This latest issue of Wayfinder focuses on one of the coolest locations (excuse the pun) in Golarion: The Land of the Linnorm Kings. As usual, the issue features great articles, stories, and artwork packed with a lot of Viking flair. Some highlights of this issue:

• Kalyna Conrad's "Ice and Darkness" a tale of two brothers and their fated encounter with a great beast of the North. This links to a Weal and Woe article by Conrad, with Eric Hindley, featuring Bram and Liut as NPCs years after the story takes place. Finally, "A Cold Reunion" brings the brothers back together in an adventure scenario full of chills, terrors, and a big bad with a new template.
• The Frost Dancer: an archetype for the Shadowdancer prestige class, by Clinton J. Boomer.
• A slew of magic weapons, armor, and items, all fit for a brave Ulfen warrior.
• "Linnorm Games" A dice game by Dain “Zylphryx” Nielsen, perfect for those long sea voyages between raids.
• A Bestiary containing 14 strange and fearsome beasts to plague the far North in your games.

All this and more fantastic stories, poems, articles, and artwork. And it's free!

This was a great issue. I would pay for a magazine this good, and here it is given away for the enjoyment of all!

Here is my review primarily of the stories in the e-zine.

Ice and Darkness: A story of temptation and fall. I loved how this story tied into the next weal/woe segment and then tied into the following adventure segment!

The Three Rimes: As soon as I finished this story last night, I turned to my wife (who was reading World War Z) and told her that she should read this story. It is a bit of a classic fairy story with deals and suchlike, especially a clever hero. I especially enjoyed the extensive use of alliteration since that was in important part of Scandinavian folklore.

The Great Hunt: I want to play this game. It looks like fun. I will be looking at options to download and print the full size board and tokens. (Thanks JonathanRoberts!)

Tallak: Portrait of a Warrior: Good story. Simple. As stated, it is a character portrait of a warrior with a strong moral code. This story is a good counterpart to the next one in line, which brings me to:

The Linnorm's Curse: Well written! Sad! A beautiful story of heroism and loss. Not every campaign should end this way, but some definitely should. It certainly portrays that great things cannot be done without losing something along the way. This story also fits the archetype of the Scandinavian mythology where the hero loses much, if not all, to win. I think that this was the best fiction in the issue. It grabbed and held me at an emotional level.

In Hells Embrace: Part IV: I’ll be honest. I did not read this one, because I want to go back through my back issues of Wayfinder and read them in order. If I can find the time to do that this weekend, I will post a review... here, I guess. I am not sure where else to put it.

Words from Many Roads: I enjoyed the poetry. I need to let this stew a bit more before I comment on it. Poetry is not as east to talk about as fiction is.

Moot: A Folktale: I’ll admit, I read this one out of order last night because it was written by Kevin Andrew Murphy and I have enjoyed everything of his that I have read so far. This was a fun, one page story about the inner workings of gremlin culture as related by the hero from The Three Rimes. It was fun, anyone can be a gremlin.

Ostog’s Song: An entrancing story of an Ulfen hunter entranced by the song of a Nymph. I enjoyed the inevitability in the story. The way that he knew what he SHOULD do, but couldn’t seem to do it. Even though I knew exactly what was going to happen, I still wanted to read to find out HOW it happened. Bravo! The fey are so mischievous! Racy art!!

Champion of the People: The lengths that we will go to in order to protect those we love and those under our protection are tremendous.