#munavri

(art by GrishaYungen on DeviantArt)

We’re taking a break from liberty and justice for now with a prestige class that spits in the face of both of those things. I speak of course of the Gray Gardeners!

Ah, the nation of Galt, Pathfinder’s expy for France… or rather, a version of France where the Red Revolution… didn’t stop for 50 years.

From the shadows as the decadent nobility were ousted came a group calling themselves the Gray Gardeners, who took control of the enraged mobs and exacted their own justice in the form of the Final Blades, magical guillotines that trapped the souls of those executed with them, preventing any loyalists from resurrecting them later. That was the stated purpose anyway.

And if they had stopped there, it would have been a bloody and grim chapter in the nation’s history, but life would have eventually moved on with a presumably more responsible governing body in place.

…But they did not stop. The Gray Gardeners remained and while they ostensibly served the new Revolutionary Council, they had a nasty tendency to “discover” that the new council were secretly loyalists, or otherwise traitors to the new burgeoning government, and executing them. Usually when the Council tried to rein them in or demand transparency from the organization.

It is worth noting that recent events and updates to the setting have officially dissolved the Gray Gardeners, though some members definitely still exist in hiding, so keep that in mind if you want to play a 1e game that takes place in the 2e part of the timeline.

[Spoiliers for the Night of Gray Death event]

So it turns out that the Gray Gardeners were actually the pawns of a powerful conqueror worm called Xoanthurund who had been manipulating events from behind the scenes to keep the Revolution going for so long, and had been planning to unleash the souls trapped in the final blades as apocalyptic undead horrors, utterly destroying the nation.

Thankfully with it’s discovery and defeat, the Gray Gardeners are now a broken power and the nation can finally start to heal.

[End Spoilers]

While they existed though, the Gray Gardeners were a force of terror in their nation, hunting the exiled nobility and anyone loyal to them, or at least, anyone the Gardeners claimed was loyal, and packed a little divine power to boot!

The requirements for this prestige class are a little weird, requiring minor skill ranks in all but one skill and second-tier divine casting. Furthermore, the prospective gardener must have executed a tried and sentenced sapient being. Guilt or innocence being irrelevant.

They do continue to gain magic with their class though, albeit at a reduced rate.

As anonymous executioners, gray gardeners have a vested interest in concealing their identities, and are quite skilled at it.

They also train a bit in the art of targeting the vitals of foes to slay or knock them unconscious quickly.

Even if they weren’t inquisitors before, these executioners use their divine power to pronounce judgement on foes, though they are limited to more hostile options. Later on they can pronounce two judgements at once.

Also borrowing from inquisitors is there stern and discerning gaze.

They also gain the ability to empower their weapons with bane like an inquisitor, and even improve this later on with an additional mid-point between as well.

Fearsome and threatening, these arbitrators of “justice” are very good at influencing even onlookers during their interrogations.

They also gain bonus feats focused on overwhelming force and dealing deadly final blows.

Their terror tactics also prove useful in gathering information as well.

Powerful gardeners can infuse their attacks with slaying might, to deliver final justice to those that try to evade them.

The most powerful also make it very difficult to bring those they slay back to life, especially when they use secret rituals to use the killing weapon as a temporary vessel, trapping their soul to deliver it to a final blade.

This prestige class feels a little bit odd. It feels like it should be meant mostly for inquisitors, but the fact that only some of their abilities stack and are redundant seems to instead suggest cleric instead, maybe druid or ranger. I can’t imagine a paladin taking this archetype no matter what their version of the oath is. It’s decent for an NPC villain though, and if you can make it work, go for it.

This is definitely mostly a villain option, but the potential for character development and turning away from such a ruthless life is there. I imagine that those that gain their divine powers from a god definitely lean towards either lawful neutral or lawful evil (or chaotic evil if we consider mob rule)

As the Vensuga Martial Arts Tournament draws close, many are questioning the emperor’s decision to hire on the judicators, a notorious mercenary company known for brutally executing prisoners and priority targets for their employers, and wonder if something similar is about to happen with the competition as pretense.

The Silent Executioners are the primary assassin’s guild in Tobesh, and border on cult-like in behavior. Deepening this mystery is their sudden interest in capturing a munavri envoy from the Below despite nobody posting a contract for her.

(Illustration by Kim Sokol comes from the Paizo Blog and is © Paizo Publishing.)

After all this time, I think we finally have it: a worthy subterranean human race.  

Drow have elves. Dwarves have duergar.  Gnomes have svirfneblin.  Orcs have…well, orcs.  Halflings have no one cares (or dark creepers if you’re being kind).  You get the idea.  

But subterranean humans have tended to be confined to lost cities or are so corrupted/devolved by life underground that they are no longer recognizable human.  In the first category we have “basic”/Known World D&D’s Cynidiceans, Greyhawk’s Lerara (once again I’m pointing you to the excellent Dragon #241), and Forgotten Realms’ Deep Imaskarri.  In the latter, we have morlocks, dark folk, and even (in certain canons) skulks or derros. Those are great races, but none are what you’d call human anymore (and only dark folk really build civilizations of their own, rather than squatting in caverns or occupying ruins).  Unless I’ve majorly overlooked something, we’ve never had a human race that was both recognizably human and spread out throughout the Darklands/Underdark/Deepearth.

And then here come the munavris.  Are they human with a dash of something extra?  Sure, they’re telepathic albinos.  Do they have a distinctive culture?  Yeah, the telepathy and the need for genetic diversity have led to open minds and even opener relationships; they also worship the empyreal lords and fight in jade armor.  Can they go toe-to-toe with the drow and duergar realms?  They don’t have to, because they sail purple-sailed ivory ships across subterranean seas, battling urdefhans and retreating to jade islands that ward off aboleths. And to top it all off, they’ve got a neat object reading ability that lets them use almost any device—including weapons, armor, or spell-trigger items for a short period of time.  That alone makes them instantly iconic.  (And you can even play them as a PC race!)

All in all, I think the munavri are a real coup.  And they belong on the underground seas of your game world.

Based out of the sunken city of Mushroot, adventurers find a magical torc made of a metal they don’t recognize.  Assuming they can smuggle it past the duergar tax agents, their dark dancer fixer agrees to set them up with someone who can help.  He arranges a meeting with a strange, pale humanoid. The woman, who calls herself a munavri, barely needs to touch the item to recover the command word, and offers hints as to its origin. But she will not reveal more until the adventurers allow her to accompany them on their journey.

Most airships don’t do well on seas—and they have no business being underground!  But when a waterspout seizes the Falcon’s Promise and plucks it out of the sky, that’s where a party of adventurers find themselves: floating on a vast ebony lake in an unthinkably large cavern.  An encounter with a water orm goes badly when a jittery crewmember looses a harpoon at it.  They are only saved by the arrival of munavri corsairs, who warn them that far worse threats await them if they cannot get their ship aloft or under sail soon. (And how they will get back to the open sky is another question entirely…)

The Spear of Prophecy is a jagged shard of jade the size of a mountain erupting from the Stillwind Plains.  A monastery sits about halfway up, carved into the Spear itself. Pilgrims who go to treat with the light-shy, prophecy-spinning monks, oracles, occultists who dwell there have no idea that the monastery leads all the way down to a sunken sea miles beneath, patrolled by the monks’ far more piratical kinfolk.

—Occult Bestiary 34 & Pathfinder Bestiary 6 197

Personally, I’m not enough of a sci-fi or old-school psionics fan to really geek out over telepathy. If I were running a campaign I’d probably skip that and just concentrate on the advanced object reading—that’s an awesome enough mental power for any race.

(art by Samuel Grey on Artstation)

To many orderly cultures, people, and religions, one’s word is one’s bond. Moreover, to them, such bonds exist conceptually beyond their initial swearing, existing in the same space that laws and social mores do in the otherwise thoroughly imaginary machinery that makes civilization run, lesser contracts in the great social contract that is living in a society instead of living alone as a feral beast.

However, while some truly do use such structure to formulate their very lives, nearly all struggle with it in some regard one way or another, which is why laws exist regarding when a binding oath is broken and what is to be done about it.

Many of these laws are mundane, but to the followers of the faiths of lawful gods, they can be so much more, which is why oathkeeper inquisitors exist.

Not quite as focused on monster hunting or fighting the enemies of the faith as their contemporaries, oathkeepers instead put their skills to use in order to create binding contracts in the eyes of their deity between other parties, and if necessary, hunt down those who dare to break said bonds. (Of course, don’t imagine for a second that they can’t go toe to toe with such foes, only that their focus is on those that become enemies by their lack of honor)

What they do when they find said oathbreakers varies between the inquisitor, their religion, and the nature of the contract, but needless to say that they likely aren’t happy with the perpetrator, and we’ll soon see the powers that strike fear into the hearts of their quarry.

As part of their duties as servants of law, these holy warriors can facilitate binding divine contracts between other parties with themselves as mediator and witness. These pacts are coercion-proof, visibly failing if magical or physical coercion is used. Furthermore, if one party breaks the vow willingly, they are marked with the special symbol of the inquisitor and said inquisitor is immediately aware of their location for weeks afterwards, leaving them nowhere to hide. However, a pact broken unwillingly, say by accident or magical or physical coercion, no such curse triggers, instead dissipating harmlessly and rendering said oaths manipulation-proof as well.

Even if it is not one of the oaths they officiated, they prove especially capable when hunting down oathbreakers as long as they are presented with physical evidence of the wrongdoing and a request to hunt them down. Divine providence helps guide them to their quarry, and the power of their judgement is strengthened against such foes. However, the inquisitor must take care to verify these claims, for using the hostile advantages of this power against the innocent will see them robbed of it until the next moon or divine atonement.

This is a simple archetype, and one that replaces a few passive abilities with more active ones, so this archetype mostly offers a more specialized form of tracking and a flavorful ability that either sets up for that later tracking or just serves the sort of narrative that the archetype lends itself to. Which isn’t a bad thing, and the fact that the archetype is so unintrusive means that you can build them however you like.

With their role in the church being what it is, I can imagine that depending on the nature of their religion, some of these inquisitors may be hired out to mediate and seal all manner of disputes. Others, however, may only offer their services to truly important cases where magical binding is actually necessary, so as not to beleaguer the inquisitors with hundreds of petty infractions.

The pact was sealed with a marriage, with a holy warrior of justice presiding, and with that, the war between the Crocodile clan and the Ibis clan was on the path to lasting peace. However, Not everyone agreed with the marriage between the two chief’s children. Not content to just break them up, someone in the two clans has begun praying to a bone idol, forging the gristly statue into a monster set to murder the couple and implicate the other tribe, but who?

The owner of a local mine is desperate to get out of a binding deal with the union that has cut into his previously exploitative profits, but he knows that the inquisitor that mediated the deal with come for him if he goes against it. So, he has hatched a scheme to pay off third parties to act on his orders and use a memory spell to erase his memories of doing so, all in the hopes that without “premeditated” intent, the contract will simply fade when it is breached instead of marking him.

(art by Catilus on DeviantArt)

On Monday we looked at the caligni, and now it’s time to look at one final example of Azlanti survivors that were changed by their exodus. However, unlike many such survivors, the muavri were not corrupted or degenerated by the transformation, and are a rare bastion of good and righteousness in the often cutthroat world that is the Darklands.

Descended from Azlanti sailors that were ambushed and abducted by the alghollthu in the wake of Earthfall, they were dragged down into the depths along the Braid, a supernatural waterspout that connects the Arcadian Ocean of the surface to the Sightless Sea in the Orv layer of the Darklands below.

Though no doubt the alghollthu had sinister plans for these abductees, perhaps planning on turning them into something similar to the azarketi gillmen, these Azlanti escaped and made use of their skill as sailors to ply the dark ocean aboard violet-sailed vessels made from carved ivory, where they settled on floating islands of a strange, jade-like substance.

This jade is highly psychically reactive, which made it unbearable for the alghollthu and many of their minions to approach, making it a sanctuary for these survivors. Over the generations, they adapted to the darkness and constant psychic power around them, becoming powerful and canny mystics in their own right as they prove a nearly inassailable nuisance to drow, alghollthu, urdefhans, and other villainous cultures in the depths.

Munavri look mostly human of Azlanti ethnicity, but their skin and hair is bleached of all color, making them seem at first glance to be albino. What’s more, their eyes radiate light from their natural psychic power. They typically wear jade armor chipped form the very gemstones they reside on, as well as leathers tanned from subterranean beasts.

It’s no exaggeration to say that the munavri represent the best of response to hardship a society can have, forging close-knit communities that are there for each other and treat each other like family beyond the bonds of blood, and forgoing brutality for carefully organized resolution of conflicts between their own. They also typically worship the various empyreal lords, with three spiritual leaders, each representing the empyreal lords of a particular celestial clade. Meanwhile, large family units are led by a protector-marshal that governs in the best interest of their people. That’s not to say that there are not dissenters or no room for individuality, but they often do focus on community first and foremost. Additionally, they treat friendly outsiders very well, and are eager to hear about the world outside their lightless nautical realm, especially the surface world.

As beings descended directly from the incredibly hale and brilliant Azlanti, the Munavri boast superior minds and bodies (particularly agility) with the exception of their strength, which is on the weaker side.

They also possess exceptionally long-ranged night-sight as well.

This, however, is coupled with a sensitivity to bright light.

Imbued with psychic magic, munavri have a knack for reading the psychic echoes on objects in particular, gleaning information from them.

They are able to take this even further, however, by reading the memories of how the object was used, allowing them to use unfamiliar weapons and tools with a surprising level of competence for a short while.

Like many Darklands residents, they also possess a bit of innate spell resistance as well, making them hard to affect with hostile magic.

Their psychic abilities also grant them telepathy, though it is limited to communication with other munavri only.

 The realm of dreams is a mysterious and fantastical place that can be a fearsome realm of terrors for the uninitiated, but also a source of great power for those that learn to tap into it.

Indeed, the occult and esoteric arts definitely count this poorly understood plane and the dreaming minds that fill it as part of their purview, so it only makes sense that there would be mesmerists that specialize in it and the unconscious mind as a whole.

These dreamstalkers may live up to their name, invading the dreaming minds of others as a hostile predator, twisting and tormenting victims from within. However, more goodly mesmerists of this path might instead be guardians of dreams, using their magic to heal the mind and decipher mysteries in dreams.

Even while in the waking world, these mind-benders have incredible power over the magics of sleep and dreams.

 At their most basic level, these mesmerists gain access to a useful scaling magic that can put foes to sleep. Additionally, they can choose to learn other sleep-related witch hexes instead of mesmerist tricks, such as sending nightmare, granting visions, and even putting creatures into a permanent sleep.

Additionally, they can also forgoe learning new tricks to instead learn two spells related to dreams. These range from conjuring phantom foes from a foe’s subconcious, to inducing sleep, to sensing and dealing with mindscapes, to communicating with dreams, and more.

Naturally, dreamstalkers are immune to magical sleep, and resistant to fatigue and exhaustion, those these protections can be bypassed if they lose their emotional center.

While unable to remove fear or nausea with their psychic treatment, they can remove magical sleep and fatigue.

Thanks to their familiarity, they also act with little fear while within dreamscapes, being adept at living within them, and in fighting against their denizens, including both figments and stand-alone beings.

Finally, they also learn to inflict trauma with their psychic attacks.

Interested in a specialized mesmerist that can put foes asleep with ease and have plenty of utility with mindscapes and dreams? This archetype might be for you, especially if you don’t see any mesmerist tricks you like and would just rather have more dream-related hexes and spells. I personally recommend a build that can focus on bringing down one or more foes so they and their allies can focus on those that remain.

 No matter if they are evil or good, these mesmerists no doubt have a lot of insight to over in regards to subjects of the minds and dreams. After all, they often delve into dreams on a regular basis, both in traveling the Dimension of Dreams, and in simply visiting dreaming minds anyway.

  A soft-spoken lad, the half-elf Yuri hides a strange secret: He can travel into people’s dreams. This power has given him great insight into his neighbors, but when he sees murder on the mind of someone, he knows he needs help, and the party might be just the ones to provide it.

 The Monastery of the Dream Nomad offers expansive training into the arts of dream magic. However, many students remain content to simply delve into the dreams of others out of curiosity and entertainment, rather than use their power proactively. Many of the teachers there, however, believe this is for the best.

 There are a lot of things that we take for granted when it comes to sailing, perhaps the most notable is sight. Without sight, it becomes very difficult to read the environmental clues around you and navigate, especially at the swift speeds that boats and ships tend to travel at.

So imagine trying to maneuver a vessel while unable to see past a certain point, and with no sky above to guide you. That is the difficulty of trying to sail underground seas in a hollow earth scenario like we see with Pathfinder’s Darklands and D&D’s Underdark.

As such, several cultures that dwell alongside such massive oceans must, by necessity, learn alternate methods of navigation and watch-keeping, training not only their eyes, but also their ears and sense of equilibrium to better navigate in the dark.

These requirements are pretty much universal to any civilization living belowground, so this archetype could hardly be tied to only one ancestry. That being said, environment that breeds this skillset is so specific you’re not likely to see these darklands sailors outside of said environment either.

 With keen ears and other senses, these sailors ply the sunless depths, gaining a keen sense that lets them avoid obstacles, monsters, and hazards when swimming or sailing, which only improves over time.

The waters beneath the earth are full of terrors, so being athletic and swift in the water is a must.

Directing their allies, these sailors can keep them silent to also listen out as they do, signalling them to supplement their untrained ears.

Their knowledge on how to read the water and detect that which is hidden also gives them a keen understanding of how to hide themselves as well.

Interested in a darklands campaign that takes place at least in part with an underground sea? This archetype might just be what you’re looking for, and it doesn’t even force any sort of build, combat-wise. Of course, it’s one of those specialized archetypes that is unlikely to ever see play outside of that specific campaign backdrop.

 Drow corsairs, munavri sailors, or even duergar buccaneers, regardless of species, I imagine that despite the darkness and lack of wind, these sailors have many things in common with their surface counterparts, perhaps including the same sort of superstitious caution. After all, the mysteries of the deep are frightening enough when you actually have light for the first few miles, to say nothing of when there is no light at all.

  On the hunt of a dangerous assassin, the party must track them across the Sea of Night, which means hiring a boatman skilled in reading the black waters, one that can be trusted not to lead them into an ambush with pirates.

 One must be wary when meeting duergar ships on the ocean below. Some may be pirates, just as any ship might, but the worst ones are slaver ships that may decide that your crew is a good source of new stock, and by duergar law, they cannot be punished for this.

 Ah, numerology, one of the many forms of divination that exists in many cultures across the world. As the name suggests, it uses the supposed significance of certain numbers and mathematical principles to try and make observations about mystical significance and even the past, present, and future.

Now, we’ve covered numerology before on the blog when we talked about the numerology feats and spells from Occult Mysteries, but now we’re looking at an archetype geared towards the concept, albeit, more along the lines of using numerology as flavor rather than actually playing with prime numbers and digital roots in the middle of combat (though there is some of that too). Regardless of what you think of real numerology, the idea of incorporating into the magic of a fantasy setting is fun.

Associated with the Oracular Council of Po Li in the Golarion setting, divine numerologists are a group of oracles that have trained their abilities through the filter of numerological interpretation, giving them a surprising, if not complete, understanding of the underpinnings of the universe even through the noise of chaos.

While they are not necessarily stronger than other oracles, the wisdom they possess stems from long-standing tradition, and even has a bit of hybridization with the themes of arcane casting, what with the constant search for knowledge about the truth of the universe.

 Naturally, this archetype replaces some of the spells that these oracles gain from their mystery, namely giving them a variety of divination spells, including those that grant foresight, as well as viewing things remote viewing, and extraordinary magical senses. It also grants access to a numerological spell that boasts versatility in evocation.

They also gain a handful of new revelations they can take, including one that allows them to calculate the mystic numbers to bolster the success of their next action.

Another allows them to bless the variables of fate to guarantee an average result in any number of areas, from their resistance to success to even the harm that their foes experience. The most powerful of them can improve this power to achieve the maximum potential.

At the zenith of their power, these mystics achieve the full mastery of their own fate, ceasing to age, and helping guarantee success against foes.

This is a fun little archetype if you want some fun ways to give buffs to your rolls, and guarantee average (and later maximum) damage rolls from your spells. The divination spells granted are a nice plus as well. However, I will say that numerological evocation is… well, in retrospect, the only good thing about it is the potential of different damage types. Otherwise, it’s just not a viable spell at low levels, and is poorly worded, with terrible damage output. Giving it a higher spell DC by making it a higher level spell for these oracles makes it somewhat better, but it’s generally rarely worth it to cast, and is the least useful of the Path of Numbers spells. Beyond that drawback, this can be a fun and useful archetype for someone looking for lots of successful rolls and good information-gathering and buffing divination utility.

 There’s a lot of stigma surrounding divination techniques in the real world due to them being co-opted by new-age types, but these traditions have a lot of history and reverence, so do some research and try to roleplay your character less like a suburban mom and more like a mystic steeped in the arts.

  The Sky Citadel of Illakash is famed for it’s many sylph and strix seers and mages, while chuspiki familiars dance on the air. Deep in its heart is a wing dedicated to the significance of numbers, where wizards rub elbows with oracles seeking to understand the powers they have been granted.

 Deep underground, the munavri have long dwelled, developing their mental powers, forgetful of the time when they were once human. However, a young lady named Niy has awakened to a new power, a vision of the equations of the universe. In the code she saw the future, and that a great disaster will come to her people if they do not leave for the barely-remembered surface.

 The way that a crystal structure can grow from a single crystal almost makes them seem like living things, and in the deep dark, what caverns are not filled with fungi might treat such formations as the closest thing to a garden.

Where such crystals, magical or mundane, can be found, there are those that treat them as sacred things to be cared for and harvested from responsibly. Many who take up this duty are shamans, speaking to the very earth spirits of the crystals themselves as they watch over them.

These crystal tenders are protective of such places in the same way a druid might protect an ecosystem, protecting them from being plundered or destroyed.

In turn the spirits grant them power over crystals that few can replicate, though curiously, the shamans have no limit on the exact type of spirits they can bond with, perhaps representing the multitude of forces that can result in crystal formation, though naturally, spirits that that are associated with the open terrain of the surface may be hard to find.

 Rather than bond with an animal, crystal tenders instead conjure forth a small elemental in the shape of a familiar to be their spiritual conduit, a creature composed of living crystal which is quite durable, though vulnerable to sonic attacks.

With their connection to crystals, they can choose to redirect some of the power from a wandering spirit into their bodies, growing crystalline growths to protect themselves and their spirit animal.

Additionally, both familiar and shaman benefit from ioun stones that one or the other bears, and the familiar can integrate said stones in their body to protect them.

At the very zenith of their power, these mystics can channel their power to turn into durable living crystal, being as hard as iron, but taking on the vulnerabilities of crystals.

A simple archetype that doesn’t change too much, but gives you some extra defenses and an ability for protecting ioun stones, so if your build revolves around those, go for it. Be warned that this version of the familiar is more expensive to replace, though, so I’d advise to find ways to keep it safe. Beyond that, build to your heart’s content.

 Because the archetype places no restrictions on your primary or wandering spirits, It can be fun to figure out exactly how said spirit relates to crystals, even the ones where it isn’t immediately obvious. For example, a heavens spirit might be associated with crystals that twinkle like starlight, while a waves spirit may have to do with crystals that form exclusively by the action of water.

  After plundering a formation of crystals hidden below Regus Isle, the smuggler ship Stormshawl makes all due haste towards the buyer. However, they are pursued by the shaman whose duty it was to protect that formation, but the smugglers have a guardian of their own, a magic-infused animated figurehead with fists that crackle with lightning. This is where the party, struggling to remain afloat from the wreckage of their ship, gets caught up in the mess.

 From the air, Pamasha Jungle looks like unbroken trees and plant life as far as the eye can see, but beneath the canopy and undergrowth, there are deep fissures in the earth that a brave or foolhardy explorer might enter. The native catfolk do guard some particularly fiercely, however, as they contain seams of gemstones and crystals sacred to them