Community / Paizo Blog / 2014 / March

Have You Seen Me?

Mar 31, 2014, 11:04 am

The Grand Lodge has been positively humming with rumors that some of the Society’s infamous rivals are once again on the loose. Initiates have busied themselves printing fliers to alert agents that danger is afoot. Can you identify any of the faces in this rogues gallery?

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Tags: Jakub Adam Witowski Pathfinder Society

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Pathfinder Battles Preview: One More Tri

Mar 28, 2014, 05:43 pm

In my Las Vegas-fueled GAMA Trade Show enthusiasm of last week, I somehow missed the fact that the upcoming Reign of Winter set includes at least three more alien creatures from the frigid world of Triaxus, as featured in the fifth Reign of Winter Adventure Path adventure, The Frozen Stars. Check out last week’s preview blog for a sense of some of my original trepidation about including “furry elves” in the miniatures set.

Pathfinder Battles Preview: One More Tri

Friday, March 28, 2014

In my Las Vegas-fueled GAMA Trade Show enthusiasm of last week, I somehow missed the fact that the upcoming Reign of Winter set includes at least three more alien creatures from the frigid world of Triaxus, as featured in the fifth Reign of Winter Adventure Path adventure, The Frozen Stars. Check out last week’s preview blog for a sense of some of my original trepidation about including “furry elves” in the miniatures set.

As it turns out, I shouldn’t have worried so much. The set’s Triaxians look absolutely fantastic, and all of them easily double as other creatures for GMs who have no intention of taking their campaigns to the stars.

First up this week is the menacing Drakelands Barbarian, a sworn enemy of the Dragon Legion officers we previewed last week. I’m holding the final production run version of this figure as I write this, and I’m blown away by the paint quality WizKids has pulled off on this set. The Barbarian has a great feral snarl on her face, and her armor looks fantastic. Her fur is not too furry, and the figure easily doubles as a rather pale half-orc. From the wooden shield to the fine sculpt detail, it’s almost impossible for me to believe that I’m looking at a common. But I most certainly am. The Drakelands Barbarian is a fantastic-looking Medium common.

Speaking of fantastic Medium figures, here we have Commander Pharamol, the cover figure from the The Frozen Stars adventure. Pharamol commands the Dragon Legion aerie of Spurhorn, and could end up as either an ally or an enemy of the player characters. One thing is for sure, he’s is absolutely PERFECT for a male catfolk ranger. Again, the paint detail on this guy is unbelievable, with amazing red outlines on his white skirt, brilliant gold trim along his fine green cloak, and an excellently executed face. If a near-perfect sculpt and excellent paint job is enough to convince you to take a second look at a weird miniature, you’re going to love this guy. Commander Pharamol is a Medium miniature slated at the rare rarity.

And then we have General Malesinder, an enormous female silver dragonkin with a sword made of ice, some cool jewelry, and an absolute hate-on for Commander Pharamol and his Dragon Legion ilk. If you can handle weapon-wielding dragons, this figure is just about perfect. Your players are definitely going to freak out when this nasty lady hits the table. She’s great, and looks even better in-hand. General Malesinder is a Large, rare figure.

Ok, now I’m pretty sure I’ve featured all of the Triaxian aliens in the set. Except for one, that is. I’ll get to that furry fellow in a future week.

In the meantime, please consider setting up an ongoing case subscription to ensure you don’t miss a single Reign of Winter figure.

Don’t get caught out in the cold!

Erik Mona
Publisher

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Tags: Miniatures Pathfinder Battles Reign of Winter

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A Sound of Goblins

Mar 27, 2014, 10:00 am

When I was writing "Burnt Offerings," I was focused mostly on the daunting task of setting up an adventure that would not only present goblins as monsters you love to hate, but also to launch an entire new product line. I was focused on how to make the adventure simultaneously introduce the world to a new world while at the same time feeling old-school enough that it felt nostalgic and familiar and comfortable. I wanted readers of the first Adventure Path installment to enjoy the innovations, but to feel more than ever that this was the same game they've enjoyed playing for years.

A Sound of Goblins

Thursday, March 27, 2014

When I was writing "Burnt Offerings," I was focused mostly on the daunting task of setting up an adventure that would not only present goblins as monsters you love to hate, but also to launch an entire new product line. I was focused on how to make the adventure simultaneously introduce the world to a new world while at the same time feeling old-school enough that it felt nostalgic and familiar and comfortable. I wanted readers of the first Adventure Path installment to enjoy the innovations, but to feel more than ever that this was the same game they've enjoyed playing for years.

I think it's fair to say that I never really stopped to think what the characters sounded like, or how a 50 page adventure could translate into an hour long audio drama.

When we sealed the deal with Big Finish to produce Rise of the Runelords as a full cast audio adventure, though, those were among the many questions we had to answer. We worked closely with Big Finish from the start on both determining what iconics should be featured in the story and what parts of the adventure needed to be represented in the hour-long running time for each installment.

Choosing the characters, in retrospect, was relatively easy. The important NPCs would be determined by what parts of the adventure we chose to adapt, so it came down to the PCs as the main choices we had to make early on—we knew we wanted four adventurers, since that's the basic assumption we make for the game... but which four? In the end, we knew that just as the visuals of all our iconics are so distinctive, we needed the voices to be distinctive as well. The first-time listener needed to be able to tell the four heroes apart just by listening to their voices. Furthermore, we wanted to choose the four iconic heroes from those who were actually featured on the covers of Rise of the Runelords. Harsk and Ezren made a lot of sense, because their voices—an old man's and a gruff dwarf's—were so distinctive. Valeros was an obvious choice since he was the first iconic we'd illustrated he's as close as we have to a "main character" among all the iconics. And that was it for the initial party—but we needed one more. I pushed hard for Merisiel, and not only because she's my favorite iconic—she's also an elf AND a female character, two elements that were missing from the current lineup.

Ezren
Download the sample! (147 KB MP3/zip)

Harsk
Download the sample! (143 KB MP3/zip)

Merisiel
Download the sample! (123 KB MP3/zip)

Valeros
Download the sample! (143 KB MP3/zip)

That DOES leave the heroes without a dedicated healer in the group... but fortunately, when you get to control all aspects of the story and don't have to worry about dice and chance throwing curve balls at you, you can write the story so that the lack of a healer isn't an issue.

And that brings us to the second part of the question—how do you condense an adventure that can provide for hours and hours of game play over the course of several days of gaming sessions into a single hour?

And it's here that Big Finish's writers stepped up big time. For each installment, the authors write out a brief outline of what elements they want to focus on, and then we at Paizo would go over the outlines and approve some elements and make suggestions for others. Deciding what parts of the adventure are important to cover and what parts are not made for some tough choices—the reduction of Nualia's henchmen in number or the entire catacombs of wrath would have been great to hear, but the storyline works without them as well. Once we approve the outline, then the next step is for us to approve the full script—we'd go through page by page, giving feedback from "Harsk is spitting too much" to "Ameiko wouldn't say that," and much more... and once that stage was done, the task of actually recording the dialogue came next.

Ameiko Kaijitsu
Download the sample! (86 KB MP3/zip)

Nualia
Download the sample! (135 KB MP3/zip)

The final step—approving the final recording—was the most fun though. It's pretty cool to sit in your office at work, listening to goblins run amok!

Goblin
Download the sample! (180 KB MP3/zip)

James Jacobs
Creative Director

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Tags: Pathfinder Adventure Path Pathfinder Legends Rise of the Runelords

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Dune Runner

Mar 26, 2014, 10:00 am

Searing heat and abrasive, sand-laden winds burned the exposed patches of skin around Jasilia's stylized brass goggles. She slipped a hand beneath her tightly drawn burnoose and adjusted the scarf around raw cheeks, her other hand thrust up under the half-buried opening of the tomb's great stone lip so the wailing winds wouldn't sweep her away.

Dune Runner

by Christopher Paul Carey

Chapter One: The Storm

Searing heat and abrasive, sand-laden winds burned the exposed patches of skin around Jasilia's stylized brass goggles. She slipped a hand beneath her tightly drawn burnoose and adjusted the scarf around raw cheeks, her other hand thrust up under the half-buried opening of the tomb's great stone lip so the wailing winds wouldn't sweep her away.

Beside her, what looked like an oversized scarab in human form gestured frantically at her to get below. Nekhtep the Constant, the Risen Guard assigned to protect her, lived up to both his duty and his honorary title, but the sight of him tore at her more fiercely than the khamsin's fury. She looked away, watching streaks of blue-tinged flame soar up over the desert and scorch the charcoal sky.

The ages-old struggle between the elemental chieftains would go on forever, it seemed. But then, wasn't that built into their natures? Fire consumed air and air fed fire—not unlike her and Nekhtep, each forever seared by the other's presence. Like the elemental forces of nature, there was no arguing it. After their indiscretions came to light, Nekhtep had chosen to end their relationship and die under the pharaoh's blade. A fortunate development, the Ruby Prince had remarked. Better than my sister disgracing herself by marrying a commoner.

The screaming sands drowned out her curse. It was just as well. She would rather Nekhtep not hear it.

A Risen Guard gives his life for the Pharaoh—and that's just the beginning

Jasilia turned from the storm and descended into the tomb. A few moments later, a heavy scraping of stone on stone grated above. The silence that followed was filled only by the ringing in her ears and the coughing fit that seized Nekhtep as dust and sand settled in the enclosed space. She knelt on the narrow ramp, removed a foot-long rod from her bag, and struck it against the rough stone at her feet. The tip blossomed with silvery light.

The glow revealed a steep, limestone-walled corridor barely wider than her shoulders, its ceiling crawling with hieroglyphs from a forgotten age. Keeping her weight on her heels, she shuffled downward while Nekhtep's half-plate scarab armor clanked and clattered behind her. After they had proceeded what Jasilia judged to be about thirty feet below the surface, the floor leveled. A pile of rubble strewn beneath a dark, yawning hole in the far wall marked the corridor's end.

"We'll be down here a while." She placed a boot heel on the uneven rocks to judge their stability. "Might as well make our stay useful."

"Let me go first, O Heritor." Nekhtep tried to sidle past Jasilia in the narrow corridor, but she held out an arm to block him.

"Not a chance. You know I always go first. Royal privilege."

"But the tomb may still be guarded—"

"You did read the inscriptions on the way down?"

Nekhtep looked sheepish beneath his beetle-headed helmet.

"Oh. Right. We really do need to get you back to school, Nekhtep. The glyphs indicate interment of one Sebti Heptna. Minor nobility. Probably could barely afford to construct the tomb, let alone an eternal protector."

She almost felt bad for needling him. After all, the glyphs were an unusual regional variant, and she could read only about a quarter of them herself. Besides, Nekhtep was doubtless more proficient in the ancient tongues of the region than most of the foreign "scholars" her older brother had crawling all over the country. But she couldn't help herself. Anything to get through that Risen Guard stoicism.

Nekhtep relented and stepped back, but he drew his khopesh from its wide leather scabbard.

She rolled her eyes, then climbed over the rubble into the darkness.

The passage led her through five feet of solid, jagged-edged rock before opening onto a shallow ledge running along the perimeter of a small chamber. Above the ledge, depictions of humanoid figures painted in burgundy and turquoise danced across high limestone walls in sunk relief. Funerary ceramics lay overturned and broken along the room's far side. A large chunk of the east wall showed only bare, uneven rock where the smooth stone had been chiseled out, presumably so the vandals could abscond with some treasure embedded in the stone.

Two sarcophagi—a massive one that doubtless once held Sebti Heptna's remains and another that appeared to be sized for a human infant or small child—lay in the chamber's center. The limestone covering of the smaller sarcophagus still lay in place and seemingly undamaged. The heavy stone lid of the larger sarcophagus was cracked and lay toppled to one side, and from her position on the ledge Jasilia could see that the inner coffin was missing.

But thank Abadar, the thieves had left behind the greatest treasure of all: a small, unassuming row of hieroglyphs cut into a plain limestone ribbon circling the chamber's uppermost reaches. Now if only she knew enough of the regional dialect to make sense of the glyphs.

Jasilia tossed her glowing rod to the basalt floor and hopped down to retrieve it.

"Come on in!"

She turned to find Nekhtep already emerging from the tunnel onto the ledge above her. The Risen Guard removed his helmet and proceeded to doff his armor. She snuck a look at the muscular form that emerged from the half-plate, though she winced when she saw the burns the khamsin sands had seared on that handsome face. Earlier on their journey she had teased him for carrying along the heavy, suffocating armor. Now she saw that it had saved his life. She would never forgive herself if she got him killed.

Again.

A sick feeling crept into Jasilia's stomach. "You're sure Ojan made it to the eastern tomb?"

Nekhtep nodded down to her. "He signaled to me that he'd be fine, and to get you below. Then he led the camels down with him. I waited long enough to see that he'd sealed himself up."

She sighed with relief. "Then there's nothing we can do but wait out the storm."

While Nekhtep extricated himself from his armor, Jasilia walked to the south wall, removed a decorative torch from an ancient stone sconce jutting from the ledge, and affixed her glowing rod in its place. She took a field-book and stylus from her bag and knelt down, craning her neck as she began to transcribe the glyphs from the limestone ribbon above. She heard Nekhtep jump down into the chamber, trying her best to ignore him as he made a circuit of the tomb, presumably to verify with his own senses that nothing in the chamber presented a threat to his royal charge.

"Early Second Age?" Nekhtep asked.

Out of the corner of her eye, Jasilia could see him examining the glyphs on the child-sized sarcophagus's stone casing.

"No," she said. "Khamos's tip was wrong this time. The tomb is Late Apsu, or maybe Middle Osezis Period. See the Pahmet influence in the murals? Definitely not as early as Khamos claimed. But that's what I get for trusting a ghoul."

Stone grated, followed by a loud thunk. She looked up to see Nekhtep dusting himself off, the covering of the smaller sarcophagus lying off-kilter. Jasilia cursed. "At least watch that you don't damage the inscription."

Now Nekhtep was leaning into the sarcophagus and probing its bottom with the point of his khopesh. Jasilia tried to concentrate on transcribing the glyphs, translating what she could as she sketched the archaic symbols. She felt she was on the verge of deciphering the meaning of a particularly troublesome glyph when an eruption of Nekhtep's clattering blade caused her to break the tip of her stylus.

"Stop it!" she snapped. "You're worse than a Pathfinder, compromising the site like that!"

The scraping of Nekhtep's khopesh ceased, but she could still hear him rustling about in the well of the sarcophagus. Jasilia threw her notebook and stylus to the dusty floor and stood, whirling to confront him.

"If you don't cut it out, I'll—"

An unearthly yowl filled the chamber. Nekhtep raised his arm out of the sarcophagus, and a small feline head—skull-like and with eyes that glowed red in the torchlight—emerged with it, the creature's sharp teeth clamped onto the man's leather armband.

Jasilia shook off a shiver fear and, drawing her short sword, ran toward Nekhtep. The man didn't wait for her, however, and his khopesh made short work of the ubashki. He held the undead cat aloft by a loose wrapping, coolly examining the creature as it spun slowly before him.

"Too poor for a guardian?" Nekhtep mused. "I guess the poor make due." He dropped the ubashki back into the coffin and rubbed his hands together as if trying to flick off the creature's filth.

"You call that a guardian?" Jasilia slid her sword back into its leather sheath. "When it's my time to kick off, I'll find myself a proper protector to have strangled and stand vigil over my tomb, not a harmless little housecat." She looked Nekhtep up and down, as if appraising his value.

Nekhtep's expression was as still as the limestone walls. "Dying once for you wasn't enough?"

Jasilia heard her own breath catch in the silence of the tomb.

She straightened and walked across the chamber with feigned aplomb. "In any case," she continued, picking up her field-book from the dusty floor and tracing over a glyph with the half-broken tip of her stylus, "at least the looters who came before us were smart enough not to disturb that sarcophagus. Now can you stay put and let me get back to my transcription?"

It was dark enough in the tomb that she might have imagined Nekhtep's smirk.

∗ ∗ ∗

When they estimated that morning had come, Nekhtep heaved aside the great stone slab that sealed the tomb. After unburying themselves from the deluge of sand that fell down into the passage, Jasilia and Nekhtep emerged into a world that looked very different from that of the day before. Morning's golden rays skimmed through small valleys of sand, dappling the seemingly unending field of dunes that had risen up overnight. That the barren plains of the Glazen Sheets lay a mere few days' journey to the east only made the sudden appearance of the great sand mountains that much more astonishing.

Jasilia looked about the site, her anxiety mounting. Where was the entrance to the other tomb in which Ojan had sealed himself to escape the khamsin's wrath? She tried to orient herself by the sun's position in relation to the tomb opening they had just exited.

Her stomach turned. The other tomb had been to the southwest, just about where an immense wall of sand now rose from the rolling scape—a mound so high she and Nekhtep could never hope to unbury it by themselves.

She took off across the sands and ran up the dune's convex rise, her leg muscles straining as the sand gave way beneath each desperate step. When at last she reached the crest of the dune, she looked down its leeward side. Some twenty feet below, an arcing shadow darkened the bottom of the slipface, but not enough that she couldn't see the black opening at the base and a rectangular block of limestone cast aside next to the hole. A whitish trail, perhaps a vein of salt unearthed by the storm, ran from the edge of the hole and snaked eastward, disappearing into a valley of sand. A few yards from the opening lay the bloody corpses of two of her party's three camels.

A moment later, Nekhtep was beside her, looking down over the dune's crest. Then they were both heeling their way down the slipface into the dune's cool shadow, sand sloughing from the great mound with each footfall.

When they reached the base, Jasilia entered the hole and scampered down the tomb's steep entryway, the scuffing tread of Nekhtep's boots following close behind. As the dim light from the surface fell away, she removed another rod from her bag and struck it on the floor, bathing the narrow corridor in an ashen glow.

The passage opened onto a tomb much plainer in design than the one in which she and Nepkhtep had spent the night. Bare stone walls enclosed the small chamber, in the center of which lay an open sarcophagus, doubtless plundered of its meager treasures in some lost age. Three dromedary saddles sat stacked against one wall alongside Ojan's supply pack.

But the tomb's architecture and her party's equipment weren't what grabbed Jasilia's attention. No, it was the stink of undeath that assaulted the confining chamber, and the two humanoid forms that lay unmoving before the sarcophagus. One had been decapitated, by the swing of a khopesh if she judged correctly. The other had been cleaved nearly in two at the waist.

She knelt to examine the severed head and wrinkled her nose.

"The flesh is still rotting," she said.

Nekhtep began examining the chamber and disappeared behind the sarcophagus. When he rose, he held a finely crafted khopesh in his hand.

"Ojan's," Jasilia breathed.

She stood, feeling the blood draining from her face. "No. It can't be that."

"What?" Nekhtep said. "Can't be what?"

But Jasilia was already bolting back up the passageway on her way to the surface. When she emerged, she fell to her knees beside the whitish trail leading from the mouth of the tomb and scooped some of the substance into her hand. Instead of the dry grit of salt or some other mineral, she felt only cold.

Nekhtep came up out of the tomb entrance and stood over her.

"What is it?"

Jasilia rose and sieved the mix of melting frost and sand through her fingers and onto Nekhtep's open palm.

"I know where they've taken Ojan."

Coming Next Week: Death in the desert in Chapter Two of "Dune Runner"!

Christopher Paul Carey is an Associate Editor at Paizo, and the coauthor of Gods of Opar: Tales of Lost Khokarsa with Hugo Award-winning author Philip José Farmer. His short fiction may be found in anthologies such as Tales of the Wold Newton Universe, The Worlds of Philip José Farmer, Tales of the Shadowmen, and The Avenger: The Justice, Inc. Files. He holds an M.A. in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University, and has edited numerous collections, anthologies, and novels. Visit Chris online at www.cpcarey.com and follow him on Twitter.

Illustration by Damon Westenhofer

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Tags: Christopher Paul Carey Damon Westenhofer Pathfinder Tales

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Pathfinder Adventure Path #85: Fires of Creation (Iron Gods 1 of 6) (PFRPG)

Iron Gods Roll Call

Mar 25, 2014, 06:00 pm

I've been wanting to do the Iron Gods Adventure Path for a long time, but it's not all that easy to just roll out a campaign that makes significant use of mountains of items and armor and weapons and creatures and hazards that the game doesn't yet have rules for. I'm talking, of course, about lasers and robots and radiation and gravity suits and nuclear resonators and atom guns and neurocams and K-lances and heavy weapon harnesses and robojacks and thoracic nanite chambers and graviton generators and more. What are all those things? I'm afraid you'll all need to wait a few more months to find out.

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Tags: Iron Gods Pathfinder Adventure Path Rodrigo Vega

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Pathfinder of the Month: Thursty

Mar 25, 2014, 04:47 pm

The Pathfinder community is rapidly growing, reaching numbers in the hundreds of thousands, spread all over this great wide world. Each month, we ask a member of our community to tell us a little bit about themselves. We'll feature players, hobby shops, and anyone else helping to make Team Pathfinder awesome!

Pathfinder of the Month: Thursty

Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Hello Pathfinders!

The Pathfinder community is rapidly growing, reaching numbers in the hundreds of thousands, spread all over this great wide world. Each month, we ask a member of our community to tell us a little bit about themselves. We'll feature players, hobby shops, and anyone else helping to make Team Pathfinder awesome!

This month, Thurston Hillman basks in the warm glow of Paizo's adulation, as our way of saying thanks for all his hard work writing scenarios and generally being awesome!

To preface; it was a cold Canadian Monday when my local venture-officers told me to stop by the local game shop for their weekly game of Pathfinder Society. I showed up, only to find that it was 'Thursty Night' and they were running tables using only my Society scenarios—what an awesome feeling! Of course, when Jenny Bendel messaged me about 30 minutes after I left about being 'Pathfinder of the Month', I figured I was in some crazy gamer dream world. As it turns out, I wasn't in some weird delusion, and now, here I am standing beside giants (well John Halpin at least, I can't comment on Steve's height).

Living in the cold northern lands of Winnipeg, I can't say when I got into roleplaying games. I started with a copy of AD&D Second Edition, which I ran throughout high school. The roughest looking of my 'old gaming collection' would be my stack of Ravenloft books, which I've kept to this day.

Later, while living in a bachelor pad of gamers, I was running about eight games, all of which were Pathfinder. During this time, I GM'd my first adventure path; successfully running a group of players through the Second Darkness where they managed to avert the end of the world with only a single surviving character... who may, or may not have been facing down the BBEG and about 30 of their minions before a well-timed fade to black.

As you may have gathered from my little introduction, I also freelance for Paizo. I started in 2010 when I tossed in a Pathfinder Society open call submission. A browbeating set of feedback later and I was writing for Paizo! Since that first project, I've been involved in writing two convention specials and three more scenarios for the Society. Somehow I tricked the Paizo staff into letting me do more work for them, and you can see some of my handiwork from monsters in the upcoming Mummy's Mask adventure path.

In 2011 I snuck out to my first GenCon, where I volunteered at the Pathfinder Society room. It was there I started making my first real connections in the community; sharing drinks and conversations with people like Liz Courts, Jason Bulmahn, Tim Hitchcock, Mark Moreland, and many more. Following GenCon, I was able to visit Seattle and the Paizo home office during the weekend of PAX Prime 2011. During this visit, I managed to meet Erik Mona, after forcing him into the gaming room when I had all the tables chanting 'Squealy Nord'. I also had the privilege of sleeping on Kyle Elliot's couch.

Bah, there are too many people and too many stories to tell. That's the great thing about being part of this community, I've made friends from across the world, and I like to consider this community more than just a game. It's a group of great people, and it's my pleasure to interact with them.

Except that Jim Groves guy, he's still my archenemy.

If you'd like to nominate a Pathfinder of the Month, or would like to be featured yourself, send a blog of 500 words or less, along with a photo, to press@paizo.com.

Jenny Bendel
Marketing Director

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Tags: Community Pathfinder of the Month

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Pathfinder Battles Preview: Tri, Tri Again

Mar 21, 2014, 12:35 pm

This week was the GAMA Trade Show in Las Vegas, where about 350 of the top hobby games retailers in the world gathered with game manufacturers to discuss new products, new organized play initiatives, and the gaming business in general. Over the last several years, GTS has gotten more and more healthy, reflecting a revitalized hobby game retail environment. It's always great to meet face-to-face with retailers, and this week a lot of the discussion focused on Pathfinder Battles and the upcoming Reign of Winter set.

Pathfinder Battles Preview: Tri, Tri Again

Friday, March 21, 2014

This week was the GAMA Trade Show in Las Vegas, where about 350 of the top hobby games retailers in the world gathered with game manufacturers to discuss new products, new organized play initiatives, and the gaming business in general. Over the last several years, GTS has gotten more and more healthy, reflecting a revitalized hobby game retail environment. It's always great to meet face-to-face with retailers, and this week a lot of the discussion focused on Pathfinder Battles and the upcoming Reign of Winter set.

About an hour before the show opened, our friends at WizKids stopped by the Paizo booth with a little surprise—a complete set of production-run Reign of Winter figures! We split the set and each of our booths featured several figures that had never before been seen in public.

Looking over my half here in my hotel room (you'll never get them back from me, WizKids! Neeeevvvveeerrrrrr!!!), I'm struck by the amazing quality of the paint jobs. As I've discussed in previous blogs, after aiming slightly above the head of the production factory with the Legends of Golarion set, starting with Wrath of the Righteous we simplified the number of paint steps on each figure. This (miraculously, as it seems to defy logic) actually resulted in BETTER figures, since the plant had enough time to give each figure the attention it deserved.

I was very pleased with the production paints in Wrath of the Righteous, but there were still enough problems here and there that I felt there was room for improvement. And wow, based on the production run figures I'm looking at right now, Reign of Winter hits it out of the park!

The Female Ice Troll, for example, features what I think might be the best paint job on any figure we've done to date. It's not particularly elaborate or innovative or anything, but it is absolutely flawless in execution. When we're talking about production runs for tens of thousands of figures, there's always going to be a little bit of variance from figure to figure. Not every Female Ice Troll is going to look exactly like this one, but we've been doing this for seven full sets now, and I'm more confident in the final quality of Reign of Winter's paint steps than I have been with any previous Pathfinder Battles set.

After seeing the figures, I'm also more confident about one of my lingering concerns about the set—the existence of so many weird miniatures.

I've previously discussed the "modern" figures in the set, like the Russian Machine Gunner and Rasputin. I knew going in that these niche figures wouldn't be for everyone, but again the quality (and the relatively small number) gave me a lot of confidence that even skeptics wouldn't mind them. So after getting a look at the final models, I didn't worry too much about the modern figures.

I remained a bit concerned, I must confess, about the Triaxians.

Part of what makes the Reign of Winter Adventure Path so great as a roleplaying experience—travel to different worlds filled with exotic creatures—makes it a somewhat more daunting prospect for a set of miniatures likely to be used by lots of gamers who are not running the Adventure Path, and simply want to use the miniatures in adventures of their own design.

The campaign's fourth adventure, "The Frozen Stars," takes place on a frigid planet inhabited by two unusual creatures. Triaxians, the planet's natives, were originally described to me as "furry elves." The dragonkin are, essentially, dragons who wield weapons and who are often used as mounts by the Triaxians.

Art for both of these creatures was absolutely phenomenal, but I still worried a bit about just how cool (and, more importantly, how useful) these figures would be.

I've now seen them in person, and I am no longer worried at all.

Let's take a quick look at a few of them.

The most unusual Triaxian figure in the set is Cesseer of Ning, an ass-kicking monk who makes for a brutal enemy when crossed. For fun, we decided to portray Cesseer in mid kick, giving the figure a very dynamic appearance. Cesseer easily doubles as a catfolk monk for campaigns a little closer to home than Triaxus. As usual, WizKids did a fantastic job on the sculpt, which includes tons of awesome little details. Cesseer of Ning is a Medium, rare figure.

Here we have a member of Triaxus's vaunted Dragon Legion, and for my money this is one of the coolest figures in the entire Reign of Winter set. Heavily armed with an axe, a pole-arm, and three javelins (all of which look GREAT in hand), this figure sports massive three-dimensionality and would make for a killer player character figure. Yes, it's got a bit of fur on its face and legs, but with a big helmet and armor covering just about every other part of his body, this figure frankly looks human at table distance. One of the best sculpts of a Medium figure we've produced to date, the Dragon Legion Dragonrider is slotted at the rare rarity.

If you like the Dragonrider, you'll love seeing another member of the Legion fully mounted on a big red dragonkin! Of all the Reign of Winter figures displayed at the Paizo booth at the GAMA Trade Show, this garnered the most attention—and rightly so. Again, the Dragonrider atop this bad boy easily doubles as a human, but looks alien enough if you know where to look. The shading on the red dragonkin looks wonderful, and I guarantee your players are going to start to sweat when this piece hits the table. The Red Dragonkin Rider is a Large, rare figure.

And that's it for this week's reveals. We'll be back next week with more cool preview images. Remember, the Reign of Winter set is scheduled for a late May release. Contact your retail store to make sure they have your figures in stock, or preorder here at Paizo.com!

Until next week,

Erik Mona
Publisher

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Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Inner Sea Gods (PFRPG) Hardcover

Art Blog: Inner Sea Gods

Mar 20, 2014, 10:00 am

Welcome to the first monthly blog post directly from the art department. This first preview is for Inner Sea Gods coming out soon. Enjoy!

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Tags: Jorge Fares Maichol Quinto Roberto Pitturru Yu Cheng Hong

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Winter's Wolves

Mar 19, 2014, 10:00 am

Jendara moved through the dense forest, following Irlu as the tracker floated through the bracken and brush. Jendara was an able tracker; the dark-haired Blackraven made her look like a novice. Despite the hill giant's size and ungainly burden—Lugh stood six and a half feet tall—the creature had left little spoor. It might be huge and ungainly, but the giant clearly knew the woods.

Winter's Wolves

by Wendy N. Wagner

Chapter Three: Up the Mountain

Jendara moved through the dense forest, following Irlu as the tracker floated through the bracken and brush. Jendara was an able tracker; the dark-haired Blackraven made her look like a novice. Despite the hill giant's size and ungainly burden—Lugh stood six and a half feet tall—the creature had left little spoor. It might be huge and ungainly, but the giant clearly knew the woods.

"Irlu will find him." Grotnir's voice was a soft rumble from behind Jendara. She glanced over her shoulder to see his face. She hadn't noticed the gray in his beard earlier.

Jendara watched the woman pick a flake of lichen off a branch and look closely at it. "She's a great tracker."

"The best I've ever worked with. And she doesn't give up. She'll comb these hills all night, if that's what it takes. He's Caul's brother, so he's as good as her own."

There's nothing natural about white wolves.

He caught the questioning look on Jendara's face. "Irlu's family was killed when she was just a little girl. She's never said what happened to them. A Blackraven patrol found her in the woods, surviving on her own."

No wonder Irlu had joined the prestigious border guard. And to have survived at such a young age in these woods—here, so close to the Irriseni border, where creatures like giants and white wolves were a constant threat—only made Jendara's admiration for the woman grow.

They moved through the forest in silence for a few minutes, crossing a stream at the bottom of a steep ravine and then climbing up again. They'd left behind any trace of loggers or hunters long ago: this was wild country, a rough and uninviting wilderness. Even the trees looked shorter here, their trunks twisted and wind-battered.

"I have a son a little younger than Lugh," Grotnir said, suddenly. He leaned against a tree for a moment. "He wants to join the Blackravens."

Jendara caught something in his tone. "And you don't want him to?"

He shook his head. "He's a good man, but no warrior. He'd make a fine smith or farmer, but I can't tell him that. Not after hearing Blackraven stories all his life."

Jendara picked a bit of moss out of the end of her braided hair. "I have a son myself. He's ten."

He reached out and caught her hand, pulling it close to study the tattoo. "And do you want him to follow in your footsteps?" He tapped the inked spot. "Besmara is a cruel goddess."

She pulled her hand away. "You know her sign."

He shrugged. "I've known a pirate or two. Bad men, all of them."

"We'll lose Irlu if we don't get a move on." She pushed past him without making eye contact.

He was right, of course. There were good reasons she wasn't a pirate anymore, and her boy was only one of them. But that didn't mean she'd apologize for it.

Irlu picked up her pace, and after a few moments, Jendara understood why. They were following some kind of game trail that snaked up the steep hillside. There was very little ground cover here, and bits of broken rock and debris marked the paths of long-ago landslides. The trail ran between little heaps of scree and dead leaves, looking well used.

Irlu hesitated and looked back over her shoulder. "I don't like this."

"What?" Grotnir asked.

"There's no sign of the giant anymore. I don't know how she lost us, but she has. We're only following the wolf."

Jendara frowned. "But the wolf didn't have Lugh."

"I think it does now." Irlu squatted. "I've seen a couple of scrape marks alongside the trail. I think it's probably Lugh's boots, dragging as the wolf carries him. I don't know when they switched off. Before they left the tree cover, certainly."

"Why didn't you say something sooner?" Jendara snapped.

"I wasn't sure." Irlu paused to cough. This walk uphill after breathing as much smoke as she had—it couldn't be good for her. She cleared her throat. "They're planning something."

A sudden rumble made them all turn to stare up the hill.

"Move!" Grotnir bellowed. A massive boulder bounced down the rocky slope, stirring up clouds of dust.

Jendara grabbed Irlu's hand and pulled her off the trail. They skidded for a second before Irlu caught a scraggly brush and stopped their descent. The boulder careened past them, hitting a stony outcropping and exploding into shards.

"Merciful Desna," Irlu breathed. Then she doubled over in a coughing fit.

"Too much dust." Jendara fumbled in her belt pouch for a handkerchief and offered it to the tracker. "We can probably expect more of that."

Another boulder, much smaller, soared out over their heads, landing a few feet beyond the remains of the other. It bounced down the hillside and disappeared into the trees.

"Now we know where the giant went," Grotnir said. "How the hell are we going to make it up to the top of this hill? Except for this game trail, it's all rock ahead. Not a bit of cover."

Jendara studied the terrain, then pointed out a thin, tall larch that somehow clung to the steep rocks of the hill. The game trail ran away from the tree as it headed up the hill's soft flank on the other side. "There's a chimney in the rock about halfway up the slope. If I shinny up that tree, I can jump to it and make my way to the top. That's got to be where the giant is."

Irlu's eyes widened. "Climb that? You're crazy."

Jendara grinned. "I'm a sailor. Climbing is what I do." She eyed the vertical crevice again and took off her sword—she didn't want to risk getting caught in the narrow gap. "Just give me a few minutes' head start."

Keeping low to the ground, she ran to the larch and scrambled up into its branches, which were thin, weak, and few. Despite her bravado, she felt her stomach twist. It was one thing to climb a stout oak mast, but this tree wasn't much thicker than her ankle. She'd better hope her luck held.

The trunk narrowed and began to lean. Jendara bit down on the inside of her cheek and eyed the rocks. There was a sequence of ledges leading up to the chimney—she ought to be able to jump onto one. She closed her eyes for a second and leaped.

She caught the rock with her fingertips and felt her boots skid before she steadied. She grunted. It would have been a nervous shriek if she didn't know the giant was someplace over her head. But after a moment, she pulled herself up to the next ledge and slipped into the jagged crack. She was glad she'd left her sword behind. The rocks pressed tight against her body—but that actually helped her. She braced her palms against the rock and pushed herself upward.

A ribbon of sunlight ran down the narrow gap between the rocks. Jendara felt as if the light itself pulled her up the tiny space. She kept her eyes fixed on the glittering bit of sunshine, filling her mind with its brilliance and not her precarious position.

Suddenly, the ribbon of light went dark.

A guttural voice boomed down the tube. Jendara craned her neck. Something blocked the top of the crevice. The giant, peering down at her. She could smell its filthy stink. Her heart thudded in her chest.

The giant pulled back and Jendara climbed faster. Then suddenly the huge voice bellowed in pain. Jendara threw herself up out of the crevice just as volley of arrows peppered the stones. Jendara pressed herself to the ground. Irlu must have raced up that hill while Jendara was in the tree.

The arrow storm paused. Down below, a cold voice shouted. Jendara couldn't make out the words, but she knew that voice. They'd found the wolf.

The giant was peering over the edge of the hilltop once more. The ground here was wind-scoured rock, dotted here and there with lichen-dappled boulders and rocks—the perfect lookout for an ambush.

Jendara got to her feet and drew her handaxe just as the giant spun around to face her. An arrow jutted out of the creature's arm, but it didn't seem to notice anymore. Its piggy eyes narrowed and it roared in rage, then pulled back its leg and kicked a chunk of rock at Jendara.

She threw herself aside, but the rock still hit her shoulder, jolting her hard enough to make her teeth rattle. The giant snatched up another rock.

Anger boiled up inside her. She charged the creature, dropping low at the last second and chopping into its kneecap with a crunch. The giant screamed. Jendara wrenched the axe free and shoved against the thing's hip. It stumbled backward.

For a second, its arms windmilled and it balanced at the very edge of the cliff. Then it flew backward. There was a thud as it hit the ground, just missing Grotnir as he rushed the white wolf.

The wolf bit into his hand, and Grotnir bellowed in pain. He wrenched himself free and stumbled away. Arrows streaked toward the wolf, and the creature retreated beyond Jendara's limited view. She glanced around herself. She had to get down off this hilltop, and she didn't have time to risk the crevice.

A mound of dirt caught her eye, and she hurried toward it. This side of the hill wasn't half as steep, and she could see the giant's footprints in the dirt. She followed them down and around the hillside. A few feet ahead, Grotnir's green cloak stood out against the rocky outcropping he was sheltering behind.

Jendara sank down behind a larch sapling. A few dozen yards beyond Grotnir, Irlu was creeping uphill. Jendara followed Irlu's gaze up the hill, beyond the sprawled corpse of the giant. A dark slit stood out against the rocks making up the hill, a horizontal version of the crevice Jendara climbed up. That had to be the wolf's den.

If Lugh was still alive, he was almost certainly in that cave.

She sprang up from her cover and burst into a run. It wouldn't be expecting a head-on charge, not from her, and this would distract from Irlu's stealthy approach. She realized she was bellowing like a berserk raider, but couldn't make herself stop.

The wolf burst out of the cave, snarling. Its teeth flashed as it lunged toward her, and for a second she feared its ice breath attack, but her handaxe was already slamming down on its face. The blade bit into fur and meat. The creature twisted aside, ripping the blade free with a splatter of blood.

But Jendara hadn't lost her grip on the weapon. She rolled under the beast's counterattack, her knees grinding into the broken gravel of the cave's entrance. The white wolf shrieked in sudden desperate pain.

She didn't pause to wonder why, just pushed herself up, slamming into the beast's belly and sending it flying. It fell on the rocks beside the dead giant. Blood trickled out of its mouth, and an arrow jutted out of its ribs. Irlu crept toward it.

"Finish me, Blackraven," it gurgled. "Like you finished my mate."

"I'm no Blackraven," Jendara spat.

"But I am." Irlu jammed her knife into the wolf's blue eye. The wolf convulsed once and went still. Irlu grinned savagely, and then a coughing fit made her double up as well.

"Irlu! Are you all right?" Grotnir ran to her. His arm hung limply at his side, blood running down his fingers.

Jendara turned away from them and hurried inside the shallow cave. "Lugh?"

A groan answered her. She couldn't make out his face in the dim light, but the sound was comforting. "You okay?"

"My head hurts."

"At least you didn't hurt anything important." She found his shoulders and began dragging him out into the light. He chuckled once, then groaned with pain again. When he was out of the cave, his skull bloody and knotted but still intact, Jendara sat down beside him and stretched out her legs.

"You know," she said, "you have a lot more of this to look forward to once you become a Blackraven."

Lugh chuckled again, then touched his head. "Like you said, no one ever said my brain is my best feature."

"Still," Jendara said, "you have to admit this was more interesting than hunting a bunch of ducks."

At the entrance of the cave, Irlu laughed. "Jendara, are you sure you're not a Blackraven?"

Jendara grinned. She was pretty sure that was a compliment.

Want more Jendara?
Preorder Skinwalkers now!

Coming Next Week: Royal adventure in the sands of Osirion in Paizo Associate Editor Christopher Paul Carey's "Dune Runner"!

Wendy N. Wagner is the author of the Pathfinder Tales novel Skinwalkers and the web fiction story "Mother Bears," both starring Jendara. Her short fiction has appeared in anthologies such as Armored and The Way of the Wizard, and in many online magazines. Wendy lives with her family in Portland, Oregon, where she also teaches writing for youth. An avid gardener and board gamer, she can be found online at winniewoohoo.com.

Illustration by Ian Llanas

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A Visitor's Guide to Osirion

Mar 18, 2014, 12:38 pm

"Welcome, travelers, to the ancient land of Osirion, where the countless ages are preserved beneath the sand, awaiting your exploration. Please use the following promotional illustrations as a reference when deciding to brave our welcoming and accommodating land."

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Tags: Bryan Sola Lindsey Wakefield Mummy's Mask Osirion Tim Kings-Lynne Yong Yi Lee

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Tell Me About Your "Paladin"

Mar 17, 2014, 10:53 am

When it comes to creating characters, I think we all have at least one stereotype, habit, or guilty pleasure that we fall back on. Perhaps you love playing two-handed melee bruisers, or maybe you can't stop designing oracles. I've known my share of folks who would repeatedly build idealized versions of themselves as well as those who are hard-pressed to leave the house with an Armor Class below 20 at 1st-level.

Tell Me About Your "Paladin"

Monday, March 17, 2014

Death attack: It's the new smite evil.

When it comes to creating characters, I think we all have at least one stereotype, habit, or guilty pleasure that we fall back on. Perhaps you love playing two-handed melee bruisers, or maybe you can't stop designing oracles. I've known my share of folks who would repeatedly build idealized versions of themselves as well as those who are hard-pressed to leave the house with an Armor Class below 20 at 1st-level.

Me? I can't stop creating characters that masquerade as a member of another class. Whether its a druid nearly indistinguishable from a bard, a witch who tries to be a cleric, or an inquisitor that claims to be a ninja, something about characters that pretend to be something else scratches an essential design itch of mine. A recent messageboard post reminded me of one of my favorite classes to emulate: the paladin. The player in question had a "paladin" of Yaezhing—in truth an oracle of the brutally evil deity—which gave me considerable amusement.

I've run across several such non-paladins. One was a "paladin" of Cayden Cailean, complete with a scimitar he ignorantly referred to as a rapier, as well as a "smite sobriety" class feature. While under its effects, the "paladin" would undergo a major change in accent and personality, after which he remembered nothing. Of course, on his character sheet he is a bard with the archaeologist archetype (and "smite sobriety" is simply archaeologist's luck renamed), who chose spells like remove fear and cure light wounds to further his character concept.

The other "paladin" is one I had a hand in creating, for my Razmiri priest is always on the lookout for converts. Having convinced another player's samurai that Razmir is a god of healing, prosperity, love, and just retribution, she swore the oaths of a paladin and claimed Razmir as her patron. Sure, her "divine grace" may actually involve daily uses of resolve, her "smite evil" works on any target due to its being the samurai's challenge, and her mount has never imagined a good-aligned plane much less been summoned from one. Nonetheless, she's one of the most altruistic paladins I've ever come across.

I find Pathfinder Society Organized Play is a great way to try out this type of character. Do you know any particularly weird "paladins?" If so, how did that character emulate the class features or otherwise accomplish the deception?

Happy gaming,

John Compton
Developer

Illustration by Craig J Spearing

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Pathfinder Battles Preview: When Animals Attack

Mar 14, 2014, 02:31 pm

We've already previewed several animals from the upcoming Reign of Winter set of prepainted Pathfinder Battles figures. We've seen a Falcon, a Goat, an Owl, a Fox, and more, making Reign of Winter the most animal-friendly set of figures we've produced today.

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Warmest Wishes and Fondest Farewells to Sean K Reynolds

Mar 14, 2014, 10:00 am

Today marks Sean K Reynolds's last day as a member of Paizo's design team, as he leaves us for new adventures in the East. Sean's been an invaluable member of the Paizo crew since 2008, lending his experience, insights, innovations, and insanity to hundreds of products, as well as being a key contributor to the Pathfinder RPG's most major successes. While we'll all certainly be seeing plenty more of Sean on the message boards and in future Paizo products, for those of us used to seeing him everyday today's exciting but also a little sad. So, we wanted to take this opportunity to share some of our favorite Sean memories and wish him all the best in what comes next.

Warmest Wishes and Fondest Farewells to Sean K Reynolds

Friday, March 14, 2014

Today marks Sean K Reynolds's last day as a member of Paizo's design team, as he leaves us for new adventures in the East. Sean's been an invaluable member of the Paizo crew since 2008, lending his experience, insights, innovations, and insanity to hundreds of products, as well as being a key contributor to the Pathfinder RPG's most major successes. While we'll all certainly be seeing plenty more of Sean on the message boards and in future Paizo products, for those of us used to seeing him everyday today's exciting but also a little sad. So, we wanted to take this opportunity to share some of our favorite Sean memories and wish him all the best in what comes next.

(Video compiled by Jessica Price)

From Sean's Friends

"Sean K Reynolds has been a constant in the business since I first joined in the late 90s. Heck, Sean even hired me for my first "real" RPG job, as a TSRO moderator on the old TSR AOL site. I saw his TSR web policy seminar at my first Gen Con, worked with him on the rebirth of Greyhawk, and co-wrote the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer with him. When I finally got a job at WotC in '99, Sean was one of the few people I knew coming in, and he did a great job making me feel at home. When we had a chance to bring him on to the Paizo staff, I leapt at it. In the years since, we've worked together, gamed together, and traded minis tips together. It's going to be weird not having him around. Sean, thanks for the years of friendship and professional support. You're a great guy, destined for great things. And since you're moving to Indy, at least we know we'll always have Gen Con!"

—Erik Mona, Publisher

"In the 90s Sean was my favorite designer at TSR and early WotC—I used Children of the Night: Ghosts and Lords of Darkness until they were practically in tatters. In the low 00s, Sean's Ghostwalk article "The Bloody Swords" in Dragon #315 was the first article I read on my first day working at Paizo. Years later, his Greyhawk deity articles finally won me over on D&D's original campaign setting. Sean was one of the first authors to help us in exploring the world of Golarion and it wasn't long after that he joined James, Jason, Sutter, Chris, Sarah, and I in a cramped cube-divided office, making Pathfinder full-time.

"That first year we were roommates at Gen Con and I admit to still being more than slightly starstruck. They screwed up our room, though, giving us a single bed and a rickety iron cot. Sean dashed for the cot. There was no way though. The 16-year-old fanboy in me wasn't about to let that happen. The politest argument of my life transpired, one which only ended when I had to confess that there was no way I was going to let him sleep on the cot simply "Because you're Sean K Reynolds." I claimed my cot amid the resulting blushing.

"In the years since, Sean has been a font of awesome ideas, a mouthpiece for alien insanity, an office-place peacemaker, a dauntless romantic, a Post-It note artiste, a promoter of great Indian food, a friend to baristas, a passenger-seat virtuoso, a plastic-wrap elitist, a lead-footed cleric, a vital part of our every victory, and one of the most selfless friends anyone could ever wish for.

"Best wishes, man. If you ever need anything, just yell."

—F. Wesley Schneider, Editor-in-Chief

"Sean joined the design team in the early days of the Pathfinder RPG. To say that he was pivotal in its design and implementation is a bit of an understatement. He's been a critical part of the design team, tirelessly working to ensure our game is the best it can be. From assigning work to freelancers to maintaining an incredibly useful stat-block generator, Sean's value to the team and to Paizo will surely be missed. I want to wish Sean all the best in his future endeavors, your skill and expertise will be missed (as will your hilarious, bizarre, and ridiculous carpool stories)."

—Jason Bulmahn, Lead Designer

A Goblin Song for Sean
Goblins gray or goblins green,
Doesn't matter, we're all mean.
Always seeking to demean...
And so that's why we call you Sean!

"Don't let them out there be goblins too, Sean! Don't let them mispronounce your name! Seeya on the internets, farming crops!"

—James Jacobs, Creative Director

"Bye Sean! I'll miss your dancing!"

—Sarah Robinson, Senior Art Director

"When Sean first started here, it was up to me to take him under my wing and show him what this whole 'RPG developer' business was about. Fortunately, he was a quick learner, and after his first Paizocon we decide to let him start using his own arms for simple tasks. You will be missed, Sean!"

—James Sutter, Managing Editor

"I'll miss Sean's pithy humor and refreshing honesty (as well as the hilarious post-its he was always leaving on my desk), but I'll miss the kindness under the wit even more. From my first day at Paizo, Sean was supportive and patient, willing to take the time to answer my newbie questions, and ready to volunteer answers to the questions I didn't know enough to ask. I wish him the best and hope we'll get to hang out with him at Gen Con for many years to come."

—Jessica Price, Project Manager

"There are so many things I'm going to miss about Sean, it's hard to pick just one. So I won't. I'll miss our rules discussions and arguments. I'll miss the heavy sighs as he reviews message board posts. I'll miss the big grin he gets when he says something (he thinks is) really funny. Then again, he gave me a bunch of cool minis stuff that he didn't want to take to Indy, and I'll have my own office for a short while, so I guess it all evens out. Good luck, sir!"

—Stephen Radney-MacFarland, Designer

"Who's going to make fun of my "Europe-ness" now? Take care, Sean, and I'll think of you the next time I'm in Europe!"

—Rob McCreary, Senior Developer

"Sean is one of the greats in the land of fantasy RPGs, and getting a chance to work with him has been a blast. His rules knowledge and the thought he puts in constantly impress me, as does his ability to analyze and revisit our twisting, sprawling collection of rules. He's most definitely the wizard in the design team's party! I wish him the best of luck as he steps out with his bags of loot (mostly miniatures and pieces of terrain) for the wilds that will be his new home. Happy trails, Sean! It's been a pleasure and I look forward to seeing you again whenever the percentile rolls dictate."

—Logan Bonner, Developer

"Sean has a much-loved talent for dropping in on a discussion and contributing an inspired observation or a brief anecdote. From his gifts of victory candy to his smiling responses even to tough questions, he has helped to make Paizo Publishing a positive place to work."

—John Compton, Developer

"You and Wes were the first people at Paizo to give me work, and you were incredibly helpful getting me started and teaching me the right way to do things. I will miss having you in the office since I won't get to see your silly dances and hear you poking fun at Rob about Europe. I'm at least glad you'll still be writing for me."

—Adam Daigle, Developer

"My biggest fear is that without Sean to scare them off, the protestors will return to the post office in greater numbers and with even more mustaches.

"Most of all, though, I'm gonna miss the way Sean says, 'Hey man.'"
—Patrick Renie, Developer

"I'll miss you, Sean. You were the first friend I had at Paizo, and I'll never forget meeting you right after you managed to knock yourself unconscious. Safe travels, hamdoctor.

—Crystal Frasier, Digital Products Assistant

"Sean, thanks for your patient mentoring over the years! I'll miss your unflagging sense of humor and surrealist song-and-dance routine!"

—Judy Bauer, Associate Editor

"Sean came aboard the good ship Paizo only about a month after I began working here as an editor. At the time, I had no idea of his renown in the gaming industry. I think my first question to him was, "Can I hyphenate the term 'bull rush' when it's used as a verb...you know, like in real English?" I'm sure he wondered, "Who is this guy?" Instead, he politely explained to me that hyphenating such game terms wasn't a traditional practice, and I sighed and went back to my cube and cried (okay, not really). Over the years, Sean has (at least outwardly) put up with all of my pesky editing questions with unflappable tolerance, and has also been a good friend through both calm and stormy weather.

I have no idea know where this sailing metaphor is coming from, so I'll just end this here by saying: Bon voyage, Sean! Looking forward to seeing you the next time the good ship Paizo ports in Indy!"

—Chris Carey, Associate Editor

"Sean is one of the kindest and thoughtful humans I've worked with in gaming. He made me feel welcome at Paizo, and carpooling with him was often a...treat. Dude tells weird stories, and I suspect half are made up on the spot. But anyway, I will miss Sean's "manic pixie game designer"-ness in the office."

—Ryan Macklin, Editor

SKR Haiku
one of the nicest
most opinionated men
I have ever known

—Sonja Morris, Graphic Designer

When I first came on board as a developer here, Sean was incredibly welcoming and helped me hit the ground running. To this day, almost 4 years into the job, I still go to him several times a week with questions about rules, the industry, and specific elements of Golarion canon he had a hand in creating (namely the gods). While I'll miss having him as a resource on hand when I need him, I'll miss more his unique sense of humor, matter-of-fact demeanor, and the dependability of having him in the office to assist with whatever I might need.

Best of luck to you, Sean! I look forward to catching up at GenCon every year (and maybe some Paizo Cons if you ever return for it). Don't give anyone else that banana bread recipe, please.

—Mark Moreland, Developer

All our best, Sean, from all of us at Paizo. There will always be a place for you here and in our future adventures.

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The Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Osirion

Mar 13, 2014, 10:00 am

Since the Age of Destiny, the people of Osirion have worshiped their own local gods, in addition to those deities venerated throughout the Inner Sea region. The popularity of these Ancient Osirian gods has waxed and waned over the centuries, but they remain a part of the history of Osirion’s land and people, and with the restoration of native Osirian rule, interest in these ancient divinities has been rekindled.

The Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Osirion

Thursday, March 13, 2014

Since the Age of Destiny, the people of Osirion have worshiped their own local gods, in addition to those deities venerated throughout the Inner Sea region. The popularity of these Ancient Osirian gods has waxed and waned over the centuries, but they remain a part of the history of Osirion’s land and people, and with the restoration of native Osirian rule, interest in these ancient divinities has been rekindled.

Full details on the 20 major gods of the Ancient Osirian pantheon appear in Pathfinder Adventure Path #80: Empty Graves, but for those who might want to play a follower or worshiper of one of these deities in the Mummy’s Mask campaign, here’s a preview of the gods, their areas of concern, domains, and favored weapons. Plus, enjoy a sneak peek at three of the gods appearing in the article!

Deities of Ancient Osirion

Deity AL Areas of Concern Domains Favored Weapon

Anubis LN Burial, the dead, funeral rites, mummification, tombs Death, Earth, Law, Protection, Repose Flail

Apep CE Chaos, darkness, destruction, snakes Chaos, Darkness, Destruction, Evil, Scalykind Dagger

Bastet CN Cats, pleasure, secrets Animal, Chaos, Charm, Protection, Trickery Cat’s claws (tekko-kagi)

Bes NG Households, luck, marriage, protection Community, Earth, Good, Luck, Protection Hunga munga

Hathor CG Dance, joy, love, music, the sky Air, Chaos, Charm, Good, Travel Short sword

Horus LN Rulership, the sky, the sun Air, Animal, Law, Nobility, Sun Khopesh
Isis NG Fertility, magic, motherhood, rebirth Charm, Community, Good, Healing, Magic Quarterstaff

Khepri NG Freedom, the rising sun, work Artifice, Good, Liberation, Sun, Trickery Sling

Maat LN Justice, law, order, truth Knowledge, Law, Protection, Void, Weather Starknife

Neith NG Hunting, war, weaving Animal, Artifice, Good, War, Water Shortbow

Nephthys CN Mourning, night, protection of the dead Chaos, Charm, Community, Darkness, Protection Light mace

Osiris LG Afterlife, fertility, rebirth, resurrection Good, Healing, Law, Plant, Repose Flail

Ptah N Architecture, craftsmanship, creation, metalworking Artifice, Earth, Fire, Knowledge, Travel Quarterstaff

Ra LN Creation, rulership, the sun Fire, Glory, Law, Nobility, Sun Spear

Sekhmet CN Fire, healing, vengeance, war Chaos, Destruction, Fire, Healing, War Battleaxe

Selket CG Embalming, healing, scorpions Chaos, Good, Healing, Protection, Repose Scorpion whip

Set NE Darkness, deserts, murder, storms Darkness, Death, Evil, Madness, Weather Spear

Sobek CN Crocodiles, fertility, military prowess, rivers Chaos, Scalykind, Strength, War, Water Falchion

Thoth LN Magic, the moon, wisdom, writing Darkness, Knowledge, Law, Magic, Rune Sickle

Wadjet LG Good serpents, the River Sphinx, wisdom Good, Law, Protection, Travel, Water Light mace

Illustrations by Ekaterina Burmak and Johan Grenier

Rob McCreary
Senior Developer

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Winter's Wolves

Mar 12, 2014, 10:00 am

The hill giant stepped over the smashed remains of the trees. It wore a vest and skirt made of filthy hides, and a necklace of raccoon skulls dangled between its two drooping and half-covered breasts. Its hair hung in clumpy strands the color of dirt, damp and clinging to its jowled cheeks.

Winter's Wolves

by Wendy N. Wagner

Chapter Two: Message in Blood

The hill giant stepped over the smashed remains of the trees. It wore a vest and skirt made of filthy hides, and a necklace of raccoon skulls dangled between its two drooping and half-covered breasts. Its hair hung in clumpy strands the color of dirt, damp and clinging to its jowled cheeks.

A dozen of the canvas and wood tent cabins stood between Jendara and the giant, and two men raced out of one of the structures, loaded up with gear and screaming. One of them shoved Jendara aside and barreled down the hill. Jendara ignored the other. Off to her right, Grotnir ran with Nola, headed toward the end of camp where the mule screams were coming from. She couldn't see his horse anywhere.

The giant bellowed something in its ugly language and swung a tree limb at the nearest tent cabin. The structure crumpled on impact.

What hill giants lack in intelligence, they make up for in brute strength.

Jendara unslung her bow and narrowed her eyes. A giant. She had only seen one once: While traveling on the mainland with her father, they'd seen one attack a shepherd and his flock. Her father had driven the giant away with only a hunting spear and a handaxe. Jendara had been maybe six or seven, but she'd never forgotten the ugly, stinking mass of the thing, or the pain that filled the shepherd's eyes as he struggled to breathe with lungs and ribs crushed by the creature. That shepherd was the first man she had watched die.

The giant wrenched a broken tree trunk from the ground and flung it. Jendara threw herself aside. The log crashed down in the logging road, just inches from where she'd been standing.

She felt the hot stirring of anger in her chest. She growled and readied her bow again.

She let fly her arrow. It sank fletching deep in the giant's floppy dug, and the creature shrieked. Then the giant ripped the arrow free and cast it aside. Jendara reached for another. She had to choose a better target—the creature's torso was just too fat for her arrows to hit a major organ.

The ground rumbled beneath her feet. A herd of mules thundered down the hill, straight toward Jendara.

A hand closed on her arm and she flew up in the air, her bow clattering to the ground.

"Get on!" Lugh bellowed. She scrabbled for a grip on the saddle and managed to get onto the horse's back even as it bolted away from the stampeding mules, racing leftward up a switchback Jendara hadn't noticed before.

Lugh slowed the horse. A couple of good-sized hemlocks stood between them and the camp, but Jendara could still hear the giant's laughter, low and rumbling and ugly. She sat up straight in the saddle. The black horse tossed its head, and she recognized it as Irlu's.

"We've got to stop this thing before it brings down the whole camp. Do you know where Irlu is?"

Lugh patted the horse's neck. "I saw her bringing wounded out of the biggest tent—must have been the folks the wolf hurt when it came through camp. Want to bet the giant and the wolf are working together?"

"I'll keep my money, thank you."

Lugh only laughed and urged the horse back toward the camp. Jendara gripped Lugh's shoulder tight with her left hand and drew her sword with the other. The giant stood in the middle of camp, fallen and shattered tent cabins all around it. The horse leaped over a toppled tree.

Then it suddenly reared up, hooves flailing. Something white burst up out of a fallen tent, snarling and roaring. The horse screamed as frost covered its hooves and coated its front legs. Jendara lost her grip on Lugh's shoulder and slid off the horse's back. She had the presence of mind to roll to her right, but she hit the ground hard. She pushed herself to sit up. Her ribs hurt, and her sword had fallen someplace. She felt naked without it.

The horse dropped to all fours and spun around. The white wolf lunged forward, but the horse lashed out with a rear leg and clipped the wolf in the muzzle. The creature toppled backward, but caught itself and shook its shaggy white head. Its glacial blue eyes fixed on the horse.

Jendara's sword lay just inches from the big white wolf. She eyed the distance between the creature and the sword. There was no way she could grab it and attack before the beast saw her.

A splintered door smashed down in front of her. She kicked the broken slab of wood away and jumped to her feet, but the wolf was gone.

Jendara ran to grab her sword. "Where is it?" she shouted. "Lugh, do you see the wolf?"

He stroked the horse's neck. It was calm now that the wolf had vanished. "I'm more worried about the giant."

"Forget the giant," Grotnir growled, appearing at Jendara's elbow. "Irlu and I have gotten most of the injured onto a logging skid. Let's grab the last of them and get these people down to Big Cascade before anyone else is hurt."

"What about the mules?" Jendara shouted, remembering the stampede. She sheathed her sword.

"Nola's rounding them up!" Grotnir beckoned her toward the biggest of the tent cabins.

Before she could move, part of the big tent's wooden frame collapsed. Flames whooshed suddenly up the back wall. The giant stumbled backward, shielding its face from the heat.

"Irlu!" Grotnir grabbed Jendara's arm. "She's in there!"

They ran into the smoky haze. On this side of the tent, the doorframe still stood, but black smoke billowed out the open door. Jendara covered her mouth and nose with her shirt. A deep whump shook the wall, and another section collapsed.

Jendara grabbed the back of Grotnir's cloak. "You can't go in there!"

He tried to shake her off. "I've got to get her out!"

Flames lapped across the sagging tent roof. Jendara threw her arms around Grotnir and heaved him away from the doorway. He wrenched at her fingers, but she stuck fast.

A hunched figure burst out of the doorway, enshrouded in smoldering wool.

"Irlu!" Grotnir shouted.

Irlu threw herself on the ground, rolling hard to smother any flames. She sat up and coughed hard, fighting for air. Jendara and Grotnir hurried to help her to her feet and away from the flaming tent.

"We've got to get out of here," Jendara warned Grotnir. "Where's the logging skid?" She couldn't see a thing. Her eyes stung with the black smoke choking the air.

"The road," he grunted. They staggered forward until their boots squelched in the road's deep mud.

Irlu sagged against Grotnir's side for a second, sucking up air. "A barrel of cooking oil," she croaked. "Exploded. I tried to get to the last man, but there were flames everywhere."

"Don't talk," Grotnir said. "You've breathed a lot of smoke."

Jendara blinked around herself. There was no sign of Lugh or Irlu's horse—and no sign of the logging skid, either. "I don't see Nola or the skid."

A black horse burst out of the smoke, riderless. Jendara's stomach sank. "Where's Lugh?"

A gust of wind stirred the smoke, and Jendara caught a glimpse of white at the edge of camp. She ran toward it. She could make out a voice—a rough, horrible voice, speaking a language she couldn't understand. The consonants clacked like rocks tumbling together, but the voice wasn't a giant's deep boom. She remembered what Grotnir had said about the wolves speaking.

The smoke eddied around Jendara, obscuring the world around her. She stumbled and fell into the mud, then pushed herself up to her hands and knees and looked back at what had tripped her: the still figure of a dark-haired woman in a brown coat, her cheek pink and blistered.

Nola. She'd come back to help her friends, and now she lay here in the mud.

The skull-and-crossbones tattoos on the backs of Jendara's hands—symbols of the pirate goddess she'd once revered—burned with rage. She reached for the axe in her belt. That wolf was going to pay. The giant may have crushed the camp, but the white wolf had to be the brains behind the attack.

Snarling, she jumped to her feet and ran toward the sound of the wolf's voice. The wall of smoke dissipated and she saw the white shape again, now moving into the dark forest beyond a broken corral, the giant close behind. The wolf turned to look at her. Its lip curled.

"Tell the Blackravens I took their partner." The creature made a noise in the back of its throat that might have been a laugh. "If they want him, they'll have to find him."

The giant's sides jiggled in merriment. It raised one hand and wiggled the fingers in a mocking wave. The other hand rested on Lugh's back, bent over the giantess's shoulder. His body was limp.

"Give him to me!" Jendara bellowed.

The wolf smiled broader. "Don't forget the message." It slipped into the trees without another sound.

Jendara ran forward—straight into the sudden swing of the giant's club. She managed to sidestep the full force of the blow, but it still caught her on the edge of her ribcage, spinning her around. She crumpled into the mud, her vision gray and bleary. She tried to sit up and saw a dazzling constellation of stars.

Someone knelt beside her and touched her shoulder. "Jendara?" Irlu's voice was raspy with smoke.

Anger pushed the pain out of Jendara's head. She sat up. "It thinks Lugh is one of you. A Blackraven. It wants you to come after him."

Grotnir squatted to meet Irlu's eyes. "So that's what this is about. It's the wolf the last patrol didn't finish."

"They wrecked this whole camp just to draw us in," Irlu growled.

"Fine." Grotnir spat on the ground. "If it wants Blackravens, we'll give it Blackravens.."

Jendara grabed his shoulder and pulled herself up. She felt terrible. Her head hurt, and her ribs screamed from the double insult of the giant's club and the fall from the horse. But at least she could think clearly. "This is a trap."

Irlu swiped soot from her face. "Of course it is. But I'll be serving on patrol with Caul for a whole year. Am I supposed to look him in the eye and say I let his brother get kidnapped by a white wolf and didn't go after him?"

Jendara nodded, then regretted the motion. "I'm going with you."

Grotnir's fist closed on her shoulder. "You're a brave one, but you're no Blackraven. Go down to Big Cascade and warn the townsfolk."

She knocked his hand away. "I promised Lugh's father I'd take care of him. I can't turn my back on him now."

Grotnir's lips pursed, but at last he nodded.

"Besides," Jendara added. "That wolf tried to turn me into a messenger girl." She grinned. "I'm going to teach it a lesson."

Irlu stood and moved toward the forest. "If you two are coming, then hurry up." Then she slipped into the trees as silently as the white wolf had.

Jendara had to admire the dark-haired tracker. The white wolf had killed two of her fellow border guards. Irlu was injured and didn't even know Lugh. But she hadn't hesitated to go after him.

Jendara tapped the handle of her belt axe. It had been her father's, once; he had used it to fight off that giant. If his spirit could see her holding it now, he would certainly approve.

Jendara followed Irlu into the forest. That wolf had no idea who it was dealing with.

Want more Jendara?
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Coming Next Week: The icy conclusion of Wendy N. Wagner's "Winter's Wolves"!

Wendy N. Wagner is the author of the Pathfinder Tales novel Skinwalkers and the web fiction story "Mother Bears," both starring Jendara. Her short fiction has appeared in anthologies such as Armored and The Way of the Wizard, and in many online magazines. Wendy lives with her family in Portland, Oregon, where she also teaches writing for youth. An avid gardener and board gamer, she can be found online at winniewoohoo.com.

Illustration by Ian Llanas

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Victoria Jaczko Wins RPG Superstar 2014!

Mar 11, 2014, 02:00 pm

We are thrilled to announce the winner of the 2014 RPG Superstar contest. After 4 months, more than 1000 submissions, and nearly half a million votes, game designer Victoria Jaczko is 2014's RPG Superstar! Paizo will publish Jaczko's winning Pathfinder Module pitch, The Daughters of Fury, set to release November 2014.

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Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Mythic Adventures (OGL)

Mythender in Golarion

Mar 8, 2014, 10:00 am

One of the great things about working at Paizo is the after-work gaming culture. Sure, there are home games, but there are also one-shot rounds of RPGs that I might not have tried otherwise. What's more, they're run by GMs who are passionate about sharing their latest non-Pathfinder discoveries. A little more than a month ago, Paizo editor Ryan Macklin decided to run a game of Mythender, a roleplaying game about killing gods. That's right, the characters are Mythenders, powerful heroes that straddle the line between mortality and the divine in their quest to rid the world of all Myths. The game's website describes it in better and greater detail, but suffice it to say it's an intense, action-packed experience that involves handfuls of dice, encourages over-the-top descriptions, and is well suited to heavy metal background music.

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Pathfinder Battles Preview: In from the Cold (War)

Mar 7, 2014, 12:42 pm

I'm writing this Friday morning sitting in gate B1 of the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, waiting for a flight that will take me to Austin. While I'm in town I will be spending a lot of time hatching plans with Brandon Hodge, one of my favorite Pathfinder authors. Brandon is the mad genius who brought us the fan-favorite Rasputin Must Die! in the fifth volume of the Reign of Winter Adventure Path.

Pathfinder Battles Preview: In from the Cold (War)

Friday, March 7, 2014

I'm writing this Friday morning sitting in gate B1 of the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, waiting for a flight that will take me to Austin. While I'm in town I will be spending a lot of time hatching plans with Brandon Hodge, one of my favorite Pathfinder authors. Brandon is the mad genius who brought us the fan-favorite Rasputin Must Die! in the fifth volume of the Reign of Winter Adventure Path.

When we came up with the idea of sending the Adventure Path heroes to a variety of exotic worlds via the magic of Baba Yaga's Hut, it was probably inevitable that one of us would come up with the idea of using the Mother of Witches' real home—Russia. You know, on Earth.

Mention Russia in a room of nerds like us, and it's only a matter of time before someone brings up Rasputin. We all got so excited about the idea of the player characters encountering Rasputin (and trying to kill him, of course), that we didn't ever really stop to consider whether it was a good or bad idea for the Pathfinder brand. We just knew it got our blood pumping, and that it was a way to inject an unexpected left turn into a line that had already seen more than 60 adventures.

We knew we were in love. It was too late to turn back, and we didn't want to turn back, anyway. But we knew that the idea would be controversial, and that most gamers would have their default set to "skeptical." Convincing folks to give it a try meant getting the right ideas, and getting the right ideas meant getting the right author.

We immediately thought of Brandon Hodge. In addition to having strong adventure design fundamentals and just being an all-around professional and affable guy, Brandon had already written killer adventures and articles for us that included a pervasive sense of grounding in real world facts and mythology. He was our guy.

The adventure came out. It was really, really popular—certainly the most talked-about adventure since Kingmaker.

Several months later we made the decision to produce a line of figures based off of the Reign of Winter Adventure Path, I had to face the daunting prospect of including modern World War I era figures in the set. I did this with the full understanding that enjoying reading or even playing an unusual adventure is a one-time thing, but adding miniatures to your collection is forever.

A figure like a Lich or even something like the amazing Clockwork Reliquary might only come out once a campaign, but it isn't too difficult to imagine finding a use for it again down the road.

But a guy with a gun and a gas mask? How many uses are you going to get out of that?

So I knew I needed some modern figures in the Reign of Winter. I knew I couldn't include too many, as some folks are going to be very difficult to convince. So the ones we used had to be worth it.

They had to be awesome.

This week, I present the results of our efforts. For those of you looking for a way to stage an amazing run of one of the best adventures we've ever published, I hope you put these to use and appreciate these figures. For those who would prefer that we not have included them at all, I hope you appreciate them as at least attractive necessary evils.

Speaking of evil, here's Rasputin:

This is the man himself. Grigori Rasputin, the unkillable Russian mystic who serves as a major villain in the Reign of Winter Adventure Path. Although drawn from Earth history, there's not too much about this figure that defines it as "modern," so our boy Rasputin also easily doubles as a wizard or cleric in a smart coat. Rasputin is a Medium, rare miniature.

Here we have the Russian Soldier of World War I. Gas mask. Rifle. Hand grenade. The gas mask and long coat give the Russian Soldier a kind of otherworldly quality that makes them seem less out of place in a fantasy setting, but basically, they're Russians. The Russian Soldier is a Medium, common figure.

Bedecked in a gray coat and cool hat and wielding one major machine gun is the Russian Machine Gunner. This Medium figure is slated at the common rarity.

Last up today is Polkovnik Lavrenti, a dullahan soldier riding a nightmare. Check out the clear plastic effects on the horse and the heads dangling from the saddle. Creepy! You've got to look pretty hard to see the modern elements on this guy, so throw him down on the table in any campaign and watch players shudder in fear. Sweet. Polkovnik Lavrenti is a Large, rare figure.

And that's it for the explicitly modern figures in the set. We'll see you next week for more reveals. There are many more monsters to come!

Erik Mona
Publisher

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Mummy's Mask Player's Guide

Mar 6, 2014, 12:00 pm

In short time, brave postal carriers and miles of copper wire will be bringing the first volume of the Mummy's Mask Adventure Path to subscribers (and later—the world!) While your GM waits for Pathfinder Adventure Path #79: The Half-Dead City the first volume and you wait to start your campaign, check out the Mummy's Mask Player's Guide and start getting some ideas about the characters you and your fellow players want to play. This guide talks about ways to get the party together, and provides players with some background on Osirion, especially the city of Wati where the adventure begins. The guide also gives some tips and advice on the best class and race options for your characters in this campaign. Of course, no Adventure Path Player's Guide would be complete without an array of exciting campaign traits. (For those that are devoted, make sure to tune in to this blog a week from today to get a sneak peek of the gods of Ancient Osirion.)

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Winter's Wolves

Mar 5, 2014, 10:00 am

Jendara dropped onto a fallen log and eyed her companion. "Are you ready to give up?"

Winter's Wolves

by Wendy N. Wagner

Chapter One: Mud, Ice, and Blood

Jendara dropped onto a fallen log and eyed her companion. "Are you ready to give up?"

The young man's ever-present grin widened. "Already? We haven't shot anything yet!"

Jendara sighed and scrubbed mud off of one jolly roger-tattooed hand. She'd grown tired of the stink of mud over the past two weeks. She was used to the sea, to sailing on the trading ship Milady, or hunting on the wind-battered island of Sorind that she had come to call her home. But she and Vorrin, the Milady's captain, had both agreed that this summer they'd look for new stops to add to their trade routes, and old friends in Trollheim had convinced them to sail upriver for good deals on garnets.

Lugh squatted down so he could meet her eye. The boy—young man, she corrected herself—was nearly as big as a bear, and almost as hairy. "You've got your cursing-the-locks face on."

She sighed again. "I just can't believe we're still waiting for the damn locks to be fixed. It's bad enough having to sail up a river. Being stuck out here in the mud is just ridiculous."

"What's ridiculous is that we didn't find any ducks." Lugh stood up, stretched, and looked around himself. "The villagers said this marsh is packed with ducks and geese, but we haven't even seen a blackbird."

Jendara stood up. At her feet, a small stream ran by, hurrying toward the wide marsh she and Lugh had trekked around. If she squinted, she could just make out the headland separating the marsh from the solid ground the village of Big Cascade stood upon. Vorrin and the rest of the crew were probably drinking in the village's pathetic excuse for a tavern by now.

She turned back to Lugh. He was a new friend, a passenger they'd taken on as a favor to his father, who ran a canvas mill in the capital city of the Ironbound Archipelago. The Milady had too many sails not to curry favor with a man like that, and besides, he'd paid them well. Lugh's family was enormously proud of the fact that Lugh and his twin brother had been selected for a year's service in the Blackravens, an elite border guard here on the mainland. The brother had gone ahead while Lugh had been delayed several months by a leg broken during the testing, and now he fairly vibrated with his eagerness to catch up. The youth's boisterous good spirits irritated Vorrin, but Jendara didn't mind. The boy was no great philosopher, it was true, but she enjoyed practicing her swordplay with someone who could laugh about it afterward.

"I don't like this place much," she admitted. "Everything feels damp and smells musty. The clouds look so heavy, I can feel them weighing down my shoulders."

Lugh clapped her on the back. "Let's get you back to the village. The food might be garbage, but the ale will cheer you up."

The ale wasn't much better than the food, but Jendara knew he was trying to bolster her spirits. She gathered up her bow and quiver and led them back toward the rutted logging road that followed the edge of the marsh. The mud sucked at their boots, and she swore under her breath the whole way. Lugh chuckled as he pushed back a branch of a young alder and held it aside for her to step out onto the road.

As she did, a pair of riders rounded the corner. She waved at them, a neighborly gesture, but neither the man nor the woman looked like they could be the neighbor of anyone in Big Cascade. The villagers earned their keep via the locks, and were as soft as people got in the Linnorm Kingdoms. These newcomers were anything but. A battered but polished halberd hung on side of the man's saddle, and the woman had a fine bow slung across her back, along with an array of blades. Neither spoke as they passed by.

"Beautiful horses, weren't they?" Lugh asked Jendara. He looked after them wistfully. As methods of transit went, Jendara would always choose a boat over a horse.

The woman turned around in her saddle, dark eyes wide. "Caul?"

Lugh beamed. "You know my brother?"

She laughed. "Merciful Desna! Caul said he had a twin, but I never expected you'd be his copy." She dismounted and stuck out her hand. "Irlu Icewine, tracker and Blackraven. Caul's assigned to our patrol! "

A Blackraven is a force to be reckoned with.

Lugh's shook her hand with an exuberance that threatened to take her arm off. Jendara stepped forward. "Jendara Eriksson. Pleased to meet one of the Blackravens."

Irlu gave her a quick glancing-over, her eyes pausing on Jendara's belt axe and sword, then smiled. With her dark hair and dark eyes, she didn't look like the natives of the region—she could almost pass for Tian. But her face was open and friendly, and her handshake firm. Several dark feathers had been woven into her hair. "Just doing my part to keep the witches of Irrisen and their accursed beasts out of the Linnorm Kingdoms. But any friend of Caul's is going to be a friend of mine. Grotnir!" she called to her companion. "Come down here and meet these fine folks!"

The other Blackraven dismounted to join them. "I see you've found Caul's twin," he said, his voice a low rumble. "Did you get held up on your journey to Blackraven Hall? We heard the locks were down."

"You guess correctly," Lugh answered. "We've been waiting two weeks for the repairs to finish. Jendara and I escaped the harbor to try our luck at duck hunting."

Irlu eyed their muddy clothes and empty game bags. "It looks like your luck failed you."

"It was oddly quiet out there." Jendara said.

The two Blackravens exchanged glances. Grotnir's lips tightened.

"Do you know something?" Jendara's hand went immediately to the axe in her belt. Anything that upset two experienced Blackravens was bad news.

Irlu's face darkened. "We've been tracking a white wolf that's already killed two of our patrol members, and injured another. Caul's with our hurt man, maybe twenty miles back; he took him to the nearest healer. We're headed to the logging camp up this hill, because one of the loggers reported a sighting."

"A white wolf?" Lugh's eyebrows knitted. "How could a wolf kill two Blackravens?"

Grotnir shook his head. "Not an ordinary wolf, son. A white wolf. Nothing natural about those. They're bigger, smarter—they can even talk."

"And they can breathe ice," Irlu added. "They use it to stun their prey."

"We think it's been through here before," Grotnir said. "Another patrol passed through this area a few months ago and dealt with a particularly vicious pair of white wolves. One got away."

"It wouldn't have if I'd been on that patrol," Irlu snapped. "Their tracker ought to be ashamed of himself."

"Are the white wolves a big problem in this area?" Jendara asked. There weren't any such creatures on Sorrind. She knew this part of the Linnorm Kingdoms had more than its share of dangerous creatures, but this beast was one she'd never encountered.

"They're nomadic," Grotnir said. "But they're bad news. If that logger really saw a white wolf, the people of Big Cascade don't even know the kind of trouble they're in."

Jendara cocked her head. "We've been standing here talking for a good ten minutes. That's long enough for most birds to stop worrying about a person's presence. Why haven't we heard any?"

Grotnir's eyes narrowed. "You're right."

"Help! Please, help!"

Lugh stared up the road. "What the—"

A woman raced down the hill toward them, her brown jacket streaked with blood. She tripped on a rock and fell hard. With a little cry, she jumped back to her feet and kept running. "Help!"

Lugh raced forward and caught the woman as she stumbled again. "Are you all right?"

She gasped for air. Blisters dappled the left side of her face and the skin was puffy and pink, as if she'd been splattered with hot oil. "Something attacked the camp," she managed to say, although it clearly hurt to talk.

Irlu balled her hands into fists. "The white wolf."

The woman's fingers went to her cheek. "Its breath burns, it's so cold."

Grotnir was digging in his saddlebags. He tossed Lugh a container. "Ointment. Help her." He caught Irlu's eye. "We've got to get to that camp."

"Most of us are still in the woods—it's just cooks and them's too sick to work today. I'm not sure they can hold it off much longer." The woman winced as Lugh slathered the cream on her face.

Irlu swung up onto her saddle. She looked unhappy. "Looks like we caught up with it after all."

"Finally." Grotnir smiled without humor. "No beast brings down a Blackraven and lives."

"We'll help!" Lugh said.

Irlu frowned. "You're not a Blackraven yet, boy."

"We can tend the wounded," Jendara said. "If you've got supplies."

"Me too," the logger added. The presence of four armed warriors seemed to have calmed her. "The beast took us by surprise, but with you four..." She began marching back up the hill toward camp, her mouth set tightly.

"The white wolf is probably gone already. They prefer sneak attacks to drawn battles. I'll go ahead." Irlu urged her horse into a quick trot and raced past the woman.

"I don't like this," Grotnir growled at Jendara. "I should send you back to Big Cascade for reinforcements."

"Let's take stock of the situation, and if need be, I'll head back to town and organize a hunting party," Jendara told him.

He rubbed his beard and gave her a measuring glance. At last he said, "Well enough. Irlu's right—the beast's probably disappeared already. Let's go."

The hill climbed sharply away from the marshes and lowlands of the Rimeflow River valley. The country here was rugged, all craggy hills and steep ravines. The dense evergreen forest crowded down to the edges of the logging road, a muddy track cut out of the woods, just wide enough for a horse-drawn skid. When the locks were up and running, the road was probably much busier. Lots of barges and small craft went up and down the Rimeflow, and the towns and cities of the Linnorm Kingdoms were hungry for quality timber. These trees, no matter how dark and ominous they might feel to Jendara at this moment, were worth a great deal.

The woman from the logging camp gave Jendara a sidelong glance. "You're no Blackraven."

"No," Jendara answered. "Just a sailor out for some hunting."

The woman put out her hand. "I'm Nola. Good meeting you."

Jendara shook on it. Nola gave her a smile, and fell silent, lost in her own thoughts. As Grotnir's horse pulled ahead of the three walkers, Jendara peered into the woods. The late morning sunlight that dappled the logging road ended at its edges. The forest beyond sat in twilight gloom.

A thin, piercing howl split the air. Nola went pale.

"The beast!"

She broke into a run. Lugh tore after her.

Jendara walked faster, the hairs on her neck prickling. Everything felt wrong about this situation. The too-quiet forest, the attack on the logging camp, and now the wolf's triumphant call. She unslung her bow and pulled free an arrow.

The road went up one last switchback and then widened out into the logging camp, a cleared space filled with at least a dozen canvas-sided tent cabins. People darted from tent to tent. Someone screamed in pain. Over the top of it all, the panicked braying of mules added a cacophonous note.

Jendara stood on the edge of the madness, unsure where to go or how to even start to help. She couldn't see Irlu's horse or Grotnir's, and Lugh was nowhere to be seen.

The wolf's call resounded again, and the earth shook beneath Jendara's feet.

With a tremendous crashing noise, the stand of trees on the far side of camp burst into splinters as a boulder blasted through it. The massive stone bounced once, twice, and landed in the middle of the road, just inches from Jendara. Her heart lurched and she stumbled backward.

A club the size of a small tree smashed down on a tent at the edge of camp. Jendara stared at it.

"Hill giant!" someone screamed.

Somewhere nearby, the wolf howled again.

Want more Jendara?
Preorder Skinwalkers now!

Coming Next Week: A deadly hunt in Chapter Two of Wendy N. Wagner's "Winter's Wolves"!

Wendy N. Wagner is the author of the Pathfinder Tales novel Skinwalkers and the web fiction story "Mother Bears," both starring Jendara. Her short fiction has appeared in anthologies such as Armored and The Way of the Wizard, and in many online magazines. Wendy lives with her family in Portland, Oregon, where she also teaches writing for youth. An avid gardener and board gamer, she can be found online at winniewoohoo.com.

Illustration by Ian Llanas

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Superstar 2014: Vote For Your Superstar!

Mar 4, 2014, 02:00 pm

Now it's time for you, the voters, to pick the next RPG Superstar! Each voter gets one vote. The voting ends Monday, March 10th, at 2 PM Pacific time. The ultimate winner will be announced on Tuesday, March 11th.

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News about Gen Con 2014 and Official Call for Gen Con 2014 Volunteers

Mar 3, 2014, 01:08 pm

For Gen Con 2013, I advised last year that we planned to make it the biggest and best Gen Con yet. And it certainly was. We scheduled 1,400 tables of Pathfinder Society over the four days. We showed the world our GM 101 and GM 201 workshops, Kid's Beginner & Advanced Tracks, and Beginner Box Introductions, Parts 1 and 2. Gen Con was definitely a success and Paizo's biggest showing in history. But we can make it bigger and better!

News about Gen Con 2014 and Official Call for Gen Con 2014 Volunteers

Monday, March 3, 2014

For Gen Con 2013, I advised last year that we planned to make it the biggest and best Gen Con yet. And it certainly was. We scheduled 1,400 tables of Pathfinder Society over the four days. We showed the world our GM 101 and GM 201 workshops, Kid's Beginner & Advanced Tracks, and Beginner Box Introductions, Parts 1 and 2. Gen Con was definitely a success and Paizo's biggest showing in history. But we can make it bigger and better!

Paizo will once again be a cosponsor at this year's show. What does that mean for Pathfinder Society? It means we return to the Sagamore Ballroom! We increase our playspace size, scheduling 150 to 170 tables per slot. Additionally, we also have two of the seven rooms that were used for Pathfinder Society last year. One of them will be used exclusively for Paizo seminars. The other room will have 10 tables and will be utilized for Pathfinder Adventure Card Game play.

We are planning to schedule 20 different scenarios, two Gen Con Specials, one Gen Con Exclusive, and two modules, We Be Goblins! and We Be Goblins Too! throughout the course of the convention.

The beginning of Season 6 Gen Con Special, The Paths We Choose, scheduled for Thursday night, will help us kick off Season 6 by showing off the achievements of many of the factions' Season 5 goals. As a tease, here is the short description as it will appear in the Gen Con catalog:

The failure of Mendev's wardstones set in motion not only a new crusade, but also catalyzed a change in the Society's various factions.

More information on the factions and surpirses upcoming will be offered in a series of blog posts later this year. This special is designed for levels 3—7.

The end of Season 5 Gen Con Special, Legacy of the Stonelords, scheduled for Friday night, will help us close Season 5 inside the Worldwound!

As a tease, here is the long description as it will appear in the Gen Con catalog:

At long last, the Pathfinders have reached the lost Sky Citadel Jormurdun only to find it already occupied by fiends and subterranean foes. The Society must mount an epic offense to explore the immense subterranean city while simultaneously driving off the squatters within. If they succeed, the Pathfinders may discover that the greatest prize is not the mountain fortress itself but the treasure that lies at its heart. The adventure concludes Season 5, Year of the Demon.

This Special is designed for levels 1—11.

The scenarios being scheduled for Gen Con are as follows:

Season 5

#5—06: You Have What You Hold

#5—08: The Confirmation

#5—09: The Traitor's Lodge

#5—10: Where Mammoths Dare Not Tread

#5—12: Destiny of the Sands, Part 1: A Bitter Bargain

#5—13: Weapon in the Rift

#5—15: Destiny of the Sands, Part 2: Race to Seeker's Folly

#5—16: Destiny of the Sands, Part 3: Sanctum of the Sages

#5—17: Fate of the Fiend

#5—18: The Stranger Within

#5—19: The Horn of Aroden

#5—20: The Sealed Gate

#5—21: The Merchant's Wake

#5—22: Scars of the Third Crusade

#5—23: Cairn of Shadows

#5—24: Assault on the Wound

#5—25: Vengeance at Sundered Crag

Season 6

#6—01: Trial by Machine

#6—02: The Silver Mount Collection

#6—03: The Technic Siege

We will be offering one exclusive on Saturday night. We will follow up Ruins of Bonekeep, Levels 1 and 2, with Bonekeep, Level 3: The Wakening Tomb also written by Jason. It is being designed for Tier 5—9 characters and again, will be particularly challenging and lethal. Ruins of Bonekeep, Level 3 will make its debut at Gen Con. We will only run level three one time at Gen Con so it will be a truly limited and exclusive event. On a side note, we will have a few tables running all three of the new Season 6 scenarios if you would rather not participate in this exclusive.

In regard to the Beginner Box Introductions, we have two different offerings again this year. During seven slots at Gen Con, we are setting aside six tables for these Beginner Box Introduction events. Both parts are scheduled with new players in mind. For Beginner Box Introductions, Part 1, it will allow for the first 45—60 minutes to be an exploration of the contents of the Pathfinder RPG Beginner Box, explaining the rules, and reviewing the pregenerated characters. The final 4 hours of each slot will be playing through the four, 1-hour adventures. For Beginner Box Introductions, Part 2, the GM will assist players in advancing their character to third level. The Beginner Box Transitions, Player Pack, and GM Kit will be reviewed. Once those three free documents have been briefly covered, we will be offering up five 1-hour adventures as time permits. Much like the four adventures in part one, these will be utilizing only the Beginner Box rules.

For the Pathfinder's Kids' Track, we will be setting aside six tables at seven slots during the convention. We are focusing on players aged 6—12 and we will be using the Pathfinder RPG Beginner Box for this as well. The Kids' Track is divided into two parts: the Beginner Track and the Advanced Track. Each kid's beginner track slot will be 2 hours long and each player will receive a check-off card. The first hour of each of the seven Kids' Beginner Track sessions teaches roleplay and rules, and reviews the pregenerated characters found in the Pathfinder RPG Beginner Box. During the second hour, one of the four, 1-hour adventures used during the Beginner Box Bash will be played.

For the Kids' Advanced Track, we are focusing on children who participated in last year's Kids' Beginner Track, at a local Kids' Beginner Track session near their home, or for older children that have prior experience with Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. The GM at each of the 2-hour slots will help the children level their chosen character to third level. After leveling is complete, the GM will run one of five new adventures designed using the Beginner Box rules.

We will be running each of the nine different adventures multiple times throughout the convention to allow flexible scheduling for children and parents. We will be restricting tables to four children players and are requiring a parent or guardian be present with their child (or multiple children if they have two or more interested in participating) for the entire 2 hours. The parent or guardian will assist the child when needed. But, we want to make this a good and memorable experience for the kids that attend Gen Con, who often find little they can participate in, especially with others their own age. We will be scheduling 24, 2-hour tables per day on Thursday through Saturday, and 12, 2-hour tables on Sunday, for the Kids' Track, divided between the Beginner and Advanced Tracks.

If a child plays all four different adventures in the Beginner's Track, he will be able to present his check-off card to HQ and receive a special certificate that celebrates his accomplishments. If a child plays all five different adventures in the advanced track, she will be able to present her check-off card to HQ and receive a second, different special certificate. Both certificates can be used on the child's Pathfinder Society character if they did to advance from the Beginner Box to the full Core Rulebook rules and participate in Pathfinder Society Organized Play. We may also have other give-aways or special prizes, such as dice and miniatures, similar to last year. I will be very picky when choosing volunteer GMs for the Kids' Track. I prefer to have school teachers and other professionals with experience dealing with children. I will consider GMs who are parents even if they do not deal with children regularly in their profession. If you are volunteering to GM the Kids' Track, please make sure to include all of your credentials. Also, since these are scheduled as 2-hour blocks, a GM will be required to run two Kids' Track slots back to back in a 4-hour block to count as one slot of credit toward GM rewards.

We will be running a new set of Pathfinder Quests inside the Sagamore and I do have a very few spots of 5-hour blocks for any GM interested in running those for players as they show up and fill the quests tables.

We are also bringing back the popular GM 101 and GM 201 seminars and need instructors to oversee the running of both. Both seminars will be offered on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.

Finally, I need volunteers who have experience with the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game, to run demos in the Dealer Hall next to Paizo's booth, as well as run tables in a break out room next to Paizo's Seminar Room, from 8 a.m. until midnight Thursday through Saturday, and from 9 a.m. until 2 p.m. on Sunday. You can volunteer to work one or two 5-hour blocks each day from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. (Sunday ends at 4 pm) in the Dealer Hall. Volunteering for any demo time will count toward your GM reward credit below, but you still must have a minimum of seven, 5-hour sessions to qualify for a hotel room as a Tier 2 volunteer.

Now, let's talk about the GMs and volunteers we need to pull all of the above off and make it the biggest and best Gen Con ever.

I need a minimum of 350 volunteer GMs for Pathfinder Society games, Beginner Box Introductions, Kids' Track events, GM 101 and 201, and Pathfinder Adventure Card Game demos. I'll continue taking volunteer GMs until the slots are filled, at which point I will create a waiting list in the event that a scheduled GM has to cancel their Gen Con trip for whatever reason. I also need a few Volunteer Assistants for each slot of the show. These folks will not GM during their volunteer slots, but will instead help me run Pathfinder Society HQ, including marshalling, collecting tickets, distributing GM packs, entering tracking sheets into the database, and will be our go-to guys and gals for all things Pathfinder Society. Keep in mind these are very limited and likely to fill up in the first hour after the blog goes live.

Below you will find the reward structure for volunteering at Gen Con 2014. Keep in mind that you're volunteering for slots, not a specific event. Those that are able to spice up their event by adding 3-D terrain, props that stand out and the like, will be given first consideration for specific events. I will let you know the slots and scenarios you have been assigned as soon as possible. You may designate what tier scenarios you wish to GM but this is not guaranteed to be filled. I will do the best I can to accommodate your requests. My target date to have all GMs their assigned schedules is April 4. This should allow you plenty of time to plan a schedule, before the May 18 event registration, with your friends and family who are also attending Gen Con 2014. Please let me know via email which days you will be at the convention and how many slots you are volunteering for at Gen Con 2014.

When you email me, I need you to include the following information in your email:

1) What email is tied to your Gen Con account.

2) What email is tied to your Paizo.com account and what your message board user name is.

3) I need to know if you have received the purple goblin Pathfinder Society volunteer shirts at a previous show. If not, I need to know what size you wear.

Volunteer Tiers and Rewards

Tier 1 GM Volunteers

Tier 1 GM volunteers are invaluable to making the show a success. Tier 1 GMs must select and volunteer for a MINIMUM of 8 slots. Tier 1 GMs may feel free to volunteer for more than 8 slots if they so desire. I only have room for 160 Tier 1 GM volunteers so don't delay in volunteering for this tier. Volunteers will be chosen on a first-come, first-served basis, though I reserve the right to select volunteers who have previously worked for Paizo over new volunteers. Please do not volunteer for Tier 1 if you have any doubts that you won't be able to attend the show. Tier 1 GMs receive:

A FREE 4-day Gen Con 2014 badge

A FREE 1/4 of a hotel room in the Marriott or J.W. Marriott Hotels

A $10 per slot voucher for Paizo.com credit, useable at the show or anytime after, including with your subscriptions

A FREE Advanced Class Guide hardcover

Four FREE limited edition purple goblin Paizo Publishing Pathfinder Society Volunteer T-Shirts (if not previously received)

A special PFS boon that gives the option of choosing a one-time complete rebuild of any level character OR the choice to create a character from one of the following races: grippli, ratfolk, samsaran, suli, or vishkanya.

Tier 2 GM Volunteers

Tier 2 GMs must volunteer for a MINIMUM of 7 slots. I only have room for 120 Tier 2 GM volunteers so don't delay in volunteering for this tier — it fills up very quickly. Tier 2 GMs receive:

A FREE 4-day Gen Con 2014 badge

A FREE 1/4 of a hotel room in the Marriott or J.W. Marriott Hotels

A $10 per slot voucher for Paizo.com credit, useable at the show or anytime after, including with your subscriptions

A FREE Advanced Class Guide hardcover

Four FREE limited edition purple goblin Paizo Publishing Pathfinder Society Volunteer T-Shirts (if not previously received)

A special Pathfinder Society boon that gives the choice to create a character from one of the following races: grippli, ratfolk, suli, or vishkanya.

Tier 3 GM Volunteers

While the rewards for volunteering for this tier are smaller, the majority of my volunteers will come from Tier 3. Tier 3 GMs must volunteer for a MINIMUM of 6 slots. Tier 3 GMs receive:

A FREE 4-day Gen Con 2014 badge

A $10 per slot voucher for Paizo.com credit, useable at the show or anytime after, including with your subscriptions

A FREE Advanced Class Guide hardcover

Four FREE limited edition purple goblin Paizo Publishing Pathfinder Society Volunteer T-Shirts (if not previously received)

A special Pathfinder Society boon that gives the choice to create a character from one of the following races: grippli, suli or vishkanya.

Tier 4 GM Volunteers

Tier 4 GMs must volunteer for a MINIMUM of 5 slots. Tier 4 GMs receive:

A FREE 4-day Gen Con 2014 badge

A $10 per slot voucher for Paizo.com credit, useable at the show or anytime after, including with your subscriptions

Four FREE limited edition purple goblin Paizo Publishing Pathfinder Society Volunteer T-Shirts (if not previously received)

A special Pathfinder Society boon that gives the choice to create a character from one of the following races: suli or vishkanya.

Tier 5 GM Volunteers

This is the minimum volunteer level to receive shirts. Tier 5 GMs must volunteer for a MINIMUM of 4 slots. Tier 5 GMs receive:

A $10 per slot voucher for Paizo.com credit, useable at the show or anytime after, including with your subscriptions

Four FREE limited edition purple goblin Paizo Publishing Pathfinder Society Volunteer T-Shirts (if not previously received)

A special Pathfinder Society boon that gives the choice to create a character from one of the following races: suli or vishkanya.

Volunteering for One, Two, or Three Slots

A $10 per slot voucher for Paizo.com credit, useable at the show or anytime after, including with your subscriptions

A special PFS boon that gives the choice to create a character from one of the following races: suli or vishkanya.

When Volunteering...

Again, please be specific about what days and how many slots you are volunteering for. I will assign folks to slots and scenarios on an as-needed basis. I will update the needs in the thread below as I receive volunteers, so you may look there to remain up to date on where we still need help. You must have a gencon.com account and you must include your email tied to your Gen Con account in your email or I won't be able to get you a badge (obviously this is only for volunteers who are volunteering for 5 or more slots). Include your Paizo.com email account so I can make sure you receive the scenarios in your downloads. Finally, I need to know if you have received the purple goblin Pathfinder Society volunteer shirst in the past. If not, I need to know what size.

The time slots are as follows:

Slot 1: Thursday 8 A.M. to 1 P.M.

Slot 2: Thursday 1 P.M. to 6 P.M.

Slot 3: Thursday 7 P.M. to Midnight (Gen Con Exclusive #1 and three new Season 5 scenarios)

Slot 4: Friday 8 A.M. to 1 P.M.

Slot 5: Friday 1 P.M. to 6 P.M.

Slot 6: Friday 7 P.M. to Midnight (Gen Con Special)

Slot 7: Saturday 8 A.M. to 1 P.M.

Slot 8: Saturday 1 P.M. to 6 P.M.

Slot 9: Saturday 7 P.M. to Midnight (Gen Con Exclusive #2 and three new Season 5 scenarios)

Slot 10: Sunday 9 A.M. to 2 P.M.

All Gen Con 2014 volunteers please email me at mike.brock@paizo.com with the subject line “Gen Con Volunteer - Tier X.”

Thanks in advance for volunteering and have a great spring and summer convention season!

Mike Brock
Pathfinder Society Campaign Coordinator

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