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By James Jacobs Player’s Guide Second Edition

How to Use This Guide Welcome to the Season of Ghosts Adventure Path! This Player’s Guide will help you to prepare for a horror-themed campaign set in the rural regions of the nation of Shenmen, where your characters play the roles of hometown heroes who must rise to the occasion and defend the people of Willowshore from a sinister curse and all manner of supernatural threats— while also preparing for what might be a particularly cruel winter season. You’ll begin as 1st-level characters who, if you haven’t lived in Willowshore your whole lives, have come to be recognized and welcomed as locals after arriving in town in the recent past. This Adventure Path is split into four parts, each taking place during a different season as your PCs grow more powerful and the threats facing Willowshore grow deadlier and more shocking. The Adventure Path features some particularly significant plot twists and revelations, so if you’ve had some of these surprises revealed to you, please consider other players’ experiences before spoiling the secrets that await discovery during the later parts of Season of Ghosts! To play in this campaign, all you need is the Pathfinder Core Rulebook and a character sheet. With your Game Master’s permission, you can also use Pathfinder Second Edition supplemental rulebooks, campaign setting books, and other accessories to further customize your character, especially since this campaign is set on the continent of Tian Xia, where the most common ancestries, faiths, and other elements aren’t the same as those assumed in a campaign set in the Inner Sea region. On the following pages, you’ll find specific suggestions to help you create a new character for Season of Ghosts. This Player’s Guide is organized into the following sections. • Character Suggestions (page 5): Guidance, practical advice, and specific tips for creating a 1st-level character that fits seamlessly into this campaign. • Willowshore Gazetteer (page 15): Much of what you (and your character) need to know about your hometown of Willowshore is presented in this gazetteer. Your GM has additional information about this town, should information you need not be present in this section. WHAT IS THE SEASON OF GHOSTS? The Season of Ghosts Adventure Path is named for a traditional period in Shenmen that takes place during the first few weeks of summer, when the woodlands see an increase in hauntings, spirits, and undead. While the cause of this increased haunting is uncertain, these ghosts often lure people to their deaths. In Willowshore, a massive feast and festival takes place on the last day of spring. Called the “Reenactment Festival,” this gala is meant not only to celebrate the end of spring, but to trick the evil spirits and ghosts believed to come out of the woods during the first few weeks of summer. As the festival’s feast concludes, the town reenacts victims being snatched away by “ghosts” (played by townsfolk in paper masks). Those not involved in the faux abduction pretend to plunge into collective panic as designated wailers mourn loudly while others play out a search and rescue effort. This farce is believed to trick real ghosts into thinking that someone has already haunted the settlement, and thus trick them into seeking a happier village to inflict misery upon once the season of ghosts begins the next day on the first day of summer. As fate would have it, the PCs are chosen this year to play the role of the town’s abductees—reasons for their abduction are built in to the various Season of Ghosts backgrounds, so if you don’t use one of these backgrounds for your character, work with the GM to create a reason similar to those presented there to explain why you’re among the festival’s abductees. Once you’re “abducted” from the feast, your captors roll you up in straw mats and then carry WHERE (AND WHEN) ON GOLARION? The Season of Ghosts Adventure Path takes place exclusively in a small part of rural Shenmen, a haunted nation in the middle of the continent of Tian-Xia. Specifically, the bulk of this adventure path happens in and around the town of Willowshore, which is presented in further detail beginning on page 15. Of greater note is the time in which Season of Ghosts takes place—unlike other Adventure Paths, the events of Season of Ghosts take place roughly over the course of a year, starting on the first day of summer in the year 7108 ic (4608 ar in the Inner Sea region), over a hundred years in the past and only a few years after the start of the Age of Lost Omens. Player’s Guide 3
you off into a forest clearing on the town’s outskirts, where you’re expected to stay overnight. With the first dawn of summer, the “abductees” are ransomed by whoever is in charge of that year’s Reenactment Festival. This year, that honor falls to one Choe Chun‐hu, beloved leader of Willowshore’s millers. He has promised to bring the “ransom” (a selection of delicious breakfast delicacies) to the PCs in the forest clearing the next morning for them to enjoy before leading them back to town to proclaim the Reenactment Festival a grand success. While it often rains during the summer, you luck out and spend a relatively comfortable night out under the stars. Of course, staying overnight in any woodland carries some risk, and you all have plenty of time to prepare. You can bring all your starting items and gear, as determined during character creation, to have with you during your abduction—items not brought will be waiting for you back at home. The Season of Ghosts Adventure Path begins when you and the other PCs awaken in a forest clearing on the first day of summer... but there’s no sign of Choe Chun-hu and the breakfast he promised! IN THE YEAR 7108 Season of Ghosts begins on the first day of summer in the year 7108, over a century before the current year assumed for other Adventure Paths. While playing a campaign this far in the past could result in significant work to revise the setting in various parts of Golarion, Season of Ghosts requires very little work in this regard, as Willowshore is a remote rural location that, for the first several years of the Age of Lost Omens, was largely ignored and left to its own devices. The Age of Lost Omens began in 7106, during which powerful storms wracked much of Golarion. Willowshore was no exception, and the winter storms that blasted the region were among the worst in memory. Now, two years later, the people of Willowshore are somewhat nervous about the coming winter season. Even though the winter of 7107 was relatively mild, memories of the snow, high winds, and torrential rains of 7106 linger. The collapse of the empire of Lung Wa is a less immediate concern to Willowshore, even though on a larger regional scale, this political upheaval would be one of the most important events to shape modern Tian Xia. While Shenmen’s rule under Lung Wa ends in 7106, the fact that small towns like Willowshore had traditionally been largely ignored and left to their own devices under governors installed by Lung Wa edicts has largely sheltered Willowshore from ramifications, even two years after the empire’s collapse. Willowshore is fortunate that the governor assigned by the empire, a man named Heh Shan-Bao, is relatively benign as far as tradition goes, and if anything, the lack of a yearly tax collector or other imperial visitors have resulted in idyllic seasons in the rural town. Meanwhile, the mayhem of a collapsed empire has led to violence and upheaval in more urban areas. The largest change that hit Willowshore as the result of Lung Wa’s collapse was the abandonment of the town by various lumber lords, who left their estates and lumber camps rather than continue to supply the demands of the city of Sze, the closest large settlement to Willowshore. For the people of Willowshore, the loss of these unpleasant long- term visitors was seen almost universally as a relief, and their manors and lumber camps have been left alone—in part out of fear that they could return at any time, but mostly because of a local belief that letting these buildings and locations be reclaimed by the woods is the most respectful way to usher Lung Wa’s influence over Willowshore into memory. The notion that jorogumo have taken control of Shenmen remains, at this point, “ghost story” or “scary rumor.” No jorogumo has visited Willowshore yet... at least, as far as anyone knows. Likewise, news that the ruler of the city of Sze has died and returned as a ghost has reached town, yet not everyone believes these stories. The people of Willowshore are content to live as they always have... for now! ABOUT SHENMEN While some nations in Tian Xia are inspired by certain real-life cultures, Shenmen is primarily inspired by horror traditions taken from a wide range of real‐world stories. It’s a fictional nation and isn’t meant to represent more than these traditions of supernatural horror. During this nation’s history, Player’s Guide 4 Heh Shan-Bao