While the writers of our Paizo products are always credited in the front and back of the books, a simple name in a byline doesn’t give readers much information on the people who work to bring the setting to life! To wrap up our look at the Lost Omens Ancestry Guide, we reached out to the authors of the book with the intent of promoting them—as well as any other personal work they would like to share, so that new fans of their work could find other projects, RPG products, websites, livestreams, and more to enjoy!
Art by Carol Azevedo
Calder CaDavid
Hello, Calder here! I was thrilled to write for some of my favorite ancestries – aasimar and orcs in Lost Omens Ancestry Guide. I’ve been a freelancing TTRPG writer for a little over two years and loving every moment. I’ve written for previous Lost Omens books, the PFS adventure (1-22) The Doom of Cassomir and several adventures for the subscription service Dungeon in a Box. I hosted and ran the actual-play and GM discussion podcast Mythos Manual, which post-modern plague may actually get back to. I work in television production and live in Los Angeles with my cat, dog and fiancé. Follow me on Twitter @CaDavidCalder. Enjoy more Lost Omens goodness!
Jessica Catalan
Hi everyone! My name is Jessica Catalan and I wrote androids and azarketi for Lost Omens Ancestry Guide. I’ve been freelancing for Paizo’s Pathfinder and Starfinder RPGs for nearly two years. In that time I’ve contributed to twenty three projects for Paizo (and counting!), including Advanced Player’s Guide, Lost Omens Legends, Starship Operations Manual, Alien Archive 4, five Organized Play scenarios, and a variety of other products that will release over the next year or so. In between freelancing and parenting, I occasionally find time to update
d20diaries.com, a personal blog focusing on my family’s experiences in gaming. For a full list of my announced TTRPG credits, visit d20diaries.com/freelance-work/ You can follow me on Twitter (@d20diaries), Instagram (d20diaries), and Facebook (D20 Diaries). Contributing to Lost Omens Ancestry Guide was an absolute delight and I’m thrilled to see it hit gaming tables. Enjoy!
Art by Dominik Derow
Lyz Liddell
Hey, everyone! I’m Lyz Liddell, former designer and editor for Pathfinder, back on the job to nurture my beautiful goth children: dhampirs! When I created this versatile lineage for the Advanced Player’s Guide, there was so much more we wanted to do than we had space for, so it was a delight to put those ideas into action for the Lost Omens Ancestry Guide. Dhampirs in fiction bear an unfortunate and long-held association with violence and loss, but I wanted to break those assumptions in Pathfinder so you have the freedom to tell any stories you want with these physically, socially, and emotionally complex characters. I hope you enjoy them!
Ron Lundeen
I’m Ron Lundeen, a developer on the Pathfinder Adventure Path line here at Paizo. I really wanted to write up the fleshwarps for this book, because they could be tentacled and gross. I initially thought of them only as grotesque creations for players who want to be a monster (which their ancestry feats really reflect), but as I thought about fleshwarps' place in the world, I realized that even these physically distinct people would have conventions, hopes, goals, and self-images of their own. Incorporating these thoughts made them a much deeper and more flavorful ancestry. With a fleshwarp, you can still "just be the monster," or you can explore what it means to have a shockingly inhuman appearance in a world of wonders and terrors. Plus, Gaping Flesh is maybe my favorite feat I've ever written. You can check out my RPG advice, including an entire free Pathfinder Second Edition Adventure Path I wrote, on my blog at RunAmokGames.com. I’m available for freelance for any number of game systems at rules.lawyer.ron@gmail.com.
Art by Alex Stone
Patchen Mortimer
Hey all! I’m Patchen Mortimer, an advertising copywriter and DJ from Baltimore. You might know me from The Daily Bestiary(dailybestiary.tumblr.com and dailybestiary.blogspot.com), where I spent 7+ years writing adventure seeds for nearly every monster in the 1e Bestiaries.
It’s been a thrill contributing articles to Pathfinder Adventure Path(most recently “Prisons of the Inner Sea”) and several Pathfinder 2e hardcovers. Lost Omens Ancestry Guide was an exciting chance to return to my beloved iruxi and wander through the warrens of the ysoki. Here’s to everyone out there who thinks role-playing’s more fun when you have sharp teeth and a tail!
For freelancing, find me via email: patchen.mortimer@gmail.com. For silliness, find me on Twitter: @patchdj. For great music every week, find me Tuesdays 9–11PM (US Eastern) on the radio: wmuc.umd.edu.
PS: I want to give a big shout-out to Clean Cuts, the studio that helped bring Starfinder to life on Alexa. Way back in 2006, Clean Cuts helped me make some of my very first TV and radio commercials, and they’ve been a joy to work with ever since. So I’m *thrilled* they found their way to Paizo and the Pact Worlds—congrats all around!
Andrew Mullen
Hello from the US Southwest! I'm Andrew Mullen, who you might know from Old-Mage Jatembe's section of Lost Omens Legends and xulgath culture in the Extinction Curse Adventure Path. For Lost Omens Ancestry Guide, I worked on fetchlings and aphorites. I've always liked shadows' place in fantasy, but as someone who doesn't play much with the chaos/law axis, aphorites were a new challenge. I quite enjoyed thinking through what it means to have an intrinsic connection to order!
Ancestries aside, and assuming this blog presents authors in alphabetical order by last name, I'm going to scoop Mikhail's bit - we're working on a third-party project!
Was the world plunged into darkness because the prior civilization exsanguinated god to death, and when his eyes closed the stars went out? Was it because the wreckage of the gods' civil war blotted out the sky? In Ourichor: Fulcrum of the Luminant Age, there's no certain answer: this truth is a matter of faith. The Luminant Age is a Weird Fantasy world with a robust, nuanced take on fictional culture. But that level of detail doesn't mean an impenetrable mess of lore! We want players to be able to dive right into a game, even one that takes into account the power struggles and intrigues of a technological renaissance fueled by god's blood.
Oh, and we've got vampire anteater dogs and flying rays with gardens on their backs! Adorable!
Keep an eye on our Twitter at https://twitter.com/LuminantA - there's strange stuff on the horizon!
Art by Mirco Paganessi
Jessica Redekop
Hi! I'm Jess, and this blog means I can finally tell everyone I'm the author of the geniekin versatile heritages for Ancestry Guide. This was a real dream for me! I'm not sure I can express how much of a joy the geniekin heritages were to write, and I hope you'll enjoy reading about and playing the elemental planar scions as much as I will. For more genie content from yours truly, check out the PFS scenario Freedom for Wishes releasing in March. You can find me on twitter and instagram as @tectonomancer, and playing Xiadani the aasimar druid on Valiant, an actual play podcast on the Know Direction network.
Mikhail Rekun
Здравствуйте, уважаемые читатели! (Hello, dear readers!) My name is Mikhail Sergeyevich Rekun, and you may remember me from Lost Omen Legends (Baba Yaga) PFS 1-15 Blooming Catastrophe, and PFS 2-8 Frosty Mug, amongst a great deal of other writing. In my significantly more boring daily existence, I’m a Russian-American historian and educator, presently working in China.
In LOAG, I wrote the entries for the tieflings and the duskwalkers. Duskwalkers and I go way back—my very first assignment for Paizo was writing Duskwalker feats for the Plane-Hopper’s Handbook, and my first ‘big’ Paizo assignment was the Half-Dead backmatter in AP139 The Dead Roads.
Here and today, though, I want to mention a new project I’m working on, a bit outside of the Paizo umbrella. Ourichor: Fulcrum of the Luminant Age is an upcoming third-party setting for Pathfinder Second Edition, a Weird Fantasy Swashbuckler set in a world without stars, where players will have a chance to set the course of history—or maybe just get run over by it, as the case may be.
It’s still early days, but we have a Twitter at https://twitter.com/LuminantA and plans for some fun stuff in the near future.
Досвидания! (Goodbye!)
Art by Matheus Dorow Schwartz
David N. Ross
I'm something of a jack-of-all-trades freelance writer and developer peddling novel rules, vibrant settings, and intrigue-laced adventures. This book is also a major milestone for me: my 50th contribution to Paizo's catalog! Although I'm best-known as a writer for Paizo's various lines, I also develop rules and write new content for other clients including Petersen Games, Raging Swan Press, AAW Games, Legendary Games, and a dozen more using rules for Pathfinder (both editions), Starfinder, and D&D. This time, I'm excited to revisit catfolk and provide them with some new tricks! I previously wrote some of their Inner sea Races mechanics in first edition and helped flesh out their lore in Pathfinder Adventure Path #152: Legacy of the Lost God. My next major release will be my first Adventure Path installment, "Ready? Fight!" which comes out in May. You can find me on Twitter @DavidRossWorlds and shop most of my non-Paizo products on DriveThruRPG. I also help run Freelance Forge, a community for current and aspiring RPG freelancers.
Mark Seifter
I'm Mark Seifter, Paizo's design manager and one of the four leads on the creation of Pathfinder Second Edition.
In Lost Omens Ancestry Guide, I created the sprites. I'm a big fan of fey, and I wanted to express that in this section. Plus, since I was also working on Bestiary 3, I was able to coordinate adding three brand new types of sprites in both books, as heritages and new creatures: Thanks to the creativity of Eleanor and Luis, we came up with draxie (dragon sprites), melixies (insect sprites, often bees), and nyktera (bat sprites)!
Check out my twitch stream with Linda Zayas-Palmer, Arcane Mark, Tuesdays and Thursdays at 7PM Pacific, and Saturdays at 10 AM Pacific at https://www.twitch.tv/arcanemark. We cover a variety of RPG and Pathfinder topics on Tuesdays and Saturdays, chosen by the viewers!
Owen K.C. Stephens
Owen K.C. Stephens is a former Paizo employee and 20+ year veteran of the tabletop RPG industry, who has worked on products for five editions of D&D, two of Pathfinder, the Starfinder Roleplaying Game, its Beginner Box, and more than a half-dozen other RPGs. He was delighted to work on this book, especially the opportunity to get to write some things about kobolds again. You can find his every-weekday game posts at his blog (owenkcstephens.com), support him on his Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/OwenKCStephens), and check him out on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/OwenK.C.Stephens) and Twitter (https://twitter.com/Owen_Stephens).
Art by Carol Azevedo
Authors of Awesome Ancestries (And Heritages)!
Monday, March 15, 2021
