OK, two requests. First one; I absolutely HATE the stylistic affectation of short sentences and sentence fragments as paragraphs. I know that you think that it's dramatic, but I hate it. Stop doing that. Don't do any more of those. Secondly, I want a group for a Mummy's Mask adventure path. I want to maintain the lower fantasy take, leaning into Lovecraftian horror and maybe a kind of pulp exotic exploration kind of vibe as well, and I want different class and archetype combinations than I have seen for any of the previous groups that you've generated, so I can have more variety.
Absolutely. And I’ll stop doing that. I understand the distinction you are making: you do not want prose broken into artificial one-sentence or fragmentary paragraphs for “dramatic effect.” I’ll use normal paragraphs with complete sentences, while still using lists when a list is actually useful.
For Mummy’s Mask, I’d take the opportunity to move the party in a noticeably different mechanical direction from the groups we have already built. The official Player’s Guide itself emphasizes tomb exploration, traps, desert survival, and forgotten Osirian sites, and specifically calls out options such as Crypt Breaker Alchemist, Archaeologist Bard, Serpent Shaman Druid, and Terra-Cotta Monk as particularly appropriate. That gives us a nice excuse to make this group feel like a pulp archaeological expedition rather than another party of investigators, slayers, and occult detectives.
The Four Winds Expedition
The overall tone I would aim for is 1930s archaeological adventure filtered through Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard. The characters are competent explorers rather than superheroes, and most of what they encounter initially has a mundane explanation: tomb robbers, poisonous creatures, ancient traps, disease, rival expeditions, and fanatical cultists. Gradually, however, they discover that some of the things buried beneath Osirion were buried for very good reasons.
Mechanically, I would also keep the magic restrained. There is magic in the party, but nobody should feel like a walking magical artillery piece. The characters should rely heavily on expertise, equipment, physical ability, cunning, and specialized knowledge.
1. Rashid ibn Khalil
Human Alchemist — Crypt Breaker
Male
Rashid is an Osiriani antiquarian and professional tomb explorer who has spent years recovering artifacts from minor ruins for wealthy collectors. He is not particularly interested in the romantic notion of archaeology. To him, ancient tombs are extremely dangerous structures containing valuable objects, and surviving them requires preparation, good equipment, and an intimate understanding of poisons and traps.
The Crypt Breaker is almost tailor-made for the campaign. It is one of the archetypes Paizo specifically recommends for Mummy’s Mask, and it gives us a character who can approach tombs almost like a nineteenth-century scientific explorer rather than a conventional fantasy wizard.
His alchemy would be presented in a very low-fantasy way. His bombs are chemical mixtures, incendiary compounds, corrosives, and strange powders rather than glowing magical missiles. His extracts are experimental drugs, stimulants, antitoxins, and inhaled preparations. Even his more obviously supernatural abilities can initially look like bizarre products of his knowledge.
His horror connection is particularly good because Rashid understands physical causes. He knows what a poison does to the body. He knows what a venom does. He knows how long a corpse should take to decompose in the desert. Then they find a corpse that has been dead for three thousand years but still has warm blood. That is the sort of thing that begins to undermine his entire worldview.
Party role: trap expert, alchemical support, identification, anti-poison specialist, and general problem solver.
2. Cassian Vale
Human Bard — Archaeologist
Male
Cassian is the group's classic pulp adventurer, but I would make him considerably less heroic and polished than the usual fantasy bard. He is a disgraced academic who was expelled from an Osiriani university after publishing a controversial theory that several supposedly unrelated ancient cults were actually descended from the same prehistoric religion. Unfortunately, he was right.
Cassian travels with notebooks, maps, charcoal rubbings, stolen translations, a battered rapier, and a whip that he insists is an essential archaeological tool. His bardic abilities represent education, rhetoric, historical knowledge, confidence, and the ability to inspire people under terrible circumstances rather than musical magic.
The Archaeologist archetype is particularly appropriate because it shifts the bard away from the traditional performer and toward the pulp-adventurer archetype. Paizo specifically recommends the Archaeologist for Mummy's Mask.
He also gives the group an important intellectual function. Rashid knows how to survive a tomb, but Cassian knows why the tomb was constructed. He can read inscriptions, recognize recurring symbols, identify ancient dynasties, and understand why a particular burial practice might indicate something far stranger than ordinary religion.
His greatest flaw is that he desperately wants his theories to be correct. The campaign can therefore gradually confront him with the horrifying possibility that the ancient civilization he has spent his life studying was not worshiping imaginary gods at all.
Party role: face, scholar, historian, skill monkey, and secondary combatant.
3. Meren-Ka
Human Monk — Terra-Cotta Monk
Male
Meren-Ka is the least obviously “adventurer” of the four. He was raised in a remote temple whose guardians have maintained an ancient funerary tradition for generations. His order's martial techniques were developed specifically to protect sacred tombs from grave robbers and desecrators.
He does not consider himself a martial artist in the modern sense. He is a tomb guardian, trained to fight without weapons because weapons can be taken away, break, or become contaminated by whatever lives beneath the earth.
The Terra-Cotta Monk is an especially fun choice here because it has a direct thematic connection to ancient Osirion and funerary imagery, while being completely different from the Brawler, Fighter, Slayer, Swashbuckler, and other martial characters we have already used. Paizo's Player's Guide specifically lists Terra-Cotta Monk among the options that fit Mummy's Mask.
I would make Meren-Ka somewhat unsettling without making him supernatural. He has an almost pathological respect for the dead. He refuses to step over corpses. He will not disturb a burial chamber unnecessarily. He knows hundreds of funerary taboos and becomes increasingly disturbed when he encounters ancient tombs whose occupants were deliberately denied proper burial rites.
Eventually, he realizes that some of those rituals were not intended to honor the dead.
They were intended to keep something from waking up.
Party role: front-line fighter, physical specialist, tomb guardian, and character who understands Osiriani funerary customs.
4. Samira al-Hadid
Human Druid — Serpent Shaman
Female
Samira is the group's wilderness specialist, although I would avoid making her a conventional “nature priestess.” She is a desert herbalist and wandering healer who has spent most of her life traveling along the edges of the great desert. Her spiritual traditions center on snakes, desert predators, and the harsh cycles of life and death.
She joins the expedition because she has discovered that something is disturbing the natural world around several ancient ruins. Animals are abandoning places where they have lived for generations, snakes are behaving strangely, and scavengers sometimes refuse to approach certain tombs.
The Serpent Shaman gives us another archetype that Paizo specifically identifies as appropriate for Mummy's Mask. It also gives us a very different kind of character from the occult casters we've used in previous groups.
Samira's connection to the supernatural should be ambiguous for a long time. Her serpent-related abilities can feel like an extension of her knowledge of the desert and its creatures. She knows which plants cure venom, which snakes inhabit which regions, and how to read subtle changes in animal behavior.
The horror begins when her animals start reacting to things that none of the humans can see.
She might stare into an apparently empty tomb and quietly tell the others that something inside is watching them. When they ask how she knows, she simply explains that every snake in the vicinity has stopped moving.
Party role: wilderness survival, healing, divine support, animal companion, and supernatural warning system.
—( † )—
This party gives the campaign a different dramatic texture. The Skull & Shackles group felt like pirates gradually discovering supernatural horror, while the Curse of the Crimson Throne group was essentially a group of urban investigators watching a city become increasingly horrific. This one starts as an archaeological expedition. The characters are looking for ruins, artifacts, historical knowledge, and treasure, and the horror gradually emerges from the realization that the civilization they are excavating understood things about death and the cosmos that modern people have forgotten.
That fits the actual premise of Mummy's Mask very well. Paizo describes the campaign as modern Osirion opening ancient vaults and tombs to exploration, with the discovery of Hakotep I's stolen funerary relics eventually leading to a cult seeking to restore the ancient pharaoh.
The Lovecraftian angle
I would make the horror less about “there are lots of mummies” and more about “the ancient world knew something about the universe that modern civilization has deliberately forgotten.”
The first few tombs can contain perfectly recognizable supernatural threats: undead guardians, curses, traps, ancient cults, and strange creatures. As the expedition progresses, however, the characters begin finding evidence that some ancient Osiriani religions were not simply primitive sun worship or funerary superstition. Their priests recorded astronomical phenomena that should not have been visible from Golarion, carved representations of creatures that do not resemble any known species, and constructed underground chambers whose geometry seems completely unrelated to ordinary architecture.
Cassian initially interprets these things as obscure religious symbolism. Rashid searches for chemical or biological explanations. Meren-Ka assumes they represent forbidden funerary practices. Samira listens to the animals.
Eventually, all four interpretations begin pointing toward the same conclusion.
Something existed in the darkness before the oldest Osiriani dynasties, and some ancient priests knew how to communicate with it.
That lets you have the Howard/Smith/Lovecraft pulp atmosphere you seem to enjoy without turning the campaign into a parade of high-level spellcasters and cosmic entities from the beginning. The characters remain relatively grounded adventurers who happen to be digging in exactly the wrong places.
I actually don't mind the same classes, but you're re-using the same archetypes too often for my taste. I would want more variety from campaign to campaign. I prefer brawler to monk, for instance, and don't really like bards very much. I also quite like the Occult Adventures classes, and would like to see at least one class OR archetype from that product in most groups.
That makes sense, and I think it actually improves the way we should build these groups. I was treating “different class combinations” as the main source of variety, when what you really want is variety in the mechanical expression of the characters, while still being free to reuse classes that fit the campaign. So I’ll stop treating an archetype as something that should recur just because the class recurs.
I also agree that Brawler is a better fit than Monk for your tastes, particularly for the pulp-adventure groups, and I’ll leave Bard out unless there is a very compelling reason to use one. I’ve also noted your preference for having an Occult Adventures class or archetype in most groups. In particular, the Occultist is unusually well suited to Mummy’s Mask because its entire mechanical concept revolves around historically significant objects and implements, and the class is explicitly described as fitting naturally with explorers and archaeologists.
With those preferences in mind, I would actually replace my previous Mummy’s Mask party rather than merely tweak it.
The Expedition of the Black Scarab
The group is a band of relatively grounded treasure hunters, antiquarians, desert travelers, and tomb robbers who become increasingly aware that the ancient world of Osirion was hiding things that modern scholars were never supposed to rediscover. The pulp influence should feel more like Howard, Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, and old archaeological adventure serials than conventional high fantasy.
I would also make the characters somewhat morally ambiguous. They are not necessarily noble archaeologists preserving cultural heritage. Some want knowledge, some want money, some want revenge, and one of them simply wants to find out what happened to a vanished expedition.
1. Harun al-Rashid
Human Brawler — Shield Champion
Male
Harun is the group's expedition fighter and former caravan guard. He spent years escorting merchants across the desert and eventually discovered that his particular talents were more valuable to wealthy tomb hunters than to ordinary merchants.
He fights with a heavy wooden shield and improvised weapons, giving him a very practical, brutal fighting style. He is not a knight or trained soldier; he is the sort of man who has learned to survive tavern brawls, caravan raids, narrow alleys, and ambushes in tomb corridors.
The Shield Champion gives us a Brawler without repeating the Snakebite Striker we used for Strange Aeons, while also giving the character a distinctive pulp-adventure fighting style. He can fight effectively in cramped tombs without requiring the character to become a magical martial artist.
Harun is also the group's skeptic. He believes every supposedly supernatural phenomenon has an explanation involving criminals, poison, disease, or someone trying to frighten them away from something valuable.
That conviction becomes increasingly difficult to maintain.
Role: front-line combatant, bodyguard, expedition muscle, and improvised-weapons specialist.
2. Elias Venn
Human Occultist — Necroccultist
Male
This is the character I would use to bring Occult Adventures directly into the heart of the campaign.
Elias is a European (????)-born antiquarian who came to Osirion specifically because he became obsessed with a collection of funerary artifacts that appeared in the black market several years earlier. He discovered that the objects were not simply ancient religious artifacts: they seemed to retain impressions of the people who had owned them. He has therefore developed a strange occult practice based around handling ancient objects and communicating with the psychic residue attached to them.
The Necroccultist is particularly appropriate because it focuses the Occultist's fascination with the past toward death and the undead. Its mechanics explicitly center on necromantic implements and learning from the dead. his also lets us do something I think would work exceptionally well for your Lovecraftian angle: Elias isn't a necromancer in the conventional fantasy sense. He does not raise armies of skeletons. He studies the psychological and supernatural traces left behind by dead people.
When he picks up an ancient dagger, he might briefly experience the final moments of its previous owner. When he handles a funerary mask, he might hear someone whispering in a language he doesn't know. When he touches something that should have been destroyed thousands of years ago, he might suddenly realize that the person whose memories he is experiencing is still alive.
His implements can therefore be physical artifacts from the expedition, making the Occultist's core mechanics unusually visible in the story. The class specifically treats implements as objects with historical or personal significance, which is almost tailor-made for an archaeological horror campaign.
Role: occult scholar, magical utility, artifact expert, supernatural investigator, and the character most directly connected to the campaign's cosmic horror.
3. Darius Voss
Human Rogue — Knife Master
Male
Darius is a professional tomb robber rather than an archaeologist. He grew up around smugglers and black-market antiquities dealers and knows that the difference between an archaeologist and a thief is often simply who gets to the tomb first.
He specializes in knives, traps, stealth, and getting through places that were specifically designed to keep people out.
The Knife Master gives us a Rogue that feels substantially different from the Pirate Rogue we used for Skull & Shackles. He is not a swashbuckling thief or urban burglar; he is an extremely dangerous close-range killer who has learned to operate in the cramped spaces of tombs and ruins.
I would make Darius the group's most morally questionable member. He is willing to rob graves, sell artifacts, lie to his companions, and abandon a stranger if the situation becomes dangerous. But he has one absolute rule: never open a sealed chamber that has warnings written on the outside. He has already made that mistake once. He refuses to explain what happened.
Role: trapfinder, scout, stealth specialist, precision damage, and professional tomb robber.
4. Nadira bint Safiya
Human Ranger — Beastmaster
Female
Nadira is the expedition's desert guide. She has spent her entire life traveling between isolated settlements and knows the desert in a way that the others never will. She is not a noble wilderness guardian or mystical nature priestess; she is essentially an Osiriani frontier scout and caravan guide.
Her animal companion would be a hyena, which I think is much more interesting for this campaign than the usual wolf or big cat. The hyena is a practical desert scavenger, but it also reinforces the increasingly unpleasant relationship between the expedition and death.
Nadira understands that the desert is dangerous because it kills people. She is much less comfortable with the possibility that some things in the desert are dangerous because they want people dead. Her favored enemies could emphasize humanoids and undead as the campaign develops, allowing her to start as a mundane desert tracker and gradually become an experienced hunter of supernatural threats. She is also the character who knows when the group should leave. Unfortunately, the others don't always listen.
Role: tracker, archer, wilderness survival, animal companion, and desert specialist.
—( † )—
This feels substantially more like the Mummy's Mask version of the overall campaign aesthetic I think you're after. It also gives us four very different mechanical identities. Harun is a straightforward physical combatant, Darius is a specialized rogue, Nadira is a wilderness-oriented martial character, and Elias is the one genuinely strange occult character. There is no bard, no monk, no investigator, no slayer, and no reuse of the Brawler archetype from Strange Aeons.
And I particularly like the Occultist here. I think Occultist is a better Mummy's Mask choice for you than simply putting a generic occult caster into the party. The class's relationship with significant objects means the campaign's artifacts can become mechanically important to a character rather than simply being treasure the GM hands out. An ancient crown, funerary mask, ceremonial dagger, broken statue, or piece of a sarcophagus can all become things Elias has a personal and mechanical relationship with. It also gives us a very nice progression for the horror.
At first, Elias thinks the objects contain psychic impressions left by the dead. Then he discovers that some of those impressions are not memories. They are warnings. And eventually he realizes that some of the things whispering through the artifacts aren't dead at all. That is much closer to the Lovecraftian archaeological horror I think you're looking for than simply filling the party with traditional undead hunters.
Yes, that is the right approach. I will point out that as I do more of these, it's not necessary to add an archetype to every character. The base classes unmodified by an archetype are also fine if it fits the concept.
Yes, that's a useful distinction. I was overcorrecting toward archetype variety, when the real goal is character and mechanical variety across the groups, not “every character must have an archetype.”
Going forward, I’ll treat archetypes as tools rather than requirements. A party might have: one character using an unusual archetype because it perfectly captures the concept, one using a familiar archetype that suits the campaign, one using a completely unmodified base class, and one using an Occult Adventures class or archetype because it adds something distinctive. That also gives us considerably more freedom to make the class itself do the thematic work. A straight Brawler can be exactly what a pulp expedition needs without having to bolt an archetype onto him, for example. I’ll also keep the broader pattern you've established in mind: different archetypes from campaign to campaign, Brawler preferred over Monk when both fit, Bard generally avoided, and an Occult Adventures element in most groups when it makes thematic sense.
I would like to add an "anti-PC" party of outright villains that could be used as rivals. I want them to be genuinely bad guys; cultists, murderers, necromancers, cannibals, or anything terrible. I don't want them to be particularly monstrous in terms of race, i.e., they can be literally made up of PC races and classes, but they are definitely monstrous in terms of personality. I also want to use the same restrictions and constraints on party composition as for the regular PCs.
Yes. I think an anti-PC party is particularly effective for Mummy’s Mask because the heroes can encounter another expedition that is pursuing the same ruins, relics, and secrets but has none of the moral boundaries that constrain the PCs. They should look, at first glance, like entirely plausible adventurers: mostly human, professionally competent, and capable of cooperating with civilized society. The horror comes from what they actually do.
I would make them genuinely evil rather than “morally gray rivals.” They murder witnesses, desecrate graves, sacrifice people, exploit the poor, and betray one another when it is advantageous. They should also be dangerous enough that the PCs cannot simply dismiss them as cartoon villains.
The Black Scarab Company
This is a rival expedition that has been operating in Osirion for several years. They began as ordinary tomb robbers, but their leader gradually became convinced that the ancient burial cults possessed knowledge of a power that could transcend death. The group now works for several occult patrons while pursuing its own increasingly deranged agenda.
Unlike the PCs, they aren't interested in preserving artifacts, understanding history, or respecting the dead. They want to know what the dead can still do for them. I would keep them entirely within normal PC races and classes.
1. Khafra Venn
Human Brawler — Unarmed Fighter
Male
Khafra is the group's enforcer and probably the most immediately frightening member because there is very little theatricality to him. He is a large, powerful man who has spent years working as a caravan guard, pit fighter, and hired killer. He has no interest in occult philosophy. He simply enjoys hurting people.
Khafra has developed a particular fascination with killing people with his bare hands, partly because he considers weapons impersonal and partly because he enjoys watching his victims realize that they cannot escape him. He has broken fingers, jaws, and ribs for trivial reasons, and he has murdered people simply because he disliked their voices.
I would actually leave him as a straight Brawler with no archetype. This gives us a useful contrast with Harun from the heroic Mummy's Mask group: both are Brawlers, but their personalities and fighting styles are completely different. Harun is the practical protector; Khafra is a sadistic murderer. Khafra is also the person the other villains send ahead when they need somebody intimidated, beaten, or killed.
Role: melee bruiser, intimidation, enforcer.
2. Menes Qar
Human Cleric — no archetype
Male
Menes is the group's religious authority, although calling him a priest would give the wrong impression. He is a necromantic cultist who has become convinced that the distinction between life and death is an artificial limitation imposed upon humanity. His particular obsession is with discovering whether consciousness can survive the destruction of the body. Menes therefore conducts experiments. He purchases slaves and prisoners, kills them, interrogates their corpses, and records the results. He has developed increasingly elaborate methods for determining whether a person's memories survive death, including deliberately creating undead from people he knew while they were alive. The most disturbing thing about him is that he is polite.
Menes speaks gently, treats everyone with apparent courtesy, and regards his atrocities as legitimate scientific and religious inquiry. He doesn't hate his victims. He simply doesn't believe their suffering matters. His clerical magic should consequently be presented as austere and funerary rather than spectacular. He is a man who has turned religious devotion into an excuse for vivisection.
Role: divine caster, necromancer, healer of the villains, and ideological leader.
3. Silas Crow
Human Rogue — Scout
Male
Silas is the group's infiltrator, thief, assassin, and professional liar. He is also probably the person the PCs are most likely to mistake for an ordinary adventurer. He dresses well, speaks intelligently, knows ancient history reasonably well, and can behave impeccably in polite society. He has cultivated relationships with merchants, antiquarians, government officials, and members of the nobility. His specialty is making people disappear without anyone realizing they have been murdered.
Silas doesn't kill primarily for pleasure. He kills because it is useful, and because he has gradually lost any ability to regard other people as real human beings. A guide who knows too much becomes a liability. A rival scholar becomes an obstacle. A servant who overheard a conversation becomes a loose end. He is also the group's principal tomb robber. He is exceptionally good at bypassing traps and stealing artifacts without damaging them, which makes him the perfect counterpart to Darius Voss from the heroic group. The difference is that Darius is a thief who occasionally does terrible things because he is a criminal. Silas is a murderer who occasionally commits theft because it is convenient.
Role: scout, trap specialist, infiltrator, assassin, and social infiltrator.
4. Nefertari Sutekh
Human Witch — Gravewalker
Female
Nefertari is the most overtly supernatural member of the group and the one who gives them their strongest Lovecraftian component.
She was once a respected healer who became fascinated with the boundary between life and death after watching a family member die. Her experiments began with legitimate medicine, then progressed to forbidden funerary magic, and eventually to deliberate communion with the dead. She now considers corpses to be resources. Nefertari steals teeth, fingers, hair, bones, and organs from graves and keeps them catalogued in small labeled containers. She has no sentimental attachment to the dead and considers the idea of respecting a corpse to be a primitive superstition.
Her cannibalism is part of the same philosophy. She believes that consuming a part of another person allows one to acquire something of that person's essence. She has therefore eaten portions of corpses belonging to people whose memories or abilities she particularly desired. Unlike Menes, who approaches death intellectually, Nefertari enjoys it. She is fascinated by the moment when somebody realizes that they are going to die. She deliberately prolongs that moment whenever possible because she believes fear produces a stronger psychic residue. Her greatest secret is that she has begun receiving dreams from something beneath the desert. She believes it is teaching her. The PCs eventually discover that it has never actually promised to help her.
Role: witch, occultist, debuffer, divination, curses, and primary supernatural threat.
—( † )—
This deliberately follows the same composition principles as the heroic group: one woman and three men, predominantly mundane PC races, low-to-moderate magic, and classes that feel appropriate to the campaign rather than a collection of mechanically optimized specialists. It also gives us some archetype restraint. Only Silas needs one; the Brawler and Cleric work better as straight classes, while Nefertari's class/archetype combination gives the group its supernatural identity.
I would make the Black Scarab Company a mirror image of the heroic expedition, rather than simply another unrelated adventuring party. That creates some particularly nice recurring rivalries.
Harun vs. Khafra is a physical confrontation between two Brawlers who have taken radically different paths. Khafra might genuinely respect Harun because he recognizes another man who knows how to fight, while Harun finds him absolutely repulsive. Elias vs. Nefertari should be the intellectual and occult rivalry. Elias wants to understand the memories contained in ancient objects. Nefertari wants to consume and exploit the remnants of the dead. They could even possess competing theories about the same supernatural phenomenon. Darius vs. Silas is the most personal. Both are thieves who understand tombs and traps, but Darius still has some concept of loyalty and self-preservation. Silas regards loyalty as an amusing weakness. Nadira vs. Menes is perhaps the most philosophical. Nadira sees death as part of the natural order and believes the dead deserve peace. Menes believes death is merely an obstacle to be overcome.
And because the Black Scarab Company is genuinely evil, I wouldn't make them secretly noble or redeemable. They can have understandable motivations, personal histories, or even moments of genuine affection for one another without softening what they do. They are the people who made the choices the PCs refused to make.
The most interesting possibility, in fact, is that they sometimes have better information than the PCs. They may correctly identify a supernatural threat, understand part of an ancient inscription, or realize that a particular tomb should not be opened. The difference is that when they discover something terrible, their first question is not “How do we stop this?” but “How can we use it?”
Sorry; I didn't mean specifically for Mummy's Mask, or specifically for an Osirion theme. I would actually like a more northern party that would be at home in Varisia, Ustalav, Cheliax, Andoran, Taldor, etc.
Ah, yes. I misunderstood the scope. You want a reusable evil rival party that could plausibly turn up across the more northern/central parts of the Inner Sea—Varisia, Ustalav, Cheliax, Andoran, Taldor, and similar regions—rather than an evil mirror of the Mummy's Mask party.
I would also make them feel like a real adventuring party with a shared history, rather than four interchangeable villains. They should be the sort of group the PCs might encounter in several different campaigns, with the GM able to transplant them almost wholesale.
The Black Company
They call themselves the Black Company, although they have no formal connection to any mercenary organization bearing that name. The title originally referred to the black iron tokens they use to identify members and associates. They have worked as mercenaries, grave robbers, bounty hunters, cult agents, smugglers, and hired killers throughout Avistan. Their reputation varies considerably depending on where they are encountered. In some places they are wanted criminals; in others, they are respected mercenaries who happen to accept unusually unpleasant contracts. They are not monsters in appearance. All four are entirely plausible humans or other common PC races, and they can walk into a respectable inn without attracting attention.
Their evil is entirely a matter of what they choose to do.
1. Garrick Voss
Human Brawler — no archetype
Male
Garrick is the leader and the group's principal killer. He is a former soldier who discovered that he enjoyed violence considerably more when nobody was giving him orders.
He is a big, physically intimidating man who favors heavy clothing, a military-style coat, and battered gauntlets. He rarely carries an obvious weapon because he prefers to fight with his hands. He has killed enough people that he has developed an almost professional understanding of exactly how much violence is necessary to accomplish a particular objective. Garrick is not insane. That is important.
He is perfectly capable of kindness, courtesy, humor, and friendship. He genuinely cares about the other members of the Black Company. He simply has no moral objection to murder. If someone needs to die, Garrick considers the question to be whether killing them is useful, not whether it is right. He is the sort of villain who might buy a drink for a frightened stable boy immediately after murdering the boy's employer.
Role: leader, melee combatant, intimidation, and the group's practical problem solver.
2. Father Severin Vale
Human Cleric — no archetype
Male
Severin is a former priest whose faith curdled into nihilism. I would leave him as a straight Cleric, because his evil is more interesting if he isn't mechanically defined as an exotic necromancer or cult archetype. His particular religious affiliation can change depending on the campaign. In a Varisian or Ustalavic game, he might serve an obscure death cult; in Cheliax, he could be a disgraced Asmodean; in Taldor, he could be a heretical priest who has convinced himself that morality is merely a tool used by the powerful. Severin believes that human beings are fundamentally selfish and that civilization is simply a thin layer of hypocrisy covering that truth. His response is not to become chaotic. Instead, he deliberately cultivates hypocrisy.
He presents himself as a respectable priest, offers charity to the poor, performs funerals, tends the sick, and gives excellent spiritual advice. Meanwhile, he secretly arranges murders, blackmails people, engineers religious conflicts, and sells information to anyone willing to pay. His favorite method of killing people is to convince somebody else to do it. He is also the group's intellectual center. He can discuss theology, ethics, history, and philosophy with genuine sophistication, which makes his conclusions all the more disturbing.
Role: divine caster, negotiator, healer, strategist, and ideological manipulator.
3. Lucien Mordane
Human Rogue — no archetype
Male
Lucien is a professional assassin who specializes in people rather than monsters. He is elegant, soft-spoken, and impeccably dressed. He carries a rapier and several concealed knives, but his greatest weapons are patience and information. Lucien's philosophy is that murder should never look like murder. He prefers poison, staged accidents, manipulated rivalries, and carefully constructed alibis. If he has to kill someone personally, he considers it a failure of preparation. Unlike Silas from the Mummy's Mask group, I would leave Lucien as a straight Rogue. He doesn't need a specialized archetype because his distinction comes from how the character is played.
He keeps dossiers on everyone he meets. Not just enemies. Everyone. He knows which party member is secretly in debt, which noble has a bastard child, which priest has doubts about his faith, and which adventurer is terrified of undead. He doesn't necessarily intend to use the information immediately. He simply believes that everyone should have something that can be held against them.
Role: scout, trap specialist, assassin, infiltrator, and social intelligence.
4. Ilse Vey
Human Witch — Gravewalker
Female
Ilse is the member who makes the Black Company genuinely frightening. She grew up in Ustalav and learned hedge magic from an old woman who lived alone in the woods. She became fascinated with death at a very young age and eventually progressed from communicating with the dead to using them. Ilse is a cannibal, but I would make this more than simple shock value. She believes that consuming a piece of a dead person allows her to retain something of their personality, memory, or power. She therefore eats the dead for very specific reasons. If she kills an enemy she considers particularly interesting, she may preserve part of the corpse until she has decided what she wants from it. She keeps little notebooks describing the people she has consumed.
She is not openly sadistic like Garrick. In fact, she can be remarkably gentle. She talks to corpses in a soothing voice, tends her garden, makes excellent tea, and becomes genuinely affectionate toward people she considers friends. Her morality is simply completely alien. She sees the human body as raw material. Her relationship with Severin is particularly interesting. He regards death as evidence of the meaninglessness of morality; Ilse regards death as a source of knowledge.
Role: witch, curses, occult knowledge, supernatural utility, and the party's most disturbing character.
—( † )—
I actually prefer this composition for your purposes because it demonstrates the principle you just clarified: there is absolutely no reason to force an archetype onto every character. Three of these four are deliberately ordinary base classes. It also gives you a useful recurring villain structure. They are not a party where everyone is an occult specialist, everyone is a pirate, or everyone is some variation of a monster hunter. They are recognizable adventurers whose choices make them horrifying.
What makes them particularly unpleasant is that their evil doesn't depend upon an elaborate ideology. Garrick kills because he likes violence and because violence solves problems. Severin corrupts people because he enjoys demonstrating that their principles are weaker than they believe. Lucien murders people because he regards human beings as pieces on a board. Ilse violates the dead because she genuinely believes corpses are useful things. And they actually like one another.
That's important. They aren't four psychopaths who would inevitably betray each other. They have been together for years, and their loyalty to each other is probably the one genuinely admirable thing about them. If Garrick is arrested, the others will attempt to rescue him. If Ilse is threatened, Lucien will kill whoever threatened her. If Severin is wounded, Garrick will carry him out. That makes them considerably more dangerous as recurring rivals.
They can also change their presentation depending on the campaign. In Ustalav they might be occult mercenaries and grave robbers. In Cheliax they could operate as assassins and blackmailers. In Andoran they might be smugglers and political terrorists. In Taldor they could be mercenaries working for corrupt nobles. In Varisia they could be treasure hunters who have become involved with an unpleasant local cult. The underlying characters remain the same, while their current employer and specific villainous scheme change.
And because they're all ordinary PC races, there is nothing inherently supernatural about their appearance. The PCs have to discover what these people are by watching what they do. That makes them much more suitable as recurring “anti-PCs” than four obviously evil-looking monsters.
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Here's the original Carrion Crown ChatGPT generated characters, except image generated by Grok because I was out of ChatGPT images. Left to right:
