The votes for the First Annual Gen Con Pathfinder Cosplay Contest are in, and after a hard battle, the winner is... both of them!
Yes, it seems that our messageboard horde saw too much merit in Tiffany's fantastic starknife and Kelly's unnerving Pactmaster mask to let either of them go unrewarded. (And in a way, Tiffany started this whole idea with her costume last year, so perhaps we should consider this the 2008 and 2009 awards.) Regardless of how you parse it, the result is that both Kelly and Tiffany will be receiving $50 in Paizo store credit. Congratulations to them both, and special thanks to messageboard poster Taig who offered to foot the bill for the second prize—we may not have taken him up on it, but we always love seeing the generosity of our community.
As for all of you who didn't have time to compete this year: there's always time to start preparing for next year's contest! Time to start collecting those giant crab legs for your Rovagug suit, hitting the gym in preparation for the Merisiel outfit, or shaving the family dog and training it to carry your goblins—I mean "beautiful children"—on its back. The possibilities are endless!
(P.S: I'm ashamed to admit that Tiffany's contact information was lost in the shuffle of Gen Con. Tiffany, if you're reading this, please email me at james.sutter@paizo.com to claim your prize!)
Another Gen Con has come and gone, and as all the editors crawl out from where we've been hiding in fetal positions beneath our desks, recovering from the exhaustion and excitement, we're forced to conclude that this was the best convention yet. The release of the Core Rulebook was a rousing success, the ENnies were kind, the community was more welcoming than ever, and our favorite industry professionals were just as zany and fun as last year. Yet all that in no way lessened the excitement of...
PATHFINDER COSPLAY!
Despite the relatively late warning (next year's contestants: consider this your starting gun), we doubled our Pathfinder cosplay turnout this year. That's right: two intrepid individuals spent portions of their con wandering around in full Pathfinder regalia, forever winning our hearts (and potentially $50 dollars in store credit). This year's contestants were Tiffany as a cleric of Desna (whose same costume last year inspired the contest, and hence is allowed to compete this year as well—unfortunately, only last year's photo is available) and new challenger Kelly, who wowed us all with his incredible rendition of a Pactmaster of Katapesh.
Tiffany as Cleric of Desna
Kelly as Pactmaster of Katapesh
Which costume is the best, and most deserving of reward? It's a tough question, but it's up to you to decide. If you want to weigh in on the matter, or just congratulate them both on their amazing costumes, head over to the Pathfinder Cosplay Contest thread on our messageboards and make your voice heard. Votes will be collected for roughly 48 hours, at which point we'll announce the winner here on the blog. So what are you waiting for? Let the voting begin!
Snagged from the Vault: Dark Markets, A Guide to Katapesh
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Our latest foray into the treacherous Vault has met with success once again, dear readers! Today we bring you a preview of the dreaded ghul, the restless undead spirit of a fallen genie, illustrated here by Tyler Walpole. The ghul appears in the bestiary of Pathfinder Chronicles: Dark Markets, A Guide to Katapesh, due out in April. Fear the power of the genies, even in death!
Vadid and Nahk Preview Purloiners
Sometimes a janni dies in a state of disfavor with Fate; as a parting curse from its race's age-old enemy Ahriman (lord of the divs), such an ill-favored genie may come back from the dead as a ghul, a ghoul version of genie-kind. Ghuls are easily recognized as inhuman by their donkey hooves, which shame them greatly; most ghuls take great pains to hide their hooves from view. Ghuls feed upon carrion much as their lesser ghoulish kin, but prefer the fresh blood of mortals, especially children and innocents. They haunt desolate cemeteries and necropolises feeding upon the interred as well as mourners and gravediggers they can catch. They despise the light of the sun (though it does not harm them), so such locations are usually safe during the day, though there are no guarantees that a hungry ghul might not brave the dreaded light to obtain a tasty-looking morsel.
Snagged from the Vault: Pathfinder #21—The Jackal's Price
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Once again, the foolhardy Purloiners have braved the depths of the Vault of the Golem to bring you, our faithful readers, a glimpse of the future. Featured here today is the cover of Pathfinder Adventure Path volume #21—The Jackal's Price. Enjoy it, dear readers, before the Golem returns to claim his prize...
Vadid and Nahk Preview Purloiners
A strange artifact discovered in the belly of an ancient ruin has all of Katapesh intrigued. Yet none can decipher the strange markings, nor confirm much about the scroll's purpose beyond the fact that the magic it contains is powerful indeed. In order to learn more, a trip to the sprawling market city of Katapesh itself must be mounted. Yet others want the map for themselves—scheming merchants eager to make their fortunes with its sale, enraged gnolls eager to reclaim what they feel rightfully belongs to them, and even a sinister hidden society willing to murder to claim the treasure as its own. What could be hidden within that could drive so many to such desperate acts of violence and mayhem? Is this artifact truly the one and only Scroll of Kakishon, and does the one who controls it control an entire world?
Snagged from the Vault: Dark Markets—A Guide to Katapesh
Friday, March 6, 2009
Once again, fellow Paizonians, my colleague and I have managed to pilfer a spectacular sneak glimpse into the vault. Behold the Zephyr Guard, illustrated here by Jason Engle...
Vadid and Nahk Preview Purloiners
Though the Pactmasters are rarely seen outside their palace walls, they are keenly alert of all that transpires within Katapesh through their network of spies and active patrols of the Zephyr Guard. The Zephyr Guard is made up of diverse ethnic groups and races, but mostly humanoids such as humans, half-elves, and half-orcs. Their unifying feature is their expertise in combat and the precision with which they carry out their duties. A Zephyr Guard squad is usually composed of five elite soldiers (LN fighter 4) and their squad leader (LN fighter 6). Each squad leader carries a charm of aluum control, which is magically bound to them, making it useless to anyone else. Aluum are powerful golems created to maintain order in Katapesh when other forms of authority fail (see the Appendix for statistics). Dormant aluum are scattered through the city in key locations for the Zephyr Guard. They stand silent vigil at street corners, in the shadows of buildings, around busy squares, and throughout the numerous bazaars. No matter where one goes in Katapesh, an aluum is never far away.
I'm deep in the development for the third adventure of Legacy of Fire as I write this—"The Jackal's Price." This is the first adventure to actually visit the fabled city of Katapesh, and the adventure only scratches the surface of what kind of adventures a group of PCs might find themselves in while visiting the city. Dark Markets, A Guide to Katapesh is looking to be a great supplement for GMs who want to explore the city's nooks and crannies. Pictured here is the sight that greets visitors to the fabled city as they pass through the gates.
Every book we work on has a folder with a tracking sheet, which helps us monitor the progress of each article in the book—design turnover, developer's pass, edit 1st pass, edit 2nd pass, layout, edit 3rd pass, copy edit, and final approval. Because the schedules for these books overlap, I usually have multiple folders on my desk at one time (currently I have seven). As I'm a visual person, I find it's easier for me to locate which folder I want if I put a big recognizable doodle on each tracking sheet, rather than having to read the handwritten title. Some of these doodles are pretty simple (a dragon's head for Dragons Revisited, a pyramid for Osirion, Land of Pharaohs, and so on). Some of them get a little strange.
The doodle for Blood of Dragonscar is a weird, pallid, white-eyed face with a scythe, as weird, pallid undead play a role in much of the adventure. I had to get more creative with the doodle for the Legacy of Fire Player's Guide, as it relates to Katapesh and I didn't want to confuse it with the folder for Dark Markets, so I made a bit of a rebus (LEGO + C + FIRE = Legacy of Fire). The third is for Beyond the Vault of Souls, and requires a bit of backstory. The author of that adventure is my friend Colin McComb, who wrote for (among other things) TSR's Planescape setting. One of the Planescape adventures was called Well of Worlds, and the cover art featured a man being pulled into a pit by a weird slime creature... and the model for that illustration was Colin. So my doodle for this Colin-authored planar adventure is of Colin-as-art-subject from an entirely different, older planar adventure.
One of the fun things about moving out of Varisia and into a new land for the Adventure Path is that the NPCs end up looking quite different. While generating art orders, I suspect we've spent days surfing the net looking for more and more exotic outfits and apparel to clothe our characters in. The upcoming Dark Markets: A Guide to Katapesh bears the fruit of those hours of Internet research—pictured here are three of the NPC portraits that appear in the book, each representing a different type of character you might encounter during an adventure in the region, be they surly half-orc merchants, graceful but deadly swordfighters, or even a desperate young child who MIGHT just grow up to be a world-famous iconic paladin!
I know we just showed off another book's cover art a few days ago, but when covers come in close together like they sometimes do, I'm okay with repeating blog topics in the course of a week. Check out Vincent Dutrait's cover to the upcoming Pathfinder Chronicles book, Dark Markets: A Guide to Katapesh. Word to all gnoll slavers out there—just because the leaders of the city say it's okay to practice your trade in the open on the city streets doesn't mean that a vengeful PC won't leap out of the crowd with a few swords to ruin your day!
New Blog Entries
