Hail and well met, Pathfinders and Starfinders! This month’s new releases bring the Pathfinder Remaster Project to your pocket (edition) and pit the Starfinder Society in a race against doomsday!

Join us this Friday, March 1^st at 4 P.M. Pacific for Paizo LIVE. This month’s topics include Starfinder Mechageddon!, the Wardens of Wildwood AP, and an update on conventions and events!

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Pathfinder Player Core Pocket Edition

FORGE YOUR LEGEND!

A world of adventure awaits, but it needs you to be the hero of the story! Take on the role of a daring adventurer with Pathfinder Player Core. This tome contains everything you need to create a player character and outfit them with mighty weapons and powerful spells, and it provides all the tools necessary to survive in a world filled with deadly monsters, nefarious villains, and fabulous treasures! The first page of your amazing adventure starts here.

The pocket edition presents the same contents as the standard edition in softcover and a smaller size for a lower price and better portability.

Pathfinder GM Core Pocket Edition

TELL YOUR STORY!

Creating a compelling tale takes more than just heroes—it requires a complex cast of allies, adversaries, and villains! As the Game Master, your job is to narrate the story, working with the players to imagine an epic adventure. PathfinderGM Core is here to help you with every facet of the game and includes guidelines on story structure, tips on creating thrilling combat, and amazing treasure to reward your heroes for saving the day! This book has everything you need to become a legendary Game Master.

The pocket edition presents the same contents as the standard edition in softcover and a smaller size for a lower price and better portability.

Pathfinder Flip-Mat: Temples Multi-Pack

SAY YOUR PRAYERS!

In a world steeped in divine magic, temples serve as centers for the power of the gods. Whether your heroes are in search of a holy place to defend or a profane temple to defeat, Pathfinder Flip-Mat: Temples Multi-Packhas you covered. This trove of temples features a tranquil sanctuary of healing, a rugged seaside temple devoted to a violent god, a temple of undeath nestled in a dilapidated graveyard, and a diabolical temple where the stage has been set for the arrival of hellish terrors.

This set includes two flip-mats, each measuring 24" × 30" unfolded, and 8" × 10" folded. A flip-mat’s coated surface can handle any dry-erase, wet-erase, or even permanent marker. Usable by experienced GMs and novices alike, Pathfinder Flip-Mats fit perfectly into any Game Master’s arsenal!

Starfinder Society Scenario #6-13: Beginning of the End

A Starfinder Society Scenario designed for 5th- through 8th-level characters.

Time is running short as the nefarious Order of Dawning Fate turns their experimental doomsday weapon upon a defenseless metropolis in the Vast! With millions of lives in danger, it’s up to the Starfinder Society to navigate the streets of the crumbling city, locate and destroy the doomsday weapon, and save the city from destruction! Yet fate is not on the Society’s side as Kebzec, a founder of the Order of Dawning Fate, oversees the weapon’s deployment and defenses. Will the Starfinders emerge victorious, or will they meet their end at the hands of the Order of Dawning Fate?

Pathfinder Society Scenario #5-11: Equal Exchanges—The Hidden Current

A Pathfinder Society Scenario designed for 7th- through 10th-level characters.

A mysterious abandoned laboratory is discovered in the Arcadian Ocean, with clear signs of occult experimentation having occurred within it at some point. The Waterfall, strangely fascinated by this new find, sends a group of Pathfinders to investigate and gather whatever research they can find inside, while also ensuring that the building poses no further threats. Deep inside, a soul and forgotten memories await, hungry to be found and revealed to the light. The research and artifacts inside seem like they'll lead to answers about the enigmatic Waterfall, though this information may turn out to be unwanted.

Starfinder Society Scenario #6-14: The Missing

A Starfinder Society Scenario designed for 1st- through 4th-level characters.

For months, citizens of the kasathan colony ship, Idari, have vanished without a trace, disappearing from the idyllic Sea of Grass for a fate unknown. As the number of missing increases, all eyes turn to the nearby Red Corridors, a subterranean neighborhood home to anarchists, malcontents, criminals, and other kasathas looking to flout the deeply ingrained traditions of modern kasathan society. Representatives from the Red Corridors vehemently deny any involvement in the abductions, but rising tensions and the desperation of those who have lost are primed to spark violence. With citizens of both the Sea of Grass and the Red Corridors distrustful of the ruling Doyenate and refusing to cooperate with ship security, the captain of the Idari calls for help from an old friend: Ehu Hadif, current First Seeker of the Starfinder Society.

Pathfinder Society Quest (Series 2) #17: Escorting a Mirage

A Pathfinder Society Quest designed for 1st- through 4th-level characters, playable in 2-3 hours.

A down-on-his luck Aspis Agent, relegated to Thuvia where Aspis operations have all but ceased, has found an unexpected opportunity for revenge. Zarta Dralneen is making a purchase in Merab, and what her purpose could be is the talk of the town. The vengeful Aspis twists these rumors toward talk of the sun orchid elixir, and while no one of any competence or understanding would ever fall for such a flimsy rumor, Merab has more than its share of desperate fools. As the PCs transport Zarta's mundane purchases back to port, these desperate fools strike, making a simple escort into a fight for survival.

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From Our Partners:

Our partners at Archives of Nethys, Demiplane, Fantasy Grounds, Hero Lab Online, and Roll20 are dropping new content this month as well! Buy your PDF on paizo.com to get a discount via the PaizoConnect API, or pay full price on their platforms, sync your account, and get a complimentary PDF on the Paizo Store.

Pathfinder Region Dice

Our partners at Q Workshop have released three new sets of dice based on regions in Pathfinder! Get dice inspired by Azlant, Arcadia, and Avistan now on their website!

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Continuing our series of encounters to challenge your players, featuring creatures debuting in the forthcoming Pathfinder Monster Core, Bill Fischer takes us to the dank grotto lair of a remastered sea hag, as depicted in Pathfinder Flip-Mat: Temples Multi-Pack.

Eye for an Eye — Moderate 1

Captain Blazo Orane’s career as a notorious pirate captain was cut short when a freak storm capsized his ship not far from the city of Riddleport. As stubborn as he was cutthroat, Blazo went down with the ship but awakened several hours later to find himself in the cave of a sea hag named Cyclona. The hag had spared Blazo’s life, but in return, she demanded the captain’s eye. Blazo balked, of course—like any good pirate, he only had one eye left to spare. Unfortunately, his captor was in no mood for mercy. Cyclona plucked Blazo’s remaining eye from its socket, leaving the now-blind man to bleed out while she transformed her grisly reward into a hag eye.

Miraculously, Captain Blazo managed to free himself from his shackles—striking Cyclona with his cold-iron scimitar in the struggle—and stumbled his way back to Riddleport. Now, still weakened from his ordeal, Blazo hires the PCs to retrieve his stolen eye. If the PCs express doubts Blazo will regain his sight even if his eye is recovered, the pirate seems unconcerned. “If I can’t have my eye,” he grumbles, “I’ll settle for revenge.” Blazo lends the PCs the only thing of value he has left, his cold-iron scimitar, with the promise they can keep the weapon if they return with his eye or proof that Cyclona is dead.

Map: This map showcases one of the maps included in Pathfinder Flip-Mat: Temples Multi-Pack, out this month on Paizo.com or at your local hobby store!

Approaching the Cave: Cyclona’s cave is a half-day’s walk from Riddleport. If Blazo’s understandably vague directions aren’t enough for the PCs, most anyone in the city can direct them to the place.

The remnants of an ancient sea wall stretch to Cyclona’s cave like a trail of stepping stones. Slick with algae, the wall is uneven ground. Once during the crossing, each PC must make a successful DC 13 Acrobatics check to Balance or fall into the surf. Any PC who fails this check alerts Cyclona to the party’s arrival, granting her a +2 circumstance bonus to initiative. Alternatively, the PCs can approach the hag’s cave along the weed-choked shore to the south. This approach doesn’t require skill checks, but the ground is difficult terrain, and the party’s noisy arrival automatically alerts Cyclona.

Creatures: When the PCs arrive, Cyclona lurks in the northern alcove, admiring an amulet set with a blue gemstone: Captain Blazo’s eye transformed into a hag eye. Loath to surrender her new treasure, Cyclona lunges at intruders, opening with her Dread Gaze before slashing with her claws. The hag remembers all too well the bite of Blazo’s scimitar, granting the PC holding the weapon a +1 circumstance bonus to Demoralize the hag. If reduced to 15 Hit Points or fewer, Cyclona dives into the sea, dropping the hag eye in her panic.

Treasure: The PCs might not recognize Captain Blazo’s eye in its current state, but anyone who interacts with the amulet feels its wet, sticky surface, allowing the character to attempt to disbelieve the illusion (DC 19). Like all hag eyes, the amulet produces no direct benefit for the wearer (and doesn’t restore Blazo’s sight if given to him), but it allows Cyclona to peer through the eye using the Seek action. Any damage dealt to the eye destroys it. If this happens while Cyclona is looking through it, the hag is blinded for 1 hour.

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Sea Hag — Creature 3

Medium, Amphibious, Hag, Humanoid
Perception +10; darkvision
Languages Aklo, Common, Fey, Jotun, Thalassic
Skills Acrobatics +8, Athletics +11, Deception +10, Occultism +8, Stealth +8
Str +4, Dex +3, Con +4, Int +1, Wis +3, Cha +3

Coven A sea hag adds humanoid form, mariner’s curse, and water walk to their coven’s spells. Their spell DC when leading a coven is 20.

AC 19; Fort +11, Ref +8, Will +10; +1 status to all saves vs. magic
HP 45; Immunities polymorph; Weaknesses cold iron 3
Speed 25 feet, swim 35 feet

Melee [one-action] claw +12 (agile, magical), Damage 1d10+4 slashing

Dread Gaze [two-actions] (curse, emotion, fear, mental, occult) The hag gazes upon a creature, afflicting it with a gnawing sense of impending doom, with a result depending on its Will save (DC 20). The target doesn’t need to be able to see the sea hag.

Critical Success The creature is unaffected.
Success The creature is frightened 1.
Failure The creature is frightened 1 and is slowed 1 for 1 round. If the target was dying, it remains unconscious for 1 day. At the end of the day, it must attempt a Fortitude save against the same DC; if it fails, it dies.
Critical Failure As failure, but the creature is frightened 2 and slowed 1 for 1 minute.

Sea Hag’s Bargain (concentrate, exploration, occult, polymorph) The sea hag can make a bargain with a willing creature who must be of sound mind. The creature gives away a special or cherished quality—such as its courage, its beauty, or its voice. In exchange, the sea hag spends 1 minute polymorphing the creature into a form the target desires.

This functions as Change Shape. It might be a total transformation or just changing one or more aspects of the target’s body, and it can’t make the creature more than one size smaller or larger. The creature changes its Speeds as appropriate for the new form. It doesn’t change the attack and damage bonuses with its Strikes, but it might change the damage type the Strikes deal. This has an unlimited duration, and as long as it’s transformed, the creature is sickened 2 and can’t reduce its sickened condition below 2. The creature can slowly and carefully eat and drink despite being sickened. The only way to restore the lost quality used as payment is to defeat the sea hag or make another bargain for its return. Ending the bargain in this way also removes the transformation.

It may seem odd that I have not made any notes within the margins of the prophecies themselves. It is certainly not for lack of opinions, but out of an abundance of caution; some of the most heated debates that I have ever witnessed during my studies dealt with the supposed impartiality of the researcher, with some believing that we should be as unbiased as my fellow psychopomps in their judgments of souls in the Boneyard and others noting that our beliefs influence everything we do, and should be acknowledged and even used within the way we work. The arguments grew heated more than once, and while it cannot be said for sure that they led to what some call “The Dueling Quills Incident,” they certainly caused plenty of frayed nerves.

This particular debate has taken on new meaning for me now, though, in reading of one supposed divine death after another. Maybe it is something I will grow out of one day, but it is hard not to be affected by these, whether I am mourning the potential loss of the Lady I serve or learning of the potential demise of a god I do not care for. I’m not sure I would ever want to view them and feel nothing but analysis. Passion drove me to this work and passion should be part of it—for all I know, that may even have been what brought me to my Lady’s attention. Still, I will present the prophecy with no further comment, and fear that once I have read it fully, even my small bit of glee will dissipate. As always, momentary gains bring unexpected consequences.

—Yivali, Apprentice Researcher for the Lady of Graves

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The Death of Urgathoa

The feast is a sumptuous spread of delights if that’s the sort of thing you like. Piles of sweets and meats and cheeses, decadence on decadence, to celebrate a distant plague gone better than expected. Urgathoa is smiling as the undead shovel down the food, the flavors barely noticed in their urge to sate their hunger. It would all make Arazni sick, if that was still a thing she felt, and if she wasn’t steeled by something greater than revulsion. For all the gods Urgathoa hates, and all who hate her in return, she hasn’t even bothered to secure her own protection, relying on the undead to sniff out any intruder. Except they know Arazni’s scent. A tiny boon from all her years forced into undead servitude, now sharpened to a weapon to take down the god who dared to bring undeath to the unwilling.

Arazni moves in shadow, and if the diners notice, they barely pause their latest gulp to see her blade unsheathe. Urgathoa dies easily, falls lengthwise on the table, face-first into a centerpiece of something rich and juicy. As panic and dismay begin to spread throughout the Bloodrot, Arazni leaves the way she came, a vengeful shadow baring teeth in something like a smile. Divinity is still a thing she’s learning to inhabit, but this almost makes everything she’s suffered seem worthwhile.

Arazni waits, for…something—some rest for those trapped in undeath, some halt to necromantic work, some alteration in what had been a truly loathsome status quo. And there are places in the world where she can see the fruits of her handiwork—the Whispering Way is driven back, Geb’s Blood Lords struggle for control—until the undead start to rise from any perished soul. Not all, but some, begin to turn without a necromancer’s aid, and stagger from their resting places trying to fill their hunger. Without Urgathoa to lend some order to the chaos, some dead stay locked inside their graves, while others now reanimate with no real rhyme or reason, rising from their tombs and slowly crawling off battlefields, horrified and terrified and sometimes all too eager to see what unholy agenda their new bodies can pursue.

In places where undead have always been a threat to life and limb, the champions against them try their best to hold the line, not looking at the faces that are suddenly familiar, comrades-at-arms turned into bodies cut down by their blades. Some look to magic to protect the bodies of the newly-dead, but magic has its limits, and others fall to the horror they once tried to quell. At least they know how to respond, unlike those who are wrapped in grief, only to see a loved one rise as some new transformation. Do you love or do you fear? Do you watch or do you help? Do you wait or do you run and run and keep on running?

Some families go missing now. Some villages are overrun. Some cities bar their crypts and add guard shifts to every other street. Some call undeath a blessing, see the change as nectar from the gods. Some view it as a threat to something they once lived and died for. Others search for patterns, narrow in on who or what is to blame, let something they don’t understand consume their baser instincts, and rain fire down on those they think have brought this new world forth.

Arazni owns what she has done, seeks out the help of other gods, but they know just as little and have found themselves just as besieged, as undeath spreads like the diseases Urgathoa once held dear, refusing to contain itself to one singular plane. And as the numbers slowly rise, a flood that grows by sodden inches, one undead soul at a time from Axis to the Boneyard, some say the Pallid Princess watches from some place beyond undeath, relishing the moment like a feast to truly savor.

The severity of this prophecy ensures that even I, a loyal servant of the Lady of Graves, take no joy in the foretold destruction of the Pallid Princess. May that these prophecies prove untrue!

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That was, to say the least, unexpected. While the horrors of undead potentially coming from every grave are one thing (and something that I know my Lady will not enjoy, no matter how untrue this prophecy may turn out to be), Arazni’s direct role in this cataclysm is not something I am quite sure how to parse. She has broken free from her centuries of servitude as Geb’s unwilling lich queen, and in so doing attained true divinity, a risen herald. With her newfound power, is she capable of slaying a fellow god? Is this merely one facet of the unreliability of these prophecies? Perhaps I should begin watching Arazni more closely, as some sort of harbinger, a sign that this alone among the prophecies is true? Does she have knowledge of this prophecy, and if not, is this something to warn her of? I will be dusting off my copy of What the Future Holds: The Ethics of Prophecy immediately. In the meantime, my Lady will know what to do with this. All I must do now is move forward.

About the Author

Erin Roberts has been thrilled to be able to contribute a few small threads to the fabric of Golarion in the pages of books like Lost Omens Firebrands, Lost Omens Highhelm, and Lost Omens Travel Guide. In addition to her work for Paizo, she freelances across the TTRPG world (and was selected as a Diana Jones Award Emerging Designer Program Winner in 2023), has had fiction published in magazines including Asimov’s, Clarkesworld, and The Dark, and talks about writing every week on the Writing Excuses podcast. Catch up with her latest at linktr.ee/erinroberts.

Sichen was three when the grandmasters first clashed in Zhining Village. She remembered it clearly. The magistrate’s villa was torn from the earth like an obstinate weed, which made everyone cheer, then it was thrown into the drinkhouse, which made everyone groan. But the grandmasters didn’t care. On her father’s back, her small body bouncing to the cadence of his footsteps as they fled their family’s inn, Sichen watched the fighters with unafraid curiosity. Even as ceramic shattered and geese honked and people shouted, even as a broken oxcart flew into the air with a braying ox in tow, even as magic tightened like a fist about to strike, the grandmasters had eyes only for each other.

Sichen was fourteen when the grandmasters clashed again. One moment, she was blearily feeding the chickens, catching what she could of the morning light streaking through the yews, and then the earth was shaking and Old Man Ping’s house was gone. He was still there, yawning in bed, before he realized he had no walls. (To this day, the people of Zhining were still finding bits of Old Man Ping’s roof scattered across town, like fragments of broken teeth.) He made a noise Sichen thought only harpies could make, said a word she wasn’t allowed to say, then took off toward the nearest building for shelter, which unfortunately was the inn. As her fathers came out with blankets and mortified expressions, Sichen stared at the rubble, pulverized in a blast of concentrated qi that arced from across town, which could only mean one thing: the grandmasters were back.

Sichen eagerly stepped into the street to get a better look, but then her dad’s hand was on her shoulder and her father was calling her from inside. It wasn’t safe, she was a child, she had chores. “Little Chen,” her dad scolded, guiding her away from the street. “Those grandmasters despise each other. You don’t want to be caught in their fury, do you?”

With a final, forlorn look in the direction of the grandmasters who despised each other, Sichen trudged indoors.

Sichen was twenty-two when the grandmasters clashed again. Old Man Ping’s granddaughter Leyue had come back to Zhining to take care of him and was helping out at Sichen’s inn to earn extra coin. Even outside of work, Sichen found herself spending time with Leyue: wasting coppers at the drinkhouse, laughing about nothing, teaching each other martial forms they’d picked up here and there. Neither were cultivators, but that idle Quain hope was strong in their hearts: “maybe one day.” They were sitting by the docks, the glistening waters of the Dragon Sweat Run as bright and promising as gold. Their hands touched; Sichen’s pulse quickened. She leaned in, but the river surged.

Roaring like a dragon made of shimmering taels, the water smashed onto the bank three hundred bu away. Sichen grabbed Leyue’s wrist and pulled her from the crumbling jetty. Waves undulated, subsuming fishing boats and spitting angry brine at the shouting, fleeing harborside merchants. A cultivator stood on the bank, a single arm outstretched, the pummeling deluge of river water parted in dark slices at her feet. She was a lithe, handsome woman with short black hair and a temperate face that made Sichen think of a temple statue. Sichen recognized her immediately: she was one of the two grandmasters from eight years ago; from nineteen years ago. Her face and body were virtually unchanged. A dim memory rose—her father, pulling her aside, having found the cultivation books Sichen had spent a whole month’s tips on. Cultivators are to commoners as the Dragon Sweat Run is to a single drop of water... and grandmasters are to cultivators what the ocean is to the Run.

A second cultivator flitted above the rushing, swirling water. Colorful robes billowed around her body. She was a fat woman, cloaked in power and magic, her face a pure halo of beauty that left Sichen breathless. Even after she and Leyue ran to safety, Sichen couldn’t shake the image of those two grandmasters glowering at each other, focused and limitless, as though each of them were the only thing the other could see.

Over the course of Sichen’s life, the grandmasters clashed a few more times in Zhining, making all other duels in the village seem trite in comparison. Although their property damage was considerable, the grandmasters’ blows never fell on bystanders. Stories of the decades-long rivalry spread throughout the province, drawing tourists and traders to such an extent that the magistrate’s son (by now the magistrate himself), commissioned the local stoneworker to erect two statues in their honor by the town gates with a simple plinth: “may their mutual hatred feed our village for years to come.” Some villagers even looked forward to the grandmasters’ clashes, taking bets on when they would next hurtle into town like an unexpected typhoon. Sichen always bet, and she always won.

Sichen was eighty-five when the grandmasters clashed for the last time in Zhining Village. She was managing the front desk of the inn when Leyue came out from the office. Her wife kissed her on the cheek and handed her a coin. “Extra from the ledgers,” she said with a smile. Sichen kissed her back and placed the coin on the ancestral shrine, which bore a small painting of her fathers and Old Man Ping. As she turned back to the customer, a cabbage smashed through the front doors before being drawn back by an implosion of air, shattering the windows on its way out.

Ilustration by Ilina Naydenova

The customers shouted and ducked for cover. Sichen exchanged a look with Leyue, her eyes bright and shining and eager. “Wait here,” she said, then grabbed her cane and ran outside.

The grandmasters were in the inn’s square—her square—and they were fighting with the same single-minded fervor they had for the past eighty-five years. One held a cabbage cart over her head with one arm. The other turned, tore a stone lion from the inn’s doorstep, and held it like a bat. As the other villagers shouted and ran, Sichen stayed at the threshold, watching intensely. The cart flew, the lion swiped through the air, wood exploded, and vegetables burst everywhere. One of the grandmasters grinned cockily as she ripped up another statue; the other raised a second cart over her head—

“Oh, that’s ENOUGH!” Sichen found herself yelling. “Just admit you like each other, already!”

The grandmasters startled. For the first time since Sichen had known them, they looked away from each other—and at her. The inexplicable courage that had filled her froze, like a stag caught in a hunter’s sights. The immensity of not one, but two grandmasters fixing her with their undivided attention was almost too much for her old, mortal body to handle; her heart palpitated, her nerves sang—

The handsome woman laughed. The woman in the colorful robes looked at her with a stunned expression, then she began laughing as well. The sound made Sichen think of Dragon Sweat Run at twilight, the water rushing over the rocks, Leyue’s head in her lap. Then the grandmasters stopped laughing; they took each other’s hands with an intimacy that made Sichen’s cheeks burn, and then they walked. They walked out of the square, they walked through the streets, they walked past the gates, and they were never seen in Zhining Village again.

Leyue came out of the inn, clucking at the damage. “Aiya! Couldn't they have left a tael or two as an apology?”

But Sichen just smiled. “Grandmasters are to regular people as the ocean is to a single drop of water,” she said. “They’re more powerful than anyone can imagine, but they forget the simplest things, like saying ‘I’m sorry’ or ‘Thank you.’” She turned to Leyue with a glimmering look that made her wife’s heart rise to the surface of her chest. “Or ‘I love you.’”

And with that, Sichen kissed Leyue, and they went back inside.

About the Author

Connie Chang (they/he/she) is a queer and trans Chinese-American actual play Game Master, TTRPG designer, and screenwriter who loves threading black-hearted apocalyptica with queer love. They're the GM and Creative Director for Transplanar RPG, an all-transgender, people of color-led, dark fantasy, TTRPG channel telling stories set in an original noncolonial, antiorientalist multiverse. He's currently working on GODKILLER, a two-person holypunk narrative game for one player, the Godkiller, and one Game Master, God. Check her out on Twitter, Itch.io, and TikTok!

To bring this and other Tian Xia stories to life in your Pathfinder game, check out the Pathfinder Lost Omens Tian Xia World Guide (releasing in April) and the Pathfinder Lost Omens Tian Xia Character Guide (releasing in August), both available for preorder now—Customers who subscribe to the Lost Omens product line will receive both books and a complimentary PDF of each upon their respective release!

The Deep Levels!
We’ve delved a lot of dungeons throughout Order of the Amber Die’s history. We’ve delved a few megadungeons too. There is this cool thing that happens when you pass the two-thirds mark of a megadungeon; in 2014, it happened when we reached the eleventh level of The Emerald Spire. In our earlier years, it happened when we reached the third poster map of the Ruins of Undermountain. It happened again during this marathon, when we landed on the eighth level of the Abomination Vaults. You’re close to the end. You can feel the immensity of the megadungeon above you, instead of below you. Barring teleportation, it takes longer and longer each time you trek back up to the surface. Everything is a bit more serious—the pressure to succeed is greater. You’re in what we call “the deep levels” of a megadungeon. Just reaching the deep levels is enough for hand-slaps and hugs around the table, but in the back of your mind is what awaits at the bottom.

To reach the deep levels of the Vaults, we first had to get past some devils who ran the prison level. Quite a few of them actually, but as devils go, one was more important than the rest. Determined to reach the bottom of this megadungeon and stop Belcorra, we cut a deal…with the devil. This is Order of the Amber Die and we’re playing the Black Powder Cadre, so one deal wasn’t nearly enough. We cut DEALS with devils. You can’t hand our GM a whole section of the Adventure Toolbox titled “Infernal Contracts,” without expecting him to entice us into nearly every contract available. Yet, when Adam asked our party of gunslingers if we had Legal Lore, you’d think the answer would be nothing short of silence and smirks. Instead, our Player Captain argued two marathons ago that every human gunslinger in the group should take Clever Improviser, which Matt said was one of the best feats in Pathfinder 2E. Legal Lore, you say? Why, we seem to have a party of outlaws and aspiring attorneys here!

If you need to get caught up, here is our story from the other levels of the Abomination Vaults:

• Introduction
• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4

This marathon saw a couple of gunslinger cameos as additions to the Black Powder Cadre. Grundak, “son of Bashdak,” is an orc gunfighter who joined us with his Barricade Buster from Pathfinder Treasure Vault. It’s worth adding that the clip on the Barricade Buster was impressive; the rest of us were busy reloading while the rookie was plugging away. We were also accompanied by a new companion from Pathfinder Lost Omens Impossible Lands, following the Way of the Triggerbrand and offering some potential melee backup. Our final cameo was from Auralee, playing the cocky yet enigmatic “Lady Sniper,” who likes to wait a while before unslinging her arquebus and quick-scoping a kill.

• Adventure: Hands of the Devil/Eyes of Empty Death
• Marathon Length: 59 hours
• Session Hours: 40hrs, 30min

Every marathon feels different, and for this one we played our hours on level seven under the red light, which made for some serious immersion. We spent most of our three-day weekend trying to locate fragments of a pentagram that would allow us access to the levels below—along with permission from Urevian, a phistophilus. Tess Rajani, wife of Carman Rajani (the future mayor of Otari), signed away her firstborn in what she swore was a deal that outwitted even a contract devil. To make this moment even more intense, Adam laid an actual contract in front of Theodora to sign!

Highlights from Marathon 5:

□ Some of the devils in this megadungeon wield wicked Hellforged weapons. On level seven we found the Hellforge itself, then riddled its smith with bullets. Did you think we’d pass up a new forge, when one of us is married to the most famous blacksmith on this side of Kortos? “The Rajani Hellforge” is now operational, and ready to give Carman the boost to his reputation he’ll need in the next run for mayor! Should we mention our ownership of the Hellforge was part of the deal we signed?

□ Just like the levels above, we encountered more bearded devils on level seven. It could be something that every group experiences while playing the Abomination Vaults Adventure Path, but sustaining an infernal wound from a barbazu is definitely a rite of passage in the Black Powder Cadre. Thanks to PathfinderGuns & Gears, Cauterize effectively shuts down the worry of dying from one of these wounds, and it leaves a nice scar – we like to show them off.

□ We came across a gug that wanted nothing to do with us. Out-of-game, our vets have something personal against gugs. We faced them in The Emerald Spire Project, The Giantslayer Endeavor, and The Strange Aeons Experiment. Now one was right in front of us, sitting quietly in some kind of prison cell. We made a firing line and let the powder fly— only to be served once again by the power of a gug, regardless of what Pathfinder edition we’re in! Across the team, its Furious Claws ability spread out 207 damage in a single round with a few critical hits in there. The ground was littered with facedown gunslingers, and it’s the closest we’ve been to TPK.

□ We stumbled across one of the most memorable chambers of the entire Abomination Vaults so far: a stasis prison, holding an array of nasty creatures that formed a threat level high enough to cause the Core Rulebook to combust. Luckily, it wasn’t the prison that opposed us, but its witchfire warden. Our guns have names, and it was Vlai’s scattergun called “Collateral” that lit up the air like flak. Keep flying lady, you’re easier to hit.

□ One of the things we love about delving a megadungeon is how you get to make a different entrance onto each level, and level eight was hard to beat. We descended on an elevator into a large cavern filled with water, docks, and a few boats. Cypress Hill prepped the scene with “Cock the Hammer” as we spotted forms moving below – undead forms to be precise. One ran for a door and only made it to the handle. Another tried to launch a skiff and never had a chance. We dumped lead on them until the shouts of “cease fire!” echoed off the walls.

Character Deaths

□ With the assistance of devils, kind of dying doesn’t count. It’s all in the fine print.

The Arsenal

There were the occasional doubters when we started this all-gunslingers project. After reaching level eight of the Abomination Vaults, it’s about time to take some credit for just how well this party has handled the majority of what this megadungeon has presented. Let’s be clearer: we’ve just downright trashed a lot of encounters. First off, each gunslinger’s Initial Deed means that many of us start combat with hands free, which means on round one we can draw silversheen, a redpitch bomb, or even grab an edge if we need to. Do you think it’s a ghost? Have our Way of the Drifter draw her ghost touch shortsword. Oh, it a levitating seugathi? Pull! A hulking bone gladiator with resistance? Rocked it with concussive weapon traits. Creatures that climb walls? Just lead them a bit. Fearsome gibbering mouthers? Here’s some extra bludgeoning damage from the harmona gun. Mobs that rush you? That’s what hip-firing with Risky Reload is for. Just make sure to act out blowing on the tip of your barrel after the last shot is fired.

Best Quote from Marathon 5

(staring down a denizen of Leng and his companion—a giant crawling hand)
Zoric: “We should try talking to this guy.”
Tess: “Can’t talk to the hand…”

Current Situation

We disembarked from the elevator down to level eight, then Vlai gave the order: search and destroy. After cleaning out a couple of rooms containing bog-soaked undead, we debated whether or not we wanted to use one of the skiffs to explore the waterways down here. Water and firearms don’t mix, so we’ll likely keep scanning for another path around the level.

More Content:

Our table was brought to life with the help of Blue Table Painting for the miniatures, and Black Bard Studios for custom adventure-specific miniatures/terrain.

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Welcome back to another exciting collection of Pathfinder Infinite & Starfinder Infinite Top Performers!

Pathfinder and Starfinder Infinite is a program that allows you to create content (adventures and locations; monsters; character classes, archetypes, and backgrounds; fiction; etc.) based on Paizo’s intellectual property (IP), including Pathfinder’s Lost Omens campaign setting, and to make some money while you’re at it. Your work might even be recognized by the community and earn you an invitation into the Infinite Masters elite creator program.

For more info on Pathfinder Infinite, Starfinder Infinite, and how to get started, check out the FAQs!

January’s Top Performers

Titles are ranked by an average of units sold and revenue earned and presented in alphabetical order. Asterisks indicate titles that have been on a best-seller list previously. Because they’ve consistently topped the list, and due to the number of their titles that typically take up spots, “Team+” and “Team Index” have asked to be removed from the calculations for ongoing top performers lists. This will allow newer publishers or book series to get more attention. Thanks, all!

Pathfinder Infinite Top Performers

The ABCDs of Edicts and Anathema

Dive deeper into the new system of Edicts and Anathema from the Pathfinder Second Edition remaster. Over 700 edicts and anathemas for the ABCD of character creation: Ancestry, Background, Class, Deity.

Eldritch Expansions—Rainbow of Elements*

A kineticist expansion from Eldritch Osiris Games. With 8 new elements, you can become a master of the elemental energies of: aether, awareness, light, shadow, spirit, time, vitality, and void! In addition, you can find expansions for the elements of: air, earth, fire, metal, water, and wood as well as composite elements and expansions to the monk class and houses of perfection!

Kitsune of Golarion Remastered

Providing an in-depth expansion of Pathfinder Second Edition's vulpine ancestry, Kitsune of Golarion Remastered provides players and GMs alike with everything they need to make this vibrant ancestry of shape-shifting fox folk feel at home in the Age of Lost Omens. Based on the Gold Best-Selling product Kitsune of Golarion, this product aims to not only remaster but redefine the content from this original offering into an indispensable product for the entire table, tailless or not.

Player Core 1 Expanded*

Has inspiration struck, but Player Core 1 doesn't have a subclass to fit? Whether you are looking for a Cleric spy, a swaggering Rogue, or a Druid with a will of Steel, you will find myriad options within, made by 4 Infinite Masters and specially tuned for the PF2e Remaster! Feats, subclasses, focus spells, and more for the classes of Player Core 1.

Shattered Omens of Golarion*

The reality of Golarion is coming undone after the loss of one of its greatest deities, and it's up to heroes like you to hold it together. Shattered Omens of Golarion is a collection of over 2 years of work consolidated into one tome. Inside, you'll find over 185 pages of Remastered player options, including new ancestry and class feats, backgrounds, heritages, spells, and magic items. 

Starfinder Infinite Top Performers

A Lurker’s Subclasses, Vol III

A wide variety of subclasses, feats, and alternate class options—whether it comes from mastering the use of sound to bringing religion to the more physical classes. And let us not forget options of various levels of technology, from Steampunk, to tech which is science fiction even to Starfinder, to bringing forward old favorites from Pathfinder.

Creatures from the Drift*

Creatures from the Drift is a supplement for Starfinder players and GMs, introducing a vast array of new foes from the depths of the Drift. Ranging from Cybernetic Fae to Drift-warped animals, these beings are unlike anything seen in the Pact Worlds. But thankfully there are also new feats, themes, and a plethora of companion pets to help you survive the mysterious entities from the Drift—including a whole new playable race!

Enhanced Mechanic

Experience the new Enhanced mechanic—revised for balanced and easier play. This expansion includes several new and revised mechanic tricks, drone chassis, and drone mods.

Galactic Magic: The Feats Chapter

A slew of feats for spellcasters of any class and some love for new classes, designed by Owen K.C. Stephens, Dustin Knight, and Sasha Laranoa Harving.

Starfinder Infinite: Mech Threat Manual*

Towering mechs, ancient elementals, territorial kaiju, and many more mech-scale threats can be found in Starfinder Infinite: Mech Threat Manual! Inside, you’ll find a spread of the latest mech creations of the Outer Sphere, deadly carnivorous mechform mimics, oozes that can slip inside a mech to throttle the operator or take over the machine entirely, and more. This book provides a variety of themed threats for use in mech combat at all levels of play, and all mechs within were made in accordance with the recommended alternative rules for creating NPC mechs from Starfinder: Tech Revolution. 

New & Exciting from Infinite Masters!

Want to see what’s been cooking in the Infinite Masters’ alchemy lab? Here’s a selection of new products from some of our Infinite Masters—and some pieces that have caught their eyes!

• The Godsrain Contingencies—Player options based on the Godsrain Prophecies, including archetypes, feats, new deities, and more! Updating with each prophecy.
• The ABCDs of Edict and Anathema—Updated feats and character creation information to expand on edict and anathema.

Hello, Starfinders! We’ve got a packed month for you, so let’s dive right in!

Our metaplot continues as the Order of Dawning Fate progresses their plans, unleashing a devastating disaster weapon against a planet in the Vast. Not yet certain which planet the Order is targeting, the Starfinder Society is forced to dispatch teams to numerous planets, spreading their forces thin. You’ve been assigned the planet of Relthune, which is currently experiencing extensive tectonic activity. Race through a city in chaos to find the Order of Dawning Fate, deactivate their weapon, and bring their schemes to an end. Yet, the Starfinders won’t go uncontested! You will face with enemies old and new and be opposed by one of the founders of the Order of Dawning Fate—the drow Kebzec!

With the fate of an entire city in your hands, every second matters. Better make it count!

Starfinder Society Scenario #6-13: Beginning of the End is an adventure for 5th- through 8th-level characters written by Isis Wosniakowska.

Left to Right: Illustrations by José Luis Islas López and Kevin Sardinha.

Meanwhile, back in the Pact Worlds, a team of Starfinders is dispatched to solve a mystery!

For months, citizens of the kasathan colony ship, Idari, have vanished without a trace, disappearing from the idyllic Sea of Grass for an unknown fate. As the number of missing increases, accusations fly at the inhabitants of the nearby Red Corridors, a subterranean neighborhood home to anarchists, criminals, and kasathas looking to flout the deeply ingrained traditions of modern kasathan society. Despite the danger, citizens of both the Sea of Grass and the Red Corridors remain distrustful of the ruling Doyenate and refuse to cooperate with ship security. Fearing that rising tensions could erupt in violence, the captain of the Idari calls for help from an old friend: First Seeker Ehu Hadif and the Starfinder Society. It’s up to you to find the missing!

Starfinder Society Scenario #6-14: The Missing is an adventure for 1st- through 4th-level characters written by Kim Frandsen.

Take care, Starfinders!

Jessica Catalan
Starfinder Society Developer

---

Hello, Pathfinders and welcome to your official second month of the year!

This month, the Equal Exchanges metaplot deepens further as a team of Pathfinders is sent to a strange island that defies all scrying and divination magic. The team is there to document whatever may have been left behind in a laboratory known as the Tsevel Center, previously run by the now-defunct Conference Z, the occult research section of the Aspis Consortium. The Waterfall has also tasked the Pathfinders with locating an artifact for her, that of a small, wooden box. As the Pathfinders explore the center, another soul lingers and watches them, wondering if they’ll prove to be friend or foe. Now’s definitely not the time to lose your head!

Pathfinder Society Scenario #5-11: Equal Exchanges – The Hidden Current is an adventure for 7th- through 10th-level characters written by Michael Bramnik.

Left to Right: Illustrations by Rodrigo Gallo and Carol Azevedo

Meanwhile, things are heating up in Thuvia, at least for some unfortunate Pathfinder agents—namely you. Someone has spread rumors that the PCs are transporting the valuable sun orchid elixir, instead of some reference books ordered by Zarta Dralneen. Only the desperate and foolish would fall for such an obvious lie, but, as Pathfinders, they’re excellent at attracting trouble from those types in spades.

Specifically, this quest is set up so the GM has 3 groups of enemies to choose from, each bamboozled by the rumor, but can disrupt the actual mission just as well. Since it's repeatable, there will always be another rumor to squash. Just don't disappoint Zarta and get her books stolen.

Pathfinder (Series 2) Quest #17: Escorting a Mirage is an adventure for 1st- through 4th-level characters written by Glen Parnell.

Josh Foster
Pathfinder Society Developer

Shay Snow
Pathfinder Society Developer

While it would require someone with far more expertise to confirm this absolutely, I am now convinced that this set of so-called prophecies are all authored by the same hand. Some of this is due to the handwriting on the documents that have been found in more pristine condition (it is perhaps fitting that a prophecy dedicated to the death of the Lucky Drunk was found on a scrap of parchment that looked like it had been dragged through the floor of more than one tavern), but the rest I attribute both to the places in which they were discovered and, I believe, the rhythm of the writing (though I would be a bit more sure of that if I had read The Peculiarities of Prophetic Speech more closely despite what I believe to be a truly excessive number of footnotes). I am sure that Lorminos knows someone who can confirm my beliefs if needed. That is if, of course, my Lady wants a set of writings so inflammatory to be so widely seen. I am far from convinced of the truth of any of them, and a single author could point as much to a singular troublemaker wishing to create strife as someone with a sudden gift of foresight.

—Yivali, Apprentice Researcher for the Lady of Graves

---

The Death of Cayden Cailean

Cayden Cailean had never thought himself a liar. A storyteller, sure, in the tradition of the tavern, where convincing someone of your worth might mean a refilled tankard. Who among his fellow patrons hadn’t added enemies to boost their tale of combat or invented some new twice-trapped room deep within the dungeon of a newly fallen foe? To claim that he’d become a god was more than normal boasting, but he couldn’t quite remember what had happened with the Starstone. Maybe he had passed its test and that was what kept him alive. Maybe he’d become a god and godhood felt no different than mortal existence. Maybe he would take another round of good ale on the house (a thank you from the barkeep for the honor of his presence). Maybe as he told his tale he could almost believe it. At least until the nightly dreams began.

They started off as flashes, tiny moments in the dark of night—a clanging sword that echoed down a long and shadowed hallway, the smell of new-cut marble turned impossibly acrid, the taste of blood and honey in the space behind his tongue. And still, no matter what they were, each vision woke him shuddering—skin drenched in sweat, heart racing wildly, cold breeze crawling up his spine, a voice he’d never heard before that whispered in his eardrums—liar, drunkard, cheater, thief. One day you will pay for this with everything you owe.

Cayden Cailean would never call himself a cheater. How could he know belief alone could make a deity? But every time the story spread that he had passed the Test of Starstone, something shifted in him, brought him that much closer to true divinity. By the time he heard his story chanted like a rowdy prayer, he was every inch the god that he had claimed to be. He did his best to share the gift, empower those who followed him, pass blessings out like cups of drink to those who strived for freedom. But no good deed had earned him pity from the voice that stalked his dreams, a whisper he now recognized as that of the Starstone itself, murmuring about the flask that he kept tight against his waist—forbidden, stolen, holy power. There will be a reckoning.

The flask was Cayden’s property from long before the Starstone, but now it held a draft he’d brought back from the Cathedral—a distillation of the power held within its core. And while he still could not remember what he’d done to make or bring it back, he knew that every sip gave him a taste of the divine. His followers’ convictions may have been the thing that made him a god, but all beliefs grow worn and frayed and faded over time. No matter who believed in him, he knew one thing down to his core: the liquid in his flask was what kept his lie alive.

But every tiny sip of nectar took his dreams on twisted paths, until he dreamt of death in the Cathedral every night. And after he had died each way the Test of Starstone could devise—some with the sound of steel on bone, some with the fall of flesh to floor, some with a bargain on his tongue that faded in a gasping breath—it left him with a final and unalterable verdict: time for you to pay your debt, return to mortal life.

Cayden Cailean had never minded being mortal, but as his story shifted, he mourned his legacy. Word spread, as words are wont to do, of his deceitful rise to grace, and those who’d raised his name in praise could barely muster pity. The innkeepers and brewers he’d counted as his worshipers now barred him from their premises, afraid they would be thought of as complicit in his lie, and soon the one-time god had faded out of public life, so far removed that no one knows quite how and where he died. Some say it happened in an alley, slumped over in the pouring rain, while others claim he died in battle fighting for a righteous cause, or braved the Starstone once again in one last fatal try.

Iomedae and Norgorber, as fellow gods Ascended, both moved to quell the rumors that they had also cheated to obtain divinity—Iomedae appearing on the front lines with her champions in tireless demonstrations of her prowess on the battlefield and Norgorber eliminating each one of his followers who dared to voice dissent or wonder who he used to be. But neither sees the true change that still lurks along the margins, as one after another shop begins to claim that, for a cost, you too can be transformed from mortal life to deity. If all it takes is stories and a liquor no one understands (as noted in a few reports of Cayden’s sad demise), then nothing stops a hundred shops from selling sugar water and a complement of town criers to those who feel that being god is next on their agenda—a warlord here, a despot there, the righteous and the vengeful—and what new revolution might they bring if they do rise?

---

A god created from belief alone? That is both deeply intriguing and somewhat baffling, as this is the first report I’ve read of such an occurrence. Surely if this were truly possible, I’d have encountered it before in my studies. This will require more research, though with what time I will pursue it I know not. It does make me wonder how many believers one might have to acquire to cross the boundary from mortal to god, and whether belief was nearly as important in this case as the Starstone nectar mentioned above. I have no doubt that if someone were able to distill a liquor from a source of pure divine power, it would be Cayden Cailean, but for those of us not blessed with that specific set of skills, I am struck by the idea that you could solve for number of believers and gain divinity simply by exceeding that threshold. Equations are not my strong suit, but I may see if I can find a collaborator and determine what that number might be. Though it might be difficult to do without revealing where the idea has come from. Perhaps it would be better to wait until I have all the prophecies properly analyzed and know what my Lady wishes to do with them before I begin making them a basis for a new research field, but it is hard not to get excited!

About the Author

Erin Roberts has been thrilled to be able to contribute a few small threads to the fabric of Golarion in the pages of books like Lost Omens Firebrands, Lost Omens Highhelm, and Lost Omens Travel Guide. In addition to her work for Paizo, she freelances across the TTRPG world (and was selected as a Diana Jones Award Emerging Designer Program Winner in 2023), has had fiction published in magazines including Asimov’s, Clarkesworld, and The Dark, and talks about writing every week on the Writing Excuses podcast. Catch up with her latest at linktr.ee/erinroberts.

What’s a Desna?

Some two-hundred months ago, I was a wrecked ball of frazzled nerves as I waited for the verdict to come in on the very first Pathfinder Adventure Path. This was before Pathfinder was its own RPG, and while I had experience writing and developing three previous Adventure Paths, this was the first one that wasn’t tied to an established world.

We were starting from scratch.

Not only was my adventure, “Burnt Offerings,” kicking off the first Pathfinder Adventure Path, but that volume also had to present a brand new campaign setting, complete with its own pantheon of gods, new weapons and items, world maps, new monsters, and more, all at the same time. Before “Burnt Offerings,” no one knew what a starknife was, who Desna was, or where Sandpoint was but me. All of those things (and quite a bit more) were part of my homebrew campaign, exported into the new Paizo setting largely as a time-saving stunt so that we didn’t have to build everything from nothing in a few months of frenzied creativity. Fortunately, we had an entire company of incredibly creative folks and amazing artists (in particular Wayne Reynolds and his iconic goblins) to support the adventure, and by the time that first Adventure Path came to a close, Golarion was off to the races.

And so here we are, waiting for the 200th volume of the Pathfinder Adventure Path to hit store shelves, and I just wanted to extend a heartfelt thank you to all of the folks who helped keep this thing going over the years—and to all of the gamers who kept their subscriptions going and spent countless hours exploring the adventures we’ve been creating. You’re all the reason we made it this far, after all, and unlike the first time I wrote about Sandpoint and its many troubles, this time I’m confident it’s here to stay.

Well... unless one of those seven dooms gets loose and has its way!

James Jacobs
Narrative Creative Director

Shadows Under Sandpoint

Coming back to Sandpoint to celebrate the 200th volume of the Pathfinder Adventure Path isn’t just a return to the site of the very first Pathfinder adventure back in our very first volume in 2007—it’s a return to the town where the Pathfinder RPG was truly born, in the very first Paizo office campaign to use the new rules. As players around the world were playing one of our first four Adventure Paths, the Paizo creative staff itself (or at least a very large portion of it) gathered in our office conference room to explore James Jacobs’s Shadows Under Sandpoint campaign.

Players like Jason Bulmahn, F. Wesley Schneider, Rob McCreary, PaizoCon co-founder Tim Nightengale, Sean K Reynolds, Christopher Paul Carey, James L. Sutter, and more gathered weekly to explore the town, facing off against foes like Pillbug Podiker, the menacing undead Kanker, the maddening Red Bishop, and even the Sandpoint Devil itself in a campaign that spanned the first few years of the Pathfinder RPG era. Traces of these adventures have appeared in previous Pathfinder products. The old Pathfinder Chronicles NPC Guide contained early stats for the characters of everyone listed above, and in the few times we’ve revisited Sandpoint in print since Rise of the Runelords, more NPCs and other plot developments have worked their way in, a palimpsest record of our original adventures hidden between the sheets of official Pathfinder material. Heck, my own character in James’s game, Ostog the Unslain, is now a genuine regent in the Land of the Linnorm Kings, a development right out of the final session of that old office campaign.

Now, with Seven Dooms for Sandpoint, James has pulled together all these threads into a new narrative that features many of the same challenges and foes that went into our original game—an office game that literally influenced the development of the Pathfinder rules and world more than perhaps any other.

It’s not every day that a monthly periodical manages 200 volumes. The predecessor to Pathfinder Adventure Path, the venerable Dungeon Magazine, only lasted 150 issues. A rare milestone like this calls for reflection, and for celebration. We hope you enjoy facing off against the Seven Dooms just like we did in the Paizo offices more than a decade ago, when we weren’t even sure Pathfinder would last 20 volumes, let alone 200.

Here's to Sandpoint, to Pathfinder, and to at least 200 more months of adventure on the road ahead!

Erik Mona
Publisher

This is Where I Came In

Let’s fiddle with the Scepter of Ages a little and bounce back to the quieter times of 2007. I learn that the excellent Dungeon and DragonMagazinesare ceasing publication and Paizo, this little company that put the excellence into those magazines says that they’ve got this monthly Pathfinder thing they’re making that will carry the torch of the Adventure Path forward. I liked their stewardship of the magazines, so I took the option to roll my subscription over to this new endeavor. When “Burnt Offerings” (Pathfinder Adventure Path #1) arrived at my house, I was greeted with a tale of evil wizards from a forgotten empire waking into a world already full of uncertainty and hard people eking out a living in a remote corner. And goblins. Delightfully maniacal goblins. I immediately volunteered to run it for my group as soon as we wrapped our current campaign.

Maybe it’s because it was my first taste or maybe it was because the place oozed with colorful characters full of life (and potential conflict), but Sandpoint has been a gold standard of the small fantasy town in my eyes. It’s small enough to have that “everyone knows everyone else’s business” thing going, but big enough that there’s always some shady goings on when the town goes to sleep.

Years later, I joined the company while we were working on “Skull & Shackles”—so, well after most of the foundational Runelords work was done or the return to Sandpoint in “Jade Regent”—but I helped out with “Shattered Star,” wrote for “Return of the Runelords,” and developed both Sandpoint: Light of the Lost Coast and this—the 200th volume of the Pathfinder Adventure Path, a return to Sandpoint to save the first town I came to love in the world of Golarion. I in no way created Sandpoint or the Runelord saga—that’s James’ crown to bear—but I’d like to think I’ve guided it a bit.

Adam Daigle
Director of Game Development

And before any of y’all ask in the comments below... Yes, our digital-play-loving friends, this adventure is getting support from Foundry VTT and it will be available on the same day as the PDF! In fact, since this is a big deal—being the 200th Adventure Path volume and all—the team over there is pulling out all the stops and making this one fancy. In addition to the usual stellar maps and smooth play experience, It will include a fully-integrated, original musical score and special digital dice themed specifically for Seven Dooms for Sandpoint!

Pre-Order The Seven Dooms For Sandpoint Adventure Path Today!

Howdy! Luis Loza here! Last time, we peeked at the cover for Player Core 2 and took a look at look at the conspirator dragon that had earned a spot on the cover. This time I’ve decided to share the draconic wealth and showcase the new fortune dragon. Let’s have a look!

Illustration by Kent Hamilton

Fortune dragons are the other arcane dragon featured in Monster Core. Similar to the mirage dragon, the fortune dragon embodies direct control over magic. Unlike its cousin, the fortune dragon is less about a specific type of magic and more about raw magical power.

Magical energy and magical potential exist everywhere, and much like a person breathing in air, a fortune dragon constantly draws in magical energy from their surroundings. They use these energies to empower their magical abilities, or even heal their wounds. Though they are arcane dragons, their frames are noticeably bulkier than the typical frame of their other arcane cousins, and marked by one distinctive feature: their treasure. The constant drawing of magical energy creates a strange sort of magnetism that causes coins, gems, and magical items to cling to the body of a fortune dragon. This energy even flows through the items themselves, causing many of them to heat up and melt in the process.

Since fortune dragons are constantly drawing on magical energy, they have the capability of actively drawing from large surges of energy and using it for themselves. While they use spontaneous magic, a fortune dragon can recharge their magic by feeding upon other spells that affect them, turning a foe’s magic into fuel for their own spell. More powerful fortune dragons even have an aura of magical disruption, which makes consuming spells in this way an automatic process. Fortune dragons can unleash blasts of pure magical energy, manifesting as force damage, to hurt others. These blasts are disruptive as well, making others stupefied and leading to more disrupted spells that a fortune dragon can consume.

Of course, a fortune dragon has an enormous hoard of wealth in their lair. These hoards are typically larger than those of other dragons. A significant amount of a fortune dragon’s hoard is effectively worthless, however. Countless relics litter these hoards, each drained of their innate magic, with any inherent value left in the form of non-magical materials. A fortune dragon typically keeps their most valued treasures deep within their hoard or even directly attached to their bodies.

That’s our look at the fortune dragon! Make sure to keep an eye out for this dragon and lots of other new dragons when Monster Core releases in March. Stay tuned for more draconic previews in the coming weeks. Next time, we’ll take a look at the mighty horned dragons. See you then!

Luis Loza
Creative Director, Rules & Lore

I’ve always been a fan of the immersion factor that music and sound bring to TTRPGs. I have fond memories from the olden times of collecting sound effect CDs from the Halloween store to use as background ambience for dungeon-crawling sessions (and then probably going through far too much effort trying to make the setting and the encounters at least sort of match the audio). Granted, those weren’t always the best—if you’ve never had the pleasure of engaging in a tense roleplaying session that keeps getting interrupted by random screams and cackling like an extra in a rubber clown mask at a third-tier state fair funhouse, you’re missing out—but fortunately, the breadth and quality of available sound and ambience options have come a long way since then.

Music is the same way. When you’re sitting around the table and your GM hits play on something from the “Conan the Barbarian” soundtrack, you know it’s time for some bad guys to get sworded and/or sorceried. When you hear that Shire theme from the “Lord of the Rings” soundtrack, you know you’re about to enter a pastoral little hamlet full of relatable NPCs that your GM will make you fall in love with before shamelessly brutalizing and/or endangering them to raise the emotional stakes. There’s a track on the “Pirates of the Caribbean” soundtrack that I’ll always associate with a particularly nail-biting combat against a BBEG (more than I associate it with the movie itself) just because it happened to come on at exactly the right time.

Anyway, where was I going with this? If you read the final paragraph of our Season of Ghosts blog last week, you may have caught our announcement that Paizo has officially partnered with Michael Ghelfi Studios—one of the industry’s leading producers of music and audio specifically tailored for TTRPGs—to produce original music for select and upcoming Pathfinder Adventure Paths! You can go check out our official Season of Ghosts Adventure Path trailerfeaturing a taste of that music, and download the first track—aptly titled “Season of Ghosts”—absolutely free, right here!

Well, I’m excited to announce that our next two Adventure Paths—Seven Dooms for Sandpoint and Wardens of Wildwood—will both receive full-length soundtrack albums of their own, which we hope to release alongside the first volume of each Adventure Path so that you can use it to set the stage for your adventures from day one. Each album is being created completely from scratch by a member of Michael Ghelfi’s award-winning team of composers, working from input provided by each Adventure Path’s lead developer on key themes, inspirations, major characters, and story beats. It’s our hope that, not only will this awesome music enhance your games today, but that years from now you’ll be able to listen to a track from one of these albums and immediately associate it with a memorable NPC or moment from your own campaign, much as I associate this track with the time my character critically fumbled and accidentally dropped his weapon off the side of a boat.

We’ll be offering each of these albums as complete downloads on the Paizo store, and shortly after release, they’ll also be available on Michael Ghelfi Studios’ Bandcamp, Spotify, Opus, YouTube, and probably anywhere else you like to purchase digital music. Oh, and just because we think it’s cool, we’ll also be including the complete Seven Dooms for Sandpoint album with the adventure module for Foundry VTT, all cued up and ready to score your valiant attempts to save Sandpoint from utter destruction.

And there’s more on the way! We can’t share all of our plans just yet, but we can heavily insinuate that we don’t plan on stopping here. Watch this space!

Andrew White
Digital Products Lead

Today, we debut a series of sample encounters previewing some of the creatures from the pages of Pathfinder Monster Core, the next release in the Pathfinder Second Edition Remaster Project. This encounter, from Josh Birdsong, features the first look at the quai dau to and makes use of Pathfinder Flip-Mat: Night Market & Shrine.

The Sound of Love — Moderate 11

This encounter takes place at a shrine for the Black Butterfly. Your PCs could have heard rumors of the shrine or have been invited to a heartbondritual taking place at the sanctuary. The shrine is a series of smaller altars and sanctuaries that were built to be traveled between in utter silence with respect to the Black Butterfly, allowing travelers to meditate on the silence between.

The PCs are given an opportunity to reflect on their previous adventures and meditate on their future choices. If they choose to travel in silence, they become more aware of the beautiful vista before them. They notice how green the trees are and how beautiful the nearby river sounds as it tumbles on its way, unconcerned with the happenings of the world around it. The air begins to smell fresher and cool against their skin. PCs who remain silent during their travels gain a +1 status bonus to Perception checks while traveling between the altars.

When the PCs arrive at the final altar, they are welcomed by a small gathering of nobles who decided this shrine was the perfect location for their heartbond ritual. When the ceremony begins, trumpets are sounded to announce the union to the world. Unbeknownst to the nobles, a quai dau to stealthily hunts nearby, and the sound of trumpets sends it on a rampage. It inflates and flies towards the ceremony with rage in its eyes.

Map: This map uses a portion of the Pathfinder Flip-Mat: Night Market & Shrine

Creatures: The local quai dau to normally hunts the river in peace, leaving the silent visitors of the shrine alone. However, they are very sensitive to loud noises and the trumpets, which caused the beast great distress. The quai dau to will attack the creature making the most noise. PCs can spend an action to calm the beast (DC 32 Nature check), provided they can get everyone else to become completely quiet. This DC is reduced by 5 if the quai dau to is reduced to 150 HP or lower. The beast will flee if reduced to 50 HP or lower.

---

Illustration by Gunship Revolution

Quai Dau To Creature 13

Huge, Beast

Perception +25; darkvision, mist vision, scent (imprecise) 120 feet
Skills Athletics +27, Stealth +25, Survival +24
Str +8, Dex +4, Con +8, Int –3, Wis +5, Cha –1

Mist Vision The quai dau to ignores the concealed condition from mist and fog.

AC 32; Fort +26, Ref +19, Will +21
HP 300; Immunities blinded, dazzled; Weaknesses sonic 15

Frightful Sight (aura, emotion, fear, mental, visual) 60 feet. This aura functions as a DC 32 frightful presence aura (page 359), but a creature doesn’t attempt its save until it sees the quai dau to.

Reflective Scales [reaction] Trigger A creature within 30 feet casts a spell with the light trait or uses an ability with the light trait; EffectThe quai dau to adjusts its position to reflect the light off their scales in a blinding display. All creatures in a 30-foot emanation must succeed at a DC 33 Fortitude saving throw or become blinded for 1 round.

Speed 40 feet, swim 30 feet; Inflate

Melee jaws [one-action] +27 (reach 10 feet), Damage 3d12+14 piercing

Melee tail [one-action] +27 (reach 20 feet), Damage 3d8+14 bludgeoning

Melee foot [one-action] +27 (agile), Damage 3d8+14 bludgeoning

Drain Water [one-action] (manipulate) Requirements The quai dau to is within 10 feet of a body of water that’s at least 10 feet deep and their water sac is empty; Effect The quai dau to sucks water through their trunk to fill their water sac, lowering the level in the body of water by 10 feet. All creatures in the water within a 30-foot emanation are off-guard until the start of the quai dau to’s next turn.

Inflate [one-action] The quai dau to inflates their body. They become Gargantuan, gain a fly Speed of 30 feet until the end of their next turn, and then Fly. They deflate if they fall unconscious or Dismiss this effect.

Mist Breath [one-action] (primal, water) Requirements The quai dau to’s water sac is full; Effect The quai dau to empties their water sac to breathe out mist in a 10-foot emanation. All creatures within the mist become concealed, and all creatures outside the mist become concealed to creatures within it. The mist dissipates after 1 round.

Spout Water [two-actions] (primal, water) Requirements The quai dau to’s water sac is full; Effect The quai dau to empties its water sac to blast water from its trunk, dealing 9d10 bludgeoning damage to all creatures in a 90-foot line, with a DC 33 basic Reflex save. A creature that fails is pushed 10 feet (or 20 feet on a critical failure).

As I continue my reading of the Godsrain Prophecies’ dire predictions of the deaths of various gods, it should be noted (and will be, in the compiled report for my Lady), that their existence as a collection brings into question the validity of each one. I believe that a corollary of the Windsong Paradox explains this best (as unsettling as this discovery of “prophecy” has been, I relish the opportunity to apply one of my favorites!): each individual prophecy exists independent of the others, as if they each occur in their own solitary void (note, for example, the mention here of a living Pharasma).This means they cannot all be true and, per the corollary, the chance of any of them being true is lessened¹. A reassuring thought that I am happy to consider!

¹In all fairness, a counter-argument could be made that one of the Godsrain Prophecies is correct in full, with all others either invalidated by its truth or purposefully created to mislead, but I tend to believe my initial theory (perhaps, if nothing else, because it is a bit more comforting).

—Yivali, Apprentice Researcher for the Lady of Graves

---

The wound that kills Asmodeus has ached for countless eons, and still he has no memory of how Ihys drew blood. He knows the war between them, can hear the ringing battle cries as he fought hard for order, and Ihys, sympathetic fool, set chaos in his sights. He sees his brother’s hand outstretched, can feel the arm against his back, remembers what it tasted like to plunge his sword into his kin, but never feels the moment that some blade or nail sliced at his leg, has only blood upon his hands to prove that he was hit.

Some days the cut is barely there, a scratch upon his surface, a moment’s irritation as he moves from place to place. But other days, it festers into leaking, pulsing wetness, a shooting pain that drips and strikes and stops him where he stands. He spends those days in agony, sealed deep within the Catafalque, encouraging the rumors of his secret chamber of delights, returning only when the wound has calmed itself again.

He’s known, somewhere inside himself, that this would be what felled him, but somehow, in his final steps, he still feels disbelief. How can one cut unravel everything that he has been and done, the worlds that he has built and wrecked, the Hell he has created? He stumbles through the empty hall, his body crashing to the ground, a rictus of shocked agony carved deep into his face. Perhaps it is a mercy that he cannot see what happens next, does not perceive the brother who emerges in his place. Ihys, summoned by the force that kept the gash forever open. Ihys, who, with sorrowed glance, replaces him upon his throne. Ihys, who believed in taking mercy on the mortals, giving them their freedom even when they broke and twisted things, seeing good inside their souls as something worth the sacrifice. Ihys, now the Prince of Darkness. Ihys, Lord of Hell.

Deep inside the Catafalque, the new god works deliberately, taking time to understand the Hell his brother wrought. He finds a few things to preserve—the contract of creation and its binding power on the gods, the prison that holds Rovagug, whose key he’s now charged with keeping—and vows he will uphold them in Asmodeus’s name. The rest he’s ready to unmake, but slowly, with the greatest care. This time he will not act in haste. This time Hell works his way.

He first visits the archdevils, his enemies of ages past, who greet him with their surface smiles and offer false obeisance—some dripping poison-syruped words, some sharpening their blades and fangs, some gathering a mass of shades to wait for new wartime demands. But Ihys understands their ways and flaunts his new divinity, his scepter Archstar swinging in a show of all his power, and while the peace he gains from them may be a prelude to a war, he makes each of Hell’s denizens sign contracts to a new decree—a kinder, gentler punishment for those whose souls have damned them there, a way for those to free themselves who want to choose another path, a safe route as they journey back up from the depths of Hell.

He's visited by deities—some curious, some threatening—who see the shifting way of things and wish to understand. And while Pharasma alters how her psychopomps send souls to him and Sarenrae applauds an ancient ally on his newfound life, the Four Horsemen of Abaddon begin to seek advantages, to plan some future action they may one day undertake.

With Hell remade to suit his likings, Ihys settles on his throne, turns the power of his gaze to fixing mortal things. He pores through every contract that he must now enforce, underlining loopholes that invalidate the cruelest clauses, marking for destruction those he cannot bend or change. With every small relinquishing, the power in some region shifts, as those who felt their contract as a prison or a heavy weight now have the chance to change the old direction of their lives. But none change more than Cheliax, where House Thrune used the power gifted by the Lord of Hell himself to make the many contracts that have kept them on the throne. Ihys rescinds this favor and refuses to grant any more, leaves the realm of Abrogail to manage on its own.

As Ihys rests then, satisfied. He does not hear the whispers, as close as Mephistopheles and far off as Egorian, of bitterness and revolution, hanging in the air. Or if he does, he honors them as choices made of mortal will—whatever comes, he lives and breathes, and he can always start anew. If devils come to challenge him, if Cheliax is torn to shreds, he’s happy to rend everything (with Rovagug set free to feed) and make the world again.

While one might assume an end of Asmodeus’s treachery would presage improvements in the multiverse, this prophecy presents a very different potentiality.

---

I felt such relief while reading this to know that the death of Asmodeus (at least according to this still unproven and unidentified source) might not mean the release of the Rough Beast, only for the prophecy to suggest that Rovagug might still be unleashed? Those who claim that research has no excitement are simply in the wrong field of study. I also must confess that this prophecy has piqued my interest in learning more of the fallen god Ihys—a topic I might not otherwise have considered! It will, though, have to wait. I must reach some conclusion, and still have much to read through, before I can present this to my Lady.

About the Author

Erin Roberts has been thrilled to be able to contribute a few small threads to the fabric of Golarion in the pages of books like Lost Omens Firebrands, Lost Omens Highhelm, and Lost Omens Travel Guide. In addition to her work for Paizo, she freelances across the TTRPG world (and was selected as a Diana Jones Award Emerging Designer Program Winner in 2023), has had fiction published in magazines including Asimov’s, Clarkesworld, and The Dark, and talks about writing every week on the Writing Excuses podcast. Catch up with her latest at linktr.ee/erinroberts.

No fewer than three songs echoed through Hide and the deer kami as they strolled past the vendors lining the streets of Kasai. Unseen drums shook the air, the bass felt as much as it was heard, while flutes and shamisen competed for the rest of the matsuri’s soundscape. Hide’s stomach gurgled, but the festival food they passed—fried chicken, grilled octopus, and omelet-wrapped sausage—were ill-suited to either of their diets.

Ask her if she has one in green. The deer kami’s words appeared in Hide’s mind, as if revealed by receding mist. Similarly, Hide realized they were standing in front of a stall festooned with colorful strings of flowers and staffed by a woman in gray robes.

Nn. I will, Mister Kami.

Because it’s my favorite color.

Nn. I understand. Hide turned to the flower vendor’s stall. If you’d just allow me to—

“Taking your pet for a walk?” murmured the vendor from beneath her mask.

“No, he’s not a pet, he’s...” Hide trailed off as he realized the woman’s eyes were not on him. She snorted and turned her attention to Hide.

“Apologies, sir. I was speaking to your companion.”

“I was the pet?” Hide asked, barely holding his incredulity at bay.

“What can I do for you, sir?” the woman continued, without missing a beat.

“Do you have any green flowers?”

“Not exactly, sir, but I could apply a treatment to some yellow ones. The string won’t stay fresh as long, but—”

The kami pranced excitedly, hooves tippy-tappying in the dirt road. This time, the words he was trying to convey were completely unintelligible to Hide, though the sentiment was clear.

“I think we’ll take one.”

“Wonderful. I’ll just—”

Whatever the vendor said next was lost as the kami’s words washed over Hide. Tell her she doesn’t have to wrap it. The vendor cocked her head slightly and paused gathering her supplies, waiting for her customers’ mental conversation to complete.

“He wants to wear it?” the vendor asked.

“He wants to wear it,” said Hide. “How did you know?”

“Kami often have particular tastes,” replied the vendor. She tugged her mask up a little higher, then laid an ornament of yellow flowers across her table and started waving a wand over it. Blue and green sparks cascaded from her hand, so quickly and brightly that Hide jerked his head away and blinked rapidly. If the sparks caused the masked vendor any discomfort, she didn’t show it. Nor did she show the gold coins that appeared in her hand in a telltale subtle shimmer of transportation magic; they’d disappeared from Hide’s purse while he was blinded by the sparks.

Ilustration by Sammy Khalid

“May I ask,” Hide began, “Why are you dressed in gray while your stall is so colorful?”

The vendor’s eyes sank slightly, and Hide realized the woman had been smiling under her mask until now.

“Life everywhere in Minkai under the Jade Regent was... challenging. We all did what we had to do. And we don’t know what we’ll have to do next.”

Hide was suddenly very aware of the gold chains adorning his robes. His purse felt wrong. The pause lingered too long.

“I didn’t hurt anyone. I just... relocated things and information. Hence the dark gray,” the woman continued.

“I understand. I’ve done similar things. I’m sorry for asking so indelicately.”

“May I ask you a question, sir?” the vendor inquired.

“Of course.”

“Why are you a kami’s traveling companion?”

“This place was all forest once, you know?” said Hide. “That’s a silly statement. I apologize. Obviously, this was once forest. Everything was forest at one time. I mean to say that my friend remembered this place as it was and wanted to return—to see what we humans had done with the space and the trees.”

A smiling crinkle returned to the woman’s eyes. “How nice. I hope he’s not too put off by what he sees.” She paused and shifted her attention to the deer kami. It took a moment for Hide to realize the kami was mentally speaking with her once more.

“That’s a very charitable view of humanity, Mister Kami. Thank you.” The merchant said. She faced Hide again. “Now, it’s my turn to apologize. He pointed out that you didn’t answer my question. Why do you follow the kami?”

“Ah. You’re right. I didn’t,” Hide admitted. He looked to his companion somberly. “It’s something of my calling. After I traded in my sword for a political office, I found myself knowing too much to sleep soundly. I do not think the Empress will return the kami’s lands to them, but that doesn’t mean that kami like Green Rush here should have to stay confined to their forest.”

“So, you’re a chaperone?” the vendor asked.

“Something like that. Perhaps more of a bodyguard, truly.”

Green Rush turned his head towards Hide, as the razor-sharp points of his antlers caught the light. Truly?

“A bodyguard in the same sense that a professional fighter needs someone to limit the danger to would-be aggressors,” Hide answered aloud.

“I thought you said you put down your sword,” probed the vendor as she leaned over her stall’s counter, holding the newly green flower string out for Green Rush.

“I don’t need to use a blade to defend, just as you don’t need to use your hands to collect payment.”

The vendor’s eyes went wide, and she froze as Green Rush’s deadly antlers surrounded her hands. “I—” she started.

“I’m not judging you.” Hide cut her off. “I told you I’ve done similar things. I’m not even upset. You’re doing something nice for our kami guest, making sure he has his favorite color. That’s more than most would do.” Hide lifted his pouch slightly, checking its weight. “Yes, that seems like a fair trade. And it will undoubtedly help you transition to a more... conventional vocation, yes?”

“Yes. Of course, sir,” said the vendor, her relief reducing her voice to a mere whisper. She finished tying the flower string to Green Rush’s antlers, pushed herself upright, and regarded her customers once more. “Will that be all, honored guests?”

“I think there’s just one more detail we need to take care of.”

Beneath the vendor’s mask, a whimper started to form, despite Hide’s calm smile.

“Could I get a receipt? I need one so I can file a reimbursement with the Empress’ government.”

About the Author

Hiromi Cota (they/them) is a writer, developer, and storyteller who has worked on over 100 books and games for Paizo and other publishers. They are proud to have been a part of the phenomenal teams of Asian writers who created the Tian Xia World Guide and Tian Xia Character Guide. Their portfolio of work can be found at hiromicota.com.

To bring this and other Tian Xia stories to life in your Pathfinder game, check out the Pathfinder Lost Omens Tian Xia World Guide (releasing in April) and the Pathfinder Lost Omens Tian Xia Character Guide (releasing in August), both available for preorder now—Customers who subscribe to the Lost Omens product line will receive both books and a complimentary PDF of each upon their respective release!

Lore Masters is releasing a new question pack, aimed at broadening knowledge and proficiency in the spells featured in Player Core.

The pack contains 1,625 questions, comprehensively covering all 325 spells included in Player Core. Its distinct structure sets it apart from other question packs: each spell is accompanied by five questions, each reflecting a different level of difficulty. This design is beneficial for a wide range of players, from those just beginning their journey in wizardry to more seasoned spellcasters, providing challenges and engagement at various skill levels.

Another notable aspect of this question pack is the option to filter questions based on magical traditions—arcane, divine, occult, or primal. This feature allows players to customize their learning experience according to their specific area of interest or expertise in magic.

While the pack does not delve into every detail of each spell, it serves as a valuable resource for understanding key aspects of spellcasting, such as spell rank, casting time, range, and duration. The questions are carefully crafted to emphasize these essential elements, aiding players in grasping the fundamentals of magic and its use in the game.

This pack is highly recommended for those looking to deepen their knowledge of the magical arts.

Download Pathfinder: Lore Masters here:
App Store | Google Play

Greetings, adventurers! We’re Natural Pengu, and we’re developing the Natural Pengu Mobile VTT. We want to bring Pathfinder to your phone and make it available for everyone, from beginners to veterans alike.

We’ve been listening, and your feedback has been very valuable. Today, we’re thrilled to share some significant changes to our platform.

1. The Core Platform: Free and Accessible to All

The core platform is now free for all users! Simply log in at https://pengustudios.com, and you’ll have immediate access to Natural Pengu Mobile VTT and the Player Core Toolkit.

Remember, Natural Pengu Mobile VTT is still in Early Access, so there will be missing features and bugs.

2. GM Unlocks Rules for All

We want to make it easy for you to start a game. If you’re the GM of a room and you own Pathfinder Player Core on Natural Pengu Mobile VTT, your players can access those rules while playing in your room. It’s our way of lowering the threshold for your players to join your game.

3. Snack-Sized Adventures

To make it even easier and faster to start playing, we’ll regularly release Natural Pengu content packs. These include snack-sized mobile adventures with stories, maps, monsters, NPCs, and lore that you can access and play immediately on our VTT.

4. Help Us Keep the Dream Alive

Creating and maintaining a virtual tabletop needs funding, and we trust our community to support us in this endeavor. Simply put, we need to make money to survive. Here’s how you can contribute and support us if you like what we do.

• Content Packs: Buy our content packs that give you snack-sized mobile adventures, stories, maps, monsters, NPCs, and lore. You can either access select packs through one-time purchases or subscribe and get every pack upon release. More information on content pack subscriptions coming soon.
• Paizo PDFs & Integrations: Purchase Paizo PDFs and Natural Pengu Mobile VTT integrations from our marketplace.
• Subscription Tiers: Consider subscribing to our Founder or Legend plans. Right now, only Legends can upload their own art and maps to their Natural Pengu Mobile VTT rooms.
• Kickstarter Campaign: You can pledge to support our ongoing development with our upcoming Kickstarter campaign. Your contribution will directly shape the future of our platform. Sign up for our mailing list to stay updated here: https://pengustudios.com/mailinglist.

Thank You for Your Support!

To our incredible community, thank you for your support and valuable feedback. We can’t wait to hear more about your adventures on Natural Pengu Mobile VTT!

Hail and well met, Pathfinders and Starfinders!
February is recognized in the United States of America as Black History Month, a time when we honor the contributions of Black people to culture, cuisine, science, history, and more. The theme of this year’s Black History Month is African Americans and the Arts, focusing on art as a vehicle for empowerment and a way to preserve history and community.

The Association for the Study of African American Life and History’s cover image for Black History Month, featuring a collage of photos of Black artists and musicians

In honor of Black History Month, Paizo reached out to our Black contributors, content creators, and community members and asked them to share their projects, their joy, and their art! We’re proud and grateful to have such a phenomenal community here at Paizo.

Basil Wright

Basil Wright (he/they/xe)

Basil Wright (he/they/xe) is a Black and Seminole Game Designer and Sensitivity Consultant located in Florida. When writing for Paizo, they wrote The Aucturn Dilemma, a Starfinder bounty. His work has also appeared in All the Witches, Backchannels (Backwater Games), and is forthcoming in Jukebox. Xe has provided sensitivity consulting for MCDM Productions, Brotherwise Games, and many others. 

Currently, Basil is finishing Pelogos, their horror TTRPG about death, grief, and the afterlife. Players can either be an underwater paranormal investigator called a Lantern Keeper, or a sea ghost called an Echo, and can help the living come to terms with their loss. Once that project is complete, they'll be turning their attention to Rancher’s Respite: Call of Nature, an expansion to Rancher's Romance; both are a homage to their mother's expansive love of werewolf rancher romance novels. Their other long-term project is The Afrodyssey, where they intend to translate all 24 books of Homer's Odyssey into African American Vernacular English.

When xe's not working on games, Basil is either playing video games (visual novels, horror, etc.) or (lovingly) pestering xir sibling to make xem more banana jam for xir Monte Cristo sandwiches.

Links

• The Aucturn Dilemma: https://paizo.com/products/btq02ete?Starfinder-Bounty-11-The-Aucturn-Dilemma
• Website: https://towerofbasil.wordpress.com
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/Kobanya_kana
• Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/kobanya.bsky.social

Dan ‘Pan’ Grosset

Dan 'Pan' Grossett started the Cosmopunk podcast (@Cosmopunkpod) with 3 friends and quickly found himself charmed by the passion and friendliness of the Paizo AP Streaming / Podcast community. 

A huge fan of science fantasy, they can be found on Twitter (@Stellarencore) taking part in several other Starfinder shows like: 

• Emergency Power (@EmergencyPwrPod)
• Horizons Unknown (https://youtu.be/-WNurouqtdQ?si=aFArWg6hD61aFQP4)
• Spaceflix & Kill (https://youtu.be/YF9MZ0sL-W4?si=UMUEPhWgrborzCAN).

They are looking forward to Starfinder 2E while helping set up crossover events and dipping their toes into the world of Pathfinder 2E with Euro-focused group, Hoard Of Tales (@hoard_of_tales).

“Coming to the hobby fairly late, I was kicking myself for not taking up TTRPGs sooner. It's been a great source of new adventures and new friends. If you're even halfway curious but worried about what others may think, or about sticking out at the table, I promise you that if you find a good group and jump straight in, you won't regret it! More and more black folks are making their voices heard in the Tabletop RPG space, so lend us yours!"

Social Media:
Twitter.com/stellarencore
Twitter.com/cosmopunkpod
https://cosmopunk.carrd.co/

Lin and Becka

Lin & Becka | Ten Times Ten

Lin and Becka invite gamers of all kinds to where video games and tabletop adventures collide, a channel they have lovingly deemed Ten Times Ten.

While they have over a decade of combined experience, both past and present, as Game Masters, players, and innovative homebrewers, their passions extend beyond the TTRPG space as well.

• Explore their TikTok with their ongoing episodes of Fascinating Playable Races for players, as well as their episodes of Crypt of the Dungeon Master, where they showcase monsters to enhance any game master’s arsenal.
• On Spotify, they host deep conversations related to various forms of media, including video games, movies, and more.
• Join in their Twitch for exposure to their favorite games and to observe local tabletop events unfold.
• On YouTube, their channel offers videos that present a mix of their gaming knowledge, ventures, reviews, experiences taste-testing unusual snacks, and more!

Ten Times Ten is not just a channel; it's a community where gaming enthusiasts can find a fun and unique perspective on the gaming world, all while they keep it 100~.

Quinn Murphy

Quinn Murphy's journey with RPGs started when he "inherited" his brother's copy of Chainmail at the age of 11. He started running games for his friends and hasn't stopped for over thirty years. Though he's been building games his whole life, he started doing it professionally in 2009. Since then, he's written for a wide range of products and companies, including (but not limited to): Paizo (Pathfinder, Starfinder), Wizards of the Coast, Kobold Press, Magpie Games, and Onyx Path Publishing. Quinn loves TTRPGs of all shapes and sizes and relishes the thrill of finding the perfect form-factor to express a setting or idea. He believes that Imagination is for Everyone.

With his own company, Thoughtcrime Games, Quinn is currently running a Kickstarter for Community Radio, a wacky improvisational TTRPG inspired by Welcome to Nightvale.

Shan Wolf (he/they)

Hi everyone, I am a freelance game designer and contributing author on both the Pathfinder and Starfinder Lines. My credits include Starfinder Bounty #4: Poacher’s Prize, the Adventure Toolbox for the first part of the Drift Hackers Adventure Path, Starfinder Ports of Call, the Adventure Toolbox for the second part of the Strength of Thousands Adventure Path, Pathfinder Lost Omens Highhelm, as well as a few other projects.

My primary focus as a writer is in Black and Indigenous liberation narratives, monster creation, archetype creation, history and lore, and writing revolutionary and inherently anti-colonialist themes. Besides that, I am a huge Pathfinder and Starfinder booster. I love these games as they help bring to life amazing fantasies about being heroes and saving the world, or Universe, and that is always something I’m interested in doing, or just talking about in general.

If you’re interested in my work or hearing my views, feel free to take a look at my twitter, @Fenrirs_Chosen.You will see an outspoken and passionate advocate for Black liberation and making the tabletop space more open, safe, and inclusive.

---

We also want to spotlight some Black content creators and performers in the Pathfinder and Starfinder community! The shows on this list feature Black hosts, GMs, players, and/or producers—give them a listen and support them year-round!

• Tablestory—Gatewalkers Actual Play
• Know Direction
• Cosmopunk: A Starfinder Podcast
• Outcast and Outclassed—Pathfinder Actual Play
• Unwavering Force—Pathfinder Actual Play
• 20XX: A Drift Odyssey—Starfinder Actual Play
• The Atomless & SAGA—Starfinder Actual Play

If you’re a Black content creator in the Pathfinder or Starfinder space, we would love to hear from you! Shoot an email to community@paizo.com and introduce yourselves.

Thank you again to our Black contributors, content creators, and community members!

I begin my annotation holding death between my talons. An overly poetic beginning, that, and one I will certainly change when I report back to my Lady. Perhaps this a consequence of reading the Godsrain Prophecies, each with its dire tale of the death of a god and everything that comes after. I am reminded of the year I read What Comes Down: A Treatise on Mortal Falls and used the word defenestrate so often in my papers that Lorminos asked me to limit the word to once per page at most!

As my earlier field notes on these works detail, I learned of the Godsrain Prophecies not long ago, and have acted with great haste to locate as many as possible, despite my many doubts as to their accuracy. I must confess that I have also felt a certain unanticipated exhilaration in bringing rigor to a rumor, despite the grim contents of the documents once discovered. I believe that I may almost understand the impulse of adventurers (a mortal drive that remains an obscure field of study), though I likely took as much joy from detailing my methods as I did in undertaking them. Research rarely moves at such a rapid pace, but then rarely has any researcher been so motivated!

What to make of these “prophecies” is a wholly different matter, and one that I must settle before reporting to my Lady, lest I stir up visions of doom with no attempt at context or framing, no better than a doomsday caller singing in the streets! Any thought of these being accurate seems at first impossible, given the current failure of prophecy overall, and their author has yet to be identified. I immediately recall the many false omens in the years after Aroden’s death, many of which had Golarion perishing brutally a thousand times (and will one day, I assume, make for a fascinating set of studies).

Still, there is something about these pages that makes me ill at ease. The detail, perhaps, or the nature of the futures they forecast. This is heightened, of course, by the subject of the first of them, which I hoped never to find but must still document faithfully, as I have below. Perhaps the thing that troubles me lies in this simple question: how do you tell your Lady that she’s prophesied to die?

—Yivali, Apprentice Researcher for the Lady of Graves

---

The Death of Pharasma

When Pharasma dies, she dies by inches. She grasps for a prophecy beyond her reach and the skin on her fingertips blisters. She dreams the lost feeling of futures foretold and wakes with a tooth ground to ashes. She feels an uncertainty chilling the air, and her bones grow cold and brittle. What changed with Aroden’s death? Why has prophecy faltered? The questions race and turn and tumble, edges carving at her mind as she tries to judge the mortal souls whose futures she’s unsure of.

Is it any wonder that she shatters?

The god they called Survivor dies alone inside her palace—cold, exhausted, broken. No psychopomps to judge her works, no Atropos to take her reign. Most of her servants lose their power in the instant she dies, and no one comes to place her in a plane for all eternity. The fear of how she might be judged has kept her upright more than once, but in the end it’s simply this—she is and then she isn’t. Pharasma ceases to be.

Death does not pause for the Lady of Graves. Death does not stop for anyone. Mortals succumb to the usual things—some in the arms of those who loved them, some at the hands of those who did not. Some in a show of bravery, some in a haze of regret, some drenched hot with sweat or fear or love or loss or anger. All plunge into the River of Souls like jagged rocks sent tumbling, leaving eddies in their wake that shift and roil the current. The river churns with energy, a swirling froth of rapids, throwing souls from in its midst with no set rhyme or reason. The guardians who watch it pass are nothing more than onlookers, as this soul bound for Heaven is shunted off to Abaddon, and that one at the brink of Hell is flung into Nirvana. With souls no longer guided to the places where they’re most aligned, the outer planes turn turbulent, splintering to factions where they once found harmony. Fights break out, and rescue missions; pacts and trades and promises no sooner made than torn apart—a muddied bloodied mess of souls askew for all eternity.

Pharasma’s former psychopomps, distracted by the chaos or the torrents of the river or the sorrow of their grief, rarely see the predators who feast within the river’s wake—daemons and worse who grab souls up by the handful, taking them to sell or gift or simply disappear with.

Among the mortals, resurrections now begin to falter, as souls are often missing from the places where they’re sought. Even for those who never cared a moment for Pharasmin things, the new finality of death leaves many saying prayers for Pharasma, desperate for a sign that she might one day still reach out.

Her followers are hardest hit—the clerics and diviners, the midwives and morticians—their boons no longer functioning, their spells bereft of power. Those who battle the undead see their advantage dissipate, and some who cannot fight or flee fall easily to undead foes, their victories turned to slaughters in a hundred grim tableaus.

Urgathoa laughs, heartily, to see a foe defeated, declaring 50 days of feasts and manifesting blood-soaked wine in any empty cup. She calls upon her followers to press their new advantages, as those who fought her worshippers are left to face a reckoning—some turning to another god whose purpose fits their calling, some searching for a prophecy or ritual or sacrifice that might bring back Pharasma and the surety she gave them, some finding other pledges for their cause.

Above it all, a visage hangs and grins upon the chaos—Groetus watching eagerly from just above the Spire. Some say the crescent of his moon begins to wax in earnest, as we move ever closer to the end times he desires.

A prophecy foretelling the death of Pharasma specifically caused by the death of prophecy in the Age of Lost Omens certainly poses a paradox.

---

An unpleasant future, to say the least. I shudder to think of it! Thankfully, much of this prophecy remains questionable at best. Not only are there are many questions raised here, including the likeliness of my fellow psychopomps to simply cease their work and let souls be ravaged, whatever their grief, but this also appears to note the cause of my Lady’s death as indirectly caused by the end of prophecy. And yet if there is no prophecy, then how has this one come to be? A paradox, if I ever knew one, and one that I cannot yet untangle. Perhaps my next annotation will offer greater clarity.

About the Author

Erin Roberts has been thrilled to be able to contribute a few small threads to the fabric of Golarion in the pages of books like Pathfinder Lost Omens Firebrands, Pathfinder Lost Omens Highhelm, and Pathfinder Lost Omens Travel Guide. In addition to her work for Paizo, she freelances across the TTRPG world (and was selected as a Diana Jones Award Emerging Designer Program Winner in 2023), has had fiction published in magazines including Asimov’s Science Fiction, Clarkesworld, and The Dark, and talks about writing every week on the Writing Excuses podcast. Catch up with her latest at linktr.ee/erinroberts.

Howdy, folks! It’s been a while since we’ve done one of these blogs, and in that time, we’ve added some wonderful new folks to the Creative Department and had a couple of former Paizo creatives return to lend their expertise to Pathfinder and Starfinder. Since it has been a while, some of these folks have been with us for quite a few months, but you didn’t know that and that’s no reason not to join us in welcoming them. It’s been great having new people and new voices on the team in design, development, art, and edit to add their keen experience and varied experiences to the fabric of the Paizo Creative Department.

Michelle Kim

Hey everyone! I’m Michelle, a developer on Pathfinder’s Narrative team. I started off as a freelance writer for Paizo so you’ll see my name pop up in projects like Season of Ghosts, Howl of the Wild, and Lost Omens Divine Mysteries as well as some other unannounced products down the pipeline. I’m a big fan of horror ttrpgs like Call of Cthulhu, Ten Candles, and Bluebeard’s Bride but also a huge sucker for mecha games like Spectres of Brocken. I’ll play almost anything; crunchy? Yes. Narrative? Also yes.I have a few personal projects in the works including a Joseon setting supplement for Good Society: A Jane Austen RPG. If you want to find me on socials, I’m on Twitter at @_missmyk_ and on Bluesky at @missmyk.bsky.social.

Lynne Meyer

Hello! I’m Lynne (she/they), a queer, autistic, chronically ill femme originally from Chicago. Since joining the editing team last June, I’ve been living my best Leslie Knope life in Indiana and working on incredible stuff I can’t wait for you all to see.

Named a 2021 Queer in Games Awardee by Rainbow Game Jam, I’m best known for my work on the ENNIE Award-winning Uncaged: Goddesses and Uncaged Anthology. In my free time these days, I’m usually doing one of three things: playing the Chief Medical Officer in my Star Trek Adventures home game; doting on Izzy, my ancient, beloved kitty; or drinking way too much coffee as I wrap writing for the upcoming All the Witches TTRPG. I’m an unapologetic dice goblin, an em dash enthusiast, and an octopus stan who thinks that the Dumbo Octopus is the cutest thing ever. Come say hello on Bluesky (@lynnemeyer.bsky.social) and Twitter (@Lynne_M_Meyer).

Joshua Birdsong (he/him)

Hello Paizo fans! I am Joshua Birdsong. I am now the newest Designer on the Rules & Lore team. I am very excited to work among such an experienced team, and I am still (and hopefully always will be) learning so much. I cannot wait to help make awesome stuff for our game! I believe my first debut will be in Monster Core! You can find me @impr0phet.
DFTBA

Adriana Gasperi

I am Adriana Gasperi from Caracas, Venezuela, I am a graphic designer, traditional and digital illustrator, and fine artist in Portland, Oregon since 2017. I have been painting cats since 1995 my brand name is Gatos Ilimitados (unlimited cats) https://www.instagram.com/adriana.gasperi.art/ and lately I have been also painting all kinds of animals, and pet portraits. I have been vegan for the animals for about 8 years and belong to an international group of vegan artists called The Art of Compassion Project where we donate art related to animals and veganism. I live with my husband and 6 cats in downtown Portland. I love my job at Paizo and also the diversity and inclusiveness of the company, I enjoy working from home. I am a true crime documentary and podcast fan, Serial Killers is one of my favorite podcasts, as thrillers and horror movies (especially classics), film noir, American Horror Story, and all their new ones like American Crime Story, actually everything Ryan Murphy creates and produces, The Shinning and Psycho are two of my favorite movies.

Jason Keeley

Who, me? I guess you could say that I’m one of those “returning faces,” having come back to Paizo last year to take a position as a Senior Developer on the Pathfinder Rules & Lore Team! In my career at Paizo, I’ve been an editor, a developer of Starfinder Adventure Paths, and more! I’m thrilled to be working with second edition and with the rest of this team, who are an honest-to-goodness bunch of rock stars. You can find me at herzwesten on a lot of the social medias and if you want to see the type of things I get up to in my spare time, check out This Compleat Breakfast (a game about cereal mascots) on my itch.io page!

Felix Dritz (he/him)

Greetings fellow finders of the paths and stars! I’m Felix, one of the editors who sift through the many words you read. This means I check for general errors, discrepancies, formatting, and ensure it has that recognizable Paizo style.

I was first introduced to Pathfinder Organized Play in 2016 by accident, and I never left. So many kind and supportive people adopted me into this community, and I’m overjoyed that I get to support the games they love. It’s been a surreal journey to get here, but now I’m at a desk editing for a game I adore and the community I love.

When not editing for Paizo, I’m usually homebrewing my ever-expanding Pathfinder 2nd Edition setting. If I’m not editing or writing, then I’m likely playing Pathfinder, GMing at local game stores, mashing buttons on a videogame controller, or cooking. I’m not active on social media, but I hope to meet you around the table someday!

Bill Fischer

Bill Fischer has been creating strange and terrifying worlds for role-playing games for over 30 years. He is the author of The Runewild Campaign Setting published by Sneak Attack Press and has done both writing and editing for Kobold Press, Goodman Games, Roll For Combat, AAW Games, and EN Publishing. He lives in Minneapolis, MN with his partner and children.

Mike Kimmel

Hello! I’m Mike Kimmel, and I’m thrilled to be the newest member of the Starfinder team. Since coming on board in September 2023, I’ve been hard at work with my colleagues to create Starfinder Second Edition. While my prior work as a developer for Pathfinder Society Organized Play mostly involved adventure design, I’ve been able to stretch my narrative and game design muscles on the Starfinder team in all sorts of interesting ways these past few months. Alas, I can’t talk much about the things I’m working on—yet—but stay tuned for more Starfinder news in the coming weeks! I can’t wait for you to see what we’ve got in store for you.

Aside from working on games, I like to play them, too! I’m a fan of cooperative games of all kinds, and I also enjoy relaxing with a nice cup of tea and a challenging permadeath videogame. When I get a chance to run an RPG campaign, I tend to lean into horror themes—the spookier the better. If you’d like to chat about games, recommend a good book to me, or play some chess, you can find me on various Paizo-related Discord channels or drop me a line at mike.kimmel@paizo.com. Please note that I am not accepting glitch gremlins or other mischief at this time!

Simone D. Sallé (she/they)

Hi again! I’ve been in the Paizo orbit as a temp, freelance, and full-time contracted editor since 2018. I joined the staff as a senior editor in 2022 and have been having a wonderful time wrangling words with the creative team ever since! While we’ve worked on a lot of great projects lately, I’m particularly excited for everyone to see <em>Pathfinder Howl of the Wild</em> in May, which has some extremely fun new ancestries and mechanics, incredible art, and a heartfelt story.

Unsurprisingly, words and games fill a lot of my time outside of work as well: I have a spreadsheet of SFF book recs for anyone who asks, a handful of Pathfinder and indie TTRPG campaigns on my calendar, and an overflowing queue of Steam games that I frequently ignore to revisit Subnautica (my beloved). I also do freelance editorial work as Wildwood Editing for projects like Queerfinder and Luminant Age. I’m grateful to my Disreputable Dog, Penny Kibeth, for reminding me to take a break from screens and get some fresh air every day.

Editors largely operate behind the scenes, and our best work is invisible, but I can confidently say that I work with some of the finest professionals in the industry, and it’s a delight to learn, grow, and help shape the games I love with them and everyone else at Paizo. I’m not as active on social media these days, but if you track me down I’m always thrilled to discuss conscious language in storytelling, the merits of style guides, and how we can make our worlds—both real and imagined—better for everyone.

Dustin Knight

Greetings, Starfinders! I’ve had the honor of being a member of the Starfinder team for a little over a year and working here at Paizo is still a dream come true! I’m currently moving into my dream home in St. Paul, Minnesota, running a Firefighters of Absalom campaign, Where There’s Smoke, and playing in an incredible Starfinder campaign, Teenaged Wasteland. I’ve been a freelance author and publisher on Pathfinder Infinite for the past few years, as well as avid tabletop gamer, and Paizo-sphere discord lurker! I’m honored to help manage the rules of one of my favorite games in one of its most exciting eras and you may have seen me drop the FAQs and Errata updates for the Starfinder Roleplaying Game. I’m also thrilled to see everyone’s excitement and enthusiasm for Starfinder Second Edition, as working on a new Core Rulebook line with such an incredible team has been my developer hoop dream for decades. Feel free to hit me up using any of the various Paizo discords, including my own discord channel for Pathfinder & Starfinder Infinite fans and authors at http://www.infiknight.net, or email me at dustin.knight@paizo.com! You can also follow me @kitsunewarlock.bsky.social and, as always, please send memes!

Hi everyone! We at Paizo love to do community creator shout-outs, and our friends over at Infinite have an amazing team we want to spotlight. So without further ado, we present the February Infinite Team+ spotlight!

Bringing The Flavor
What makes a good meal good? This is the direction from which you should approach any TTRPG writing. After all, it’s not far from the truth! You’re serving up a meal for people, and you have two goals to make sure it pleases your clientele.

First off, you have to make sure the meal doesn’t poison them and kill them. Dead clients will not buy your food again, nor will they try your homebrew, third-party publisher (3pp) work, or original writing! In our cooking metaphor, this is the role of mechanics; it’s what provides your meal/TTRPG writing with a healthy structure and makes it “good for you.” It is, fundamentally, the most important part of what you’re making. Without good balance, your feat, item, spell, or whatever it is that you’re making will fall apart. People will look at what it grants, say “this seems busted,” and make a snap judgment on whether the rest of the project is worth checking out. But is a passable structure enough?

Absolutely not. Adding something extra transforms a merely digestible offering into one that’s delicious. And that something extra in both the world of food and writing is flavor.

Flavor text is a crucial ingredient that often goes uncelebrated, but it makes the difference between incredible and bland. But to make the flavor pop, you need to know—what do people like? In this context, I’m going to speak from my personal experience. I write books for the Classes+ series, a line of 3pp books that focuses on expanding existing classes, like witches, clerics, magi, etc. I’ll talk about things I’ve found that have helped me write flavor text that keeps people coming back, and how to give them a go yourself.

First off, you want your flavor to be consistent. This goes for any piece of text, of course, but it’s one that’s often overlooked in fantasy TTRPGs. You want your content to fit into the world within which it’ll exist or most likely be used. For Pathfinder, a lot of people are either going to be playing in Golarion or in a homebrew world most likely based in fantasy tropes. That’s just the kind of setting that Pathfinder most easily lends itself to; the sword and sorcery aspects are the biggest selling point. So, when writing a new option, you want it to be something that can seamlessly fit into this world without breaking its established rules. For example, when writing Archetypes+, we wanted to create something that would expand existing options and add new ones too. One of the new archetypes we decided to make was a clown. This was difficult, because most people have one of two very specific ideas when it comes to clowns: a red-nosed guy in a funny wig, or a murderous slasher with smeared white makeup. While there are places where these could feasibly fit in Golarion, they don’t fit everywhere. Indeed, a standard party with a fighter, wizard, cleric, and then a classic clown might not look right. It’s noticeably “other,” and it had the potential to make people turn up their noses at the product and not include it in their game. So how did we lessen the otherness of it?

That’s where our next point comes into play. Research! This may come as a surprise, but you are not an infinite sponge of all knowledge ever. You need to look up what you’re writing on, give yourself a brief lesson on the topic, and then return to it. So, continuing with clowns: how did we make clowns fit? Pathfinder’s setting ranges from prehistoric times (with the Mammoth Kings) to 1800s-analogous Absalom. As it turns out, clowns have a long history between prehistoric times and the late 1800s! The first clowns were priest-clowns in Ancient Egypt, over 4,000 years ago. Then, throughout the medieval era, there were jesters, who acted as advisors to nobility. In the 16th century, commedia dell'arte was popularized in Italy. These theatrical sketch shows involved masked character archetypes like the daring Harlequin and the glum Pierrot. Finally, in the early 1800s, Joseph Grimaldi introduced face paint, colorful costumes, and all the tropes we associate with the common clown. Once we knew that clowns did exist during the timeframe that Pathfinder likes to play with, we could make something fitting for it! But now, the next question is… how did we make it unique?

One’s work needs to stand out on its own. Yes, the mechanics might be unique, but the dressing over the mechanics needs to be something unlike anything else the game has to offer presently… while, crucially, feeling exactly like something else the game has to offer. It’s extraordinarily easy to go overboard here and quickly go from “Here’s a fun idea” to “What if the clown can use three actions to become a clown elemental?” Mechanically, maybe that’s fine, but it’s a strange idea that breaks the existing lore of the world. The implication of an elemental plane of clown, while itself horrifying, also completely ignores the Golarion setting’s rules and, most likely, the rules of any other setting missing an elemental clown plane.

But then, what if you don’t go far enough? Perhaps clowns can pull tricks to inspire their allies in combat! But… that’s just the bard, another entertainment-focused character option. If you don’t go far enough, your writing will feel unsure of itself. You really need to solidly hit that middle ground. What’s something that’s like existing content, but not so similar as to lack identity, and not so different as to become nonsensical in most settings?

Clowns are meant to be ridiculous, so some of our ideas were naturally going to be a little more comedically toned, but we wanted them to fit most worlds. The feat Rubber Body is a good example of our process—it’s a feat that plays with the raw physicality of clownish performances, which often include over-the-top slapstick. The feat gives the clown resistance to damage as a reaction while also knocking them back 15 feet and rendering them prone. Another feat, Uncanny Legerdemain, allows clowns to seemingly magically transport items from one closed hand to another, or one sleeve to another. This feat not only allows a character to pull off classic magic tricks, it also offers good roleplay opportunities like smuggling, stealing, and otherwise storing items in an extradimensional space in a comical fashion. All of these fit the clown without being too out there, and without feeling exactly like anything presently in the game.

So, that’s what it comes down to. It seems like a daunting task—have the idea, make sure it fits into the world you’re writing for, research it, and then make sure it isn’t too much or too little. It’s not easy to pull off, but you need to be sure to put in the appropriate work here. It doesn’t matter if you have the greatest mechanics in the world—dry oats may be healthy, but they don’t taste great. Thankfully, once you get used to writing flavor, it starts getting easier. It’s like standing in front of an oven and smelling the aroma of the food waft up to you; you’ll feel like there’s no stopping you, and pretty soon, you’ll have made something people won’t forget!

Derry Luttrell (they/he) is an animator, illustrator, and writer from Kildare, Ireland. They are the host of Dice Will Roll, an award-winning Pathfinder Second Edition podcast which has recently passed 400,000 downloads and started its 1970s-inspired run of Abomination Vaults, complete with synth music, VHS sounds, and classic dungeon crawling fun. It was while running Dice Will Roll that Derry decided to make a book of homebrew witch patrons. This eventually bloomed into Witches+, brought to life by an impromptu teamup between Derry and Tony Saunders. Thousands of sales later, Team+ is the most successful duo on Pathfinder Infinite—the first of their brand-new products to reach the mithral and platinum ranks. In Team+ projects, Derry largely tackles flavor and illustration. Their heavily stylized art decorates each release, inside and out. Derry is open for commissions; find them on Discord as @derryzumi.

In the next few months, Derry will be launching Safe Haven: A Weird West Tale, a 200-page book for Pathfinder Second Edition and D&D 5e, with a western-themed adventure that goes from Level 5 to Level 10 and features a setting splatbook for a world where magic has died and the age of the gunslinger is upon us.

The Starfinder Second Edition Playtest products revealed.

Hello everyone! As some astute fans have already noticed, we’ve uploaded the first products related to the upcoming Starfinder Second Edition Playtest. For those of you who’d like to learn more, the team thought it wise to provide additional context on what to expect!

Illustration by Kent Hamilton

The first product we’ve announced is the Starfinder Playtest Rulebook. This 264-page softcover playtest book contains a figurative ton of new Starfinder content using the Pathfinder Second Edition rules as a foundation. You’ll notice right away that this book requires the use of Pathfinder Player Core and Pathfinder GM Core. The reason for this is because we wanted to provide as much new content as possible without reprinting massive sections of rules that already exist in Pathfinder rulebooks and on our online PRD at Archives of Nethys. All relevant rules will be reprinted in full for our 2025 release.

Inside this rulebook, you’ll find six classes (including the Envoy, Mystic, Operative, Solarian, Soldier, and Witchwarper)*, new ancestries, new feats, new spells, a new equipment system, and more! The idea is to provide as many tools as possible for a Starfinder game, along with some of the new systems and tweaks necessary for running a science-fantasy game. When 2025 rolls around, we’ll be splitting this content (and more) into appropriate player- and GM-facing books. Please note, the Starfinder Playtest Rulebook will not have any special edition covers or hardback editions and is intended to be released as a softcover book. The PDF for this product will be made freely available at launch.

While many of you have heard about the playtest rulebook already, you probably haven’t heard about our playtest modules and the associated flip-mat. So, let’s talk about those!

Starfinder Second Edition Playtest Adventure: A Cosmic Birthday, written by Paizo senior developer Jenny Jarzabski, is the first of two playtest adventures that we’ll be releasing during the playtest window. This adventure takes place on Absalom Station and is meant to introduce new 1st-level characters to the setting of Starfinder. You’ll explore the station as a setting-shattering event occurs: the hatching of the planet Aucturn and the emergence of a new deity into the Starfinder core pantheon! We’ll have SO much more to share about this in the coming months!**

Illustration by Ignacio Bazán Lazcano

Our similarly announced Starfinder Flip-Mat: Second Edition Playtest Multi-Pack also has a bit of a spoiler which we’ll talk BRIEFLY about…

Starfinder Second Edition Playtest Adventure: Empires Devoured (product page coming soon!) is our second and final playtest adventure. Written by Thurston Hillman (that’s me!), this 10th-level adventure takes place on the distant world of Kehtaria during the signing of a historic peace accord between two galactic superpowers…let’s just say that things don’t go entirely as planned.

We’ve written each playtest adventure to be like the adventures you’ve come to love from Paizo. These won’t involve slogging out wave-based encounters to stress test combat, but instead, they’ll have narratives and encounters that showcase how we can use the new Second Edition rules to create evocative stories in the Starfinder setting. These include all-new art and major setting events, and it’s our hope that these adventures remain relevant long after our playtest is over and we’re well into the new edition—after all, we need to know where your character was when Aucturn hatched!

Again, we’ll have SO much more to explain in the coming months about all these products. For now, enjoy a quick art preview of what to expect in Empires Devoured…

Illustration by Mirco Paganessi

Thurston Hillman
Managing Creative Director (Starfinder)

*Don’t worry, we haven’t forgotten the Technomancer and Mechanic and will share our plans as soon as we can!

**You might even get some early hints if you’re involved in Starfinder Society Organized Play…

Hello, hello! Luis Loza here! Last time, we jumped into the Monster Core cover and took a look at the adamantine dragon. This time around, we’re going to be jumping into the Player Core 2 cover to look at the conspirator dragon. Let’s get to it!

Illustration by Kent Hamilton

The conspirator dragon is one of the new occult dragons featured in Monster Core. Occult dragons tap into more mysterious and strange magic, making use of supernatural abilities that sometimes seem alien or off-putting. Most occult dragons have slender bodies. They use their wings as supplementary appendages, somewhat like front legs to keep their proper forward limbs for grasping and other uses.

The conspirator dragon is named such due to their innate desire to see grand plans play out. Conspirator dragons are constantly scheming, either for personal gain or simply because watching a plan come together is exciting. These schemes vary, with some dragons looking toward more benevolent goals, some enacting wicked plans, and others simply scheming for scheming’s sake. Regardless of their goals, conspirator dragons tend to manipulate others, pulling strings from the shadows to get what they want.

A conspirator dragon has a variety of abilities to help them achieve their goals. In addition to using their magic to charm and influence others, these dragons make use of magical disguises. They conjure forth flesh-suit replicas of others and, through the help of magic, squeeze themselves into these suits. This bone-crunching and flesh rending process results in perfect disguises that allow a conspirator dragon to live among populations none the wiser to the dragon’s machinations. If they’re ever found out, the dragon can erupt from the suit in an explosive display that hopefully buys them enough time to flee. If not, they also use their choking breath to create a literal smokescreen for escape.

And that’s our look at the conspirator dragon! Make sure to keep an eye out for this dragon and lots of other new dragons when Monster Core releases in March. Stay tuned for more draconic previews in the coming weeks. Next time, we’ll take a look at greatest treasure hoarders of all, the fortune dragons. See you then!

Luis Loza
Creative Director, Rules & Lore

Hello Starfinders!

As many of you know, Starfinder Second Edition is glowing brightly on the distant horizon, which means that the era of Starfinder First Edition is coming to an end. Never fear! The Starfinder Society won’t let Starfinder First Edition fade into the sunset without a celebration!

With that in mind, it’s my honor to announce the final season of the Starfinder Society for Starfinder First Edition…

Welcome to the Year of Era's End!

Illustration by Kevin Sardinha

The Year of Era’s End is a time to celebrate the end of Starfinder First Edition! It’s a time to revisit old friends, capstone some of our most beloved ongoing storylines, and shine a spotlight on big, exciting events in the Starfinder setting—events that will change the course of the Pact Worlds now and have lasting effects into the future of Starfinder Second Edition!

So, whether you’re a veteran of the Starfinder Society, a newcomer who’s excited to get in on the game, or a fan looking to experience events that directly influence the upcoming Starfinder Second Edition, join us for the Year of Era’s End!

We're going out with a bang!

Illustration by Kevin Sardinha

While much of the Year of Era’s End is focused on closure and big, exciting capstone events—events best suited for mid- to high-level play—our metaplot is focused on low-level play, to accommodate everyone who wants to get in on the game! But low level, however, doesn’t mean low impact!

Under the watchful eye of newly elected First Seeker Sarmak, the Starfinder Society travels to the machine planet of Aballon to undertake an archaeological survey of the ancient city of Eternity—a fabled city of the First Ones! During this three-adventure metaplot, the Starfinders explore mysterious ruins, discover long-forgotten secrets about the First Ones, and clash with a violent faction of anacite extremists named Those Who Call.

The Year of Era’s End begins with Starfinder Society Intro: Year of Era’s End, an adventure for 1st- through 4th-level characters written by Letterio Mammoliti! This adventure debuts at PaizoCon 2024 alongside one other Starfinder Society Scenario written by our very own Jenny Jarzabski, though we’re keeping that one under wraps for now!

With the launch of Year of Era’s End, the following ancestries will become “always available” for Organized Play: barathu, borai, ghibrani, morlamaw, orc, and prismeni. In addition, be on the lookout for a few new Starfinder Society boons related to the end of the Year of Fortune’s Fall and the launch of the Year of Era’s End, which you’ll be able to purchase online using your Achievement Points!

To learn more about the Year of Era’s End, tune into twitch.tv/officialpaizo on February 2nd from 4–6 p.m. Pacific and watch PaizoLive! Missed the live stream? No worries! You can watch it on demand anytime.

I hope you join me in celebrating the final season of the Starfinder Society for Starfinder First Edition with the Year of Era’s End! Big changes are on the horizon… and you can be a part of it!

It’s going to be a year to remember.

New to the Starfinder Society? Read about the story so far and start playing Starfinder Society today at StarfinderSociety.club!

Jessica Catalan
Starfinder Society Developer

OPC Musings

After the longest January in memory (seriously, I swear it was eight weeks long), it’s now the shortest month of the year! Before you know it, it’ll be March, then May… and then PaizoCon… and Gen Con… oh no, I have so much to do. Can I have some of January back?!

We’re currently recruiting GMs for PaizoCon Online and Gen Con Indy! Find more on that later in the blog. As convention season begins to rev up its engines, we’re all very excited for what’s in store!

In personal news, last weekend my husband and I welcomed two darling kitties, Mochi and Sasha, into our home! They’re still getting settled but we’re in love with them already. Sorry in advance for becoming an Insufferable Cat Dad, it’s who I am now.

Digital Adventure Releases

These adventures will be available on February 28, 2024.

Pathfinder Society

Pathfinder Society Scenario #5-11: Equal Exchanges – The Hidden Current*

Pathfinder Quest (Series 2) #17: Escorting a Mirage

Starfinder Society

Starfinder Society Scenario #6-13: Beginning of the End*

Starfinder Society Scenario #6-14: The Missing*

*part of a subscription

2024 Premier Conventions

Convention Recruitment

2024 is going to be an incredibly exciting year for Paizo. Be part of the excitement by volunteering as an Organized Play GM at our Premier Conventions! Our volunteer GMs are the best of the best, the cream of the crop, and the most helpful skittermanders in the galaxy. Last year, our volunteers ran over 1,000 games online and in person, and we’re looking to exceed that in 2024!

We are currently seeking volunteers for our two Premier Plus conventions: PaizoCon Online and Gen Con Indianapolis. Our friends in Columbus are also recruiting GMs for Origins, which I’m thrilled to announce I’ll be returning to this year!

You can get all the information in this blog post. Spots are going fast, so don’t delay, apply today!

PaizoCon @ Your FLGS

We’ve also announced the locations for this year’s pilot PaizoCon @ program! Nine game stores, as well as KublaCon in California, will be hosting PaizoCon events concurrent with the online show. Check out this blog post for the locations, an interactive map and more!

Interactive Special Presentation Survey

As we start to build out the presentations for our interactive specials, we wanted to take the community’s temperature on how they’re working and what improvements can be made. If you’ve played in any of our multi-table specials over the past few years, and especially if you’ve been a House GM, we’d love to hear your thoughts in this brief survey!

2024 GM Boons

With the recent influx of new players, Paizo Organized Play’s biggest problem is that we simply don’t have enough GMs to run games all the time. We’re always looking for ways to incentivize people into the GM chair, and we’ve got a new one this year!

Below are download links for two brand-new boons. These boons will unlock character options as you GM games. While you can run games with your friends and complete the boons that way, they will unlock faster if you GM at RSP-supported locations like your local game store, or at conventions (like, perhaps…Gen Con or PaizoCon).

We hope that those of you who have yet to take the plunge into GMing find this a great incentive to start, and that our long-time GMs are able to enjoy the fruits of their labor. Make sure to tell your friends about the rewards of GMing games for Organized Play!

Download the boons here:

Pathfinder Society (second edition) || Starfinder Society

Sanctioning Updates

New Content

New year, new sanctioning! We’re pleased to announce that sanctioning for our latest two adventure paths has been posted: Season of Ghosts for Pathfinder, and Scoured Stars for Starfinder. Long-time players may notice that the chronicle sheets for the Scoured Stars AP look familiar; in most cases, we took the original scenario chronicles and updated them based on the new content. We’ve also posted boons and sanctioning for the two Dynamite comics: Pathfinder: Wake the Dead and Starfinder: Angels of the Drift.

Updates

We’ve also made a couple of updates to the Character Options pages based on the Remaster and new errata.

For Pathfinder Society, we clarified that legacy bards can still use the Remastered feats in Player Core with bothinspire courage and courageous anthem, to clear up that final bit of confusion. We also added a clarification to the Curse Maelstrom archetype for those who have unlocked it via the GM boons. Finally, it was brought to our attention that a number of 5th-level [Ancestry] Weapon Innovator feats have been included in the 1st-level [Ancestry] Weapon Familiarity feats in Player Core. Any character who has been affected by this may freely retrain their 5th-level ancestry feat out of the Weapon Innovator feat into something else!

On the Starfinder Society side, the recent Starfinder errata allowed us to make a couple of changes. The chlorophyll infusion serum from StarfinderPorts of Call and the Forced Deconstruction mechanic trick from Starfinder Enhancedare now permitted for use with the design team’s changes.

GM Recognition

Campaign Service Coins

This month, a new Campaign Service Coins was awarded! We award these coins to members of the community who have gone above and beyond to provide an exceptional program to the community at large. Campaign Coins are awarded based on nominations; if you believe someone in your community is deserving of this award (whether or not they are a Venture Officer), send an email to organizedplay[at]paizo[dot]com with their name and reasons.

Congratulations to:

Marc Daoust, who now holds a campaign coin and OP ID #874

GM Ranks

Whether stars, novas, or glyphs, achieving a 5 ranking in any program involves a substantial amount of time. To achieve the 5th milestone, a GM must run 150 games, of which at least 50 must be unique scenarios and 10 special scenarios as well as run between one and three games for venture-captains (program dependent). A conservative estimate of the time needed to reach the 5th milestone is 650 hours!

This month, we had two GMs earn their 5th rank!

5th Glyph (PFS2): Federico Grecuccio (who is the first GM I’m aware of to do their three evaluation games in three different languages)

5th Nova (SFS1): Jake Rennels

That’s all from me this month, folks! Until next time—Explore! Report! Cooperate! And stick around for a big announcement later today!

Alex Speidel
Organized Play Coordinator