The Shards of Sin

The seven Shards of Sin are the fractured remnants of the greatest artifact of First King Xin of Ancient Thassilonia...the Sihedron. Each Shard contains powerful magic...and also a powerful curse.

Using The Shards of Sin

A character in possession of a Shard may add any relevant bonuses the Shard grants to their actions and activate any Stunt-like abilities the Shard offers (i.e. anything on the Shard's 'Good At' line). Similarly, the character subtracts any relevant penalties and gains the additional Trouble associated with the Shard (i.e. anything on the 'Bad At' line).

Further the Aspects on the Shard can be invoked and compeled if relevant, though more commonly they would just be interacted with as 'facts'; for instance a 'Detect Magic' ability would pick up the overwhelming magical aura of a major artifact and the type of magic involved, while a Lore ability might identify the Shard as being part of the Sihedron.

A magic item of this sort would usually have stress and consequences as well, but as Major Artifacts the Shards are functionally indestructible; getting rid of one of them would be a mythic quest unto itself.

Unusually, each of the Shards can be combined with a particular kind of ioun stone which serves to cancel out the Shard's 'curse'. This is discussed in more detail in the GM Notes. A Shard with the correct ioun stone attached effectively has no 'Bad At' line.

GM Notes

And, conveniently, the adventurers' patron (Sheila Heidmarch as written) will provide the proper ioun stones in a timely fashion. This has the side effect of keeping the patron relevant throughout the campaign and incentivizing the adventurers to periodically check in and keep their patron happy.

Thus, unless the adventurers lack a patron the "curse" angle has no real impact and is not a problem.

If the adventurers do not have a patron they will need to figure out that ioun stones negate the Shards curses, which ioun stones go with which Shard, and also will need to acquire the ioun stones. This could be managed as a single up front side quest to figure it all out and get all or most of the ioun stones before moving on with the adventure, or it could be handled one at a time as each Shard is found. Whichever works best for an individual GM's campaign.

Complication: Are Shards Refresh Equivalent Items Or Not?

The Shards are fairly powerful permanent magic items. As such they would normally be tracked on a Fate Accelerated character as some combination of Aspect and Stunt slots.

However, characters will often not want to spend their precious Stunt slots / Refresh on Shards. Also, there are seven Shards and collecting them all is the entire purpose of the Adventure Path...making the adventurers expend precious resource slots just so that they can account for the items they have to get in order to complete the quest is a pretty steep and unreasonable "Refresh tax" considering how many of them there are.

Thus the recommended way to handle this complication is to waive the normal requirement for a character to allocate one or more Stunt slots and possibly an Aspect for the purpose of carrying a Shard, and to instead just treat them as a sort of special "expendable" item that will effectively be expended at the end of the campaign. This also allows the adventurers to swap Shards amongst themselves without getting mired down in character bookkeeping and metagame logic.

Complication: Finders Keepers

If the adventurers stick to it, eventually there will be more than enough Shards to go around (assuming the group has seven or fewer members). However, the first one or two might be contentious amongst the adventurers if multiple members want to bear the Shard. Even later on, if a one of the adventurers feels like one of the Shards is especially appropriate to them but another adventurer carries it, problems might arise.

One option is to pass the Shard(s) around on a rotation or as needed. Another option is to simply leave the Shards with the adventurers' patron as they are found rather than carry them around (unfun and anticlimactic). And yet another option is to just allow the adventurers to settle the matter amongst themselves via roleplaying; let the chips fall where they may.

Spoiler Alert: Locations of the Shards and Ioun Stone Matchups

The following chart is the GM's crib sheet for where the Shards are to be found, and also the correct ioun stone selections.

The Swords of Sin

One of the earliest paizo supplements, Seven Swords of Sin (PZO9503 D2) was set mostly in Kaer Maga and dealt with the "seven swords of sin", which were powerful weapons carried by champions of the Runelords. While that material doesn't necessarily line up exactly with the modern status quo of Pathfinder and the setting of Golarion, there is an obvious parallel to be made with the seven shards of the sihedron. A GM wishing to accentuate the idea of sin magic and the polarization between the Runelords dedicated to each of the seven Thassilonian schools of magic, could interweave the seven swords concept in various ways. A few suggestions follow.

Other Weapon Types

In the intervening years since D2 Seven Swords of Sin was published, much more information on the last Runelords has been published, and as it happens each of the Runelords have a different preferred weapon. A GM might prefer to go with the "weapon of rule" weapon types instead of swords; for instance the Weapon of Wrath might be a ranseur while that of Gluttony might be a scythe. The Runelords and their choice of weapon are as follows:

Examples

Following are some possible examples of Sin Swords ala Pathfinder Fate Accelerated.