Of the many pleasant surprises we at Paizo have run into since Pathfinder's inception, one of the biggest remains the popularity of our iconic characters. Perhaps we shouldn't have been surprised—after all, when Wayne Reynolds is doing the art, it's hard to not fall in love with whoever's getting painted. But when you get right down to it, the iconics were created to be tools. (And one might argue that some of them still are—we're looking at you, Alain!) The whole reason for their existence was to keep us from having to explain to each new artist what made a ranger a ranger and a rogue a rogue—we could just hold up Merisiel and say “draw her.” But people started asking questions about the backstories, and before long we were writing Meet the Iconics blogs and seeding little bits of iconic fiction in the hardcover chapter introductions. Yet we held off on doing more, always feeling like the time wasn't yet right.