On Legacies

Tuesday, July 31, 2018

Crystal Frasier has left the building, but her legacy lives on! Legacies are a big focus of the War for the Crown Adventure Path, which comes to its stunning conclusion with Amber E. Scott's The Six-Legend Soul. Amber's adventure opens on a truly dire note:

Spoiler:

While the PCs were working hard to obtain the approval of First Emperor Taldaris's spirit in Axis (as recounted in John Compton's excellent adventure, The Reaper's Right Hand), assassins murdered Princess Eutropia!

This is not a good position for the PCs to find their patron.
Illustration by Miguel Regodón Harkness

Some of these conflicts are intellectual, while others are definitely not.
Illustration by Miguel Regodón Harkness

Illustration by Miguel Regodón Harkness

This mighty deed is merely the first step in a thrilling adventure that will put high-level heroes to the test. Amber assembled a ton of exceptional encounters—so many that I'm not sure how she fit them all into a single adventure—and Crystal tied them very neatly to the rest of the adventure path. Several of the PCs' former enemies and allies influence this story, but it is the legendary figures from Taldor's history that really steal the show. You may have noticed the, well, shall we say, suspiciously favorable histories of Taldan emperors in the inside cover of each of the adventure path's volumes. The PCs meet each of them here, vying with these legendary spirits for control of young Prince Carrius's soul.

It's quite common for us to end an adventure path with a "Continuing the Campaign" article, and War for the Crown is no different. In addition to providing adventure hooks regarding several loose ends, Crystal's article presents an in-depth subsystem to determine what kind of ruler Eutropia becomes at the end of the campaign. So much of Eutropia's legacy is tied up in the PCs' decisions and victories throughout the entire adventure path that her ultimate leadership style rests on their actions. Will history call her Eutropia the Kind, Eutropia the Builder, Eutropia the Measured…or even Eutropia the Bloody?

Bring your War for the Crown campaign to a stunning conclusion and create a lasting legacy in your world!

Ron Lundeen
Developer

The Ironfang Resolution

Thursday, July 19, 2017

This month marks the conclusion of the Ironfang Invasion, and even as I type, issues of Pathfinder Adventure Path #120: Vault of the Onyx Citadel are being furiously packaged and shipped by our warehouse raptors. Some of you may already have them in your dice-stained hands. We finally get to see what makes Azaersi tick, and what sort of danger her sly inner circle truly present. Your heros will (hopefully) slay the "witch worm" Zanathura (again) as well as the Ironfang Commanders, Kraelos and Azlowe as they explore a pocket of the Plane of Earth originally mastered by the ancient xiomorn, and left abandoned with its mysteries and powerful artifacts intact. Hopefully you all have as much fun killing everything as the authors and I had breathing life into them.

Developing this AP was a hell of a journey that helped my skills travel almost as far as your PCs will. I learned that sometimes you need to make a giant mess on an office wall with sticky notes before you can make a complex system work, and that greater barghests are a lot bigger than I realized. I also learned that my fellow developer, Amanda Hamon Kuntz is a sick little monkey. Traditionally, the AP developer uses this blog to mention their favorite thing from the six volumes, but my authors did some amazing work all around, and I don't think I have a favorite. There are too many weird characters and bizarre encounters, and my brain is too leaky from years of drinking and traumatic head injury to really have a favorite thing for more than five minutes. I will say that I'm pretty happy with the art; we gave the art team some really strange requests—from balding bugbears to morlock matriarchs—and their artists delivered.

I also learned in this six-month process that I am not—counter to what the internet tells me—infallible. I have in fact fallibled. I fallibled so hard, you guys. Sometimes it was little things, like not remembering when I swapped a character's name out or whether they were called "onyx towers" or "obsidian towers." Thank the dark gods for editors or else it would have been a lot worse. But there's one glaring omission: The onyx key itself. I never included a statblock for the macguffin that powers the entire campaign! In early volumes, I decided that since it largely acted as a plot device that the PCs wouldn't interact with, we could leave off a statblock until later volumes. But by the time we reached said later volumes, I knew that surely I'd included the statblock in the first adventure (it was would be asinine not to, I think you'll agree).

Now that your players are ready to kick General Azaersi's butt and take her stuff, here at last is the statblock for the onyx key:

Illustrations by Will O'Brien and Remko Troost

The Onyx Key

This jagged growth of crystal pulses with warm pink and range hues. Carvings of spires and crenellated walls transform the top into a model fortress or palace. Nine uncarved spikes grow from the citadel's base—eight jet-black and the ninth a brilliant red.

Onyx Key Major Artifact

Slot none; CL 20th; Weight 8 lbs
Aura strong conjuration

Illustration by Miguel Regodón Harkness

Though deceptively small, the onyx key is a powerful artifact that serves as the focus and control mechanism for the vast dimensional energies collected by the xiomorn facility called the Onyx Citadel. The citadel itself maintains a complex network of extradimensional tunnels known as the Stone Roads—once used by the xiomorns to travel across the Plane of Earth—and allows this network to bridge into other planes, granting its user the power to move resources or entire armies. Eight shards of black crystal grow from the onyx key's base, and may be broken off as a standard action. If an onyx shard is plunged into natural earth or stone as a full-round action, it begins rumbling and grows into a thirty-foot spire of translucent black stone with an archway in its base. The tower's archways can be commanded to open an extradimensional tunnel to the archway of any other onyx tower no the same plane. The tower requires a full thirty seconds to grow. A Stone Road opened between two towers is typically a 100-foot stone tunnel, but as with many elements of xiomorn magic this is far from certain, and gates may occasionally run far longer, with smaller side passageways leading off into the unknown.

A crystalline matrix—a network of circles and imbedded stones—embedded in each spire may be manipulated to open and close the tower's connection to other towers, destroying it, or restructure the tower's design. Linking to another tower requires a successful DC 25 Knowledge (geography) check, reshaping the tower requires a successful Knowledge (engineering) or Use Magic Device skill check, with the DC ranging from 20 for simple additions, such as stairways or a single room—to 35 or higher for sophisticated layouts or defenses. Open or closing the tower's connection to the Stone Roads takes a standard action, while inputting changes requires one minute of work and 1d4 weeks for the tower to slowly make the appropriate alterations to itself. Destroying the tower requires a successful DC 35 Knowledge (engineering) or Use Magic Device check and a full 36 rounds to activate. A tower's footprint cannot exceed 120 feet on a side, and cannot grow taller than 80 feet.

In addition to the nine black shards, a single sardonyx shard grows from the onyx key's base. This shard cannot be used to grow a tower, but instead may be installed in an existing tower to augment its power, allowing it to open a Stone Road to the Onyx Citadel itself, or connect to onyx towers on other planes.

Whoever possesses the onyx key itself may mentally destroy an existing onyx tower as a full-round action, but cannot destroy a shard that hasn't yet been transformed into a tower, nor the sardonyx shard if it hasn't been installed in a tower. Once a tower is destroyed, its corresponding onyx shard regrows from the onyx key over the next month.

Destruction

The eight onyx shards of the onyx key must be planted in the eight ends of the Stone Road, stretching itself magic thin, while the onyx key itself is cast into the Storm of Fangs on the Plane of Air.

History

While the Stone Road predates the onyx key—the Onyx Citadel and other hubs of xiomorn science already capable to opening gates to this network—the artifact gave its ancient creators the gift of mobility and the power to leap the dimensional barrier with ease, expanding their experimentation to new worlds. As the xiomorn withdrew from Golarion, they left the onyx key, alongside many other treasures, in a sacred stronghold in the Darklands layer of Orv.

The artifact entered the modern history of Golarion when it was discovered by the dwarven explorer Kraggodan, who followed strange whispers in the earth to the vast treasures the xiomorn left behind. Using the onyx towers as a series of ever-advancing strongholds, Kraggodan and his clan completed their Quest for Sky swiftly and with minimum casualties—most notable Kraggodan himself, who died defending his people from the orcish hordes—and the clan named the city they founded in honor of their late savior. Once settled in, the dwarves began to experiment with the onyx key in hopes of understanding its powerful magic, and instead opened a Stone Road to the Vault of the Onyx Citadel, allowing all manner of outsiders to flood through and devastate their population. Wary of a similar tragic mistake, they sealed the artifact in a sacred vault dedicated to their people's history, safely locked away from curious hands.

And there the onyx key stayed for thousands of years, largely forgotten by all but a few, until it was stolen by the hobgoblin warlord Azaersi, beginning the events of the Ironfang Invasion.

Crystal Frasier
Developer

As Aeons End

Thursday, February 16, 2017

Illustrations by Kent Hamilton

This month the Strange Aeons Adventure Path wraps up, and by the time this blog goes live some subscribers will have already dug their claws into the adventure while others have to wait for stores to put them on the shelves next Wednesday.

Over the course of this Adventure Path, readers have seen how subtle corruptions can boil over into dangerous territory, leaving those that witness them to gestate further horrors in their own minds that can threated the world at large. Within this Adventure Path, we got a look at the Great Old Ones and Elder Gods that make up the Elder Mythos. We explored Hastur's cult and had a glimpse into what might happen if that Great Old One was to rise as an Outer Gods. We got to look deeper into the vile evil of the Necronomicon, and explored the strange world of the Dreamlands. We ventured to forgotten locations in Golarion and stepped beyond the gap between worlds to set foot on lost Carcosa. In the Adventure Path bestiary, we got to show you new statistics for a Great Old One in each installment, as well as a double handful of other Mythos creatures throughout. It's been a strange journey to say the least.

I'm terrible at picking favorites, be it a favorite color, favorite song, favorite food, whatever. However, since I had so many great writers on this Adventure Path, I felt the need to pick my favorite thing that they created in each of the six adventures. Like always, it's difficult picking my favorite things that I liked about each one, so in some cases I just went with my gut when picking from my lengthy lists. Here goes!

Pathfinder Adventure Path #109: In Search of Sanity

Favorite Thing: The whole first act.

The starting encounter with the PCs asleep and encountering the Tatterman and the fugue state set up of the whole AP seemed challenging in the outline, but Wes Schneider killed it in a way that was better than I could imagine.

Honorable Mentions: That attic whisperer illustration; the Argus Wall; and Red Destiny.

Pathfinder Adventure Path #110: The Thrushmoor Terror

Favorite Thing: Thrushmoor's weird townsfolk.

Tito Leati is great at writing character that interconnect, so I loved his backstory of Nemira Lowls and how she tied in with Clymes Prett and the history of Thrushmoor's leadership, as well as the other characters he introduced.

Honorable Mentions: Fun Star Stelae mechanics; the Hastur article; and meeting Weiralai the first time.

Pathfinder Adventure Path #111: Dreams of the Yellow King

Favorite Thing: The adventure's entire structure.

I love that this adventure takes place in two worlds during a long river journey, and with most of it in the Dreamlands Ron Lundeen was able to give out powerful treasure and present some nearly impossible fights (I'm looking at you, Bokrug).

Honorable Mentions: Abdul Alhazred; Skywin Freeling as a breath of fresh, positive air; and fighting yourselves.

Pathfinder Adventure Path #112: A Whisper Out of Time

Favorite Thing: Creepy derro madness.

Rich Pett is a master of the weird and unsettling, and I really adored what he did with Miacknian Mun's house (and his weird experiments that look like him).

Honorable Mentions: The derro leader Twain; the weirdness of the Mysterium; and betrayal and blood in Okeno.

Pathfinder Adventure Path #113: What Grows Within

Favorite Thing: The strange allies you encounter.

This trip into a forgotten and inhospitable location in Golarion was made extra fun and interesting with the rich characters John Compton introduced. I adored Hoshbagh, the otyugh tome eater occultist and the frightening Mother Grim Moon, as well as the broken soul manu and the Saffron Prince.

Honorable Mentions: The return of Weiralai in her advanced form; the Necronomicon article; and the child of Yog-Sothoth template.

Pathfinder Adventure Path #114: Black Stars Beckon

Favorite Thing: Packing varied locations into one adventure.

It was a tough challenge to show different parts of Carcosa in such a tight space, but Jim did a great job of it. I especially liked seeing the Paris element of Carcosa, but getting to see Azlanti vampires and an elder thing "ghost town" was delightful as well. Man, I really love this cover.

Honorable Mentions: The cast of familiar characters like Erich Zann, Cassilda, and the Pallid Mask.

The Sounds of Madness

Today we're also excited to announce that our partners at Syrinscape have released the first Strange Aeons SoundPack! Ben has, yet again, worked his magic on bringing "In Search of Sanity" alive in all of its delightfully creepy beauty. After listening to it at my desk, I nabbed Wes so he could get a chance to hear the demented sounds of his adventure. This SoundSet really captures the fear and uncertainty of trying to survive an asylum that has descended into monstrous chaos. I loved hearing the sounds for the argus wall, and the encounter with what Debis Lieklan has become is especially unnerving. Listening to this also made me realize that I need to put more dialog in adventures, as it was great hearing the NPCs in this adventure come to life.

The first volume in the new Strange Aeons Adventure Path, "In Search of Sanity", is a fantastically intense and ghastly adventure needing equally fantastic and horrible sounds. You can get a peek at the process behind how the Syrinscape team worked their magic to bring this adventure to spine tinglingly disturbing 3D life on our YouTube channel. (Who would have thought you could voice a Nightgaunt with a fur seal?)

With the In Search of Sanity SoundPack you'll be able to carefully and finely tune your player's discomfort. Subtly ramping up or down from one so-called "Tension Level" is simply a matter of touching a single button. Your players probably won't even notice just how intensely immersed and involved they've been in the adventure session. Not until you stop Syrinscape to take a break and the mood weirdly drains from the room will they know just how you've been masterfully you've been controlling the ebb and flow of this horror adventure with a few subtle mostly subliminal tones.

Watch the demo below and grab the first Strange Aeons SoundPack here! If you're looking for more creepy sounds, check out the whole range of Syrinscape products.

Benjamin Loomes
Creative Director
Syrinscape

Illustrations by Miguel Regodón Harkness

Crossing the Streams

For those of you who want more Call of Cthulhu chocolate in their Pathfinder peanut butter (or vice versa—it's your metaphor to manipulate as needed), James Jacobs worked up a clever system in the Continuing the Campaign article to merge your Strange Aeons characters with investigators working against the sinister machinations of the Mythos in this final Strange Aeons Adventure Path volume, Pathfinder Adventure Path #114: Black Stars Beckon.

When using this system, at the climax of the Adventure Path, the PCs don't return to Golarion, but instead a magical vortex opens in Carcosa that blasts their consciousness out to the stars where they arrive in the minds of humans on a planet with a strong connection to Carcosa—Earth.

This provides an option to play adventures with the Call of Cthulhu Roleplaying Game where the investigators have the spirit essences of the characters the players controlled throughout the Strange Aeons Adventure Path inhabiting their minds on Earth. These spirit essences want to return to Golarion, but can't make the transition until they achieve some goals on Earth such as preventing the rise of eldritch forces and fighting against Mythos influence. With enough successes, the characters' spirit essences are freed from the human investigators and can safely return to their selves on Golarion.

This is an interesting approach to merging two different games and campaigns, and I'm interested in seeing how folks use it.

This month's Pathfinder Adventure Path closes out the Strange Aeons Adventure Path and I hope that you've enjoyed the weird ride as much as we've enjoyed bringing to you. Stay tuned to this blog for deeper looks into the Adventure Path as we bring you more reports from the Order of the Amber Die as they run marathon sessions of the remaining adventures in this campaign. You're not getting this Adventure Path out of your head that easy.

Adam Daigle
Developer

Happy Anniversary, Korvosa!

Wednesday, July 13, 2016

The Founding Festival is upon us, and what better way to celebrate the city of Korvosa than with a preview of the updated Curse of the Crimson Throne Adventure Path that made it (in)famous?

As with the hardcover edition of Rise of the Runelords a few years ago, one exciting element of revising Curse of the Crimson Throne was the opportunity to look through all the comments people posted on our messageboards over the years. Feedback, observations, obituaries for dead PCs, obituaries for dead villains, complaints, misunderstandings, corrections, and so much more awaited discovery as I made my way through all those posts in the early days of work on the revision project. But one thing stood out over and above everything else—folks had fallen in love with the city of Korvosa so much that they hated leaving it!

While the journey into the Cinderlands and the exploration of a certain infamous castle very much remain integral elements of Curse of the Crimson Throne's hardcover revision, I took to heart the complaints folks had about leaving Korvosa behind for two adventures. The fact that this occurred after your player characters likely gain access to fast travel spells like teleport, wind walk, shadow walk, word of recall, transport via plants, and so much more only further complicated the issue. After spending half an Adventure Path defending a city, why would heroes abandon it when returning is often just a spell away?

There's all sorts of tiny new additions to the campaign, the single largest addition to Curse of the Crimson Throne takes place between books 4 and 5. I won't go into great detail about what this addition consists of, but it DOES involve a return to Korvosa to take care of two particularly vexing groups that your PCs will grow to love hating during the campaign. Expect to encounter some familiar faces, some brand new foes, and at least one established Korvosan NPC who may or may not have a brand new secret (and a lot of brand new powers) to be surprised by!

Illustrations by Miguel Regodón Harkness, Bryan Sola, and William O’Brien

And while showing you illustrations of some of the foes your characters will meet in this new section will spoil those surprises... I can't NOT show off some of the new art from the new book! See if you can recognize some of the new looks for old friends and enemies!

James Jacobs
Creative Director

A Silver Centennial

Friday, December 11, 2015

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

Wrath and Other Sins: How We Chose the Next Pathfinder Adventure Card Game Set

Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Illustration by Wayne Reynolds

Hello! Wrath of the Righteous marks the third Adventure Path for our humble little Pathfinder Adventure Card Game, and we are just pleased as punch that you would pony up your hard-earned nickels to—

Man, to hell with that polite nonsense. Or rather, to the Abyss with it. Let's gas up our panhead Harleys, set fire to the gas station, and head off on a power ride into a canyon of flames.

Wrath of the Righteous is all the sin you want in one game. Designers Paul Peterson and Tanis O'Connor will march you lockstep through the gory battlegrounds of the Worldwound in the next couple weeks. For now, I'm going to describe how we got to the gates of the Abyss, and why we barreled right on through.

The First Sin: Pride

When we were considering the next Adventure Path, we thought about what had come before it. Rise of the Runelords was a catalogue of essential fantasy tropes: there were goblins and ogres and dragons and giants and everything under the sun. Skull & Shackles was a lot more focused and personal: you were kidnapped pirates trying to stay alive in a sea of sharks and buccaneers. As epic as those adventures were, they seemed... manageable. You could get your brain around how to defeat the challenge. We wanted something crazy impossible for the next set, something that would make everyone say "How exactly do you expect us to beat THAT?" Basically, we wanted to show off. So we pridefully looked around for the most impossible thing. Going into the Abyss to stop a demon prince's invasion of the world sounded pretty, pretty good.

The Second Sin: Sloth

Illustration by Miguel Regodón Harkness

I've made no secret of the major influence that the videogame Diablo had on the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game. The plot of Diablo is pretty simple: there's a demon lord named Diablo, and he's not a very nice guy, and so you kill everything in your path to get to him. Blizzard made two more Diablo videogames after Diablo, and they were exactly that thing two more times. Maybe that thing was the best thing ever. I have probably sat on my couch for a full three months of my life playing Diablo. Yes, I could be using that time to go outside and interact with the world. To heck with that. There's demons to kill. So when it became apparent that we could write an entire Adventure Path about carving a swath through the Abyss, I was on it like a Shakespeare sonnet.

The Third Sin: Gluttony

Wrath of the Righteous is about being mythic heroes. I mean, seriously mythic. Kings of the world, really. Everything is just bigger in the Worldwound. We wanted all that stuff. Of course, we had a real challenge ahead, because we needed every character we've ever created to work in that environment. We had to come up with a lot of clever trickery to make that all work. But basically, we did it because we like to eat the most awesome things, and nobody was gonna stop us from eating all of them.

The Fourth Sin: Greed

And oh, the toys! The Pathfinder RPG folks had built up all these artifacts and relics and other boss things that just didn't make sense in an intimate story like Skull & Shackles. We made a thing called a Boomcrown for you. Also, we made a bow that fires dragon breath. And that's not even scraping the surface. Would you like to ride a Dire Griffon? Got that for you. Wanna cast a spell called Terraform? No problem. Maybe have a goddess as an ally? All of this and more can be yours! It's so cool.

The Fifth Sin: Lust

I would like to introduce you to my friend Nocticula. She's a demon lord who controls a realm made out of the corpses of demon lords she's killed. She's got a cavalcade of succubi and incubi and other demons of lust, ready to bring down the will of the mortal world. She's a super-hot nova of sex and violence. And she's your friend. That's just the kind of thing that keeps our attention in Wrath of the Righteous.

The Sixth Sin: Envy

And okay, here's the basest reason we wanted to do Wrath of the Righteous. We were working on Rise of the Runelords when the Pathfinder RPG guys were designing the RPG version of Wrath. Throughout the day, we would hear them chuckling at the latest evil machination that James Jacobs and his team had come up with. They were having so much fun. And quite honestly, we're not the kind of folks who can abide people having fun without us. So we stole their fun. I'm sure they will get it back someday.

Illustration by Bryan Sola

The Seventh Sin: Wrath

With all those rationalizations under our belt, we set about to designing Wrath of the Righteous, breaking everything along the way. One of the coolest things about this game line is how the sets seem to take on the personality of one member of the design team. Rise of the Runelords is Chad's: it's a sweeping arc of everything one can pack into a fantasy game. Skull & Shackles is Gaby's: it's a jaunty adventure on the high seas, with all the yo-ho-hoing her galvo-obsessed brain can handle. The organized play seasons are Tanis's: they're a big inclusive tent under which all gamers can gather.

Wrath of the Righteous is Paul Peterson's. Paul is the designer of Smash Up and Guillotine and other violent-sounding games. If I'm going to find someone to design a hellscape, he's my guy. And so he'll be leading you through Wrath of the Righteous. Buckle up, because it's going to be a bumpy ride.

Mike Selinker
Adventure Card Game Designer

Wrapping Up Iron Gods

Saturday, January 24, 2015

The Iron Gods Adventure Path wraps up this month with Pathfinder Adventure Path #90: The Divinity Drive and the Giantslayer Adventure Path is set to launch next month with Pathfinder Adventure Path #91: Battle of Bloodmarch Hill, so to tie things off we'd like to share a few pieces of the excellent artwork that appeared throughout Iron Gods. Enjoy!

Illustrations by Kari Christensen and J.P. Targete

Illustrations by Dmitry Burmak, Tatiana Vetrova, Brynn Metheney, and Miguel Regodón Harkness

Adam Daigle
Developer

Confessions of a Recovering Paizo Blog Addict

Thursday, October 2, 2014

Hello. My name is Mark, and I'm a recovering Paizo Blog addict.

When the Paizo Blog first started back in spring 2007, I was new to the Pathfinder fan community, and to be honest, Pathfinder wasn't even a thing. I rarely read it, because I wasn't quite sure what the people who made my favorite magazines thought they were doing making D&D content that wasn't officially approved and licensed as canon and therefore allowable in my game (yeah, I was one of those gamers). I read the blog occasionally, but that was it.

Then I started working (rather obsessively, I might add) on Pathfinder Wiki, and suddenly the blog was really useful, super exciting, and checking it daily became a big priority. Big isn't even the right word. I used to check religiously every day at blog time for the latest update so that I could add any newly revealed hints or secrets to the wiki, whether that was a spoiler about the monsters that were going to appear in a new Pathfinder Adventure Path volume or an image of Aroden creating Absalom.

Now, it should be noted that at this time, blogs were scheduled to go live at midnight. I was then living in New York City, so that was 3 AM where I was. And like the dedicated fan-boy I was, I stayed up until 3 to be the first to comment on each one, then I'd go promptly to bed. When there wasn't a blog or it wasn't on time, I got upset that I'd waited all night and forgone sleep for nothing. So entitled was I that I created an alias called Blog Police to remind the fine folks at Paizo that they'd "forgotten" a blog or neglected to include art in it that I could use under the Community Use Policy.

Oh how things change!

All this is to say that today's blog is being written after it was supposed to go live at noon. I'm sorry if anyone in Sydney has been waiting for a 3 AM blog. Here it is! And it's got art! And it's a preview of an upcoming book, Pathfinder Adventure Path #87: The Choking Tower by Ron Lundeen! Plus, a bonus wallpaper for download!

Illustrations by Maichol Quinto and Wayne Reynolds. Download the widescreen version of the wallpaper here.

Illustrations by Johan Grenier, Maichol Quinto, and Miguel Regodón Harkness

Ron's been a staple of many Pathfinder lines for several years now, but this is his first adventure path volume. Here are a few of the choicest pieces of art from the book, selected by yours truly based on which I like the most and/or feel would be most useful to the wiki. Enjoy!

Mark Moreland
Developer

Illustrating Zernebeth

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Tim Pratt originally created the Technic League captain Zernebeth for his Pathfinder Tales novels City of the Fallen Sky and Reign of Stars. Now she's going to be appearing as an NPC in Pathfinder Adventure Path #89: Palace of Fallen Stars, and Tim was kind enough to share his thoughts on what it feels like to see her get illustrated for the first time—twice!—and appear in an adventure.

When I was ten years old, cat-sitting for a neighbor while they were out of town, I noticed some D&D Monster Manuals on their shelf. I'd never played an RPG at that point, so the lists of stats and sizes and powers and hit points didn't mean anything to me, but the artwork seized my imagination and didn't let go. I still remember the drawings of beholders, umber hulks, green dragons, gelatinous cubes, mind flayers, rust monsters—and seeing them brought to life in ink lines and paint made my synapses sizzle.

As I got older, I discovered that some of the best fantasy artwork was appearing in RPG manuals and source material, and on fantasy trading cards. When I became a professional author, I experienced the thrill of seeing my work brought to life by various artists time and time again—and it's a thrill that never gets old.

Illustrations by Miguel Regodón Harkness and Tatiana Vetrova

But now, in addition to the pleasure of seeing a character I created depicted so vividly by Miguel Regodon Harkness and Tatiana Vetrova, I've got an extra special thrill, something that would have delighted my ten-year-old-self (and delights me equally all these years later): a character I created is going to be part of a *game*. My manipulative white witch cyborg Zernbeth is going to make life interesting and/or miserable for Pathfinder players lucky enough to pick up the Iron Gods Adventure Path. She's making the leap from my brain to your gaming tables.

Sometimes I really love my life.

Tim Pratt
Pathfinder Tales Author

Notoriously Good

Thursday, Novermber 21, 2013

In this volume of the Wrath of the Righteous Adventure Path the PCs journey to the Abyss at the behest of Queen Galfrey to get to the bottom of the sinister plots before them. While there the PCs visit the Midnight Isles where they have to gain notoriety in order to obtain a meeting with the realm's ruler—Nocticula, demon lord of assassins, darkness, and lust. Even though Nocticula allows nearly anyone into her realm, not all of the denizens there are going to be happy to see the PCs poking around the Abyss. Though this animosity might make things more difficult for the PCs, it certainly helps them gain notoriety. Getting into fights with demons, openly showing affiliation to lawful or good deities and organizations, and competing in blood sports all helps earn notoriety. For example, the PCs can earn a solid chunk of notoriety if they enter the arena of Battlebliss and defeat its reigning champion Gelderfang. Can the PCs pilot a safe course through the intrigues of the Midnight Isles to achieve victory? Until you can get your hands on Pathfinder Adventure Path #76: The Midnight Isles to find out, enjoy these fine illustrations.

Illustrations by Eric Belisle, Ekaterina Burmak, and Miguel Regodón Harkness

Adam Daigle
Developer