Gancanagh

(Illustration by Rogier van de Beek comes from the artist’s DeviantArt page and is © Paizo Publishing.)

Inspired by the gean cánach or “love talker” from Irish mythology, Pathfinder’s gancanagh got upgraded from fey to azata.   Unlike many outsiders though, at CR 4 he’s easy to insert into even a low-level adventure.  Any number of jilted lovers, jealous husbands, and irate fathers or magistrates might hire adventurers to take revenge on a gancanagh…and what will they do when they find out that he’s not only a good guy, but a guy for Good? 

(Moreover, just how far are they willing to go to get the stat boost from the gancanagh’s Invigorating Passion (Su) ability?  Wouldst thou hit that for a Hit Die?)

Gancanaghs typically woo shepherdesses and milkmaids.  Iefan of the Silver Glade wooed the head of the Inquisition instead…and when he ended the affair to pursue another woman, she took it poorly.  As a luckless adventuring party is currently under the High Inquisitrix’s thumb—they were caught stopping a witch-burning and their paladin has been threatened with censure—it becomes their job to round up the azata before he slips away to Elysium.

The lizardfolk of the Sword Reach are accomplished sailors and whalers despite their cold blood.  One, the white-scaled Griznak, is never to be seen without his pipe, which he says he carved from the thighbone of a living frost giant. In truth, he stole the pipe from a gancanagh…and now that the azata is back on the Sword Reach after questing in Ettinhope, he wants his pipe back.

Determined to take down the sorcerer-bishop of Axburg, adventurers seek to learn more of the bishop’s crimes by freeing his hated rival.  Known only as “the Elf in Irons,” the renowned swashbuckler has been locked in a tower for 15 years.  In truth the imprisoned “Elf” is no less than a gancanagh.  But years of being bound in a mask of cold iron in a cell lit by smoky braziers have rendered the azata quite mad, and he attempts to kill his would-be rescuers.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 5 38

Since one of the reasons we know about the gancanagh is through Mr. William Butler Yeats, now is the time where I point out I took my senior yearbook photo at Yeats’s grave.  Pretentious much? 

(It was a sweet photo, though.)

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