain dominated, the guards are violently loyal to the vampire, and immediately attack anyone who enters the room.
If freed from their domination, the guards thank the PCs and want only to flee the area; they certainly take the time to warn the PCs about the vampire, though, and know that he sleeps under the soil in area C5. Office CR 9 This small office features a single desk and chair. A strange scent, like that of thick loamy soil, fills the room. The smell of rich soil comes from below the floorboards of this room, as a DC 20 Perception check can attest.
Ripping up the boards reveals a small crawlspace with no other exit but a freshly dug grave-shaped hole in the ground filled with rich, dark soil. Creature: The vampire Jerusen was, in life, a nearly feral vagabond who lived in the northern ruins of Westcrown—a place that just happens to be one of the favored hunting grounds of Ilnerik Sivanshen.
Since then, Ilnerik has used Jerusen as a scout and assassin—the skills at moving unseen through society the man developed in life served him quite well in undeath.
Jerusen spends his days sleeping under 3 feet of soil in a pit he dug under the floorboards here. He comes and goes from the soil via gaseous form, sifting through the floorboards and into the deep, rank dirt every dawn to sleep the day away, emerging at night to take up his typical watch post among the rooftops of the buildings in the area.
As soon as he learns the PCs are in the area, he tracks them down and observes them from the shadows, likely in gaseous form. You should have Jerusen strike against the PCs when one of them is distracted or separated from the group, or alternatively, the vampire could be a bit more opportunistic and attack while the PCs are engaged in a fight against another foe.
Note that if the wooden structure above burns to the ground, Jerusen is more than protected in his 3-foot-deep hole in the ground, and that evening he simply wafts up through the rubble in gaseous form to seek out a new lair likely another nearby building, particularly if the PCs have cleared one of its denizens already.
A battle against the vampire should be a frustrating and harrowing experience, with the vampire making a sneak attack on a target using vital strike with a slam attack and then fleeing into the shadows to hide and await a chance to strike again.
Morale If destroyed, Jerusen becomes gaseous and flees to his lair in area C5 to recover. And like the Mhartis, the Rasdovians have fled the region while the area is under siege by thieves and vampires and devils. The Rasdovians, being a larger family with more help and guards, managed to gather the majority of their valuables and left little of value behind in their manor—with the exception of its value as a shelter and hideout.
It is to this end that the bone devil Nyxervex claimed the Rasdovian Gatehouse. Nyxervex is a long-time loyalist and minion of Liebdaga the Twin. Nyxervex has explored the 20 The Infernal Syndrome conditions around the infernal engine for many years, from studying the details of the binding contract using the copy stored in the Fallen Fastness of Dis to making risky trips to the Material Plane itself to study the site in person.
Arrow slits line the walls of the gatehouse to either side of a pair of iron gates that block entry into a gravel-floored barbican—a second pair of gates opens into the manor courtyard in the opposite wall. Guardposts CR 7 This chamber seems to be a hastily abandoned guardpost.
A few scattered arrows lie on the floor along with some overturned and damaged furniture. Arrowslits in the walls allow an archer to look out upon the plaza to the south and the central barbican of the gatehouse. Creatures: Nyxervex has placed one of his immense lumbering lemures in each of these guardposts.
During Combat Nyxervex needs several more sacrifices before he can act on his plan to free Liebdaga. As such, he avoids killing foes if he can, softening them up with his attacks but relying on his poison sting to eventually paralyze enemies. Against spellcasters, his first act is generally to try to prevent them from fleeing via magic by using dimensional anchor on them. Speed 20 ft. Gatehouse A one-story gatehouse stands at the edge of the ruined plaza, its stone walls having weathered the recent explosion quite well.
TACTICS During Combat The lemures have orders to remain silent and still unless anyone other than Nyxervex attempts to enter the gatehouse, at which point the lemures move to attack the first foe they notice.
Morale The lemures fight to the death. Office This large office may have once been a place to interrogate visitors to the estate, but now the furniture in the room has all been pushed around and damaged, as if something large has moved through the room multiple times. What appear to be fresh bloodstains spatter the room, concentrated near two heavy doors to the west that have been barricaded with bits of heavy furniture.
This is one of two areas in the gatehouse where the PCs might stumble upon Nyxervex. If they do, they find the bone devil either enjoying a spot of relaxing torture with one of his paralyzed victims, or in the act of opening or closing one of the storerooms to drop off a new victim.
Storage Rooms This partially emptied storeroom still contains a few jars of preserves and some firewood. The chamber reeks of filth, obviously having served recently as a prison of sorts. Nyxervex uses these storage rooms for his own sort of horrific repository—stowing the victims here for use in his eventual attempt to sacrifice many good souls in order to convince Asmodeus to free Liebdaga.
Although the bone devil has no special knowledge regarding the nature of sacrifices, nor does he possess any divine powers granted him from Asmodeus by virtue of cleric or other character levels, he understands the nature of worship and sacrifice enough from his knowledge of how the planes work that he hopes to succeed nevertheless.
Whether or not he has any chance to succeed at this plan is up to the individual GM—in theory, the PCs will take care of both Nyxervex and Liebdaga before the bone devil gets the chance to try. Each of these storage rooms currently contains five of these victims, strewn haphazardly about the room on top of each other in a heap.
Starvation and thirst are already beginning to take their toll on these poor souls. Armory This room contains several empty armor stands and an empty weapon rack. Most of the furniture has been crushed and pushed to the corners of the room, with a partially destroyed bed having weathered the destruction with the least damage. Nyxervex uses this room as a place to hide when he needs solitude or privacy.
The devil is large, and generally uses teleport to come and go rather than enduring the uncomfortable squeeze of passing through the hallway and doors. He prefers to snatch up his hidden cache of magic and then teleport to the roof of this building, whereupon he becomes invisible and waits for the PCs to emerge before attacking again.
This cache can be found with a DC 20 Search check, and consists of gp, seven pieces of jewelry four rings, a bracelet, a necklace, and an anklet worth gp each, and four potions of cure moderate wounds. Even the entrance to the Asmodean Knot has been destroyed—the fate of the Knot itself is left to each GM to determine, but the assumption this Adventure Path makes is that the Asmodean Knot was entirely destroyed in the explosion.
In any event, the Asmodean Knot has no further role to play in this campaign. The only portion of the manor to have escaped utter destruction is the ground floor of the eastern wing— and this section of the building has been claimed by the Council of Thieves.
The thieves are spread between this section of the manor and the first few rooms of the Nessian Spiral below. Those on the ground floor are tasked with guarding the entrance to the Nessian Spiral and keeping an eye on activities in the ruined plaza, while those below are actually tasked with exploring the Spiral and finding a safe way to contact Liebdaga the Twin. Here above ground, the thieves are led by a halfling sorcerer named Aberten, a reluctant leader forced into the role after their previous leader, a rogue named Lozendi, The Infernal Syndrome was destroyed when the erinyes attacked him and threw his body into one of the pillars of fire in area B.
A replacement has yet to arrive, so Aberten now orders and leads the thieves as best he can, despite the fact that as a sorcerer his thievery skills are not quite up to par. Gathering Intelligence While the rank-and-file thieves in this adventure know little about the Drovenges, this is not the case for their commanders or for the one member of the loyalists currently imprisoned in area F9.
If the PCs can establish a friendly parlay with Aberten, Avahzi, Crosael, or Jalki an easier task with some than others , they can learn much about their enemies. Even if the thieves currently attempting this are defeated, as long as Liebdaga remains alive or in Westcrown, the danger of such an alliance being forged remains. The thieves suspect that the only copy of the contract was either destroyed in the explosion or more likely is in the possession of the now-missing mayor of Westcrown—they have agents scouring the city but have not yet found him.
Pathfinder Wiki Explore. Index Navigate by category. Explore Wikis Community Central. Register Don't have an account? The Infernal Syndrome. A lightly used Pathfinder Adventure Path in excellent condition. Six soft cover books sold as a complete set. Priority Mail is our only option, so buy more than one book for a competitive shipping price.
Be the first to review this product. Pathfinder Adventure Path: Council of Thieves Pathfinder Adventure Path is Paizo Publishing's monthly page, perfect-bound, full-color softcover book printed on high-quality paper. Wesley Schneider 3 of 6 What Lies in Dust by Michael Kortes In Westcrown, darkness brings fear and death, the night haunted by the spawn of a terrible curse.
Vaughan Leaderless and disorganized, the city of Westcrown reels after a terrifying incursion from the infernal realm.
Wesley Schneider 6 of 6 The Twice-Damned Prince by Brian Cortijo and James Jacobs Their deception revealed and their plans waylaid, two deadly and Hell-touched siblings make a desperate final play for control of Westcrown.
To banish the monstrous shadows that stalk Westcrown by night, the PCs go undercover, joining the city's chaotic theatrical community in an elaborate plot to infiltrate the estate of the decadent lord-mayor.
Yet theater life turns deadly when they become players in a spectacle no actor has ever survived. Can the PCs endure their debut performance in a city where an actor's first big hit is often his last?
What Lies in Dust. Written by Michael Kortes. In Westcrown, darkness brings fear and death, the night haunted by the spawn of a terrible curse. Striving to free the city from its decades-old blight, the PCs must reveal a long-buried secret and a treasure locked away for ages. Their journey will set them against the scum of Westcrown's underworld, denizens of the haunted night, and the very forces of Hell itself, all in an attempt to rekindle the memories of long-dead spirits with stories still to tell.
Yet what those souls reveal might prove even deadlier than the city's midnight curse. The Infernal Syndrome. Written by Clinton Boomer and James Jacobs.
In the bowels of one of Westcrown's most esteemed halls of power lies an unfathomable evil, a terror beyond all reason and sanity, shackled and broken by the magic of a lost archmage. For years this menace has laid fuming, endlessly testing the bars of its prison, gathering its hatred and planning its revenge.
Now the machinations of a deadly conspiracy have weakened the chains of this nightmare's bonds, and in their growing cracks rise the flames of the damned and the promise of Westcrown consumed in hellfire. May have medium-sized creases, corner dings, minor tears or scuff marks, small stains, etc. Complete and very useable.
Very well used, but complete and useable. May have flaws such as tears, pen marks or highlighting, large creases, stains, marks, a loose map, etc. Extremely well used and has major flaws, which may be too numerous to mention. Item is complete unless noted. If you have any questions or comments regarding grading or anything else, please send e-mail to contact nobleknight.
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