Some scholars say that a shadow's very essence is gluttony and greed. This is misleading; while all shadows hunger, few overeat.

Golarion being what it is, there are more than a dozen catalogued varieties of undead shadow, each with their own unique characteristics. Some feed on Intelligence, or make two attacks a round, or have sorcerous magicks. But in the main, undead shadows are created in two ways. Rarely, Evil souls shirk Pharasma's judgement to linger instead on Golarion. Else:

Melee incorporeal touch +4 (1d6 Strength damage)

Create Spawn (Su) A humanoid creature killed by a shadow’s Strength damage becomes a shadow under the control of its killer in 1d4 rounds.

Shadows have existed for a long time, and most people aren't shadows yet, from which we infer most shadows which exist haven't eaten anyone.

This demands explanation.

It's not that the shadows aren't hungry. Everyone agrees that they are. It's not that they aren't capable; shadows are far deadlier than humanoids.

Golarion's incurious scholars recite that shadows are uncomfortable in direct sunlight (sunlight harms shadows not one whit) and wide open spaces (shadows, being incorporeal, can cross open spaces beneath the surface of the ground[1]). With that mystery satisfyingly answered, they go on to explain that shadows, as undead horrors, have no discernible motivations save to sap vitality from living beings, that passing centuries means almost nothing to shadows, and that "none can say what shadows do or think in the long wait between victims."

(One wonders whether Golarion's wise sages ever thought to ask why shadows haven't overrun the drow in lightless Sekemina, or interview one the many civilized shadows Geb counts among its aristocracy[2].)

Golarion's intelligentsia came of age in a world where shadows have never eaten a major city. To them it feels like an entirely normal state of affairs. The sun rises in east, sets in the west, and shadows aren't a major threat. A gorgon is scarier than a shadow, but gorgons don't attack walled cities. Does that need a special explanation? Any who realize that there is need for an answer at all quickly find one that satisfies them, and don't spontaneously ask themselves whether their answer explains too much or too little.

The speculation of Golarion's scholars makes for thin gruel. What is observed is that many shadows rarely move far from where they spawned. Not because they're location-bound; some elect instead to roam about or become eighth-circle wizards named Ganderhall who menace Andoran.[3] But most of them don't like to travel far. This small mercy is paired with a greater one: historically, shadows that do move about have been haunted by extremely bad luck. Especially if they accidentally wander somewhere a shadowpocalypse would radically change the setting.

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1. Keeping a finger in contact with the surface.↩

2. Pathfinder Campaign Setting: The Inner Sea, page 77 ↩

3. Cheliax, Empire of Devils, page 45 ↩

Relations between Shoanti and Korvosans – testy at the best of times – have substantially soured in recent months. The politics are complicated and – to this warpriest – frankly uninteresting. King Eodred Arabasti of Korvosa offered an ultimatum which the Sun Shamans cannot accept. In fourteen calender days, they will be at war.

(Or perhaps King Eodred, as many hope and expect, is nothing but bluster. But if in attacking Korvosa this warpriest commits litigious Little Cheliax to fight the fight it threatened, Gorum would not count it against him.)

This particular little shadow was once a Shoanti girl.

It hurts to remember how she squandered it.

So many pretty things! Jewelry and blankets and whittled horses Ooljee could hold and turn in her corporeal hands. She knew enough to desire them, but never thought to guard them jealously forever.

She had family and friends who ran and yelled and she never drained a one of them. So many chances to feed on humans and she let them slip through her fingers.

It hurts to remember. She makes up stories instead. And little tunes she sings to herself. Counts the seasons. Swims in the earth like a fish. Sometimes she thinks about leaving her ruin. Actually, she does that one a lot.

Centuries pass one minute at a time.

Undead that fail their saves fall under your control, obeying your commands to the best of their ability, as if under the effects of control undead.

This spell enables you to control undead creatures for a short period of time. You command them by voice and they understand you, no matter what language you speak. Even if vocal communication is impossible, the controlled undead do not attack you. At the end of the spell, the subjects revert to their normal behavior.

Intelligent undead creatures remember that you controlled them, and they may seek revenge after the spell’s effects end.

While he's already in the neighborhood, might as well grab two. Command Undead the feat only lets him control one shadow at a time, but he's also got command undead the spell.

Three hundred years ago – Year 4407 Absolom Reckoning, in the Age of Enthronement – ascendant Cheliax built Fort Korvosa on a small island where the Jeggare river reaches the sea.

Then Cheliax fell to anarchy and civil war, leaving staid Korvosa alone in savage Varisia. Egorian sold itself to Hell, forsook Chelish Nidal, and still can't reign in mob ruled Isarn and Almas.

Of Cheliax, Korvosa remains.

The small state is beset on all sides by enemies. Assailed by barbaric Shoanti raiders, traitorous Magnimar, criminal Riddleport, chaotic Kaer Maga, horrors and Nidalese that spill across the border, unconstant holdings in constant need of attending, festering Old Korvosa burning like an ulcer in the great city's belly, mainland Korvosa hopes still to be here when and if Cheliax comes to its senses.

Until then, no help is coming. They will survive by their own powers or not at all.

This[1] is the most complete map of all Korvosa, and leaves out few places of interest to us.

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1. With gratitude to the redditor who made it.↩

Most Korvosans live crowded above first-floor stores or businesses in townhouses that share at least one wall with the neighbors.[1] Atop these conjoined dwellings sprawl the Shingles, Korvosa's unofficial eighth district: a layer of tents and ramshackle huts, thickest above Bridgefront, that add a third or fifth story to the city's walkable roofs.

You can cross the crowded city without touching a single cobbled road, and many do, Shingle running to beat the crowds or avoid the Guard.

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1. Guide to Korvosa, page 3.↩

You could look at most of Korvosa as essentially one building - a megadungeon.

Streets are connecting hallways, but rooms are also connected by secret passages, attic windows, and simple proximity. Adventurers in dungeons rely on stone shape and their Insistent Doorknockers to flummox dungeon builders, and the most hated dungeon monster is that which ignores walls. A shadow on the hunt can search every room of a townhouse within a single round.

Earth's early cities had a problem where the whole damn thing would go periodically up in cinders. This is a smaller problem in Korvosa, where they magically control the weather. Earth's cities had or have problems with rats. Again less so in Korvosa, where they enchant rodents with magic pipes and march them into the sea[1]. (Disease, though, is a problem which Korvosa struggles to solve at scale[2].) What fire has in common with rats and smallpox is that it spreads exponentially wherever humans densely congregate.

At last census, Korvosan households were broken down as follows[3]:

  d%         Encounter            Avg EL

01–04        Lives alone                1/3

05–12        Household of 2          1/2

13–25        Household of 3            1

26–40        Household of 4            1

41–54        Household of 5            2

55–68        Household of 6            3

69–00        Household of 7+      Varies

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1. Source: I made it up.↩

2. Curse of the Crimson Throne, Seven Days to the Grave.

3. Inspired by the 1790 US Census.↩

If you were a shadow and wanted to maximize the damage you did Korvosa, ideally you would swim up the Jeggare River, beneath the North Bridge, and attack Midland at the West Dock.

Ooljee was instead directed to attack at Bridgefront; shadows aren't known to be clever and the warpriest didn't want to overcomplicate things. Attacking Old Korvosa is a calculated risk: as it's separated from mainland Korvosa by the Narrows of Saint Alika, there's a chance Korvosa successfully quarantines the island. But targeting the Heights seems likely to draw a prompt and strong response, and South Shore is near to the Gray. And the Narrows are, well, narrow. He'll count on the shadows to cross it.

She isn't stupid, you know.

Agree to disagree.

I won't be disrespected like this.

We can measure Intelligence with detect thoughts and yours is objectively six.

Six of what?

It's generally accepted that INT score corresponds in some way to the thing which is measured by IQ tests, and AD&D said outright that INT and IQ were one and the same, but no edition of D&D or Pathfinder has ventured an official opinion on what it means to have 6 INT or 18.[1]

The concrete anchors we have: creatures with less than 3 INT can't learn language. And 10 (technically 10.5) is the human average. You can draw a straight line through any two points, but gamers have been arguing over how the INT curve should curve for 50 years and there's nothing like a consensus.

There are three methods with the legitimacy to mention, and happily they give fairly similar results in the case of 6 INT:

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1. If you've seen an unsourced table on d20pfsrd.com which says things like "dull-witted or slow, often misuses and mispronounces words" and have mistaken it for being from something other than a random blogger's blog, well, the table is actually from a random blogger's blog.↩

The first method was printed in the Sage Advice column of Dragon Magazine:

Multiply your INT score by 10. That's your IQ.

Advantages: this is the most official answer we'll ever get for any system of Dungeons & Dragons, not that it is by any stretch official.

Disadvantages: it is uncompromisingly batshit insane. (Also the average 3d6 person has 105 IQ.)

Using this method the average shadow has IQ 60 (technically 65).

The second method: players and NPCs allegedly roll 3d6 for their ability scores, which forms a bell curve. IQ is also a bell curve, so take the one and match it to the other, easy like Sunday morning.

Advantages: if you’re rolling 3d6 for stats, characters are as likely to have a given INT score as Earth humans from Earth are. 

Disadvantages: by this method a wolf has like 50 IQ, and if the upper end of ability scores aren’t as completely nutty, wizards can still get 220+.

Using this method the average shadow has about 80 IQ.

Method three: average INT is 10 which mostly corresponds to 100 IQ, NPCs have less variable ability scores than they’d get from the 3d6 method (I'm not sure whether this applies to printed monsters, who for unmodified stats use an array with three 10s and three 11s), every point of INT is about half a standard deviation along the bell curve but INT doesn’t particularly track intelligence especially as you get into the tails.

Disadvantages: this doesn’t square with any in-game construct.

Advantages: it often gives less nutty answers than the two above and is the convention on glowfic dot com.

By this method the average shadow has IQ 70 (77.5?).

So shadows have an average of 70 IQ, abouts. Or a little higher.

What does that mean?

It's hard to say.

When humans think of stupid people they think of children, else adults with brain damage or severe disabilities.

Adult chimpanzees have better working memory than adult humans[1], let alone a human with enough brain damage that it isn't clear who has the higher Intelligence. Wolves are dumber than human toddlers across many dimensions, but seem faster to process their surroundings and have far better pack tactics. 70 IQ children from demographics that do poorly on IQ tests are socially more adept than 70 IQ children from groups with average 100 IQ[2].

Shadows are not human children. Nor disabled human adults. They are adult shadows, with racial bonuses to Wisdom and Charisma. Shadows are slow learners, and bad reasoners. In humans that correlates with slurred speech, emotional incontinence, poor impulse control, poor communication and leadership ability, an inability to keep track of one's environment, to react quickly and decisively.

Shadows aren't geniuses at grand strategy. (At least, not most of them. Some are eighth-circle wizards.)

But they aren't at all hurting for solid horse sense and the ability to work well in groups.

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1. https://humanbenchmark.com/tests/chimp ↩

2. https://twitter.com/cremieuxrecueil/status/1712174161521496434 ↩

Okay, fine, whatever.

If after opening the Bridgefront front you have the presence of mind to swim up the Jeggare and attack the West Dock, I won't stop you. But do Bridgefront first.

Understood?

Ooljee arrives unnoticed; she made her approach beneath the surface of ink-black water, and she is a shadow.

The attack will begin at midnight.

The decaying remains of Fort Korvosa still stand atop Garrison Hill of Endrin Island – rising above the slums of Old Korvosa.

Today the island is home to the city's poorest and most criminal.

Sidelined in 4489 when Magistrate Remsey Ornelos moved the civilian government of Fort Korvosa across the Narrows, irrelevant since losing the Cousin's War, the district clings to fastidious Korvosa like mold on a cheese. Those of Old Korvosa rarely burden themselves with such trifles as legality, morality, or compassion, and the Korvosan Guard is seldom welcome there...

Thankfully, as the Korvosan Guard keeps no vampires on the payroll it doesn't much matter whether we're welcome or not.