Merisiel took a deep breath, held it, then let it out slowly as she tried to relax, her arms balanced, palms up, along the chair’s slender armrests. It wasn’t working. Her belly remained tight and crawling with gutwasps—the nervous feeling in the pit of your stomach that the church of Calistria called “the tingle you get ‘fore the trick is all set.” But this was no complex prank or long-planned vengeance that had the wasps doing their thing. It was something, Merisiel forced herself to remember, that she’d brought entirely upon herself.

Glory to the Dawnflower! Today, Sarenrae answered the prayers of fans of Kyra, the iconic cleric! Enjoy the following piece of short fiction from James L. Sutter in the next entry into our series of Iconic Encounters—brief vignettes of the iconic characters showcasing the myriad stories you can tell with Pathfinder Second Edition.

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

At the conclusion of every costume production course at UWM, students are assigned a choice project that will fully illustrate the variety of techniques that they have learned throughout the semester, and explore techniques that they have not yet learned about in order to create a project that is uniquely tied to their interests. My interest in costuming is directly tied to my love of gaming and fantasy, so naturally I decided to build Kyra’s helmet.

Sometime in the next week or so, Ultimate Campaign will be shipping out to a game store or mailbox near you. In anticipation of the release of this 256-page hardcover, we are taking a look at what you can expect to find inside. In the past three weeks, we have looked at character backgrounds, the downtime system, and rules for the GM to add to their campaign. This week, we are looking at the final chapter of the book, Kingdoms and War!