Act IV
The party must now split their time between defending their kingdom from neothelids and returning to the surface world to free the other outsiders imprisoned to power the planar shroud. At this point, the party likely has powerful magic at their disposal and can return to the surface without much trouble. However, the neothelids are aware that the PCs seek to foil their plot, so attacks on the fledgling kingdom force them to return to the Darklands frequently.When the characters return to the surface world, they find it a lesson in devastation. The poisoned air has killed off the most of the humanoid survivors; in their place have sprung up societies of mindless undead ruled over by powerful vampires and liches. These necrotic kingdoms squat within the wreckage of human, elf, and dwarf cities and fight petty wars among themselves for land and resources.
Small societies of other beings less susceptible to the poisonous atmosphere also cling to their meager surface existence. Several clans of high-fortitude giants have resorted to cannibalism as the last of their food sources died out. The fungal myceloids, plant-men immune to poison, have spread across the land to feed on the rotting dead and tend their gardens of sentient plants. Bands of high-level NPCs pick through the wastes, focused solely on their own survival. And the dragons of Golarion keep their own counsel.
By interacting with one or more of these groups, the PCs are able to piece together what’s been going on in the surface world since their departure. Evidently, seugathi sightings are not uncommon topside. Often the wormlike monstrosities are seen in the company of masked figures which, judging by their size and shape, appear to be humanoid. Presumably the masks protect them from the poison; however, their business with the seugathi remains unknown.
Piecing together reports of seugathi activity, the PCs can narrow down the list of possible planar shroud generator sites to six definite locations: one each in the Uskwood of Nidal, the Thuvian desert, Varisia’s mushfens, the Aspodell Mountains, the city of Absalom, and a collection of ships adrift in the Inner Sea. The order in which the PCs choose to visit these locations is up to them, but with each extraplanar being they free another piece of the puzzle falls into place.
The Uskwood location is a squat stone compound buried deep in the forest. It appears to have been some sort of accursed library and magical research station; within are tomes of forgotten knowledge regarding the art of summoning and binding outsiders. The PCs also discover information on the specific outsiders which are being used to power the planar shroud, as well as many other candidates which were summoned but eventually deemed unsuitable (including the succubus from Act II). While abandoned by its original masters, the compound is a veritable menagerie of extraplanar monsters, most of whom are hostile. In the middle of the compound the PCs find the magical apparatus they recognize as a planar shroud generator; trapped within is a nalfeshnee demon.
In the Thuvian desert the characters find an ancient pyramid mostly submerged beneath the shifting sands. The walls of the pyramid are lined with prophecies about the dawn of a new era when ‘the gods fall silent save the raging beast,’ an era where poisoned air will herald the coming of some distant being or beings. The pyramid also contains a mostly-empty cache of masks which grant an immunity to inhaled poison, several deadly puzzles, and a kolyarut inevitable tied into a shroud generator.
As the PCs enter the Mushfens, they are greeted with a horrifying sight. Around a massive altar of unnatural geometries humans, skum, seugathi, and even a neothelid worship together, crying names like Shub-Niggurath and Hastur, Azathoth and Nyarlathotep. The cultists rant that this unworthy world is nigh prepared for the descent of the Great Old Ones, and other such ravings. The PCs must use stealth or fight a running battle to free the thanadaemon imprisoned at the base of the altar.
The cave complex in the Aspodell Mountains is, at this point, mostly empty. The PCs find nothing other than piles of corpses and a few forgotten blood crystals. The corpses bear evidence of extreme acts of self-mutilation; the blood crystals appear to have been somehow altered by proximity to these acts. A character with arcane knowledge can determine that these altered crystals have no power of their own, but can now serve as an amplifier for other sources of power. There is evidence that many more blood crystals used to be stored here, and the trumpet archon imprisoned deeper in the caves confirms that they were only recently moved.
Exploring the mostly-abandoned streets of Absalom, the PCs stumble upon the home of the inventor of the planar shroud generators. This gnome is not a member of the cult of the Old Ones himself; rather, the idea of the planar shroud came to him in a series of nightmares and he created the devices is a dream-like state. Now he is quite insane, and will pursue the PCs through his trap-ridden mansion, all the while screaming that he doesn’t know ‘where the excess power will go.’ Imprisoned in the prototype generator in the inventor’s basement is a ghaeles azata.
Several ships of various sizes and origins have been roped together in a stormy area amidst the Inner Sea. There, hoards of cultists worship something beneath the surface by sacrificing living beings to it. They speak in their chants of assuaging the dread being below and, more critically, sending the souls of the sacrificed to the Charnel Beacon. If the PCs are discovered the cultists will set their ships ablaze; the PCs must rescue the would-be sacrifices (humans protected from the poisoned air solely to be sacrificed later on) as well as release the cornugon devil imprisoned in a shroud generator located in a fireproofed chamber in one of the ships’ holds.
From this accumulation of evidence, the PCs can deduce the cultists’ plan. Following their ancient prophecies, they created a device to block out the influence of the gods of Golarion; accordingly, the atmosphere became poisoned. Due to the planar isolation, the souls of the dead cannot reach the afterlife. Instead, the excess power of the shroud generators channels them to a single location at which the cultists have constructed the Charnel Beacon. Using the power of the trapped souls, amplified by a lens of blood crystal, the cultists plan to send a signal into the heavens calling the Great Old Ones to the world.
When the PCs free the last outsider, the earth beneath their feet again rumbles as the planar shroud disengages. Access to the other planes is reestablished, including summoning, extraplanar travel, and divine spellcasting. Also, the last outsider, whichever it may be, provides one final, crucial piece of information. It alone can determine the location to which the shroud generators projected their power and channeled the souls of the dead– a empty place in the map in the PCs’ native Cheliax! At that location the PCs will find the Charnel Beacon, and the end of their quest.
Act V
Before the PCs can move onto the final stage of their quest, they face a small problem. Now that the planar shroud is down, there is nothing stopping the neothelids from using one of their most potent abilities– teleportation– to wreak havoc upon the PCs’ kingdom. The PCs must defend against one final, desperate assault before acting on the knowledge they have uncovered.At last, having successfully defended their kingdom against the neothelid onslaught, the PCs go on the offensive. They find the Charnel Beacon without great difficulty, perhaps with some of their extraplanar allies in tow. The Charnel Beacon itself is a twisted tower of bone and onyx with a great lens of blood crystal. As the PCs arrive, the Beacon has just been activated– souls trapped in the tower shine through the lens into the heavens as cultists prance and worship at the base.
In this final battle, the PCs must deactivate the Charnel Beacon and incapacitate the cultists quickly, as bizarre aberrations sink from the heavens every few turns to answer the call. Finally, the heroes succeed in deactivating the Beacon, but it is too late. An Aspect of Azathoth descends from the sky, and the PCs must destroy it lest it sink the world into an age of darkness from which it may never recover.
The dust settles as the PCs emerge victorious. The surface world is still devastated, but with the planar shroud lifted and the cultists defeated, society can slowly begin to return to normal. It may take generations for life on the surface to return to normal, but the heroes have dealt with the immediate threat and created a glimmer of hope for the future.
