It's been a long, strange, and humiliating trip for the poor unlucky owlbear. He's been shot dead, turned into a pigeon roost and object of mockery for slack-jawed yokels, torn down and broken apart by barbarians, and defiled by wandering wolves. But as is always the case with that pesky circle of life thing that nature loves so much, eventually he gets to return to his beloved woods. And hopefully warn future generations of owlbears of the dangers he faced.
Or maybe not. Maybe his forgotten head will just serve as a dinner platter for the next one to come along...
If these installments of the Unluckiest Owlbear saga seem to suddenly be coming fast and furious, there's a reason—as our deadline for Gen Con "ship to the printer" approaches, we're finally seeing all of our product lines actually bunch up and get back on schedule. As a result, we've sent what feels like 40 installments of Pathfinder Adventure Path to the printer over the past few weeks. Which is, I suppose, good news for our poor unlucky owlbear, since that means the ongoing humiliations will be made public (and thus come to an end) all the sooner! This week, we present the penultimate installment of the saga, wherein the raiders have done their thing and moved on to other towns, leaving in their wake nothing but ruins and wolves. It's probably for the best that this illustration doesn't depict the natural progression of events as the wolves, moving in to claim new territory, begin to do what wolves do best when it comes to neglected statues...
In Pathfinder Adventure Path #34, things once again take a turn for the worse for our poor unlucky owlbear. It's one thing to be immortalized as a statue in the middle of a village, where children laugh at you and birds poop on you and you eventually become forgotten as part of the town square's mundane decor. It's quite another when the barbarians come to town and, in a sudden urge to show off their destructive power and strength, tear your statue down! At least the owlbear's ghost can take solace in the fact that those pesky barbarians are probably being equally destructive to the adventurers who got him into this fix in the first place.
So it's been about a month, and you know what that means! Yup! Time to reveal Chapter Three of the saga of the Unluckiest Owlbear. I had mentioned previously how the poor owlbear was destined for greatness... and as it turns out, that greatness is that he's now the pride and joy of Owlbearton's central plaza! Gaze upon his magnificent glory, preserved for all time* for the idle entertainment of passing rubes and for the perching comfort of well-fed pigeons! What more could a proud magical beast of the woods primeval hope for?
James Jacobs
Creative Director
*At least, until next month, when the indignities continue.
As I mentioned back on the 22nd of February, the owlbear sort of ended up being the mascot for the Kingmaker Adventure Path. I also hinted that our poor mascot was going to have something of an unlucky streak. Turns out... the bad luck hits more or less immediately—in the second Kingmaker adventure, "Rivers Run Red," the PCs start to build their kingdom and tame the wilderness of the Stolen Lands. That's bad news for the owlbears, as you can see here.
Don't worry, though, because our unlucky owlbear is destined for greater things than merely providing a pile of experience points for some overzealous archer! It's just that the owlbear won't be all that aware of his fame when it finally comes!
Although I can't quite yet show off the actual rules you'll be using in the Kingmaker Adventure Path quite yet, I can show you how they look in play. Presented below is an excerpt from Merisiel's diary as she oversees the foundation of a brand-new kingdom in the mysterious Stolen Lands. NOTE: Merisiel's probably not the best choice in this group for a nation's ruler, but sometimes that's just how politics work. As time permits, I'll post a few more diary entries to this blog's messageboard thread so we can all learn from Merisiel's triumphs and failures. Certainly there'll be more triumphs in her future, yes?
1 Pharast: So it looks like I'm in charge. Queen Merisiel. I like the sound of that. Although, as Seelah is so fond of pointing out, I'm technically a baroness until this new nation of mine grows large enough. I'm still gonna be calling myself queen in these pages. Seelah's gonna be the general of my armies (she volunteered!), and I put Lem in charge of keeping an eye on the citizens to make sure they're loyal as the spymaster. And of course Kyra's our high priest. All the other leadership roles, for now, go to some of the other locals we've allied with during the past several months of exploring the Greenbelt. We'll see how they work out, I suppose—none of them seem particularly talented, but hopefully they'll grow into their jobs? And if they don't, I can fire them. I'm the queen, after all. Anyway, we've managed to claim a pretty sizable area around this old ruined castle that bandit lord was using as a hideout. The ruins should work pretty well as a new castle, once it gets patched up. We've started clearing the area around the ruins to serve as a good place to build up a town. I'm thinking of calling it Owlbearton, after that bandit's pet owlbear that nearly bit off Lem's ear, but Seelah says that's a stupid name. I told her that if she comes up with something better we'll call it that, but so far all her ideas suck. Surprise, surprise. So for now, Owlbearton it is! We've even built some roads around the place! It's gonna be a city in no time! Especially now that I've got some deliciously heavy taxes coming into the treasury! Who woulda guessed that taxes could be something to be happy about? So far, those taxes more than paid for the roads and land clearing and stuff. Not the rebuilding of the castle, though. That's expensive, as it works out. And while Lem says that the locals are complaining that all I'm doing is lying around and taking it easy while they pay for my little project, and while Kyra says she only barely managed to talk a group of farmers out of marching up to the castle to tear it down and (their words) "git back what we done paid for from that spendthrift pointy-eared harlot!" I'm not worried. Once they see how excellent this castle looks when it's all done, they'll all forgive me. I'm sure of it!
I'm not sure when it happened, but at some point along the way, the owlbear kind of ended up being the official Kingmaker mascot. Sure, the PCs will be facing evil fey, lizard and frog men, undead monstrosities, bandits, trolls, giants, dragons, and worse during this Adventure Path, but they'll also be facing a lot of owlbears. Some of which are really rather memorable.
Anyway, once we realized how owlbear-riffic this Adventure Path was going to be, we decided to open each one of Kingmaker's forewords with illustrations of the life and death (mostly death) of the River Kingdoms' unluckiest owlbear. There he is in the illustration above, wandering through the primeval woodlands of the Stolen Lands without a care in the world. I'm not going to name him, because that would just make the next five months of what happens to the poor guy depressing.
For now, though, he's at home in his element, with no idea of the pain and humiliation to come. What has cruel, cruel fate got in store for this poor, innocent owlbear? Tune in to this blog next month to find out!
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