Like many of his kind, Grimmyr is unable to return home.

Ulka knew the warmth of family for less than an hour. Her first cries were a wail of grief for her parents, slaughtered alongside the rest of her hold in a brutal raid by rival orcs. The murderers left the orphaned child untouched among the corpses, prey for wolves or the elements to take, chortling and sporting among each other for their cruelty. Empty Hand scouts found the babe not long after, screaming in defiance at the heavens, as if daring the gods themselves to answer for their sins.

“So the shiny runes are… the reflection on the water?”

"And then he walked face-first into a swarm of mosquitos, just like that!” Lini chuckled. “I remember the first time I did that, so many years ago! It nearly scared the life out of me. He’s fine, though; just rattled from the experience.”

Yoon was only eight when she learned of fire; the power to command and control flames awoke within her, as it had within her grandmother, and her grandmother's grandmother before her. Fire was a good friend to have, for Yoon was on a journey across Tian Xia, fleeing her old home of Minkai and heading down the coast to Hwanggot, the land her parents had left decades ago. Her flame kept her warm at night and protected her from monsters and bandits, and she had friends she met along the road to teach her survival and point her toward the next village or inn.

Hi, my name is Fred Van Lente, writer of comics and prose (my latest novel, Never Sleep, debuted a few weeks ago: check it out if you like historical thrillers about America's first female private detectives). The fine folks at Paizo asked me to drop by to tell you a little bit about my new Pathfinder comics series, Wake the Dead, premiering from Dynamite in May. This is volume eight of the long-running Pathfinder series, and we're doing something a little different this time out.