Time flies when you're on a deadline every single month.
It surely doesn't feel like 100 months have passed since "Burnt Offerings," the first volume of the Pathfinder Adventure Path, showed up on my desk. A lot has changed for me in those 100 months—I've moved my place of residence, my job's moved ITS place of residence, I've lost more than 150 pounds, I've gained countless new friends and industry contacts, and more. It hasn't all been good—some friends are gone, some doors have closed, and as THEY are fond of saying, "mistakes were made." But sitting here now, looking at the 100th volume of Pathfinder, I can categorically state that overall, things have gone really quite well over those past 100 months. I couldn't be prouder of how this volume turned out... or more nervous, frankly. I hope folks like the adventure!
It was as early as Wrath of the Righteous that Erik Mona started putting the 100 Bug in my head, of course. At that time, it was still years in the future, but it was pretty obvious that, barring cataclysmic apocalypse-related events, we WERE going to make it to that stage. "What should we do for volume 100?" became an increasingly pressing question. The answer was more complicated than one might initially think, since the way math works meant that volume 100 of Pathfinder Adventure Path wouldn't coincide nicely with any other significant event—it wasn't going to be the first or last volume of an Adventure Path, nor would it sync up with any other notable Paizo-related anniversaries. It was, in fact, smack in the middle of an Adventure Path, and that raised some challenges.
The end result, of course, is now out for folks to see. Pathfinder Adventure Path #100 is 32 pages longer than any other volume of the Adventure Path. It's the first one to contain a foldout poster (presenting an awesome depiction of the first 102 volumes of the Adventure Path along with a minis-scale map of an encounter area that plays a key role three times in the campaign—twice in this adventure!). It's the first one where we've spent more than half a page discussing one of the setting's most talked-about and mysterious characters—the dead god Aroden. (And no, we still don't tell you HOW he died.)
And of course, I fully admit to certain self-indulgences I made along the way. What's the point of being Creative Director if you can't claim volume 100's adventure as one you write? Or if you can't put one of your favorite characters in the adventure? Of course, I went even beyond that—I wrote the adventure, one of the commemorative NPCs, and two of the monsters (Adam will be around later to talk more about that half of the book and more). And I didn't just put one of my favorite characters in the adventure—I put her on the cover.
Anyway, enough about that! There's a lot more going on in "A Song of Silver" than my pet NPCs—so go grab your copy and check it out! Or if you don't have a copy handy yet... then check out some of the incredible art from volume 100 below!
Illustrations by Jaime Martinez, Wayne Reynolds, Ekaterina Burmak, and Miguel Regodón Harkness
James Jacobs
Creative Director
Editorial Note: For the last 100 volumes of Pathfinder, I've been changing Jacobs's ENTHUSIASTIC ALL CAPS to italics, in editorials and elsewhere. Given the festiveness of the occasion, however, I've decided to make an exception, just this once. Congratulations, Jacobs! Don't get used to it!—Sutter
