But Wait... There's More!

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

	Illustration by Colby Stevenson

If you've been following the free weekly web fiction, then you've probably already noticed that today brings you the fourth installment of Ed Greenwood's "Guns of Alkenstar," a mystery set deep in the steaming, clanging depths of Alkenstar's legendary Gunworks. The fourth installment—but not the final one.

That's right—while web fiction stories are normally broken into no more than four parts, in this case we couldn't help ourselves. In addition to being written by master world-builder and storyteller Ed Greenwood (who you may remember as the creator of the Forgotten Realms), this story was just too big an adventure for its original run of four weeks. Rather than cut it down, we thought it best to relax our guidelines and give it room to breathe, using the extra space to continue its cascade of corruption and gun smoke in a so-far-relatively-unexplored nation.

"Guns of Alkenstar" will continue for two more episodes, reaching its conclusion two weeks from now. And lest you think that we can't possibly keep up the barrage of awesome, it's my pleasure to officially announce that this story will be followed by a sneak preview of Plague of Shadows and a new four-part story by no less than Monte Cook, one of the other masters of modern gaming. (What can I say? We aim to please.)

So check out the latest episode of Ed's Alkenstar odyssey, and as always, hit us up on the comments thread and let us know what you think!

James Sutter
Fiction Editor

Sound the Guns of Alkenstar

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

One of the great things about being an editor at Paizo is not just working with some of the best new folks in the gaming industry, but also having the opportunity to approach some of the best old-school folks, those writers and designers who influenced you as a young gamer, or whose imagination set a stage that now feels too large and organic to have ever been created from whole cloth.

Ed Greenwood is one of the latter. While still very much a public figure in the fantasy world, continuing to publish novels in a variety of worlds, Ed will forever be known as the man who created the Forgotten Realms. It was from the depths of his brain that the world got one of the longest-lived and most vibrant settings ever to come to gaming (not to mention the highly recognizable character of Elminster, who looks suspiciously like Ed himself). For decades, Ed's creations have inspired novels, video games, comic books—and, of course, RPG products.

And now that same creativity has been trained on Golarion. While we've worked with Ed in the past, particularly on the Kingmaker Adventure Path, I was particularly pleased to invite him on board to do some web fiction for us—in this case, an extra-long tale of murder and intrigue that starts today and is set to run for the next six weeks. Knowing Ed's particular talent for breathing life into a region, we were also happy to temporarily turn over the keys to one of our most frequently asked-about nations: the Grand Duchy of Alkenstar, that tenuous holding deep in the Mana Wastes where magic is shaky at best, and a relatively new invention called gunpowder attempts to usher in a whole new era in warfare, even as its inventors cling tightly to the secret of its manufacture.

Click here to follow Ed on his journey down into the strange and dangerous world of Alkenstar's Gunworks, trailing along in the shadows of those elite investigators who maintain the region's delicate balance...

James Sutter
Fiction Editor