The Shattered Star (Pathfinder Fate Accelerated)

The Shattered Star

At stake are seven Shards, fragments of an ancient Thassilonian artifact at the very root of that long dead empire's perversion and ultimate collapse.

A magical relic so powerful its reassembly will shake the pillars of the world.

The quest begins in Magnimar, City of Monuments, in the darkest and dimmest of neighborhoods...the infamous Underbridge.

GM's Resources

The Shattered Star

Pathfinder FAE write ups for the various challenges, opponents, and NPC's the PC's may encounter in the course of the Shattered Star Adventure Path.

The Shattered Star is a Pathfinder Adventure Path published by Paizo, thematically based on seeking out seven parts of an ancient artifact once owned by Xin, the First King of the long fallen empire of Thassilon. Each of the seven parts were (conveniently enough) keyed to a specific school of magic / virtue / sin / skymetal (a lot of sevens going on here) and were unsurprisingly stolen by each of the seven Runelords who conspired together to kill Xin and take his shiny stuff in proper old school idiom.

Many thousands of years later these shards, each a potent minor artifact unto itself, are scattered and secreted around Varisia. They have the rather convient feature that each of them can find the next in the chain so that they can be reunited, thus finding just one of them can lead a sufficiently motivated person to be the first kid on their block to have the complete set! Despite this thoughtful feature, the seven parts have not yet been gathered and reassembled over the course of 10,000 years give or take a decade. But thanks to our bold heroes, that's all about to change!

The Shards of Sin

Write-ups are provided for the seven parts of the Sihedron, aka the Shards of Sin, as well as some advice on how to handle them.

Dawn of the Scarlet Sun

Dawn of the Scarlet Sun GM Resources: Pathfinder FAE write ups for the various challenges, opponents, and NPC's the PC's may encounter in the course of the Dawn of the Scarlet Sun adventure module.

For my campaign, I chose to run a variant of the free Dawn of the Scarlet Sun module as the lead in to Shattered Star. In my version, the succubus Avalexi has already acquired one of the parts of the Sihedron (though Lust would be more obviously thematic, to avoid later complications she has the Shard of Pride which is located in Magnimar in the adventure path).

I beefed up her coterie to include an infernal sorceress and a warlock, and extended the idea of setting up a cult dedicated to the demon lord Shax.

The hook to tie it into the Adventure Path is: the PC's should acquire the Shard of Pride after defeating Avalexi and pals, only to have it stolen from them by Natalya Vancaskerkin and thus lead directly into Shattered Star part 1.

Even if it is not used as the lead in, the Dawn of the Scarlet Sun lends itself to being used as a side quest within the larger framework of the Shattered Star (the Adventure Path itself suggests this several times, typically placing it between the second and third part of the Path). The material is provided to facilitate either usage.

Player Resources

Here are some things to think about when choosing or making a character for The Dawn Of The Shattered Star adventure:
- The Shattered Star Adventure Path is thematically anchored on seven artifacts that were each once owned by a Runelord of ancient Thassilon. Thus, a character with strong Thassilonian lore or a background concept involving that doomed civilization of many ages passed will likely gain more than the usual benefit.
- The Shattered Star Adventure Path has a sort of meta-theme of classic dungeon crawls with a twist. What this means to a player is that a good deal of the adventures will be spent indoors or underground in relatively confined spaces. More outdoorsy and social characters still have opportunities to shine, but players might want to ensure that their character has some relevance when in a "dungeon" setting.
- Each of the Runelords was a very powerful specialist in a specific kind of magic and their ancient legacy has left deadly magical traps that have survived thousands of years and remain a threat to the unwary. A well prepared adventuring troupe should have some way to answer the inevitable encounters of this kind.
- If playing the Adventure Paths in canonical order, Shattered Star takes place some years after the Rise of the Runelords and Curse of the Crimson Throne Adventure Paths. All three Adventure Paths are strongly rooted in Varisia, and each later printed Adventure Path assumes that the events that occurred in the previous are in effect. A character that uses some element(s) of the previous two Adventure Paths in their own background is likely to get some play out it.
- The Runelords were big into binding evil extraplanar baddies to do their bidding and guard their stuff. Plan accordingly.

Intent Of The Material

The intent of this material is for a GM to use a copy of a published Paizo product for the structure of an adventure (The Shattered Star Adventure Path in this case), with the Pathfinder FAE guidelines presented within this site and the Pathfinder FAE versions of the monsters, NPC's, traps, and so forth encountered in the adventure that are provided below.

The main advantage to "borrowing" Pathfinder material for use in a Fate Accelerated game is that it allows a GM to easily take advantage of the many high quality professional resources published by Paizo such as maps, pawns, and artwork, but using a much lighter weight story based game engine with dynamic resolutions. Additionally, players that like Pathfinder that might not otherwise be interested in trying Fate Accelerated can be enticed to give Pathfinder FAE a shot and thus become introduced to the game.

We've had a lot of fun running a variety of games in this way, both using published adventures as well as homebrewed scenarios based in Golarion. We hope that others might find similar fun for themselves reusing the material.