Frozen Fingers of Midnight: A Pathfinder Society Scenario Sneak Peek

Thursday, July 3, 2008

Last Saturday night, Craig Shackleton gathered together a number of Paizo Origins attendees in the lobby of the Drury Inn in Columbus, OH and ran us through the first ever installment of a Pathfinder Society Scenario. The aptly named Frozen Fingers of Midnight kept a bunch of us up way too late as we explored Absalom in service of the Pathfinder Society. Our mission was to find the cause of a freezing sickness that had infected a highly-regarded emissary from the Land of the Linnorm Kings.

Ever the bunch of roleplaying fanatics, we created a freak show menagerie of characters too weird to live and too rare to die:

Erik Mona was Ecritus, a pathfinder in service to the Cheliax faction and a Cleric of Asmodeus with a voice much like the Monarch from The Venture Bros. cartoon on Adult Swim. Barely able to tolerate his less intelligent brethren, Ecritus used every opportunity available to him to manipulate his fellow pathfinders into doing his bidding.

Michael (a representative from the company printing the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game beta) played Angelo, a pathfinder Paladin in service to the Andoran faction and completely unsure of the terrifying rabble the Pathfinder Society assigned him to in order to solve the mystery of the freezing sickness. A quiet, jovial sort, Angelo spent most of the scenario in the background, steering clear of Ecritus and Jason Bulmahn's character.

Jason played Dar-An'Sumat, an Osirion necromancer obsessed with sending the dead to their proper resting place in Pharasma's embrace. Ever the loyalist, Dar was also a member of the Osirion faction, and while trying to complete his faction's mission in the scenario, spent a great deal of time with his hooks, cotton cloth, and flensing knives sending the deceased foes of the party to the great beyond. Jason was decidedly creepy in this role.

Chris Self, Paizo's Sales Manager, played a sorcerer of the Cheliax faction named Blase. In any other group of pathfinders, Blase would be creepy and strange, but when put up against the creepy and strange Osirion and Blase's fellow Chelaxian, he was pretty tame. Chris played him dark and goth-like.

My own character was an Ulfen barbarian with an incredibly long and unpronounceable name in service to the Qadiran faction. He was a member of the Pathfinder Society because the society's goal of protecting and seeking knowledge matched his own. Cast out from the Land of the Linnorm Kings as a youth, he wandered the Inner Sea educating himself in the ways of more civilized peoples. I played him as a smart, well-spoken Dolph Lundgren-type who saw violence as a last resort and would blackout when flying into a rage. He was fun to play and very difficult to roleplay around some of his more violence-first-then-questions-asked adventuring companions.

Lastly, and certainly not least, was Nicolas Logue as the Ulfen cripple and albino rogue, Thalg Sickeyes. In Nick's own words from the Post Your Gen Con Character Concepts Here! thread on the Pathfinder Society messageboards, "His bloody birth ended his mother, thus he claimed his first life before he took his first breath. He was born with his left arm crippled. It remains palsied to this day. Thalg is an albino, with sickly yellowed pupils and stringly white hair." Click the link to the thread to read more about Nick's decidedly twisted take on an Ulfen rogue.

Our first foray into a Pathfinder Society scenario was a blast. Craig Shackleton has written a fantastic little adventure for Gen Con and I'm positive everyone who gets a shot at playing Frozen Fingers of Midnight will be impressed as well. Who knows, if you're lucky, you may even get Craig as your GM.

Stranger things have happened.

And now, pictures:

Joshua J. Frost
Director of Marketing