Pathfinders face Hellish standoff outside Absalom in new scenario

The Handmaiden’s Gaze gives Pathfinder Society tables a rare kind of pressure cooker: an 11th-12th level job in the Cairnlands outside Absalom, where Hellish soldiers are already sitting in place and the Grand Council cannot simply move against them. Written by Hilary Moon Murphy, the 2-3 hour scenario pushes the party straight into the gap between law, diplomacy, and force.

Paizo has set Pathfinder Society Scenario #7-22 for release on July 1, 2026, and it can be run at events starting that day. That timing makes it one of the cleaner July pickups for GMs who want a ready-made high-level Society session instead of a longer home campaign detour. It also gives convention organizers a fast convention table to slot into a busy schedule, with Gen Con listing a run of The Handmaiden’s Gaze on Friday, August 1, 2026 at 4:00 PM EDT for 3 hours.

The setting does a lot of the work here. The Cairnlands are not just outskirts, but a ruined battlefield zone shaped by more than 4,000 years of failed sieges against Absalom, strewn with siege castles, battlements, and the remains of past attackers. Inside the city, the Grand Council of Absalom has twelve high seats, plus low seats, and state business moves by vote, which means the table is stepping into a city built to deliberate slowly even when the threat is immediate.

That matters because the pressure is not abstract. Cheliax is one of the most powerful military nations in the Inner Sea region, and PathfinderWiki places a Chelish siege of Absalom under Prince Haliad I in 4137 AR, an unsuccessful campaign that still hangs over any show of force near the city. Put Hellish troops outside those walls now, and the scenario stops feeling like a routine Society errand and starts feeling like a border crisis with history attached.

That is the real hook for July. The Handmaiden’s Gaze is not asking a table to chase rumors or clean up a side street problem. It drops the Pathfinders into Absalom’s oldest kind of danger, where the city’s law, its politics, and its enemies all meet in the same field outside the walls.