Blighted Beginnings—Writing is a Sensory Experience

Friday, February 19, 2016

Last year I competed in the Paizo's RPG Superstar contest, and earlier this week I saw my complete winning adventure. It was humbling to see my first design work become reality. Roleplaying games are an integral part of my daily and family life. I play Pathfinder at least once a week, sometimes with friends, my children, complete strangers—I love to game! I love the social aspects of gathering around a table to share in the group storytelling experience. We explore, we laugh, we fight, we are a party, and we are together. As gamers we experience things outside our everyday lives, see places that exist in our collective imaginations. We get to be "not ourselves."

Winning RPG Superstar introduced me to a new aspect of my favorite hobby. I created a space for gamers to explore Nar-Voth and discover new things about themselves (should gamers follow those threads). One of the most important parts of the design process was finding places to include roleplaying solutions in addition to combat solutions. Creating believable NPCs was both fun and challenging. My favorite characters to create were the three "big bad" encounters. The personalities and relationships between Zohir and her underlings were crucial to giving options to players for dealing with the encounters. For each NPC, I created files of real and fictional people and relationships, created musical soundtracks, and for a few, I had specific perfumes that I wore when I wrote their scenes to help me focus and round out NPCs that could have ended up moustache twirling villains. Even now when I wear some of them I'm put in the frame of mind of Zohir and Delbera. (Editor's Note: Apparently Lady Delbera is Vétiver Fatal. We leave it up to you, dear readers, to convince Monica to share the rest!)

Illustrations by Sally Gottschalk and Vicky Yarova

Thank you Paizo, Lisa Stevens, Crystal Frasier, Amanda Hamon Kunz, and RPG Superstar voters and judges! Without this supportive gaming community we would still be searching for like-minded friends to share our dreams. Thank you for sharing my dream of an axe wielding dwarven cleric. Thank you Andrew for believing in me and for your endless support. This module is for all of you!

Monica Marlowe
Contributing Author

Illustration by Mattias Fahlberg

Hey, Who Turned Out the Lights?

Thursday, February 18, 2016

It had been a few years since we returned the classic "Revisited" line of Pathfinder Campaign Setting sourcebooks, so we were really excited to delve into the depths beneath the Inner Sea in Darklands Revisited. All we had to do was narrow down what ten monsters we were going to feature in the book—a scary proposition indeed!

In the end, we left out some favorites, in part because they're all our favorites, but also because we love them so much that they might get books of their own someday. What we landed on was a nice mix of classic subterranean foes like drow and duergar; pillars of the science fiction and fantasy genres like morlocks and gugs; icons from the game's history like intellect devourers, neothelids, and vegepygmies; and two monsters introduced to the game in Pathfinder—daemon-worshiping urdefhans and their good-aligned nemeses, the psychic munavri.

It's rare that a single author tackles an entire 64-page Pathfinder Campaign Setting book, but we were lucky to get the veteran Canadian, Thurston Hillman, to put down his poutine and curling broom long enough to breathe life and adventurous inspiration into all ten creatures detailed in Darklands Revisited. The result is one of the most exciting Pathfinder Campaign Setting books I've had the pleasure of working on. I think Game Masters and players alike are going to love this book.

Illustrations by Jon Neimeister, Daniel Lopez, and Dave Allsop

Check out some of the awesome art that brings the Darklands and their deep-dwelling denizens to life! Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Darklands Revisited invades the surface world next Wednesday.

Mark Moreland
Developer

Illustration by Craig J Spearing

Out of this World!

Thursday, December 23, 2010

The Inner Sea World Guide, our revised, reorganized, and expanded look at the world of Golarion, is off to the printer! While it won't be back and ready to share in all its hardbound glory until sometime in March, we've done the heavy lifting and put together a beaut of a book we think is going to blow away both those visiting Golarion for the first time and all of you who practically live there. But for those who think they know what to expect out of our refreshed and 100% Pathfinder RPG infused World Guide, now seems like a great chance to give away five things about the The Inner Sea World Guide that you probably didn't know.

1. Shoanti. They're in the races rundown in Chapter 1: Races, right along with Chelaxians, Kellids, Tians, and all the rest.
2. The Darklands. They get their own four-page write-up now, right along with all the other countries and regions in Chapter 2: The Inner Sea.
3. Languages. A TON of them, listed, detailed, and divided into Modern Human Languages, Ancient Languages, and Other Languages, in Chapter 4: Life.
4. Guns. The Pathfinder RPG's first stab at rules for firearms shows up in Chapter 6: Adventuring, along with a ton of Golarion-specific gear.
5. Monsters. All of Chapter 7: Monsters is dedicated to investigating some of the deadliest denizens of Golarion, along with 9 complete write-ups for some of the Inner Sea's most notorious beasties.

If you knew all that already, well, then check out the new art for the Worldwound by Craig Spearing! I know you haven't seen that before!

F. Wesley Schneider
Managing Editor

Zirnakaynin Toolkit

Thursday, April 29, 2010

As you may have seen in recent blogs, I like miniatures and props when running a game. As my office is on the ground floor of the Paizo office and my Exiles of Zirnakaynin game is held in our large conference room upstairs, I have to carry this stuff upstairs for every game, and down again afterward. An interest in efficiency and expediency has resulted in me building a set of compartmentalized, easy to carry "units" of game materials. From back to front, the picture shows:

• A cardboard box containing five large cavern terrain pieces created out of extruded polystyrene foam (painted brown, drybrushed light brown to show details, with patches painted green and glow-in-the-dark to represent phosphorescent fungi).
• A craft kit containing cheap plastic minis, wooden tokens representing camping gear and building furnishings, various tokens from Litko Aerosystems, colored magnetic bases for miniatures, cheap plastic animals and bugs for summons, and miscellaneous map scenery like cages, barrels, and skull piles.
• A large plastic storage bin holding my Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook, Bestiary, five foam miniatures trays (containing the PC minis, various NPC minis, monster minis, and common summonable creature minis such as elementals), two GameMastery Flip-Mats, a Pathfinder RPG GM Screen with binder clips to hold stat block pages, dry-erase markers, pens, and more Litko Aerosystems tokens, topped with four smaller foam terrain pieces (the ovoid brownie-looking things) and five larger dinosaur toys for summon monster spells.

Sean K Reynolds
Developer, Pathfinder Chronicles

Things I Learned Running a High-Level Drow Game

Friday, April 23, 2010

Wednesday night we finished session #3 of Exiles of Zirnakaynin, my high-level, all-evil, all-drow-noble campaign. This session started with getting James Jacobs and Rob McCreary caught up to the rest of the group, as they missed session #2 due to bad cases of the sicky sickies. Once sisters Alivorah (James) and Ylvirixna (Rob) reached the pleasure-haven drow city of Far Parathra, they were attacked by mysterious creatures that crawled out of the angles formed by the walls and floors of their hotel rooms. Similar creatures attacked the rest of the PCs at the end of session #2, and most of Wednesday's game involved six individual, simultaneous battles against these creatures, as all the PCs had split up for the night.

Things I learned in last night's session include:

• Even a creature of the Mythos can succumb to a baleful polymorph if you try enough times (ook ook!).
• Remembering you have Combat Casting can be the difference between successfully casting a ground-zero flame strike and eye-rolling failure.
• 14th-level fighters and inquisitors can deal a horrendous amount of damage in one round.
• Fast zombies make fine litter-bearers but poor obstacles against CR 9 opponents.
• Letting a demon possess a PC sometimes means the PC goes crazy and destroys her sister's undead lackeys.

All photos copyright Joshua Frost Photography © 2010

Sean K Reynolds
Developer, Pathfinder Chronicles

Darklands Plus Black Light Equals....

Thursday, March 25, 2010

In a fit of madness, I decided to run a high-level playtest so we could have an ongoing idea of how high-level play works in the Pathfinder RPG. In a fit of double-madness, I decided it would be an "evil" game. Triple-madness means everyone is playing a drow noble from House Azrinae in the Darklands. The result is Exiles of Zirnakaynin.

As I'm a miniatures geek, this meant painting up a bunch of dark elf PCs and NPCs, plus other Darklands monsters and underground terrain. As I'm a science geek, I painted many of these things with fluorescent paint highlights, glow-in-the-dark paint, or glow-in-the-dark varnish so they react to a black light.

This photograph is from our first session, where the PCs (and associated undead and eidolon minions) and soldiers of House Azrinae line up on the eastern wall and tower of the House grounds (with the riding-lizard stable in the foreground) to defend against an attacking force of half-fiend minotaurs, enemy drow soldiers, some treant-like fungus creatures, and a few other surprises not yet on the map.

Sean K Reynolds
Developer, Pathfinder Chronicles

Illustration by Kevin Yan

Beasts of the Black Blood

Monday, December 1, 2008

In Pathfinder #18's "Descent into Midnight," the heroes travel deep into the Darklands, into the nightmare realm of Orv. There, in an immense cavern known as the Land of Black Blood, the final enemy awaits. This volume of Pathfinder includes a short gazetteer about the Land of Black Blood that details the numerous strange locations therein and several of the region's dangerous denizens, like the aboleth pictured here.

But there are also less intimidating (but no less creepy) denizens of the Land of Black Blood than monsters ready to challenge a high-level party. Numerous rare and unique creatures make their home here as well, most warped from more common forms by ages of exposure to the vault's strange magics and the deadly black blood.

Ghost Bats: The pale bats native to the Land of Black Blood typically sate themselves upon large insects and other vermin, though in their swarms they have been known to attack larger prey. Possessing transparent wings and no hair—just white flesh—these small hunters sometimes grow to shocking sizes. Ghosts bats have the same stats as normal bats and bat swarms, though the species frequent mutants might grow to the size of dire bats.

Ether Frog: These creatures look like nothing more so than an oversized, four-legged blister with nostrils and a mouth. With an undifferentiated body and head, these ghost-white amphibians hide a single overdeveloped parietal eye beneath their bulbous backs, which grants them darkvision out to 60 feet despite their lack of normal eyes. Most creatures avoid the frogs, knowing of their natural poison—Ingested, Fortitude DC 14, initial and secondary damage 1d4 Dexterity. In all other ways they are simply largish frogs with the same statistics as common toads.

Stirge Hounds: These rare, unnaturally large stirges are often used as tracking animals, capable of following flying creatures through the Darklands. Stirge Hounds have the statistics of a stirge advanced to Small size and 4 Hit Dice. They are very aggressive and prone to hunting in packs or even swarms. Their proboscis is uniformly ivory-colored, while their bodies are usually dark rust-red along the wings fading to black upon the body.

James Jacobs
Pathfinder Editor-in-Chief

Where do Driders Come From?

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

In the Second Darkness Adventure Path, we knew we wanted to use the drow as the primary antagonists. And of course, where there's drow, there's driders. Yet with the changes to drow society in Golarion (and in particular who and what they worship) versus their classic representation in the game, the genesis story for driders had to change. This gave us a pretty interesting bit of new flavor for both driders and drow.

In (under?) Golarion, driders are not punishments meted out by the gods. They are punishments meted out by the drow themselves. One noble family of drow, House Parastric, has maintained their power due to their possession of a powerful secret—the art of fleshcrafting. On one level, this art lets a drow use various poisons to reshape parts of the body, granting a soldier large claws or a poisonous bite, for example, or a scout antennae so he can navigate even more easily in the dark. Yet this is just the beginning, for the drow of House Parastric also developed a method to reshape an entire creature—this is known as fleshwarping, and those that survive the painful and humiliating process are known as fleshwarps. Every race put through the process emerges as something different—all troglodytes come out as hulking behemoths; all surface elves emerge as twisted deformed monsters; all halfings come out as skittering quadrapedal beasts, and so on. But it was the drow themselves who proved the most impressive subjects for fleshwarping, for all drow that undergo the process emerge as driders.

In drow society, driders are seen as freaks and mutants. Becoming a drider is not prestigious—it's physical proof of punishment and a brand of shame. Yet driders are not frail or helpless fleshwarps; they're powerful creatures in their own regard. As a result, in drow society driders are often kept as guardians, soldiers, or bodyguards. Retaining little of their previous life's memories, most driders serve their drow lords and ladies without question. But not all of them.

Female driders in particular are more headstrong and aggressive, just as with the drow themselves. Most drider rebellions are instigated by a female, and today there are numerous small tribes of driders dwelling in the remote corners of the Darklands, free from drow rule. The majority of driders one sees in drow cities are male, as a result. And fortunately for those drow, it's real easy to tell them apart. Female driders retain their sleek, beautiful, and elven shapes above the waist; below, their spider bodies are similarly sleek and smooth. Males, though, are much more bestial. Their faces are a horrific blend of drow and spider, and their bodies are spiny and rough. Pictured here are examples of the sexual dimorphism driders present, a female illustrated by Ben Wootten and a male illustrated by Concept Art House.

In Pathfinder #16, we present "Abominations of the Drow," an article that discusses both fleshcrafting and fleshwarping so that if your PCs stumble into the hands of the drow of House Parastric, you'll know what kinds of things they'll have to look forward to.

James Jacobs
Pathfinder Editor-in-Chief

Down Orvway

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

In the Darklands of Golarion, there are three regions. The uppermost one is known as Nar-Voth; this is the "wilderness" of the Darklands. The races who live here are relatively isolated, tribal, or small. The duergar are an exception, of course, but that's only because they have a bunch of abandoned pre-made dwarf cities to squat in. Below Nar-Voth lies the largest realm—Sekamina. This one's the classic underground warren of tunnels that span continents that long-time gamers will find the most familiar. The drow are the primary race here, but there are others like the skum, the serpentfolk, ghouls, and morlocks.

Then there's the third realm. The deepest realm. This is where we transition from the classic underground RPG realm back into the pulps, for the most part. In this realm, known as Orv, there are many immense caverns known as Vaults. Golarion doesn't have a Hollow World or an Edgar Rice Burroughs style Pellucidar per se, but these vaults are big enough to stand in for those regions. Underground oceans, caverns with jungles and artificial suns, entire nations of warmongering humanoids, and regions containing mountain ranges and vast deserts but deep under the earth dominate Orv, and the denizens of the upper Darklands think of the vaults with the same sense of fear and wonder that surface folk do for them. Orv is sort of a Darkland for the Darklands.

Into the Darklands covers the races and major locations for all three of these realms, but of the three, it was Orv that I was the most excited to see come alive. The enormous lost worlds of deep underground are a classic trope of the genre, but not one that's been done all that much in the game. Certainly not much in Pathfinder until now; we've had our share of big dungeons and cave systems already, but now? Now it's time for immense underground deserts ruled by undead drow, dinosaur-infested jungles where cavemen and troglodytes squabble over the best (and safest) places to live, and oh yeah... areas ruled by classic monsters like intellect devourers and giant worms!

James Jacobs
Pathfinder Editor-in-Chief

The Last Home of the Elves

Monday, September 15, 2008

For the last several months of Pathfinder's Second Darkness Adventure Path we've been neck-deep in drow, with one terrible question looming over our heads all the while: With such a history of fantastic dark elven cities, where do the drow of Golarion actually live? The answer started as a sketch on a single piece of graph paper and grew into a tape and grid work monstrosity that would dominate my dining room table for several weeks. From this ever-expanding madness eventually developed a vast underground metropolis I eventually dubbed Zirnakaynin, the Last Home of the Elves.

While the city of the drow won't completely take shape until Pathfinder #16, players at last Gen Con's Ascension of the Drow Pathfinder Society event got a first look at the massive, tri-cavern subterranean domain. For everyone who missed out on Ascension, though, here's a sneak peek of the heart of the drow race, their stockade and sanctuary: Zirnakaynin.

None, not even the drow, can say how long their ancestors wandered the darkness, but for more than 8,000 years settlements have stood among the severe cliffs of Cocyrdavarin, the great cavern that now holds Zirnakaynin. The first walls of the city rose upon the cavern's highest scarp, and like a glacier slowly crashed down upon the lower slopes. Over time, each level took on a distinct name and characteristics.

Atop the crowning plateau stand the ancient bladed walls of the Last City, the densely packed heart of Zirnakaynin, where the drow first clustered in fear of the dark. Today, it is home to the city's wealthiest and most powerful non-nobles, cruel artisans and performers, and purveyors of all manner of decadences. At the plateau's westernmost edge, amid gardens of dark stone, stands the topless tower of Ileccinoc, the seat of the city's ruling council, the many-spired column that looms over all Zirnakaynin.

Beneath the heights of the Last City sprawls Arsyrvhar, the Pale March, home to most of they city's drow population, many of its everyday shops and residences, and the markets of Ovessia. Mingling among the common drow, merchants from Zirnakaynin's slave cities and strange locales throughout the Darklands travel here to bargain and curry the favor of drow nobles. Those traders whose wares are considered unworthy for elven consumption are banished from the bustling district to the slum-bazaar of Drashes in Ghenavoc.

The lowest span of Cocyrdavarin, the Pit of Ghenavoc hosts the most worthless of drow society: the low-born, the deformed, the city's few freed slaves, and foreign residents. Among workhouses, slave pens, drug dens, and warehouses, the least of Zirnakaynin's society scrape out pitiful lives.

F. Wesley Schneider

Pathfinder Managing Editor

Into the Darklands We Trod

Friday, September 12, 2008

It falls to me once again to reveal a tantalizing taste of some of the terrific tableaux contained within the pages of Pathfinder. Today I bring to you two pieces from Into the Darklands. The first is a bunch of drow and slaves leading freshly captured heroes into a drow city. Lucky them. The second is, well... it's an underground lost-world-type cavern where giant monsters fight dinosaurs. I think that speaks for itself. Have I mentioned before how much I love my job?

Enjoy!

Jacob Burgess
Online Retail Coordinator

Hazards of the Dark

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

There are certainly a lot of monsters in the Darklands, but any seasoned traveler of the nighted tunnels deep below can tell you that there are more ways to die down there than on the teeth or claws of a beast, or upon the poisoned blade of a dark elf. There's poisonous fungi, devastating floods of water and magma, poisonous gas, tremors, bad air, and even radioactive minerals. Pictured here are one of those deadly crystals—blightburn.

Blightburn is highly radioactive and emanates a nonmagical aura that provides a dim illumination equal to a candle. This emanation can be blocked by stone of at least 1-foot thickness or lead sheathing, as well as by force effects. Contact with blightburn causes immediate pain, blistering of skin, and 2d6 points of fire damage per round. In addition, the radiation poisons anyone within 60 feet with blightburn, a deadly disease (Fort DC 22, Incubation instantaneous, 1d6 Con/1d6 Cha); victims of this sickness grow increasingly frail as sores erupt on their bodies, hair falls out, and bones grow shockingly brittle.

Teleportation spells function poorly in areas where blightburn is present—in order to successfully cast such a spell in a cavern that has blightburn crystals in its walls or to teleport to such a location, a spellcaster must succeed on a DC 30 caster level check.

James Jacobs
Pathfinder Editor-in-Chief

Denizens of the Darklands

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Although the Darklands are a dangerous place, one rife with strange monsters and eerie hazards, they're not completely uncivilized. Of course—in a place where a nation of undead passes as one form of civilization and an empire of forgotten aquatic fish-man slaves passes as another, civilization might not be what visitors from the surface expect.

Into the Darklands covers many different underground-dwelling races, providing details on many different races. A fair amount of these should be familiar—races like the drow, derro, duergar, aboleths, and svirfneblin exist in the Darklands. Other races exist there too, like vegepygmies, intellect devourers, skum, and ghouls. But this being a brand new world in the grand scheme of the game, you can bet we'll be introducing some new races as well. Deformed humanoid throwbacks to a savage time, for one (morlocks!), and a slumbering empire of ancient arcanists and cultists for another (serpentfolk!). There's even a few races who are completely brand new, such as the mysterious sanity-blasting seugathi. That's one of them pictured here, wielding a dagger in one tentacle, a wand of fireballs in the other, and a mouthful of poisonous teeth!

James Jacobs
Pathfinder Editor-in-Chief

What Lurks Below

Thursday, August 28, 2008

With Gods and Magic off to the printer, we now officially turn our attention to the next Pathfinder Chronicles product on the schedule—Into the Darklands. For those tuning in for the first time, the Darklands of Golarion are a vast network of caverns hidden below the surface world. The Darklands are at once an iconic location that should feel familiar and a mysterious new frontier filled with surprises. Sure, we've got drow and duergar and derro and aboleths in the Darklands, but there are also degenerate humanoids known as morlocks, mysterious lost worlds inhabited by dinosaurs, a secret nation of intellect devourers, Lovecraftian horrors like gugs and serpentfolk, a hidden empire of humanoid blood-drinkers known as urdefans, and more—all awaiting discovery by brave new explorers of the deepest parts of the world.

We'll have a few more detailed previews of Into the Darklands over the weeks to come, especially as sections of the book are edited and polished up for public consumption, but since the interior art has started to arrive I thought I'd show off what happens when a PC lags behind in duergar-infested tunnels!

James Jacobs
Pathfinder Editor-in-Chief

Drow of Golarion

Monday, August 25, 2008

One of the great things about working on Pathfinder is that I get to work with my heroes. In Pathfinder #15, we have an article about the drow written by none other than Jeff Grubb, author of such products as Manual of the Planes, Spelljammer, The Finder's Stone Trilogy, and countless other classics. And as it works out, he worked on my favorite D&D adventure of all time, the super-module Queen of the Spiders. So his resume was pretty solid for the guy who we wanted to write about our drow.

In Pathfinder #15, we'll have just such an article—everything you wanted to know about how the drow of Golarion are different from those of other campaign settings, or how they're the same. Jeff did an excellent job capturing the depravity that is drow, but they're different enough that they're unique to Golarion.

James Jacobs
Pathfinder Editor-in-Chief

D is for Darklands

Friday, August 8, 2008

Just a few weeks after handing over the incredible new cover for Gods & Magic, Wayne Reynolds turned around and dropped our jaws again, this time with the new cover for the next book in the Pathfinder Chronicles line, Into the Darklands. As always, Dr. Reynolds's images speak for themselves: a dark elf casting dark magic in the Darklands. What more could you ask for? Into the Darklands releases this December.

F. Wesley Schneider
Pathfinder Managing Editor