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Archives of Nethys

Archives of Nethys

Pathfinder RPG (1st Edition) Pathfinder RPG (2nd Edition) Starfinder RPG

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Heh Shan-Bao

Had any trace of Heh Shan-Bao survived into modern day Tian Xia, he could've served historians well as a model of a late Imperial Lung Wa official. He came from a long family line of minor bureaucrats and government workers. His civil exam results were brilliant. He was strict, authoritarian, well- educated in the classics, and could even be charming when he needed to be. He was also completely corrupt—a trait that sadly reinforced how typical he was among Lung Wa's crumbling regime. His habit of performing political favors for friends and superiors barely registered as improper conduct to the public. However, his habit of carrying on affairs with other people's wives was viewed less charitably and ultimately proved his downfall, though not until Shan-Bao made the error of backing the wrong horse in a minor government spat. Demoted and mocked by his colleagues, he found himself serving as the petty governor of Willowshore, a village in the backwaters of Shenmen.

For all his faults (and they were many), Governor Heh never blamed the citizens of Willowshore for his predicament. The villagers knew very little of Heh Shan-Bao, save that he was foreign and they didn't like him, which meant that his exile served as a fresh start of a kind. Shan-Bao knew that the townsfolk were hardly to blame for Willowshore's deficiencies—that was an issue of government, and as the local government official, it fell on him to remedy it. If Willowshore was to be a location suitable for him to inhabit, it needed better infrastructure. Trade routes had to be maintained, local industry needed to be promoted, educators would need to be lured in to tutor promising youths, and the threat of a lingering evil buried below the ruins of nearby Tan Sugi monastery would need to be addressed. Most importantly, imperial law and order needed to be upheld. Willowshore's obscurity caused numerous problems that could be solved, and Shan-Bao liked solving problems.

It all fell apart in four years, alongside the Lung Wa empire. Rotted from the inside by government malfeasance and a bloated aristocracy, a series of natural disasters proved the final blow to any semblance of centralized imperial authority in 7106 ic. In the aftermath of the empire's fall, its peripheries were abandoned to fend for themselves. Willowshore's remote nature helped to keep the town safe as the bandits and monsters of Shenmen closed in, but then news spread that jorogumo had begun to take control of Shenmen. Governor Heh didn't need to guess at what would happen next. His spiritual servitors warned him of the voracious tithes that jorogumo demanded of their subjects. Worse yet, some of the nation's new rulers had an affinity for the malevolent spirits that inhabited Shenmen.

The governor's fears returned to the imprisoned evil below the ruined monastery, and he worried that, should the jorogumo discover it, the repercussions would be dire. Whether the land's new rulers punished Willowshore for “harboring” a potential competitor or whether the jorogumo rulers used Kugaptee to bolster their own power, Governor Heh Shan-Bao focused on solving this looming problem as swiftly as he could. No one who ever knew Heh Shan-Bao would've called him a man of character. Yet, unlike the local lumber bosses and other officials, he never once considered fleeing and leaving Willowshore to its fate. Instead, he turned his considerable magical training toward finding a way to heal the Tan Sugi tree, rifling through ancient documents and summoning spirits to advise him. The only surefire method he found was a ceremony that involved capturing an innocent with mystic power and ritually ending their life at the base of the sacred tree.

Governor Heh destroyed every text and implement that could've enacted such an awful ceremony. His sins had always been human, yet his pride drew a sharp line that wouldn't be crossed when it came to such vile rites. Instead, he deconstructed the rite from within, then sought to rebuild it in a way that would restore the Tan Sugi tree from afar, without the need for him to travel to the dangerous site or to sacrifice an innocent.

Unfortunately, he vastly underestimated Kugaptee's power, and when he performed the rite he hoped would bolster the Tan Sugi, all he did was open himself up to Kugaptee's direct influence. His worldly and sin-stained soul was unable to resist the fiend, and he was utterly consumed by the sealed horror. The ritual Shan-Bao performed, tainted by his grisly murder, combined with Kugaptee's power and unleashed a vortex of hungry ghosts and nindoru fiends upon the people of Willowshore, slaughtering them all and then capturing everything in two separate mindscapes—one for the unknowing citizens of the town and one for the governor. With these two bottled realities, Kugaptee's imprisoned power could slowly build over the repeating years until, finally, he would be strong enough to rip free from the Tan Sugi's roots and reincarnate into the world.

Shan-Bao, now trapped in a mindscape prison of his own, has lived with this knowledge for more cycles than he knows, but even now, he continues to work toward redemption—a goal he'll never achieve without outside help.

Recall Knowledge - Humanoid (Society): DC 36
Unspecific Lore: DC 34
Specific Lore: DC 31

Elite | Normal | Weak
Proficiency without Level

Heh Shan-BaoCreature 9

Legacy Content

Unique LN Medium Human Humanoid 
Source Pathfinder #198: No Breath to Cry pg. 89
Male human governor
Perception +15
Languages Aklo, Celestial, Common, Draconic, Minkaian, Nagaji, Samsaran, Tengu
Skills Arcana +19, Crafting +17, Deception +17, Diplomacy +19, Intimidation +17, Religion +13, Society +19, Willowshore Lore +19
Str +3, Dex +2, Con +1, Int +4, Wis +0, Cha +4
Items +1 resilient padded armor, +1 striking longsword, ritual notes and journals held within a glove of storing, Temporary Scrolls scroll of crisis of faith (4th level), scroll of fire shield, scroll of flame strike, scroll of haste, scroll of hydraulic torrent, scroll of illusory creature (5th level), scroll of illusory scene, scroll of mirror image, scroll of soothe (4th level), greater choker of elocution (grants Celestial^ Draconic^ and Nagaji)
AC 25; Fort +15, Ref +18, Will +16
HP 135
Speed 25 feet
Melee [one-action] longsword +17 [+12/+7] (magical, versatile P), Damage 2d8+5 slashingEsoteric Lore Heh Shan-Bao can attempt to Recall Knowledge on any topic with a +15 modifier.Reflecting Ward [reaction] (abjuration, occult) Frequency twice per day; Trigger Heh Shan-Bao would take any form of energy damage; Effect One of the many otherwise non-magical fulus Heh Shan-Bao keeps on his person flashes with golden light and crumbles to ash, granting him resistance 10 to the triggering damage type for 1 minute, or until he uses this ability again.Scroll Esoterica Heh Shan-Bao creates a set of nine temporary scrolls each morning that lose their magic after 24 hours. On a typical day, the governor has the scrolls listed above under Temporary Scrolls available for use.Scroll Thaumaturgy Heh Shan-Bao's magical training allows him to activate scrolls of any tradition despite having no actual spellcasting power of his own. His spell DC is 28, and his spell attack is +20 for any scroll he uses.