Pathfinder Battles Preview: The Living Dead

Friday, September 28, 2012

Last night we finished up session 35 of James Jacobs's office campaign, which has morphed into an adaptation of Gary Gygax's classic fantasy Egyptian superdungeon, Necropolis. James has done a lot to make the adventure his own, including transporting it to the nation of Osirion in the Pathfinder world, and adding several devious traps and monsters not in the original adventure.

But we're still in ancient tombs and pyramids and stuff, though, so if one thing has changed, it's that we're running into a LOT more undead these days.

Which brings me to today's preview of upcoming figures from the Shattered Star set of Pathfinder Battles prepainted plastic miniatures! The set supports the brand-new Shattered Star Adventure Path, which sets the players on a quest around Varisia to reunite an ancient artifact created by the progenitor of the Runelords. It's a sort of sequel to other Varisia-based Adventure Paths, including Rise of the Runelords, Curse of the Crimson Throne, and Second Darkness, but the campaign also stands alone as a self-contained Adventure Path.

And, truth be told, it's got a fair number of undead.

Here are two of them, both ready to menace your player characters and both slated at the uncommon rarity.

Up first is the Skeletal Champion, a figure I've wanted to create since I first saw his illustration in the Pathfinder RPG Bestiary. We later used the same illustration in the Pathfinder RPG Beginner Box, where the Skeletal Champion is one of the major antagonists provided in the set. I've long had a goal to create miniatures of every monster in that set, so when it came time to plan the Shattered Star miniatures set (and the Shattered Star Adventure Path itself), I asked James Jacobs to make sure to include a skeletal champion somewhere in the campaign. He obliged, and I finally got my miniature.

The Mummy Cleric is a similar story. Back when we were doing the Rise of the Runelords set, we almost slipped in a "Thassilonian Mummy" figure, partly because a few appeared in the Adventure Path, and partly because the Mummy in Heroes & Monsters, our first Pathfinder Battles set, looked a lot more like a rank-and-file bruiser from a Scooby Doo episode than a chilling, memorable villain.

The Thassilonian Mummy didn't make the final cut for Runelords, so when it came time to create the Shattered Star outline, I asked James if he might include more Thassilonian Mummies in the new campaign (which was, after all, set in the ruins of Thassilon). We then asked artist Tyler Walpole to draw what one of these guys might look like, and he came up with a skull-faced menace that blew our socks off.

Accordingly, this figure is now one of the tougher opponents PCs will face in the campaign. He's still Thassilonian, but he's his own villain, a nasty undead cleric of Groetus, God of the End Times. We call him (appropriately enough) the Mummy Cleric.

Good luck with this one, player characters!

That's it for this week. I have other undead I could show you, but we have a few more weeks to go before things get really spoooooky for Halloween.

I have tricks, and I have treats.

Erik Mona
Publisher

Paizo Publishing's 10th Anniversary Retrospective—Year 7 (2009)

Launching Our Own RPG

Thursday, September 27, 2012

This blog entry is the eighth in a series of blogs commemorating Paizo's 10th anniversary.
Click here to read the first installment.

One of the things that has plagued Paizo through most of its existence is that every year, we end up throwing a major project or two on top of an already full product release schedule. In 2005, it was the Shackled City hardcover. In 2006, it was the Dragon Compendium, Monster Ecologies and the Kill Doctor Lucky board game. In 2007, we launched our Adventure Paths and Modules lines as well as the Stonehenge board game. In 2008, we published the hardcover campaign setting sourcebook and launched the Player Companion line, and we ran the Pathfinder RPG playtest as well.

Surprise! 2009 wasn't any different. And this time, we were taking on perhaps the biggest add-ons yet: the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook, weighing in at 576 pages, and the Bestiary, with its hefty 328 pages. All told, we were adding more than 900 pages to our regular workload. It ended up requiring hundreds of hours of overtime and the combined effort of dozens of employees.

One of the first decisions to make was the physical form that our rulebooks would take. Traditionally, the core D&D rules encompassed three volumes: the Player's Handbook, the Dungeon Master's Guide, and the Monster Manual. We thought about following a similar format for Pathfinder, but it had always bugged us that players needed to own the DMG if they wanted to look up magic items, so we decided to wrap all of the information that you would need to run a game of Pathfinder, minus the monster writeups, into a single Core Rulebook. The Bestiary would remain its own book.

We also had to make a huge decision about how far we were going to stray from the 3.5 SRD. Our alpha playtest had introduced a number of new systems that pushed the boundaries of backwards compatibility. Ultimately, we decided to keep Pathfinder fairly close to its 3.5 roots while using years and years of GM experiences to update and fine-tune the system. We certainly didn't fix everything we could have in 3.5—some issues are endemic to the math underlying the core system—but we did fix a lot of the problem areas.

The white board lets the editors exercise their inner artistic talents.

So why did we swing the pendulum toward backward compatibility? Because our customers were telling us that they didn't want their trove of 3.0 and 3.5 books to become obsolete. Everyone had a pile of Wizards of the Coast products, of course, but the OGL and the d20 license had also inspired an explosion of print and PDF books the likes of which the gaming industry had never before seen. And we really wanted people to be able to use all of those products with Pathfinder. For the most part, I think that we did a good job striking the balance between compatibility and innovation.

Not surprisingly, the new RPG had a huge effect on the rest of our product lines. Since we were launching a new system at Gen Con, all of the other products scheduled to be released from that date forward needed reflect the new rules. The problem is that we usually contract freelance writers eight months or so before the intended release date of a product, and the rules were still in flux at that point. What to do?

We decided to contract in-house authors to write the first adventures and adventure path volumes for the new game. Since our own people were working with the new rules as they were being written, we figured that they would be in the best position to use those rules to write adventures. Even hedging our bets that way, we still had lots of issues, but at least they could be worked out in person and in real time, rather than via email or telephone. Still, not a task for the faint of heart. Whenever possible, we also planned products that were relatively rules light for much of the year.

Lisa Stevens is flanked by future Paizo employees Liz Courts and Adam Daigle at Gen Con and cover artist Wayne Reynolds poses with his copy of the Core Rulebook.

As we prepared to send the game to the printer, we faced another big question—how many Core Rulebooks should we print? Until this book, we'd mainly printed adventures and campaign sourcebooks, products aimed pretty much exclusively at GMs. Now, for the first time, we had a book that was aimed at players. We ended up setting a print run three times as big as any other print run we had ever made. The cost was staggering and a bit unnerving. But distributor orders flooded in, and we sold out of our first print run before it even arrived from the printer! We were floored. We thought that the Pathfinder RPG was going to do well, but none of us thought that we'd sell out of a print run three times bigger than any other print run... and before the product was even released. It gave us an early indication of the success that the Pathfinder RPG was going to have. We ended up setting our second print run even higher than the first, committing Paizo to TWO staggering print bills before any money even came in from the first sale!

Of course, shipping all those books around the world also ended up being a bit of a struggle. We always pride ourselves in doing a great job of packing our shipments, but the hardcover Core Rulebook made us re-evaluate our processes, eventually leading us to use book corners to keep the books pristine. Another hurdle was the weight of the book. In 2007, the USPS discontinued surface mail, meaning that everything now goes by air, and international shipping costs go through the roof if your parcel weighs more than four pounds. The Core Rulebook exceeds that limit before you even add the weight of box and packaging materials! To this day, customer service continues to deal with a ton of emails and messageboard posts from customers complaining about the cost of shipping the Core Rulebook.

We also had a big debate when it came to pricing the Core Rulebook PDF. Normally, our PDFs are priced at about 70% of the cover price of the corresponding print edition, a formula that would result in a price of $34.99 for the Core Rulebook PDF. But we had already decided to post the rules themselves for free on the Pathfinder Reference Document, so the price to have them neatly laid out and beautifully illustrated needed to be something much closer to "free." We ended up settling on $9.99, and right out of the gate, PDF sales were astounding. We earned so much goodwill from that decision that we've continued to offer all of our rulebooks in PDF form at that price.

We also had to decide how we were going to let other publishers interact with the Pathfinder rules. We had long been believers in the OGL, so we never considered anything other than making our rules completely open. However, the OGL specifically prohibits publishers from saying their products are compatible with trademarked brands like "Dungeons & Dragons" or "Pathfinder" without another agreement, so we came up with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Compatibility License, which has allowed the existence of hundreds upon hundreds of Pathfinder RPG–compatible products by dozens and dozens of publishers. The growth of the third-party community has been one of my favorite parts of the whole Pathfinder RPG business.

We also created our Community Use Policy, which has allowed customers and fans to create an incredible diversity of free products, websites, and other materials that expand our game and our world in ways that we never imagined.

One great example of this community collaboration is Wayfinder. Originally plotted as a fanzine to be given away at the first official PaizoCon, Wayfinder has become a biannual publication that recently released issue #7. It has earned a lot of praise from the gaming community, even garnering its own ENnie award nominations. Liz Courts originally helmed the editor-in-chief role for Wayfinder, but she turned that title over to PaizoCon founder Tim Nightingale when we hired her on at Paizo.

One benefit of the success of Pathfinder is the ability to license other companies to produce Pathfinder products. One such deal in 2009 was with Q-Workshop, to produce a line of dice themed around our Adventure Paths. To date, they've released six sets of Pathfinder dice.

The sculpt for Reaper's first original Pathfinder miniature is unveiled at Gen Con!

In 2009, we landed one of our bigger licenses in Reaper, producing unpainted metal miniatures. We had initially licensed Crocodile Games to make Pathfinder minis, and their figures were great, but they were just coming out too slowly for us. So after a year or so, we decided to give Reaper a call to see if they were interested. Imagine our surprise when we not only received a "yes" but a resounding "Hell yes!" from them. With two to four minis released every month, Reaper has built up quite a stash, with 153 different figures in release or on the way as I type this!

The second year of our RPG Superstar contest saw an increase in the number of contestants. Original judge Erik Mona had to drop out as we were keeping him way too busy, so Sean K Reynolds came in as his replacement. Contestant Neil Spicer emerged as the victor with his Realm of the Fellnight Queen proposal. Neil is the quintessential RPG Superstar: hitherto undiscovered talent that Paizo has since come to rely upon. Since his victory, Neil has authored five Adventure Path volumes (contributing to Kingmaker, Serpent's Skull, Carrion Crown, Jade Regent and Skull & Shackles), and he has gone on to become one of RPG Superstar's best judges as well! In its first two years, RPG Superstar had already brought Paizo a number of great freelancers, as well as two employees—not a bad start!

2009 was also the year we took over PaizoCon as an official Paizo convention. We were all impressed with the job Tim Nightingale did with 2008's fan-run PaizoCon, but it was clear to everyone that it could be so much more if we as a company got behind it. Interestingly enough, the impetus for this move saw its genesis in another convention, the Origins Game Fair in Columbus, Ohio. Origins had been a big and important convention dating back to the '70s. For decades, Origins and Gen Con were the cornerstones of the summer convention season for many publishers. But over the years, Gen Con had grown in prominence on the national stage while Origins slipped away to become a large regional show. Paizo had been going to Origins since our inception, but we'd been spending an increasing amount of money attending the show each year. Sending a large portion of our staff across the country, providing them food and lodging, buying space in the dealer hall, and shipping our booth and product across the country is very expensive, and sales in the dealer hall continued to decline each year as attendence fell. So we decided to make a corporate decision—if we were going to (hopefully) just break even each year on a convention, we might as well make it one that we owned, right here in the Seattle area.

A mountain of Core Rulebooks awaits the swarm of gamers on the first day of Gen Con! There are more copies underneath the black cloth... and we sold them all!

So we reached out to Tim and asked him if we could take over PaizoCon for 2009. He gladly accepted and we were off to the races! Our first problem was securing a location. Tim's 2008 PaizoCon had around 50 attendees, and since we were aiming to have three or four times that many people for PaizoCon 2009, we needed a bigger space. We soon learned that most hotels are either set up for small corporate conferences the size of the first PaizoCon, or they're optimized for thousands of attendees. It seemed we were exactly the wrong size. After months of searching, we stumbled across the Coast Hotel in Bellevue, just minutes from where our office was. Its size proved perfect for the next couple of years as the con was growing. We were able to take most of the rooms in the hotel, packing it with gamers from top to bottom. The Coast gave PaizoCon a very intimate feeling that suited us just fine. We ended up having just over 200 paid attendees for PaizoCon 2009, plus another 50 or so guests and staffers. Our first ever Guest of Honor was super designer Monte Cook and his wife Sue, while our first artist Guest of Honor was Eva Widermann.

One of the big surprises for us was how well the Paizo store did at the show. We'd anticipated that only the most hardcore Paizo enthusiasts would journey all the way out to Seattle to attend PaizoCon, and hardcore fans—pretty much by definition—tend to already have everything you've made. So we expected sales to be tepid at best. To our surprise, we've eclipsed our budget for the Paizo store each year at the con.

Gen Con was a very big deal for Paizo in 2009, for it was the first public release of the Core Rulebook. Our big question for the show: How many Core Rulebooks do we bring to sell? Memories of the year we brought too many copies of the Shackled City hardcover haunted us. We wanted to have enough rulebooks to last the entire convention, but we didn't want to ship pallets of the books home if we brought too many. To complicate matters, we knew that the quantity we were earmarking for Gen Con would be among the very last unsold copies of the first printing of the book, so for many folks, this was going to be one of the only ways to get the book for a few months while we waited on the reprint. We decided to go big, bringing a ton of books to the con, using cases of books to build a huge table in the middle of our booth, stacking more books on top.

When the doors opened on the first day of the show, the tidal wave of customers rushing to our booth was staggering. Chaos ensued, and it took the combined might of the entire Paizo staff to wrangle a semblance of order to the line, which wrapped around our booth once and then tailed off into the art show next door. In order to get people through the line quickly, I borrowed an idea from White Wolf's successful Gen Con launch of the Werewolf RPG. I quickly grabbed Erik Mona, and we gathered a box and a pile of books and headed down the line. If anybody in line was buying only the Core Rulebook, they could give us $60 cash—the cost of the Core Rulebook plus sales tax, rounded up to avoid making change—and leave the line, book in hand. Dozens and dozens of people took us up on our offer, and we were able to cut the line down to a paltry two-hour wait! Amazingly, we did a nearly perfect job predicting the number of books we needed, selling our last copies late on Sunday!

The first print run of the Pathfinder Core Rulebook made it to the new Paizo office before the rest of the company did!	The Paizo staff hangs out with the cast of "Burnt Offerings," a school play based on the first Pathfinder Adventure Path!	The Paizo golem is one of the last to leave the old office on moving day.	Conan O'Brien gives a late-night TV shout-out to our Yetisburg card game!

At the ENnie Awards, Paizo won 4 golds and 2 silvers. The awards received were:

• Best Art, Cover: Silver Medal for Pathfinder #19, Howl of the Carrion King
• Best Cartography: Gold Medal for Pathfinder Chronicles Second Darkness Map Folio
• Best Adventure: Gold Medal for Pathfinder #19: Howl of the Carrion King
• Best Setting: Gold Medal for Pathfinder Chronicles Campaign Setting
• Best Miniatures Product: Gold Medal for Flip-Mat: Waterfront Tavern
• Best Publisher: Silver Medal

When we got back from Gen Con, there was no rest for the weary; we had to move our entire operation from our old office in Bellevue to our new office in Redmond. For much of the previous year, we had been desperately searching for new office space to suit our changing needs. When we moved into our Bellevue office a few years before, we were a magazine business with a fledgling e-commerce store. Our warehouse needs were small. As our business had shifted to book publishing, pallets of new products were filling our warehouse, spilling over into the underground parking garage. We needed new office space with a seriously large warehouse, and soon. But on Seattle's east side, a fairly large office space adjoining a fairly large warehouse space is not a common combination. We searched high and low, and only at the last minute did we find the space we are currently in. Our new space had been leased by two separate tenants who both went bankrupt at the same time, leaving the landlord with half a building and a big warehouse to fill. He was very excited when we said we would take over the space with only minor changes.

As 2009 came to an end, Paizo was firmly settled into our new digs, and the Core Rulebook was selling so well that we were already preparing for a third printing. The Bestiary had just been released and was also seeing great sales. It was looking like Paizo was going to weather the shift to our own RPG game system with flying colors. Now we had the challenge of building on the successes of 2009 to establish Pathfinder as the preeminent brand in RPG gaming. A lofty task that was going to take a lot of hard work and a little bit of luck...

Employees who started in 2009 (in order of hiring date):
Ross Byers, Assistant Software Developer
Crystal Frasier, Production Specialist
Will Chase, Warehouse Specialist
Sara Marie Rip (now Teter), Customer Service Representative
Rob McCreary, Assistant Editor

Employees who left in 2008 (in order of their end date):
Drew Pocza
Brock Mitchel-Slentz
Alison McKenzie

Lisa Stevens
CEO

My Path to Adventure

Rob McCreary joins the
Paizo staff!

My time with Paizo began with the inaugural RPG Superstar competition in 2008. I was living in Prague, Czech Republic at the time, and entered the contest on a whim. I ended up as one of the Top Four finalists, which led to my first freelance gig for Paizo, working on the Pathfinder Chronicles Campaign Setting. From that time on, I was hooked. I went to Gen Con UK in Reading, England specifically to meet Erik Mona, Jason Bulmahn, and Josh Frost (and joined Erik's trivia-dominating "Coalition of the Willing" team), and to play in Season 0 of Pathfinder Society organized play. And I kept bugging James Jacobs and Wes Schneider for more freelance work.

By 2009, I knew I wanted to work at Paizo full time. There were only two problems: I was still living in Europe, and Paizo didn't seem to be hiring. I decided to go and meet some of the Paizo staff in person, to put more names to faces, and even more importantly, give them a face to go with the name of their freelancer-in-Europe whom most of them had only talked to in emails. I flew back to the States to attend PaizoCon 2009, and while I was there, I made a point of mentioning to Lisa, Erik, James, and Wes that I wanted to work for Paizo, that I was willing to move back to the US to do so, and to keep me in my mind if they had any job opportunities.

In September, an editorial assistant position at Paizo did open up, and I wasted no time applying for it, once more assuring Wes that I was definitely willing and able to move back to the States for the job. After an editing test, a Skype interview (the only interview question I remember is Lisa asking me what class would I be if I were a Pathfinder RPG character), and lots of emails back and forth, I sat back to wait, and worked on convincing my European wife, whom I had just married a couple of weeks before, that moving to the US was a good thing.

I received word that I got the job in the middle of my honeymoon in Greece, and suddenly my wife and I had to start preparing for the move we had talked about but never really thought would happen. I had less than a month to get everything ready to move from Prague to the Seattle area, and on November 1, I started my first official day working for Paizo. Since then, I've moved from editing to development, and now I spend most of my time developing the Pathfinder Adventure Path.

Almost three years later, I still have trouble believing how everything worked out. Like almost every gamer, I used to dream of being a game designer, but I never seriously pursued that goal and never thought it would happen. I entered RPG Superstar on a whim, and fell in love with writing and working for Paizo.

I can honestly say that this is the best job I have ever had, and though it's hard work a lot of the time, it's also fun. Every day, I get to work with some of the best freelancers in the industry, and collaborate with amazing people who are passionate about their work and their play at a company that truly cares about its employees, its fans, and the game we all love.

Rob McCreary
Developer

Customer Carebear Stare!

Mostly by sheer chance and dumb luck, I ended up in a gaming group with a GM who was really excited about this Pathfinder thing. He convinced the group to try out the Beta Playtest, and was also able to convince me to go to PaizoCon and tack on a banquet ticket.

The staff I met were super friendly, willing to just hang out and chat, and the members of the community I met were very inclusive. I left wishing I knew game design, not because I wanted to design games, but because I wanted to work at Paizo.

Several months later, someone in my gaming group casually mentioned Paizo was hiring for customer service. The listing had been up for a while, so I knew I needed to act fast. I nearly talked myself out of applying a million times. In the end it came down to knowing that never trying would hurt worse than the rejection of not being chosen.

I was asked to come in for an interview. I can't even begin to describe the nervous panic. Butterflies in the stomach, palms sweating, I sat in the conference room waiting, and then Cosmo poked his head in to let me know it would be just a few minutes until Lisa was ready. The CEO? In my interview? Ack! I did my best to stay outwardly calm while my insides turned to jelly. However, Lisa, Jeff, and Cosmo were great, and it immediately felt like a conversation rather than an interview. I kept realizing over and over how much I wanted to work with these people. The atmosphere and company philosophy were exactly what I was looking for. I left convinced Paizo would be perfect for me, but I was sure I would never get the position.

When Jeff called and offered me the job, I was through the roof. Uprooting to a whole new job and learning on a sharp curve? Bring it! Commute twice as long? Sure. Considerable pay cut? I'd make it work.

And I am so glad I did.

I found a job where I not only like my coworkers, but I like the customers. I found a company that actually cares about all levels of employees and actively encourages thinking about how to make things better for the customers. I was completely shell-shocked the first time I made a suggestion to Cosmo, and he said "Yeah, that's a good idea; go talk to the tech team and see if it's possible." And then the tech team said, "We'll have it ready the next time we roll the site." And then the next time they rolled the site, there it was: my idea, out there, making customers' experiences better! I found a place where I feel like I fit in.

I also found a husband, so that might be biasing my experience slightly.

Sara Marie Teter
Customer Service

Shattered Steel

by F. Wesley Schneider

Chapter Three: Wounds that Rust

I crashed down on my upper back with a peal of metal thunder, the impact as much a sound as a physical blow, jarring every steel plate and fragile bone. Flashes of lightning exploded within my helm, and I fought to remain conscious as I slid sideways down a mound of rubble, part of a small avalanche of splinters and broken bricks. I think I momentarily lost my senses, as the next thing I remember was a commotion of unpleasant sensations, pinpricks cascading across my limbs as my confused body tried to either reawaken itself or rage against the grip of paralysis. Something in my memory urgently vied for attention, the lingering flickers of rational thought screaming at me, going hoarse with desperation.

A shadow fell across my unseeing gaze, and my mind rallied.

I kicked as fiercely as I could, silently exulting at the sensation of my legs—though heavy—actually moving. The motion slid me further down the pile of wreckage, spinning me just as a heavy object impacted the rubble where my head had been, pelting my slightly askew visor with debris. My heels hit the semi-level stone of the courtyard and I was up, taking two long stumbling strides as one hand righted my helmet and the other gripped my sword. I spun, my blade half from its sheath before reflex threw me into another motion more akin to ballet than battle.

The barbed spike of a halberd whistled as it swung, swiping through vision up-flung by the extreme arch of my back. Muscles like taut chains snapped my torso upright, and I faced my attacker with blade fully drawn, a deadly extension of my outstretched arm.

What light filtered into the courtyard barely glinted from blackened plates as much weapons as armor, bladed and forged with the visage of a fiendish skull dominating the breastplate, its monstrous teeth gnashed together in a wall of daggers. The infernal steel piled upon a mountainous figure, his face now hidden behind the featureless visor of a newly donned helm. Had the night itself sent its own legionnaire against me, its manifestation could not have been more menacing.

A Hellknight. Now it was clear who Quil had found to avenge him against the Calavettis so affordably. Initially I'd assumed just some sadistic gang member or bloodthirsty lunatic, but those possibilities had largely evaporated when I'd seen the Slug's Trail emptied of its huddled occupants. So much for optimism. The Hellknights served no lord other than their own grim vision of justice, meting it out sometimes for the coin of those seeking lawful revenge, and sometimes merely to make examples of those who flaunted their crimes. I suspected Quil had convinced this monstrosity that the Calavettis fell into that latter category—they had robbed the crooked gambler, after all. It'd be easy to see them as the villains and undertake their execution with only half the story—Quil's half. I couldn't help but wonder if I would have done the same if Quil had come to me.

The Hellknight's tempered, dispassionate voice jerked me from my fantasy of morality, his words sounding almost mechanical as they reverberated from his heavy helm to mine. "There's no defense for your being here," he said, his tone that of judge delivering his verdict. "Having rejected amnesty, you are a war criminal and a traitor to the new order. Throw down your weapon and submit."

He was right. Just wearing this armor made me a criminal, an embodiment of slaughter and mad ambition. After the queen fell, the city's new rulers offered us our old lives back. They humbled us and called it mercy.

But they didn't know what it had been like. They might have had their families killed and their bodies scarred, but so had we—and worse, we had done it to ourselves. We were the Gray Maidens, the elite, the bodyguards of a queen as beautiful as she was ambitious—and viciously insane. Few chose to join the queen's guard, but she and her followers were not to be denied. The beautiful, the talented, the unscrupulous—I forget which I'd been—all of us were made to serve. Those of us who hadn't reveled in our cruel authority had our minds shackled as thoroughly as our bodies, the parts of us that made us who we were locked away, transforming us into the marionettes of a mad woman. The scholar I once was—the one who had dreams, who indulged in magic words, and whose blood I too often bled—died long ago, executed in all but body for deeds performed against her will, but performed nonetheless. And not the sweep of a thousand bureaucrats' pardons would resurrect her. There was only this. Only a chance, a hope, that I could make something right in whatever days I had remaining. That I might have a chance to prove that something like a heart still beat within this armor.

But the Hellknight cared nothing for my redemption. His halberd hung in the space between us, its curved blade all too suggestive of an executioner's axe. If I submitted, at best I'd be handed over to the city guard, put on public display, then executed as either a zealot or a dangerous lunatic. Or he might exact his view of justice here and now—as he did with the Calvettis. He didn't appear to be carrying any manacles. In any case, I doubted he would be the first of his kind to show sympathy.

I stepped forward, as if preparing to lunge. The knight's weapon came around in a predictable arc, but far faster than I'd anticipated, barely giving me an instant to dance back. The blade passed and I shot forward again, seeing how close I could get between scythelike swipes. Farther this time, but not far enough. The Hellknight channeled the momentum of the long-hafted axe like a deadly conductor, directing his steel around in a lethal figure eight, the weapon never even slowing as it wheeled around, intent on cleaving me in two. I flung myself back just barely in time, the point of the halberd's spear tip clattering across the steel scales of my midsection. If he'd been able to adjust his weight fast enough, he could have impaled me in that instant. I slid farther out of reach, and regarded him even more cautiously.

He knew his weapon, had greater range, was likely stronger, and was at least as well trained as I. This was going to be nasty—but he didn't have all the advantages.

The Hellknights serve no lord other than their own grim vision of justice.

His heavy blade waving between us, I darted in once more, directly toward the weapon. The spear tip shot forward to meet me, seeking to punch through my armor's weaker scales. It hit almost directly—an inch closer to my middle and it would have skewered me. As it was, it struck where I'd intended. I spun with the impact, twisting hard away from the curved axe head. Flexible scales rolled the weapon's point across my midsection, and for an instant the knight saw my back—probably believing he'd struck a deadly wound. I eagerly disillusioned him. My upraised sword arm came around with my spin, sliding my blade cleanly under his spiked gardbrace, tearing into his shoulder.

A growl of surprised pain rang within the dark armor and I yanked my sword back as though it were a knife, preparing to stab again. With me inside his guard, he couldn't effectively bring his polearm to bear. I had him.

His armored fist erupted upward, catching me under the chin. Stars flashed across my vision, and the blow snapped my jaw up hard, rattling my teeth as though I'd caught a thrown rock in my mouth. I stumbled back, slashing wildly, but succeeding only in scoring the fiendish face snarling upon his sculpted breastplate.

My sword almost didn't come up fast enough. The axe-head skidded along my blade and I had to use both hands to throw it aside, the power of his blow forcing me back another step. The vibrations of the impact rang through me, dulling the feeling in my arms. Just as fast, the next strike came. The bloodied Hellknight had perhaps lost a measure of his composure, but none of his vigor. His attacks hammered down, raining over me like a taskmaster's lash. Before the tremors of the last strike subsided the next was already falling. It felt as though my bones were being reduced to dust in their sockets. I gave ground just to keep my balance, each impact forcing me back farther, each step a chance to slip or find myself backed against a wall.

I felt his rhythm before I even realized it, my limbs expecting the coming blow, my sword arm rising to parry an attack high and to the left. The Hellknights prided themselves on their mercilessness, on their unfeeling exaction of law, but obviously didn't value imagination. This one had trained himself to be a clockwork soldier—deadly, but predictable.

I, on the other hand, had the dubious fortune of having been trained by maniacs.

The halberd came leveled for my head, and I wasn't there. Dropping low, I slid under the swipe and drove my blade down with all my weight, puncturing the metal guarding his left foot, momentarily pinning him to the ground. His growl worsened to a roar as he reflexively tried to jerk back. Lashing wildly, the butt of his weapon came down hard on my shoulder, knocking me away. I rolled as best I could, slashing at his legs. The armor seemed weaker there, and my steel cleaved through leather and skin—but not without a price. The spear-tip fell, and I threw up my arm to catch it. The barbed spike grated through metal and flesh with equal ease.

Immediately, the length of my arm coursed with wet warmth, rivulets leaking through armored gaps. It looked black as oil in the courtyard's shadows. My sword rose wildly, scraping the plates of my attacker's groin. It didn't find a mark, but the impact alone caused him to flinch, pulling his bloodied weapon along with him.

Bounding to my feet, I pressed forward, trying to keep him on guard as long as possible. We clashed like living swords, both of us weapons honed for similar purposes, but still far from alike. Where my armor granted me flexibility, his reinforced the impression of some hellish automaton, and what strikes he couldn't deflect with his weapon he beat aside with gauntleted fists. Again and again my blade struck like a cat's claw, his metallic hisses signaling a dozen minor scratches, but none telling. From the lines of dark droplets sprayed across the courtyard rubble, I had to be wearing him down, but his movements gave little sign. He fought like a fanatic, and as the fight ground on I realized he'd never back down. For him, this wasn't a battle with another soldier—it was against an enemy of his blind convictions. Somewhere, someone's word ordered him to fight unto victory or death. It was simple.

For a moment, I almost envied him. But my days of freedom through obedience died with the old queen.

Again the swing of that blackened halberd cleaved the air like a giant's axe, carrying the force of a killing blow. Flecked with gore, the devil upon the knight's armor sneered viciously, its cruel eyes acknowledging that out duel could only end in death. The Hellknight knew my speed now, striking lower to limit my motion. As agile as I was, attempting to leapfrog an attack was a deadly gamble. But if I was to survive, it wasn't the only gamble I'd be willing to try.

With his next thrust, I gripped my cloak like the cape of a bullfighter and threw it directly for his horned helm. The heavy fabric rippled between us and I followed, ready to strike. He struck first, ignoring my attempt at distraction. The halberd blade swept the ground, extended too far to sever my legs, but the shaft bludgeoned my calf. The blade jerked back toward its wielder, catching my limb in its hooklike curve, tugging my leg out from under me. A moment's weightlessness, and then I hit the ground with a rush of breath and a clangor of collapsing steel.

Two devils glared down—the one on the armor, and the one inside it. I gripped my sword, only to have a steel-shod boot kick it away. The first blow fell, punching through scale mesh and piercing my side. The echoes within my helm made me realize I'd screamed, more out of frustration than pain.

"You could have renounced your armor. You could have left with your sisters." The Hellknight's voice rumbled matter-of-factly through his heavy breathing and the blood-leaking helm. "Instead, you've persisted in the old queen's madness. As a Gray Maiden, still within these walls, you prove yourself the embodiment of that madness. You and your order forced this city to the brink of chaos, and for all of you the punishment is the same." The spear-point lifted again.

I was finished—but the dead woman inside me refused to give up so easily. The old words rang through my armor before I could compare them to faded memories. Numb fingers moved as though possessed, recreating delicate signs as I thrust my arms up to meet the plummeting blade. The crimson sensation of sharp metal sheering along my wrists matched the blast of energy that burst from my palms.

The arcane darts flickered and threatened to falter, they didn't have far to go. They lanced into the black sliver of the Hellknight's visor, then exploded in a rain of scarlet sparks. A wail like that of a malfunctioning machine tore through the courtyard as the Hellknight and his dripping blade toppled, crashing backward into the rubble.

I lay there breathing deliberately, letting the exhaustion of bruised muscles and split veins momentarily overcome me. When I rose, I cradled my left arm. Although my steel skin was little more than scraped, it felt as though the flesh within had been reduced to ribbons. Learning the extent of my wounds would have to wait, though. Recovering my sword, I walked to the fallen Hellknight.

A thin wisp of steam, smoke, or breath rose from the soldier's visor, and I imagined I caught a whiff of burnt meat. He lay perfectly still, and through the leering armor I couldn't divine any sign of life.

I didn't regret toppling him—it had been his life or mine—but I had to admit that I could all too easily become like him again: a champion of a crusade sane people could never fathom, a killer without the inclination to see or the soul to judge the difference between law and right. How many had thought the same of me?

Just in case, I kicked that bloody halberd out of his reach. Then my sword slid between the thick plates at his neck, releasing a spurt of liquid darkness and a brief choking noise more gurgle than gasp.

"Gray Maiden?" The name came unbidden, even as the steel-skinned fanatic bled out at my feet. Was that all I was even now? A shattered sword that refused to stop killing? "We'll see."

I turned to start the shadowed walk back to Trail's End, a Varisian neighborhood just outside Korvosa. I couldn't say whether I'd done right tonight, or avenged anyone who deserved it. I couldn't say whether I'd just murdered a hero or a monster. But I was pretty sure there was a Varisian girl back in Trail's End who would sleep better for the rest of her days knowing that the ones who killed her kin had paid for those deaths, and that she'd bought the sword that struck the avenging blow. And when you can't afford justice, you make due with revenge.

Coming Next Week: Honor among thieves in "Proper Villains," a new story by Erik Scott de Bie!

F. Wesley Schneider is the Editor-in-Chief of Paizo Publishing and co-creator of the Pathfinder campaign setting. He is the award-winning author of numerous RPG adventures and sourcebooks, including Rule of Fear, Book of the Damned Vol. 1: Princes of Darkness, Seven Days to the Grave, and Endless Night, as well as the Pathfinder's Journal Guilty Blood.

Illustration by Ashley Walters

FAQs of Life

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

The facts are, we are crazy busy in the office this week trying to get some books to the printer, so I’ll keep this one short and sweet.

If you use Two-Weapon Fighting on your turn to attack with two weapons, do you also take that penalty on attacks of opportunity made before the start of your next turn? How long do the penalties last?

No, the penalties end as soon as you have completed the full-attack action that allowed you to attack with both weapons. Any attacks of opportunity you make are at your normal attack bonus. Generally speaking, penalties on attacks made during your turn do not carry over to attacks of opportunity unless they specifically state otherwise (such as the penalty from using Power Attack).

Can you pick up or manipulate an object in a square within your reach? Does this provoke an attack of opportunity? Does it provoke even if the foe can reach the object, but not your space?

The rules are a little hazy here, but to put it simply, you can affect objects and creatures within your reach. When picking up or manipulating objects, you generally provoke an attack of opportunity, but only against foes that can reach your space. You do not provoke attacks of opportunity from foes that cannot reach you, no matter what action you are taking, even if it includes reaching into a threatened space. Although it might seem realistic to allow an attack in such a case, it would make the game far too complicated.

Can I take a 5-foot step in the middle of my attempt to use the Cleave feat, to bring another foe within reach?

No. Cleave is a special action and the conditions for that action are checked at the moment you begin your action. At that moment, all of the available targets are checked to make sure they adjacent to each other and within reach. You cannot take a 5-foot step in the middle of the action and check conditions again. If you do not have two targets within reach, adjacent to each other at the start of the attack, you could not even attempt to make an attack using Cleave.

Well, I hope that clears up a few things. See you all next week.

Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer

Pathfinder Society in France

Monday, September 24, 2012

Illustration by Eric Belisle

Usually, I try to spread out international Pathfinder Society blogs to every 3–4 weeks. However, with one sitting in my inbox, I didn’t want to just hold onto it for a month. I had the pleasure of meeting Venture-Captain Karim Majeri at PaizoCon UK in July. Not only did I meet him, but I was able to GM a game for him and several other international Venture-Captains and Venture-Lieutenants. I will just say that it was a very entertaining session of #3–25: Storming the Diamond Gate. The Pathfinder Society organization in France is lucky in that they are one of the three international regions that have Pathfinder RPG books translated into their native language. This allows us to provide convention prize support with French Pathfinder books. Karim was also kind enough to bring me several French Pathfinder books, and the French Core Rulebook sits in my collection as one of my favorite pieces.

Karim also is supported by Venture-Lieutenant Benoit Gros in Geneva, Switzerland. I also met Benoit at PaizoCon UK, and between them, I suspect we will see significant growth in France in the coming year.

Without further ado, I present to you Karim’s report on Pathfinder France.

I’m Karim Majeri, the Venture-Captain for France and surrounding French-speaking countries. I started to play Pathfinder RPG with the Beta version, while at the same time running a Rise of the Runelord Adventure Path campaign. Besides serving as a Venture-Captain for Pathfinder Society Organized Play, I am also president of the Ligue Ludique, an association that promotes RPGs, in particular D&D and Pathfinder. The organization is based in Paris. We are currently coordinating more than 150 events per year, including large conventions that include Comic Con Paris, Monde du Jeu, Paris est Ludique, MayCon, and LudikXPerience (our own convention).

The first Pathfinder Society event hosted in France was several years ago. Past Pathfinder Society Campaign Coordinator Joshua Frost attended an event in Lyon in the summer of 2010. Since that game day, we have hosted numerous full Saturdays with many players in Lyon and in Paris.

We are currently running many demos and campaigns in different shops in Paris, including my own shop, La Carte Chance, located in the northern district of Paris. I have taken the lead and recruited and trained quite a few new GMs on how to run Pathfinder Society games. I’ve also created a dedicated webpage in French for French players who want to start playing Pathfinder Society.

Here in France, we have a strong community of fans and you can find out much information from different sources. Of course, we have the Ligue Ludique website mentioned above, but we also have Pathfinder-FR (with a wiki, a forum and a lot of other information); PSOP, a website that collects your sessions and characters’ info; and finally the Black-Book Editions website, which is the French editor for Pathfinder RPG books.

The largest events in France and French-speaking countries to play Pathfinder Society are Comic Con in Paris the first week of July, Octogones in October in Lyon, Festival en Jeu in Belgium, and Imaginaire at the end of November in Paris. There are also other conventions and you can stay updated on future dates and information at the French PFS website or on the Paizo event page here at paizo.com.

The next step for growing Pathfinder Society in France is to find some Venture-Lieutenants throughout different regions in France. My hope is they will help promote the game and find new GMs for Pathfinder Society. I have found quite a few players and GMs that are very motivated, including my new Venture-Lieutenant, Benoit Gros, in Switzerland. I’m currently recruiting for Venture-Lieutenants in or around Lyon, Rennes, Lille, Bordeaux, Marseille, and Strasbourg. If you live in or around any of those regions, please contact me at webmaster@ligueludique.fr.

Last, but not the least, after Paizo Con UK (organized by UK Venture-Captain Dave Harrison and Venture-Lieutenant Rob Silk), I have been highly motivated to organize a PaizoCon France in Paris. The idea is to gather and welcome all the players in Europe together in Paris. That’s my new project and I am working with BBE to plan it for the end of August or beginning of September 2013. Thanks again to Dave and Rob for the great time had at PaizoCon UK and the inspiration for a PaizoCon France.

Thank you to Karim and Benoit for kickstarting an awesome Pathfinder Society organization in France. I look forward to the additions of new Venture-Captains and Venture-Lieutenants in other regions of France and watching Pathfinder Society spread like wildfire. Keep up the awesome work!

Mike Brock
Pathfinder Society Campaign Coordinator

Pathfinder Battles Preview: The Golems' Got It!

Friday, September 21, 2012

Earlier this week WizKids brought by the case incentive miniature for the upcoming Shattered Star set of prepainted Pathfinder Battles miniatures. In the previous set, Rise of the Runelords, the incentive miniature was the enormous Rune Giant, which lorded over the rest of the set and looked absolutely amazing doing it.

I can't say what the case incentive figure will be for Shattered Star yet (because I want to show you a painted sculpture for extra jaw-droppage, and we're not quite there yet), but when we got a look at it, our excitement for this set exploded to the next level, which is something I didn't even think possible (we like the Shattered Star set an awful lot).

So I can't show off that incredible miniature just yet. But I do have a couple of other incredible figures this week to make up for it!

Up first this week is the Iron Golem. This Large figure is based on a great illustration by Tyler Walpole that I think captures a classic look for this iconic dungeon monster. The paint job on this guy is relatively simple, but WizKids has made subtle choices that make the simplicity work for it. The color of the creature's “iron” skin has a sheen to it that really sells the metal effect, similar to the way the Karzoug Statue in Rise of the Runelords really looked like it could have been made of stone. Even better, the Iron Golem's eyes and mouth are painted in a sort of pearlescent orange, giving the effect of smoldering fire within the sockets. WizKids brought by a production sample of this figure at this week's meeting, and everyone commented on how much they liked it. I think you'll like it too.

The Alchemical Golem from Bestiary 2 is one of my favorite golems in the game, so it's fitting that the Alchemical Golem from the Shattered Star set is one of my favorite prepainted plastic miniatures in any set. This Large miniature is SERIOUSLY cool.

I count FIVE different colors of clear plastic on this figure, from the green goo that fuels its body to the varicolored potions in its syringe fingers. Best of all (and not really visible in this preview photo, alas), the clear dome of the Alchemical Golem's head actually contains a little brain! Gross!

Expect preorder pages for the Shattered Star set to appear very shortly here on paizo.com, and it's not too early to ask your local retailer to make sure they order enough copies of this set from their distributor.

It's going to be a great one!

More next week.

Erik Mona
Publisher

Illustration by
Dmitry Burmak

Week of Free!*

Thursday, September 20, 2012

Earlier this week we gave you the Pathfinder RPG: Beginner Box Transitions download and now we present you with something else with a "free" price tag.

For those of you who have Curse of the Lady's Light (either in your paws or downloaded onto the digital perusal device of your choice) you might have read James's foreword where he mentions something about a free web enhancement. In that foreword, he explains how a chunk of Mike Shel's adventure needed to get scrapped to fit the deity article on Torag (which we missed putting in the Skull & Shackles Adventure Path). This isn't something we normally do, but we had the art and James really liked the extra social interaction encounters. This is GM-focused bonus material that provides a few more encounters and helps move the story from Magnimar to the Lady's Light—so stay out players!

But for everyone else, enjoy your time with the new characters you'll meet in this free supplement and use it to bring more fun to your Shattered Star campaign!

Download the Web Enhancement! - (1.9MB zip/PDF)

Adam Daigle
Developer

* Blog title restricted to reference two days only.

Shattered Steel

by F. Wesley Schneider

Chapter Two: Silvered Skin

"Two brothers. Sczarni." My words took on the hollow, metallic ring of my sealed visor. "Their blood is on your hands."

The gambler's eyes bulged like a panicked animal's, his gaze torn between my sword point and the copper-scented mess spreading about my feet. "What?! No! I'm just a dicer," he stammered—a total coward, and doubtlessly a liar. Obnoxiously, his voice had also gone up an octave. "We roll a friendly game here. Dice—just dice. The weapons are just for protection, you never know who—"

He screamed like a farm lass thrown from her horse, a surprised shriek followed by a stream of blubbering. Good the guards never patrolled these docks, as to someone above the noise surely sounded like something far worse than a thief getting what he deserved. I brought my sword level once more, Quil's cheek reddened from the slap, but was no more bloodied than by a bad shave.

"You killed them."

"No!" he whimpered.

My blade crossed his other cheek, releasing new reserves of pathetic noise. He dropped to the ground.

"Please!" he bawled. My blade rose. "No! The Calavetti brothers. You mean the Calavettis. I know why they're dead, but I didn't kill them!" The words spilled out almost faster than I could follow. When the sharp steel didn't fall, the gambler ventured a glimpse at me between his upraised arms.

"They came to my game a week ago—less than that. They lost. But that happens—that's the game—and they knew the risks when they got into it." His shielding arms, slowly lowered. A twitch of my still-wet blade was all it took to jerk them back to position.

"All their coin, every copper, and more—they lost it all, but they didn't know how to quit. There was some jewelry, a necklace, the hat off one of their heads. They got in that deep, and lost."

"You cheated them."

"It's cheater's dice!" he squawked. Another steel twitch, and he cowered. "No! No special way. No gimmicks, no rigging, no finger waggling. They knew the game—probably thought they had it all worked out—and they lost bad. We threw them out once they started getting... impolite. But they came back."

He paused, waiting for me to urge him on. His discomfort in the resulting silence did that for him soon enough.

"The bastards jumped us as we were headed back into town. They wanted their money and everything else back. Scum like them's why I hire protection and keep it well paid." He flashed mangled teeth, momentarily forgetting I wasn't some taproom floozy. When I remained silent, he quickly came back to the moment. "But before we'd even seen those two Sczarni saddle boys one of my men was fishing a bolt out of his side. I sure wasn't polite about it, but I gave them their coin back. Then they got greedy and took the rest—the entire night's haul." He'd gotten his dander up. "I told them that wasn't going to be the end of it, and it sure as hell wasn't!"

"You and your men tracked them down." I still hadn't heard anything leading me to reconsider my condemnation.

A Gray Maiden's armor is as much a part of her as her skin.

"No," he said, sounding almost offended. "There's people for that kind of work."

"Hired killers. Assassins." But of course I knew that nearly anyone in the old city would cut a man's throat for contemptibly low prices.

"Nah. There's a man who's been lurking around here the last few weeks—a nasty sort. Unpredictable, but thorough."

"You paid him to kill the Calavettis." It wasn't a question.

"Why pay when he does the work for free? I just had one of my boys find him, explain what happened, give him the name of the sty they spend most of their nights in, and he tracked them down himself. Those two were dead the next morning." He nodded purposefully, gloating over the revenge he'd had another take for him. "But I still don't have my money back! You can see I'm kind of like the victim in all this."

"What's this killer's name?"

"Damned if I know," he said. He was getting some of his spirit back. I let it pass for the moment. "He's some crazy who's shacked up on the Slug's Trail."

"You're still the reason they're dead."

"They robbed me! That much silver was worth plenty more than the lives of two Sczarni sleazes."

"Your crooked game lures in the desperate. Your accomplices spread lies and prey upon the hopes of the poor. You bully and rob those who come. You kill any who try to take back what you steal. You are a cheater, a thief, a murderer, and a coward."

"What!? I don't force anyone to come here!" His excuses sounded like a piglet's squeals as he scooted back against and up the curved wall, trying to regain his feet. "And it's not my fault if they don't have the money to play. I'm no murderer!"

"You are."

It wasn't as clean as that. The dead men's sister hadn't muddied her brothers' memories with unflattering truths. And Quil hadn't murdered them with his own hand. His confession had even pointed me toward someone who might be even more dangerous. But being a lesser evil didn't make him innocent.

My steel flashed again. This time Quil didn't whimper.

∗∗∗

The back alleys and forgotten streets of the old city wound together into a singularly wretched urban quagmire. At times I found myself wading waist-deep through piles of trash, the wreckage of broken lives, and the filth mountains of rodent despots. At others I had to retrace my steps entirely to avoid a collapsed building or a gang's territorial barrier. Fortunately, the prisoners of this labyrinth didn't bother me—those who even roused at my passing knew well enough to squeeze their eyes back closed and hastily forget. But some things were bolder, and knew or cared less about my armor's infamous reputation. More than once a hail of loose shakes clattered onto the cobbles behind me as something skidded upon the rooftops. I never saw more than a dash of shadows or the reflection of the moon off oily eyes, but I knew that more than men preyed upon those lost among these streets. In the old city, garbage collected in the gutters along both streets and shingles.

Despite the debris and denizens of the slums, I soon reached my destination. The Slug's Trail was little more than a blind alley leading to the walled-in courtyard of a half-collapsed insula. It took its name from both its short length and the years of discarded oils and cooking greases that coated its walls, thrown from the rear stoop of a long-emptied fish fry. Flies congregated here in droning plagues, and the squirming things they spawned weren't slugs. But despite the swarms of shit-eaters, this had also become a kind of wretched safe house for the most pitiable street dwellers. No gang or roof crawler cared to contest the flies for their home, and the high walls of the surrounding buildings sheltered against much of the wind and weather. The alley was filthy, infested, and disgusting, but still preferable to many of the hunting grounds where gangs of self-proclaimed slumlords insisted upon rents paid in either silver or skin.

Tonight, though, the Slug's Trail was something other than a glimpse of urban Hell. It was empty.

Narrow and largely uncluttered, its shadows shallow, the alley's rough stone formed an unobstructed channel to a sagging entryway, the inner yard beyond visible in ghostly shades as moonlight filtered through the night's pooling mist. Barely noticeable in the dark, a narrow, uneven window watched from just above that opening, a single lazy eye lolling over the ugly alley.

It wasn't difficult to recognize this for what it was—not just a dirty cul-de-sac, but a killing ground. Anyone attempting to enter the insula would have to pass beneath that window and whoever might be lurking amid the shadows within. I considered that I might be paranoid, but if I was hunting a killer, I preferred not to give my quarry any undue opportunity.

Somewhere over the buildings and across the nearby docks, a ship's bell rang out the meager hour. By the time its echo had faded I'd found another of the insula's exterior walls and, using slanting bricks as handholds, climbed through the window into a second-story apartment. There were few who could move as I did in full armor—but then, few had their armor specially fitted to their body's every angle, the skin they were born with overridden by steel. I could hardly call it a blessing, but I am the creature I am, and tonight steel moved as soundlessly as silk.

The apartments within obviously hadn't been rented for years, but also hadn't wanted for residents in that time. Broken glass, shattered furniture, and other garbage littered the floor, while layers of crass graffiti and outdated gang symbols covered what remained of cheap plaster walls. The rats had been at the place as well. I didn't see them, but their smell was thick in the air. Time and violence had thoroughly devastated the interior, reducing the multiple apartments into a broken hall, cornering at right angles around the central courtyard and divided only by the low remnants of walls and splintering supports.

Slipping through the wreckage as stealthily as the irritable floorboards allowed, I reached a corner and looked down another row of rooms. Here would be the one with the window overlooking the Slug's Trail. There was more, though. By weather, shoddy construction, or more deliberate violence, much of the inner wall had fallen away, calving in great pieces into the courtyard below.

A figure in black, his form concealed by shadow, knelt at the window, his head resting upon the sill. I jerked back into the dark, not eager to lose my advantage if he looked over his shoulder. It seemed my caution had proved warranted. If I'd come down the alley, the hiss of a crossbow bolt would likely have been the last thing I heard.

A momentary gap in the night's clouds threw a weak wave of moonlight over the figure. At first I thought he was much bigger than a man, his shoulders impossibly broad, but a glint of steel suggested that heavy spaulders had inflated my impression. The shoulder guards weren't out of place, either, as plates weighty enough to bring the unaccustomed to their knees girded all but his head.

This was something I hadn't expected. I thought for sure that Quil had lied to me, or gotten lucky by finding some thug with actual skill, but here was something else—someone either trained to wear that armor or suffering the worst kind of madness. Of his features, I could see little, the outline of a head shaved nearly bald being the only hint of a man beneath the steel plates. If he was armed, I couldn't tell, the night and his dark steel conspiring to make him a shadow only slightly more lustrous than the rest crowding the wreckage.

At first I thought he was waiting—perhaps even for me. Could he be a guard, and this some elaborate trap? But as I waited and watched from the darkness, I began to see his head nod almost imperceptibly, slowly, with even breaths. He was asleep. This didn't seem careless, though, with his vantage over the best approach and armor still fastened. He seemed more like a soldier in hostile territory, as ready as he could be while still at rest. Or it was a ruse.

Either way, I moved cautiously as I slipped around the corner, picking through the ruin to come upon him from behind. During my nearly silent approach he hadn't moved. That changed quickly as I clamped one hand around his neck, digging my thumb into a tender point, my other lifting his chin with the cold length of my dagger.

"Who are you?" I demanded, the rasp echoing hollowly within my locked helm.

I could feel him jar to wakefulness and tense with surprise, but that passed in an instant—not a good sign. He'd been trained to control his shock, his instinct to go rigid. Without a word he reversed his balance, throwing his weight against my chest.

My own training countermanded my curiosity, and my blade slid across his throat. But instead of being gripped by the slight resistance of separating skin, the dagger screeched across a gorget hidden in the dark, doing nothing to slow the armored figure's rearward charge. I suddenly became aware of the crumbled inner wall behind me, my legs kicking backward to keep me upright, heels skidding on glass and garbage. The remains of a plaster window frame caught me in the small of my back, and I reflexively released my grip, lashing out for any handhold in reach. I snagged a piece of wooden beam, only to have it crumble like a chunk of clay.

A vision of clouds made ghostly by moonlight blurred through my vision as I toppled backward through the air.

Coming Next Week: Two of the most notorious knightly orders in Golarion go toe-to-toe in the final chapter of F. Wesley Schneider's "Shattered Steel."

F. Wesley Schneider is the Editor-in-Chief of Paizo Publishing and co-creator of the Pathfinder campaign setting. He is the award-winning author of numerous RPG adventures and sourcebooks, including Rule of Fear, Book of the Damned Vol. 1: Princes of Darkness, Seven Days to the Grave, and Endless Night, as well as the Pathfinder's Journal Guilty Blood.

Illustration by Ashley Walters

Free Beginner Box Transitions Download

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Taking that step from the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Beginner Box to the complete Pathfinder Roleplaying Game just got a lot easier with the Pathfinder RPG: Beginner Box Transitions. Players and Game Masters alike can download this free PDF to take what they learned in the Beginner Box and expand upon it, learning how to read and understand new facets of the Pathfinder RPG rules, how to advance characters to 6th level and beyond, and ways to unlock the entire arsenal of Pathfinder RPG adventures and accessories. For players not quite ready to step into the wider world of the Pathfinder RPG, this document also presents detailed guidelines on adapting Pathfinder RPG adventures for use with the Beginner Box, presenting another free download, Pathfinder Module: Master of the Fallen Fortress, as an example. With Pathfinder RPG: Beginner Box Transitions, the jump between your Beginner Box game and the endless possibilities of the full Pathfinder RPG just got a lot easier. Unlock a whole new world of adventure with this free download now!

F. Wesley Schneider
Editor-in-Chief

More Venture-Captains Added to the Ranks

Monday, September 17, 2012

As we continue to expand Pathfinder Society to areas where players are looking for organization, it is important to me to find the right people to serve as ambassadors of the game, to present a positive light for new players, and try to bring veteran players who have left back into the fold. Ten more Venture-Captains have been chosen to fill those roles.

Illustration by Dmitry Prosvirnin

First, I want to thank JP Chapleau for his tremendous efforts in building the Denver area Pathfinder Society. Not only was he the caretaker of Denver, but he oversaw Pathfinder Society in all of Colorado and expanded into parts of New Mexico and Idaho. He has taken a position as Creative Director for Neo Exodus and will be building the organized play program for that game. I wish him the best and look forward to watching the growth of Neo Exodus organized play. Taking over in Colorado is Venture-Captain Jacque Woods. She comes into the position extremely motivated to continue the awesome job that JP did where he left off. She mentioned she was looking to centralize all Pathfinder Society activity into a website to help foster a greater sense of community and I look forward to seeing it blossom. She also mentioned to me she is willing to travel to help support Pathfinder Society in and around the region, including southern Wyoming and northern New Mexico, east into Kansas and west into Utah.

I also want to thank Doug Daulton for all he did for Pathfinder Society in Las Vegas. I met Doug at Neon Con last year and he ran a good watch. Due to his hectic and very busy work schedule, he has taken a step back. One of Doug's Venture-Lieutenants, Chris Clay, has stepped up and taken on the mantle of Venture-Captain. He mentioned several challenges and goals for the next 6 to 12 months and I look forward to seeing how Las Vegas reignites its interest in Pathfinder Society under Chris's watch.

In July, I had the pleasure to meet Diego Winterborg when I traveled to PaizoCon UK and Viking Lodge Summer Games. Diego was one of the 13 original Venture-Captains chosen on October 4, 2010 and I had the honor of working side-by-side with him for a year as a fellow Venture-Captain, and the last 8 months as Campaign Coordinator. Diego did a fantastic job introducing Denmark to Pathfinder Society and growing it. Unfortunately, he had to step aside as Venture-Captain at the beginning of August due to hectic a life schedule and he will be sorely missed. Stepping up to fill his shoes is Erik Ingersen. He will center his initial activities out of Ringsted, while he works with current Venture-Lieutenant Jacob Trier in Jutland to start growing Pathfinder Society again. He mentioned he would also be looking for Venture-Lieutenants in Copenhagen, Holbaek, and Roskilde. If you have an interest in helping grow Pathfinder Society in Denmark, please send Erik an email. I'm sure he would greatly appreciate it.

Eddy and Stephanie Roberts started Pathfinder Society coordination in Salt Lake City, Utah, but have since had to step down for a hectic work and life schedule. Taking over the reins for Pathfinder Society coordination and growth is Phillip Willis. He had some very exciting and interesting ideas to restart Pathfinder Society in Utah and I look forward to watching as Pathfinder Society grows by leaps and bounds. He advised me he considers his region the entire state of Utah and possibly northeastern Nevada, so if you live in those regions, make sure to reach out to Phillip with any questions, advice, or help you can offer.

My first week on the job last year, Doug Miles informed me he was having to step down due to a new family and hectic work schedule. Not only was Doug one of the original 13 Venture-Captains selected, but he was Pathfinder Society's first five-star GM. When he stepped down, it was a huge blow to the Detroit area. Daniel Luckett and Eric Clingenpeel have done their best to help fill the void while I have searched for someone to step into Doug's shows. After almost a year without a Venture-Captain, Detroit is finally getting their second one! Mason Whitlark is excited to fuel the fire once again in Detroit and hopes to expand his area from Fenton to Ann Arbor, and down to Toledo, Ohio. With Mason in place, joined by Daniel and Eric, the entirety of Michigan should pretty much be covered.

Chris Jarvis did a phenomenal job in Seattle over the course of 9 months. He took over the Seattle Venture-Captain position the same week I started at Paizo. Under his watch, a website was created to bring the community together. Multiple weekly game days were established in more than eight cities across Washington. And he coordinated and oversaw the smooth operation of Pathfinder Society at more than seven local conventions. He also went above and beyond his duties and was a tremendous aid to me with the coordination of PaizoCon in July. His shoes will be tough ones to fill. His Venture-Lieutenant, Kyle Elliott, has stepped up to the challenge and has hit the ground running, coordinating Pathfinder games and demos at Pax Prime. The Washington Pathfinder Society player base is in very good hands with Kyle at the helm.

I am also excited to add four new areas to our Venture-Captain regions. The first is Memphis, Tennessee. Phillip Goettsch already has some plans on how to kick-start coordinated Pathfinder Society play in the western Tennessee region. He also advised during his interview process that not only was he going to facilitate the establishment of coordinated Pathfinder Society play in the greater Memphis area, but he was going to try to reach as far north as Dyersburg, TN, northern areas of Mississippi, and eastern Arkansas to include Little Rock, until a Venture-Captain or Venture-Lieutenants could be found to coordinate Pathfinder Society in those regions. Please contact him if you are able to assist him in western Tennessee.

The second new region is Jacksonville, Florida. James Apostolou comes highly recommended by several local Venture-Captains and Lieutenants, as well as local players and GMs. Jacksonville is an area ripe for tremendous growth, and with the fairly recent addition of the Pathfinder Society of Florida website and the three current forums for Jacksonville game locations alone, it looks like James has plenty to work with to grow and expand Pathfinder Society in northeast Florida.

I met Matt Clay at Gen Con, as he was one of my GMs. He did an outstanding job at Gen Con as a Tier 1 GM and I look forward to seeing what he has in store for Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Western PA has just been waiting for someone to step up and take charge and Matt is the man for the job. Not only will Matt oversee Pathfinder Society in the Pittsburgh area, but if there is interest he will also cover Washington, PA; Wheeling, WV; and possibly Somerset, PA. I am very interested to see the growth of Pathfinder Society play and look forward to working with Matt again.

Finally, Michael Seales will be taken over all of Alabama, operating out of Birmingham. He is currently coordinating and organizing Pathfinder Society on Wednesday and Friday nights at three different Birmingham stores and looks to expand further. He is also planning to attend and coordinate Pathfinder Society for Birmingham Game Days in March, Alabama Phoenix Festival II in May, and Play On Con VI in July of 2013. Additionally, he is looking at the possibility of attending Kami-Con, MOBICON, and Con*stellation as well. It looks like Alabama could be the next hotbed of activity for Pathfinder Society growth.

We are still in need of additional Venture-Captains in some regions and you can find the list here and the first phase of the application process here.

If interested in applying, please contact me after reviewing the application process in the previous link.

Welcome aboard to all my new captains!

Mike Brock
Pathfinder Society Campaign Coordinator

Pathfinder Battles Preview: Feel the Burn!

Friday, September 14, 2012

We've just finished laying out the packaging for the upcoming Shattered Star set of Pathfinder Battles prepainted plastic fantasy gaming miniatures, which means we'll very shortly have the product up for pre-order! These figures support the new Shattered Star Adventure Path, but are of course usable in any fantasy campaign.

At this point, all of the sculpts have been approved, and the only figure still in painting is the enormous Gargantuan "case incentive" miniature, whose big reveal is still probably a few weeks away.

While we wait for these important milestones, let's take a look at more figures from the set. Come along, won't you?

Here we have the Medium Fire Elemental in all his burning glory! Emerging from a pillar of flame, this guy stands about a foot taller than your average adventurer, which I think qualifies as "fiery death from above." He's sculpted in clear plastic, and should look extra-flamey when light shines through his clear bits.

Why call this guy a "medium" fire elemental, you might ask? Well, because there is another fire elemental at a different size coming in a future preview.

Just kidding. Here he is. This beast is the Large Fire Elemental.

This guy is WAAAAAAY bigger than a normal adventurer. Heck, he's bigger than the biggest ogre we've produced to date. He is SO BIG that it almost seems like he should fit on a Huge base. But no, he is in fact Large. We just love putting as much value into a miniature as possible, and the Large Fire Elemental is a good example of that principle in action. It's also a suggestion that if we ever do a truly Huge fire elemental in the future, it's going to be absolutely astoundingly enormous. Again, the Large Fire Elemental is sculpted in clear plastic for extra fiery effect.

And because we're about to reveal packaging that has this next guy on it anyway, I've decided to include a bonus figure in this week's preview. The Guiltspur Naga!

This creature is one of many of its kind that traveled up through the Darklands and into the ancient Thassilonian ruin of Guiltspur, site of the Shattered Star's fifth adventure, "Into the Nightmare Rift". This creature is Large and in charge. And in the office next to mine, our Creative Director James Jacobs is working on this creature's encounter RIGHT NOW!

Because production on the set is still in swing, we have not yet assigned solid rarities to any of the figures in the set, including these. Keep your eyes on this space in the next couple of weeks for specific details on the set's configuration, price, and release date.

There's a lot more where these came from!

Erik Mona
Publisher

Winter Witch Revisited

Thursday, September 13, 2012

Illustration by Ryan Portillo

It's the end of the summer, and while it's not winter quite yet, we got you a frosty gift. When we recently released Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Paths of Prestige there were some questions on the messageboards regarding the winter witch prestige class and how it worked with hexes and spells and some of the other goodies the prestige class gets. Since we're gearing up for the Reign of Winter Adventure Path, we decided we'd revisit the winter witch, make a few clarifications, and present you fine folks with the result. We wanted to get it cleared up so people can play the class in the Adventure Path, but don't think we're being completely altruistic—we really wanted to make sure that the White Witches of Irrisen provide a significant challenge to pesky adventurers making trouble and poking their nose in their nation's frozen business!

Download the New Winter Witch Spread! (1.2MB zip/PDF)

Adam Daigle
Developer

Shattered Steel

by F. Wesley Schneider

Chapter One: Holding an Edge

Night's the only time I risk the streets. Dingy streetlamps are far easier to avoid than the sun—not that the ways I frequent ever have streetlamps.

My face isn't a welcome one here. Too many have seen it too recently and too often. Everyone has their bad memories, their reasonable hatreds, and many of those injustices look like me. I'd started out hoping that maybe I could change that, but a year of stinking alleys, tear-soaked streets, and steel rusted by blood made me doubt.

Those with coin have ways to solve their problems; in the light of day, with the new law, with a few words in the right ears. Those without… they've got the real problems, the messy ones no one cares enough to handle. The ones there's never a law for. Copper and bruised flesh buys a far less reliable brand of justice, and everything gets muddy down on the old city's streets. Those who live there know it so well it's not worth explaining. Those who don't will never understand.

I'm no expert. I wasn't born to those flophouses, sweaty basements, and alley shanties. I didn't ask to come, either—but I guess no one does. The difference between me and most of the players in that rehearsal for Hell was that when I arrived, whoever threw me there thought they finished me. They might have scarred my body, stolen my respect, and broken everything I was going to be, but I came through. I wasn't some sword straight from the fire, but sometimes even dross holds an edge.

Someone like the Varisian girl couldn't afford a sword. That's why she followed the rumors no guardsman would ever gamble on and found me. She said her brothers had been murdered. She knew by who but not why. That seemed convenient, but her people lied as easily as they spoke. The city watch would have dismissed her for that reason alone. For a moment I was tempted to do the same, but tears had dug twin graves in that soft face—a face that would never be as pretty as it was before. So I named my price.

She tried to bargain. I stopped her before she embarrassed us both. She went ahead anyway, and I was the only one embarrassed. She took my silence for disgust—an easy mistake; it's difficult to read expressions through steel—and forked over some bauble of hemp and cracked beads that wouldn't buy me a meal. I stayed quiet, and her desperation urged her further, but she had nothing left but words, the promise of future promises. It would have to do—favors seemed in short supply these days anyway.

I waited until well after midnight, until an hour when anyone with honest business was long since abed, before heading into the street. Even then I kept to the alleys. I didn't care if the drunks and alley rats saw me—their kind only survived because they'd learned to keep their mouths shut. No one would believe them anyway. Most didn't even believe their own senses, dismissing my steps as too soundless on the crumbling cobbles, doubting the metal glimpsed beneath my close-drawn cloak, disbelieving my face as a nightmare conjured by booze more poison than liquor.

It didn't take long for the streets to give way to boards, and then from boards to muck. I hated the docks, not just because of rust and my obvious wariness of water, but for the constant noise. It compounded a disadvantage. Much of the world was muffled thanks to my helm, and the constant rasp of water over trash beaches and the clunking of moored boats didn't help. But her directions had been specific.

If the Caterwaul had seen better days, no one ever visited to reminisce. I'd never spent a day of my life on a boat, so I couldn't say why such a capable-looking fishing trawler had been abandoned in the first place, but it surely wasn't leaving port again. Mold draped what rigging had survived, moss collected upon much of the wood, and though the masts still stood, the sails had disappeared as surely as the ship's crew. What remained of a vandalized figurehead, ruggedly carved as a mangy cat, stared inland, yowling for its absentee captain's return.

Light flickered through the ship's bowed timbers, and a burst of nasty guffaws preceded a long string of repetitive curses, verifying rumors that the Caterwaul had a new crew.

Supposedly a gambler called Quil ran a nightly game of cheaters' dice in the wreck's hold. This particular game was widely known in Old Dock's shadier watering holes as having relatively square dice and life-changing stakes. But those who sat and listened to the stories long enough eventually heard them repeated, and always from the same loudmouths—publicizers doubtlessly on Quil's payroll. No doubt a game played out here nightly, but it wasn't just this Mr. Quil gambling.

With the tide low, the Caterwaul leaned against the dilapidated dock, its hull sunk deep into the rancid muck. The noise and light drifted up from below the pier, as though the game were taking place right in the surf. Good. I wasn't eager to try and creep across the ship's deck, guessing at which rotted timber might give me away. Slipping across the muddy boardwalk, I dropped onto the dark of the beach below.

The forgotten temple of some imaginary goddess of sea-junk sprang up around me. Pilings marched in almost even rows parallel to the shore, their crusty coverings of muck and barnacles suggesting elaborate religious reliefs. Piles of discarded crates, small wrecked boats, and other unidentifiable heaps became the inhuman artistry of this weird sanctuary, while the heavy scents of wood rot and sewage made do as incense. Fortunately, the local congregation didn't seem to be terribly devout.

Ahead, the hold of the Caterwaul gaped open, the terminal gash explaining the end of its days at sea. Within, five figures surrounded a crate making do as a table, dice and the coins of fresh bets scattered beneath a lantern wobbling overhead. None looked like sailors.

Despite the unlikelihood that anyone within could see me, I stuck to the deepest recesses of the under-docks. It wouldn't look like it to most, but this was a classic Sczarni trap. In this trick, you make yourself the bait, setting up in the open so the guards, or thieves, or whoever you've pissed off this week think they've got the drop on you. That way most don't even bother to look for the cutthroat hidden away in the dark. I'd fallen for it once before and almost got knifed. Lesson learned, I waited now, letting my eyes adjust, searching through the motion of the flickering shadows and lazy roll of the shallow surf.

I counted time in the rolls of dice. Two complete games passed as I stared into the dark, until finally a lean, excitable fellow won a significant pot. A wave of shouts, curses, and banged bottles rose and ebbed, rattling the lantern above and upsetting the shadows leaning away from the broken ship. One shadow craned its neck from behind an algae-draped stanchion, light flickering for an instant across the quarrel set in its crossbow.

Just one guard. Mr. Quil shouldn't be so frugal with his security.

Quil should have brought more than a crossbow.

My response came faster than thought, and my armor immediately rebelled at the twitch of that old reflex. Three escapee syllables whispered within my helm, turning harsh inside my metal mask. Intonations that once came as easily as a child's prayer tripped over my lips, becoming jumbled upon hearing themselves spoken by an unfamiliar voice. They sounded like lost faith.

I choked back the rest of what I would have once called magic, but it was only for the sake of stealth. If there had still been power in those noises, I would have felt some twinge, some hint of it building like steam in a kettle. Instead, all I felt was rust, biting leather, and my own tired muscles. The words—or the memory of what they should have been—made me feel weak, and I shoved them back into the scabbed over recesses of my mind, down with all the other wounds of what I used to be. I hadn't chosen them, but I had other, more direct solutions now.

Suddenly eager to move, I slipped between the pilings, darkness masking my steel and the waves drowning the sound of my steps. His attention more on the game than his watch, the guard's first hint of my presence came as I snapped upon him like the jaws of a hunter's trap. My free arm locked around his chest and arms as my mailed hand dug into his face, slamming his head back against my pauldron. Hair muffled the clang of his skull striking metal, his body tensing for an instant before going limp. I let him drop into the muck. If he woke up, he'd have a nasty knot to nurse. If.

Gliding up to the hull, I slunk close to the hole that served as the entrance to the makeshift gambling den. Again I waited for a distraction, and this time it didn't take long. Cheating was actually part of cheaters' dice, so you couldn't really call an opponent a cheater and have it mean anything. But at a game usually played with bare knives upon the table, part of the challenge was knowing how far you could push your opponents' tolerance. Someone had just gone too far.

The dice clattered. Shouts rose without the accompanying laughter. A fist pounded the table, and a stool skidded across the floor. More shouts and thuds.

I drew my sword and stepped into the light.

My entrance was the flood that stopped the house fire. Suddenly no one was seated. A beast of a man was already grabbing for a whip-thin braggart wearing the melting traces of a gloating smile—I don't think either of them even saw me as brutal intention drove them toward the hold's shadowed stern. But others did. Doing a double-take as he looked past the brawlers, a formerly bored man with hair the greasy gray of pigeon feathers jolted to his feet, cursing and sweeping dice and coins into the pockets of a once-fine violet vest. A pair of less swift players—wet old stevedores, their leathery faces incapable of showing surprise—rose slowly amid the confusion. Over the clatter of silver, the coin collector pointed at me and shouted to the brawlers. Had a twenty-foot-long sea snake just washed into the room, he couldn't have looked more startled. I singled him out as Mr. Quil.

I went directly for him. As I strode in, the coinless dockworkers clambered out, the hurried slaps of their steps soon receding in the muddy surf. Pointing my blade at Quil's throat, only a stride away, I made my intention clear.

To his credit, he didn't flinch, instead yanking up a crossbow from behind the crate-table. Although loaded, it was little more than a toy. Still, he fired, and the miniature bolt struck me solidly in the chest. Had I been some thug in scavenged rags, I'd be retching up my lifeblood.

I wasn't. The bolt ricocheted away harmlessly, and a kick shattered the crate between us. The crossbow in Quil's hands followed suit a half-moment later, my blade swiping it from his hands and crushing it against the ship's sweating timbers. Quil pressed himself against those same moist boards, unsuccessfully trying to find some crevice wide enough to squeeze through and escape.

Something struck the small of my back. It shattered, and a man's high-pitched scream rang out. I twisted away from the impact. Harsh words came to my lips, both curses and something more. I bit them back.

The smaller of the two thugs, his face already blossoming where it had caught three or four of the larger man's punches, was stumbling back away from me. In one shaking hand he barely balanced the handle of a rusty chef's knife, the shattered slivers of blade running deep between his fingers and into the meat of a lacerated palm. He tripped backward, whimpering, and bolted out through the broken hull.

Unfortunately, he had been the big fellow's only distraction. Shuffling from the rear of the ship, the apelike goon had to duck to keep his head from scraping the deck above. He paused as he reentered the ring of lantern light, obviously not sure what to make of me. Quil shrieked at the brute.

"She's one of the mad queen's guards, you dolt! A Gray Maiden!"

I winced at the old name. Something in my head, something I still couldn't banish, swelled with pride even as my teeth clenched and a spark of rage flared deep in my guts.

"Take her down!" Quil continued. "When you're done with her, we'll turn what's left over to the guard for a prize!"

The bewilderment on the brute's thick features peeled back in a lecherous smile, his eyes tracing the curves of my armor. A lewd chuckle croaked from over-plump lips.

There's little I wouldn't do for another day back in the life I had before my abduction. Before my armor. Before the queen. But occasionally a situation arises where I loathe my condition perhaps less than I should.

If the brute could see the smirk locked behind my visor, he might have rethought his intentions. But he couldn't, and didn't.

He rushed in, his hairy, broad-knuckled hands outstretched. My sword wheeled, a ribbon of silver, and a hand slapped a curved wall far from where anyone stood.

The breathy bellow that followed filled the hold. The big man's face flushed, and the stump of his hand shoved across his chest into the cloth of his armpit, the yellow stains there swiftly overwhelmed by another shade. Too enraged to realize how lucky he'd been, the giant channeled his wrath into a howl and charged, his remaining hand reaching as if he hoped to crush my neck in a singlehanded grip. By the time his momentum carried him to the spot where I'd been standing, the light was already fading from his eyes, his prodigious belly split like a wet sack. What followed sounded like a fisherman slopping his haul onto the planks, but I had already turned. With a jerk, I again leveled my sword at Quil, blood whipping from the blade to spray the wall and his face with a line of sharp crimson. He flinched, and I grabbed him by his neck, pulling him close to the featureless plane of steel that was my face.

He gazed into the hollows of my helm. Whether he could see my eyes locked away beneath the mask or just the stifling darkness, he didn't find what he was desperately hoping for—some sign of mercy. Of humanity.

All he could do was whimper.

Coming Next Week: A Gray Maiden's take on interrogation in Chapter Two of F. Wesley Schneider's "Shattered Steel."

F. Wesley Schneider is the Editor-in-Chief of Paizo Publishing and co-creator of the Pathfinder campaign setting. He is the award-winning author of numerous RPG adventures and sourcebooks, including Rule of Fear, Book of the Damned Vol. 1: Princes of Darkness, Seven Days to the Grave, and Endless Night, as well as the Pathfinder's Journal Guilty Blood.

Illustration by Ashley Walters