It's not often that I get to show off Planet Stories art besides the covers, but I wanted to take a minute and point out that in addition to a killer story, Leigh Brackett's Skaith books (which include The Ginger Star, The Hounds of Skaith, and the forthcoming The Reavers of Skaith) all feature hand-drawn maps by the incredibly talented Rob Lazzaretti. I've always loved being able to follow along with a character's adventures on a map, getting a better sense of what the author's world actually looks like, and Rob does a fantastic job of maintaining an old-timey cartographic flavor that really makes these maps pop. The two images here are from The Ginger Star and The Hounds of Skaith. Click for larger versions, and enjoy!
Once more, I reveal unto you some great art for Pact Stone Pyramid by Bento Box Studios! Nothing much more to say than pictures of paladins headlockin' mummies. Paladins headlockin' mummies.
Over the last year or so, we've been listening carefully to what people have to say about Planet Stories, and especially about the books' covers. While we all know that it's what's inside that counts—and with authors like Brackett and Howard, Moore and Moorcock, I think we're pretty set on that level—the cover remains the single most important factor in selling a book to somebody who may never have heard of it. I know that, especially as a child, covers often made my buying decisions for me. Did it have bright colors? A dragon on it? What about a weird alien landscape? My favorite science fiction novel of all time, Dan Simmons's Hyperion, I purchased based solely on the amazing cover, and it's my sincere hope that someone can someday say the same thing about one of our books.
But finding the right mix with covers isn't always easy. Should it be pulpy or sophisticated? Detailed and realistic or painterly and stylized? All of us at Planet Stories have our own personal tastes, but we're a relatively small sample, and as such we've been spending a lot of time on the Planet Stories messageboards getting reader feedback. Lately, it seems that we've really hit our stride, with the Swordsman of Mars cover and this fabulous Hounds of Skaith art from our old friend James Ryman being the hands-down favorites to date.
In this interior piece we have a girallon covered in glowing magical hieroglyphics battling Seelah and Kyra, set in one of the interior areas of the Pact Stone Pyramid. Well, it's not really a girallon, it's a magical curse in the shape of a girallon, but when the thing is quadruple-punching your face the subtle difference probably isn't your biggest concern....
In the Second Darkness Adventure Path, we knew we wanted to use the drow as the primary antagonists. And of course, where there's drow, there's driders. Yet with the changes to drow society in Golarion (and in particular who and what they worship) versus their classic representation in the game, the genesis story for driders had to change. This gave us a pretty interesting bit of new flavor for both driders and drow.
In (under?) Golarion, driders are not punishments meted out by the gods. They are punishments meted out by the drow themselves. One noble family of drow, House Parastric, has maintained their power due to their possession of a powerful secret—the art of fleshcrafting. On one level, this art lets a drow use various poisons to reshape parts of the body, granting a soldier large claws or a poisonous bite, for example, or a scout antennae so he can navigate even more easily in the dark. Yet this is just the beginning, for the drow of House Parastric also developed a method to reshape an entire creature—this is known as fleshwarping, and those that survive the painful and humiliating process are known as fleshwarps. Every race put through the process emerges as something different—all troglodytes come out as hulking behemoths; all surface elves emerge as twisted deformed monsters; all halfings come out as skittering quadrapedal beasts, and so on. But it was the drow themselves who proved the most impressive subjects for fleshwarping, for all drow that undergo the process emerge as driders.
In drow society, driders are seen as freaks and mutants. Becoming a drider is not prestigious—it's physical proof of punishment and a brand of shame. Yet driders are not frail or helpless fleshwarps; they're powerful creatures in their own regard. As a result, in drow society driders are often kept as guardians, soldiers, or bodyguards. Retaining little of their previous life's memories, most driders serve their drow lords and ladies without question. But not all of them.
Female driders in particular are more headstrong and aggressive, just as with the drow themselves. Most drider rebellions are instigated by a female, and today there are numerous small tribes of driders dwelling in the remote corners of the Darklands, free from drow rule. The majority of driders one sees in drow cities are male, as a result. And fortunately for those drow, it's real easy to tell them apart. Female driders retain their sleek, beautiful, and elven shapes above the waist; below, their spider bodies are similarly sleek and smooth. Males, though, are much more bestial. Their faces are a horrific blend of drow and spider, and their bodies are spiny and rough. Pictured here are examples of the sexual dimorphism driders present, a female illustrated by Ben Wootten and a male illustrated by Concept Art House.
In Pathfinder #16, we present "Abominations of the Drow," an article that discusses both fleshcrafting and fleshwarping so that if your PCs stumble into the hands of the drow of House Parastric, you'll know what kinds of things they'll have to look forward to.
It's that time again—time for me to point out that nothing new I can say about The Hounds of Skaith can recommend it any better than it recommends itself and jump straight to an excerpt from the novel. In The Ginger Star, everyone's favorite mercenary and wild man Eric John Stark ventured to the dying world of Skaith in search of his foster father, only to find himself the subject of a revolutionary prophecy. Now, reunited with his mentor and with the support of the rebels' beautiful prophetess, Stark must master a pack of vicious telepathic hounds and tear down the planet's corrupt government before they close the starport and leave him stranded forever in a galactic backwater. The following scene is his first encounter with the race of desert-running cannibals that locals call the Runners...
The hound had stopped in his trotting. He stood braced on forelegs like tree trunks, high shoulders hunched against the wind, coarse fur ruffling. His head, which seemed too heavy for even that powerful neck to support without weariness, swung slowly back and forth. The dark muzzle snarled.
The pack gathered behind him. They were excited, making noises in their throats. Their eyes glowed, too bright, too knowing—the harbingers of death.
There, said Gerd.
Stark saw them, strung along a rib of sand in the grainy light. A second before nothing had stood there. Now, in the flicker of an eyelid, there were eleven...no, fourteen bent, elongated shapes, barely recognizable as human. Skin like old leather, thick and tough, covered their staring bones, impervious to wind and cold. Long hair and scanty scraps of hide flapped wildly. A family group, Stark thought—males, females, young. One of the females clutched something between pendulous breasts. Other adults carried stones or thighbones.
"Runners," Ashton said and pulled out his sword. "They're like piranha fish. Once they get their teeth in—"
The old male screamed, one high wild cry. The ragged figures stooped forward, lifted on their long legs and rushed out across the shadowed sand.
They moved with incredible speed. Their bodies were drawn and thinned for running, thrusting heads carried level with the ground and never losing sight of the prey. The upper torso was all ribcage, deep and narrow, with negligible shoulders, the arms carried like flightless wings outstretched for balance. The incredible legs lifted, stretched, spurned, lifted, with a grotesque perfection of motion that caught the throat with its loveliness even as it terrified with its ferocity.
Gerd said, N'Chaka. Kill?
Kill!
The hounds sent fear.
That was how they killed. Not with fang or claw. With fear. Cold cruel deadly mind-bolts of it that struck like arrows to the brain, drained the gut, chilled the blood-warm heart until it ceased beating...
Pathfinder #15 is off to press, and you know what that means! Time to start working on Pathfinder #16! Pictured here is the cover by Steve Prescott for "Endless Night," the fourth installment of the Second Darkness Adventure Path. In the coming month, we'll be revealing more about this volume's contents (driders and demons and mothmen, oh my!), but for now, feast your eyes on a typical day for surface folk in a drow city.
While pulp science-fiction magazines had entered a sort of digest-sized hibernation by the early 1960s, the paperback book phenomenon was hitting with full force, exposing readers to a new generation of writers while bringing many of the old pulp classics of the past into book form for the very first time. The celebrated Ace Doubles of the era presented many of the books we've already published in our Planet Stories classic fantasy line, including Leigh Brackett's The Secret of Sinharat and People of the Talisman, both of which first appeared in the original Planet Stories magazine of the 1940s. Ace also republished many full book-length tales, including this month's Planet Stories release, Otis Adelbert Kline's The Swordsman of Mars.
Kline's classic tale of swashbuckling and savage monsters in the deserts, swamps, and jungles of Mars first appeared in 1933 as a 6-chapter weekly serial in Argosy Magazine, the very pulp that had birthed the so-called "sword and planet" genre with the publication of Edgar Rice Burroughs's Under the Moons of Mars 21 years prior. Contemporary fans of Burrough's John Carter of Mars and Carson of Venus tales often ranked Kline's planetary adventures as equal or near-to-equal those penned by the master himself, but in the 75 years since the original publication of The Swordsman of Mars, Kline's reputation as an author has not fared quite as well as that of Edgar Rice Burroughs.
The tale's paperback publication came in 1960 from Ace, appearing alongside such science-fiction classics as Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne, The Isle of Doctor Moreau by H. G. Wells, and The Weapon Shops of Isher by A. E. Van Vogt. The boldly colored cover depicts a long-haired John Carter clone and his damsel battling some Martians under the banner "He wore another man's body on the Red Planet". Tucked away at the bottom of the frame, near the left-hand corner, is the tiny legend "Complete & Unabridged."
As with many early paperbacks, this latter claim is more complicated than it appears. The 1960 Ace edition is an "unabridged" reprint of the 1960 hardcover edition of The Swordsman of Mars from a publisher called Avalon, who reprinted all of Kline's sword and planet fiction starting in that year. Rather than a celebration of Kline's important serial work, the '60s Avalon editions are badly truncated rewrites. Entire chapters are missing, key character and location descriptions are completely absent, and the final product cuts a slash across the chest of Kline's literary reputation that would be totally invisible to readers unable to assemble the original Argosy serial and compare the two texts.
Happily, we at Planet Stories did just that when preparing our manuscript for print, and the differences between the original and the "Complete & Unabridged" versions are staggering. Yes, the serial is much longer, which is to be expected. But the changes made to The Swordsman of Mars rob the story of a great deal of description, characterization, pacing, and background that does no service to the original tale or the literary legacy of Otis Adelbert Kline.
Take a look at the first chapter of The Swordsman of Mars, first in its Ace paperback/Avalon edition, and then in the complete serial publication used as the basis for our Planet Stories edition.
Here's the Ace version:
PROLOGUE
Harry Thorne opened his eyes and gazed about him with a startled expression. This was not the tawdry hotel bedroom in which he had gone to sleep; it was a small room with bare, concrete walls, a door of hardwood planking studded with bolts, and a barred window. The only articles of furniture were the cot on which he was lying, a chair, and a small table.
So the sleeping pills didn't finish me off, he thought. Now I'm in jail for attempted suicide!
Thorne sat up, then rose unsteadily to his feet and staggered to the window. Supporting himself by gripping the thick iron bars, he peered out. It was broad daylight and the sun was high in the heavens. Below him stretched a deep valley, through which a narrow stream meandered. And as far as he could see in all directions there were mountains, though the highest peaks were all below the level of his own eyes.
He turned from the window at the sound of a key grating in a lock. Then the heavy door swung inward, and a large man entered the cell, bearing a tray of food and a steaming pot of coffee. Behind the man was a still larger figure, whose very presence radiated authority. His forehead was high and bulged outward over shaggy eyebrows that met above his aquiline nose. He wore a pointed, closely cropped Vandyke, black with a slight sprinkling of gray, and was dressed in faultlessly tailored evening clothes.
Thorne got to his feet as his singular visitor closed the door behind him. Then, in a booming bass, the man said, "At last, Mr. Thorne, I have caught up with you. I am Dr. Morgan." He smiled. "And I might add, not a moment too soon. You gave us quite a time—Boyd and I managed to get you out of that hotel room and down to the street, passing you off as a drunk. Don't you remember a knocking at the door? You weren't quite out when we came in."
Thorne thought for a moment, then nodded. It seemed that there had been a pounding somewhere. "How did you get in? I thought I locked the door."
"You did—but I had skeleton keys with me, just in case. We took you to my apartment, treated you, and brought you out here." Morgan nodded to Boyd, who left the room, then waved his hand invitingly toward the tray. "I ordered breakfast served in your room. I especially urge you to try the coffee. It will counteract the effect of the sedatives I was compelled to use in order to save your life to bring you here."
"You've gone to a lot of trouble to save something I don't want," Thorne said. "May I ask why you are interfering in my affairs?"
"I need you," Morgan replied simply. "And I can offer you adventure such as only one other man of Earth has known—possibly glory, possibly death. But if death, not the mean sort you were seeking."
Harry Thorne frowned. "You referred to a man of Earth as if there were men not of Earth. Are you suggesting a trip to Mars?"
Dr. Morgan laughed. "Splendid, Mr. Thorne. But suppose you tackle breakfast. It will put you in a better frame of mind for what I am going to tell you. I shall not lock the door as I leave. When you have finished, join me in the drawing room—at the end of the corridor to your right." He paused in the doorway. "You mentioned a trip to Mars, Mr. Thorne. Forgive me if I keep you in suspense for a time, but—although it is not exactly what you think those words mean—that is what I am going to propose."
So that's it. Quick, to the point. Our hero is Harry Thorne. We don't know what he looks like, how he came to be in this room, why he wanted to commit suicide, or really anything about him other than his name. We've met the esteemed Doctor Morgan (the scientist who ties together all of Kline's Mars and Venus serials), but we don't understand why he would be interested in poor, old suicidal Harry Thorne. This introduction is a serviceable stepping stone to the adventures to come, but it does little to ground the reader's interest in the protagonist or foreshadow future events.
Here's the first section of the original serial, as it will appear in this month's Planet Stories release:
CHAPTER 1
A VERY STRANGE VISITOR
"Is Mr. McGinnis in?"
The girl who presided at the information desk and switchboard of the McGinnis Physical Culture Institute suspended her gum chewing long enough to reply: "I'll see. What's the name?"
"Thorne. Harry Thorne."
As she connected the office phone of her employer, the girl surveyed the young man before her with a look of approval. He was tall and slender, with wavy hair of a chestnut brown shade, and there was a pantherish suppleness about his movements which hinted of powerful muscles, perfectly controlled. His faultless attire and aristocratic air told her that he was likely to prove a wealthy prospect for the services which Mr. McGinnis had to offer, so she rang three times, a signal which her employer would understand.
"Mr. Harry Thorne to see you, sir."
She nodded and smiled at the young man. "You may go in, Mr. Thorne. The first office at your right."
"Thank you." Thorne followed her directions, and was welcomed at the door of the office by the beaming proprietor of the institution, a middle-aged gentleman with bulging chest and biceps, a broken nose, and cauliflower ears.
"Come right in, Mr. Thorne. Take a chair. A wonderful frame you have to put muscle on. Now with our system of training we guarantee to add an inch to the circumference of your biceps in less than-⎯"
"One moment, Mr. McGinnis. I came here to be built up, not physically, but financially. In short, I am after that job you advertised in this morning's paper."
McGinnis settled back, a look of disappointment on his face.
"Oh, so you want a job as my assistant fencing master. Can you handle a foil?"
"Fencing has been a hobby of mine."
"A hobby, eh? You'll have to make it a profession if you work here. But come. I'll try you out."
McGinnis led him down the hallway, and through a large room where a group of perspiring financiers dressed in shorts and jerseys were going through various contortions under the direction of a husky looking young man wearing a striped sweater. A conspicuous majority of these striving athletes looked as if their chests had slipped down beneath their belts, and the calves and biceps were undeveloped.
They passed through another room, where a number of corpulent gentlemen were being mauled, poked, pinched, prodded and steam-cooked, and thence into a small empty gymnasium.
McGinnis removed his coat and invited Thorne to do likewise. Then he handled him plastron, mask, glove and foil, and both men armed themselves.
"Now, my lad," said McGinnis, when Thorne was ready, "we'll see what we'll see. On guard!"
They saluted and engaged. Before he had got fairly warmed up, McGinnis, much to his surprise, was hit. "Accidents will happen," he said. "We'll try again."
They did, and this time McGinnis was disarmed. The sudden realization of this made him quite red in the face—he, a fencing master, disarmed by this amateur.
"That was a coincidence," he said, as Thorne politely handed him his foil. "We'll try it once more."
Much to his astonishment and chagrin, the master was hit in the fifth disengage. He threw down his foil and tore off his mask. "Enough's enough." He growled.
"Do I get the job?" asked Thorne.
"Not in a thousand years, my boy. Do you think I'd be fool enough to hire an assistant who can beat me? Don't slam the door as you go out."
Out on the street once more, Thorne fished his last fifty cent piece from his pocket and bought an early edition of an afternoon paper. Pocketing his change, he retired to a doorway to scan the "Help Wanted" column.
Evening found him still tramping, after having followed five more fruitless leads. He fingered the change in his pocket reflectively. Not enough for a decent meal, but if husbanded carefully it would keep body and soul together for the next two or three days. He expended five cents on coffee and doughnuts, his first meal of the day. Then he returned to the cheap hotel where he had taken lodging and where his room rent, which had been paid in advance, would expire on the morrow.
As the clerk handed him his key, he said: "A gentleman called to see you, Mr. Thorne. Said he'd be back later."
"A gentleman to see me! That's strange. Did he leave any message?"
"Only that he'd be back later."
"Thanks."
Thorne climbed the creaky stairs with their covering of dusty, moth-eaten carpet, and entered his room. Shortly thereafter, in dressing gown and slippers and with his pipe going, he sat down in his creaky rocker, vintage of 1880, to think out the situation in which he found himself. He had already pawned his watch and ring, and the money was all but gone. The dressing gown would be next, he decided. Then his reverie was interrupted by a knock at the door.
"Come in," he said, wearily.
He looked up curiously as the door opened, then suppressed a gasp of amazement at sight of the striking individual who entered. His visitor, almost a giant in stature, was obviously a tremendously powerful man. But the impression of great physical strength which the stranger's physique induced was overshadowed by the promise of inconceivably greater mental force which shone from his face. His forehead was high and bulged outward over shaggy eyebrows that met above his aquiline nose. His piercing black eyes seemed to look through Thorne's own, and into his very brain. He wore a pointed, closely-cropped Vandyke, black with a slight sprinkling of gray hairs, and was dressed in faultlessly tailored evening clothes.
Thorne got to his feet as his singular visitor closed the door behind him. Then, in a booming bass voice, the big man said: "At last, Mr. Thorne, I have caught up with you. I am Dr. Morgan."
Surprised, Thorne took the proffered hand and muttered an acknowledgement. "Take the chair, doctor," he invited. "I'll sit here on the bed." As his visitor complied, he continued: "You say you have caught up with me. Am I to understand from this that you have been following me?"
"Halfway across the world and back again," was the reply. "I first saw your photograph in a local paper, accompanying an article which told of your hunting expedition in British East Africa. I followed you there, only to learn that you had sailed there days before my arrival."
"You saw my picture and followed me there? Why?"
"I'll come to that presently. When I reached New York, I called your father's home in Long Island. I was advised that you had left, and that no one knew of your whereabouts. After that, it was not easy to trace you. I learned that you had sailed for home sooner than you planned, because of a wire from your father. I also discovered that on your return, you and your father had quarreled, and that as a result you were disowned and disinherited."
"You seem to have taken a remarkably keen interest in my affairs," said Thorne, amazed at the intimate details of his private business with which this strange individual was familiar.
"Exactly. And I presume you have seen the evening paper."
"Only the 'Help Wanted' columns."
"In that case," said the doctor, "you missed some news which will be of interest to you." He took a clipping from his pocket and passed it to Thorne.
With a shock that turned him suddenly pale beneath his coat of tan, he read:
FIANCÉE OF HARRY THORNE
ELOPES WITH OTHER MAN
Sylvia Thompson, daughter of Dr. and Mrs. Horatio Thompson, of Newport, whose engagement to Harry Thorne, scion of the wealthy Long Island family, was recently announced, has eloped with Herbert Lloyd Vandevetter.
There were details, but Thorne did not read these. Instead, he looked at the pictures of his lovely fiancée, his best friend, and himself, conspicuously displayed beside the article. Then the page blurred and he turned away. A great sorrow gripped his heart. Sylvia Thompson was the one person in whom he had not lost faith. Before leaving for Chicago he had confided in her, had told her that he was penniless, and must seek out a new means of livelihood before they could be married. She had promised to wait. And now—this!
"She was false—a cheat, a fraud!" he said, bitterly. "I'll never believe any woman again. I'll never believe anybody."
"Steady boy," admonished the doctor. "You're taking a lot of territory."
"I mean it," said Thorne. "I—I don't care to live any longer."
"Suppose you were offered a new interest in life. Excitement and adventures beyond your wildest dreams. A chance to view new scenes that no earthly being save one has ever glimpsed. To meet new and strange peoples."
"All that is old stuff to me," replied Thorne. "I've traveled until I'm sick of it. I've hunted big game in Asia, Africa and the Americas. I've been in every important country on the globe. The only adventure I have not tried is death, and just now it is the one adventure that intrigues me."
He got up suddenly, and stepping to where his suitcase lay open on the grip-rack, drew therefrom a .38 caliber pistol. "I don't know why you've come here, doctor," he said, "and I don't much care. But I'll appreciate the favor if you will notify my fond relatives of my demise. I don't like being messy, and I haven't the slightest desire to be dramatic, so I'll go into the bathroom for the last act."
"One moment, before you go," said the doctor. "Do you realize that if you do this deed while I am present you will implicate me as a murderer?"
"Right. I hadn't thought of that. Sorry. I'll say good-by then, and give you time to get away."
The doctor rose. "That's considerate of you my boy, and I'll be glad to notify your relatives for you. Good-by." He held out his hand.
Thorne listlessly grasped the extended hand. As he did so, he felt a sharp pricking sensation in his palm, followed by a numbness which shot up his arm and traveled rapidly through the rest of his body. The gun, which he had been holding in his left hand, clattered to the floor. A moment later things went black before his eyes. His knees buckled under him, and the doctor, catching him beneath the arms, eased him back upon the bed. Then consciousness left him.
The original Kline text reveals his hero to be a weary world traveler, an adventurer of impeccable swordsmanship and an aristocratic background (all of which will serve him well on the Red Planet). We have a fitting physical description for the ideal sword and planet hero, and we have a tragic love story that explains Harry Thorne's self-destructive impulse and the motivation that will eventually send him to Mars.
Otis Adelbert Kline died 14 years prior to the publication of Avalon's The Swordsman of Mars hit the shelves. Whoever wrote the short version, it wasn't the original author, and the merciless cuts did little to help Kline's literary reputation. No less an authority than The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction calls Kline's work "pulp fiction at its worst." But these analyses, indeed most modern perception of Kline's fantasy output, is based not on the original pulp printing, but on posthumous editorial hack-jobs perpetrated long after the author himself had died.
Now, for the first time in 75 years, Planet Stories presents Otis Adelbert Kline in his own words. Order The Swordsman of Mars today and take the fantastic journey to the Red Planet the way the author originally intended it.
You'll find it makes all the difference in the world.
A new addition to the Pathfinder Modules is coming down the pike, and with it of course comes new art, a cover in fact. It is, once again, a pleasure to bring you, right off of Drew's desk, one hot cover (it's in a desert, ya know) for The Pact Stone Pyramid.
Enjoy!
Now that I've shaken the plague of pneumonia from my fragile lungs, I've set about getting the Pathfinder Society back on track and that begins with unveiling the soon-to-be-released September scenarios. Without further ado:
Pathfinder Society Scenario #5: Mists of Mwangi
Pathfinder Lugizar Trantos recently returned from the Mwangi Expanse with haunted eyes and a pack full of strange idols. Absalom's famed Blakros Museum purchased his pieces and Lugizar vanished. The strange monkey idols he pulled from the misty jungles of Mwangi carry with them a fell curse, and now their power has laid claim to the museum. Can the Pathfinder Society uncover the source of the curse in time, or will the Blackros Museum be forever lost to the mists of Mwangi?
Written by Nicolas Logue
Pathfinder Scenario #6: Black Waters
The Pathfinder Society seeks the ancient ruby ring of the salamander and it falls to a team of Pathfinders to find it. Last seen in the Tri-Towers Yard, a once elite academy for the youth of Absalom, the ruby ring is now lost in the Drownyard, all that remains of Tri-Towers after it was destroyed a decade ago in the great quake. The Pathfinders must risk the strange black ichors and salty brine to find their prize—will they risk their very souls as well?
In the Darklands of Golarion, there are three regions. The uppermost one is known as Nar-Voth; this is the "wilderness" of the Darklands. The races who live here are relatively isolated, tribal, or small. The duergar are an exception, of course, but that's only because they have a bunch of abandoned pre-made dwarf cities to squat in. Below Nar-Voth lies the largest realm—Sekamina. This one's the classic underground warren of tunnels that span continents that long-time gamers will find the most familiar. The drow are the primary race here, but there are others like the skum, the serpentfolk, ghouls, and morlocks.
Then there's the third realm. The deepest realm. This is where we transition from the classic underground RPG realm back into the pulps, for the most part. In this realm, known as Orv, there are many immense caverns known as Vaults. Golarion doesn't have a Hollow World or an Edgar Rice Burroughs style Pellucidar per se, but these vaults are big enough to stand in for those regions. Underground oceans, caverns with jungles and artificial suns, entire nations of warmongering humanoids, and regions containing mountain ranges and vast deserts but deep under the earth dominate Orv, and the denizens of the upper Darklands think of the vaults with the same sense of fear and wonder that surface folk do for them. Orv is sort of a Darkland for the Darklands.
Into the Darklands covers the races and major locations for all three of these realms, but of the three, it was Orv that I was the most excited to see come alive. The enormous lost worlds of deep underground are a classic trope of the genre, but not one that's been done all that much in the game. Certainly not much in Pathfinder until now; we've had our share of big dungeons and cave systems already, but now? Now it's time for immense underground deserts ruled by undead drow, dinosaur-infested jungles where cavemen and troglodytes squabble over the best (and safest) places to live, and oh yeah... areas ruled by classic monsters like intellect devourers and giant worms!
As the title and art may suggest, our iconic barbarian just loves tusslin' with great winged wyrms! This lovely bit of art is just one component of the cover to Pathfinder #15, "The Armageddon Echo," unfettered by logo or iconic image. Unfettered, I say! I hope you enjoy!
For the last several months of Pathfinder's Second Darkness Adventure Path we've been neck-deep in drow, with one terrible question looming over our heads all the while: With such a history of fantastic dark elven cities, where do the drow of Golarion actually live? The answer started as a sketch on a single piece of graph paper and grew into a tape and grid work monstrosity that would dominate my dining room table for several weeks. From this ever-expanding madness eventually developed a vast underground metropolis I eventually dubbed Zirnakaynin, the Last Home of the Elves.
While the city of the drow won't completely take shape until Pathfinder #16, players at last Gen Con's Ascension of the Drow Pathfinder Society event got a first look at the massive, tri-cavern subterranean domain. For everyone who missed out on Ascension, though, here's a sneak peek of the heart of the drow race, their stockade and sanctuary: Zirnakaynin.
None, not even the drow, can say how long their ancestors wandered the darkness, but for more than 8,000 years settlements have stood among the severe cliffs of Cocyrdavarin, the great cavern that now holds Zirnakaynin. The first walls of the city rose upon the cavern's highest scarp, and like a glacier slowly crashed down upon the lower slopes. Over time, each level took on a distinct name and characteristics.
Atop the crowning plateau stand the ancient bladed walls of the Last City, the densely packed heart of Zirnakaynin, where the drow first clustered in fear of the dark. Today, it is home to the city's wealthiest and most powerful non-nobles, cruel artisans and performers, and purveyors of all manner of decadences. At the plateau's westernmost edge, amid gardens of dark stone, stands the topless tower of Ileccinoc, the seat of the city's ruling council, the many-spired column that looms over all Zirnakaynin.
Beneath the heights of the Last City sprawls Arsyrvhar, the Pale March, home to most of they city's drow population, many of its everyday shops and residences, and the markets of Ovessia. Mingling among the common drow, merchants from Zirnakaynin's slave cities and strange locales throughout the Darklands travel here to bargain and curry the favor of drow nobles. Those traders whose wares are considered unworthy for elven consumption are banished from the bustling district to the slum-bazaar of Drashes in Ghenavoc.
The lowest span of Cocyrdavarin, the Pit of Ghenavoc hosts the most worthless of drow society: the low-born, the deformed, the city's few freed slaves, and foreign residents. Among workhouses, slave pens, drug dens, and warehouses, the least of Zirnakaynin's society scrape out pitiful lives.
It falls to me once again to reveal a tantalizing taste of some of the terrific tableaux contained within the pages of Pathfinder. Today I bring to you two pieces from Into the Darklands. The first is a bunch of drow and slaves leading freshly captured heroes into a drow city. Lucky them. The second is, well... it's an underground lost-world-type cavern where giant monsters fight dinosaurs. I think that speaks for itself. Have I mentioned before how much I love my job?
I've always been a fan of mythology, dating back to my pre-teen years reading about the Greek and Norse gods and not coincidentally right around the time when I started playing D&D. Working as a designer at Wizards I eventually became known as "the gods guy," writing or developing most of the deity write-ups for the World of Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms. In the last months of Dragon magazine's time at Paizo I wrote a series of Core Beliefs articles for Greyhawk, and when James and Wes wanted to keep the series going with the gods of Golarion they asked if I'd mind continuing it. Of course, I jumped at the chance—how often do you get a chance to shape the mythology of a new published world? Work on those articles naturally led to me filling out the gods section of the Pathfinder Chronicles Campaign Setting, and that led to writing Gods and Magic.
Tackling this sort of project can be daunting. James, Mike, Wes, and Erik all had their ideas about the setting and its history, and all I had were a few paragraphs on each deity, which I had to expand into two-page write-ups that didn't go against their years of home campaigns and office discussions about the world. Fortunately, we had a format that worked—the long deity write-ups in Pathfinder—and the first step was to reduce that format from its 6,000–8,000 word incarnation to a more manageable 1,600–word two-page setup. Stripped down to a leaner form, I knew exactly what topics I had to cover; the challenge was getting into the right mindset for writing about each of the 20 deities, which is where real-world inspiration comes in.
Thousands of years of human history have created hundreds of strange beliefs suitable for adapting into a game. Sacred prostitutes? Check. Mortals making pacts with fiends? Check. Beast-headed protector deities? Check. And so on. Using the references on my bookshelf, bits from the History Channel, and online sources such as Wikipedia, I was able to find idea seeds that I could "game up" for an interesting deity description. The ultimate goal was twofold: one, to make the gods cool enough that GMs think, "I need to get these guys into my game as soon as possible," and two, to make them cool enough that players think, "I want to play a priest of this god as soon as possible.' Depending on the deity, this may require making them sexy (like Calistria), creepy (like Zon-Kuthon), badass (like Iomedae), or some other "hook."
Most of the text in the deity write-ups is "fluff" rather than "crunch"—descriptive material with no game mechanics, useful for getting the feel of a religion but usually not enough to differentiate them when the dice hit the table. Fortunately, this book has a lot of room for crunch; each deity gets a faith-specific spell and magic item, and these help nail down aspects of the god and his or her worshipers as well. For example, there's an Asmodean magic item that lets a worshiper use his own blood to augment certain spells. Calistria's priests can seduce an enemy, then cast a spell to avenge themselves against that enemy. Rovagug's cult has an item that causes rage if the wearer is bound or shackled. Torag's priests have a spell that turns failures into successes. Urgathoa's followers can compel enemies to eat their own fallen comrades. Little things like this help establish the reality in a fantasy world where these gods and goddesses are real.
Gods and Magic was a fun book to write. The work situation was a bit more hectic than my normal experience (near my deadline I had my sister's wedding and moved to Washington to start full-time at Paizo) but I'm familiar enough with the process of writing this sort of material that I could let my instincts steer me true. It doesn't hurt that the rest of the Paizo team is very supportive and gives great feedback—a smart designer quickly learns to rely on these open channels of communication to make their work stronger, and that is precisely what I did. I think this book will become an integral part of your Golarion collection, and I hope you enjoy it.
There are certainly a lot of monsters in the Darklands, but any seasoned traveler of the nighted tunnels deep below can tell you that there are more ways to die down there than on the teeth or claws of a beast, or upon the poisoned blade of a dark elf. There's poisonous fungi, devastating floods of water and magma, poisonous gas, tremors, bad air, and even radioactive minerals. Pictured here are one of those deadly crystals—blightburn.
Blightburn is highly radioactive and emanates a nonmagical aura that provides a dim illumination equal to a candle. This emanation can be blocked by stone of at least 1-foot thickness or lead sheathing, as well as by force effects. Contact with blightburn causes immediate pain, blistering of skin, and 2d6 points of fire damage per round. In addition, the radiation poisons anyone within 60 feet with blightburn, a deadly disease (Fort DC 22, Incubation instantaneous, 1d6 Con/1d6 Cha); victims of this sickness grow increasingly frail as sores erupt on their bodies, hair falls out, and bones grow shockingly brittle.
Teleportation spells function poorly in areas where blightburn is present—in order to successfully cast such a spell in a cavern that has blightburn crystals in its walls or to teleport to such a location, a spellcaster must succeed on a DC 30 caster level check.
See, back in April I did one of these blog posts about The Ginger Star, the first of Leigh Brackett's three Skaith books. In it, I talked all about how she's my favorite Planet Stories author so far, and how The Ginger Star is hands-down the most fun-to-read book in our line to date. I was fair, but I was effusive, as the world she painted was a beautiful blend of fantasy and sci-fi (as is the case with so much far-future apocalyptic fiction), a work of a sword-and-planet genius that seems more akin to Tolkien or Star Wars than Edgar Rice Burroughs. It lit me up, and I shouted it from the rooftops. And now I'm in a bind.
In this sequel to The Ginger Star, Brackett has more of everything I loved from the first book. More strange aliens. More bizarre and yet immediately familiar cultures. More battle scenes, more fights with telepathic hound-beasts, more starships and political theory and morally ambiguous bad guys getting what's coming to them. New nations and landscapes (and an additional map of the world as well, courtesy of Rob Lazzaretti). Without the need to explain who Eric John Stark is and why he's there, Brackett is free to keep pushing the envelope and packing every scene with more wonder. One of the things I love most about Brackett is actually one of the things that originally attracted me to China Miéville (who was born just six years before her death... Ms. Brackett was light years ahead of her time). Both of them have so many ideas that they can afford to just toss them away with a line or two. The beautiful, perfect Yur men, for instance, whose women are like shrieking, pale grubs—Leigh may only have given them a paragraph, but the image has stuck with me ever since.
So what can I say? I spoke too soon. My only hope at this point is that, when it comes time to release The Reavers of Skaith, I'll be referring back to this post in much the same fashion. Call me crazy, but something tells me Brackett isn't quite finished yet.
As the Second DarknessAdventure Path progresses, the PCs will become more and more familiar with the countless ways the drow have to inflict pain, suffering, and ruin. In Pathfinder #15, alchemy is added to the dark elves' arsenal, including alchemical ammunition for their ubiquitous hand crossbows.
Acid Bolts: These metal bolts have a glass section in the middle, filled with acid. On a successful hit, they deal normal damage and 1d4 points of additional acid damage. Acid bolts do not cause any splash damage. Cost: 40 gp per bolt.
Drow Poison Bolts: These iron bolts have small resin tips that break when the bolts strike their targets. Inside is a dose of drow poison. Anyone struck by a drow poison bolt must make a DC 13 Fortitude save or fall unconscious for 1 minute. After 1 minute, the subject must succeed on another DC 13 Fortitude save or remain unconscious for 2d4 hours. Those using drow poison bolts do not risk poisoning themselves, but the strange tip affects the bolts' accuracy. Double the range penalties when using a drow poison bolt. Cost: 100 gp per bolt.
Yesterday, we showed you a small sample of images from our recent
excursion to the lovely England. Now that I have returned, all
jet-lagged and full of smiles, I thought I'd share some more images
plucked from the depths of my digital camera.
Before.
After.
Most excellent GM, Rob Silk, prepares to delight his table of players in
the Pathfinder Society Organized Play room at the University of Reading.
GM Simon Butler (back to camera) prepares to run first-time Pathfinder
Society members through a scenario. Standing (in black) is Dragnmoon
from the messageboards, and sitting to his right (in purple) is RPG
Superstar Top 4 finalist and recent co-author (among many) of the
Pathfinder Chronicles Campaign Setting, Rob McCreary.
Paul, Peter, and Claire proudly display their loyalties to the Andoran
and Osirion Factions. Peter and Claire also helped the Paizo-led Quiz
Team, Coalition of the Willing, to a resounding victory on Thursday night.
Playin' Games, located just meters from the entrance to the British
Museum, was the first London store we wandered into after the convention
wrapped.
Of course, they had a nice selection of Paizo products displayed
prominently in their RPG section.
Nice warning.
Next, we visited a fantastic sci-fi book and games store called
Forbidden Planet.
Where, inside, we found a healthy selection of our books. (You can't see
them, but they had almost all of our modules just behind the books I
pulled out for this picture.)
The "New RPG" section where you can see our books prominently displayed
in very good company.
We tried to visit the Orcs Nest, but they were closed.
Despite being closed, they were displaying our recent releases
prominently in their front window. If you look very closely at the
previous store-front picture, you can also see shelves just inside the
window with a solid three rows on Pathfinders displayed on it.
From Seattle to Indianapolis to the British Isles, it's been a busy month for the Paizo staff! A few weeks back we posted some snapshots from Gen Con Indy, but over this past weekend the crew has been having even more adventures with Erik Mona, Josh Frost, Jason Bulmahn, and Nick Logue off to Gen Con UK, while Jacob Burgess, Sarah Robinson, and myself hit up the Penny Arcade Expo here in Seattle. Check out a few of the highlights below.
Jason chills by the Paizo booth at Gen Con UK.
Introducing the new British language editions of all your favorite Paizo products!
Artists Eva Widerman, Wayne Reynolds, and Lydia Schuchmann represent Paizo's elite European artists' collective!
England's not big enough for these two madmen. Authors Rich Pett and Nick Logue finally bring their years-long rivalry to an end.
The cake might be a lie, but back home at PAX, Jake Burgess's feelings for Portal's companion cube are all too real.
Sarah and Wes really got into some D&D 4E. Get it! Ha!
Although the Darklands are a dangerous place, one rife with strange monsters and eerie hazards, they're not completely uncivilized. Of course—in a place where a nation of undead passes as one form of civilization and an empire of forgotten aquatic fish-man slaves passes as another, civilization might not be what visitors from the surface expect.
Into the Darklands covers many different underground-dwelling races, providing details on many different races. A fair amount of these should be familiar—races like the drow, derro, duergar, aboleths, and svirfneblin exist in the Darklands. Other races exist there too, like vegepygmies, intellect devourers, skum, and ghouls. But this being a brand new world in the grand scheme of the game, you can bet we'll be introducing some new races as well. Deformed humanoid throwbacks to a savage time, for one (morlocks!), and a slumbering empire of ancient arcanists and cultists for another (serpentfolk!). There's even a few races who are completely brand new, such as the mysterious sanity-blasting seugathi. That's one of them pictured here, wielding a dagger in one tentacle, a wand of fireballs in the other, and a mouthful of poisonous teeth!
It's been a while since we've talked about a Pathfinder Module on this blog, for the simple reason that they were the unfortunate sacrifice to the Deadline Demons that had to be made in order to get everything else on schedule. The good news is that the modules themselves are back on schedule as well now, and with the upcoming release of Hungry Are the Dead you can expect to see a new Pathfinder Module once every other month.
To celebrate, I figured I'd show off art not from one, but from two upcoming modules. See if you can correctly guess which of these illustrations is from the nautical-themed Treasure of Chimera Cove and which is from the grisly undead-themed Hungry Are the Dead!
We've had an awful lot of spider-themed monsters in the pages of Pathfinder over the past year or so. Enough that we've actually heard some complaints about how many of the new monsters are spider-themed. Furthermore, when we revealed that the third Adventure Path was going to revolve around the drow, we heard an even more vocal outcry against spiders. I'm not sure how much of the spider backlash is due to all the spider stuff we've been doing in Pathfinder and how much is fueled by arachnophobia, but in the end we are trying to do less spider stuff.
But it's hard to say no to something like the cutlass spider, one of four new monsters appearing in Pathfinder #15's Bestiary. And even though we have a lot of drow in this month's adventure, the cutlass spider's not actually a drow creation. It's actually a construct that often sees use on pirate ships and other nautical locations, where they serve as guardians, bodyguards, or even assassins. One of the most interesting things about them, though, is that they can add magic weapons to their bodies, and in so doing gain the properties of that magic weapon to their natural attacks. A cutlass spider that snatches a vorpal sword would be a menace indeed. And guess what happens if a cutlass spider absorbs an intelligent weapon in this manner?
In any event, for those of you who are growing tired of spider monsters, I apologize. As it turns out, spiders are just too awesome a source of monster inspiration to resist for long!
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