Outlook

Yanagihama is a community of neighbors, and this campaign assumes your character is motivated by compassion for their hometown — often without promise of payment. Cruel and selfish characters are a poor fit. Beyond that, any temperament works, so long as the party pulls together when the town needs them.

Ancestries

Where an ancestry has a Shenyun-native version in the Tian Xia Character Guide (its "Tian" entries — leshy, kobold, lizardfolk, sprite), use that version; those entries represent Shenyun's own populations.

Common in Yanagihama: Humans are the clear majority, with every ethnicity of Shenyun represented. Elves and half-elves (descended from Eirendor settlers), halflings (Imperion-enclave stock), kitsune, nagaji, tanuki, and tengus are all established parts of town life — and a band of leshies runs the local saloon.

Uncommon — at home in the Cloud Province, a handful in town:

• Dokkaebi goblins — Akanegumo's folklore-famous tricksters in the flesh; locals treat them with the wary courtesy owed to anything out of a grandmother's story.

• Kijimuna — red-haired spirits of river and shore; the fisheries consider one resident kijimuna worth three good nets.

• Tsukumogami poppets — tools and treasures awakened by a century of loving use. In a woodcrafter's town with a ghost season, nobody is even surprised.

• Samsarans — souls who remember the wheel of their past lives. Followers of the Path of Returning Waters consider them quietly blessed, and the choice is outstandingly on-theme for this campaign.

• Yaoguai — beings transformed by spiritual influence into something new; the Yūreimori produces more of them than most forests.

• Wayangs — shadow-folk whose knack for going unnoticed serves them well in a haunted province.

• Shenyun kobolds and sprites — small folk of the deep forest margins.

• Dhampirs — an excellent fit for a horror campaign; ru-shi lineages tracing to jiang-shi are especially appropriate.

• Ratfolk, hobgoblins (from the northern marches), and dwarves, gnomes, or goblins as enclave emigrants.

Versatile heritages: Dhampir (above), hungerseed (oni-blooded — like fiend-touched lineages, they draw wary looks; talk to your GM about how the town knows your character as an exception), and nephilim of celestial descent ("from across the water").

Rare: Lizardfolk (river-dragon folk of distant southern deltas), sarangay (horned folk of far-off isles), and yaksha (spirit-guardians bound to sacred places — discuss with your GM what duty, or what failure, carried yours to Yanagihama; in this town, that question will matter). Anything else not listed is rare — clear it with your GM first.

Poor fits: Aquatic ancestries will spend most of the campaign out of their element, and automatons or other machine-folk don't suit the era or region (tsukumogami poppets are spirits of beloved objects, not machines — they're very welcome).

Tengu players, take note

Yanagihama harbors no dislike of its tengu citizens — some are pillars of the community. But the jorogumo who now rule Akanegumo are said to loathe tengus and fly into murderous rage on sight. The spider-courts haven't visited remote Yanagihama... yet. If such news ever arrives in play, your GM will have guidance; raise any concerns at session zero.

Classes

Your character is assumed to be a citizen of Yanagihama. The town may only hold 225 people (not counting your PCs!), but its history and placement leave it open to a remarkably wide range of classes among its newest crop of heroes. Playtest classes are marked — those need GM permission.

Alchemists are respected and adored in Yanagihama, both as herbalists and as crafters of fanciful festival distractions. The local herbalist, Yeo Su-Min of the Quiet Garden, leans toward the herbalism side of the art, but access to her lab and supplies — should you earn her friendship — will be of great use. The chirurgeon research field is the most thematic choice, but every field pulls its weight in this campaign.

Animists may be the single most on-theme class in the game for this campaign. Yanagihama's world is thick with kami, apparitions, and restless spirits; an animist who bonds with them will never lack for material, allies, or trouble. If you want the class built for this story, it's this one.

Barbarians are a complex choice — there are no established clans in the region and no barbarian NPCs in town, though plenty of locals appreciate a good fight. An animal instinct barbarian might be valued for hunting prowess, while a spirit instinct barbarian could earn real respect as a defender against the spirits locals fear (and the ability to harm incorporeal foes will be a great boon in many of this campaign's fights). Other instincts lack a local hook but play perfectly well.

Bards will find constant opportunities to influence neighbors, stage singular performances, and solve problems with music; no one build outshines another. An enigma muse might court the legend of the ancient hero Yun Hai-Qing, or the strange kodama of the Great Willow north of town. Okabe Shun, director of the Seven-Colored Songbird theater, periodically auditions performers.

Champions are all appropriate, provided your cause doesn't set you against the rest of the party. The ronin who settles in a small town and becomes its defender is an iconic shape for this campaign. Mounted builds won't find many mounted encounters, but a mount remains handy in both town and wilderness.

Clerics should consult the Faiths section and the deity table for guidance on patrons and shrines.

Commanders fit better than you'd guess for a farm town: the militia could badly use drilling, and watch officer Jiang Wu would weep with gratitude. A year of defending your hometown is one long lesson in small-unit tactics.

Daredevils (playtest) work anywhere brave fools are needed, and Yanagihama is about to need several.

Druids have ample room to excel — the campaign spans a full year of seasons in a deeply rural place, and temperate forest is the primary terrain throughout. The animal, leaf, and storm orders are the most thematic, but all orders find opportunities. On-theme animal companions for the region: arboreal sapling, badger, bat, bear, beetle, bird, boar, cat, horse, snake, or wolf (anything else, work out with your GM how it came to you).

Exemplars (rare) — a mortal channeling a divine spark through sacred ikons reads, in Shenyun's idiom, as a hero touched by the kami, walking the road Yun Hai-Qing once walked. Clear the rare rarity with your GM, but the fit is lovely.

Fighters will find ample chances to shine, but remember this campaign's heavy urban and downtime elements: consider investing in Crafting, Diplomacy, Intimidation, or Society so you have moments outside of combat too.

Guardians embody the campaign's premise in a single class: someone has to stand between the town and what comes out of the woods.

Gunslingers are a poor thematic fit, and Yanagihama has no resources for them whatsoever — best to save the concept for another campaign.

Inventors aren't common in Shenyun, but they're hardly unknown, and a knack for rigged-up contraptions is precious in a rural town far from specialized suppliers. Hou Jian-Yu of the smithy called Second Best is well known for his creations and would make an excellent friend or ally. No innovation is more appropriate than another.

Investigators are a particularly excellent choice — this campaign is dense with information to research, clues to track, and mysteries to unravel. The alchemical sciences and forensic medicine methodologies are the most thematically appropriate.

Kineticists play fine, though the town offers little elemental tradition to hook into — talk with your GM about adjusting that. Worth knowing: a quiet motif of wood against metal runs beneath this campaign. The town's spirit is wood; the themes of metal align with some of what opposes it.

Magi will find their abilities useful throughout but aren't tied to the plot — which also means a magus is refreshingly free of thematic clashes when building up their power.

Monks are a strong thematic choice: Yanagihama was founded to support a remote monastery, and though the Okusugi Monastery is now a ruin, that legacy runs deep in the town's traditions. See Faiths for the Path of Returning Waters.

Necromancers (playtest) deserve a serious session-zero conversation. Yanagihama cremates its dead precisely so they don't get back up, and a PC trafficking in undeath collides head-on with the town's deepest taboo — rich drama if that's what you want, constant friction if it isn't.

Oracles are perhaps an even stronger divine pick than clerics here. Most mysteries are strongly thematic; battle, cosmos, and flames are the least so. See Faiths for religious context.

Psychics aren't represented among the townsfolk, but their practices are known and admired. A psychic focused on lore, buried secrets, or battling supernatural forces will find no shortage of opportunity.

Rangers are deeply valued — the town's self-sufficiency rides on its hunters and foragers, and the Silverfern Lodges are their traditional gathering place. Forest is far and away the dominant terrain for Favored Terrain (aquatic and mountain see minor use; plains, sky, swamp, and underground less; arctic and desert never). For animal companions, use the druid list above.

Rogues will find many uses for their skills, especially navigating the politics of a very small town. See Skills and Feats below for where to focus.

Runesmiths (playtest) dovetail beautifully with Yanagihama's fulu-crafting tradition — talismans and inscribed wards are already how this town fights back.

Slayers (playtest) suit the Silverfern monster-hunter tradition perfectly.

Sorcerers are an excellent thematic choice in a town steeped in supernatural tradition. All bloodlines work; imperial, psychopomp, and undead are the most thematically resonant.

Summoners should consider the surrounding country — forests, low mountains, rivers, and lakes — when shaping an eidolon. The most thematic eidolons: anger phantom, beast, devotion phantom, plant, or psychopomp.

Swashbucklers, like fighters, will find plenty of chances to show their stuff in battle — and like fighters, should pick up an option or two for downtime and town problems that a blade can't solve.

Thaumaturges are excellent: like investigators, they'll face a steady diet of mysteries and ancient secrets. Every implement finds hooks here, but none more than the lantern, given the town's Eternal Lantern tradition — you can't take that lantern as your implement, but one crafted in its image fits perfectly.

Witches may be an even more thematic spellcaster than sorcerers, with a mysterious patron and horror-adjacent themes built right into the class. The curse, night, wild, and winter patrons are always excellent choices in this campaign. And a spider familiar honors the stone guardian at the town's eastern gate.

Wizards find their mastery genuinely valued — provided their focus isn't something that unsettles the neighbors. All schools have ample opportunity. A wizard PC might pursue an alliance with Igarashi Kohana of Mother's Coil, the town's resident (and recently bereaved) scholar of all things arcane.

Faiths

Yanagihama keeps two true temples — one to Inarihime, fox kami of rice and craft, and one to Aishin, the Veiled Shepherd who keeps the souls of the dead — but the town's faith is gloriously plural. Small shrines stand everywhere, tended by habit as much as devotion: the Imperial Shrine of the celestial bureaucracy, Tsukuyomi (moon, night, and dreams), Hinokami (the sacred flame and the sword), Kazehana (luck and the open road), Midorihama (sorcery, family, and the serpent's healing kiss), the propitiated Widow of Ashes at the mill lake, an Eirendor hunt-god kept by the Silverfern families, and humbler spirits besides — Grandmother Rat, the Executioner's Debt, and shrines all but forgotten. If your character worships one of these, you know where their shrine stands; if you favor another deity of the Celestial Harmony or beyond, speak with your GM — your faith might add a shrine to the town's list.

Beyond the gods, many in Yanagihama follow the Path of Returning Waters — the contemplative philosophy of the town's founders, which teaches that souls flow as rivers to the sea and rise again as rain. The ruined Okusugi Monastery in the western hills was its great retreat, and though the monastery is sixty years abandoned (and reputedly haunted), the Path's teachings endure at many a hearth.

Deities at a Glance (for clerics, champions, and the devout)

Shrines in town:

Other Celestial Harmony deities your character might keep (no town shrine — yet):

The Imperial Shrine is civic veneration of the divine Emperor/Empress rather than a cleric's patron; champions and clerics of the celestial bureaucracy should talk to the GM. Full deity write-ups (edicts, anathema, and more) are available from your GM.

Languages

Shenyan — the empire's tongue, with its own script and phonetics — is this campaign's Common; everyone in town speaks it. Elven, Halfling, Kitsune, Nagaji, and Tengu all see daily use as well, and many older locals also speak Jinghu, the rural dialect of the deep provinces.

Two scholarly tongues reward the bookish. Wu-Zen, the liturgical language of monks and spiritual traditions, is what the Path of Returning Waters' texts — and the Okusugi Monastery's inscriptions — are written in, which makes it an excellent campaign pick. Senzaar, the ancient language of arcane tomes and historical records, suits wizards and historians.

Languages with occasional value in this campaign include Chthonian, Aklo, Necril, and Fey; ask your GM before spending picks on anything more exotic.

Skills and Feats

You'll face a wide range of challenges in this campaign, and an unusual share of them arrive during downtime — the story spans a full year, and you'll regularly spend weeks at a time pursuing downtime activities between crises.

Adventuring skills. Acrobatics, Athletics, Medicine, and Stealth see consistent use in and around combat throughout the campaign — and several of them (Athletics especially) have significant downtime applications as well.

Magical traditions. Of the four tradition skills, Nature and Religion have significant opportunities to shine across the entire campaign. Arcana comes into its own in the second half of the story, as does Occultism.

Social skills. Diplomacy, Intimidation, and Society see constant use from the first session to the last. Deception is the odd one out: in the first half of the campaign its moments outside combat (Create a Diversion, Feint) are few but important — in the second half, it becomes much more valuable.

Self-sufficiency. Keeping yourself — and a remote town — fed and functioning makes Survival important throughout. Thievery earns its keep against hazards and in the occasional downtime challenge that calls for a subtle touch. Crafting becomes a major skill after the first adventure, when you'll increasingly be called on to build and repair. Performance has fewer openings, but every adventure includes a few moments where it solves a problem with ease.

Lore skills. An extensive number of Lores help in this campaign — when a downtime activity opens up, a specific Lore often carries a lower DC than the generalized skill alternative. The most important by far is Yanagihama Lore, as you'd expect of a campaign set almost entirely in and around this town. Other Lores with recurring moments: Academia, Art, Engineering, Farming, Hunting, Library, Returning Waters, and Tea Lore. Lores with one or two chances to shine: Architecture, Cooking, Fishing, Fortune-Telling, Games, Genealogy, Guild, Herbalism, Jorogumo, Labor, Mercantile, Midwifery, Midorihama, River, Sailing, Scouting, Theater, Underworld, and Warfare Lore — plus any food-or-drink Lore that isn't tea.

A Lore worth saving room for

One Lore skill that appears in no rulebook will become increasingly useful as this campaign unfolds — it concerns a family of creature your group has yet to discover. Once you do, training in it will help you prepare for battle and research what's coming. Not having it at the start is expected, and is part of the story; this note exists only for players who like to map their level-ups in advance.

Feats. Avoid feats that work best in large cities or rely on long-distance travel — neither features in this campaign. Feats that help you interact with townsfolk, bolster your self-sufficiency, or would simply prove useful to anyone living out a year of their life in a remote woodland town will serve better than usual.

Archetypes

The ritualist archetype is exceptional here — this campaign offers more rituals than most. Other strong picks: blessed one (any shrine deity), bounty hunter or duelist (ronin flavor), herbalist, horizon walker (forest), loremaster, marshal, martial artist, and most multiclass archetypes (except gunslinger). Skip assassin, pirate, vigilante, and viking — wrong story.

Gear

As a campaign set in Shenyun, the following uncommon weapons are available to all PCs at character creation: kama, katana, nunchaku, sai, shuriken, temple sword, daikyu*, khakkara, tengu gale blade, wakizashi, butterfly sword*, feng huo lun*, fighting fan, hook sword*, jiu huan dao, kusarigama, naginata, rope dart, sansetsukon, tekko-kagi, and three-section naginata*. An asterisk marks weapons that are also advanced weapons.

At a Glance: Suggested Character Options