With most of the Paizo editorial staff being transplants from across the country, the holidays tend to be the one time of the year where we put aside talk of goblins and statblocks and deadlines for a few days (or at least try to). With much of the crew making treks across the country to spend a few days with much neglected family members, things might get a little spotty here on the blog up through the New Year. Even with the dedicated folks staying behind to man the walls, the holiday fever can get a little distracting, so to tide things over till January 4th, here's Eva Widermann's fantastic artwork for our 2009 holiday card. But that's it from us for 2009, everybody! Thanks to everyone for an incredible year, and do me a favor and yell at James Jacobs if you see him on the boards over the course of the next week. Happy holidays from all of us here at Paizo and we'll see you in 2010!
Those of you who check the blog daily have doubtless noted that there's been a few missing posts of late. The answer can be found on any major news website; the Seattle area's been hit with a pretty potent winter storm. Now, before anyone starts getting indignant about how snow's easy to drive through and Seattlites are cowards when it comes to snow (an accusation in my own case that's spot on, by the way), it's worth remembering that a lot of the streets and freeways out this side are on hills. And when you mix snow and hills, you get icy chutes that can only be navigated by things like white dragons who have the icewalking ability.
Anyway, rant about ranting aside, the reason there's been a dearth of blogs lately is that very few of us at Paizo have been able to get into the office lately, and as a result, blog writing has kinda been set aside. I'm sitting at home, typing this blog with a blanket on my shoulders and a space heater aimed at my feet, after having ventured outside to snap the following picture. It was while I took the picture that I think I heard that yeti stomping around somewhere. I ain't going back outside till he's been driven off by the local sasquatches, who, of course, aren't coming out until the snow goes away. Stupid sasquatches. You can never trust them to be there when you need them...
When Mike Selinker and I were designing Yetisburg, Mike had this awesome idea to write a bunch of Yeti-themed songs based on the actual soldiering songs of the American Civil War and sprinkle them throughout the rulebook. Unfortunately for Mike, those songs proved too big for our little rulebook and only one, Dixie, was left in. Fortunately for you, the outstanding Paizo blog reader, we're going to share all of them with you now!
Dixie (Oh I Wish That Weren't a Yeti)
Oh I wish that weren't a Yeti,
No way, no way
In Dixie Land it's not so grand
To be eaten by a Yeti
Run away, run away,
Run away now from the Yeti!
Abominable Hymn of the Snowman
Mine eyes have seen a Yeti
On whose tusks my friends are gored;
He is trampling through the Cavalry
And cannot be ignored;
'Twould protest this incursion
But his rage I can't afford;
I hope he'll soon be gone!
The Yetis are Marching Home
The Yetis are marching home again,
Hurrah! Hurrah!
To join their belov'd Canadians,
Hurrah! Hurrah!
It was great when they battled by our side
And great when so many of them died
And we'll all exhale as the
Yetis go marching home!
All credit for the songs should go to Mike Selinker. Yetisburg is available now on paizo.com and will soon be available at your local game store.
A few appropriate remarks, spoken by President Abraham Lincoln, November 19, 1863, after a two-hour fusillade of yowling by the Right Abominable Statesman, Senator Everett OrYARRadoogOOch'ook!ook!:
Four score and seven yetis ago, our fathers discovered on the northern fringes of this continent a new breed of soldier, conceived in the Belly of Hell, and dedicated to the proposition that not only men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a rarely civil war, testing whether those yetis, or any yetis, so ill-conceived and so odiferous, can long be endured. We are met on a great charnel house of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that those yetis might be once again returned to Canada. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this, for they do us no good at all here.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not even find—this ground. The brave yetis, living and dead, who struggled here, have pretty much torn it to ribbons, far above our poor power to reconstruct. The yetis will little note, nor long remember what we say here, as they have the attention span of a chamberpot. It is for us the humans, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished collection of random soldiers' body parts, which they who fought here have gnawed down to the bone. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they ran screaming from the field, those that could walk, anyway—that we here highly resolve that these dead should not have died in pain, oh such horrible pain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new resolve to solve its own damn problems—and that government of the people, by the people, and specifically only for the people, shall not rest until every last man-ape is driven from its shores. Really, what in thunderation were we thinking?
It's been passing long since last we embraced. After months of fighting in this damnable battle between the states, I fear I shall never hold you in my arms again. It's the Yetis, Clarabelle—they've torn off my arms at the shoulders. I write this hasty note to you with pen firmly in mouth. I trust my tears shall not disrupt the ink and that our love will carry me through the challenging months to come.
In the weeks after the traitorous Secession, the shaggy beasts came from the darkened forests of the Canadian north. My grandfather remembered tales of the hulking monsters serving in the front lines of the enemy in 1812, but this time, the generals claimed, they would battle on the side of the righteous Union.
Believe me, Clarabelle, these Yetis fight on no side but their own. In the first few battles their razor claws and savage maws tore great bloody holes in the ranks of the enemy, but bullets in a territory of war know no difference betwixt friend and foe. This Wednesday last I had occasion to misfire my carbine into the back of one of the shaggy white beasts, and he turned on me with the fury of a savage beast. It was all the doctors could do to save my life that wretched day, and the worst of it is that my wedding band now rests with my festering fingers in the belly of that overgrown, odiferous meat-monkey.
I write with trembling lips that Johnny Reb has Yetis of his own, disgusting hair-patched beasts they purchased from the distant North. I am no longer certain of the future of our Union, but I can say with confidence that war breeds greater and greater weapons of destruction, and now that the Yetis have joined the field on both sides, there can be no assurances as to the eventual victor of this conflict.
May God above save us from the wretched Yetis. May God above save the Union!
Back on November 14th, we had a sort of cryptic post here on the blog. Well, more of a warning, really: "THE YETI IS COMING!" Well, later this month, the yeti will arrive—just one of many dangers awaiting the PCs in "Spires of Xin-Shalast," the final adventure in Rise of the Runelords. Pathfinder #6 also presents a short article that talks about other dangers that await any who dare explore the Kodar Mountains, one of Golarion's most inhospitable regions. This article opens with some words of advice from one of Varisia's most widely traveled explorers—the currently missing Ronagard Roteshield.
"The cold's not your enemy. No, when you get it in your fool head to go gallivanting up to the top of the world, there's plenty else to be worried of. Up there, there's mountains that roar and try to eat you alive. There's air that quits caring and does you about as much good as trying to breathe a lake. There's rock that's solid as a fortress wall 'til it's the only thing holding you over a gap a mile deep. And then there's the things. The snowy, hungry things that don't let anything made of meat just pass on by.
"The cold, though, it'll kill you slow and quiet. It'll be there when you're fallen and broken, half-eaten at the bottom of some ravine. It'll make the hurting stop, wrap you up in that dull, soft numbness, and make your forget any thought of climbing back down.
"No, the cold's not your enemy. Up there, it's the best friend you've got."
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