History of Willowshore

The history of Willowshore, a town in Shenmen, is deeply fraught and full of mystery.

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The entire Season of Ghosts Pathfinder Adventure Path
This article summarizes events that constitute major plot spoilers for the entire Season of Ghosts Adventure Path. Reading any further will spoil potentially campaign-breaking major plot events and mechanical aspects of encounters.
If you are playing in the Season of Ghosts Adventure Path, do not read any further than this point.
For spoiler-free details of Willowshore, consult the free Season of Ghosts Player's Guide.
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Sealing of Kugaptee

In 6223 IC, the adventurer Tan Sui-Jing and nindoru Ascetic Kugaptee both died in battle with each other in Shenmen. A sugi tree grew on the site of Kugaptee's remains that also sealed away the fiend and prevented its self-resurrection; it becomes known as the Tan Sugi after Tan, and legends among Sangpotshi practitioners tell that the tree is Tan herself, transformed as an ultimate act of sacrifice.

Founding of Willowshore

Willowshore as of 7108 IC.

Some of those practitioners sought out the tree, and centuries later in 7020 IC the Sangpotshi Master Zhi Hui succeeded and led her monks to found a monastery at the Tan Sugi, named Tan Sugi Monastery after the tree.

They founded the village of Willowshore nearby, first to support its construction and then to facilitate trade between the monks and the outside world, with the two connected by a long, winding trail known as the Pilgrim's Path. The village earned its name from its remote location, which ferry operators referred to as "the shore of willows", a metaphor for being hard to locate.

The monastery took five years to build, and Willowshore continued to grow after its completion to welcome and house pilgrims, visitors, and new residents. However, Zhi Hui died in 7054 IC, and amid the town's transition to logging and discord among the Sangpotshi monks, the monastery was effectively abandoned by 7060 IC.

Shenmen eventually deployed lumber lords to the village to support Imperial Lung Wa's need for lumber and set about making infrastructural improvements to grow it into a town, including bridges and a dam. However, with new settlers came divisions of class, unwanted aristocratic tourists, and forced seizures of the town's sustenance.

Curse of Kugaptee

In 7062 IC, a group of loggers from Sze that included the son of Sze's leader Chou Mingxia attempted to harvest ancient sugi trees at the monastery's site but returned to town as hostile undead. The townsfolk fended them off in a deadly battle later known as the Night of Broken Blades. The abandoned monastery was subsequently regarded as cursed and avoided, though many of the town's residents remained faithful to Sangpotshi.

Monsters appeared in the region more frequently after the event, and the imperial governor at the time offered property to imperial soldiers in exchange for their protection. Many took up this offer, resulting in another population boom.

After Lung Wa collapsed in 7106 IC, its lumber barons subsequently left with their wealth, and many of its soldiers departed for Shenmen's capital or as deserters. The town's distance from civilization spared it from the rampant banditry and political upheaval that followed, but it also left Willowshore's people unaware that jorogumo were taking over Shenmen.

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To protect the town from any threat Kugaptee might pose, Heh Shan-Bao—the town's governor, who remained in Willowshore—attempted to invoke the power of the Tan Sugi through a ritual in 7108 IC. However, he botched the attempt and instead disturbed the long-dormant Kugaptee; the resulting burst of fell energy killed every resident overnight.

Ghost town

Willowshore remained abandoned after that fateful night. Local tales claimed the site was haunted by its mysteriously dead residents, whose cause had never been determined. In truth, Heh Shan-Bao's actions trapped the souls of Willowshore's people in a mindscape reality that forced them to relive the prior year repeatedly, looping back on the last day of spring unaware that they had died or of what had happened, and unable to leave the Willowshore Hinterlands. Only Heh Shan-Bao remained missing from this mindscape, trapped in a nightmarish mindscape of his own.

In 7115 IC, the shinigami Asahina Shinzo and nosoi psychopomp Yix arrived to the site of Willowshore to investigate, and remained there as of 7223 IC. Additional nosois eventually arrived with concerns about Shinzo's activities.

By 7223 IC, lumber baron Mago Kai from Sze arrived to the site to harvest its lumber and found the former settlement haunted by its residents' restless spirits. He employed exorcists to purge the town of any spirits located within, after which point he planned to establish a lumber harvesting operation on the site.