Dark Stalker

As subterranean peoples go, the dark folk are comparatively decent neighbors—they aren’t degenerate savages like the morlocks, hedonistic demon-worshippers like the drow, slavers in service to dour gods like the duergar, or kidnapping mad sadists like the derro.  Compared to them, a race of chaotic neutral thieves and poisoners seem almost benign.  But the very fact that dark stalkers can’t be easily categorized by their goals or habits makes one ask: So what are they hiding?

At least one school of shadowdancers is actually a cover for a shadow school of dark stalker assassins.

The Watch corners a black-cloaked man and a pair of diminutive companions stealing artifacts from the town museum.  In order to escape, the man slit his own lackeys’ throats, then vanished in the flash.  However, he dropped a scrap of paper that seems to reference something called the Umbral Orrery.  Wanted posters for the man are now on every street corner.

The head of the thieves’ guild becomes alarmed when a new poison called Black Smear floods the town—and not just because it threatens his monopoly.  His men track the suppliers three levels down below the city, where the closes and basements give way to caverns peopled by dark folk.  Dark stalkers captured one of his men, but he can’t go to the authorities because he himself is a fugitive due for hanging.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 54

The closes of Edinburgh are awesome for sparking game ideas.