“So the shiny runes are… the reflection on the water?”

“Precisely! But there are many varieties and states of water, yes? How to maintain a reflection upon the frothing waves, or to split one across all the drops in a storm so that they fall in unison? What if one could calm and freeze the sea, carve off a piece of that reflection, and deposit it in another, still liquid sea—and have it continue reflecting that original sea? With a more expansive view of magic, one not held captive by axioms or collecting dust in a university library, one begins to see the hidden world truly unfold."

“Ez, I don’t wanna be in this chair all day.”

“Yes, yes.” Ezren scowled at his subject. “‘You can talk and tattoo at the same time,’ I believe were the exact words. Very well.”

Tak.

A precise blow, and Ezren’s needle once more pierced Valeros’s skin to deposit a drop of ink. Ezren placed the instrument on the work table, lifted another from a pot of sparking red liquid, muttered over it, and then the stuff turned just as black as any other ink. Valeros had asked about this about half an hour ago, which had earned him the lecture on magical theory.

Valeros wasn’t sure what hurt more, Ezren’s needle or the knowledge that he still had hours of pontification to sit through before the tattoo was done.
Illustration by Ian Perks

Tak.

Tak.

Tak.

Ezren lifted the striking rod, sighed brusquely, and set aside his tools. “Valeros, this patronage lasts for weeks. Can you at least try to be a good conversation partner?”

Valeros went to massage his temples, remembered he couldn’t move his right arm, and growled in frustration. “That’s rich. I tried with your big wet mirror analogy, you know! Hard to stay engaged when I can’t get a word in edgewise. Plus what do I know about magic theory? You want to have a proper conversation, you need to—"

The workshop’s southern face exploded inward in a storm of wood and dust. A ceiling joist smashed onto one end of Valeros’s chair, knocking it over and sending him rolling across the floor. Ezren hit the far wall, followed by several pots of ink—one of which hit the man square in the head. He folded like an anemic bird.

Valeros, dazed, opened an eye. No sign of sword: bad. Shield nearby: good. Shield slightly bent: standard.

Nothing broken, good. Lotta shallow stinging cuts, fair enough, not great.

Heavy, gurgling breathing, and what sounded like tightening rope.

Valeros rolled. A gnarled and glowing fist smashed through a fallen bookshelf and practically disintegrated the floor where his torso had been. He kneeled, lifted his shield, and turned to face his opponent.

Then swore. “Oh, give me a break.”

The person in front of him—he was almost certain it was a person—needed to crouch to fit in the cramped workshop. Which they were not doing, having instead used their neck and head as a battering ram. They had ploughed through roof and wreckage in their attempt to crush Valeros. Human-shaped, their body was covered in thick, obsidian scabs, viscous blood pouring from fissures like molten steel into a mold. They radiated heat like a furnace.

“Ez,” he called. “Ez!”

No sound but the hot roar of the giant’s breathing—and another tightening rope. He whipped his shield up, caught part of the blow, spun, and let the monstrosity stagger past him.

Fast not nimble. Probably too big to take out himself? Outmaneuver it, check on Ezren. Yeah.

Deep breath. Shield set. Knife out. Keep moving. In, sting. Out, shield up, make space. He was the horsefly, the heaving thing was the horse. Each bite of the blade loosed a cascade of blazing sludge that burned its way through the floor.

Sting, make space. Stay hard to see. Avoid the—

Valeros’s bones rattled inside his flesh and his vision exploded with hot, angry light.

“Back!”

Ezren’s voice rose over the assailant’s furnace rage. Valeros dipped in and out of consciousness, the ringing in his ears sometimes giving way to the whoosh of fire magic. He caught glimpses of Ezren wreathed in blue-white symbols, launching gouts of flame from one hand. His other held the snake-head staff, its eyes sapphire coals, surrounded in a blazing corona that flared every time the creature swung at Ezren. The fists seemed to hit an invisible barrier, and light erupted in a crackling flash.

It was pretty impressive, honestly. But Ezren was going to run out of steam soon.

The broken armor stand was leaning against the wall nearby, Valeros’s breastplate wrapped around it by the force of the giant’s initial entry. He lifted it, tested its weight. It was no sword, but it would do.

Valeros charged, makeshift weapon high, and brought it down on the thing’s spine. It screamed in a blast of sparks and spun toward him. Ezren continued raining flame into it. With each one, those internal fires grew hotter, and Valeros hoped that Ezren knew what the hell he was doing.

Then the tattoo started moving. Almost tickled, at first. It pulsed in time with Ezren’s magic, flared when those blue-white runes did. The tiger stripes slithered down his arm and up the erstwhile mace, and now each blow brought its own arcane heat. In, body blow, out. In, pull attention, out.

Then he raised the makeshift weapon high and brought it down on the creature’s leg. It stumbled forward and fell, now almost too bright to look at, its fissures incandescent, limbs churning on the splintered floor, little fires beginning to sprout around it.

It howled and launched its entire body at Valeros. At the same time, those tiger stripes leapt onto the shield Valeros was already raising. Monster met metal, and there was a deafening thunderclap.

---

Ezren said it was like a kettle with no lid. Too much steam, boom. Valeros didn’t know why you’d make a furnace-thing weak to fire, but hey, spell people were weird.

“So then what was the twisty tattoo thing?”

Valeros was mopping up ink, again. The last mop had melted after he’d tried to use it on the purple stuff.

Ezren looked up from the singed diagrams he was attempting to reconstruct. “I… honestly don’t know, which is very exciting! I think the tattoo was mimicking the ablative properties of my spellshaping. Which shouldn’t have been possible, given the crystallization matrix I established, but it was a tattoo, and blood, flesh, and hair are all traditionally puissant."



“Huh, I s’pose I could see that. So you moved the wet reflection to my big red mirror?”

“…so, my friend, you were paying attention!”

“I mean, kinda. Just… next time make it interesting, y’know? Say what the magic does, not just how it works in the fantastical and esoteric realms of the mind or whatever. You’re attaching it to my body, so tell me what it does, how I can use it. That’s the interesting stuff. Sorta like learning how someone fights.”

Ezren smiled and tapped the head of his staff on the pewter mug hanging from Valeros’s belt.

“Well, then. What say we talk the finer points of steel and ritual over a drink?”

Valeros held out a hand, offering to carry Ezren’s pack on the rough road into town.

“Maybe touch on who wants us dead so bad, too. Since we’ll be here for weeks and all. But, yeah,” he said, smiling, “that sounds good.”

About the Author

Andrew Mullen has been freelancing for Paizo and other publishers since 2017. He brings a keen interest in language and the interplay of geography and culture to his work, as seen in the Magaambya section of Lost Omens Character Guide, the xulgaths in the Extinction Curse Adventure Path, and numerous other monsters over the years. As a full-time parent, his daughter is his most important monster

About Iconic Encounters

Iconic Encounters is a series of web-based flash fiction set in the worlds of Pathfinder and Starfinder. Each short story provides a glimpse into the life and personality of one of the games’ iconic characters, showing the myriad stories of adventure and excitement players can tell with the Pathfinder and Starfinder roleplaying games.

 “Can you at least tell me what it does?”

Lem frowned down at the talisman. Feiya had just handed him a cord of braided sinew hung with scraps of fabric and a small yellowed fang.

“All in due time.” Feiya’s coyly reassuring smile almost achieved its goal. Her eyes betrayed her, preoccupied as they were with scanning the darkened corners of the shop. She was on the hunt, and even more terse than usual.

“Out of sight, fang near a vein, yes? Parallel. When the entity manifests, draw its attention. Then,” she growled through a predatory smile, “it’s mine.”

“So,” she chirped, malice evaporated, “the surprise is intentional!”

“Do consider how it might behoove you to be a bit more forthright?” Lem offered cheerfully, shirt pulled over one shoulder as he tied the charm around his bicep. “People appreciate directness! For instance, a witch might clearly label her concoctions in order to assure others that… hrm. Feiya?”

His willowy companion had drifted off around a rack of hats, their broad brims embroidered with scenes of local myths and histories. Lem sighed, dropped his shoulders slightly, and allowed a frown to darken his face. He sidestepped in front of a fitting mirror.

“She’s not listening, is she, Lem?” he asked his reflection morosely.

 “No, Lem, I don’t believe she is.” The mirrored image of Lem in the glass straightened, adopting a genteel tone. “Foregoing the pleasure of our company to go ask a spider for its gallbladder. Or some such.” Lem wrinkled his nose at himself. “Remember the rat?”

“How could I forget?” Mirror Lem mourned anew. “All that chittering, night after night. Daji said they preferred the ferns, but I think he just wanted an excuse to make noise when we were sleeping.”

They’d been tracing the Crushing Shadow for a few weeks, following a trail of property damage and strangulations across inland Ravounel. As best they could tell their quarry wasn’t a person, but some sort of magical force. Lem had picked up traces of hatred and want from the recent murder sites, not as acrid as one would expect from a mortal actor. They were attenuated—just not by time. With the most recent victim, they’d arrived right as her gaze became still and empty, yet even with violence so fresh, the emotions were wan and… dusty, was how he’d described it to Feiya. She had immediately agreed, then started down the path that had led to his strange new accessory.

An integral part of this was her nine-tailed fox’s repeated interviews with a rat. It was of utmost importance, Feiya had said, that the rat give the fang of its own free will. Mostly this had meant Lem got to practice the flute and forage for mushrooms for a few hours a day, and eventually Daji had returned triumphant from his protracted negotiations.

Feiya’s “other source” had revealed that, apart from the deceased’s, no flesh or blood were present at the killing. Lem had overheard Feiya mumbling in her sleep twice. The first time, she had mentioned “the lady’s dark and diaphanous wings,” and the second was something about traveling a path of stars. Then Lem shifted in his bedroll and saw Daji’s little red eyes peering at him over his pack. Since then, he’d done his best to ignore her troubled sleep.

Now, here they were in some packrat’s palace, searching hatboxes for traces of an invisible and apparently unliving force with a particular love for flattened tracheae.

 “Come now, Sad Lem, your tenebrous friend seems to have it all well in hand,” Mirror Lem reassured. “Just make sure that little—hey!”

A flash of white flitted behind a neat stack of bones. Muddy pawprints led from the ossuary and back to…

Real Lem looked down. “I just washed my feet! Do you know how long it takes to style my hair?” he groaned. “‘Back in a town,’ I thought, ‘do something nice for yourself after weeks of rainy roads.’ Should have known.”

A vulpine snicker sounded from the bones. A pair of red eyes glittered between them, then Daji strolled out into sight, nine tails swaying languidly.

“But Lem, practice makes perfect. Consternation builds character. That is my gift to you—the chance to grow as a performer and a person.” The fox knelt, wriggled as if to jump, then paused. “It was both, by the way. They liked ferns, and I liked needling you.”

Daji launched himself upward with a little yipping laugh, landing both atop a bookshelf and above the pincushion Lem had thrown at him. There was a dejected pah, pahf as the makeshift missile bounced off the shelf and fell to the floor.

---

Feiya snorted in amusement. Daji and the affable musician clearly enjoyed their verbal sparring. Truthfully, Lem was better company than she was used to. He didn’t ask uncomfortable questions, and if she shied away from a topic, he never brought attention to it; he just steered clear in future conversations. With him, the shadows of her past weren’t quite so deep, and it was easier to tend the cold and righteous fire at her core.

Never to gutter, never to rage, a still and safe anger to burn ‘til the day.

That was why they were here, really. She had been tracing a ley line when she stopped in a village for supplies. She’d entered the provisioner’s to find a red-jacketed halfling gentleman consoling a weeping shopkeeper. Townsfolk were hauling a body out the door and, being a curious sort, Feiya asked some questions. Seems the insightfulness of her queries impressed Red Jacket and suggested she might be able to help.

She was going to say no. Then she’d heard a child crying upstairs.

Certain things could stoke that cold fire until it blazed through her, and no fuel was greater than a child’s distress. Her face must have twisted, because Red Jacket paused, gave her a curious look, then handed her a torn scrap of the victim’s scarf.

“What do you make of this?” he’d said. “You know, magically. I’m guessing you’ll pick up some of the same things I did.”

Then he’d quickly closed and opened one eye at her? It was oddly endearing.

Now they were traveling companions, at least until this Crushing Shadow was found—assuming Lem didn’t strangle Daji first. She could hear her two companions locked in another of their philosophical debates, this one on the relative merits of mortal works.

Lem was lifting a gleaming sword from its velvet cradle. “…Yes, mortal work, and mortals perish. Yes, steel, and steel rusts. But the meaning we attach to the steel, to the sword and whatever violence it wreaks, that meaning grows tall and wide as wild rose, becomes a vast and tangled thing of beauty and danger both.”

Lem didn’t think Feiya was listening, but that never stopped him from talking all the same.
Illustration by Firat Solhan in Pathfinder Player Core.

“That is one of this great symphony’s mysterious movements!” Lem was winding himself up, gazing into the blade’s mirrored surface, talking as much to his reflection as to the witch’s familiar. “What may we mortals work that outlasts and out grows us? How privileged those few who see how the first stone they lay grows into a road, hear their song a continent and a lifetime away. Why, it reminds me of…”

Daji was weaving toward Feiya between the skulls and candlesticks of a high shelf.

“I walked away after the first sentence.”

He hopped down to sit in front of a black cloak with a vaguely sinister air, and cocked his head at it.

“Smells dangerous.” He nosed the dark fabric, which rippled in a disappointingly fabric-like manner. “Alas. Your new friend talks a lot, by the way.”

“Friend? But yes, he does. I think I like it? It’s comforting. And he makes me laugh in a way that feels good.” Feiya chewed on her lip. “You make me laugh like a cat who’s not done with their dinner. And that usually feels good, too. Mostly.”

She walked her finger under Daji’s chin and gave him a scratch. He made his I am pleased sound, though he’d never admit it. They sat a moment, just the two of them, in the quiet. It was almost like those first days, together in the snow.

“You’ve come far, little one, and she’ll lead you farther still,” purred the fox.

 “…Why is it quiet?”

Feiya turned to see the cloak strangling Lem.

It was wrapped around his neck, a sooty version of that eight-legged fish he’d been trying to explain to her the other day, and he was scrabbling at it to no avail.

She reached into herself for the cold anger that was always there. In her mind's eye it rose from the depths, trailing mist, and curled into long and wicked needles to jab into the minds of those who had wronged her. She snarled, and an invisible fang streaked toward the belligerent garment.

It ricocheted harmlessly off the utter void where the thing’s intent would have been, if it were a thinking, feeling creature.

“Daji!” She yelped, and her familiar responded with his own hungry growl.

---

Woe, woe, for the snuffing of a short-burned flame, the flower plucked before it blooms.

Red and black flames licked slowly at the edges of Lem’s darkening vision.

Enough, Sad Lem. Ideas?

Not a one! Oh, but I think he has some.

Daji was crouched on some taxidermized creature, his nine tails waving slowly back and forth, that bright red coloration crawling across his fur. His eyes glimmered bright as dying stars.

“A creature in sharp artifice will gnaw a limb to aid its flight,” said the fox, words smoldering and spreading. “A last gasp caught twixt death and life can tear as tender as a saw.”

One of Lem’s ragged breaths splintered, somehow, and then each splinter spread knife-like wings to launch itself at the cloak twisted about his neck. It writhed as the magic tore through stitch and seam. Fabric turned rotten and brittle, and the tightness around his neck eased.

The thin trickle of air into his lungs was all it took. The curiosity, the wonder, the desire to live and find out rose from his throat. He fumbled with numbing fingers, but his flute was unreachable. Still, he wasn’t without tools.

A single clear note sounded from his pursed lips. It shimmered against the ear, brittle, a raindrop brimming with the vast waters of mortal emotion and experience. Even standing as he was in death’s threshold, he marveled at how the smallest part of something could reflect the beauty of the whole—

echo of malice pale stitched heart wounds reflection of right that’s it—

“Feiya!” he rasped. “Not possessed, an echo! Recall the sound, remember your—” He stopped, unable to name the thing he had seen in her eyes that first day. He’d carried it himself, once.

But as the note faded, Lem saw the realization spread across her face. She stepped forward, lifted one cool, sharp claw—she had claws?—in front of his face, then sliced it downward. The tip bit into the writhing fabric of the cloak.

His bicep went cold, and that little yellow fang on the sinew thong ripped its way through his shirt. It, too, splintered, and suddenly he was surrounded by whizzing shards of bone, all tearing through gaps left by Daji’s spell. Between the talisman, the magic, and Feiya’s claws, the malicious thing was nothing more than gray tatters, some silver, and a few rapidly darkening red gems.

Lem slumped to the floor and took in a ragged breath.

“Maybe ‘all in due time’ could happen a bit sooner?” The gleam of candleflame across dully metallic nails caught his eye. “And since when did you get so pointy?”

“I’m not certain. It’s been a while.” Feiya lifted her hand to watch her nails lighten and retract. “Thank you for that final piece of the puzzle. I thought it was possession, but when you said to… you know.”

“Yes.” Lem’s bushy eyebrows scrunched together. “Feiya, I can only guess at what’s happened, and I truly don’t mean to pry, but with the strangling…”

A newly lengthened nail pressed against his lips, but Feiya’s expression was calm.

“It’s alright. Thank you,” she whispered, smiling slightly, “friend. Now, we should probably leave before—”

A shadow fell across the shop door’s stained-glass window. The key turned in the lock with the smoothness of an old habit, and a stout man stepped into the building. One look, and his face was rapidly darkening with anger.

“Mmm,” mused Lem, surrounded by shredded garments, bone fragments, and broken glass. “Bit late for that.”

About the Author

Andrew Mullen has been freelancing for Paizo and other publishers since 2017. He brings a keen interest in language and the interplay of geography and culture to his work, as seen in the Magaambya section of Lost Omens Character Guide, the xulgaths in the Extinction Curse Adventure Path, and numerous other monsters over the years. As a full-time parent, his daughter is his most important monster.

About Iconic Encounters

Iconic Encounters is a series of web-based flash fiction set in the worlds of Pathfinder and Starfinder. Each short story provides a glimpse into the life and personality of one of the games’ iconic characters, showing the myriad stories of adventure and excitement players can tell with the Pathfinder and Starfinder roleplaying games.

"Ready to keep going? Break time’s done.” Kyra straightened from her meditative stance in the darkened, deadened grass.

Merisiel had been pacing for the past few minutes already, eager to continue onward, muscles twitching in anticipation—chomping at the bit to keep going. Kyra had seen the elf’s posture like this many times and already knew the answer before it was voiced. Still, Merisiel turned an analytical eye toward her companion.

“That’s on you,” Merisiel said. “You used some magic back there. Are you ready to keep moving?”

“I’m ready,” Kyra confirmed, stretching away the stasis in her limbs, chuckling to herself as Merisiel practically leapt forward.

Kyra hung back a step, letting the elf take lead this time. The light was dim and muted here, and Merisiel was far better trained to step silently. Not that they particularly needed to, but it was generally good practice, especially here. This woodland commanded an almost reverent silence.

It wasn’t like other places Kyra had visited. She’d certainly seen her share of forest travel, but the Uskwood—and this particular part of it—was something different. Trees grew tall but held an innate roughness to them; branches twisted, splintered, or hunched as though in pain, yet still reached hopefully to the sky.

She couldn’t blame the trees for reaching toward the light. She would, too, if this was her home. Even the air felt heavier here than it did in sun-touched lands. Blue-gray fog wisped lazily at her feet and slithered away like a living creature. It made travel difficult for the two of them, obscuring the distance but offering a dim, hazy reflection of the light. Small comfort there.

There were stretches of Nidal and the Uskwood where the border between their universe and the shadowy realm of the Netherworld grew thin. While several of these rifts were already known and studied, the two adventurers knew there might be others that would randomly appear.

They’d just hoped to avoid them. Alas.

“It’s a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live here,” Merisiel said, smirking as she made her way forward step by careful step. In the unsettling silence, she didn’t have to speak loudly for her words to travel.

Kyra smiled despite herself. It was technically Merisiel’s fault they agreed to this mission in the first place; she wouldn’t have found herself in the Uskwood under normal circumstances. She responded quietly, “Definitely not.”

Silence descended on them again, smothering and cumbersome. Step by step, they proceeded alertly in this sinister quietude. The shadow-swept wood played with their senses; several times already during their trek, they’d both caught motion out of the corners of their eyes, only to find a disturbing lack of anything substantial. Whispers just on the edge of hearing teased them, only to result in nothing: no one there and little more than a persistent feeling of disquiet and of being toyed with by forces ever out of sight.

It was starting to grate on them both.

“Sooo,” sighed Merisiel quietly, “not to alarm you, but I’ve started to see things again.”

“Me too. Eyes watching in the trees,” Kyra answered. “More this time.”

Meri nodded agreement and both women moved their hands toward their respective weapons in preparation for a fight. During the last few hours, the appearance of the wispy illusions had all been false alarms, but to relax now would be foolish.

The Netherworld is no place for a casual forest stroll. Illustration by Emile Denis from Pathfinder GM Core.

As if guided by the hands of divinity, Kyra caught sight of strange, glowing eyes at the corner of her vision, then turned to look in the opposite direction—just in time to watch the nearby shadows spit out a giant, color-drained cat, its jaw extended and its long, misshapen claws stretching out for her, mid-pounce!

She met the strange creature with a startled cry. Her scimitar flashed in her hand, angled between them. It was an imperfect defense, she knew, even before her sword arm complained from the sharp sting of claw and tooth. At least the creature was wounded as well; its red blood turned gray and shadowy as it met the dark ground and melted into it.

If I’d hesitated but one second longer...

But then Merisiel was beside her, jumping from the fog-filled shadows behind the beast. Her face was contorted into a vicious snarl, and her daggers were lightning-fast, stabbing at the creature who attacked her wife before she retreated out of sight again.

Kyra’s mind whirled as quickly as her scimitar. They’d already encountered a small group of similar creatures, bleached of their color yet somehowharder to see in the dark mists of the forest, which commanded the shadows at their will and were, in turn, twisted by them. The previous attack had come from a sickly-looking stag who needed reminding that deer did not typically hunger for flesh. It was surely a mercy to put the crazed, blood-hungry creature to rest. They’d learned a lot from that battle.

It was the Netherworld’s influence on the real world, she knew. The animal inhabitants of the shadowy plane were bizarre, distorted beings that were a strange mirror to their own. When the planes bled into each other, as they did so strangely here… Well, it was no surprise there was some intermingling of worlds.

That didn’t make it any easier, though.

“It brought a friend!” Merisiel emerged from the shadows again, this time sending two daggers flying. One sank into the meaty, pale shank of the shadow-cat, and the other flew right past Kyra’s ear, hurtling toward the new enemy. “I think you’d be better handle that one, my love!”

With Meri commanding the feline’s attention, Kyra whipped around to follow the line of the elf’s weapon, though the crawling feeling along the back of her neck already told her the nature of the enemy behind her.

The creature was difficult to pick out at first, as it seemed to be merely the shadow of a nearby tree. Kyra’s eyes caught the strange, liquid movement of the being as it slithered from its base, all harsh angles and thorny, smoky darkness made manifest and given horrible life.

Horrible unlife, Kyra corrected herself, already feeling the burning heat of holy purpose filling her breast. Her right hand clenched around the golden idol of Sarenrae and thrust it up and outward. The Dawnflower’s magic answered, and the cleric focused it onto the shadow. A holy nimbus surrounded her clenched fist, and golden, magical fire lashed toward the creature, hungrily seeking to purge the corruption with its own radiant force. The undead reeled as divine magic lashed it, leaving it wounded and weakened.

Between the two of them, their enemies stood no chance. Merisiel’s seemingly endless supply of daggers, combined with her supreme agility, allowed her to easily get herself into advantageous positions. Kyra’s battle might shone as brightly as the angelic ankh idol in her hand, held aloft and glowing with sanctified cleansing magic.

It never failed to impress her how good of a team she and Merisiel made. In short time, their enemies were conquered, their weapons were cleaned, and their wounds were healed with a few, warming words and channeled magics.

Kyra sighed, worn down from a long day of exploration and battle. With a weary smile, she insisted, “Next time, love, I choose the mission.”

“How was I to know it was going to be this exciting?” Merisiel playfully retorted before dropping back into a more serious tone. “Look, we’re almost there. Just think: soon we’ll be at Volsazni Dezarr’s country home. We’ll enjoy a nice, long rest, a good meal, and we’ll be able to ask him more about the artifact we’re looking for. Easy!”

Kyra released a long breath. They could both use a good rest, she admitted to herself.

She had no idea how true that would become by journey’s end.

About the Author

Rachael Cruz is an award-winning writer / game designer whose TTRPG work can be found in Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed-Of, Dune: Adventures in the Imperium, Fantasy Age, RuneQuest, Star Trek Adventures, and more! She loves to help people of all ages play pretend and tell amazing stories together. For contact info, social addresses, and general writerly stuff, visit rachaelcruz.carrd.co.

About Iconic Encounters

Iconic Encounters is a series of web-based flash fiction set in the worlds of Pathfinder and Starfinder. Each short story provides a glimpse into the life and personality of one of the games’ iconic characters, showing the myriad stories of adventure and excitement players can tell with the Pathfinder and Starfinder roleplaying games.

"And then he walked face-first into a swarm of mosquitos, just like that!” Lini chuckled. “I remember the first time I did that, so many years ago! It nearly scared the life out of me. He’s fine, though; just rattled from the experience.”

The orange-haired dwarf grunted acknowledgement, pausing in his forward motion long enough to ask, “This was while I was scouting?”

“Right,” the lively gnome confirmed. “That’s why Valeros and Ezren stayed back at camp. Val wanted to sleep off the mosquitos…”

“…and Ezren wanted to avoid getting his shoes wet again,” her friend grumbled.

“You’re not wrong.” Lini grinned, hopping over an old, grounded vine. “But I can’t really blame him for wanting to stay behind, Harsk. He’s been seeing enemies everywhere. Every plant’s a flesh-eater and each low-hanging vine’s a snake to the poor guy.”

“He’s not like us,” Harsk summarized.

Straight to the point as usual, the little druid mused, but no less correct for it. The three of them—her beloved companion Droogami, the ranger Harsk, and she—had already fallen into a comfortable pattern. Each of them knew the best places to set one’s feet to keep their steps as unobtrusive as possible, and they had a general knowledge of what to watch out for in this environment. Each was more comfortable here, in the middle of the thick-grown jungle, than in the chaos of “civilized” settlements. Likewise, they each trusted the other to be competent in their own skills.

“Right. And it’s never good to be alone, so I didn’t really mind them hanging back at camp while we went ahead,” Lini finished. She saw the momentary flicker of a grin cross Harsk’s face and knew he’d been thinking much the same thing about their traveling companions.

Exploring the jungle had been a lot easier since letting Ezren and Valeros stay back, she had to admit.

A short, sharp hiss of sound from the dwarf interrupted the conversation. Lini crouched instinctively and then rolled her eyes at herself; she was the one holding the torch. Most obvious target, anyone?

Fortunately, the ranger’s quick warning was not immediately followed by an attack. It was just a signal for her to be cautious. Moving forward quietly, keeping low, the green-haired druid soon discovered what Harsk had seen: through the darkness ahead, a stone monolith reached up through the shadows, impeding their chosen path.

Lini’s curiosity tingled through her, the thrill of discovery barely held at bay until she received an all-clear signal from Harsk and saw Droogami return from circling in the opposite direction. She practically bounced as she approached, hopping atop a nearby root, a thick but sturdy remnant from a long-fallen tree. At this greater height, she raised her small hand and gently cleared away a curtain of overgrown moss, then rested it along the edge of the strange, sculpted rock.

“Another one in the distance,” Harsk said, pointing out a similar shape at the edge of their vision. “Wonder how far these go.”

“Droo, look at this,” she breathed, running her fingers along the rock. “How old do you think this thing is?”

As ever, the snow leopard refused to lend her appraisal to the situation. Lini chuckled. “I bet Ezren’s kicking himself now. He’d have wanted to see this.” Though, she had to admit to herself, he’d have certainly seen that vine over there as another snake, that plush leaf as a squirmy caterpillar, that hanging bit of moss as a bat…

“We’ll bring them tomorrow. More light then,” Harsk said.

Nodding, Lini’s hand brushed over a dip in the stone’s surface. Following a hunch, the gnome cleared away more of the moss. “Hang on a tic...! Hey, Harsk, there’s some sculpted stuff on the monolith! Kinda looks all swirly and serpentine. Come and look!”

“One moment,” answered the ranger. His own exploration had turned up something odd: dark, splotchy stains on an otherwise-green leaf. Blood...? He looked up, trying to locate the source of any drip, but found nothing of interest above. His stomach tensed, as it often did when he realized there was likely danger nearby.

You never know what you’ll find in the heart of the jungle. Illustration by WIll O'Brien from Pathfinder GM Core.

Meanwhile, Lini’s eyes shifted, focusing just beyond the edges of the monolith, past the normal spectrum of light, into the space that allowed her to detect the presence of magic. What she found drew a thoughtful sound from her. “Huh. There’s a faint magical aura on it, too...”

Harsk’s warning whistle came just in time. Lini dropped down and saw the emerald green blur of a reptilian tail jam into the stone right where her head had been. Instinctually, she pulled magic around her, drawing from the earth and tightening her skin to mimic the stony strength of the monolith. If not for Harsk’s well-timed warning, she’d have been mincemeat! The creature righted itself along the side of the stone and reared up over the top, its bright, leathery wings catching the torchlight.

“Drake!” the ranger called. As if in answer, a second serpentine hunter launched itself from the trees, angling towards him. That was a mistake; lightning quick, Harsk brought his axes to hand and left a long wound along the creature’s side as it flew by, hearing a satisfying shriek in reaction.

Meanwhile, Droogami launched herself towards the perched dragon threatening Lini, deftly avoiding the swing of the creature’s stinger and swiping at it with her mighty claws.

Despite the danger she was in, Lini had to admit that jungle drakes were simply gorgeous creatures. Sure, they were larger than she was by a notable amount, and sure, their stingers hurt like nobody’s business and had enough goopy venom in them to sicken even the hardiest body. But they were just trying to eat, after all, and a dwarf, a gnome, and a big cat sure seemed like an easy meal. Lini could totally understand how tempting a target she must make. Still, how majestic they looked when they—Oops, it’s diving again!

Rolling clear of claws and dodging the drake’s stinger, Lini gathered her magic and aimed it at Droogami. Focusing nature’s might, she used herself as a conduit, feeding power into the great snow leopard. The little druid felt her bond with the cat strengthen, their shared energy invigorating her friend. “Droo!” she called. “Like we practiced!”

Her stalwart companion and protector stood between Lini and the hungry drake. Fixing the creature with its most menacing gaze, Droogami let loose a long, primal growl, a burst of sound that shredded the air before her. You are not hunter, the magically enhanced noise insisted as it tore into the drake. You are prey.

Even Harsk had to glance over his shoulder at the great cat; he’d never heard Droo do that before. He was glad he wasn’t the target of her aimed, pain-inducing yowl.

The drake, however, wasn’t so fortunate: it reeled, knocked off balance and startled by the painful sound. Its eyes widened with fear, and for a moment, it seemed to reconsider its options. Jungle drakes typically didn’t prefer to stay and face down their prey, instead opting to fly by, letting their venom do the work for them. This one’s meal had just become more trouble than it was worth.

Noting the creature’s hesitation, Lini pressed the attack, pulling her sling and sending sharpened, stinging rocks hurtling towards it. “Harsk, watch for the stingers and the spit,” she called.

“D’ya think?” countered Harsk, diving out of the way of a flailing stinger. He rolled closer to the great creature, angling his axes with the movement, and was rewarded with a horrible screech—and a spray of hot blood as he severed the drake’s stinger from its tail. Using his momentum, he leapt from the ground, slicing his weapons upward and catching the creature’s wing. It was all but done for, and the ranger wasted no time finishing the job.

That left the one facing Lini and Droogami. By now, the gnome had moved into a flanking position, sending stinging stones at its back while Droo slashed and clawed at the creature’s front. It was going to lose.

This was too much for the creature. In perhaps the smartest choice of its entire life, the drake decided that the small, helpless meal was neither as small nor as helpless as originally thought. It displayed its wings broadly to buy itself some space and, hissing, leapt into the canopy above, beating a hasty retreat.

The victory didn’t make the druid or her friends feel much better. Taking only a moment to catch his breath, Harsk asked tersely, “You hurt?”

“No,” breathed Lini, turning her attention to Droogami. A few moments reassured her that her friend was in healthy condition. “We’re both good. You?”

Harsk nodded, voicing the thought in the same moment Lini had it: “Strange that it chose to retreat so suddenly. I don’t like it.”

“I mean, we were more than it bargained for,” Lini said. “But I don’t like it either. They love to fly-by and poison, but it’s very rare for those things to only fly in twos.”

“Then there might be more,” Harsk said. “It might be getting friends. Let’s get back to camp.”

“And quickly,” agreed Lini. “Ez and Val may be in danger!”

Wasting no more time, Harsk bounded away. Lini hopped onto Droogami’s back and the giant cat was quick to follow. Tomorrow, they could return, clean the carcass, and continue exploring the ruins. Tonight, Ezren and Valeros might need help, and neither Lini nor Harsk intended to let their teammates down.

About the Author

Rachael Cruz is an award-winning writer / game designer whose TTRPG work can be found in Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed-Of, Dune: Adventures in the Imperium, Fantasy Age, RuneQuest, Star Trek Adventures, and more! She loves to help people of all ages play pretend and tell amazing stories together. For contact info, social addresses, and general writerly stuff, visit rachaelcruz.carrd.co.

About Iconic Encounters

Hi, my name is Fred Van Lente, writer of comics and prose (my latest novel, Never Sleep, debuted a few weeks ago: check it out if you like historical thrillers about America's first female private detectives). The fine folks at Paizo asked me to drop by to tell you a little bit about my new Pathfinder comics series, Wake the Dead, premiering from Dynamite in May. This is volume eight of the long-running Pathfinder series, and we're doing something a little different this time out.

While I've enjoyed chronicling the adventures of everyone's favorite Iconic PCs, i.e. Seoni and friends, both in the Fumbus comics one-shot and in the Guns & Gears flash fiction on this very blog, Wake the Dead takes up with a new party of Iconics of different classes. All these characters have appeared in the comics before in supporting roles, but this is the first time they’ve met each other, and certainly the first time they've gone adventuring together as a group.

Harsk is the one returning “main” character in the group. The dwarf ranger was delayed in rejoining his usual adventuring party, Seoni’s team, in Absalom in the Fumbus book. Those of you who read the Guns & Gears fiction know the Pathfinder Society sent them off on an adventure to the Arcadian coast; while he awaits their return, Harsk has agreed to do a separate mission for the Society to the arcane state of Nex, where he's to meet with a defector from the undead nation of Geb with valuable intel.

But Harsk isn't the only person braving the Awful district of Ecanus and the Mana Wastes to meet with the defector. The Firebrands have sent two of their newer members. Lem is the bard in the group, an eternal optimist, and a bit of a diva, and probably my favorite to write of the bunch.

Sajan is his mismatched partner, a stoic and humorless monk still on a quest to find his missing sister. The Firebrands have agreed to help him pick up that cold trail if he brings back the information this defector allegedly has.

However, in addition to the Pathfinders and Firebrands wanting to get their hands on the turncoat, she has information that could prove vital to the Knights of Lastwall too. They’ve sent the paladin Seelah into Ecanus to investigate. As a child, her family fled Geb and its horrors, so she has no love for that nation or the undead in general. Will her personal stake in this mission be a help, a hindrance, or a bit of both?

For Quinn the investigator, grabbing the defector is just another job in one sense, but in another, it's a tantalizing mystery: he does not know the identity of the client who hired him and is paying his daily fee (plus expenses). He'll only find out when he delivers the turncoat to Alkenstar.

Then, when the Gebbite necromancer Nyctessa shows up with her own inscrutable agenda and her rather, well, morbid sense of humor, Quinn's curiosity deepens further: okay, maybe it's not just a job to him after all.

So all of these Iconics with competing missions converge on the same spot in Ecanus's viscera-splattered Awful district to rendezvous with this defector—but only one can take the contact away with them. What happens next? Will they be at each other's throats, or will they work together to survive the night?

Needless to say, I can't wait for you to read the first issue of Pathfinder: Wake the Dead and find out.

Pathfinder: Wake the Dead comes out June 2023! Don't forget to ask about it at your Friendly Local Comic Shop Today!

Dynamite Entertainment is proud to debut the long-anticipated next Pathfinder comic book series! Tabletop RPG connoisseur and fan-favorite writer Fred Van Lente is revving up an all-new party and campaign for Wake the Dead, kicking off this May!

It's a new creative team, a new party of Iconics, new lands of Golarion to explore, and unforgettable moments galore in the brand-new adventure. Paizo and Dynamite are teaming up once more to offer not only a thrilling tale, but also extra features that players can bring right to their next game nights! It's been nearly five years since the last major Pathfinder saga in comics, the critically acclaimed Spiral of Bones from writer Crystal Frasier. Since then, the world of Pathfinder in-game and in real world popularity has exploded even more. With recent record-smashing sales of sourcebooks and more, it's the perfect time for fans of the game to experience this classic alternate avenue of adventure!

"I'm thrilled to be back writing Pathfinder comics, and even more exciting to be writing a whole new party of Iconics meeting and adventuring together for the very first time," said writer Fred Van Lente.

In Wake the Dead, the tantalizing prospect of a rendezvous with a Gebbite defector in possession of priceless secrets from that undead nation draws together a diverse group of adventurers in the Nexian metropolis of Ecanus. Van Lente has assembled an all-new party, spotlighting Iconics who, before now, have only graced the four-colored pages as guest stars. Readers will get to hang out with Quinn the investigator, Sajan the monk, Lem the bard, and Seelah the champion, while readers of the original hit series by writer Jim Zub and others get reacquainted with Harsk the dwarf ranger! When they all find themselves cornered by the city's remorseless Deathsealers, can the Iconics band together for survival and escape a city full of hostile wizards alive?

Fred Van Lente has been playing tabletop RPGs for years, going back to the classic "red box" basic sets, which he received as a kid like many his age. Eventually, he was introduced to the world of Pathfinder and played regularly for years. Recently, he wrote the epic comic spotlighting Fumbus the alchemist, available initially on Kickstarter. He's been contributing prose stories to the mythos on the Paizo site for a while too. Beyond the world of roleplaying, Van Lente is beloved for his work on hallmark comics titles like Amazing Spider-Man, Incredible Hercules, Marvel Zombies, Archer & Armstrong, The Comic Book History of Comics, and more.

For this new series, Van Lente is joined by artist Eman Casallos, who will bring his dungeon master-esque storytelling to the page. Artists Steve Ellis and Biago d'Alessandro also contribute covers to issues, in addition to Casallos. d'Allesandro's covers for each issue of the series will also connect to form a larger image when collected together.

Each issue of Pathfinder: Wake the Dead features premium cardstock covers, making a top tier product for collectors and something durable that will survive the rigors of the gaming table. Issues also come with bonus material useful for players of the game. These will include playable character stats for the iconic paladin Seelah, new character options for inhabitants of the magical military city of Ecanus, and more. And all of these extra features are officially sanctioned by the Pathfinder Society!

Paizo and tabletop fans can stay tuned too, as the first ever Starfinder comic series is right around the corner too! More information about that series will be revealed soon!

Guest blog by Vincent Faust of Dynamite Entertainment

Of course it happened while Kyyduh was alone and on their security shift. Of course.

While others were likely to gripe and moan, Kyyduh truly enjoyed their security shifts during cryosleep. Long trip through the Drift? Perfect time to read up on all sorts of interesting stuff around the galaxy. They were usually bored and twitchy for about two days of their shift, but after that they’d fall into an information hole on their datapad and bury themself into some new subject. Security shifts were dull and slow, so everyone found their own methods of entertainment, and Kyyduh’s was falling into research on a new, random topic each time. They were supposed to be more vigilant, given the Drift Crash and everything. Supposed to be keeping a close eye on the Drift monitors and the cameras that showed the engine rooms and storage. Supposed to.

Instead, Kyyduh had fallen into an information hole about the history of Eoxian bone lace. They’d found a whole article and several online video examinations theorizing on the history and origin of the craft and examining different techniques, and by the time they realized an alarm was blaring, they couldn’t have told anyone what day it was or what ship they were on. They swatted the button to reset the alarm, eyes flicking between the various monitors as they absentmindedly tucked their current weaving project (a tapestry of Meyel mid-battle dance) to the side of the console. Engines, fine. Storage, a little messy. Looks like some boxes were knocked over. Cryosleep—

Someone was in the cryosleep chamber. Kyyduh stood immediately, temper flaring at the thought of someone, something, some creature, interrupting their travels and preying on their buddies. And while they were sleeping no less!

As the doors slid open, a wave of nausea hit Kyyduh and they stumbled, grabbing onto a nearby container for support. They shook their head, feeling the plants that made up part of their body start to shift within their lungs and throat, allowing them to breathe more easily and fight off this sickness. They glanced up and spotted the intruder who, strangely surrounded by floating lights, was moving toward the life support systems.

“Hey! Not quite!” Kyyduh’s temper returned tenfold, and they jerked their arm, reforming it into a threatening cannon. “Turn around and hold still!” Their body vibrated softly as it readied an explosive shot, taking aim to hit the intruder and not any of the delicate support systems.

The intruder whipped around and Kyyduh caught a surprise burst of energy in the chest, knocking the air from their lungs, though the vines around their torso whipped together to form a bond that shielded them from most of the damage. With a roar they fired off a wild shot, missing the intruder but illuminating them enough to provide some more information. Strange hair, strange symbols— Oh by Meyel’s whiskers, a hesper? Here?

Illustration by Mirco Paganessi from Starfinder Interstellar Species.

They grit their teeth as the fey snarled at them, gathering energy around his body. Kyyduh took a few breaths, unable to fully calm down before another energy shot hit them in the chest, knocking them back against Raia’s chamber. The safety glass cracked beneath them, and Kyyduh saw red. They lunged for the hesper, shifting their arm into a claw just before they body-slammed into him, kicking him out of his float and onto the ground. The hesper struggled against Kyyduh’s weight, the denseness of his body working against him to keep him down. Kyyduh moved to hit him with their claw, but stopped when the reflection of their symbol of Meyel in the metal of a nearby chamber drew their eye to the expression on the hesper’s face. He wore a look of struggle and desperation, his cheeks thinner than they should be. Kyyduh forced themself to breathe, then gave the hesper a good shake.

“Calm down and tell me what you’re doing!” they demanded, dodging the hesper’s weak attempt to strike them once more. “Alright, enough with the hitting, come on!” They gave him another shake, slightly swatting at his face with their free hand. The swat seemed to startle the fey, at least enough that their radiation field dropped, letting Kyyduh breathe comfortably and sit up, dragging him with them. “Let’s start with the basics. What’s your name, bud?”

“Thakvine.” The hesper finally got out, calming down despite his repeated glances back at the life support systems. “Please, the Drift guided me here and I’m so hungry... Just a little bit of the power. Please. I need some. It’s been so long...”

Kyyduh gave him an inquisitive look, then a nod. “Don’t drain it dry. And you owe me.” They eased off, letting Thakvine stand and following him to the systems. Thakvine nodded in eager agreement, taking a moment as he pressed close to the machinery, absorbing the excess energy. After a moment, he looked back at Kyyduh, reaching out his hand and shifting it, making an exact copy of Kyyduh’s claw.

“You also change?” The fey asked, watching them.

“Yeah. Couple of years now. Not mutations, but plants and stuff. Doctors say I’m a natural at adaptation.” Kyyduh puffed their chest out, looking proud.

“Can you show me more? Like the gun, the cannon?” Thakvine, no longer gaunt looking, now wore a fascinated expression, moving closer to examine the moving plant life on Kyyduh’s body and armor.

The chitin on Kyyduh’s chest shifted, retracting, and they gave their claw a shake, reforming into its usual conical shape. “Sure.” They shrugged, giving Thakvine a smile. “But you’re a crew member now. Welcome to Sunrise Maiden. Your job is to help keep us focused during security shifts. Deal?” They held out their hand for a shake, laughing as Thakvine shook a single finger.

“Deal.” He agreed, before mimicking Kyyduh’s claw again.

Kyyduh laughed, wrapping an arm around Thakvine’s shoulders and glancing back as Raia’s chamber hissed open. “Hey! New crewmate!”

About the Author

Shay Snow is an agender Native American (Caddo and Swampy Cree) tabletop author and developer. They’ve contributed to Pathfinder, Starfinder, Backwater Southern Gothic, and Coyote & Crow. When they’re not playing or writing tabletop games, they can be found playing video games or talking about Indigenous issues on social media. They currently live on unceded Duwamish land with their Lakota spouse and two spoiled cats. You can find them on Twitter @spellsinsugar and keep up with their upcoming projects through their website, https://shayjay.carrd.co/.

About Iconic Encounters

Iconic Encounters is a series of web-based flash fiction set in the worlds of Pathfinder and Starfinder. Each short story provides a glimpse into the life and personality of one of the games’ iconic characters, showing the myriad stories of adventure and excitement players can tell with the Pathfinder and Starfinder roleplaying games.

At least this isn’t in Ustalav, Mios thought, smiling wryly to themself as they approached the Lily Lounge. It hadn’t taken much investigating into the recent mysterious disappearances in Augustana to find all signs pointing to this new luxury lounge, famous almost overnight. If this were Ustalav, Mios figured, the lodge would be full of vampires. Or werewolves. Or some kind of vampiric werewolves like those vukodlaks from last winter.

The Lily Lounge’s clientele, at least the ones who hadn’t been disappearing, tended towards the wealthy; after all, it advertised itself as a luxurious resting place for valiant hunters returning from their hunts. Though Andoran claimed to not have any nobles (technically true), many of these clients were just that in all but name. The real trouble is that the lounge was reported to also let in the less well to do… who would then go missing. Not at the lounge, though, and not right away. Whoever was responsible, likely the owners, weren’t that sloppy. No, these poorer clients were always seen afterwards for some time but mysteriously disappeared within a fortnight, often alongside reports of erratic behavior. Even odds it’s enchantment magic forcing the victim to kidnap themselves, Mios thought, or maybe this is the one time it actually IS a doppelganger replacing them at the lounge.

Regardless, the place was highly suspicious. Though Mios could tell that the lounge’s secrets were rather well-hidden by anyone else’s standards, little things gave it away to their trained eye. Heliotrope planted at the four corners of the lot, to divert close attention. Structure offset slightly from cardinal directions, subtly separating building from external expectations to decrease guard. It even extended to the proprietors—thought of highly, but only ever in the vaguest of terms—even Mios couldn’t discover much about one Gilbert Zoon (the lounge’s founder) or his business partner Sabricia (last name unknown). They’d been seen out during the day, though, so at least they weren’t vampires. And nothing was timed around the full moon…. Mios reflexively reached out and touched the old wound on their leg, another reminder of the past, and what it meant to let down one’s guard. Memories like these were why Mios never regretted leaving Ustalav behind. Here in Andoran, what was the worst it could be? No, Mios thought as they reflexively formed a turning-away sign, better not to jinx it. Some of the old superstitions died hard.

Their reminiscence was broken by an incoming party of young hunters—just the chance Mios had been waiting for. They waited until the hunters had just entered, then adjusted their wolf pelt, held their back straight, and walked forward like they owned the lodge. They’d seen enough nobles in their life that it was easy to put on airs. At the door, Mios made some small talk with the staff before being invited in. Pupil dilation normal, good recall of earlier events, able to respond to abstract questions. The staff didn’t seem to be under any form of direct mind control, though they did seem a bit tense.

After a day or two casing the Lily Lounge, Mios had decided the front door would be better than sneaking in a window or cellar, which would almost certainly be trapped or magically defended against break-ins. Threshold magic—versatile, but dependent on intent. If the owner’s intent was toward privacy, the magic could help reinforce a boundary between the outside and inside. It was the same principle when creating a circle of salt to ward off a ghost—create a boundary, then give it authority. But you can’t bar a door that you’ve opened yourself, like the front door. Let alone put greeters at. Even vampires can freely enter a public building. The staff smiled at Mios, and they walked in.

As Mios entered, two beads on their wrist pulsed once with subtle light, and a tarnished coin on their waist spun slightly. The building had been highly warded, then—but Mios had made it through easily. They absconded down a hallway, away from guests and staff, and reached out an empty hand. Ownership is never broken by mere distance, only a change in relationship. As Mios concentrated on the truism, they felt a familiar weight through their glove. When they looked down at their hand again, their lantern shone in it, and in its light, once-invisible defenses crisscrossed the walls and doors. Mios peered at an especially warded door. Sarkorian abjuration, but corrupted. Strange to see that so far south. It suggested demonic influence, or someone familiar with the Worldwound and its closing. Mios shifted their usual silver blade to a back sheath, replacing it with one of cold-forged iron, just in case. With a bit of effort—more than it usually took—Mios dismantled the wards, opened the door, and crept down the hallway beyond.

Passing nondescript private suites, Mios’s lantern light eventual fell upon a door covered up entirely by an illusion. Curious, since there was no sign of this wing from the outside. Extradimensional, or just a massive illusion? Mios slipped into the room to find out. Ah, the classic trapdoor leading down. That explained it. Maybe just mundane architectural tricks then. The chamber below was furnished in fine silk, imported wood, and elegant paintings, easily the most grandiose and opulent part of the lounge… but in the lantern’s light, the facade melted away. The entire place was a dismal cavern with clear demonic magic coursing through it. Well, clear to Mios. Surely the victims had been fooled. The thaumaturge drew their iron blade.

Mios’s lantern dispels more than just shadows. Art by Roena Rosenberger

As Mios turned the corner, their light shone on two figures who must have been the owners, though no sooner did the light reach them than their true forms were revealed. The man, now a hideous creature with claws and a carapace, shrieked in pain and flinched backwards from the light. Weak to light… no, not to light. Treachery demon. Harmed by truth. An incredibly dangerous threat for the unsuspecting citizenry of Augustana, but Mios began to grin; they were just about the worst possible match-up the demon could face. The thaumaturge reached into one of their many pouches, riffling for a bit before settling on a dried chrysanthemum. They passed the flower through the flame of their lantern and smeared the ash on their pick. They felt the concepts align, felt the tension of forces coming to oppose each other: against an unnatural creature of treachery cloaked in falsehoods, present an object of the natural world, symbolizing honesty, tempered in the light of truth. Three properties from the demon, three from Mios.

Their pick thrummed with power as the creatures howled. Time to get to work.

About the Author

Mark Seifter is the Director of Game Design for Roll for Combat, the former Design Manager at Paizo, and one of the four leads on the creation of Pathfinder Second Edition. He is the author of the thaumaturge class in Dark Archive. You can see him on Arcane Mark with Linda Zayas-Palmer Tuesdays at 7 PM Pacific, and Saturdays at 10 AM Pacific at https://www.twitch.tv/arcanemark, and Roll for Combat Live with Stephen Glicker at https://www.youtube.com/c/RollForCombat/." @markseifter on Twitter.

About Iconic Encounters

Iconic Encounters is a series of web-based flash fiction set in the worlds of Pathfinder and Starfinder. Each short story provides a glimpse into the life and personality of one of the games’ iconic characters, showing the myriad stories of adventure and excitement players can tell with the Pathfinder and Starfinder roleplaying games.

Gazing past his easel at the bustling Commerce District of Niswan, Thaleon’s thoughts wandered once again. They rarely stayed put, but life would hardly be any fun if they did. There were so many delicious new sensations to take in, from the kites dancing overhead to the tempting sizzle of vegetable wraps from a nearby food stall. He observed the colors of the market, his eye lingering on a small shrine where a priest was drawing the rose of Shelyn in colored powders. The Rahadoumi elf didn’t worship to any gods himself, of course, but he had nothing but respect for the old priest’s lifelong devotion and mastery as his fingers effortlessly scattered a vibrant green around the rose’s exterior. Thaleon turned back to his own easel to paint with his mind’s eye, the emotions of the market his palette. He blended the vibrant gold of a cunning merchant’s intellect with the frustrated red of the customer she had just outwitted in a battle of bargains. Now for some green as well, the color of growth, flexibility, potential...

Thaleon frowned. He sensed a green, but it was of an altogether unpleasant, oily variety, coming from a woman in pristine robes, her ravenous eyes scouring the market. Wanting to get closer, Thaleon steadied his mind and searched his feelings until he found the one he needed. Calmness, boredom… no, listlessness. The drabbest of grays, utterly unremarkable. Without so much as an incantation, Thaleon cloaked himself in the emotion and vanished from sight. Quick and quiet as a shadow, he slipped through the marketplace. Most would struggle to navigate a crowd, even invisibly, without bumping into a customer or jostling a cart, but Thaleon had decades of practice slipping by unnoticed and had long ago learned the consequences of getting caught.

The woman’s eyes found their target, and a predatory grin spread across her face. The crowd before her instinctively parted, and within moments, she held her prey in her grasp, her nails digging deep into the priest’s shoulders. As blood pooled in their wake, the woman whispered a single word, “Watch.” Her eyes flashed that oily green, the unmistakable swirl of magic about them. Thaleon saw nothing, but he felt the man’s terror, pure white and primal as the priest gazed with horror at a nightmare no one else could see. He fell to his knees and pushed the nearby offering basket, filled with flowers and a few coins. “Please, not them. Take what you want from me, just don’t….” His words were cut short as he vomited onto the cobblestones. The woman scowled with disgust. “This is your final warning.” With a regal nod, she strode away, splitting the crowd in her wake.

Thaleon’s hands trembled. He wanted to soothe the priest’s terror and pain, but he knew the man couldn’t find peace while the monster’s threat loomed over him. He reached for compassion—blue, tranquil as a cloudless sky—and sent it flowing into the priest, calming the man and closing his wounds. The priest glanced about, seeking the source of the swirling colors.

“Don’t worry, Father,” Thaleon whispered from the empty air, “you’re not alone.”

He quickened his pace and strode after the woman. From that display, it was clear what manner of monster she was. All Thaleon needed was a chance, away from the market stalls where so many innocents walked, to show the fiend exactly what he felt about her threats. As fortune would have it, it didn’t take long before she chose to turn down a secluded alleyway.

Thaleon didn’t need to search for his fury, it was right at his fingertips, and he used it to paint a simple blade in the air, the shape of the blade he’d been given when he left home. As the blade shot towards the woman, red fury burned away the tranquil gray that had kept Thaleon invisible, but he wasn’t afraid to let the monster see his face. With a feline growl, she rolled out of the blade’s path, scuffing her robes, before spinning toward Thaleon. Her hands spun too, twisting backward, and weaving shadowy threads of magic.

An agonizing scream echoed within Thaleon’s mind, reverberating and tearing. He steeled his will against the oncoming tide, instinctively countering each wave of psychic sound until silence prevailed once again. Definitely a rakshasa, then. And one who underestimated him too, having chosen to attack him on the battlefield of the mind. Thaleon felt a surge of pride; if she wished to play with occult magic, she’d picked the wrong opponent.

As the rakshasa leapt forward, Thaleon transmuted his pride into certainty and fortitude, summoning a disc of force in the air. Claws met the barrier and cracked it like glass, but Thaleon’s brow furrowed as he poured more will, more certainty, into the spell. More translucent shields sprung into being, and though the rakshasa’s claws shattered two of the discs, they could do no more than carve a groove into the third. She rebounded back, and Thaleon released a stream of chaotic emotion that collected around the rakshasa’s feet, dragging her to the ground, but not before she wove shadows into a bolt of flame that clipped Thaleon’s side.

Arm throbbing, Thaleon’s fury blotted out all thought, bursting forth as the air shook with color. While the rakshasa was getting to her feet, he painted again, pouring out his heart to form not just one rage-blade, but an entire storm of them hovering above the alleyway.

Thaleon’s emotions unleash in a torrent of thought. Art by João Fiuza

With an oily green flash of the rakshasa’s eyes, a sickening vision filled Thaleon’s mind—a group of rakshasas savoring a platter of roast meat unmistakably elven in origin. For an instant, the artist’s stomach churned before he recognized the intrusion and broke the enchantment. This twisted scene was the rakshasa’s dream, not his. Still, if she expected him to be sick... he retched loudly, hoping the monster’s pride would dull her suspicions. Right on cue, she charged, claws extended, running at full speed until she was just below the hanging blades. Thaleon rose from the ground, and with a last exertion, let the blades fall, each sharper and more jagged than the last.

The rain lasted for only a moment, but when it was finished, Thaleon’s fury subsided, replaced by relief and sorrow for the fiend’s past victims. No more rakshasas threatened Niswan that day.

About the Author

Linda Zayas-Palmer is the Development Manager for the Digital Adventures team, which produces Organized Play scenarios and other digital-only adventure content. Her largest projects as an author are Paizo's Fires of the Haunted City and the final third of the Roll for Combat's Jewel of the Indigo Isles Adventure Path. You can see her on Arcane Mark with Mark Seifter on Tuesdays at 7 PM Pacific and Saturdays at 10 AM Pacific at https://www.twitch.tv/arcanemark.

About Iconic Encounters

Iconic Encounters is a series of web-based flash fiction set in the worlds of Pathfinder and Starfinder. Each short story provides a glimpse into the life and personality of one of the games’ iconic characters, showing the myriad stories of adventure and excitement players can tell with the Pathfinder and Starfinder roleplaying games.

Catch up on previous chapters of Wreckers Reunion here, here, and here.

HOME, SWEET HOME

“Droven?”

“Yes, Fumbus?”

“Home’s good, Droven.”

Droven was taking time to reacquaint himself with the city that had been home for most of his life. Today, as most days since his return, the inventor made his way along the streets of Absalom, a covered wicker basket held in his right hand. As expected, no sooner had Droven’s metal-shod feet hit the cobblestones then Fumbus materialized alongside him, the quiet patter of the goblin’s wide feet slapping counterpoint to Droven’s own clanking footsteps.

Today, Fumbus wore a suspiciously guilty look on his face, and Droven had chosen to alter his normal route, which typically brought him down to the Puddles where he delivered muffins and stories to some of the local children. Instead, the half-orc inventor led his mechanical companion Whirp and Fumbus through the markets of the Coins district, waiting for Fumbus to own up to whatever had the goblin so worked up.

Droven suspected that Fumbus had borrowed or accidentally destroyed something valuable in the Pathfinder Society’s Grand Lodge and was worried that the lodge’s steward, Ambrus Valsin, would punish him for it. Fumbus had an excessive reverence for the Pathfinder Society, and the mutton-chopped old venture-captain had a particular talent for inspiring fear in the goblin without actually doing anything to him at all.

Upon realizing that Fumbus was unlikely to broach the subject of his distress without prompting, Droven finally asked, “So what happened this time?”

Fumbus sheepishly explained that a piece had come off an astrolabe in one of the Grand Lodge’s smaller libraries, completely by accident of course! Before Fumbus could fix it, he’d heard the voice of an irate Valsin echoing down the halls and had fled in search of a certain inventor who the goblin assumed could set everything right.

Droven suppressed a smile and was about to tell Fumbus he could indeed fix the astrolabe when he realized he’d lost track of Whirp. Turning, he the mechanical “goblin” dashing down the street, chasing a bouncing metal gear. Droven didn’t need to see Fumbus worriedly poking a finger through the hole in his jacket pocket to realize where the gear had come from. Nor did he need to dwell on the chaos a goblin-sized construct might cause barreling through a crowded marketplace.

Whirp lets a gear get away from him in this illustration by Roberto Pitturru from Pathfinder Guns & Gears

“Whirp, wait!”

Droven’s command was swallowed by the bustle of the streets, and neither he nor Fumbus stopped to see if the construct heard him. Nodding to Fumbus, Droven dashed to get between a trundling cart loaded with what looked to be expensive pottery and the single-minded construct chasing a shiny new “toy.” Fumbus yanked out a new bomb he’d been formulating following his time in Arcadia, this one loaded with black flecks of magnetic stone. With a slightly belated call to “look up,” Fumbus heaved the bomb between Whirp and the bouncing gear, the magnetic burst from the bomb halting Whirp in its tracks and pulling the gear to a stop right in front of the construct. After Whirp calmly sat down and picked up the now-immobile gear, Droven quickly retrieved the part and slid it into a sturdy pocket of his leather bandolier, reassuring Fumbus that all would be set right when they returned to the lodge.

“Now that that’s… sorted, I believe we have some friends wondering where we are.”

---

“Fumbus! Droven! WHIRP!” The cries came from a bevy of young children who called the alleys and gutters of Absalom their home. Droven had made a habit of visiting these urchins between Absalom’s Puddles district and the nearby bustling docks. They were mostly young humans left to run wild while their parents focused on putting food on the table, though a halfling girl was their apparent leader and a goblin boy was, Droven suspected, the culprit who kept turning various bits of castoff garbage into decidedly unsafe toys.

Three of the little waifs clambered up Droven’s side, and the half-orc smilingly obliged them by holding his prosthetic limb straight out so they could hang from it like grubby, adorable fruit. Another goblin child took Whirp by the hand and began showing the inquisitive construct her collection of shiny rocks. As Droven calmly took back several of his tools that had somehow found their way into the pockets of the children hanging from his mechanical arm, he listened to Fumbus tell everyone the story of their voyage across the Arcadian Ocean, as he had several times over the last few weeks.

“Fumbus and Droven make powerful engine. WHOOSH! We fly across the waves! A huge serpent, bigger than ten ships, rises up out of the water. RAARGH! Ezren magics up a blast of wind and WHIPPOW! We zip past it…”

As much as Droven hated to interrupt his friend’s story, the inventor noticed that several of the children were growing increasingly more interested in the covered basket Droven held.

“Perhaps a snack for our friends and a drink to keep our storyteller’s voice from going hoarse, eh?”

The children squealed with glee and quickly gathered in a semi-circle around Droven as he removed the cloth covering from the top of his wicker basket. Inside was a bottle of chilled juice and a pile of delicious, bright yellow muffins, courtesy of a kindly Vudran baker who supplied the Grand Lodge. Fumbus filled small vials with a sip of juice for each child while Droven handed out the muffins, after which the children snacked and drank happily as Fumbus finished his story.

“When’s Whirp gonna tell us a story?” A little gnome boy’s eyes shone with genuine curiosity even as he gently polished Whirp’s metal arm with the edge of his filthy shirt. “I bet Whirp beat up a whole bunch of bad guys!”

Fumbus nodded in agreement and immediately launched into the story of Whirp leaping across the trees of Arcadia with a pair of rocket-powered blast boots. The goblin exaggerated slightly, but not so much so that Droven felt a need to interject.

“Then, BAMMO! Whirp comes fallin’ outta the sky and SHWOOP stops the fire from the baddy!” As the children cheered at the end of the story, Droven explained that Whirp needed Fumbus to tell his stories because the construct was too shy, and also Droven had forgotten to give him a mouth (which the inventor promised he’d look into fixing just as soon as he had the chance.)

Once the tale was done, Droven and Fumbus excused themselves from their youthful friends’ company, promising to return the next day with more muffins and stories. As the unlikely pair of adventurers made their way back to the Grand Lodge, Droven glanced fondly at the goblin who had somehow become his most loyal and steadfast friend.

“Fumbus?”

“Yeah, Droven?”

“Home’s good, Fumbus.”

About the Author

Michael Sayre is a designer at Paizo who previously worked on the Organized Play team. He’s also a prolific freelancer, having contributed to numerous Paizo books and publications from other publishers, such as Lost Spheres Publishing, Rogue Genius Games, and many other companies in support of the Pathfinder RPG and other table-top game systems.

Fred Van Lente is a New York Times bestselling writer of comics, prose, and gaming, including the Pathfinder: Fumbus one-shot successfully Kickstarted in 2021. His short story “Neversleeps” was shortlisted for Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy. In addition to playing Pathfinder 2e, he’s currently running Call of Cthulhu 7e and Fallout 2d20 campaigns in Brooklyn, NY. He’s on Twitter and Instagram as @fredvanlente and you can sign up for updates on his upcoming projects at www.fredvanlente.com.

About Iconic Encounters

Iconic Encounters is a series of web-based flash fiction set in the worlds of Pathfinder and Starfinder. Each short story provides a glimpse into the life and personality of one of the games’ iconic characters, showing the myriad stories of adventure and excitement players can tell with the Pathfinder and Starfinder roleplaying games.

Catch up on previous chapters of Wreckers Reunion here and here.

SUPPLY RUN

Droven could hardly believe the twists and turns the last few days had taken. Month after month, season after season, he’d traveled the continent of Arcadia, searching for passage back to Absalom, an ocean away in the region known as the Inner Sea. He had spent more than a few days in the last weeks carefully examining the soles of his metal-reinforced boots. Long ago, he’d promised one of the first friends he’d made in Arcadia, an old half-orc named Darv, that if he still hadn’t found a way back to Absalom by the time the soles of wore thin, he’d return to Darv’s workshop to begin a new life.

Instead, Droven had inadvertently aided one of his closest friends from the Inner Sea, the goblin alchemist Fumbus, in a daring rescue against a gang of smugglers, the Wreckers. Fumbus’s rescued friends were a powerful old wizard named Ezren, a wise young cleric named Kyra, a cunning elf named Merisiel, and a valiant warrior called Valeros.

Droven had at first been afraid to tell the others they were as stranded as he was, but after some discussion the group realized that they had almost everything they needed to make the journey back to Absalom. Ezren and Kyra’s magic could calm the worst of the storms and turn the currents in their favor, while Valeros’s strength and Merisiel’s cunning, combined with Droven’s and Fumbus’s ingenuity, would allow them to build a sturdy enough sea craft from the salvage of the Wreckers’ victims.

The biggest problem was the lack of any known eastward currents bridging the Arcadian Ocean to the continents of Avistan and Garund. Droven had heard tales of the legendary current carrying Ulfen vikings to Port Valen in northern Arcadia and had even seen the maps of the sea routes between Arcadia and Tian Xia, which shared a northern land bridge with Avistan. Frustratingly, the northern route was only one way and the western route presented unique geographic barriers Droven had never been able to surmount. Making the trek in either direction, even accompanied by a group of stalwart adventurers, was a fraught journey that would take months at least.

Instead, Droven had a plan that this group’s unique talents were particularly suited for. While Valeros and company assembled a ship based on Droven’s blueprints, the half-orc, his construct companion Whirp, and Fumbus would venture into the abandoned lair of a reckless alchemist in the nearby jungles to retrieve the materials necessary to assemble an alchemical engine capable of propelling their craft across the Arcadian Ocean, regardless of winds or currents.

Droven had marked the laboratory the first time he’d passed along this stretch of coast over a year ago, though he’d been unwilling to delve too deep after encountering various alchemical traps. But now, with the possibility of home so close and a trusted companion at his side, Droven felt it worth the risk.

---

“Droven!”

“Yes, Fumbus?”

“Ice?”

“I’m sorry my friend, I’m afraid I don’t take your meanin–GAAH!”

Droven and Fumbus had bypassed a variety of traps and strange monsters to the facility’s primary laboratory. Things had been going remarkably well, with inventor, construct, and alchemist each uniquely suited to disable the dangers laid by the paranoid alchemist who’d built the place. Droven blamed himself for their current predicament, trapped in a sealed room with an angry ooze climbing out of a broken glass tank.

Shaking the sting of an acidic tendril from his non-mechanical arm, Droven yelled for Whirp. “Defensive formation zero zero three: barricade!”

Responding to his maker’s command, Whirp leapt between his allies and the approaching ooze, deploying thin, folded metal sheets within his chassis to create a temporary barricade. As Droven ducked behind it, Fumbus cleared his throat.

Whirp provides cover for Droven and Fumbus in this illustration by Will O’Brien from Pathfinder Guns & Gears

“Miss you, Droven” Fumbus said, ducking an acidic pseudopod and swirling a blue cannister around in his hand. “Ice?”

Droven’s good eye widened in surprise as he finally realized what the goblin was asking. “Yes, Fumbus! As much as you’ve got!”

Fumbus hurled the cannister at the ooze, freezing a portion of its body but barely slowing its advance. As Droven fired a crossbow bolt into the ooze’s mass only to watch it dissolve, he realized Fumbus’s concoctions might be their only salvation. “More ice, Fumbus, quickly!”

Fumbus’s right hand snatched an empty glass vial from one of his pouches while his left darted from his tiled necklace to his pouches, and up… into his mouth. Furiously chewing each component before spewing the macerated remains into his vial, Fumbus quickly created a second vial of liquid ice and launched it at the encroaching ooze before repeating the process.

Droven took careful aim at a frozen section of ooze before firing his crossbow. As the icy chunk shattered into pieces, Droven was relieved to see that the ooze seemed to shrink, its regeneration stymied by the freezing cold. As Fumbus threw yet another liquid ice bomb, Droven glanced at his friend and suppressed a worried frown. Fumbus smiled at Droven, but the goblin’s saliva was frozen to his chin in icicles of drool, and his green skin had taken on a distinctly bluish hue. Worse, the goblin’s teeth chattered furiously, slowing down the liquid ice process. Seeing Fumbus’s predicament, Droven quickly removed a few mechanical components from his backpack. He’d been working on something the local Arcadians called a “cryomister,” a device intended to release a controlled stream of freezing liquid. Droven had been struggling to complete it due to his lack of familiarity with Arcadian alchemy, but Fumbus possessed exactly what Droven lacked.

“Fumbus! Pour everything you’ve got into this!”

Fumbus snatched up the proffered device and spewed all the components in his mouth directly into its ammunition cartridge. Trying hard not to think about what had just happened, Droven took the device back, activated it, and tossed it at the broken glass tank from which the ooze poured. As the cryomister sank into the acidic flow, chilling fog poured forth, solidifying the ooze until only a blue-green statue remained.

Wiping shards of frozen drool from his chin, Fumbus wasted no time in sacking the lab, quickly identifying a variety of ingredients and reagents capable of fueling the alchemical engine Droven intended to build. Struggling to his feet, Droven leaned on Whirp’s body. His good arm was burned by acid, and he felt the weight of his prosthetic limb keenly as he struggled to stand. The two friends and friendly construct quickly gathered the materials they would need to assemble their engine.

“Droven?”

“Yes, Fumbus?”

“Oozes terrible.”

“Yeah, Fumbus. They’re pretty bad.”

About the Author

Michael Sayre is a designer at Paizo who previously worked on the Organized Play team. He’s also a prolific freelancer, having contributed to numerous Paizo books and publications from other publishers, such as Lost Spheres Publishing, Rogue Genius Games, and many other companies in support of the Pathfinder RPG and other table-top game systems.

Fred Van Lente is a New York Times bestselling writer of comics, prose, and gaming, including the Pathfinder: Fumbus one-shot successfully Kickstarted in 2021. His short story “Neversleeps” was shortlisted for Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy. In addition to playing Pathfinder 2e, he’s currently running Call of Cthulhu 7e and Fallout 2d20 campaigns in Brooklyn, NY. He’s on Twitter and Instagram as @fredvanlente and you can sign up for updates on his upcoming projects at www.fredvanlente.com.

About Iconic Encounters

Iconic Encounters is a series of web-based flash fiction set in the worlds of Pathfinder and Starfinder. Each short story provides a glimpse into the life and personality of one of the games’ iconic characters, showing the myriad stories of adventure and excitement players can tell with the Pathfinder and Starfinder roleplaying games.

Catch up on previous chapters of Wreckers Reunion here.

BEACH PARTY

“Whirp–click?” the tiny construct asked of Droven, who rotated the lenses of a pair of clockwork glasses he’d been tinkering with.

“Hush now, little Whirp.” The half-orc placed a hand on the construct’s metal head. Farther down the beach—just within range of what the inventor could see through the darkness of early evening—a noisome band of pirates and smugglers gathered around a cooking fire obstructed by enough foliage to remain hidden from passing ships. The flames made it hard for Droven to calibrate his goggles as he looked on from the northern flank.

“Wreckers," Droven said quietly. The nomads had warned him about them—and for good reason. Just beyond the campfire, a half dozen captives remained locked inside a stockade. The structure looked sturdy, despite being crafted from driftwood and detritus collected from the beach. Many of the prisoners had been hog-tied. Others were yoked in makeshift stocks.

“I believe the Wreckers caught bigger fish than they meant to fry,” Droven said, adjusting his position. “Someone must have stripped and dumped the bodies we found near the tree line. I bet the smugglers ambushed the prisoners and overpowered them, but not before several were lost in the fray.” He exhaled. “Which would mean they desecrated the bodies of their own compatriots. Not much of a retirement plan if you ask me.”

“Bzzzzt–click” Whirp said, tugging desperately at the inventor’s arm. Droven didn’t need months exploring the Arcadian coastline with the construct to know what that meant. He dropped his goggles and spun to draw his hammer as Whirp gestured frantically toward the small hillock’s only safe pathway. Someone had snuck near their position, leaving obvious tracks behind. Droven glanced over his shoulder. The drop was too far to know whether he could leap down to the sands below and keep his footing.

“Ho there! I warn you; I am armed and no easy prey. Allow me to negotiate for the release of your prisoners and the cessation of attacks against the ships passing by this shoreline. Otherwise, prepare for battle!”

A pair of Wrecker scouts stepped out from the underbrush. A woman outstretched her arm to reveal a spider with barbed fur clamped around her wrist like a living gauntlet. The puckering spinneret twitched toward Droven, causing the inventor to tighten his grip on the hammer. The weapon was almost certainly a beast gun. He’d seen enough of them to know it possessed the abilities of the spider whose body it was constructed from. If he didn’t act first, he and Whirp would be enveloped in spiderweb and rolled down the embankment. Some heroes they would be—wrapped up like two helpless caterpillars in silk cocoons.

Droven whistled sharply and dropped to his stomach. Whirp planted its spindly arms in the dirt and somersaulted toward the Wreckers, just before detonating in a roiling ball of flame. The inventor had rigged the little construct to explode on command, knowing it would survive the blast largely unharmed. The same could not be said of the two smugglers who rolled on the ground to extinguish their burning clothes. Droven rushed forward and struck each of their skulls with the hammer, holding back just enough of his strength to leave them alive. At least, he hoped. Neither strike had drawn much blood.

Droven’s clockwork companion, Whirp, spews a gout of flame at his enemies in this exciting illustration from Pathfinder Guns & Gears, by Maichol Quinto.

It was only a matter of time before the explosion attracted other Wreckers, though with any luck the crest of the hillock obscured most of the remaining flames. Droven kicked sand over the parts of the smugglers that still smoldered and bound them with lengths of spare wire. He and Whirp had better move fast. But not before he snatched the spidery beast gun which had been so kindly gifted to them.

“Point and click, right, Whirp?” Droven snapped the weapon in place atop his forearm, suppressing a grimace as its tiny hairs pricked his skin.

The sounds of shouting in the distance grew louder. The inventor tapped Whirp on the shoulder, signaling the construct to collapse into a light carrying case. Droven scooped up his companion by its clockwork arm-turned-handle and dashed into the trees.

Sliding behind some foliage, Droven steadied his stolen weapon on top of the little construct’s condensed body. Two triggers protruded from the abdomen of the taxidermic spider. He was reasonably confident that depressing the first would fire a net of silk webbing. He had no inkling about the second. There was only one way to find out.

As the first Wrecker came into sight, Droven pulled the first trigger—only to discover the absurdity of his assumption. A barbed hair launched from the spider and stabbed the pirate in the neck. The smuggler collapsed to the ground in spastic convulsions just before growing still. Droven moved to the body, placing his hand on the Wrecker’s neck. No pulse. Droven struggled against the dread coalescing in the pit of his stomach. As much as the inventor detested unnecessary violence, his foe had undoubtedly met the same fate as the many innocent victims who crossed the pirates’ path. Perhaps he could find some solace in that.

When the next smuggler came into sight, Droven pulled the second trigger. The beast gun fired the webbing he’d expected before, provoking a sigh of relief. The web spiraled outward from the beast gun, pinning the Wrecker to a nearby tree as it wrapped circles around the trunk. As the pirate pleaded for someone to cut him free, Droven realized he and his companion could soon find themselves outnumbered. He tapped Whirp once more and the tiny construct unfolded into its bipedal form. Pulling a pair of boots sized for the construct out of his backpack, Droven quickly fitted them onto Whirp’s stubby legs.

“Lead them on a merry chase and then meet me at their bonfire. Understood?”

“Whirrrrrrrpup–click–whirrrrrr!” the construct said in response, slamming its tiny heels together to activate the blast boots. Whirp rocketed skyward through the trees; its path lit by twin tails of flame.

Droven moved quickly through the woods, heading toward the Wreckers’ bonfire and, most importantly, the stockade. When he arrived at camp, he slowed to sneak carefully behind the pair of guards who remained. As he moved, he pictured the rest of the Wreckers struggling to keep up as they chased the flash of Whirp’s fiery trail through the darkness. He smiled and shifted his hammer to his prosthetic hand. Droven rapped both pirates with a single flourish that would have been all but impossible with a limb comprised of flesh and blood. His last remaining enemies slumped to the ground unceremoniously, knocked cold.

Droven dashed toward the prison. After releasing a small blade integrated into his metal arm, he slashed through the ropes that tied the door shut. He moved toward the nearest prisoner: a cleric bearing a silver symbol of Sarenrae who had been muffled with a cloth gag. Droven slid his blade softly under the fabric, gently enough to avoid piercing the prisoner’s cheek, and pulled. He cut her free just in time to make out, “–hind you!”

Droven turned to behold his grave mistake. Three Wreckers remained behind, not two. The pirate Droven failed to spot had her own beast gun, this one made from the neck and maw of a fire-breathing drake.

“Oi! Drop the gun!” the woman shouted.

Hoping not to alarm her, Droven disconnected the spider gun from his arm and let it fall to the ground.

“Thought you could steal from the Wreckers, eh? ‘Fraid we’re going to have to make an example out of you! Any last words?” She leveled the drake gun at Droven.

Droven couldn’t help but glance toward the sky. Some twenty feet above the Wrecker, two thin lines of fire bisected the night sky.

“Last words? Why, yes, I do have some.” Droven stifled a grin. “I’m afraid that you failed to account… for the powerful bond of friendship!” As the inventor yelled, he activated a large magnet attached to a disposable electric reservoir in his prosthetic arm. The magnetic force drew Whirp—who hovered above he and the Wrecker thanks to the blast boots Droven had fitted the construct with—down toward the inventor’s arm.

The smuggler fired, unleashing a blast of flame from her drake gun. But it was too late. The little construct twisted its metallic body and absorbed the brunt of the explosion, shielding Droven from harm.

Droven remembered the blade on his prosthetic hand. Just before he moved to strike, a thunderous explosion forced him to duck behind Whirp. When he peaked back over the construct’s shoulder, the Wrecker lie prone, screaming, and thrashing—totally enveloped in flame. Despite burning alive, she staggered to her feet and pointed the drake gun once more—first at Whirp, then at Droven.

A small figure stepped out of the shadows behind her, holding a vial of alchemist’s fire in hand. Droven’s jaw dropped in disbelief.

"Fumbus?" he coughed. “Where did you come from?” But Droven heard no words in response.

Just another boom.

About the Author

Michael Sayre is a designer at Paizo who previously worked on the Organized Play team. He’s also a prolific freelancer, having contributed to numerous Paizo books and publications from other publishers, such as Lost Spheres Publishing, Rogue Genius Games, and many other companies in support of the Pathfinder RPG and other table-top game systems.

Fred Van Lente is a New York Times bestselling writer of comics, prose, and gaming, including the Pathfinder: Fumbus one-shot successfully Kickstarted in 2021. His short story “Neversleeps” was shortlisted for Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy. In addition to playing Pathfinder 2e, he’s currently running Call of Cthulhu 7e and Fallout 2d20 campaigns in Brooklyn, NY. He’s on Twitter and Instagram as @fredvanlente and you can sign up for updates on his upcoming projects at www.fredvanlente.com.

About Iconic Encounters

Iconic Encounters is a series of web-based flash fiction set in the worlds of Pathfinder and Starfinder. Each short story provides a glimpse into the life and personality of one of the games’ iconic characters, showing the myriad stories of adventure and excitement players can tell with the Pathfinder and Starfinder roleplaying games.

They’d landed on a port moon to rehaul their ship before rendezvousing with the rest of the Pact World diplomatic team on a newly discovered world called Sigerro. A routine enough stop, but then, even in Near Space, the routine could quickly turn to excitement.

Zemir and Raia, part of the command team, were sent to find upgraded Drift drives for their ship. The thought was that Raia’s eye for tech would aid in finding the best equipment and Zemir’s tendency to bend chance might allow them to purchase it at a low price.

The technomancer and witchwarper debated the differences between their respective talents while perusing the port’s open-air markets.

“Our methods differ only in scope. You use your gifts to push technology,” said Zemir, tossing another faulty circuit board into a display case, “whereas I use mine to push reality.”

“Your scope may be wider,” said Raia, examining some drive schematics absently. “But my tech produces more reliable results.”

“Reliability is irrelevant. In the end, we seek the same thing—the new, impossible, the interesting. Is how we do it so important?”

“Some would say the ‘how’ is the most important part of all,” Raia answered, smiling. It was an old debate between friends, one they’d cheerfully had over drinks in many a space port.

“Perhaps you’re right,” said Zemir quietly. Raia recognized that faraway look. One day she’d learn the cause of Zemir’s periodic melancholy.

Before Zemir could say more, the market fell eerily silent. Everyone around them stared upward. Zemir and Raia joined them, and watched as the moon eclipsed the sun, and all went dark.

Soon after, the chittering squeaks and clicks began.

“I recognize those sounds,” said Raia. “Grioths.”

“What, this far in Near Space?” asked Zemir.

“They get closer every year,” said Raia sadly. She found grioths a fascinating formation of life. It’s too bad so many of them were in the monstrous grip of Nyarlathotep, for their voidglass technology and biology was quite interesting and could be put to great use in the Pact Worlds.

Her thoughts were interrupted by holes opening in the moon-eclipsed sky. From these shadowy portals descended a wave of winged terrors. The grioths’ silhouettes looked like thousands of bats with arms and legs—all of which held glittering weaponry.

The technomancer and the witchwarper watched the marketgoers flee. In silent agreement, both stood still amid the chaos, knowing they could hold off the grioths and allow these citizens to get to safety.

Several grioth raiders noticed the two holding their ground and broke off to attack them. Raia picked off one with a single blaster pulse while Zemir stared at another and muttered. Suddenly, the grioth’s wing seized and it plummeted to the ground. That left three more, who charged in a whirl of chittering squeaks and gleaming, deadly glass.

A fourth landed in front of Raia and swiped at her with its giant, clawed hand.

“No,” said Raia calmly, stepping back and raising her hands. She felt composed, as though in a simulation. She had spent the better part of the afternoon familiarizing herself with the tech around her, and now she simply had to put it to work, albeit for a new purpose.

As the grioth tried to grasp her again, she cast a spell with a word and a gesture. Behind her, the vast engine powering the veranda block rumbled and cracked. Suddenly, as though it were a puppet pulled by the technomancer’s strings, it unleashed from its casing and wrapped the grioth in an unbreakable embrace of steel and coiled wire.

Zemir watched his friend fight and wondered how best to aid her in the dance. He was no slouch with a blade, but with so many opponents, more help was needed.

What if, perhaps, another portal opened? One to a world filled with bright sunlight? Zemir pondered the possibilities and adjusted probabilities as though inputting calculations into the ultimately unknowable machine that was the universe. Calculations that, due to his training at the institute, he sometimes knew the outcomes for.

A bright portal to a sun-filled world opened, a world with—yes, perfect—a swarm of apari constituents, who poured from the portal, angry and hungry. The grioths shrieked at the light, some clutching their faces as its very photons pierced their psychic defenses. At Zemir’s direction, the apari swarm crashed against the grioths like a wave, instinctively trying to strike back against invaders who would darken a world.

Illustration by Mirco Paganessi from Starfinder Galactic Magic

“You will all perish for the glory of our dark master,” whispered one of grioth invaders with a harsh rasp. Before he could say more, he was overwhelmed by the swarm of apari.

He could have run—but he wouldn’t. Helping Raia made it worth it; knowing that, in some small way, Zemir had adjusted his account, paying back what he’d done wrong. He might never be able to atone for leaving his friends in that other reality, might never be able to get them back (though another part of him still wondered about this) but here, now, at least he and his friend Raia could save each other.

Together, weaving reality and technology with threads of magic, the technomancer and witchwarper beat back the remaining two grioth attackers, their martial prowess no match for the pair’s magical mastery.

“We have to get to the ship,” said Zemir once they had a moment to catch their breath. “I can open a gateway there, but I’ve expended a lot of power and can only take myself.”

“Go. I know you won’t leave me behind,” said Raia. For some reason, Zemir looked inexplicably sad at that.

“I will come back for you,” Zemir promised gravely. He stepped through the portal and was gone.

Raia waited, holding glowing sigils and technical weapons in the dark marketplace. From the chittering and squeaks, she knew another squad of grioths was inbound. With all the tech around her, Raia knew she could hold them off, but not indefinitely. She just hoped that Zemir would get back with the ship in time.

About The Author

Patrick Hurley has had fiction published in Galaxy’s Edge, Cosmic Roots & Eldritch Shores, Abyss & Apex, New Myths, Arcanist, Aurealis, Frozen Wavelets, The Overcast, and The Drabblecast. He is a 2017 graduate of the Taos Toolbox Writer's Workshop. In 2018, he was a finalist for the Baen Fantasy Award. Patrick lives in Seattle and is a member of SFWA and the Dreamcrashers. He still can’t quite believe he has the good fortune to also be an editor at Paizo.

About Iconic Encounters

Iconic Encounters is a series of web-based flash fiction set in the worlds of Pathfinder and Starfinder. Each short story provides a glimpse into the life and personality of one of the games’ iconic characters, showing the myriad stories of adventure and excitement players can tell with the Pathfinder and Starfinder roleplaying games.

As the white-bearded man casually strolled across the rainy courtyard, shadowy figures kept pace with him atop the buildings surrounding the square. The older man didn’t seem aware of the dark shapes stalking him, first from a distance, then closer, along his path. Nor did he show surprise when the ruffians stepped out of the shadows, blades glinting. The tallest of the black-clad figures spoke with a low growl.

“Shouldn’t have gotten involved in War Hounder business, old man. We don’t like folks asking questions about our dealings!”

“Well,” Ezren thought to himself, “it’s about time.”

Though confident in his preparations, the wizard still summoned some basic defenses as the War Hounders cautiously approached. A mage’s armor was, in his opinion, properly made of magic. He layered a shield spell atop it for good measure.

One of the ruffians flung a dagger at Ezren as the rest moved to cut off his escape routes… which he had no intention of taking.

“I’ve been trying to get your attention for some time,” Ezren said calmly as the knife bounced off his arcane shield. Unsurprisingly, the War Hounders ignored him. Ezren knew they were aware of his wizardly training and understood their desire to take him out quickly. If this had been a remotely fair fight, they’d be doing the right thing.

Ezren did his best to avoid “fair” fights, though. A fair fight was the result of poor research, and he prided himself on his scholarship.

His two fastest attackers were a scarred human and a dwarf; each wielding sword and dagger. Ezren reviewed a range of possible replies before settling on a simple lightning cantrip. Not fully powered, something in the mid-range he knew they’d survive. He wanted to deliver a message and getting the dead to deliver messages was more… problematic.

Ezren concentrated on the essence of lightning as he performed word and gesture to express that essence. Electricity jolted from his open hand, arcing first to the human and then the dwarf. Neither was quick enough to avoid his spell. The dwarf fell to the ground, flopping about like a fish trapped in a tide pool. The human grunted and raised his sword… as Merisiel’s thrown dagger buried itself in the back of his skull.

Ezren was not so foolish as to provoke a guild of thieves without backup, and it was gratifying to see the remaining War Hounders look stunned at Merisiel’s dramatic entrance. A moment later, it was Ezren’s turn to be surprised as a fifth War Hounder, a cloaked woman with two long daggers, launched herself between Merisiel and the fallen dwarf.

The situation was still in hand… for now.

Illustration by Tomasz Chistowski from Pathfinder Lost Omens Absalom, City of Lost Omens.

“I know you can’t answer my questions.” Ezren’s sounded calm as he turned in place, his cane held high to ward off the two-handed sword blow from the War Hounder who’d been trying to sneak up behind him. “But when you flee back to the Pyramid of the Dog, I want you to deliver your master a message.”

The cloaked woman began dragging the dwarf’s twitching body back into the shadows, tiny sparks of electricity continuing to bound off him across the worn road’s shallow puddles. The attacker with the greatsword swung it again, trying to cut Ezren in half with an attack powerful enough to force the wizard to expend his arcane shield to counter it. Merisiel threw another dagger into an apparently empty space… and the empty space grunted and spattered blood on the street.

“I’d have sent a courier requesting an audience, but none seemed willing to deliver my message, and I haven’t had any luck with public notices.”

Ezren formed a new eldritch concept in his mind, and colors sprayed out from his cane, hitting the greatsword-wielder full in the face. The attacker’s eyes took on the same rainbow colors, and the scoundrel dropped his sword as he staggered away unsteadily. The cloaked woman finished dragging her fallen comrade out of sight, and Merisiel positioned herself to watch his back.

Ezren turned slowly, scanning the open square. The blinded War Hounder was wandering aimlessly but could become a threat again within a minute or so. The woman and dwarf were out of sight but could potentially be maneuvering to make another assault. Merisiel would warn him if that were to happen. There was another man…

At the edge of the square, a man clad in brown and green lurked in the shadows. His drab clothing actually blended into the backdrop of Absalom’s Puddles District better than the pure black of his compatriots. He was bald with a full beard. He studied Ezren with a stern expression, single dagger in hand, though he was well out of stabbing range. The War Hounder could, of course, throw his blade. Or perhaps he knew some occult secret with which to blast Ezren’s mind.

Trusting Merisiel to handle any other unforeseen threats from behind, Ezren turned to face the bald man.

“You are, I take it, in charge?”

The bald man waved a hand in casual denial. “I wouldn’t say that. We aren’t strict in terms of rank or command, you see? More accurate to say I’m wise enough not to be on the front line when confronting a wizard of your… reputation.”

Ezren nodded in acknowledgment, though he suspected the bald man had no idea who he was or what reputation he might possess.

“May I assume,” asked Ezren, eyes still scanning for the missing dwarf, “that if I were to ask you to carry a message to the oldest and wisest of the War Hounders, you could see that it was received?”

“I’d be delighted.” The bald man looked anything but delighted, but Ezren believed his message would be delivered.

As Ezren was about to reply, the War Hounder who’d dropped the greatsword snapped out of his befuddlement. He looked back and forth between the wizard and the bald man. Merisiel was nowhere to be seen, but Ezren knew she was nearby. He kicked the dropped greatsword toward his assailant who, upon receiving a nod from the bald man, picked up his weapon and rushed to stand beside his ally.

“I would very much like to know,” said Ezren with as much iron as he could put in his voice, “what became of the papers and effects of Nessian. Further, I represent a buyer who would pay well for them, if they remain in War Hounder possession.”

The bald man tried to look impassive, but his eyes showed a hint of surprise. Then he nodded again, and gestured for the larger warrior to head out of the courtyard.

“I assure you, that message shall be delivered.”

And with that he followed after the taller man, both of whom were quickly enveloped by shadows.

Ezren smiled as he headed back toward the inn he was staying at in the Foreign Quarter. He made sure to walk slowly so he could easily be followed, trusting Merisiel to prevent further assaults. He suspected when the War Hounders attacked him again tonight, they’d bring someone who could answer his questions.

And tonight at the inn, he and Merisiel wouldn’t be alone to receive them.

About The Author

Owen K.C. Stephens is a veteran of the tabletop RPG industry with more than 20 years of experience, including being on staff at Green Ronin, Paizo, and Wizards of the Coast and being the publisher of RogueGeniusGames.com. He has worked on numerous RPG lines, including being co-author of the Star Wars Saga Edition RPG and Design Lead for the Starfinder Roleplaying Game. You can support his writing and free content production at Patreon, and follow him at his blog, on Facebook and on Twitter.

About Iconic Encounters

Iconic Encounters is a series of web-based flash fiction set in the worlds of Pathfinder and Starfinder. Each short story provides a glimpse into the life and personality of one of the games’ iconic characters, showing the myriad stories of adventure and excitement players can tell with the Pathfinder and Starfinder roleplaying games.

It’s strange how quickly a life-changing period spanning years can be replaced by what was once normal. Droven was certainly happy to be back in the field undertaking a Pathfinder mission again, and even happier to have an opportunity to deploy some of the gadgets and weaponry he’d created during his long exodus in Arcadia. He’d even lent his latest weapon, a gun that could create portals, to his partner for the exercise, a clever halfling freelancer from Cheliax who’d come highly recommended by a fellow Pathfinder.

The mission itself was fairly simple. There were reports of a large wolf or canine monster attacking travelers and caravans on the road between Absalom and Otari, a small port town on the western half of the Isle of Kortos. It was almost too simple, and in another place and time, the Pathfinder Society likely wouldn’t have sent a veteran agent still settling in after a long and dangerous journey abroad, but Otari was home to several friends of the Society, and perhaps just as relevant, it often served as a secondary destination for shipments too valuable to the wrong people to bring in through Absalom’s more closely watched ports.

So here Droven found himself, his entertaining companion playing a tune as they walked the forested highway on their way to Otari. As always, Whirp accompanied him, the quirky construct mostly doing what it was designed to do, staying by Droven’s side so the half-orc could readily access the tools it carried, but occasionally wandering off to examine a flower or dew drop on a leaf. Droven had disassembled, reassembled, and repaired the goblin-shaped construct countless times over the years, and he still had no explanation for Whirp’s strange moments of seeming sapience, curiosity, and self-direction. There was some magic interwoven with the clockwork devices that powered Whirp. Perhaps over the years of journeying through Arcadia, Droven’s one-sided conversations with the construct had made some impact on these arcane forces, granting Whirp a tiny spark of personality. Droven still carried on these conversations. While they drew the occasional odd look (once convincing a passing goblin to join in and look to their mechanical counterpart for a response that came in the form of an awkward hug and offered crowbar) most of Droven’s friends and peers had grown used to them and occasionally spoke to Whirp themselves.

---

On the evening of their second day out from Absalom, they finally encountered the creature they’d been sent to deal with. Droven was dozing by the fire, Whirp standing at his side and staring intently at an owl perched in the branches above, when their halfling companion whispered magically into his ear from his own hiding spot. “Barghest!”

Droven snapped awake; those years traveling on his own had sharpened his mind and reflexes. Drawing his hammer and putting his back against a nearby tree, he whispered back. “So not a wolf? Unfortunate.”

The same calm that always accompanied moments of stress descended once more over Droven. Later, when the fighting was done, his knees would shake and his eyes would water, but for now he was fully in the moment, the fire of his orcish blood fueling his analytical mind and sharpening his thoughts for the task at hand.

The barghest lurked just beyond the range of the firelight, its batlike ears and hunched shoulders faintly backlit by the leaf-shrouded moon. Droven made a mental note to recommend the halfling for future work; even his own eyes, capable of navigating lightless tunnels and moonless nights with relative ease, could barely make out the creature. Droven doubted he would have noticed the monster had he been on watch, let alone correctly identified it under these conditions.

He hoped their plan worked. Whirp was to leap in front of the threat, then scurry through a portal created by the experimental gun he’d given the halfling. Hopefully, the beast would follow Whirp through the portal, putting itself right in line for a thunderous blow from Droven’s hammer. Of course, they’d made the plan expecting a creature of animal intelligence, not a deadly fiend capable of critical thought with its own repertoire of magic.

Before Droven could propose a new tactic, Whirp began acting on the original plan Droven had modified the little construct to perform.

“Whirrrrrp!”

Illustration by Biagio d'Alessandro from Pathfinder Guns & Gears

Whether it was an intentional battle cry or merely the sound of the clockwork gears rattling throughout his small frame, it nonetheless signaled the start of the fight. Whirp’s body sparked for a moment before an explosive gout of flame vented from his chassis, launching the construct directly in front of the barghest. For Droven, an eternity seemed to pass as construct and barghest stared at one another, though it was likely no more than a few seconds. With a second “Whirrrrrp,” Droven’s clockwork companion lurched away, dashing through the woods as tools clattered out of the compartment on its back. Droven made a mental note to add a leather flap to the top of Whirp’s built-in toolbox even as he pressed tighter against the tree, hoping the barghest had failed to notice him or had forgotten him chasing after Whirp.

The plan worked to perfection. The halfling opened a portal next to Droven’s hiding spot before opening another in front of Whirp. As Whirp dashed through the eldritch opening, the barghest sped right behind it. As Whirp exited, Droven swung, his hammer whistling above the construct’s head even as the barghest’s snout cleared the portal. With a thunderous crunch, the barghest popped back out of the entry portal, its head lolling weirdly on a broken neck. Droven looked away from the barghest’s death throes, uninterested in exposing himself to another creature’s agonized final moments, and nodded to his halfling companion. A good plan, or at least an effective one, cleanly executed without injury. As much as Droven would have liked to say, “without negative consequences,” he realized that would be an inaccurate assessment. Somewhere scattered among the leaves and roots of the roadside forest, Whirp had lost an expensive and worrisome number of the inventor’s favorite tools.

About The Author

Michael Sayre is a designer at Paizo who previously worked on the Organized Play team. He’s also a prolific freelancer, having contributed to numerous Paizo books and publications from other publishers, such as Lost Spheres Publishing, Rogue Genius Games, and many other companies in support of the Pathfinder RPG and other table-top game systems.

About Iconic Encounters

Iconic Encounters is a series of web-based flash fiction set in the worlds of Pathfinder and Starfinder. Each short story provides a glimpse into the life and personality of one of the games’ iconic characters, showing the myriad stories of adventure and excitement players can tell with the Pathfinder and Starfinder roleplaying games.

Nhalmika Ironsight ran through the fresh snow. It wasn’t that much snow—it wouldn’t reach higher than mid-shin on a human—but it was higher than Nhalmika’s knees. And there’s a big difference, she now knew, between running through snow below your knees and running through snow above them. But she nevertheless ran on, hefting her scattergun to keep it free of moisture that might foul the firing mechanism. Most humans would find the large gun to be far too heavy, but Nhalmika carried it with practiced ease. So perhaps there was a fair tradeoff somehow.

Yesterday, she’d come into the village of Ivlanton to the sound of cheers. The village was deep in Irrisen, the land of perpetual winter. Frostbite and privation were as omnipresent as the snow. Ivlanton sorely needed blankets, firewood, and medicine.

A caravan master in Lod had sent a cartload of these goods to Ivlanton. When it didn’t return, he asked Nhalmika to investigate. At first, the master had praised Nhalmika’s son, an upright merchant with whom he’d done business, but Nhalmika wouldn’t venture deeper into Irrisen on familial pride alone. The master then offered a generous payment, but Nhalmika still refused. She was from the far south, and this wintry land was unfamiliar to her. She’d intended to move on quickly to warmer Varisia. But when the master talked about the difficulties the villagers would face if the goods hadn’t reached them, Nhalmika agreed to go. She couldn’t let innocent people suffer just because she didn’t like snow. She took the offered coin, too, and spent it on a hand-pulled wagon with still more blankets and medicine. If she couldn’t find the missing goods, she didn’t want to reach Ivlanton empty-handed.

It turned out she needn’t have worried. She found the cart a few miles from Ivlanton, pulled off the road. Anyone else might have missed it, but the dead teamster’s baldric buckle gleamed in the deep shadows of the snowy hedge, bright as a beacon to Nhalmika’s keen eyes. The horses were nowhere to be seen. She saw that bandits had plainly pawed through the wagon, but they’d left the blankets and firewood behind. “Disappointed in their mundane haul, no doubt,” she muttered. Nhalmika prepared a hasty cairn for the unfortunate teamster and doubled up the load in her wagon to bring the lot to Ivlanton.

The villagers were pleased, to be sure, but the village seer, an elderly and kind woman named Gerthanna, told Nhalmika that something had been stolen from the wagon after all: a small, magical flask that produced an endless stream of fresh water. In a land where water froze solid all year round, ready access to fresh water was vital.

“I know bandits,” Nhalmika said assuredly, “and I know how to put them into the dirt…that is, the snow, I suppose,” she finished with faltering confidence. She paused to consider, but only for a moment. “I’ll go after them, and I’ll bring back your magic flask.”

Nhalmika backtracked to the ransacked cart to look for tracks. Amid her own boot prints and the hoofprints of the departed horses, she discovered several heavy footprints, each a cross between an animal’s paw and an unshod human foot. Snowfall largely concealed the tracks, but Nhalmika was a little disappointed in herself to have missed them the first time. Even good eyes get old, she thought.

The tracks led away from the trail and up a nearby hill. That’s where she found the remains of the horses, brutally torn to pieces. Clearly, something had feasted on great chunks of their meat. “Well, at least a well-fed enemy is a sluggish enemy,” Nhalmika mused, following the tracks as the hills led into a series of steep canyons. They looked like the box canyons of home: winding, dangerous, and the perfect place for an ambush. She readied her scattergun and shifted her cloak to access her powder and shot more easily. Then she stopped to think.

The paw-footed bandits entered this canyon but didn’t leave it. That meant they’d either gone to hide inside or they were waiting in ambush. Either way, she could get a better look from above. Nhalmika scrambled up the canyon wall and made her way around its lip, crouching low

Near the end of the box canyon, Nhalmika spied an elaborate ice sculpture, resembling a cresting wave with spines like icicles jutting every which way. It looked like some sort of symbol, but one that twisted away from her scrutiny as if she weren’t welcome to understand it. She recognized it as a fiendish rune—and a powerful one at that—wrought entirely from ice. An open metal flask resting atop the sculpture spouted a stream of water that quickly froze to slush and then to ice.

Six hulking bandits worked around the ice sculpture, shaping the water as it froze to form the enormous rune. At first, Nhalmika thought they were dressed in ragged hides, but she soon observed that the patchy hides grew from their skin and claws sprouted from their hands and bare feet. They wore nothing other than blood-stained rags. The burly animal people were working with a definite purpose, and fear struck somewhere deep in Nhalmika’s soul.

A low growl behind her made Nhalmika gasp in surprise. She’d been so focused on the rune-shaping bandits that she’d forgotten her earliest training: “a vanguard must look in all directions at once.” She glanced behind her.

An enormous bear glared at Nhalmika from only a dozen yards away. Yet it wasn’t the bear’s hostile stare or aggressive posture that drew her gaze. The bear wore a harness of iron chains supporting a massive mirror atop its back. The mirror stood upright, reflecting Nhalmika’s puzzled expression as she perched at the canyon’s edge.

“I am never going to understand Irrisen,” Nhalmika sighed as she swung her scattergun around to point at the bear. Before she could scare the bear off, the mirror blazed with bright inner light. The light coalesced into a beam of energy that lanced out toward Nhalmika. She sidestepped the blast, but the mirror immediately started to glow again, as though preparing for another beam. The bear howled in anger, and the roar was answered by the bandits in the chasm. Even as distracted as they were, they couldn’t have missed the bright beam.

“Well, you shot first. My turn now.” Nhalmika fired at the bear’s head. Her shot might as well have struck stone. The bear hardly flinched, then took two paces, closing in on her. Nhalmika’s hands worked automatically as the scattergun recoiled, loading another round as she used the gun’s momentum to swing it back around in an arc to fire again. The bear ignored the second hit, and its mirror glowed even brighter. While her practiced fingers reloaded again, Nhalmika glanced around for options.

“That flashy weapon’s the trouble, my furry friend. I can’t let you keep it.” She fired her third round at the mirror, expecting an explosion of glass and metal, but the shot rebounded from the mirror’s surface without a scratch. The scattergun was growing hot in Nhalmika’s hands, but she smoothly loaded it once again.

“I guess this is hurting me more than it’s hurting you. I don’t have any more time for this.” Nhalmika aimed her scattergun at the snow and leapt from the top of the cliff. She pulled the trigger and the recoil propelled her even higher. Another energy blast shot across the snow where she’d been only a second ago. She had to admit the bear’s aim was good. Especially for a bear.

Illustration by Roberto Pitturru from Pathfinder Guns & Gears.

Nhalmika could see the beast bandits looking up at her. She reached the top of her arc and descended into the canyon. Her trajectory was taking her down to the wicked ice sculpture, where its prongs and spikes would impale her before she ever got close to the howling bandits’ claws. She swung her scattergun around as she fell and pulled the trigger.

For a split second, she wasn’t certain she’d reloaded after launching herself from the cliff. But her fingers knew their work and had reloaded in mid-air without any conscious direction. The round exploded from the barrel and slammed into the sculpture, shattering the frozen rune into a spray of icicles. Nhalmika reached out and snatched the flask as she completed her fall.

The bandits were bloodied from the ice fragments but didn’t seem to notice in their rage. Nhalmika could now see their faces up close, and she wished she couldn’t; they were twisted masses of animalistic snouts and snaggled teeth beneath hate-filled red eyes. Nhalmika hit the snow, rolled, and sprung to her feet. Having survived the fall, she had to grudgingly admit that maybe snow was good for something after all.

Seriously outnumbered and worried she’d see that strange energy-mirror bear lean over the canyon rim, Nhalmika ran. Her legs pumped furiously, but the snow was too deep for her to traverse quickly. Her benevolent thoughts toward snow only a few moments ago evaporated quickly and entirely.

The bandits—being significantly taller than she was—were having much less trouble. They roared and howled as they ran after her, closing in as Nhalmika reached the opening to the canyon. The wounds the bandits had suffered from the explosion were already almost completely healed. Nhalmika still didn’t know what they were, but right now she would have traded them for a whole pack of Mana Waste mutants. Preferably slower ones.

At the mouth of the canyon, Nhalmika stopped and turned. She wasn’t going to escape, and she wasn’t going to survive, but she might take a couple of the monstrous bandits down before they overwhelmed her. At least some of these brutes would have eaten their last horse! She aimed at the bandit in the middle of the pack and fired.

Nhalmika’s scattergun emitted a strange clunk and a gout of fire from the barrel. In a horrifying second, she’d realized what had happened. She’d reloaded by instinct again, but this time she’d had the small magical flask in her other hand. She hadn’t put a round in the gun; she’d loaded the flask in there instead, without realizing it until now.

But now was too late. The flask rocketed from the scattergun’s barrel and struck the central bandit in the face. The impact caused a geyser of water to drench all the bandits at once. Before Nhalmika could even lower her gun, the water became slush, then froze solid. The bandits were trapped.

Nhalmika took a few cautious steps forward. When she saw the bandits couldn’t burst free of their icy prison, she took a few more steps, then quickly scooped up the flask from the snow. To her surprise, it was still intact. And it wasn’t even cold!

“You’ve been a lot of trouble,” she said to the flask in a gentle, chiding tone. “I’m getting you to Ivlanton, then I’m walking south, and I’m not stopping until I can’t see a single snowflake.”

About The Author

Ron Lundeen lives in the rural hinterlands outside of Seattle, Washington, where he finds the climate a pleasant change from his native Illinois. After a career as a corporate attorney, Ron took a full-time position with Paizo, Inc. as a developer, working with freelancers to create fabulous worlds and monstrous threats for the Pathfinder and Starfinder roleplaying games. He now serves as development manager overseeing the Pathfinder development team. He also designs games in his free time, creating a dizzying variety of perils, plots, and legends. Ron’s favorite RPG design work is adventure writing, to help others share exciting stories with their friends. Although his first game design credit came back in 1993, Ron has recently written for Paizo, Wizards of the Coast, Ulisses Spiele, and many others. Ron also runs a gaming company and RPG writer advice blog, which you can visit at www.runamokgames.com.

About Iconic Encounters

Iconic Encounters is a series of web-based flash fiction set in the worlds of Pathfinder and Starfinder. Each short story provides a glimpse into the life and personality of one of the games’ iconic characters, showing the myriad stories of adventure and excitement players can tell with the Pathfinder and Starfinder roleplaying games.

OMINOUS TIDES

“REAGENTS!”

The goblin, Fumbus, came bounding out of the palms onto the beach with something in his hands raised triumphantly high.

Valeros had to repress the urge to pinch his brow and sigh. Whatever the excitable alchemist was on about, Valeros did not share his enthusiasm, and had a sinking feeling that was not about to change.

He had already chipped the blade of his sword beyond a whetstone’s help hacking down a half-dozen mahogany trunks for a raft; his mood wasn't going to be improving anytime soon.

“Reagents!” Fumbus skipped up to Valeros to show off his discovery. As soon as they got near Valeros’s nose, there was no mistaking what the blackish seed-sized pellets in the goblin's hands were.

“Eeuughh!” He reared back out of smelling distance. “Don't shove it my face, you—” Valeros thought back to all the innumerable goblins who had cursed at him to think of a word to really express his displeasure, and then gave up on it. “We're already up 'reagent' creek without a paddle as it is.”

Fumbus giggled and dropped the bat guano into the patched-up grog barrel lying amid the hundreds of other tide-tossed fragments from their reef-broken ship strewn across the beach. After a moment of rubbing his hands together, the goblin cackled hysterically in a way that Valeros had come to associate with imminent explosions.

“REAGENTS!”

“I get it! I can speak Taldane!” Valeros called after him, but the goblin, mercifully, had dashed back into the waving blade-bushes that marked the edge of the jungle, presumably toward the source of more nocturnal leavings.

He was as puzzled at Fumbus’s grog barrel as he was at Fumbus himself. Merisiel had challenged him to a drinking contest over that same barrel earlier that evening, back when they were all still on the same Arcadia-bound vessel. The voyage had been so long and tedious that he'd forgotten his two rules of drinking contests: one, never getting into a drinking contest with someone several centuries older than you; and two, never get into a drinking contest when there wasn’t more on the line than bragging rights. The problem with drinking contests was that no matter who wins, the next morning you’re both losing, and neither of you can remember who won anyway. Drinking was supposed to be fun, not a competition, after all.

Fumbus and Valeros make the most of the tools at hand in this illustration by Firat Solhan from Pathfinder Guns & Gears

The last memory he had was of the white-haired, black-eyed elf’s face going all fuzzy. Then, all of a sudden, everything was salty, wet, and getting dark fast—in that order. It took all his strength to kick his armored body upward, toward the sun shimmering above him on the ocean's surface; it took all his wits to keep from crying out and filling his lungs with seawater.

The bay of this seemingly uninhabited island was choked with the wrecked detritus of the brigantine, and every once in a while, the tides disgorged a passenger or sailor that Valeros recognized when they were onboard, and alive. Thank the Accidental God that all his friends had survived the wreck; sadly, they appeared to be the only ones.

That is, except Fumbus, whom Valeros had not realized stowed away on their vessel back in Absalom until the goblin popped out from beneath a coil of beached rope with a sputtering cry that scared him half to death. The self-taught alchemist soon began collecting random crap—literally—and filling his reclaimed cask with it.

Valeros had no idea what Fumbus was making, and once again found himself wishing Seoni was here to tell him. Everyone else had fanned out to look for food or friendly locals, and he had been left behind, as per usual, to do the grunt work because he had the muscles. He had spent several hours picking out, cutting down, and pruning the logs, then laying four side-by-side near the water’s edge—to make the completed raft easier to launch—then two under and above those at either end as pressure bars. By the time he was pulling down vines from trees, he was contemplating selling his soul for a drink, any drink—even water! The sun had had several hours to bake him inside his own breastplate. He felt like an engorged sweat sponge.

He thought he had grabbed the sturdiest vines he could find, but when he tugged the binding for the two front crossbeams together, the cord snapped in half, and he dropped on his backside in the sand.

Loud laughter behind him brought him to his feet, drawing his wrecked sword more from pique than caution. The goblin had finished whatever contraption he had been working on, having lashed on a conical nose to the top of the barrel with some of the vines Valeros had set aside for his raft.

“Okay, you!” Valeros pointed his sword at the lashed-together barrel. “This is what we call 'antisocial behavior.' I tore down those vines for my raft. I am trying to save our lives by getting us off this gods-forsaken island. You are yelling things in my face and stealing my stuff! Those vines are mine by right!”

He stepped toward the cone-headed barrel, but Fumbus bared his sharp, tiny teeth and leapt in front of him. “No no no no no!”

Valeros sighed. “You know what? You win. I’m sick of this yesterday. I'm gonna go lie down on the ground over there. Maybe when Kyra returns, she can tell me what's going on. But I find everything you do unfathomable.”

He retreated up the beach to the shade of the palms, dropped down onto his back, and prayed for a swift death

The goblin’s head loomed into his field of vision. The makeshift goggles the alchemist wore magnified his eyes so they bulged like magic orbs.

“Do you want to see?” Fumbus whispered without prompting and unscrewed a scroll case he kept slung across his back

“Um, no. That's alright. You really don’t need to...” But Fumbus was already pulling out a complex diagram, unfurling it on the fighter’s chest. Valeros raised his head far enough to see that it depicted a barrel, not unlike the one Fumbus was messing about with at the moment. Various incomprehensible symbols had been scrawled across it, but one in particular stood out: the word “Droven” bearing the look of a signature more than footnotes of a technical schematic.

“Droven showed Fumbus how to make something like this once,” the goblin said. “With better supplies, and different reagents, but I can make it work.”

Intrigued, Valeros sat up on his elbows and studied the chart. “Your old half-orc buddy? You miss him a lot, don’t you, Fumbus? We’ve all lost friends, little guy, and I know it can be hard to move on.” He felt suddenly guilty for giving the goblin such a hard time.

“Droven is lost,” Fumbus blurted with a surprising ferocity. “But he can help us even when he’s missing!

“Huh?”

Fumbus ran down to the barrel halfway down the beach, tugging Valeros’s arm to follow. “Come, come! Make this way!”

“For Cayden's sake, Fumbus, I just laid down!”

When they reached the barrel, Fumbus snapped two shards of flint together, and a spark sprung to the oil-slick wick Valeros now saw dangled from one side. It began to fizzle and shorten.

Fumbus gesticulated wildly at the cove below. “Into the sea it goes, unless you also want to explode!”

“Oh, those kind of 'reagents!’ Well, why didn’t you say so in the first place?”

With a curse, Valeros hefted the sputtering barrel on his shoulder and threw it as hard as he could down the beach. It bounced and arced into the water, floating out several yards…

Suddenly, Fumbus threw up his arms, blocking his face, and Valeros copied him, just as the barrel exploded into a massive waterspout that shot straight up into the clear blue sky and dropped a curtain of seawater onto their heads, along with a shower of springs, cogs, and steaming twists of metal. He managed to grab a bronze tentacle out of the air before it landed on his head.

An overturned clockwork vessel bobbed in the surf, semi ovoid and in the shape of an octopus’s head. Half of its grasping tentacles were severed and sputtered with silvery light. Some still grasped chests and gold statues and other valuables the apparatus had been trying to loot from the wreck on the ocean floor.

Stumbling out one of the shattered bulbous portholes where the octopus’s eyes would be came the apparatus's operator, pale Chelaxian skin bleeding and satin finery shredded from numerous miniature shrapnel wounds.

“Nice reflexes,” Fumbus said, nodding at the clockwork limb Valeros was still clutching.

Valeros laughed mirthlessly. “Lying in wait for hapless ships to come by then scavenging their cargo, eh?”

The Chelaxian coughed up seawater and tried to swing a boathook-like weapon in his general direction, but Valeros didn’t even bother drawing his sword. He backhanded the submariner across the face with the bronze tentacle and knocked him flat on his back in the surf.

Valeros placed a heavy boot on the man’s chest, pushing him into the soft, wet sand. “You just let me know when you’re ready to tell me everything I want to know about whatever scam it is you’re running here.”

“And where our friends are,” Fumbus demanded.

“Yeah! Tell us what you know about them, too!” Valeros glanced back at the treeline. The rest of his party had been gone an unusually long time.

The Chelaxian spat. “The others will have taken care of them by now. I was just sent to dig through the wreckage, but the others got to have…a lot more fun.”

“Got another barrel like that in you, Fumbus?” Valeros frowned. “I have a feeling this chump and his metal contraption are going to be the least of our worries.”

About The Author

Fred Van Lente is a New York Times bestselling writer of comics, prose, and gaming, including the Pathfinder: Fumbus one-shot successfully Kickstarted earlier in 2021. His short story “Neversleeps” was shortlisted for Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy. In addition to playing Pathfinder 2e, he’s currently running Call of Cthulhu 7e and Fallout 2d20 campaigns in Brooklyn, NY. He’s on Twitter and Instagram as @fredvanlente and you can sign up for updates on his upcoming projects at www.fredvanlente.com.

About Iconic Encounters

Iconic Encounters is a series of web-based flash fiction set in the worlds of Pathfinder and Starfinder. Each short story provides a glimpse into the life and personality of one of the games’ iconic characters, showing the myriad stories of adventure and excitement players can tell with the Pathfinder and Starfinder roleplaying games.

Raia crouched behind a stack of crates, camouflage membrane turned to full power, focused on powering up the warehouse’s maintenance terminal. Once her enchantments opened up the interface, she plugged the jack into her custom wrist mount and said into her comm, “I’m in.”

“You know,” answered Navasi. “I’ve never heard anyone say that on a job. Outside of an action holovid, anyway.”

“Those soap writers wish they wrote plots as good as my life,” Raia answered. “About to go virtual. Stay put until you get my beacon. After I trip security, I’m going to need a fast exit.”

“‘After’ you trip security?” said Navasi. “Don’t you mean ‘if’? Say you mean ‘if,’ Raia.”

Raia laughed and said, “Going virtual.”

The world around her vanished. Raia could still see, hear, and even feel and taste, but in this glowing, in-between world, meant to represent the digital flow of the local infosphere, sensation was different. Here, she was different. And much more powerful.

Raia had been hired by a politician to expose a cult. She’d taken the job, not for money, but for a favor. Months ago, Starfinder Society probes had discovered yet another inhabited planet along the edges of Near Space, which ancient star charts named Sigerro. Preliminary scans indicated Sigerro’s inhabitants possessed a rich culture and advanced technology. Many interested parties hoped to be on the first diplomatic team sent to meet their people, but such assignments would be determined by the Directorate in accordance with Pact World protocol.

Luckily, Elxur Droj, the verthani politician in charge of the Directorate’s diplomatic corp, was also a Seeker in his spare time—one of a group of infosphere conspiracists hoping to expose the wide-spread religion called the Disciples of Grace. Instead of helping the poor and sick, Seekers believed the Disciples were secretly corrupt slavers bent on taking over the Pact Worlds. Elxur not only believed this, he hoped to use their exposure to run for higher political office.

After approaching Elxur through her usual aliases, Raia had managed to secure a deal. If she could procure evidence of corrupt Disciple activity, Elxur would approve her request to be part of the diplomatic team on Sigerro.

The Disciples of Grace certainly weren’t spending all their credits on charity, no matter how well they laundered their donations. Raia had been able to locate a warehouse on Verces used by one of their shell companies for off-the-books shipments. If she could acquire shipping manifests, Elxur should grant her a place on the diplomatic mission.

Now, Raia stood on a floating platform in seemingly endless digital chasm. Once she leapt, there was no turning back. Checking to make all her defenses and countermeasures were in place, she dove into digital void.

Illustration by Alexandur Alexandrov from Starfinder Tech Revolution.

It was like freefall, glorious freefall, except instead of wind, breezes of bytes and floods of information cascaded all around her.

As long as Raia kept falling, standard security measures shouldn’t be able to track her presence, so fast was she moving from one node to the next. Yet this also made acquiring the right data hard.

Everywhere she looked, she saw secure files as floating screens—and each image they depicted was disturbing. People being led away in chains. Priests changing form in private. These weren’t shipping manifests, but they might be better. Like a hungry child in an orchard, Raia plucked as many files as she could into her avatar for later study. She didn’t have much time before the system’s internal security caught on to her falling simulation and—

VHHT VHHHT VHHHHHT

Suddenly, instead of descending down an endless void, Raia was approaching hard ground fast. A digital wall of spiky security code had manifested—which could shatter Raia’s persona on impact. They’d detected her more quickly than anticipated. Upgraded security. Definitely more cutting edge than a charitable religion should have access to.

Instead of smashing into the wall of code, Raia activated another program, buffering her processors through the node, her digital persona appearing to float gently to the ground.

Where she was instantly surrounded by glowing-red virtual security countermeasures. Vicious, cutting-edge anti-hacker programs, which in the virtual resembled crimson piranhas coated in blood-red razor wire, swirling in on themselves.

“Aren’t you just the cutest things,” she muttered. They rushed at her, but Raia had come ready for something like this.

With the grace of an acrobat, she dodged their serrated tentacles—prodding counterhacks trying to penetrate her avatar and learn her identity. Just when it seemed the countermeasures might be too numerous to evade, Raia pulled her next trick. In a flash of green, two digital versions of Raia stood surrounded by the menacing security programs. Both fled in different directions. The security countermeasures, momentarily confused, split up to chase both.

While her decoy fled, Raia dove behind a digital gleaming column and amped up her camouflage code, similar to the weave she’d been using in the real world. She blended completely into the digital wall around her. As the last security countermeasure flew past, Raia pounced, landing atop it, clawing both hands inside its glowing carapace.

With the precision of a surgeon, she copied its access privileges and modified its instructions. Once finished, the drone glowed the same green as her persona’s glowing functions. It sped off to fight its former companions, while Raia used its security clearance to copy the shipping manifests she’d originally been hoping to “borrow.”

A crackle and a beep indicated a message coming over her comm in the real world. “Raia? Things are getting pretty hot. Alarms everywhere and bots are summoning private security teams to your location.”

Time to rabbit. Raia exited the hacking sequence, copied data securely stored in her rig. She turned on her beacon and sprinted toward the street, already spotting Navasi’s hovercar blasting around the corner.

As she prepared to leap onto the vehicle, Raia wondered what she’d been able to acquire. She didn’t know exactly what was on those files, but it should be enough to get her on the diplomatic team. Either way, she’d make sure never to donate to Disciples of Grace in the future.

About The Author

Patrick Hurley has had fiction published in Galaxy’s Edge, Cosmic Roots & Eldritch Shores, Abyss & Apex, New Myths, Arcanist, Aurealis, Frozen Wavelets, The Overcast, and The Drabblecast. He is a 2017 graduate of the Taos Toolbox Writer's Workshop. In 2018, he was a finalist for the Baen Fantasy Award. Patrick lives in Seattle and is a member of SFWA and the Dreamcrashers. He still can’t quite believe he has the good fortune to also be an editor at Paizo.

About Iconic Encounters

Iconic Encounters is a series of web-based flash fiction set in the worlds of Pathfinder and Starfinder. Each short story provides a glimpse into the life and personality of one of the games’ iconic characters, showing the myriad stories of adventure and excitement players can tell with the Pathfinder and Starfinder roleplaying games.

“Oooh!” chirped Barsala, folding her goggles down over her eyes. She peered at the man’s leg, an image of the limb’s internal circuitry magnifying in her goggle’s lens. “The quality on your inner gyros is excellent. Liquid carbide receptors?”

“Can I see?” asked Keskodai. With a soft clicking of his mandibles, he leaned over to get a closer look. “Chhk-chhk, look! See the pistons! Look at the little energy regulators, aren’t they pretty?”

Raising one hand, Barsala waved at the shirren. “Kes, please hun, you’re in my light.”

“But you can see the problem, right?” asked Amril. Twitching nervously, the young man drummed his fingers against the arm of the chair. “I mean, is it the regulators? I hope it’s not the regulators. They should still be under warranty. Do you think it’s the compression circuits?”

“Calm down,” said Barsala. The words felt hollow in the face of her own burgeoning excitement. “It’ll be—”

Abruptly, his leg kicked. Trembling abruptly, the servos within whirred energetically. “Look!” yelped Amril, the lashunta’s antenna shivering, “It’s doing it again!”

“Fascinating... Kes, could you hand me the capacitor over there?”

Inhaling, Amril turned his eyes toward the ceiling of Barsala’s laboratory. “I knew I shouldn’t have got it cut rate. Stupid counterfeit augments. The price was just too good. But then it started acting up. I checked the actual prosthetic parts. I mean, I had it checked—an engineer. One of the mechanics down at the junk races said its fine...”

“They’re right,” commented Barsala, carefully separating two metal plates with two of her hands while magnifying her lenses with another. “In as far as the hardware is in working order. Whatever the problem is, it’s with the... Kes, please, you’re in my light again... it’s with the software.”

Another juddering tremor flew through Amril’s leg. He leaned up in the chair, excitedly. “I knew it! I mean, I knew you’d be able to figure it out. The moment I saw your vids, I knew Dr. B was the right person for the job! What are you going to do?”

“Did you hear that, Chhk-chhk? Our friend Barsala’s an expert.”

“I am hardly an expert on this particular subject, Chhk-Chhk, but,” she slid a glove free from her lowleft hand, exposing the chrome fingers beneath, “I do have some personal experience with cybernetic prosthetics.” Flexing her fingers, she slid back a thumb-sized port on the back of her palm. “Rudimentary system scan,” she explained. “My prosthetic has a proprietary Helix Computing interface, I’ll log into your software, give it a quick scan, and check the integration files to your wetware.”

Illustration by Alexandur Alexandrov from Starfinder Tech Revolution.

Glancing up at Keskodai, Amril asked “What does that mean?”

The shirren gave a soft shrug, his multifaceted insectile eyes seeming to widen in wonder.

Carefully, Barsala unwound a small connector cable from one of her many pockets, sliding one end into the port on her hand. “Don’t worry, it’ll be fine. I’ll go for a manual interface, so it’ll be more secure. Your internal firewall’s up to date?”

“I... think so?” tried the lashunta, hesitantly, as the biohacker slid the cable into his leg’s interface port. “I had a new one installed last week, after the twitching started.”

“Fascinating,” murmured the kasatha, drumming her fingers across a set of hard-light keys on her holographic display. “There’s some redundant files here. I can’t see any function for them. Do you have anything stored in them?”

“Couple of vid shows.” replied Amril. “Don’t look in the download section, please. I might have downloaded them illegally.”

With a few more taps from her three non-interfaced hands, Barsala announced, “Scanning now. Wait.” A sharp pause cut her voice silent. Then, glancing at the man’s cybernetic leg, she said “This is odd. The files are duplicating.” A second hard-light window appeared on the biohacker’s display—quickly joined by another. Then another.

“Chhk-chhk wants to know if that’s bad.” enquired Keskodai. “It looks bad.”

A series of digital windows blazed into life around Barsala, flaring like a cradle of stars. As they did, Amril’s leg shuddered violently, its pistons whirring at a fanatical speed, showering crackling sparks across the floor. “We’ve got exponential duplication!” yelled Barsala. “These aren’t redundant files—someone’s using them as a back door! Kes, quick—”

Abruptly, Barsala’s hand twisted upward, violently pulling her trailing cable from Amril’s port. The biohacker gave a sharp yelp as her cybernetic fingers tensed into claws and turned toward her. Violently, her rogue hand lashed out, clawing and swiping at her face.

“My! This is exciting!” chittered Keskodai. “I knew this would be a thrilling field trip. Do you need one of the inhibitors?” He asked nonchalantly, scanning a wide array which hung from the wall.

“The blue one!” called Barsala, latching two free hands around her rebellious prosthetic. Her cybernetic hand continued to flail, lashing out with her fingertips. She staggered back, wrestling frantically with her hand.

Quickly, Keskodai scooped up a sturdy metal cylinder marked with a blue label and hurled it over to the biohacker. Catching it deftly with her last free hand, Barsala wrestled her cybernetic hand down onto a cluttered workbench with the other two, scattering small vials and tubes. Holding her thrashing, violent hand down, she tugged open the interface port once again. “Okay,” she muttered, “that should override my biological systems long enough to isolate this thing...”

“What is it?” cried Amril, eyes wide in shock.

“Offensive countermeasure” replied Barsala. “Someone left a sentient computer virus in your prosthetic’s firmware.”

Amril sat bolt upright, looking down at his leg in panic. “A virus?”

Rolling up her sleeve, Barsala pushed the canister containing the inhibitor against her upper arm. It gave a soft hiss as the contents discharged, filling her bloodstream. “It was protecting a backdoor into your augment.” She explained, dropping the canister. Her arteries radiated a momentary glow. “Know anyone who’d want to hack your systems?” she asked.

“Hacking?” spat Amril. “No! Definitely not! I don’t have any enemies!” he paused. “Actually, wait, maybe it might be...”

With a series of thuds, Barsala’s augmented hand forced itself up from was held. Gritting her teeth in agitation, she grunted and grabbed a micro-welding torch. “Right!” she declared, crackling it to life. “Time for some surgical reprogramming!”

As she began to rewire the hand’s circuitry in deft, sharp moves, Keskodai watched in fascination. “Hmm,” he pondered, tapping a thin claw-tip against his chin. “Chhk-chhk wants to know if you can simply eject the hardware.” he asked. “If it’s trying to kill you, that is. Perhaps we can take it off and put it in a box for now?”

“Don’t need to” replied Barsala, her eyes focused intently on the work. A small shower of sparks flew from her hand. “I’ve confined the virus to a partition of the limb’s memory, which should let me get root access to... wait, Chhk-chhk wants to know?”

“Ah, yes,” trilled the shirren cheerfully. “You see, at this stage in larval development, we’ve formed a telepathic bond that’s strong enough for in-depth conversation. In fact, I’d be quite happy to discuss—”

“Maybe later.” she interrupted, dropping the torch onto the workbench, and opening another section of the limb. “I think... yes, let me just finish this scan... okay, system’s clear.”

Amril rubbed his head, his antennas drooping. “Is that it?” he asked. “The virus is gone?”

The biohacker slowly let go of her hand and bent each finger to test her control of her prosthetic, looking carefully for signs of any malicious intent. For a few moments she held her breath. Then, slowly, she gave a sigh of relief. “Scan’s clear,” she said. “Virus is gone. I’ve kept a log of if you want to watch it. In either case, your leg should be fine now.”

Whirling around to face her, Amril rubbed his eyes. “That’s... that’s amazing.” he muttered. “Thank you. Thank you so much. It feels a lot better.”

Flexing her fingers once more, Barsala reached into her pocket to recover her surgical glove. “We’ll still need to find out who hacked the limb.” She announced. “You’re quite sure you don’t have any enemies?”

Clapping his hands together, Amril inhaled. “Well, maybe that wasn’t quite true. Y’see...”

A heavy thud echoed through the laboratory. Somewhere in the distance, the ever-present hum of the power systems fell abruptly silent. The lab’s internal lights shuddered to darkness, replaced with the ghostly glow of emergency red illumination. “What?” snapped the biohacker.

“Okay,” admitted Amril, “so, I didn’t want to mention it, but I’m part of a group of hackers...”

Keskodai held up a hand. “Don’t want to interrupt” he said, “but I can sense six minds moving towards us. They seem... hostile. Friends of yours?”

“No!” yelled Amril, glancing around the room. “Okay, look, so we were sniffing around some corporate files, and...”

A heavy thud echoed from the other side of the laboratory’s door.

Barsala sighed, shaking her head, and calmly started to load her needler pistol. “And this was meant to be my weekend off.”

About The Author

Alison Cybe is a fantasy and horror author with other work featured in numerous horror and sci-fi/fantasy publications. They have a degree in Film & Media with a minor in sociology and media. They’re non-binary with pronouns they/them. They were born in Scotland and has written extensively on inclusion and positive representation within gaming communities in particular with relation to LGBTQ+ and transgender visibility in gaming publications and blogs. Their interests include Celtic mythology, transhumanism, model kits and pet rats.

About Iconic Encounters

Iconic Encounters is a series of web-based flash fiction set in the worlds of Pathfinder and Starfinder. Each short story provides a glimpse into the life and personality of one of the games’ iconic characters, showing the myriad stories of adventure and excitement players can tell with the Pathfinder and Starfinder roleplaying games.

If you’ve picked up the brand new Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Core Set and the Curse of the Crimson Throne Adventure Path, you may have noticed we reached an important milestone: For the first time, every iconic hero developed by Paizo has now appeared in PACG. How we got here was quite a journey.

The Class of 2013: Ezren, Kyra, Merisiel, Sajan, Seoni, Seelah, Amiri, Harsk, Lem, Lini, Valeros

We started, of course, with the "Core Eleven," the iconics representing the classes from the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook. In August 2013, the wizard Ezren, the cleric Kyra, the ranger Harsk, the bard Lem, the rogue Merisiel, the sorcerer Seoni, and the fighter Valeros became the centerpiece of the Rise of the Runelords Base Set, and are without a doubt the most played characters in PACG history. For those who wanted a slightly more complex set of characters, the barbarian Amiri, the druid Lini, the monk Sajan, and the paladin Seelah were featured in the Rise of the Runelords Character Add-On Deck.

The Class of 2014: Alahazra, Damiel, Feiya, Jirelle, Lirianne, Oloch, and Seltyiel

As satisfying and… well, iconic as those characters were, we were hot to introduce a bunch more. While we spooled out alternate options for those 11 classes in our first waves of class decks, we introduced a handful of less traditional iconics in August 2014. The Skull & Shackles Base Set gave us the oracle Alahazra, the swashbuckler Jirelle, the gunslinger Lirianne, and the magus Seltyiel, while the Skull & Shackles Character Add-On Deck was home to the alchemist Damiel (more on him later), the witch Feiya, and the warpriest Oloch.

We’d now introduced roughly half the known Iconics, and people started clamoring for the rest. There was a particularly loud drumbeat for the investigator Quinn, whom people presumed would make his debut in our next set. This did not occur.

The Class of 2015: Adowyn, Alain, Balazar, Crowe, Enora, Imrijka, and Shardra

May 2015 launched the Wrath of the Righteous Base Set, where the cavalier Alain, the summoner Balazar, the arcanist Enora, and the inquisitor Imrijka arrived. Those first two mandated a whole new card type, the cohort, to account for their respective warhorse Donahan and chicken-snake eidolon Padrig. The Wrath of the Righteous Character Add-On Deck gave spots to the hunter Adowyn, the bloodrager Crowe, and the shaman Shardra, with Adowyn and Shardra accompanied by the wolf cohort Leryn and the stone spirit cohort Kolo. Quinn, an urban character, would have to wait until we were done sacking the Abyss.

We were nearing the goal line, except the RPG folks were moving the goalposts. Suddenly, there were about to be a lot more iconics.

The Class of 2016: Estra, Mavaro, Yoon, and Zadim

For the next set, we had a choice to make: complete the existing iconics or branch out with a few more story-based characters. The design team was split: yeah, we wanted to wrap up the iconics in a dainty bow, but there were just too many other cool characters we wanted to make. In October 2016, the Mummy’s Mask Base Set featured the slayer Zadim and the first two of our mental-focused iconics, the spiritualist Estra and the kineticist Yoon, along with Estra’s ghost ally Honaire. Another of those, the occultist Mavaro, appeared in the Mummy’s Mask Character Add-On Deck.

But that’s only four new iconics. We slowed our roll a bit, saving room for new non-iconics in our core boxes for the first time: the rogue Simoun (whom we made up), the magus Ahmotep (ditto), the druid Channa Ti (from Elaine Cunningham’s stories), and the cleric Drelm (from Howard Andrew Jones’s stories). This made for a richer story than if we’d dropped Quinn into the middle of the undead-filled desert. We would later follow that inclusion of non-iconic characters from Pathfinder fiction by introducing James Sutter’s Salim in the Inquisitor Class Deck and Dave Gross’s Alase in the Summoner Class Deck. We also added the trio of Dave’s wizard Varian and bodyguard Radovan (both previously seen as a cohorts in Season of the Righteous) and Chris A. Jackson’s lunar naga astrologer Celeste in the Pathfinder Tales Character Deck.

At this point, we needed to make some calls. We didn’t have the next base set on the horizon yet, but we wanted to keep bringing out characters. So the practice of only debuting iconics in Adventure Paths needed to be reconsidered. The other obvious place was the class decks, but were we really going to want to write a class deck solely for mesmerists? We needed a new approach.

The Class of 2017: Emil, Lazzaro, Linxia, Nyctessa, Urgraz, and Zelhara

In October and November 2017, we debuted the first character decks united around an Adventure Path. The Hell’s Vengeance Adventure Path features six evil characters—the so-called "evil iconics," even though they’re not technically iconics—and we wanted our players to get to play the baddies too. Hell’s Vengeance 1 Character Deck featured the cleric Lazzaro, the hellknight Linxia, and the antipaladin Urgraz, while Hell’s Vengeance 2 contained the assassin Emil, the necromancer Nyctessa, and the torturer Zelhara. I admit that when I designed the first iteration of this game, I did not expect a torturer character. But hey, it takes all kinds.

The Class of 2018: Aric, Erasmus, Hayato, Meligaster, the Red Raven, Reiko, Rivani, and Zova

In the same design cycle, we did it again, this time with all of the iconics from Occult Adventures. In addition to Estra, January 2018’s Occult Adventures 1 Character Deck starred the mesmerist Meligaster (Lem’s bro!) and the psychic Rivani. The next month, Occult Adventures 2 had the return of Mavaro and Yoon, plus the debut of the medium Erasmus. This approach allowed us to make the occult boons that all of them could use, including all the psychic spells.

And now we were down to stragglers. At this point there were only six iconics left, and no clear plan to deal with them. For example, were we ever going to make the Jade Regent Adventure Path? I mean, maybe? But not soon. So what to do with the samurai and the ninja? A Jade Regent Character Deck? Sounded cool, but I had another idea.

Based on complaints I heard at PaizoCon and elsewhere that the first seven class decks had essentially been lapped by the creations we made afterward, I proposed to Paizo a new line of decks designed to supplement the class deck line. Using the four “Ultimate” RPG books as inspiration, we would make four “Ultimate Decks,” each with a bunch of experimental boons and one character each. That character would be one that we probably never would make a class deck for. For example, with the Wizard Class Deck and the Sorcerer Class Deck already in existence, did we really need a deck with three arcanists in it? One would do. So Enora reappeared in April 2018’s Ultimate Magic Add-On Deck.

But now we had a chance to get three more iconics out: the samurai Hayato in March 2018’s Ultimate Combat Add-On Deck, the ninja Reiko in June 2018’s Ultimate Equipment Add-On Deck, and—in one of the most bizarre things we’ve ever done—the dual-character vigilante Aric/the Red Raven in May 2018’s Ultimate Intrigue Add-On Deck. Which would— Hold on. As we were plotting these out, Erik and Vic let slip that a new book called Ultimate Wilderness was on the way, and it would feature a new shifter class with a not-yet-named iconic. After some quick schedule rejiggering, Zova appeared in the Ultimate Wilderness Add-On Deck in July 2018.

All right, just three to go! I had lobbied that our new versatile base set contain all the Core Eleven iconics done from scratch. My co-designers told me this would be challenging—actually, I think the word they used was “impossible.” No single box before could ever hold 11 characters, but I was sure we could do it. Eleven was tight, but we could just make it.

The Class of 2019: Fumbus, Hakon, Kess, and Quinn

But the folks in RPG R&D had one more surprise first. With the long-awaited Second Edition Pathfinder Core Rulebook underway, they wanted to introduce a goblin iconic. Totally cool by me, I said, and then they said they wanted it to be an alchemist. “But, but… we already have an iconic alchemist,” I said. They would shed no tears for poor Damiel, and neither did I when I saw the crazily goggled nutball they were planning to make. “What’s his name?” I asked. “Oh, he’s still in testing,” they said. “We won’t know that for months.” I don’t draw many lines with Paizo, but this time I had no choice. “Our game comes out three months before yours does,” I said. “So if you don’t name this goblin quickly, he’s gonna be named ‘Gobbo McBoomy.’” Bingo-bongo, the iconic goblin alchemist Fumbus was born. Alongside the other members of the newly expanded “Core Twelve,” Fumbus appeared in May 2019’s Core Set.

Core’s companion Adventure Path, Curse of the Crimson Throne, finally gave us the urban setting we’d been longing for, and we could bring in the last three iconics. Along with a new version of Varian (with Radovan as a cohort), Curse debuted the skald Hakon, the brawler Kess, and, at long last, the investigator Quinn. Iconic collection 100% complete.

That’s 41 iconic characters (since Aric and the Red Raven have separate character cards) plus 6 “evil iconics”, amid—get this—163 total characters and 329 roles. (Why not 326, you ask? At the risk of spoilers, I leave that question for the trivia-minded among you.) It’s been a great journey with a whole lot of great characters. We hope you’ve enjoyed playing each and every one.

Mike Selinker
Adventure Card Game Lead Designer

Pathfinder fans haven't had as much time to get to know the iconic goblin alchemist, Fumbus, as they have our other iconic characters, but that doesn't mean he isn't up to the same shenanigans as the rest of the crew. He might be new to the mix, but he's far from free of high-stakes adventure. We had initially not planned on doing an Iconic Encounter for Fumbus, as he didn't have an Iconic Evolution video to accompany his story, but after the rest of the series was so well received by the community, we decided to complete the set with a piece for all twelve iconics, not just those carrying over from first edition. While this is the last Iconic Encounter for now, we've loved putting them together, and the door's always open for more of them in the future. In the meantime, enjoy this piece of flash fiction from James L. Sutter showing the sorts of stories you can tell with Pathfinder Second Edition, available August 1!

Illustration by Federico Musetti

Maybe it was the way they were holding him—upside down with a knife to his throat—but Fumbus was starting to get the impression that the wererats didn't want any pickles.

It didn't make any sense. Fumbus was usually pretty good with rats. At first, they'd scratch and bite, like all wild, furry things, but typically all you had to do was give them a bit of food and convince them you weren't going to eat them, and pretty soon they'd calm right down.

At which point you would eat them—because they were rats. But they didn't need to know that.

These rats, however, hadn't even listened to Fumbus's offer of a handful of his best pickled grubs. Maybe it was because they were only rats when the moon was full. The rest of the time, they were humans, and who could say why humans did anything?

It had all started innocently enough. Fumbus had been making his monthly infiltration of the docks, looking for information about Droven—a necessary bit of sneakery, ever since the harbormaster had banned him from the docks. He normally wouldn't have spent much time searching the wererats' ship, as it was too small to have taken Droven to the far-off lands Fumbus imagined the Pathfinder must have left for. But they'd been loading barrels full of salt pork, and everyone knew salt pork was just pig-pickles. Fumbus hadn't been able to resist stealing a taste.

When he'd popped the lid, however, there'd been no delicious strips of salty pig, only a fine, dusty powder. Fumbus had leaned in to give it a sniff, and nearly lost his grip on the side of the barrel as the suddenly overpowering scents of bitterbark and redroot stabbed him in the brain. He'd swayed, the world going dark and tingly, and then both he and the barrel had been falling sideways.

When his head eventually cleared, the world was still the wrong way around, thanks to the wererat holding him up by his feet. They were inside the wererats' ship, the sailors all growing long snouts and fur as they tore through Fumbus's pack, yelling about the Harbor Guard and rival gangs and something called "grit." He'd tried to make his pickle offer, but the one holding his legs had cuffed him so hard he almost passed out again.

Now the captain threw down his pack and whirled on him, long incisors gleaming yellow in the lantern light. He was a big rat, wearing an unnecessarily large number of knives, and leaned in so close that Fumbus could smell the wine on his breath.

"Who are you working for?" he demanded. "Who sent you to spy on our operation?"

"No one!" Fumbus shook his head hard enough that he almost lost his goggles. "No one sent me!"

"I don't believe you." The captain reached down into Fumbus's pack and pulled out a sealed glass vial. He held it up, the claws of his free hand digging into Fumbus's cheeks as he yanked the goblin's head around to face the potion. "If you're not working for anyone, who gave you these?"

Fumbus squirmed, but there was no escaping the wererat's grip. "Nobody! I made them!"

That drew a surprised laugh from everyone present. The captain gave a wide, grotesque grin.

"You made these." His tone said everything. "A goblin alchemist."

"It's true!" From his inverted position, Fumbus glared up at all of them. "I know things—secret things! I brew magic!"

The captain leaned back and crossed his arms. "If you're an alchemist," he drawled, holding up the vial, "then what does this one do?"

Fumbus stared for a moment, then answered truthfully. "It makes light. Lots of it. But you have to shake it."

"Really?" One eyebrow quirked upward. The wererat pursed his lips thoughtfully, then gave the vial a hard shake.

Fumbus hadn't been lying—that mixture really did make light. And heat. And a delicious, smoky smell as both potion and captain exploded into flames.

The wererat holding Fumbus's feet jumped backward, releasing his grip. Fumbus hit the deck and rolled, coming up with his pack before the flames could set off any more of his concoctions—or worse, boil his pickles.

In an eyeblink, he was up the ladder to the main deck. Sailors shouted and scrambled after him, but he dug into his pouches as he ran, coming up with a half-prepared starter bottle and a handful of ingredients. With a practiced motion, he jammed the reagents into the bottle, judging the right proportions by feel and smell, and lobbed it into an open hatch.

Fire bloomed beneath the foredeck, drawing screams from those trapped below.

It wasn't quite enough, though. While several sailors raced to douse the flames, others pursued him down the gangplank, through the maze of crates waiting to be loaded.

He considered throwing another fire flask, but already the dock's fire bells were tolling. He'd come to like living in Absalom and didn't really want to burn down the entire harbor. At least not before Droven came back.

He needed something different. As he ran, he yanked bottles and pots from his pack, flicking open the stoppers to taste each one, trying to find what he needed. Acrid meant guano, which was a fine base, but the tangy toadstool juice wouldn't do at all...

Behind him, filthy claws scraped against Fumbus's pickle-barrel pack as the lead rat lunged, just barely missing flesh.

In desperation, Fumbus upended another flask into his mouth. Its contents fizzed and frothed across his tongue.

Perfect! Ducking around an assembly of loading carts, he withdrew another of his starter bombs, spitting in just the right amount of bubbling liquid. With a flick of his flint, he lit the fuse—

And held it. Here on the docks, everything was too open. But if he could just find the right spot...

There—a gate in the seawall, opening onto a crowded promenade where formerly carousing sailors now gawked at the flames or raced to save their ships. Fumbus zagged toward it, skidding past a shocked guard, and tossed the flask backward over his shoulder.

It exploded in a thick cloud of roiling smoke, engulfing the pursuing rats. In that moment of blindness, Fumbus ducked between the legs of passing longshanks, disappearing into the crowd.

He kept running for two more blocks, making sure no rats had followed, then turned uphill, clambering up a rain barrel and onto the roof of a sagging tavern. From a perch near the chimney, he looked out at the docks, where flames now rose from half a dozen ships.

Fumbus sighed. Now the harbormaster would really never help him find Droven. He'd probably have to avoid the whole district for weeks, at least. And it wasn't even his fault! He didn't mean for everything to end in fire. It was just something that sometimes happened—like lightning storms or burglary. There was nothing to be done about it.

But he had to admit, it was kind of pretty.

Leaning back against the chimney, he rested his head against cold bricks and watched the flames curl skyward.

That concludes this series of Iconic Encounters. For more short fiction set in the world of Pathfinder, check back next week for the first in our Tales of Lost Omens series, detailing the sorts of adventures you can set in the Age of Lost Omens! Until then, Pathfinders, may your bombs only explode when and where you want them to.

Mark Moreland
Franchise Manager