Krunzle the Quick

by Hugh Matthews

Chapter One: Honest Travelers

It was a good plan, cunningly simple. It just didn't go the way the planner had meant it to.

A caravan from Egorian arrived in the late afternoon at the heavily fortified caravanserai just outside the walls of Elidir. The merchants who had pooled their resources—and defenses—into the cavalcade of fifty mule-drawn wagons and forty pack animals intended to remain at the way station until the following midday so that they could pick over the best offerings of Elidir's purveyors of precious goods. Those exquisitries would be added to the caravan's panniers and coffers that already bulged with fine wares from half a dozen lands around the Inner Sea. Then at noon the next day, the caravan would move on, bound for the luxury markets of Kerse in Druma.

While the hauling and carrying beasts rested and the traders chaffered, safe within the caravanserai's crenellated walls, half of the sixteen-strong complement of horse-archers were granted leave to visit the city's taverns and brothels, while the half who had lost the coin toss stayed behind and remained vigilant.

Three of the liberty contingent went no farther than a raucous and crowded establishment just inside the city gates, where they called for a keg of strong ale. While they were waiting for the drink to be fetched, they bellied up to the board stretched along one wall and filled wooden plates with bread and meats spiced with the fiery local sauces. They looked around for seats and saw no empty tables, only one long trestle that had half its bench-seats unfilled.

A trio of travelers were already seated at the table, by their style of dress identifiable as a small-scale merchant and his assistants. The former good-naturedly waved the guards to take the empty places. A lean, saturnine figure seated at the head of the table, wearing a robe marked with obscure symbols, gave no indication that he was aware of any of them. His blade-like nose was buried in an antique libram bound in red leather and marked with strange devices, and he sipped something green from a tall, slim glass without removing his hooded eyes from the page.

The guards accepted the travelers' invitation. They sat, and names and origins were politely exchanged, then the ale arrived and some time was spent washing away the throat-dust accumulated between Egorian and Elidir. The merchant then leaned forward and raised a finger as if to begin a conversation, but was forestalled by the man in wizard's garb, who put down his book and directed a question to the guards.

"Your caravan leaves when?"

"Midday tomorrow," the senior of the archers answered.

"Will it take on passengers?"

"We usually do. You'll have to ask the head men at the caravanserai in the morning."

The spellslinger nodded and, without thanking the guard, returned to his reading. A moment later, the first course of his meal was brought by the serving girl, and he addressed himself to the food without removing his gaze from the book.

Meanwhile, the leader of the trio of merchants, who said he was a pearlmonger from Merab across the Inner Sea, and now bound for Kerse, asked about road conditions ahead. Because the guards had accompanied similar caravans along this route, they were able to offer expert advice.

The self-described pearl merchant, a small and wiry fellow with a narrow brow and eyes that seldom settled in one position, said, "It is good that honest travelers share their intelligence. The roads are full of highwaymen and ditch-haunters, desperadoes all of them, who will slit a throat for a half-polished button."

The senior man of the archers agreed that it was a sad world, yet not altogether so. "Were it not for bandits and brigands, I would still be pushing a plow and swallowing horse farts in the hill country below the Menadors, instead of seeing other lands and drinking good ale in amiable company."

Hearing such an ably argued view, the pearlmonger declared himself forced to agree. He proposed a toast, and when the guards hoisted their wooden mugs, he insisted that they let him top up their ale with good arrack from the big black bottle he had been sharing with his assistants.

The caravan guards gladly accepted, and offered a toast of their own. It was soon decided that more of the strong-flavored arrack was needed, and the narrow-browed fellow raised an imperious finger to summon the serving maid. Events then settled into a repetitive pattern: more healths were drunk, songs were sung, anecdotes and spicy stories told, and lasting friendships boozily sworn. Somewhere early on in this process, the reader irritably snapped his book shut and left the tavern.

He also left, barely touched, a spiced apple dipped in plum sauce. The alleged pearlmonger scooped the desert toward him and devoured it with two quick bites. Soon after, he and his companions declared themselves spent. They retired to their rooms, while the archers continued to fill and empty their cups from the bottles of arrack the Merabite had kindly left behind.

As the first gray light of day glimmered over the mountains that separated Isger from Druma, the three guards rose, albeit unsteadily, to return to the caravanserai. They knew themselves to be well under the spell of strong drink, but that was nothing new. They could spend the morning sleeping off the effects of the carousal, while their employers chaffered with the merchants of Elidir. By the time the caravan set off again, the archers would be able to sit a saddle. And their ability to put a gray-fletched arrow into a hand-sized target at a hundred paces would be unimpaired.

"Never trust a knifeman."

Halfway between the gate and the caravanserai, the first of the guards experienced a sudden shifting of his innards, as if a large and liquid weight had decided to fling itself from one side of him to the other. He stopped abruptly, and his face assumed an unusual aspect that paradoxically combined deep uncertainty with a dread conviction. He then walked with a rapid, spraddle-legged gait to a stand of low bushes beside the road, his fingers fumbling at the ties and points of his breeches.

The other two archers stopped to make rude noises and offer tactless comments at their companion's expense. But after a moment, their smiles collapsed as their own faces assumed the same haunted expression they had been mocking. Now each of them hurried to find his own bush.

Some time later, three pale and groaning figures presented themselves at the caravanserai's gates. Idrix, the captain of the archers, was called. He examined the men and declared them unfit for service.

"A belly flux," he said, and ordered them to report to the caravanserai's hospice, to be collected when the caravan returned on its way out of Druma. Their pay would be docked.

"I will go into the city," he told his second in command, "and see what I can find in the way of replacements. I don’t want to go up into the mountains under strength."

He was not happy about having to choose from what Elidir had to offer. It was common knowledge among fighting men of many nations that the Goblinblood Wars had robbed Isger of every warrior who knew which end of a sword to hold, and those who were left were either untested youths or haunted-eyed old veterans long since lost to drink. As he rode toward the city gate, the captain was thinking that he might be best advised to visit the slave market and see if there were any well set-up foreigners with military experience for sale.

Just outside the gate, he reined in as three men in leather and buckram came out. They paused to adjust their packs and touch the tips of their staffs together, as travelers often did for luck at the beginning of a journey. They were none of them large, but each had a hard and wiry look to him, and Idrix could see, even at a casual glance, at least eight daggers and throwing knives distributed about their persons.

"Gentlemen," he said, "would you be Druma-bound, by any chance?"

The apparent leader of the trio, a low-browed fellow with restless eyes, looked up at him with suspicion. "What business is that of yours?" he said. "If you're thinking we three are easy meat for a highwayman on a tall horse, here's an opportunity to change your opinion."

There was a vertical post set in the ground near the road outside the gate. Hedvend VI's judges sometimes sentenced certain classes of malefactors to be bound there, exposed to the caprices of passersby until they thoroughly repented of their offenses or expired—whichever came first. The post was untenanted this morning, but within moments of the wiry man's words, and after a brief flurry of motions, the wood was suddenly pierced by a half-dozen blades, their hilts aquiver from the impacts.

"Impressive," said the guard captain.

The three travelers were already working their weapons free of the wood and returning them to scabbards and sheaths. "It means so much to us to have won your high regard," said the low-browed one. He tucked away a short but wide-bladed throwing knife and turned to face the high country to the east.

"Wait," said Idrix.

The other man turned an irritated gaze his way. "We have a long, uphill walk ahead of us and the sun is already above those peaks."

"How would you to like to ride instead of walk?"

The knife-thrower's look of suspicion only deepened.

"And be paid for it," the captain added.

"We are busy men. If you have something to say, stop poncing about and say it."

Idrix was not used to being talked to in such a manner, but he swallowed his irritation and told them he was three guards short of a full complement and wished to offer them employment.

The three looked at him with suspicion, then gave each other questioning glances. A brief negotiation followed, during which Idrix was driven far off from his offering price. Detailed terms of service were also haggled over, the leader of the three initially expressing horror at the thought that when the caravan laagered for the night, they would have to stand watch on the perimeter.

"Well," said Idrix, pushing back his helmet and scratching his head, "where would you spend your nights when you're on the road alone?"

"We make a fire," said the smaller man, "then move out into the darkness and dig shallow trenches, where we lie under a layer of bushes and bracken. We watch in turns, and should any night-lurker creeps up to the fire, we silently leap up, our finely balanced knives in hand, and"—he made a whispery sound: whit, whit, whit—"soon he has gained a new and unsought knowledge of life's capacity to play cruel tricks."

Idrix contemplated making a comment, then decided not to. Instead he said, "Night sentry duty is a necessary part of your duties."

The three regarded him without enthusiasm. Then the leader said, "Can we at least stand watch together? We are used to supporting each other."

The guard captain found that a reasonable condition, and after a few more details were worked out, an agreement was struck and he led them back to the caravanserai to sign them onto the rolls. Within the fortified compound, the traders and their drivers were efficiently repacking wagons and saddlebags, preparing to set off at noon. Idrix and his three reluctant recruits wove their way through an organized chaos of stamping hooves, swearing men, tangles of harness, and side-stepping beasts to the spot where the merchants who had commissioned the whole enterprise stood in conversation with some persons from Elidir.

A half-dozen individuals were gathered around the caravan's owners, seeking to purchase the right to join the cavalcade, it being the safest means of crossing the wild lands between Isger and Druma, where goblinoids of various sorts still occasionally ambushed travelers. As the archer captain and the three new guards came up, one of the passage-seekers, a sinewy, grim-featured specimen in an ankle-length robe marked with strange runes, turned his head and noticed the trio.

"You!" he said. "Do you know you spoiled my dinner and gave me indigestion that kept me up half the night? You and those damned archers!"

The low-browed one looked anywhere but at the wizard, saying, "You mistake me, sir, for another..."

"No, I don't —" began the accuser, but then he broke off and his hooded gaze went from the three newcomers to the guard captain, whose brows were now knitting up a skein of suspicion.

"Aha!" the gaunt man said, "I've smoked it! You nobbled the guards so you could take their—"

As he'd been speaking, the pearlmonger's face had been showing growing alarm, and his hand had been moving smoothly and slowly toward the haft of one of the knives strapped to his chest. The man in the figured robe saw the way things were going and moved his own hand in a particular motion that ended with the fingers configured in precise arrangements. He spoke two syllables.

The accused man's hand now attained its goal, but when he sought to draw the throwing knife—and as his companions made similar attempts—they all found that the blades were fixed permanently in their scabbards.

A moment of silence and suspension occurred. Then the low-browed man said, in a whisper all could hear, "Run!"

Coming Next Week: Thieves and wizards in Chapter Two of Hugh Matthews’s "Krunzle the Quick."

Hugh Matthews is a pseudonym of critically acclaimed science-fantasy author Matthew Hughes, who is responsible for more than a dozen novels and is often called the "heir apparent" to the legacy of Jack Vance, particularly for his Archonate series. His novel Template was republished by Planet Stories, and his first Pathfinder Tales novel, Song of the Serpent, also features intrepid thief and confidence man Krunzle the Quick.

Illustration by Kate Maximovich

RPG Superstar™: Round 4 Submissions!

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

The Top 8 for RPG Superstar have completed their Round 4 entries! This round, our contestants have created a Golarion Location, Map and Encounter. Round 4 included a new twist, where each submission is being playtested and each encounter uses monsters from the Pathfinder Battles Heroes & Monsters miniatures. Fan votes will determine who of the Top 8 advances to Round 5, where the Top 4 will be submitting a Pathfinder Module adventure proposal. All finalist submissions, complete with judge and reader commentary, are posted to the paizo.com messageboards.

The submissions and judge reviews are now live! Discuss the entries and vote for your favorites, as well as engage in the playtest. Voting starts on March 6 and ends March 12, and the Top 4 (by votes) will move on to Round 5.

The ultimate winner of RPG Superstar, announced April 3, 2012, will write a Pathfinder Module to be published in early 2013. The 2011 RPG Superstar champion module, Sam Zeitlin’s The Midnight Mirror, releases in April 2012.

Bride of the FAQ Attack!

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

She’s ready to pounce!

If I have the pounce ability and I charge with a lance, do my iterative lance attacks get the extra damage multiplier from charging?

No, for two reasons.

One, because a lance only deals extra damage when you’re riding a charging mount—not when you are charging.

Two, even if you have an unusual combination of rules that allows you to ignore the above limitation, it doesn’t makes sense that those iterative attacks gain the damage bonus. To make that second attack, you have to pull the lance back and stab forward again, and that stab doesn’t have the benefit of the charge’s momentum. (The Core Rulebook doesn’t state that you only get the damage multiplier on the first attack with a lance because there is no rule in the Core Rulebook that allows a PC to charge and take multiple attacks with a weapon, so that combination didn’t need to be addressed.)

If I drink a potion, do I automatically forgo my save against that potion?

No. Nothing in the potion rules says it changes whether or not you get a saving throw against the spell stored in the potion. Even if someone hands you a potion of poison and tells you it’s a potion of cure serious wounds, you still get a save.

Does the dodge bonus from the “offensive defensive” rogue talent (Advanced Player’s Guide, page 131) stack with itself? Does it apply to everyone, or just to the target I’m attacking?

There are two issues relating to this rogue talent.

One, in the first printing it provided a +1 circumstance bonus against the attacked target, which was a very weak ability. The second printing update changed it from a circumstance bonus to a dodge bonus, but accidentally omitted the “against that creature” text, which made it a very strong ability.

Two, it doesn’t specify whether the dodge bonus stacks with itself, and because this creates a strange place in the rules where bonuses don’t stack from the same source but dodge bonuses always stack. While we haven’t reached a final decision on what to do about this talent, we are leaning toward this solution: the dodge bonus only applies against the creature you sneak attacked, and the dodge bonus does not stack with itself. This prevents you from getting a dodge bonus to AC against a strong creature by sneak attacking a weak creature, and prevents you from reaching an absurdly high AC by sneak attacking multiple times in the same round.

Sean K Reynolds
Designer

Gen Con 2012 and Official Call for Volunteers!

Monday, February 27, 2012

Illustration by Kevin Yan

For Gen Con 2012, we plan to make this the biggest and best Gen Con yet! I am scheduling 750 tables of Pathfinder Society over the four days. We are also bringing the GM 101 workshops that debuted at Paizo Con (and were discussed in last Monday’s blog) to Gen Con. They will hopefully be a hit and draw in new players and GMs to Pathfinder Society, as well as make active Pathfinder Society players take the next step and help to GM in their home regions.

We will be hosting Pathfinder RPG Beginner Box Introductions. During nine of the 10 slots at Gen Con, we are setting aside four tables at each slot for these events. These are scheduled with new players in mind. The first 45–60 minutes will be exploring the contents of the Beginner Box, explaining the rules, and reviewing the pregenerated characters. The final 4 hours of each slot will be playing through the four 1-hour adventures that were offered during the Beginner Box Bash.

In addition, we are adding a Pathfinder Kid’s Track to our gaming area. We are focusing on players aged 6–12 and we will be using the Beginner Box for this as well. Each Kid’s Track slot will be 2 hours long and each player will receive a check-off card, very similar to what was used at the Beginner Box Bash. The first hour teaches roleplaying and rules and reviews the pregenerated characters found in the Beginner Box. During the second hour, one of the four 1-hour adventures used during the Beginner Box Bash will be played. We will be restricting tables to four children players and are requiring a parent or guardian be present with each child (or multiple children if they have two or more interested in participating) for the entire 2 hours. The parent or guardian will assist the child when needed. But, we want to make this a good and memorable experience for the kids that attend Gen Con, who often find little they can participate in, especially with others their own age. We will be scheduling eight slots per day for the Kid’s Track. However, we are only scheduling one adventure each day. If a child comes back and plays a different adventure each of the 4 days, he will be able to present his check-off card and receive a special certificate. We may also have other giveaways or special prizes. I will be very picky when choosing volunteer GMs for the Kid’s Track. I prefer to have schoolteachers and other professionals with experience dealing with children, but I will consider GMs who are parents even if they do not deal with children regularly in their profession. If you are volunteering to GM the Kid’s Track, please make sure to include all of your credentials. Also, since these are scheduled as 2-hour blocks, a GM will be required to run two Kid’s Track slots back to back in a 4-hour block to count as one slot of credit toward GM rewards.

Finally, we are adding an invitation-only second round to the Gen Con Special: Race for the Runecarved Key! The first round will be what you have come to know and love as the Pathfinder Special. It will be 75 tables all working together to overcome some nasty problem the Decemvirate wants dealt with. However, the change this year is that we are adding a special, secret scoring system. The top three tables from each tier will advance to the invitation-only second round.

This second round will be one of the deadliest dungeons ever explored by the Pathfinder Society, and only the very best of the organization’s agents even have a chance of surviving. Again, let me emphasize—this will be a true and deadly test of the Pathfinder Society’s best teams. It is almost a guarantee some Pathfinders will die. Make sure to bring your A-game. The first round will be made available to qualifying conventions worldwide after Gen Con 2012 as it is every year. However, the second round is only being offered this once—at Gencon 2012.

At this point I am looking at restricting the GM pool to only 4- and 5-Star GMs. To top it off, the players that advance to the second round will trade in their Chronicle sheets received after the first round as their tickets to this invitation-only event. When they complete the second round, they will receive new Chronicle sheets with a very special boon. We haven’t forgotten about our volunteer GMs for the special either. We didn’t want them to miss out on the opportunity to play in the invitation-only second round. So, we will be entering all Round 1 GMs into a drawing, were we will pull six names. Those six GMs will then receive a seat at a 16th table of the second round.

The observant readers may have caught that I just mentioned 16 tables and are scratching their heads that three tables from each tier and the special GM table don’t add up to 16 tables. Well, you are right. Like last week’s blog that announced a special Tier 12+ event at Paizo Con, we are adding a Tier 12+ to both rounds of this year’s Gen Con special! The special will be written for Subtiers 1–2, 3–4, 5–6, 8–9, 10–11, and 12+, and we'll actually have 19 tables of round 2.

Now, let’s talk about the GMs and volunteers we need to pull all of the above off and make it an awesome Gen Con.

I need a minimum of 125 volunteer GMs for Pathfinder Society games, Beginner Box Introductions, and Kid’s Track events. I’ll continue taking volunteer GMs until the slots are filled, at which point I will create a waiting list in the event a scheduled GM has to cancel his or her Gen Con trip for whatever reason. I also need eight Volunteer Assistants for each slot of the show. These folks will not GM during their volunteer slots, but will instead help me run Pathfinder Society HQ—including marshalling, collecting tickets, distributing GM packs, and entering tracking sheets into the database—and will be our go-to guys and gals for all things Pathfinder Society.

Below you will find the reward structure for volunteering at Gen Con 2012. Keep in mind that you’re volunteering for slots, not a specific event. I will let you know the slots and scenarios you have been assigned as soon as possible. You may designate what tier scenarios you wish to GM but this is not guaranteed to be filled. I will do the best I can to accommodate your requests. My target date to get all GMs their assigned schedules is April 10. This should allow you plenty of time to plan a schedule, before the May 20 event registration, with your friends and family who are also attending Gen Con 2012. Please let me know via email which days you will be at the convention and how many slots you are volunteering for at Gen Con 2012.

Volunteer Tiers and Rewards

Tier 1 GM Volunteers
Tier 1 GM volunteers are my every day GMs. They are invaluable to making the show a success. Tier 1 GMs must select and volunteer for a MINIMUM of 7 slots. Tier 1 GMs may feel free to volunteer for more than 7 slots if they so desire. Any slots over 7 will be used as overfill GMs. Overfill GMs are requested to show up for muster but will be free for the slot if a scenario has all of its assigned GMs present. I only have room for 80 Tier 1 GM volunteers so don't delay in volunteering for this tier. Volunteers will be chosen on a first-come, first-served basis, though I reserve the right to select volunteers who have previously worked for Paizo over new volunteers. Please do not volunteer for Tier 1 if you have any doubts that you won't be able to attend the show. Tier 1 GMs receive:

• A FREE 4-day Gen Con 2012 badge
• A FREE 1/4 of a hotel room in the Hyatt Regency Hotel
• A $10 per slot voucher for Paizo.com credit, useable at the show or anytime after, including with your subscriptions
• A FREE Bestiary Box (pawn set)
• A FREE limited edition Paizo Publishing Gen Con 2012 T-Shirt

Tier 2 GM Volunteers
Tier 2 GMs must volunteer for a MINIMUM of 6 slots. Tier 2 GMs receive:

• A FREE 4-day Gen Con 2012 badge
• A $10 per slot voucher for Paizo.com credit, useable at the show or anytime after, including with your subscriptions
• A FREE Bestiary Box (pawn set)
• A FREE limited edition Paizo Publishing Gen Con 2012 T-Shirt

Tier 3 GM Volunteers
While the rewards for volunteering for this tier are smaller, the majority of my volunteers will come from Tier 3. Tier 3 GMs must volunteer for a MINIMUM of 5 slots. Tier 3 GMs receive:

• A FREE 4-day Gen Con 2012 badge
• A $10 per slot voucher for Paizo.com credit, useable at the show or anytime after, including with your subscriptions
• A FREE limited edition Paizo Publishing Gen Con 2012 T-Shirt

Tier 4 GM Volunteers
This is the minimum volunteer level. Tier 4 GMs must volunteer for a MINIMUM of 3 slots. Tier 4 GMs receive:

• A $10 per slot voucher for Paizo.com credit, useable at the show or anytime after, including with your subscriptions
• A FREE limited edition Paizo Publishing Gen Con 2012 T-Shirt

Volunteering for One or Two Slot
While we will gladly accept anyone who wants to run just one or two slots during the show, there are no rewards for doing so other than our thanks.

When Volunteering...

Please be specific about what days and how many slots you are volunteering for. I will assign folks to slots and scenarios on an as-needed basis. I will update the needs in the thread below as I receive volunteers, so you may look there to remain up to date on where we still need help. You must have a gencon.com account and you must include your gencon.com account number in your email or I won’t be able to get you a badge (obviously this is only for volunteers who are volunteering for 5 or more slots). Finally, include your Paizo.com email account so I can make sure you receive the scenarios in your downloads.

Slot 1: Thursday 8 A.M. to 1 P.M.
Slot 2: Thursday 1 P.M. to 6 P.M.
Slot 3: Thursday 7 P.M. to Midnight
Slot 4: Friday 8 A.M. to 1 P.M.
Slot 5: Friday 1 P.M. to 6 P.M.
Slot 6: Friday 7 P.M. to Midnight (Gen Con Special Round 1)
Slot 7: Saturday 8 A.M. to 1 P.M.
Slot 8: Saturday 1 P.M. to 6 P.M.
Slot 9: Saturday 7 P.M. to Midnight (Gen Con Special Round 2)
Slot 10: Sunday 9 A.M. to 2 P.M.

All Gen Con 2012 volunteers please email me at mike.brock@paizo.com with the subject line Gen Con Volunteer.

Thanks in advance for volunteering, good luck, and have a great spring and summer convention season!

Mike Brock
Pathfinder Society Campaign Coordinator

Pathfinder Battles Preview: Spoiler Alert!

Friday, February 24, 2012

There's just no two ways about it. If you read through this Pathfinder Battles Rise of the Runelords preview, you're putting yourself at risk of some plot spoilers. If you plan to play through the campaign, I highly recommend that you do not look super-closely at the miniatures I'm revealing today, as they could spoil a couple of fun surprises in the Adventure Path.

Our new Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path Anniversary Edition hardcover is set to release this summer around the same time as the Rise of the Runelords miniatures set (still no specifics on release date or price for the miniatures, alas). The hardcover collects the entire classic first Pathfinder Adventure Path in a newly revised edition, with plenty of fun bells and whistles we'll be revealing over the next few months.

So a lot of people who have not yet had a chance to play the campaign will soon get that chance. If you think you'll be one of them, and you want to maintain your sense of surprise as long as possible, I suggest that you stop reading immediately.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

Spoilers Ahead!:

First up this week we have Aldern Foxglove, a local lord encountered by the player characters in the opening encounters of the campaign. Foxglove serves as an ally and patron to the heroes, and stars in some additional expanded encounters in the hardcover, written by James Jacobs, who introduced Aldern the first time way back in Pathfinder Adventure Path #1.

Aldern is one of many NPCs to receive a new illustration in the Anniversary Edition. In many cases, we ordered these new pieces of art specifically because we knew the character needed a miniature. In the original, we only ever saw an image of Aldern's face, so this time we wanted to make sure that we captured his entire body. I think this figure, a rare, also doubles nicely for any male noble, city dandy, or even a well-dressed bard player character.

And here we have the rare The Skinsaw Man, who for whatever reason seems to have gotten a hold of a familiar jacket. I won't say much more here, other than to mention that this figure has a long purple tongue you can't quite make out in the photo, and that the splattered blood effects bring me much personal joy and satisfaction.

A noble figure like Aldern Foxglove could really use a well-dressed woman at his side, and for these purposes we've included the cunning Lucrecia, also a rare figure. Lucrecia makes a great figure for any female noble, and she plays an important role in the middle part of the Rise of the Runelords campaign. Generally speaking, we try to limit specific characters to the rare rarity. While everyone can use a nice figure of a noblewoman holding a glass of wine, you don't really need a ton of them. Placing these specific figures at the higher rarity also gives our partners at WizKids the opportunity to layer on some really great detail, like the brocade work on Lucrecia's dress and the detail on her corset. Given how many folks liked the unarmed Human Druid from Heroes & Monsters as a townsfolk figure, I think a lot of people are going to get a kick out of Aldern Foxglove and Lucrecia!

And because every preview blog needs a good monster, here's the uncommon Lamia Matriarch. This Large snake-woman has multiple uses throughout the campaign, covering two major enemies in the first half of the Adventure Path. I don't include her in this blog for any other reason. None at all. Humm dee dummm dee dooo.

So! I hope you guys dig this latest batch of releases. They look great in hand, and I'm thrilled to have them in the set. By the time you read this, an agent of WizKids is already at the Paizo office, having delivered the very final miniatures for us to approve and photograph for future preview blogs.

That means the final details on the Rise of the Runelords set, such as price and official release date, must be just over the horizon!

Erik Mona
Publisher

RPG Superstar™: Get Ready to Playtest!

Thursday, February 23, 2012

Right now the Top 8 are working like mad to finish the Round 4 challenge by tomorrow’s deadline. Their location-encounters go live on Tuesday, but there’s a unique twist to this round—the competition schedule includes a week for the public to have an open playtest of these encounters. This has never been done before in RPG Superstar, and we strongly encourage you to playtest at least one of the Top 8 encounters and post your playtest feedback in the encounter’s thread on the RPG Superstar messageboards.

Voting begins on March 6th, and we expect the playtest feedback will greatly help sort out who’s moving on to the Top 4 and the final design challenge for RPG Superstar 2012!

Sean K Reynolds
Developer and RPG Superstar Judge

Song of the Serpent Sample Chapter

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

by Hugh Matthews

In Song of the Serpent, veteran thief Krunzle the Quick gets caught burgling the house of a powerful Kalistocrat of Druma, and in exchange for his life agrees to attempt a dangerous mission to recover the merchant's runaway daughter. Such things are not so easily done, however, and in this chapter Krunzle has just been captured by the thugs in charge of a thriving mining town...

Chapter Four: A Promising Young Troll

When he awoke this time, he was at least unbound. He was lying on his back on a wooden floor in a dark place. But he knew he was not alone from the hubbub of voices and motion around him. Something startling had happened—no, frightening, he thought as his senses fully reassembled themselves and reported for duty—and a crowd of people were reacting to it by putting as much distance between themselves and the something as their circumstances allowed.

But their circumstances were not liberal; the mob had not gone far away, though the panicky cries and curses suggested they would have liked to. Krunzle also suspected that, given the chance, the unseen melee of forms struggling against each other in the darkness would have welcomed the opportunity to bathe—surely, nobody wanted to reek of filth, sweat, rotten meat, and untreated sores. And over it, a strong stink of charred meat.

His head ached, but at least it was clear. He sat up, and as he did so he heard from behind him the tramping of hard-soled boots on planks, accompanied by a faint light that grew stronger. He turned his head and, seeing vertical stripes of light, realized that they were gaps between the timbers of a heavy door. Someone was approaching the other side, carrying a light.

A rattle of iron keys, then the turning of an unoiled lock, and now the door was pushed in. A big man armed with a club bent to peer under the low lintel of the doorway, extending the oil lamp into the room. "What's all the ruckus?" he said.

He didn't seem to have directed the question at Krunzle, and the thief used the presence of the light to look about him. He was sitting on the floor of a large room, its walls made of squared-off logs. The room contained three or four score men—ragged, filthy, scrofulous-looking men—who were crowded in a group against the far wall, their eyes large in the lamplight.

The eyes were frightened and focused on Krunzle—except he now saw that the mob's collective gaze kept going to something on the floor between him and them. Something man-sized and man-shaped that, when the fellow with the lamp came into the room, casting more illumination on the scene, was revealed to be a man. Or at least most of one. And what was left of him was dead.

The man with the club stepped past the thief and bent to examine the body. Krunzle took the opportunity to rise. He thought about making a break through the open door, but decided he was far too wobbly on his feet. And for all he knew, in the blackness that seemed to be outside this jail—for ragged men, a strong door, and a man with a key and a club all said jail to Krunzle—he'd run straight over the lip of the gorge.

The corpse was that of a heavily muscled man with a scarred face and no hands or forearms. Above where his elbows should have been were charred stumps, still smoking. His eyes were wide open, as was his mouth, creating an impression that his final emotion had been huge and painful surprise.

The jailer made a noise of confirmation, straightened, and poked the club gingerly in Krunzle's direction. "You," he said, "back off. Over in that corner, and stay there." When the traveler raised both hands in a gesture of non-confrontation and did as he was bid, the man with the club pointed at a couple of the ragamuffins and said, "You two, haul this out and dump it in Skanderbrog's trough."

The indicated pair crept forward, took the corpse's ankles, and began to drag it toward the door. "Wait," said the jailer, then stooped to rifle the body's rags, which Krunzle noted were in better condition than any of those worn by the other men in the cell. Having found and pocketed a few items, the man with the club said, "Carry on."

He remained in the room, eyeing Krunzle warily, until the corpse detail returned. Then he pointed the club at the thief again, said, "No more trouble," and left, taking the lamp with him.

Krunzle heard the key turn in the lock again. Before the light went, he had seen rags and sacking on the floor near him. He scooped these into a pile, then lay down. Over on the other side of the room, he heard stirrings and mutterings and a few curses as the crowd of ragged men composed themselves for what remained of the night.

None of them came too near Krunzle, for which the traveler was grateful. Their stench was not to his liking. He raised a hand to carefully waggle his jaw, poked with his tongue at the loosened tooth, and contemplated the general ache in his skull. He had known worse.

He needed sleep. Tomorrow would bring more information about his predicament, and perhaps some means of improving it. His last thought was to wonder again what Skanderbrog was.

∗ ∗ ∗

Krunzle, along with the other slaves, was roused at dawn by the clanging of an iron bar on an iron triangle hung outside the strongroom. The door was flung open by another man with a club, and the slaves roused themselves from where they had slept on the floor and rushed outside. The thief rose and followed.

He found himself on a broad platform made of planks, close to the edge of the gorge. The ragged men were clustered around a big cauldron near the door to the barracks. They'd taken rough wooden bowls and were dipping them into the big pot and slurping the contents. More tough-looking men with cudgels—some of them had coiled whips at their belts—stood around, some of them telling the ragged men to hurry up and finish.

Krunzle went to the pile of bowls, found one that was not too encrusted with dried remnants of previous meals, and moved toward the cauldron. He could not help but notice that those in his path—or even well wide of it—moved out of his way. Even the bruisers seemed chary of coming too close to him.

He dipped the bowl into the stuff in the pot—some kind of pasty gruel afloat with chunks of spoiled vegetables—and brought it to his lips. It tasted like pig swill, the kind given to swine who were not highly prized by their owner. But he reasoned that the day was not likely to offer better nourishment, and he remembered someone saying last night that he would be "moving baskets of ore." That was not work to be undertaken on an empty stomach.

He saw the red-bearded Ulfen who had beaten him at Wartnose's behest come down from the town and speak a word with a big-shouldered guard who looked to be in charge. The thief recognized this one too: he had been one of the men who had come to take him from Room Thirteen. Now Redbeard went back the way he had come and the head guard cast his gaze over the workers, until he found the one he was looking for. "Raimeau!" he called. "You show the new man what to do!"

A gangling young man with long locks of prematurely gray hair got up from where he'd been eating, drained the final few drops of gruel from his bowl, then wiped its wet inner side with a finger to lick off the absolutely last remnants. He tossed the bowl onto the heap of others and came very slowly toward the traveler, his hands extended in a gesture that said he hoped for no trouble.

Krunzle noticed that Raimeau's eyes went from his to the thing around his neck and back again. The traveler put the facts together. To the young man he said, "You have no need to worry about this,"—he moved a hand to indicate Chirk—"as long as you leave it alone."

"Have no fear," said the other. "Seeing what happened to Chenax was instruction enough for me."

"Chenax was the man with no hands?"

"He was, though he had a very hard pair of fists before he met you, and had no qualms about using them."

At that moment, a whistle blew and the slaves moved toward the edge of the platform. "Work?" said the thief.

"Work," said Raimeau. "We'll be hauling baskets of ore from the face up to the crusher. Watch where you put your feet, because there are no railings on the ledge or the scaffolding. One misstep, and you'll be joining Skanderbrog for dinner. Like Chenax is about to do for breakfast."

The thief focused on the immediate. "Are Chenax's shoes still available?" He indicated his stockinged feet. "Mining is no work for the unshod."

"They will be if Skanderbrog hasn't had breakfast yet. He usually doesn't bother to peel his fruit."

∗ ∗ ∗

"So this is a Skanderbrog."

Skanderbrog, it turned out, was a name—a name that had been given to a juvenile male troll by his mother, who after nursing him through childhood and teaching him the rudiments of trollery, had handed young Skanderbrog the forequarter of a deer and sent him down from the mountains to see if he could establish a territory for himself and get on with life. But Skanderbrog had been unable to find a niche that was not already occupied by larger and more experienced trolls. Starving, he had come down to forage on the outskirts of Ulm's Delve. After eating a couple of unsuccessful gold-panners—they made poor meals, being half-starved themselves, living off leaves and roots while striving for the elusive gleam in the pan—he had been trapped in a pit that Wartnose's mage had caused to be dug and lined with charms.

The man with the wart on his nose was, as the thief might have expected, the same Boss Ulm by whose order Ulm's Delve barred "thieves, filchers, bun-passers, vagrants, and holy-fakers." The skeletally thin wizard he employed was Mordach the Prudent, and the red-bearded Ulfen was Brundelaf, the outfit's chief enforcer. He even knew the name of the brawler who had clipped him: Little Fost, he was called—apparently there was a larger version somewhere in the world. The thief thought he would as lief as not be spared the experience of making Big Fost's acquaintance.

Raimeau was both the knowledgeable type and the sort who liked to tell what he knew. As they descended the scaffolding then stepped off the trestle-work to where a broad ledge had been cut in the rock face, he filled Krunzle in on the history of Ulm's Delve. By the time they had wrested a pair of sturdy shoes from the feet of dead, handless Chenax, laid in a broad wooden trough at one end of the ledge, near a cave sealed behind a grillwork of black metal, the thief was well briefed.

Boss Ulm had established himself quite solidly here in the Rumples, as this stretch of hilly country was called. Hearing of the gold strike and the rush of goldbugs into the region, he had come with his henchmen to establish the first saloon, brothel, and hardware emporium—in tents at first, though a sawmill was one of his earliest accomplishments, so that he could put up more enduring structures.

Once the instant town was booming, and Brundelaf and Little Fost and the others had eliminated any doubts as to who was in charge, Ulm had begun to think larger thoughts. He had hired Mordach the Prudent and set him the task of locating the source of the alluvial gold that had the prospectors lining the river's banks, panning and sluicing. The mage had cast his runesticks and questioned a number of subterranean beings he managed to summon and bind. Finally, he had marked a spot halfway up the south side of Starkriven Gorge, as the sheer canyon upriver from the town was called.

Ulm had established a claim to the gorge by the simple expedient of sending his bullyboys to throw out the handful of gold-hunters who were trying to work the gravel beneath the swift-running water at its bottom. He then moved the infant town to the edge of the chasm and began to develop a mine.

Mines require miners. These Ulm acquired by the simplest and least costly of measures: he promulgated several ordinances, signed by himself as de facto Reeve of Ulm's Delve. He knew that gold camps attract more than goldbugs; they attract several categories of persons who are skilled in separating prospectors from their pokes of dust and the occasional nugget. Boss Ulm made many of these activities illegal—the penalty for engaging in such banned enterprises was to be sentenced to an indefinite span of labor in the mine or the sawmill. He soon had a sizable, though resentful, work force.

Ulm had them build a trestle-work of timbers from the gorge's bottom to its top, and cut a wide ledge at the level where the seam of gold within the rock came closest to the rock face. Some of his enslaved card sharps, cutpurses, badger-gamers, and sandbaggers were set to hacking their way through to the gold, while others carried baskets of split rock to the surface, piling up the ore where Ulm had put more of his prisoners—there seemed to be an unending supply—to building him a crushing mill.

In the early days, the work had gone slowly, but the pace speeded up considerably when Mordach was able to bring Skanderbrog—in massive leg fetters of hammered iron—into the picture. Accommodating the troll required extra shoring up of the scaffolding, the cutting into the rock of a cell barred with a thick grill of charmed iron—the cell outside which Chenax waited to make his final contribution to Boss Ulm's wealth—and the manufacture of a huge hammer and chisel scaled to the young monster's size. But the investment was worth it. After a couple of the least-motivated workers were delegated to become troll-fodder, in full view of the rest of the work force, the mine's productivity increased severalfold.

Krunzle was on the ledge with Raimeau, trying on the dead man's shoes—they almost fit—when the whistle blew again. "We should leave here," the other man said. "Skanderbrog's coming out." As he spoke, a creak of metal on metal announced that the iron grillwork covering the opening at the end of the ledge was being winched upward on unseen cables. The thief needed no more encouragement but went quickly back the way they had come.

The young troll emerged into the morning light, blinking. Krunzle could see that he was not full grown: his undertusks thrust up no more than a few inches and he was barely twice the thief's height, even allowing for the stooped, bent-kneed stance that was common to his species. But his months of enslavement to Boss Ulm, each day spent swinging a hammer with a head as big as a man's torso to drive a long, thick chisel into resisting rock, had put even more muscle onto Skanderbrog's arms and shoulders than most mature trolls ever achieved. Trolls were generally averse to hard labor, preferring to make their livings by leaping from concealment onto passersby of whatever species. After overwhelming their prey with sudden, massive violence, they would sit down immediately to eat them raw. Trolls actually preferred cooked food, but most were too lazy to bother gathering fuel and going through the process of kindling a fire.

Skanderbrog's attention was drawn to the trough. He picked up Chenax in both his talon-tipped hands and brought his long snout down to sniff the body's charred arm-stumps. He clearly found the scent unpleasant, and delicately pulled Chenax's upper limbs from their sockets, much like a man twisting the wings off a cooked fowl, and threw them into the gorge.

The iron entrance to his cave closed behind him. He ignored it, and hunkered down on his haunches. A single twist of his wrist and Chenax's head popped off in his hand. He tossed the morsel into his mouth and Krunzle heard it crunch between the wide molars. Skanderbrog chewed, it seemed to the traveler, quite thoughtfully for a troll, his gaze moving across the crowd of slaves ranged over the flat and inclined surfaces of the scaffolding. He focused most clearly, however, on Mordach the mage, who had come down from above, along with a crew of torch-bearing men from Boss Ulm's cadre of enforcers.

While Skanderbrog made short work of the rest of Chenax, spitting out a metal belt buckle before swallowing the last of his meal, the men formed a double line of fire across the ledge between the troll and any possibility of his escape up or down the trestle-work. Mordach took up a position behind the twin rows of lit torches, raised his hands skyward, so that his sleeves fell back from his stick-thin arms, and shouted several harsh syllables.

The troll reacted as if he had experienced a sudden toothache. He shook his head, spittle flying from his black lips and prominent bottom tusks, and got to his feet. The look he gave the mage and the torchmen would have rendered Krunzle in instant need of a toilet, preferably one behind a locked and troll-proof door, but the men did not flinch. One or two of them even jeered and made rude noises with their tongues and lips.

Skanderbrog took only three steps, then paused where a sheet of canvas covered something against the gouged rock of the cliff face. He bent and threw back the heavy fabric as if it were the lightest cloth; beneath were his hammer and chisel. Mordach sent another string of syllables his way, and the young troll took up the tools and faced the rock. He set the chisel's edge into a crack, drew back the hammer, and slammed it forward. The collision gave off an almost musical chink, and a chunk of rock separated from the cliff and fell at Skanderbrog's feet. He swiveled, stooped, and bashed the hammer against the lump of stone, smashing it into fragments. Then he turned, straightened, put the chisel back against the wall, and repeated the process.

The torchmen parted enough for Mordach to step through to the fore. The troll eyed him askance but continued to cut rock from the cliff face and reduce it to smaller pieces. The mage's arm moved in a sweeping motion aimed at the ledge, and a rune carved into the nail of his index finger glowed with a light that made Krunzle's eyes ache, even at a distance. A smoking line appeared on the floor of the ledge just short of the growing pile of rock fragments. The troll paused in his work, sniffed at the air above the line, and growled. Then he went back to work.

Mordach and the torch-bearers departed, climbing the scaffolding's steps back up to the town, though not before the wizard favored Krunzle with a considering gaze. When the steps were cleared, the overseers hurried the slaves to form two parallel lines from the ledge up to the top of the gorge. Baskets were passed down from above until every man had one. The thief and his minder were pressed into line, becoming two links in what would become a continuous double chain to move baskets up and down the scaffolding.

Now a slave with a long-handled iron rake stepped up to Skanderbrog's growing pile of broken stone. Gingerly, the man extended the tool and pulled some rock across the line, which had now ceased to smoke but remained plain on the ledge's surface. As the rake's heavy tines grated on the stone, the troll paused in his labors and turned his head slightly toward the sound. Immediately, another slave, whose only function appeared to be to watch Skanderbrog, hissed a warning. The rake man stepped back. But the troll only growled again, then with a grunt, swung the hammer against the chisel head. The first man in the basket chain scooped rock into his basket then passed it to the slave beside him, who passed it in turn to the next man.

And so went the morning. For the first hour, Krunzle was in the upward-moving chain, taking a loaded basket from his left and passing it to his right. It took about half a minute for a basket to be loaded with Skanderbrog's output, so that every thirty seconds he had to bear a load for a few moments. At first, it wasn't hard, but as the minutes piled up, his shoulders and lower back began to ache, and his forearms to cramp. Raimeau was opposite him in the second chain, passing empty baskets downward to where the troll kept making fresh material for them to shift.

After an hour, a whistle blew and the two chains changed jobs. Krunzle welcomed the relief. But all too soon, it seemed, the whistle sounded again, and he was back to the hard life. By now the sun was well up, and the rock face caught and reflected its heat. Sweat ran down the thief's face and chest, soaked his shirt to his back, made his eyes sting with its salt. He reminded himself that he had sworn never to engage in brute labor—a vow he had seldom broken, and then only at the order of a magistrate who could command guardsmen with whips and truncheons to enforce their sentences.

The whistle blew again, and Krunzle was back to passing empty panniers. "Do we get lunch?" he said to Raimeau, working opposite him.

"More gruel," was the answer. The man next to Raimeau made a face. "Sometimes with a cat or a few rats in it."

Krunzle grunted. It was time to find a new occupation. But he was surprised at the idea that emerged from the back of his mind—until he realized that the thought had not been his, but Chirk's.

Are you insane? he thought back at the snake. Even here I am too close to the troll.

But the thought formed: after lunch, the snake wanted him to take the place of the man with the rake.

Why? But in a moment, he knew the reason. Chirk wanted to have a conversation with Skanderbrog. You are insane, Krunzle thought. No one ever benefited from a conversation with a troll, unless it was the troll—a little diversion before dinner.

The word formed in his mind: Nonetheless.

No, returned the thief, and that is final.

But it wasn't. Chirk showed him pictures: Mordach the Prudent dissolving the thief in a vat of acid, then draining it away to retrieve the unharmed bronze serpent from among his smoldering bones; Mordach sliding Krunzle into a blue-flamed furnace, then raking through the ashes for the again-unharmed Chirk; Mordach coating the traveler with a sticky, sweet syrup and staking him down between two great anthills, returning later to—

Enough! said Krunzle. He will do one of these things?

A moment later he knew that Mordach was delayed only because he had not yet decided which of these methodologies would create a maximum reduction of Krunzle with a minimum effect upon the object around his neck. The mage was known, after all, as "the Prudent."

∗ ∗ ∗

Lunch was gruel and rotten pumpkin. Krunzle found a few flakes of gray meat in his, and swallowed them without comment. The work had given him an appetite as well as an acute awareness of several muscle groups that he had always taken for granted. He cataloged his aches and pains and swore to himself that Boss Ulm would one day render up an accounting for each and every one of them.

While they were eating, Mordach the Prudent returned and, with the torchmen to shield him, renewed the strength of the boundary spell he had cast that morning. Then he went back to town, throwing Krunzle a considering gaze as he passed.

The whistle blew and the thief said to Raimeau, "Come, and quickly." They descended the rough wooden steps as lightly as could be allowed by Krunzle's ill-fitting shoes and the prospect of plunging to a deadly battering on the rocks below. By the time the basket lines were reformed, he was standing near the mage's deadline—still visible, though no longer smoldering—with the rake in hand. Raimeau was beside him, wearing a look of deep uncertainty when he wasn't casting fearful sideways glances at the troll, the monster sitting with his back against the wall, glowering at them and the rest of the uncooperative world.

The man who had used the rake before said, "Give me that." To add emphasis, he scooped up a fist-sized rock and cocked his arm.

But it seemed to the traveler that the man did not have the full conviction that the implied threat required. Chirk? he thought.

Instead of an answer from the recesses of his mind, Krunzle saw the man lower his arm. The chunk of rock rattled among others in a basket, and the fellow—and his assistant, though not without a muttered threat to Raimeau—joined the basket chain.

The gray-haired man was regarding the thief with even more trepidation than when they had first met. "What?" said Krunzle, turning to where Skanderbrog was levering himself to his splay-toed feet and taking up his tools again.

"You don't know?" said Raimeau, keeping his voice low.

"Assume I don't." Krunzle raked a pile of rock toward the man whose job it was to fill the baskets.

"The snake," his partner whispered. "It glowed, kind of purple, but when you look at it too long black spots start floating before your eyes. It did that when Chenax tried to take it."

"Oh, that," said Krunzle, "of course. I'm familiar with the effect."

"Get to work!" The shout came from above, where one of Ulm's bullyboys was pushing his way down the steps between the lines of basketmen, and reaching for a whip coiled at his belt. Krunzle turned and began to rake rock.

Skanderbrog hacked at the cliff face as if it were his direst enemy. The muscles of his shoulders and arms bulged and flexed as he swung the hammer that seemed to weigh no more than a switch of willow. Raimeau watched the troll closely, speaking a warning whenever the creature gave over attacking the wall of rock and turned to smash the boulders at his feet into pebbles. For that phase of the operations, the thief and his helper stood well back.

Even so, a flying shard opened Krunzle's cheek. He felt the sting, then a warm trickle making its way down through the dust on his face. The troll looked up from his work, snuffling, his nostrils dilated. He stared at Krunzle, and for a few seconds the traveler knew what it was to be a rabbit undergoing inspection by a fox. Though he was well beyond the mage's line, still he took a step backward.

As he did so, words formed in the back of his mind. He pushed them back where they had come from, saying, I don't think so. One of my longstanding rules is not to draw the attention of man-eating monsters. It has served me well so far and—

A jolt of pain shot up from the base of Krunzle's spine to rattle his skull. He felt an even larger one forming where the first had begun, like a thundercloud boiling up on the horizon.

Well, if you insist, he thought. Ideas began to form in his mind, a strategy for gaining the troll's cooperation. Krunzle watched the sequence of thoughts unravel, then said, in his inner voice, No.

A jolt of pain shot up from his spine again. He spasmed, hissing, so that Raimeau looked at him in alarm. The thief ignored the man and the troll, which had also glanced his way, and said to Chirk, I did not say ‘no' to the project, but only to your approach.

He was surprised to hear a voice, soft and sibilant, speak in his head. It makes sense, came the reply. The creature must hate Ulm and Mordach. A chance to take revenge—

Krunzle cut off the voice. You are collecting crumbs, ignoring the cake.

How so?

Let me show you. He received no response and took the silence for acquiescence. Aloud, he spoke to the troll in a carrying whisper: "Skanderbrog! Do you enjoy your work?"

The creature was back at work on the rock face. Krunzle saw it regarding him from the corner of one eye while the hammer and chisel continued to gouge out chunks of gold-bearing ore. Over the clink of iron on iron, he heard a deep-throated growl. "You mock me?" Skanderbrog said.

"Don't mock him," said Raimeau. A full-body shiver had taken possession of Krunzle's helper. "He doesn't like being mocked."

"I cannot pass the line," said the troll, "but these can." He nudged the pile of broken rocks with the end of the chisel.

"It's true," said Raimeau. "Boss Ulm had a half-orc overseer named Horkak who used to stand just clear of Mordach's line. He would mimic Skanderbrog's labors and make uncomplimentary comparisons. One day, the troll picked up a piece of ore and threw it at him. The boundary spell heated the stone so greatly that it exploded in Horkak's face. He fell into the gorge and broke on the rocks."

"Horkak tasted bad," Skanderbrog said. "Too much gristle." He turned his head to look Krunzle up and down. "You will be more tender."

The thief would have gladly ended the conversation at that point, but Chirk was insistent. "I do not mock," Krunzle said. "I wondered if you had had enough of working for Boss Ulm. If you might want to move on."

Skanderbrog addressed himself to the rock face. "I do not like to work," he said. "But before I was captured, I starved. I ate frogs and dug for worms. I tried to make a place for myself in a cave on the edge of Grunchum's territory, but he drove me away. The same happened when I went into the land of his neighbor, Brugga. Here, at least I eat well and do not sleep on wet leaves."

Krunzle smiled to himself as he raked the cracked ore toward the men who filled the baskets. "Still," he said, "it's no life for a promising young troll."

The hammer rang on the chisel. Another great wedge of rock fell at Skanderbrog's feet. "It is true; I am not content," he said. "But I am resigned to my fate."

Krunzle let a few moments pass, then he said, "What kind of weapon does Grunchum wield? Or Brugga?"

Skanderbrog turned to smash the wedge of gray stone. He cocked his head, remembering. "They are traditionalists," he said, "and favor the long cudgel. They are not particularly adept, but they make up for it in sheer power."

"Do they eat well? As well as you have been eating this past little while?"

It was obviously not a question that had occurred to the troll, if indeed questions ever did. "Now that I think of it," Skanderbrog said, "probably not. The odd deer. Or a bear when they're still in winter sleep."

"And would either of them have developed the kind of muscles that now adorn your upper body?" Krunzle said.

Again, the troll took a long moment while the dull teeth of his mentality engaged the issue. "Grunchum was big-bellied, but his legs were spindly for a troll. Brugga looked as if he had had a good winter. But he's getting long in the tooth."

Krunzle nodded. "So would either of them expect to be confronted by a well-fed, hard-shouldered young challenger armed with an iron-headed hammer? Not to mention a sharp iron spike that he could throw like a spear?"

The troll paused, the hammer poised. He held the chisel out at arm's length and studied it. "I would have to think about that," he said. He set the iron spike into a crevice, and brought the hammer down. Splinters of rock flew.

"You might also think," Krunzle said, "about how comfortable a territory an enterprising troll might make by combining both Grunchum's and Brugga's. You did say they were neighbors?"

Skanderbrog had gone back to cutting more rock from the cliff. He did not answer, but his expression was as thoughtful as his kind could manage.

We'll let it cook for a while, Krunzle told Chirk.

Where did you learn about trolls? the snake said.

I know nothing about trolls in particular, said the traveler, but I know what it is to be young and seeking for a place in an uncooperative world. Don't you?

Chirk was a while in responding. My history, it said at length, is different from yours.

Yet we are both bound to another's service, aren't we?

The snake was even longer in giving an answer, so that the traveler thought he would receive none. Finally, he heard, You should know that I am not as easily gulled as a troll.

Purchase the whole novel here.

Coming Next Week: A brand new, standalone adventure featuring Krunzle!

Hugh Matthews is a pseudonym of critically acclaimed science-fantasy author Matthew Hughes, who is responsible for more than a dozen novels and is often called the "heir apparent" to the legacy of Jack Vance, particularly for his Archonate series. His novel Template was republished by Planet Stories.

Illustration by Eric Belisle.

RPG Superstar™ Top 8 Announced!

The Top 8 for RPG Superstar have been announced and are advancing to Round 4, where our contestants will be creating a Golarion Location, Map and Encounter. The plot thickens, as they will also be playtesting these Encounters and using monsters from the Pathfinder Battles Heroes & Monsters miniatures. In this round, fan votes determine who advances to Round 5, in which the Top 4 will submit a Pathfinder Module adventure proposal. All finalist submissions, complete with judge and reader commentary, are posted to the paizo.com messageboards.

The Top 8 have until Friday, February 24 to complete their write up on their Location, Map and Encounter. On February 28, Paizo will reveal judge comments on all 8 submissions to the general public, who will then get to discuss the entries and vote for their favorites, as well as engage in the playtest. Voting starts on March 6 and ends March 12, and the Top 4 (by votes) will move on to Round 5.

The ultimate winner of RPG Superstar, announced April 3, 2012, will write a Pathfinder Module to be published in early 2013. The 2011 RPG Superstar champion module, Sam Zeitlin’s The Midnight Mirror, releases in April 2012.

Revenge of the Son of the FAQ Attack!

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

It’s back, and it wants revenge!

Inappropriately Sized Firearms (Ultimate Combat, page 136): Does this allow a Medium or smaller creature to use larger firearms of any size?

The text of the rule is, "The size of a firearm never affects how many hands you need to use to shoot it." The intent of that rule was to prevent a Medium character from using a Small rifle as a one-handed pistol; it wasn’t intended to let a Medium character use a Large, Huge, Gargantuan, or Colossal two-handed firearm as a two-handed weapon. Just like with non-firearms, a creature cannot wield a weapon that’s far too big or small for it. Specifically in the case of firearms, a Medium character can’t use a two-handed firearm sized for a Large or larger creature, and a Small character can’t use a two-handed firearm sized for a Medium or larger creature.

Pounce (Bestiary, page 302): If have this ability, can I make iterative attacks with weapons as part of my full attack?

Any attack sequence you can perform as a full attack is allowed as part of the charge-pounce-full attack. For example, a barbarian with the greater beast totem rage power gains pounce universal monster ability and could make iterative attacks with manufactured weapons as part of her charge-pounce-full attack.

Spell Combat (Ultimate Magic, page 10): Can a magus use this ability with cantrips?

Yes. It is not limited to spells of level 1 or higher.

Rage Mutagen (Ultimate Combat, page 25): Is the Strength bonus for this archetype ability in addition to the normal bonus for a Strength mutagen?

No, the +6 replaces the normal +4 Strength bonus of the alchemist’s Strength mutagen. This will be clarified in a future printing of Ultimate Combat.

Page 25—In the Ragechemist archetype, in the Rage Mutagen class feature, change the first sentence to read as follows:

"At 2nd level, whenever a ragechemist creates a mutagen that improves his Strength, that mutagen’s bonus to Strength increases by +2 and penalizes the alchemist’s Intelligence score."

Sean K Reynolds
Designer

The End is the Beginning

Monday, February 20, 2012

Last week, we announced the final batch of Season 3 Pathfinder Society scenarios, as well as the Season 4 scenarios debuting at Gen Con Indy in August. As of the writing of this blog, however, no one noticed the first signs of a slight change to the Pathfinder Society scenario release schedule that these scenarios represent. So, in honor of President's Day here in the U.S., let me illuminate you!

First, since PaizoCon 2012 will be taking place in the first week of July instead of the middle of June, we decided to delay the release of the June scenarios (#3–23 and #3–24) so that they debut at PaizoCon. Since these four scenarios will be out within a week of one another for their PaizoCon debut, they will serve as the traditional four June scenarios and will wrap up the Year of the Ruby Phoenix storyline and segue straight into Season 4's metaplot.

I know many people will notice that this means Season 3 has two fewer scenarios than anticipated. That observation is correct, but unavoidable. Convention season is incredibly taxing on the limited organized play staff we have here, and doing 10 scenarios and 2 mutli-table specials in less than three months simply proved too daunting a task, especially when the finish line (meaning release date) of each month's portion of those products was often at the start or middle of a month rather than the end, when our production schedule is designed to have new material available.

What this does mean, however, is that we're moving the release of Pathfinder Society scenarios from the last week of each month to the first week of each month beginning in September. So instead of waiting nearly two months between the four Gen Con scenarios and the two follow-up adventures in September, we'll have new material roughly every four weeks. That also means that our production schedule will be able to more easily handle the extra workload each summer, as our new material will already be ready for early July and August release.

So there's a peek at what's changing in the coming months, and we've got a few more things left to reveal before Season 4 kicks off, but it's still a good five months away, so we'll hold off for those. There's still a lot of Season 3 left, after all.

Mark Moreland
Developer

Pathfinder Battles Preview: Familiar Faces

Friday, February 17, 2012

So far we’ve revealed plenty of monstrous menaces soon to appear on your game table as part of this summer’s new Rise of the Runelords Pathfinder Battles prepainted miniatures set. This week, we’ll bring things back to earth with a look at some familiar friends you just might recognize from the Pathfinder world.

Before I get into the new miniature reveals, I need to point out that we still don’t have all of the specifics about when exactly this set will come out, how much it will cost, or how many figures will be in each booster box, but things have been moving steadily forward on these fronts, and I expect to be able to reveal details shortly.

Until then, we wait. I hope to soothe the ennui by showing off more awesome miniatures from the set.

These miniatures support the Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path Anniversary Edition, which is scheduled for a July release. The images shown below are “paint masters,” meaning they are the painted miniatures our partners at WizKids send to their factories as guides for how the production run should be painted. Expect a little variance between these images and the final miniatures, but this is what they’ll be shooting for.

Because these are pre-production images, they’re also missing some of the fine detail work on things like tattoos, fine costume design details, and similar flourishes. These are added at the factory as a final step, so if it looks like Seoni is missing a few tattoos below, don’t despair! They’re coming soon!

Anyway, on to this week’s previews!

This uncommon figure represents Ameiko Kaijitsu, one of Pathfinder’s very first NPCs, and one who has grown to become an important figure in the Pathfinder world thanks to the events of the Jade Regent Adventure Path. Way back in the Rise of the Runelords AP, Ameiko was a simple owner of Sandpoint’s Rusty Dragon Inn, but she went on to become a very important figure whose destiny spans the globe of Golarion. She appears here kitted out in her adventuring gear, ready to help your player characters in either campaign.

The elf fighter/ranger Shalelu Andosana is older than the town of Sandpoint itself, but over the centuries she’s come to view the place as home. She makes an excellent ally and information source for the players in Rise of the Runelords, and her appearance in the Jade Regent Adventure Path means that this uncommon miniature, like Ameiko above, comes in doubly useful for Pathfinder GMs running both campaigns. Plus, female elf ranger with a bow = great miniature for lots and lots and lots of player characters.

So far we’ve managed to fit an iconic character or two into each of our Pathfinder Battles releases, and Rise of the Runelords is no exception. The first iconic in this set (an uncommon) is Harsk, the iconic ranger. I love the detail WizKids was able to achieve with Harsk’s face, and some of the detail on his outfit is absolutely amazing. Artists and sculptors always complain about Wayne Reynolds’s highly complex original art for Harsk, but we think WizKids did a great job capturing the detail and nuance of this popular character.

Speaking of popular iconic characters, they don’t come more popular than this lovely lass, the inimitable Seoni! Seoni made her debut on one of the covers of the original Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path issues, so we knew we had to include her in the set (at the uncommon rarity). And I’m thrilled that we did. WizKids definitely met the challenge with this figure. The picture above is pretty good, but in-hand this miniature is absolutely gorgeous, with a great color to it and lots of excellent sculpt details. Fans of Seoni might notice that her tattoos and some of the pattern on her outfit is missing. As I mentioned above, that stuff will be coming at the factory, and what we’ve seen so far looks terrific.

That’s it for this week! The Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path is a dangerous campaign, but these familiar faces will help you make it through alive, if not exactly unscathed!

Until next week,

Erik Mona
Publisher

RPG Superstar: Encounter Challenge Preview

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Voting for RPG Superstar Round 3 continues, and the competitors are gearing up for Round 4: Design an Encounter with Map!

We’re revealing the finished Round 4 rules on Friday. In the meantime, here’s a preview of the two twists we’re adding to the encounter round this year.

Twist #1: All creatures appearing in your encounter must be drawn from the miniatures in the Heroes & Monsters set of the Pathfinder Battles minis line!

Twist #2: The Round 4 entries are revealed on February 28, but voting doesn’t start until a week later because we’ve added a week for open playtesting of the encounters!

Voting closes on Monday, February 20th and the Top 8 winners are announced on Tuesday, February 21st. In the meantime, competitors should look over last year’s Round 4 rules and FAQ.

The Perfumer's Apprentice

by Kevin Andrew Murphy

Chapter Four: The Scent of Honeysuckle

The hag or ogre wife or whatever she was stepped into the room, still looking like a sweet grandmother with her knitting bag and little spectacles. Then she saw the dead spider lying on the hearthrug.

She screamed in horror, rushing over. “You fiendish little pig! What have you done?” She picked up the corpse. “My baby! My poor precious one! Speak to me!”

Her knitting bag fell to the floor, Norret’s glove on top. While I was frozen with fear, my spirit wasn’t. It grabbed the glove and pulled it on.

The unicorn’s jewel shone on the back, glowing with ruby light.

But I wasn’t the only one using more hands than he rightfully should. “Oh no, none of that,” snapped Madame Eglantine. Just like she sometimes seemed to have more eyes, she now definitely had more arms. While two were cradling the dead spider, two more appeared and wove a magic pattern in the air. Then I was looking at not one Madame Eglantine but five, each as monstrous as the last.

I swung the poker at the nearest one and she shattered like a soap bubble. The rest laughed mockingly like a chorus of schoolgirls. My spirit swung at another. The glove’s jewel blazed with light as that illusion vanished as well.

“What are you, you horrid brat?” snarled the three remaining Eglantines. “A sorcerer? An oracle? Some halfling wizard masquerading as a child?”

I swung again, but missed. “I’m the one who’s going to stop you, you cannibal witch!”

A ghostly wind began to blow. The cobwebs fluttered and another bell jar toppled from the mantel, its head bowling across the floor.

“Oh, I’m not the cannibal,” laughed Madame Eglantine. “I have never eaten my own kind. All my husbands were human, and while I ate every last one after he violated my private sanctum, the only true cannibal here is you...”

As she said this, she became fatter and squatter, her body becoming more hunched and spidery, until all that was left was a garden spider the size of a woman, a cross-shaped marking on her back big enough to protect a wedding cake from a whole troop of dancing pixies. It was the mother of the horrible little spider I’d killed, mirrored three times, moving around one another like walnut shells shuffled by a charlatan hiding a pea.

I screamed and ran at them, hitting one with the poker while my spirit swung at another. The illusion before me popped on contact with the iron bar, but my spirit felt the glove slap the spider’s flesh, burning it, antitoxin meeting toxin.

Madame Eglantine hissed and reared. Then the sound of ladylike laughter issued from her horrible spidery maw and webbing shot from her abdomen, a great net like you’d throw to snare songbirds for a pie, thick and sticky as bird lime.

It covered me and I was stuck fast, both me and the fireplace poker, her web pulling taut against the walls as it dried. But my spirit’s hand was still free and I slapped at her again with the glove.

The last illusion vanished with a flare of ruby light. Then the spider shifted back to the form of the spider-armed woman. She reached into her bag and drew forth one of her knitting needles, ebony capped with silver. She waved it about like a wand, weaving magical patterns in the air and clicking her tongue like a Mwangi witch out of a story. A gray ray shot from the tip, hitting the glove.

The light of the unicorn’s jewel died, the spider woman smothering its good Galtan magic with her evil foreign spell. I felt my soul’s hand slapped back as the glove fell to the floor.

She picked the glove up with the tip of her knitting needle as if it were a dead rat. “Just what are you?” She flipped the glove into her knitting bag, stuffing it down to the bottom with the wand. “I’m curious to find out...”

She shifted back to the form of the giant spider. Then she crawled over me, her huge bloated mass avoiding the sticky strands the web. She leaned close, her horrible fangs dripping venom, and bit me.

I felt pain, and then nothing, the poison numbing, putting my limbs to sleep and freezing them, like when you wake from a nightmare but still can’t move.

But the nightmare was not over. The spider woman tenderly, carefully, bit through the strands holding me on the left and the right. She freed the fireplace poker and threw it to the floor. Then she put her claws on me and began to spin me, like a woman twirls a drop spindle. Webbing flew from her abdomen, smooth and soft as silk, wrapping around me, cocooning me as she had Norret.

At last she stopped spinning me. I was terribly dizzy, but my eyes focused as she turned back into a woman. But not all the way. She still had eight eyes and six arms. Then the most horrible thing—her bottommost pair of arms reached into her bag, pulled out a half-finished stocking, and began to knit as if nothing were odd at all.

“Now what are we going to do with you, Orlin?” she mused. “You’re a bit young for husband material, though your brother’s comely enough, if a trifle thin.” She poked Norret’s middle with one long-fingered hand. “Yes, too thin for my tastes. But I’ll plump him up once I have the right charms brewed...”

She picked up the two heads tumbled on the floor, placing them back on the mantel. Norret moaned. Madame Eglantine paid no mind. She looked into her bag and selected a different knitting needle. She mumbled a charm and waved it over a pile of broken glass. Half the pieces flew up and reformed into a bell jar. She repeated the charm and the other was restored as well.

Norret opened his eyes halfway and saw me. “Orlin...” he whispered. “Her bag... bottle... spiderbane...”

He was delirious, but my body was paralyzed by poison, and my spirit as well. A fine time for it to be properly tethered to my body.

But I was not the only spirit about. While I couldn’t feel my jaw, I could sense it opening. “Rhodel...” I croaked.

"Galt’s people don’t take kindly to monsters in their midst."

Madame Eglantine fussed with her dead husbands’ hair and so didn’t see the knitting bag behind her tip on its side. One by one the balls of yarn rolled out, as if an invisible kitten were investigating them. She replaced one of the jars as Norret’s glove appeared, the unicorn’s jewel still dead from the spell. Then as the second jar was being replaced, a crystal flask rolled free. Pretty and faceted, it was a treasure that once belonged to the duchess of Dabril. It was filled with a golden liquid.

“There, much better.” Madame Eglantine looked at her husbands’ heads, now back in their places. Then she looked mournfully at the dead spider. “Poor little dear. I’ll have to put her in the garden and plant a fruit tree. Maybe a sour cherry.” She turned. “That would be nice, wouldn’t it?”

Then she saw the bottle floating up.

She dropped both the dead spider and the half-finished sock as she sprang forward, grabbing the flask with all her hands before Rhodel could work the stopper free.

“Oh, tricky,” she said admiringly. “Very tricky. But not tricky enough. Your brother said this held my doom, but he talks too much. I got the jump on him, and the same with you, Orlin. But I do wonder what it is. A poison for spiders, perhaps? Maybe some grand mithridate like the glove, or an antivenin to sour my venom in its sacks? I suppose I—”

A girl appeared next to her, a beautiful young woman dressed in the livery of a page of House Devore.

“Who are you?” asked Madame Eglantine, shocked.

“Death,” replied Rhodel. She ripped the bottle from the spider woman’s hands with the strength only the dead could possess and pulled the stopper free. “Never trouble a child of Dabril!” She threw the contents into the witch’s face.

Rhodel disappeared, the empty bottle and stopper clattering to the floor as Madame Eglantine screamed, clawing her eight eyes with all six hands. Then she stopped screaming as the room became filled with the overwhelming scent of honeysuckle.

“Perfume?” Madame Eglantine gasped. “Perfume? That’s all you have?” She exploded into gales of laughter. “Oh, that’s rich! That’s the cream of the jest! Two riddles solved for the price of one! You, my child, are nothing more than a baby bone oracle! And your brother? Not even an alchemist! A mere puffer who thought to bluff me with a bottle of perfume!”

With that, the windows began to spring open, one by one, the cobwebs ripping free as Rhodel let in the fresh air of the garden outside.

The fresh air—and the wasps and bees from the garlands of eglantine that hung about the house.

Madame Eglantine screamed as the insects swarmed her, stinging her as she shifted into her monstrous spider form. She sprayed webbing as quickly as a magician conjures scarves, but still more came, drawn by the pure scent of honeysuckle absolute.

Then came a droning buzz loud enough to be a roar. Bumblebees the size of lapdogs and wasps the size of small ponies came through the windows, the pets of Calistria, goddess of trickery and vengeance.

The spider woman played her own tricks, multiplying her form with one illusion, turning herself invisible with another. But the swarm was too great for the decoys to last, and the scent of Norret’s perfume unerringly guided the wasps to their prey. Madame Eglantine was stung again and again, until at last she was as paralyzed as Norret and I, trapped as a bloated spider with a woman’s head.

It was then that the wasps did as they always do when they win a battle: They returned to their nest with their prey, as well as the bodies of their fallen comrades—for to a wasp, meat is meat—and any other meat they can find.

The corpse on the table was carried off. The heads of Madame Eglantine’s husbands as well. Even the slab of half-smoked man-bacon from the hook at the back of the hob.

Lastly, the wasps looked at Norret and myself, still paralyzed and caught in the spider’s webs. They bit us free, picked us up in their claws, and carried us back to the nest as well.

Meat is meat, after all.

∗∗∗

Fortunately for us, their nest was the temple of Calistria, and Mistress Philomela knew us.

We were cut free from the webs with Calistrian daggers, had the poison neutralized with one spell and our wounds healed with another.

There was no balm for the horrors I’d seen save holding my brother’s hand. I knew he must have seen worse during the wars, and I understood why he had to bring me back.

Family is worth more than any gold, even if you come back wrong.

“Gingerbread?” offered Mistress Philomela. We were back on her balcony, sitting beside each other on the yellow divan. She held out a plate. On it were three gilded figures: a wasp, a dagger, and a beautiful elven woman.

I took the dagger. I didn’t want to have anything to do with cannibalism, even in the form of gingerbread.

Norret must have felt the same, since he took the wasp.

Mistress Philomela took the one in the shape of her goddess and delicately nibbled her ear. “The only thing sweeter than the cakes of Calistria is the taste of revenge.”

A great cry of exultation came up from the crowd. Rather than a load of fresh prisoners being delivered by tumbrel cart, there was only one late arrival, but arriving in style: a gilded, magical chariot borne by giant wasps hove into view, driven by one of the priests of Calistria, dressed in a golden loincloth that left little to the imagination, especially when it flapped aside. But hanging from the back of the chariot was what truly captured the interest of the crowd: a horrible monster, half woman, half spider, paralyzed by wasp venom, a look of terror on her eight-eyed face because she knew what her fate would be.

The priest did three laps of the street, to greater cries of bloodlust each time, until at last the Gray Gardener on the guillotine’s platform signaled for him to land. He did.

There was then the usual dry speech about the values of Liberty and the enemies of the people, as well as the thanks of the people for those who’d apprehended the enemies of the Revolution, especially fiends and monsters. It was then that I realized I was supposed to stand.

Norret squeezed my hand and I stood next to him. Mistress Philomela stepped aside and applauded us and the rest of the crowd below followed suit. I also realized I was still holding the barely nibbled gingerbread dagger. I raised it over my head. “Victory!” I cried.

“Liberty! Equality! Fraternity!” responded the crowd.

“Vengeance,” added Mistress Philomela with an amused smile.

The execution of Madame Eglantine was very much like any other. Madame Margaery’s blade was hoisted up. Madame Margaery’s blade came down. A woman’s head bounced into the basket. A giant spider’s body lay on the stage. The crowd cheered, all except a group of women in the front row who for once stopped their knitting, looking at the head in the basket, then at each other with expressions of mute horror. The Gray Gardener standing on the stage looked down at them with his gray mask.

You know he was thinking exactly what they were thinking.

There would be questions for Madame Eglantine’s head. Questions for the heads of her husbands. Questions for myself and Norret.

I already knew my answers. We had rehearsed them before.

We were two brothers from Dabril. My brother was a veteran who had returned from the war. My father and brother had died, so my mother remarried, and my brother had taken me with him to be his apprentice when he returned to the capital. Any peculiarities about me were likely just a bit of sorcery unlocked when I was ill. Nothing more.

Norret squeezed my hand. I looked at him. He smiled and bit off the wings of his gingerbread wasp. I smiled back.

Mistress Philomela was wrong. Revenge was sweet, but the sweetest thing was fraternity—having a brother there for you.

Coming Next Week: A sample chapter from Hugh Matthews’ upcoming Pathfinder Tales novel, Song of the Serpent, plus a fantastic new illustration from Eric Belisle!

Kevin Andrew Murphy is the author of numerous stories, poems, and novels, as well as a writer for Wild Cards, George R. R. Martin's shared-world anthology line. His previous Pathfinder Tales stories include "The Secret of the Rose and Glove" (also starring Norret) and "The Fifth River Freedom," the fourth chapter of Prodigal Sons in the Kingmaker Pathfinder's Journal. For more information, visit his website.

Illustration by Carlos Villa.

RPG Superstar: Round 3!

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Our Top 16 contestants have submitted their Round 3 CR 7 monsters! These round three submissions have been revealed to the general public with judges’ comments. Discuss the entries and vote for your favorite! Voting ends on February 20 and the Top 8 by votes will move on to Round 4. You can change your mind anytime until voting closes Monday, February 20 at 2 p.m. Pacific time.

The ultimate winner of RPG Superstar, announced April 3, 2012, will write a Pathfinder Module to be published in early 2013. The 2011 RPG Superstar champion module, Sam Zeitlin’s The Midnight Mirror, releases in April 2012.

Vote now!

Revenge of the FAQ Attack!

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Last week’s FAQ blog was so popular, we made a sequel!

In a world where FAQs run rampant...

What does “with” in the Special line for the Feral Combat Training feat (Ultimate Combat, page 101) mean for monks making a flurry of blows?

Normally a monk who has natural attacks (such as a lizardfolk monk with claw attacks) cannot use those natural attacks as part of a flurry of blows (Core Rulebook 57). Feral Combat Training allows you to use the selected natural attack as if it were a monk weapon—you can use it as one of your flurry of blows attacks, use it to deploy special attacks that require you to use a monk weapon, apply the effects of the natural weapon (such as a poisonous bite) for each flurry of blows attack, and so on.

The feat does not allow you to make your normal flurry of blows attack sequence plus one or more natural attacks with the natural weapon. In other words, if you can flurry for four attacks per round, with this feat you still only make four attacks per round... but any number of those attacks may be with the selected natural weapon.

Can I use Cleave (Core Rulebook, page 119) or Great Cleave (page 124) to cleave to or from an image created by a mirror image spell (page 315)?

No. If your initial attack hit the caster, you can’t cleave to an image as if it were an actual creature. If your initial attack hit an image, you failed to hit your intended target (the caster), and therefore can’t cleave. As you can’t specifically target an image (because you can’t tell the images from the actual caster), you likewise can’t aim for an image and try to cleave to another image.

Can I use magic missile (Core Rulebook, page 309) to destroy one or more images from a mirror image spell (page 315)?

No. Magic missile targets a creature and does not require an attack roll, so it bypasses all the images and always hits the caster.

Sean K Reynolds
Designer

PaizoCon Pathfinder Society Review

Monday, Febraury 13, 2012

I have never been to PaizoCon. I have heard many stories over a pint from friends who have been. I have wanted to go the past few years but it just never worked out, whether it was expenses or work related obligations. One of the perks of my job is now I get to go to PaizoCon every year. Of course, Erik has told me the only excuse for missing it is if I was dead and the body couldn’t be recovered. I promise, you don’t need to twist my arm to be there. I am excited to experience my first PaizoCon with many of you. Not only do I get to attend, I get to help plan the convention. I can’t begin to tell you how cool that is. Every week, I’m working on one preparation or another to help make this PaizoCon the best yet. With that in mind, I thought I would share some of what is being planned for Pathfinder Society. I need to share some of this excitement so I don’t explode.

We are scheduling 150 tables of Pathfinder Society scenarios over the three days. The response of volunteers to GM was overwhelming. We filled all 150 tables in 23 hours and we currently have 22 people on the waiting list to step in if someone has to cancel their trip. It looks like I’m not the only one excited about this year’s PaizoCon. We’re scheduling every Season 3 scenario for PaizoCon over multiple tables.

We’ll also be debuting the GM 101 Workshop. Georgia Venture-Officers took the initiative late last year to put together a program to inform prospective GMs of what they might expect while running a Pathfinder Society scenario or sanctioned module. They received excellent feedback from participants, shared it with several other Venture-Officers to run in their regions, and refined the program. They pitched the idea to me to run it at conventions and I thought it was a great idea. This 4- to 5-hour workshop will be broken into two parts.

The first half includes topics such as how to bring a 4- to 5-hour scenario to life, how to make rulings on the fly, how to manage a table of complete strangers, how to organize a game day, and how to adapt to players doing the unexpected. Participants will circulate between stations to learn and practice the skills involved. During the second half, Georgia Venture-Officers will reveal the Deck of Many Situations. They will lead a humorously instructive game that challenges its players to handle tough GMing situations based on real, in-game dilemmas. Participants will have the opportunity to play the parts of both the GM and the troublesome players. Judges will offer feedback for each round, giving everyone the opportunity to learn. Note that we will also be running GM 101 workshops at Gen Con. I prefer that anyone who wants to volunteer to help run them at Gen Con attend one of these workshops at PaizoCon.

Finally, we are returning the Grand Convocation to its rightful place at PaizoCon. There will be tiered mini-quests that take an hour or two to complete. There will be side events where special Chronicles can be earned. And, according to Major Maldris, the Blakros family is planning to make an appearance. It is unclear exactly what they want. Major Maldris seemed visibly upset (who can blame him when the Blakros are involved) when asked about it, as there have been whispers of bargains, deals, marriages and the like that the Blakros family is pursuing.

I hope to see many of you there and to match faces with messageboard names and avatars. I also hope that I can help provide all of you that are attending with your most memorable Pathfinder experience to date. I look forward to seeing you all in July.

Oh, I almost forgot one important note. It has been mentioned for several years that there would be occasional special events for retired, 12th level PCs. The Grand Convocation is the debut of these special, Tier 12+ events.

And one more thing: Check out the final cover art by Grafit for Pathfinder Module: The Midnight Mirror, an adventure by RPG Superstar 2011 winner Sam Zeitlin!

Mike Brock
Pathfinder Society Campaign Coordinator

Pathfinder Battles Preview: Large and In Charge

Friday, February 10, 2012

A short and sweet preview blog this week, focusing on some of the Large miniatures in the upcoming Rise of the Runelords set of Pathfinder Battles prepainted plastic miniatures. We’re still sorting out the fine details of product format and exact release date, so again, there’s no product page for this set, although I have reason to believe that we’ll have good news to report on that front shortly.

In the meantime, I have more images of paint masters to show you! This time, I’m taking a tight focus on stone giants, the major threat of the fourth chapter of the Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path, “Fortress of the Stone Giants,” by Wolfgang Baur!

If you’ve got a copy of that adventure, take a look at the cover. You’re about to see a lot of it in glorious three dimensions. Starting here:

This Stone Giant is a spitting image of a creature from the Wayne Reynolds cover of “Fortress of the Stone Giants,” and I think he may be one of the best prepainted stone giants ever created in plastic. Because you will need a lot of them, these guys are at the uncommon rarity.

You fight a lot of stone giants in “Fortress of the Stone Giants,” and some of them have different statistics. For that reason and to mix things up visually, we’ve included the uncommon Stone Giant Champion, complete with a boulder raised high to crush your player characters.

Also from the cover, the Dire Bear makes a great companion to a band of stone giants, or as a “special friend” for your druid character. He’s also a Large uncommon.

The spellcasting stone giant Mokmurian is one of the primary villains of “Fortress of the Stone Giants,” and WizKids did an excellent job bringing him to life in three dimensions. Note the clear blue magical energy flaming from Mokmurian’s right hand, as well as the complex gold pectoral, belts, armbands, and skirt hem on this miniature. This rare miniature makes a wonderful leader for your Pathfinder Battles stone giant warband, and we’re thrilled to have him in the set.

There are, of course, more giants in the Rise of the Runelords set, but those will have to wait for future Fridays!

Until then,

Erik Mona
Publisher

Paizo Publishing's 10th Anniversary Retrospective—Year 0 (2002)

The Thrill of Starting Something New

Thursday, February 9, 2012

2012 marks Paizo’s 10th anniversary. I plan to do monthly blogs for the rest of the year that relive the highlights (and some of the lowlights) from our first ten years of business, and then I’ll take a look into the future as the year comes to a close. There will be side anecdotes and hopefully more than a few embarrassing pictures. And at the end of it all, I hope our readers will have a better sense of where Paizo has been—and where we’re going!

The paizo.com home page in 2002.

The seeds of Paizo Publishing were planted in late 2000: I was working at Wizards of the Coast as the Brand Manager for Star Wars when the seemingly annual Christmas layoffs claimed me as their victim. As I was walking around the building saying my goodbyes to a lot of good friends, I mentioned to a few of them that I thought Hasbro might decide to divest themselves of parts of their business in the next few years and, if that were to happen, they should feel free to give me a call.

My partner Vic had recently departed his previous job as well, so 2001 was a year of relaxing for us; we traveled a bit and spent a lot of time building up our Star Wars collection. But by the end of the year, the two of us were stir crazy. So we were both relieved when, shortly before Christmas, Johnny Wilson, Group Publisher for the Periodicals division at Wizards of the Coast, called me to let me know that Wizards wanted to divest itself of its magazine business, which at the time included Dragon, Dungeon, and Star Wars Insider magazines, as well as the Official Star Wars Fan Club for Lucasfilm. I was a longtime subscriber to Dragon and Dungeon, so that was right up my alley, and the thought of running the Star Wars Fan Club and publishing Star Wars Insider excited both Vic and myself. Our own experience with magazines was limited, but Johnny had been in magazines for ages, so we felt we had our bases covered.

We met with Johnny in early 2002 to start planning the company. Johnny taught us what he called the “three-legged stool” model of the magazine business. Magazines needed income from three sources: subscriptions, newsstand sales, and advertising. If you ever let one of those three “legs” suffer, the whole would become unstable. (It took us a couple of years to figure out that there was a major problem with this model, but that’s a topic for a future installment.)

One of the earliest decisions we made was naming our new company. Johnny, being a religious scholar, had the name “Paizo”—biblical Greek for “I play”—floating around in his head for a number of years. It fit our gaming company nicely, and we could get a trademark for it, so we settled on it quickly. Of course, if we would have realized how easily it was going to be mispronounced over the years (pay-zo, pi-at-zoe, paz-zo, even pee-zo) we might have changed our minds and settled on something easier to pronounce.

We went over the financials Johnny had, and it looked like a promising business. Over the next few months, we had numerous meetings with Wizards and Lucasfilm, both of whom approved our plans, so we were good to go! We set up Paizo Publishing as an LLC with three owners: myself, Vic Wertz, and Johnny Wilson.

Paizo's first office was on the far right of the ground floor of this building in Bellevue.

We had our first bit of great luck when our real estate agent found us an office space that had been vacated in a rush by another company—it was still fully furnished, including desks, chairs, a photocopier, and even a postage machine. We paid the landlord $1 for all of the equipment, a fantastic deal which kept getting better as we explored our new digs—we found a $20 bill in one of the drawers, and there was over $100 in prepaid postage in the postage machine! We’ve moved twice since then, and the postage machine is long gone, but we still use the copier and a lot of the furniture—it was the best dollar we’ve ever spent.

We took over the entire magazine division from Wizards lock, stock, and barrel—all of the department’s employees signed on with Paizo, and Wizards gave us a nice deal on their computers, office supplies, printers, back issues, and pretty much anything else we could load into our moving truck. We made a couple new hires to round out our administrative staff, and we officially started operations on July 1, 2002.

Our initial staff was as follows:

Administrative Team
Lisa Stevens: CEO
Johnny Wilson: Publisher
Vic Wertz: Technical Director
Mary Franklin: Director of Operations and Marketing
Wailam Wilson: Corporate Admin

Publishing Team
John Dunn: Director of Production
Pierce Watters: Circulation Director
Jefferson Dunlap: Prepress Supervisor
Theresa Cummins: Production Specialist
Dawnelle Miesner: Ad Traffic Manager

Dragon Team
Jesse Decker: Editor-in-Chief
Matt Sernett: Editor
Stacie Fiorito (now Magelssen): Associate Editor
Lisa Chido: Art Director

Dungeon Team
Chris Thomasson (now Youngs): Editor
Erik Mona: Editor
Kyle Hunter: Art Director

Star Wars Insider Team
Dave Gross: Editor-in-Chief
Michael Mikaelian: Managing Editor
Vic Wertz: Editor
Scott Ricker (now Okumura): Art Director

Scott Ricker (now Okumura) looking up from his gig art directing Star Wars Insider.

We continued the production schedule that Wizards had set up for the magazines, and finished the issues they had in the pipeline as we worked on their followups. The first all-Paizo issue of Dragon was #299, followed by the milestone 300th issue, which included a special sealed-content section covering The Book of Vile Darkness. In all, we produced four issues of Dragon that year.

Dungeon was bimonthly at the time and had two issues come out under Paizo’s watch in 2002. Issue 95 also had a sealed-content section like its sister periodical. Dungeon garnered Paizo our first ENnie Award, for Best Aid/Accessory.

We did quite a lot with Star Wars Insider and the Official Star Wars Fan Club in 2002. We brought the Bantha Tracks fan section back to the magazine for the first time since the late 1970s. It had also been a while since the Fan Club had done a membership kit, and we put together a great one. It included the following:

• Official Star Wars Fan Club Membership Card
• Letter to members from George Lucas
• Exclusive 3-D fold-together mini-standee
• Three travel destination postcards from the galaxy far, far away
• Travel stickers from exotic Star Wars destinations
• A letter from myself as the President of the Official Star Wars Fan Club

We also were able to procure the official Attack of the Clones IMAX posters and banners to sell to Star Wars fans everywhere (heck, we still have them available for sale today). We also managed to arrange a great subscriber premium, a limited-edition LEGO TIE Fighter Mini Building Set.

Our first Official Star Wars Fan Club membership kit, along with the Attack of the Clones IMAX poster we started selling at the end of 2002 and our awesome LEGO subscription premium for Star Wars Insider.

But things weren’t all rosy. While Johnny knew everything about actually producing magazines, it turns out that he had never been exposed to any of the financial details. In particular, newsstand distribution terms were far more complicated than we’d anticipated. It took us a while to find an accountant that could make sense of the hideously complex reports we were getting, which thoroughly obfuscated the answers to seemingly simple questions such as “how much do we get paid, and when?” Once we negotiated our way though it all, we realized that the time it took to get paid for a given issue was many months longer than Johnny expected, and the distribution fees involved were also higher than we’d been led to believe. That meant that we were going to have to stretch our startup capital much longer than we’d intended.

Also, along with the Star Wars Fan Club, we had inherited the phone number 1-800-TRUE-FAN, which was printed as part of a “join the Fan Club” blurb on the back of every Star Wars product produced in the previous few years. That seemed like good marketing, but it really meant that we were paying a lot of money to answer calls from five-year-olds who wanted to talk to Luke Skywalker, or from slightly more sophisticated nine-year-olds hoping to speak with George Lucas. We dropped the 800 number as soon as we could reasonably phase it out.

Paizo receives its first ENnie as part of the second annual ENnie Awards, held on a makeshift stage in the hallway of the MECCA during the last Gen Con in Milwaukee. Left to right: Eric Noah, Russell Morrissey, Erik Mona, Chris Thomasson (now Youngs), Ryan Dancey

We had also continued using the out-of-house subscription fulfillment service that Wizards had used for the magazines, and we soon learned that their costs were much higher than we’d expected. They handled all customer service related to subscriptions, and charged us based on each customer contact—there was a fee for every letter, email, and phone call they received, and another fee for every reply they made. We soon realized that meant they had no incentive to solve problems quickly—in fact, they’d make more money if it took multiple contacts to resolve an issue! It became clear that we’d save a lot of money—and provide better service—if we could bring subscriptions and customer service in-house. That became our first major goal for 2003.

We ended the year with a multi-course holiday dinner for the employees at my favorite restaurant at the time, Gene’s Ristorante in Renton. Chef Charles Maddrey created a feast for us, and lots of wine and beer were served. Even though things weren’t working out exactly as planned, we were hopeful and wanted to celebrate the founding of Paizo and looked forward to what the new year would bring!

Employees who started later in 2002:
Grace Liang, Corporate Accountant
David Erickson, Corporate Accountant
Matt Beals, Lead Prepress Operator

Employees who left in 2002:
Jefferson Dunlap, Prepress Supervisor
Grace Liang, Corporate Accountant

For myself, 2002 will always be remembered for the excitement of starting something new and for the realization that I had a lot to learn when it came to the magazine business.

Lisa Stevens
CEO

The Paizo Company Logo

Once we had settled on the name of the company, Johnny had Art Director Kyle Hunter take a stab at some logos for the newly minted corporation. There were two basic styles: one was a calligraphy letter pi fused with a smoke monster, and the other was the same letter pi in the shape of the now familiar golem. Each of these creatures was given varying sets of eyes to convey different moods. From top left: Fangeye, Cyclops, Grin, Glare, Shades, Mongo, Spacey and Vigilant (the logo we ended up choosing). With the design settled, Kyle then did a number of different color treatments. We eventually went with the now-familiar “Paizo purple,” although Kyle was angling for the rusty color you can see in the bottom sample of his business card.

Kyle Hunter’s first takes at a Paizo logo and designs for the first Paizo business card (in a few different color schemes). We ended up picking the business card design on the far right of the second row.

Erik’s Memories of Year Zero

The first half of 2002 was a strange time to work at Wizards of the Coast. On one hand, the Hasbro purchase was still recent, and the luster of big bonuses and watching friends with lots of seniority get new cars and houses was still relatively fresh. On the other hand, Wizards was busily streamlining their business to focus on “core competencies,” and starting in 2000, lots of people lost their jobs in a series of layoffs.

Erik Mona and Kyle Hunter discover a haunt near their desks.

Despite individual successes at work, there was a strong undercurrent of “I’m sure I’m going to be fired soon” that seemed that year to be even more potent than it had been in the past couple of years. I had only recently been transferred from the RPGA Network to the Periodicals Department, and the two magazines I was shepherding at the time—Polyhedron and the Living Greyhawk Journal—had become sections of Dungeon and Dragon, respectively. I was really enjoying the challenge of integrating these sections, and was doing some of the most fun creative editorial work of my career, but it soon became clear that magazines were not a safe place to work when the company was paring its focus to just its core game business.

About this time, our Group Publisher, Johnny Wilson, began whispering about his plan to save everyone’s jobs and ensure that the venerable magazines of Dungeons & Dragons would continue indefinitely. He had found some investors interested in taking over the magazine business in the likely event that Wizards cut it off, and in his impish way he named the effort “La Cosa Nostra,” or “our thing.” Yes, that’s also the name of the Mafia, but Johnny has an evil sense of humor for a guy as religious as he is, and he’d rub his hands together while talking about his diabolical plan. Coming from between his rosy cherub cheeks, his words filled us all with hope at a time when it was in extremely limited supply around the office.

I was much relieved to learn that Johnny’s mystery investors turned out to be Lisa Stevens and Vic Wertz, two of my earliest Seattle friends. Lisa gave me my first real break in the industry as a continuity consultant for the Greyhawk products she was managing in the late 1990s, and I knew that she and Vic knew enough about business and were the kind of game-loving advocates that it would take to make a project like this work.

Chris Thomasson (now Youngs) and Erik Mona at the Paizo booth, Gen Con 2002.

They were (and are) major Star Wars collectors, and many of us around the office joked that the real reason Vic and Lisa wanted to run the magazine business was to add Star Wars Insider to their considerable Star Wars collection, but my time working on Greyhawk with Lisa convinced me that the Dragon and Dungeon elements were just as important—if not more important—to their interests. I wasn’t worried at all. In fact, once I learned Lisa and Vic were our potential saviors, the only real question was when we were going to move out of the building. My stress evaporated with that revelation, and as I recall things, we were all pretty excited about moving on to the next phase of our professional lives.

As it happens, I am a collector too, so one of my favorite early Paizo memories involved physically loading up all of the department’s assets into a moving truck headed to the new Paizo offices. Johnny suggested that we leave all of the back issues at Wizards, mostly because hauling them all down to the truck would take hours of physical labor, and nobody really wanted all those old magazines anyway. Lisa and I refused to let that happen, knowing just how valuable those dozens of boxes would be, and how criminal it would have been to throw them away. So long after most of the staff had gone home, Lisa, Vic, and I (and perhaps others I can no longer remember) worked into the early morning hours to load those back issues onto the truck.

Even as we loaded them up, Lisa explained (and I well knew) that we weren’t just salvaging the old issues for nostalgia. “Someday we’ll have a website where we can sell these to people who want them,” she said. “We are going to make a ton of money off of these things.”

We still sell those back issues today. That website grew to become paizo.com, one of the internet’s leading hobby stores. Even from the very beginning, Lisa showed that the company would be managed with a balance of genuinely geeky love for the game and strong business sense. It’s the main reason I’ve stuck around here every year since that first night we loaded up the truck with old back issues, and it’s the reason why the company has been able to survive and grow stronger far longer than many companies in this industry.

Erik Mona
Publisher

Lisa Stevens at the Paizo booth, inside the Wizards castle at Gen Con 2002.	Dave Gross checks out the new Paizo digs before we move in. (The photocopier in the back is part of the best dollar we ever spent.)	Jesse Decker with a coveted window seat.	Matt Sernett doing his best to ignore the camera.	Johnny’s wife Wailam Wilson holds down the front of the office.

The Perfumer's Apprentice

by Kevin Andrew Murphy

Chapter Three: The Garland of Eglantine

The innwife woke me at dawn. I’d spent the night beside the fire. Someone had picked my pocket during the night, so the gold Norret had given me was gone. All I had left was the little horn spoon.

The innwife made it clear that if I bought breakfast or even ale, I could stay, but if not, I should go. I left, stepping out into the cold morning.

Cries of “Gardyloo!” came from up and down the street. Maids and goodwives threw open windows, emptying chamber pots. Piss and night soil spattered the cobbles, running down to the grate that led to the sewers below. Horrible stories were told about those sewers, but nothing could be more awful than the stench. I wished I had one of the paper nosegays Norret and I had spent hours making, but had to make do with the woodsmoke on my clothes.

A moment later, I realized I was crying.

I bit my lip and forced the tears back. Life in Galt was harsh, and I had no illusions. Madame Eglantine was a witch, and she’d warned us not to pry into her business. What that business was, I could only guess. Summoning devils like the vile Chelaxians? Worshiping nightmares from beyond the stars? Smuggling nobles out of Galt?

Whatever it was, it was awful enough that my brother had decided to do something about it. But the witch had won.

How she had won was the question. My brother could be injured, dead, drugged, or even turned into a toad for the witch to feed flies and taunt.

Given Madame Eglantine’s ties with the Revolutionary Council, the cruelest possibility was that he would join the next cart of condemned to feed the guillotine.

The window of the uppermost gable of the house at the top of the street popped open and a familiar female voice cried out a warning. The night soil flew down and the window snapped shut, the little diamond panes frosted from the inside to ensure the old woman’s privacy.

She was unusually late. Normally Madame Eglantine would have done this before dawn, giving her time to go down to the kitchen and fix breakfast for the guests.

I steeled my courage and made my way back to the familiar house. I slipped in as one of the other boarders stepped out—the old wizard Norret had got the manuscript from, off to take his morning constitutional before returning for breakfast.

The rooms Norret and I had shared were bare as when we moved in. The only change was a pile of ashes in the grate. The air smelled strongly of irises and alchemist’s fire.

I made my way to the dining room. The other boarders greeted me kindly, inquiring as to when Norret would be by and how his research was going. I shrugged. The old wizard returned shortly, reeking of cherry tobacco and snuff.

A half-hour late, Madame Eglantine came in, bearing a tray heavy with pork pies and mirabelle plums. “My pardon, gentlemen. There will be no croissants this morning. I missed the baker’s boy when—”

“Where’s my brother?”

The old witch looked at me, shocked, but quickly regained her composure. “My dear child, you’re still here? I thought you left with him last night. Your brother gave notice and cleaned out all his things.”

“I waited at the tavern. He never came.”

A look passed among the guests, a sad one, and the old wizard turned to me and said, “Did he leave you no money?”

“A little. My pocket was picked.”

There were more sad looks and tut-tutting. The old wizard produced a few silver coins and pressed them into my hand. “You must take care of yourself now, Orlin.”

Madame agreed. “I’m not in the business of charity. You’re welcome to stay for breakfast, but you’re almost a grown man. Inquire at the workhouse, or perhaps with the army.”

“My brother would not abandon me.”

She looked very sad, but it was an actress’s look from a melodrama, a practiced expression of grief that had nothing to do with the cold glittering little black eyes behind the half-moon spectacles. “I’m sorry, but you are not the first child in Isarn to believe that, nor will you be the last.”

“People are only human,” the old wizard agreed sadly.

I did not mention that my brother had given up a fortune to bring me back to life. I only burst into tears and ran from that house, unable to think how to save Norret.

I had no way of knowing that he was not already dead. But if you’re from Galt, you know that the only truly final death comes from one of the Final Blades.

No one knows that better than myself. Even coming back wrong is better than not coming back at all.

My handkerchief fluttered out of my pocket, drying my tears without me touching it.
“Th-thank you, Rhodel,” I snuffled, retrieving it. I blew my nose and put it away.

I still had hope. The witch had gone with the lie that Norret had abandoned me, not that he’d pried into whatever awful thing went on in her attic. That meant that she’d have trouble having him arrested and sent off to meet Madame Margaery.

The Gray Gardeners always asked questions, sometimes even after people died.

I thought about what I knew of Madame Eglantine. The only way into her apartment was the door at the end of the upstairs hall, set with many locks and charms. Once I’d glimpsed a spiral stair beyond it, thick with cobwebs. I could only guess that there would be another door with far more dangerous locks at the top of the stair. All the windows locked from the inside. To get up to the gables would mean scaling three stories and a slate roof. The boarding house also had a climbing rose—an eglantine, like its owner. The vine was heavy with little white blossoms, thick with thorns, and infested with famished bees, the fat little garden spiders that preyed upon them, and the wasps that preyed upon them in turn.

Madame only left her attic to fix breakfast and supper, meet with tradesmen, and tend her beloved garden. The only time she left the house was to attend an execution, which was a general holiday. That was also the only time the cook fires were banked.

I saw a halfling walking down the street. He was wearing a short cap and a pair of heavy gloves, and had a wire brush over his shoulder. The only parts of him that weren’t covered with soot were the gilded buttons on his coat.

I stepped into his path. “Teach me your trade.”

The halfling looked up at me and laughed. “Not that I ain’t always lookin’ fer apprentices, but ye’re too tall, lad, and y’look like ye’re gonna get a dem site bigger before ye’re done.” He then turned more serious. “Parents tossed ye out? Tell y’wot. Y’can touch me buttons fer luck fer free and be on yer way with me best wishes. Sound right?”

“How about I buy you a glass of wine and you tell me about your trade?”

“Halfling size or human size?”

“Your choice.”

He grinned. “That’d be halfling size. It’s bigger.”

I ended up buying the whole bottle with a couple of the wizard’s silver pieces, but found I what I needed to know. Most of what I needed I already had—a cap and a pair of stout gloves. What I didn’t have, I didn’t need either. I had no interest in cleaning Madame Eglantine’s chimney, with or without a wire brush.

The halfling did an excellent impression of the mistress of the boarding house: “‘Yes, citizen, I am quite aware of the perils of chimney fires. Be that as it may, I have spells to clean my chimney, and I’m more limber than I appear. Indeed, I think you’d be quite surprised at how small a space I can fit into...’” He snorted. “Nasty old harridan. Lost a few snakesmen to her back in the day. Steer clear of that one if’n y’know what’s good.”

“Snakesmen?”

“Burglars,” the halfling confessed drunkenly. “Second-story men. Never seen hide nor hair of ’em ag’in. Bet she turned ’em inta mice an’ fed ’em to the cat.”

Feeding someone to a familiar was awful magic, but Madame Eglantine did not have a cat that I knew of. The only pets Madame appeared to have were garden spiders.

There were a great many of them in the garlands of eglantine that twined around the boarding house. I climbed the rose the next day, after watching Madame and half her boarders leave for the executions. I couldn’t believe my luck—the windows of Norret’s and my old rooms had been left open to air. They still smelled very strongly of iris.

I brushed the little spiders from my clothes, then went to the fireplace. It was still warm. The hearth fire had been banked in the kitchen. But not for long.

I took the wine bottle from the inn, reached up the flue, and dropped it down the chimney.

There was dim tinkle and the sound of a small explosion. Norret had taught me the formula for extinguisher grenades. It had taken the last of the wizard’s silver at the apothecary, but was worth it.

I waited for the fumes to clear, then stuck my head up the flue. It was dark, and soot drifted down over my face. I did as the chimneysweep had told me. I tied my scarf over my face and pulled my cap low over my eyes, then worked my way up slowly.

There were handholds in the brick, but the safest way up was bracing my back against the back of the chimney and my feet against the front. I wormed my way upward, higher and higher, until I found the next flue, the one that led to Madame Eglantine’s attic apartment.

I came down carefully, expecting that I might step directly into a cauldron, but her fireplace only had an iron hook at the back. It held a slab of Madame’s delicious bacon smoking over the hob. Another hook held a kettle for Madame’s tea. The fire was out save for a few banked coals, but the ashes smelled of applewood.

"Madame Eglantine is more than she appears."

I moved the fire screen aside and ducked out into the apartment, shaking the soot off onto the hearthrug. The apartment was the most cobwebbed place I’d ever seen. Madame might want her guests to tidy up after themselves, but had clearly never seen fit to clean her own rooms. What I had taken for frosted glass was a thick film of cobwebs on the inside of all the windows. It made the light far dimmer than day, but still brighter than it had been in the chimney.

There were cases of books and bric-a-brac, shelves containing the oddments and curios of a lifetime. Then I turned and saw the mantel. My heart stopped cold.

Where a scholar might keep the bust of a great philosopher, or an artist might place a single skull for still lifes, Madame Eglantine had done them one better. On the mantel was a row of bell jars like you’d use for growing vegetables or protecting mantel clocks. But under each jar was a severed head, preserved by magic or alchemy, fresh as they day they were chopped. Their eyes were wide and staring, their mouths half open. I expected them to start speaking any moment.

They did not, but as I stumbled away, I wished they had, for they could have warned me not to look at what I saw next.

Stretched out on a table was a corpse—without its head, without its hands, without a great many parts. At first I thought Madame Eglantine must be an anatomy student or necromancer, but then I saw the chart, like a doctor might use, but marked like a butcher’s with notes like brisket and good for paté. I realized that Madame Eglantine must be some horrible hag or ogre wife like in the stories. Suddenly the bacon hanging on the hob didn’t seem so appealing.

Then I saw Norret.

He was poisoned. I sensed it immediately. He was hanging in a great spiderweb strung in one corner. I rushed to him, but before I touched him, I stopped, remembering the terrible stickiness of such webs from the bard’s stories. I ran and got the fireplace poker and used it to rip the webs away.

He was still alive, but paralyzed and poisoned. And it was then that I sensed poison again. But this poison was moving.

It was a spider. A garden spider like the little ones in the roses outside, squat and brown and marked with a cross like a festival cake frosted to keep pixies from dancing on it. But this spider was the size of a crab.

It scuttled toward me. I smashed it with the fireplace poker, hitting it with the hook. It hissed like a pastry dropped into hot fat and scuttled away. I stepped back. Then the hearth broom levitated, swatting at it—Rhodel trying to help, but only swatting it on the backside.

It leapt at me.

I swung the poker, but it went wild. I lost my grip, the iron bar striking one of the bell jars.

It shattered. The head bowled across the floor, eyes blinking.

I caught the spider. It bit at me, drooling poison, but my gloves were stout. I shoved it against the mantel with one hand. With the other, I reached for my belt knife, hoping to stab it. My hand closed around something smaller than expected, and I realized that I had grabbed the little horn spoon instead.

It didn’t matter. The handle was ivory and pointed, and had come from a unicorn. I jammed it in, point first, again and again, stabbing it over and over until the horrible monster vomited blancmange. It died with a shudder.

I was crying again. I went and got the poker and used it to rip the webs away from Norret. Somewhere in his gear he had a jewel that had once belonged to Dabril’s duke, a magic ruby set in a glove that could neutralize poison. If I could just find it, I might heal him, and we could both escape this chamber of horrors.

“I believe,” said a voice behind me, “you are looking for this.”

I turned. Madame Eglantine stood framed in the doorway, taking Norret’s jeweled glove out of her knitting bag.

Coming Next Week: Further horrors in the final chapter of Kevin Andrew Murphy’s “The Perfumer’s Apprentice.”

Kevin Andrew Murphy is the author of numerous stories, poems, and novels, as well as a writer for Wild Cards, George R. R. Martin's shared-world anthology line. His previous Pathfinder Tales stories include "The Secret of the Rose and Glove" (also starring Norret) and "The Fifth River Freedom," the fourth chapter of Prodigal Sons in the Kingmaker Pathfinder's Journal. For more information, visit his website.

Illustration by Carlos Villa.

FAQ Attack!

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

It’s time to address some FAQs! These answers will be added to the official FAQ later this week.

How is the negative energy affinity monster ability (Bestiary 2, page 299) supposed to work?

The intent of this ability is that the creature is healed by negative energy (like an undead) and harmed by positive energy (like an undead); this is automatic and has nothing to do with the intent of the target or the energy-wielder. However, as written, the ability is a bit confusing because of the phrase “reacts to,” which doesn’t have a clear definition. This ability will be changed in the next printing of Bestiary 2.

Update: Page 299—In the description of the Negative Energy Affinity ability, replace the current entry with the following:

Negative Energy Affinity (Ex) The creature is alive, but is treated as undead for all effects that affect undead differently than living creatures, such as cure spells and channeled energy. Format: negative energy affinity; Location: Defensive Abilities.

Is the aquatic sorcerer bloodline (Advanced Players Guide, page 136) supposed to get geyser as a bonus spell at sorcerer level 9, even though that’s normally a 5th-level sorcerer/wizard spell and unavailable to sorcerers before caster level 10?

Yes, and the sorcerer learns it as a 4th-level spell. Note that geyser is also a 4th-level druid spell (available at character level 7), so the aquatic sorcerer gaining it at character level 9 as a 4th-level arcane spell isn’t too powerful.

Can a magus use spellstrike (Ultimate Magic, page 10) to cast a touch spell, move, and make a melee attack with a weapon to deliver the touch spell, all in the same round?

Yes. Other than deploying the spell with a melee weapon attack instead of a melee touch attack, the magus spellstrike ability doesn’t change the normal rules for using touch spells in combat (Core Rulebook 185). So, just like casting a touch spell, a magus could use spellstrike to cast a touch spell, take a move toward an enemy, then (as a free action) make a melee attack with his weapon to deliver the spell.

On a related topic, the magus touching his held weapon doesn’t count as “touching anything or anyone” when determining if he discharges the spell. A magus could even use the spellstrike ability, miss with his melee attack to deliver the spell, be disarmed by an opponent (or drop the weapon voluntarily, for whatever reason), and still be holding the charge in his hand, just like a normal spellcaster. Furthermore, the weaponless magus could pick up a weapon (even that same weapon) with that hand without automatically discharging the spell, and then attempt to use the weapon to deliver the spell. However, if the magus touches anything other than a weapon with that hand (such as retrieving a potion), that discharges the spell as normal.

Basically, the spellstrike gives the magus more options when it comes to delivering touch spells; it’s not supposed to make it more difficult for the magus to use touch spells.

Sean K Reynolds
Designer

Toasting Merrymead with Two New Venture-Captains

Monday, February 6, 2012

Illustration by Alex Aparin

It is a rare occasion when a person can combine two fun events into one. On this Monday after the Super Bowl, I get to do just that!

First, I want to welcome two new Venture-Captains to the ranks in areas that have been in serious need of strong organization for some time. The first is St. Louis, Missouri. Originally, St. Louis wasn’t on my list. However, that quickly changed when Brett Sweeney emailed his interest in becoming a Venture-Captain. He provided a very good resume and some outstanding answers to my interview questionnaire. There already seems to be a very strong base of players in the region and I am excited to see how Pathfinder Society grows in St. Louis, as well as the rest of Missouri, now that we have the entire state covered with an awesome group of Venture-Officers.

I also get very excited when we are able to assign a Venture-Captain to a region, or in this case a state, that has had little to no Venture-Officer presence, but has been longing for someone to step up to the task of organizing Pathfinder Society. I’ve known Martin Shelby for more than 10 years, have played roleplaying, board, card and miniatures games with him during that period, and know his organizational and gaming skills are up to the task. When he moved from Atlanta to Nashville last year, I already had my sights on setting him up as a Venture-Captain there. We talked about it last year at Gen Con and he wasn’t prepared to take over the reigns. However, five months later, he has decided that he would like to see how fast he can grow Pathfinder Society in middle Tennessee. He will be our first Venture-Captain in Tennessee and I foresee good things happening for the growth of Pathfinder Society in the state.

Now, on to the second fun event for this week—another holiday blog (and anyone who knows me knows how much I love a good brew)! Creative Director James Jacobs wrote the below description of Merrymead and you will find a special Pathfinder Society Chronicle sheet you can download and apply to a Pathfinder Society character. Merrymead is mentioned on page 248 of Pathfinder Campaign Setting: The Inner Sea World Guide.

The month of Calistril is much anticipated, if only because it signifies the end of winter and the inevitable (and usually much welcomed) onset of spring. And no time is more infused with this eager anticipation than the second day of the month—a day set aside in most areas of the Inner Sea as the holiday known as Merrymead. A key element of Merrymead, of course, is the consumption of the last of the previous season’s alcohol. Traditionally, this is intended to be little more than a communal sharing of mead supplies (a legacy of the holiday’s original origins in central Druma), but today, most celebrants use Merrymead as an excuse to get completely smashed on whatever source of booze is available. In high societies, aristocrats celebrate with the uncorking of bottles specifically set aside for the event, while in the city slums, roving gangs of celebrants carouse from bar to bar. It is here that the notorious “mead riots” generally happen, when not-quite-drunk-enough merrymakers, faced with the inevitable situation of there being more carousers than alcohol, grow violent and destructive. Cities with strong histories of mead riots generally draw upon additional troops from the militia to help keep the peace... yet sometimes, it can be hard to draw upon those troops when they themselves have been looking forward to their own Merrymead celebrations!

Welcome to our new Venture-Captains and Blesse... hic... Happ... hic... fun Merrymead all!

Click here to download the Merrymead 4712 Boon! - 815 KB (zip/PDF)

Pathfinder Battles Preview: A Second Look at Rise of the Runelords

Friday, February 03, 2012

Last week I previewed several miniatures from our upcoming Rise of the Runelords Pathfinder Battles prepainted miniature set, scheduled for an early summer release. WizKids is still finalizing the details on the product mix and exact release date, so while we do not yet have a product page for the set, I DO have some more really cool images to show you of paint masters!

To recap, a “paint master” is an early output of the miniature painted as a guide to the factory artists who will paint the final production run. So far, we’ve been really impressed with the factory’s ability to match the quality of our paint masters, so we’re pushing things a bit with this latest release to ensure that you receive the highest possible quality miniatures we can deliver.

So these images don’t look exactly like the final minis will look, but this is what they’re shooting for, and I suspect the final product will be very close to what you see here.

These miniatures support the Rise of the Runelords Anniversary Edition, a massive hardcover collection of our very first Adventure Path that we’re releasing this summer as a special 10th Anniversary present to ourselves (and to you!).

Up first this week is the Ghoul, a common miniature that represents a key enemy in the Adventure Path’s second installment. I’ve always been fond of ghouls as deadly undead menaces for low-level parties, and this guy looks great, nasty long tongue and all! (And no, his left arm isn’t quite so straight in real life.)

If you thought ghouls were terrifying, wait until you get a load of the Denizen of Leng, another common who will come in handy as your players reach the second half of the Adventure Path. Drawn to the world from an otherworldly plateau and possessed of weird eldritch powers, this alien mystic subs in nicely for any kid of oddball spellcaster eager to keep his ugly mug hidden behind soiled linen strips.

This miniature, the uncommon Wraith, is a good example of something new we’re trying with this set—clear plastic! When appropriate (as in the case of incorporeal undead), we plan to produce certain miniatures in this set with a translucent plastic, adding to the otherworldly effect. This figure is an almost direct translation of the wraith illustration from the Pathfinder RPG Bestiary, but it took us several tries to get a workable sculpt from the waist down, as the original art is not particularly helpful in this regard. I’m really happy with how he turned out.

Last up today is another clear plastic miniature, the relentless Scanderig (or Forgefiend). This original creature made his first appearance in the original Rise of the Runelords campaign, and countless player characters have since been stuffed inside its fiery belly. He is both Large and rare, and in person he looks absolutely amazing. Note the painted “bars” on the back of the mini. The original illustration didn’t show the creature’s back, so our master painter added the lines with paint to create a sort of grill effect. We didn’t so much care for that, so the final miniature will have an “open” front and back, which ought to help light shine through the red plastic, enhancing the fire effect.

One of the cool things about this second set of Pathfinder Battles miniatures, for us here at Paizo, is to see original Pathfinder creatures in plastic. The Scanderig is just one of many in the Rise of the Runelords set, but the others will have to wait for future Fridays, and future Pathfinder Battles previews.

Until then,

Erik Mona
Publisher

RPG Superstar: Monster Stat Block Preview

Thursday, February 2, 2012

Voting for RPG Superstar Round 2 continues, and the competitors are getting anxious. To give them something to do, here’s a sample boards-friendly monster stat block. Competitors, feel free to practice your Round 3 monster challenge using this format—you’ll be able to copy and paste this into your entry and maintain proper formatting.

[b]zzMonstername CR ##[/b]
[b]XP ##[/b]
zzAlignment zzSize zzType
[b]Init[/b] +##; [b]Senses[/b] zz, zz,; Perception +##
[b]Aura[/b] zz (## ft., DC ##)

[b]----- Defense -----[/b]
[b]AC[/b] ##, touch ##, flat-footed # (+## zzModifier, +##zzModifier)
[b]hp[/b] ## (##d##+##); fast healing ##
[b]Fort[/b] +##, [b]Ref[/b] +##, [b]Will[/b] +##
[b]DR[/b] ##/zzMaterial; [b]Immune[/b] zz; [b]Resist[/b] zz ##, zz ##; [b]SR[/b] ##
[b]Weaknesses[/b] zz, zz

[b]----- Offense -----[/b]
[b]Speed[/b] ## ft., fly ## ft. (zzManeuverability)
[b]Melee[/b] zzAttacktype +## (zzDamage plus zzOthereffect), zzAttacktype +## (zzDamage)
[b]Ranged[/b] zzAttacktype +## (zzDamage)
[b]Space[/b] ## ft.; [b]Reach[/b] ## ft.
[b]Special Attacks[/b] zz, zz
[b]Spell-Like Abilities[/b] (CL ##zz; concentration +##)
At will—[i]zz[/i], [i]zz[/i]
1/day—[i]zz[/i], [i]zz[/i]

[b]----- Statistics -----[/b]
[b]Str[/b] ##, [b]Dex[/b] ##, [b]Con[/b] ##, [b]Int[/b] ##, [b]Wis[/b] ##, [b]Cha[/b] ##
[b]Base Atk[/b] +##; [b]CMB[/b] +## (+## zzConditionalmaneuverbonus); [b]CMD[/b] ## (## vs. zzManeuvername)
[b]Feats[/b] zzFeatname, zzFeatname
[b]Skills[/b] zzSkillname +##, zzSkillname +## (+## zzCondition); [b]Racial Modifiers[/b] +## zzSkillname, +## zzSkillname in zzCondition
[b]Languages[/b] zzLanguage
[b]SQ[/b] zz

[b]----- Ecology -----[/b]
[b]Environment[/b] zzClimate zzTerrain
[b]Organization[/b] zz, zz, or zz
[b]Treasure[/b] zzCategory

[b]----- Special Abilities -----[/b]
[b]zzName (Ex/Sp/Su)[/b] zzDescription

Notes for the Competitors

Here are some tips for using the above stat block, and building stat blocks in general.

• ## is a placeholder for a number, so an entry like "Init +##" should be something like "Init +2" or "Init -2" in your monster stat block.
• zz is a placeholder for anything other than a number (obviously, "zzSize" means you should replace it with a game term for size, such as "Medium," not "zzMedium").
• When you are finished, your monster stat block should not have ## or zz in it at all.
• If your monster doesn't have an ability mentioned in the sample stat block format (such as DR, SR, Immune, an "plus" effect for a melee or ranged attack, a conditional skill bonuses, or racial skill modifiers), delete that ability and its placeholders. For example, if your monster doesn't have damage reduction, delete the "DR ##/zzMaterial" and the semicolon after it so the line starts with "Immune."
• If your monster has an ability that isn't presented in the sample stat block format (such as Spells Known), add it to the stat block, making sure to put it in the correct section of the stat block (for example, Spells Known goes in the Offense section) and match the bold and/or italic format for that ability as shown in a printed stat block.
• If the monster doesn't have Feats, Skills, or Languages, delete the entire Feats, Skills, or Languages line.
• If your monster has Space 5 ft. and Reach 5 ft., delete that entire line (the default is a monster with that size and reach).
• When you are finished, your stat block shouldn't have any "blank" entries like "DR —."
• The Defense, Offense, Statistics, and Ecology lines have "-----" at the beginning and end to visually offset those section headers. This is because the messageboard code doesn't allow you to underline text, and this is an easy and clear way to duplicate the printed stat block format for this purpose. Do not tamper with those lines.
• In a printed stat block, the individual listings for the spell-like abilities are indented, but it's difficult to make that work in the messageboards, so if your monster has spell-like abilities, just use the non-indented format as presented in the above sample stat block.
• If your monster has a new ability (such as "Arcane Vengeance" or "Eyeball Eater"), you must explain it in the Special Abilities part of the stat block.
• If your monster has a common ability from the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook (such as sneak attack) or a universal monster rule from the Bestiary or Bestiary 2 (such as grab or stench), you do not need to provide the description of that ability in the Special Abilities part of the stat block (we assume the reader knows how sneak attack, grab, and stench work, or can look them up in the appropriate book).
• When in doubt as to how to format part of your stat block, check the monsters in the Bestiary and universal monster rules.

Voting closes on Monday, February 6th and the Top 16 winners are announced on Tuesday, February 7th. At that time we’ll reveal the “twist” for Round 3!

Sean K Reynolds
Developer and RPG Superstar Judge

The Perfumer's Apprentice

by Kevin Andrew Murphy

Chapter Two: The Iris of Isarn

Norret had theories, but then my brother always had theories. It’s part of an alchemist’s job. He’d heard some story about assassins wanting to kill an ancient king, and rather than do something obvious like stab him, they got a girl and slowly fed her poison until she was immune but it oozed out her pores. The plan was that once the king made love to this girl, he’d die.

It seemed rather unlikely to me, since it hinged on the king actually wanting this one girl, but the assassins in bards' stories were never the ones who came up with practical plans. In any case, Norret wondered what happened to the “poison maiden” after that. It might also explain how Madame Eglantine’s husbands died.

He also mentioned something called an upas tree, a poisonous mulberry travelers said grew in Tian Xia. The perfume from its branches was supposedly so deadly that it would kill everything in fourteen miles. Were such a tree to have a dryad, that fey woman would undoubtedly be just as toxic.

This was a rather frightening thought, but as I remarked, if there were an upas tree growing somewhere in Isarn, someone would have noticed by now.

Norret’s third theory was that maybe Madame Eglantine was a toad witch like the legendary Crapaudine, mother of Coco the cockatrice, who everyone sang dirty songs about back in Dabril. If she’d used witchcraft to turn herself human, she still might detect as poison to my unicorn-horn senses.

I didn’t think Madame Eglantine had enough warts to be a toad. I also couldn’t picture a toad knitting. But being a witch and brewing so many poisons that some of them stuck to her? That seemed likely.

In any case, her food wasn’t poisoned and she was quite a good cook. It was hard to get food in Isarn, especially meat, but evidently proximity to the Revolutionary Council had its benefits. For our first supper there, there was a beautiful pork roast with gravy, fresh bread to sop it up, and baked apples. After months eating at second-rate inns or choking down my brother’s cooking, it was the sweetest meal I’d ever tasted.

My brother is a very good man and a good alchemist, but not a good cook. It’s a horrible thing to say about a Galtan, but it’s true. If you gave Norret a chicken, he’d be more likely to blow it up or bring it back to life than turn it into anything decent to eat.

The other boarders were mostly scholars, and while they were also appreciative of Madame’s cooking, they told us to get used to pork. There was occasionally goose for holidays, but meat mainly consisted of pork roasts, stews, dumplings, sausages, and even wonderful things like smoked ham and bacon and pork-liver paté, all accompanied by bread from the baker and fresh produce from the garden. The working theory was that Madame Eglantine had a longstanding affair with a high-ranking member of the hog butcher’s guild. There were also jokes about sympathetic magic and Madame using witchcraft to turn men into pigs, but the resident wizards all agreed there was no more magic in the meat than good Galtan cooking, and the only way anyone was going to turn into a pig was through gluttony.

Norret was a bit more worried because the elixir that brought me back from the dead was philosophic mercury, the same magic quicksilver that had gotten into his eye when he cracked the philosopher’s stone hidden in the duchess’s basement. “It’s an amalgam,” Norret explained. “The philosophic mercury mixes with natural magic and enhances it. I used eyebright to heal my eye, so the mercury fumes bonded with the residue. The unicorn’s horn is suffused with healing magic, so it brought you back to life and also let you detect poison. If the mercury were to alloy with other substances...”

I was horrified. “You mean if I eat enough pork I’m going to turn into a pig?”

Norret looked thoughtful. We were back in our chambers with the door locked, so he had his eye patch flipped up. The iris of his left eye was shimmering and silver like a mirror. “Probably not all at once,” he said at last. “You’d probably just grow orc tusks first. They’d actually be boar tusks, but everyone would think you were a half-orc, so it would still come to much the same thing.” I was even more horrified until he tousled my hair and I realized he was making fun of me. “Relax. I’ve got a present for you. I know you’ve been complaining about my cooking, and there was trouble getting food before, so I made this...”

He reached into his pocket and took out a silver nutmeg grater. He flipped the catch and inside it were little ivory nuts. They were part of the unicorn horn that had resurrected me. There was also a longer bit, the tip of a spiraled horn. Norret had shaved it down even further. As he took it out, I realized that he’d carved it into a horn spoon like you’d use to eat eggs.

“Watch.” Norret took one of his alchemist’s bowls and placed the spoon inside. All at once it began to leak white fluid. It rose up, higher and higher, thick and pasty until it threatened to overflow the sides, at which point Norret removed the spoon and pushed the bowl toward me. “Here, taste it.” He handed me the spoon.

I half expected it to crawl out of the bowl, some horrible animate pudding or jelly like they told nightmare stories about late at night in the taverns, but while it quivered, it stayed where it was. At last I put the spoon in and took a taste of the white pudding. It tasted... like paper maché, with maybe a bit of goat’s milk.

“Do you like it?” my brother asked proudly. “It’s blancmange. Your favorite!”

I remembered. Our mother used to make blancmange for Crystalhue. It was a pudding of rice and almonds with maybe a bit of shredded white chicken breast if we were lucky, flavored with rosewater and once a pinch of cinnamon smuggled in from Katapesh. “It could maybe use a little rosewater...”

Norret gave a wry smile. “I tried to add that, but it wouldn’t take. But at least we do have plenty of rose oil on hand.”

While my brother couldn’t cook, he could make rosewater. It made the pudding taste better, if not much.

That said, the ivory spoon was a very thoughtful gift, and amazing magic besides. “How does it work?”

“Spontaneous generation.” Norret said this as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “The same way that barnacles drop into the sea to become geese, the alicorn produces unicorn milk and bone porridge.” He grinned proudly. “It should be very nourishing. My friend Melzec once told me about a dwarf whose son was suckled by a unicorn and grew to become a giant.”

I stopped eating. “So if I eat this I’m going to turn into a giant?”

“Well, probably not all at once.” My brother looked thoughtful. “I’m tall so you’ll probably be tall anyway, and you could always stoop. And it’s better than boar’s tusks.”

All at once the bowl levitated into the air and the spoon flew out of my hand. Norret opened his mouth to say something more, but the spoon flew in, feeding him a spoonful of bland blancmange like he was a very large baby.

Sometimes being haunted by a dead strumpet isn’t that bad.

“Maybe you could find a way for us to see Rhodel,” I suggested.

Norret opened his mouth again, but every time he did, he got another spoonful of pudding. Eventually he just nodded.

Another thing you should know about my brother is that when he’s given a task or a puzzle, he sets to it with a single-minded passion. He’d already talked to enough necromancers about my condition, so he knew about folk who could see into Pharasma’s realm. Finding an alchemical formula to do that, however, was the trick.

As much as I love my country, I also have to admit that many of Galt’s best wizards died or fled during the Revolution and took their books with them. What’s left are fragments, but fortunately Madame Eglantine’s boarding house had a number of residents with some of these fragments, and Norret was able to trade secrets. One wizard sold him a formula for a costly ointment that was supposed to allow one to see through illusions and deceptions. A bard told a story about another salve that allowed a midwife to peer into the First World of the fey.

There was no recipe for that second salve, but while inquiring about it, Norret was able to bargain for a copy of a manuscript the wizard claimed had come all the way from the Library of Leng.

I’d never heard of Leng, but Norret was certainly excited about it, so I guessed Leng was some dead noble.

In any case, the manuscript was partially burned and written in strange runes, but Norret was able to translate the most important bit: a method to see through the doors of reality into the chambers beyond.

There were pages of complicated illustrations showing rays coming out of eyes like Calistria’s daggers, pictures of all sorts of undead—horrible things like glowing skeletons and men flayed alive—and requirements for everything from alchemically purified pitchblende to the perfume of “the flower of the messengers.” There were even partial instructions for forging a magic ring.

Norret thought that wizards were always overcomplicating things with rings, which he thought they used for status more than anything else. Beyond that, the iris of the eye was a ring already. The “flower of the messengers,” it turned out, was another iris, as “a message” is what an iris meant in the language of flowers.

The iris was also the flower of Isarn, the ancient crest of the city. Set into the curve of the river, Isarn had a huge number of the flowers fluttering along her banks like yellow flags. Before the Revolution, the royal irises could only be picked with the king’s permission, on penalty of death. After the Revolution, there was no king, but the penalty was the same.

It was a deed that could have cost us our heads many times over, so Norret and I gathered the armloads we needed in the dead of night. Dodging the city watch and patrols of the Gray Gardeners, we took the flowers back to the boarding house. We wrapped them in greased cloths so they would breathe their perfume into the fat as they died, then cleaned ourselves up and went and ate the leftovers from Madame Eglantine’s excellent supper.

Three days later, the iris pomade was washed with alcohol, then evaporated down to a golden perfume absolute. Norret mixed this with the yellow powder he’d extracted from the pitchblende. “All right,” my brother said, holding up the few precious golden drops, “let’s see if the librarians of Leng had their manuscripts in order...”

"Orlin is no ordinary child."

He tilted his head back and dripped the drops into his left eye, blinked a few times, then looked at me. His left eye changed from quicksilver to gold and began to glow. “Orlin, are you all right?” He took a step back, a shocked expression on his face.

“I’m fine, Norret.”

He continued to look disturbed, then looked at the door. He stepped toward it, then bumped into it. “Is there a door here?”

“Uh, yes...”

He began to look at his hand then, clearly fascinated, looking at it as if he’d never seen it before. “I’m... not undead now, am I, Orlin?”

“I hope not.” Honestly, my brother’s left eye was glowing like they say the eyes of liches do in all the stories.

He stepped back toward the worktable, bumping into it. “Fetch me the lead foil. It’s right there.” He pointed at his backpack, but I had to sort through several inner pouches before I found the one he wanted. Norret took it from me quickly and held it up, covering his eye, then breathed a sigh of relief. “There, that’s better...”

“What’s better?” I asked.

“Those old wizards, they weren’t as foolish as I thought. This phenomenon would be much better with a ring you could take off...” He took the lead sheet away from his glowing eye and looked at me, then moved it back. “Hand me the tin snips, would you?”

I found them, and the metal punch too, and Norret quickly fashioned an eye patch from the lead, which he placed over his regular eye patch.

“So you’re not seeing Rhodel?”

Norret chuckled darkly. “No. Very much not so. I’m so used to looking at alchemical allegories and metaphors that I failed to read the literal meaning. The wizard’s method for looking through doors into the chambers beyond? It’s not for looking into Pharasma’s realm, or the First World either. It’s for looking through actual doors into literal chambers beyond. It also lets you see bones through flesh, or even look through walls.”

He paused then, glancing at the ceiling. Our rooms were on the uppermost story of the boarding house, and on the other side of the ceiling was Madame Eglantine’s attic apartment.

Norret flipped his lead eye patch up, then went pale. He stepped about, looking, then looked back at me. “We can’t stay here, Orlin. We have to go.” He covered his eye back up, almost as an afterthought.

“What?” I said. “And miss supper? Madame said she was serving croque-monsieur with ham!”

Norret looked like he might never want supper again. “No. We won’t be having supper here. Gather your things and go wait for me at the tavern at the bottom of the street. There is something I must do here first.”

“What’s going on? What did you see?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“What? I’m not a child. I’m almost twelve! I’ve even been dead!”

“Yes,” Norret said, “but I’ve been to war and you have not.” He took me by the shoulders and looked me squarely in the eyes. “Trust me, there are some things you see that can never be unseen, and will haunt you worse than any spirit.” He glanced apologetically to the air. “Present company excepted.”

The last time I had seen my older brother this serious was when I asked what had become of our father and our brother Ceron. I knew he was trying to protect me. I trusted that he’d give me an answer in his own time, so I went to the tavern at the bottom of the street and waited.

He never came.

Coming Next Week: Mysterious disappearances in Chapter Three of Kevin Andrew Murphy’s “The Perfumer’s Apprentice.”

Kevin Andrew Murphy is the author of numerous stories, poems, and novels, as well as a writer for Wild Cards, George R. R. Martin's shared-world anthology line. His previous Pathfinder Tales stories include "The Secret of the Rose and Glove" (also starring Norret) and "The Fifth River Freedom," the fourth chapter of Prodigal Sons in the Kingmaker Pathfinder's Journal. For more information, visit his website.

Illustration by Carlos Villa.