Nhalmika Ironsight ran through the fresh snow. It wasn’t that much snow—it wouldn’t reach higher than mid-shin on a human—but it was higher than Nhalmika’s knees. And there’s a big difference, she now knew, between running through snow below your knees and running through snow above them. But she nevertheless ran on, hefting her scattergun to keep it free of moisture that might foul the firing mechanism. Most humans would find the large gun to be far too heavy, but Nhalmika carried it with practiced ease. So perhaps there was a fair tradeoff somehow.
Yesterday, she’d come into the village of Ivlanton to the sound of cheers. The village was deep in Irrisen, the land of perpetual winter. Frostbite and privation were as omnipresent as the snow. Ivlanton sorely needed blankets, firewood, and medicine.
A caravan master in Lod had sent a cartload of these goods to Ivlanton. When it didn’t return, he asked Nhalmika to investigate. At first, the master had praised Nhalmika’s son, an upright merchant with whom he’d done business, but Nhalmika wouldn’t venture deeper into Irrisen on familial pride alone. The master then offered a generous payment, but Nhalmika still refused. She was from the far south, and this wintry land was unfamiliar to her. She’d intended to move on quickly to warmer Varisia. But when the master talked about the difficulties the villagers would face if the goods hadn’t reached them, Nhalmika agreed to go. She couldn’t let innocent people suffer just because she didn’t like snow. She took the offered coin, too, and spent it on a hand-pulled wagon with still more blankets and medicine. If she couldn’t find the missing goods, she didn’t want to reach Ivlanton empty-handed.
It turned out she needn’t have worried. She found the cart a few miles from Ivlanton, pulled off the road. Anyone else might have missed it, but the dead teamster’s baldric buckle gleamed in the deep shadows of the snowy hedge, bright as a beacon to Nhalmika’s keen eyes. The horses were nowhere to be seen. She saw that bandits had plainly pawed through the wagon, but they’d left the blankets and firewood behind. “Disappointed in their mundane haul, no doubt,” she muttered. Nhalmika prepared a hasty cairn for the unfortunate teamster and doubled up the load in her wagon to bring the lot to Ivlanton.
The villagers were pleased, to be sure, but the village seer, an elderly and kind woman named Gerthanna, told Nhalmika that something had been stolen from the wagon after all: a small, magical flask that produced an endless stream of fresh water. In a land where water froze solid all year round, ready access to fresh water was vital.
“I know bandits,” Nhalmika said assuredly, “and I know how to put them into the dirt…that is, the snow, I suppose,” she finished with faltering confidence. She paused to consider, but only for a moment. “I’ll go after them, and I’ll bring back your magic flask.”
Nhalmika backtracked to the ransacked cart to look for tracks. Amid her own boot prints and the hoofprints of the departed horses, she discovered several heavy footprints, each a cross between an animal’s paw and an unshod human foot. Snowfall largely concealed the tracks, but Nhalmika was a little disappointed in herself to have missed them the first time. Even good eyes get old, she thought.
The tracks led away from the trail and up a nearby hill. That’s where she found the remains of the horses, brutally torn to pieces. Clearly, something had feasted on great chunks of their meat. “Well, at least a well-fed enemy is a sluggish enemy,” Nhalmika mused, following the tracks as the hills led into a series of steep canyons. They looked like the box canyons of home: winding, dangerous, and the perfect place for an ambush. She readied her scattergun and shifted her cloak to access her powder and shot more easily. Then she stopped to think.
The paw-footed bandits entered this canyon but didn’t leave it. That meant they’d either gone to hide inside or they were waiting in ambush. Either way, she could get a better look from above. Nhalmika scrambled up the canyon wall and made her way around its lip, crouching low
Near the end of the box canyon, Nhalmika spied an elaborate ice sculpture, resembling a cresting wave with spines like icicles jutting every which way. It looked like some sort of symbol, but one that twisted away from her scrutiny as if she weren’t welcome to understand it. She recognized it as a fiendish rune—and a powerful one at that—wrought entirely from ice. An open metal flask resting atop the sculpture spouted a stream of water that quickly froze to slush and then to ice.
Six hulking bandits worked around the ice sculpture, shaping the water as it froze to form the enormous rune. At first, Nhalmika thought they were dressed in ragged hides, but she soon observed that the patchy hides grew from their skin and claws sprouted from their hands and bare feet. They wore nothing other than blood-stained rags. The burly animal people were working with a definite purpose, and fear struck somewhere deep in Nhalmika’s soul.
A low growl behind her made Nhalmika gasp in surprise. She’d been so focused on the rune-shaping bandits that she’d forgotten her earliest training: “a vanguard must look in all directions at once.” She glanced behind her.
An enormous bear glared at Nhalmika from only a dozen yards away. Yet it wasn’t the bear’s hostile stare or aggressive posture that drew her gaze. The bear wore a harness of iron chains supporting a massive mirror atop its back. The mirror stood upright, reflecting Nhalmika’s puzzled expression as she perched at the canyon’s edge.
“I am never going to understand Irrisen,” Nhalmika sighed as she swung her scattergun around to point at the bear. Before she could scare the bear off, the mirror blazed with bright inner light. The light coalesced into a beam of energy that lanced out toward Nhalmika. She sidestepped the blast, but the mirror immediately started to glow again, as though preparing for another beam. The bear howled in anger, and the roar was answered by the bandits in the chasm. Even as distracted as they were, they couldn’t have missed the bright beam.
“Well, you shot first. My turn now.” Nhalmika fired at the bear’s head. Her shot might as well have struck stone. The bear hardly flinched, then took two paces, closing in on her. Nhalmika’s hands worked automatically as the scattergun recoiled, loading another round as she used the gun’s momentum to swing it back around in an arc to fire again. The bear ignored the second hit, and its mirror glowed even brighter. While her practiced fingers reloaded again, Nhalmika glanced around for options.
“That flashy weapon’s the trouble, my furry friend. I can’t let you keep it.” She fired her third round at the mirror, expecting an explosion of glass and metal, but the shot rebounded from the mirror’s surface without a scratch. The scattergun was growing hot in Nhalmika’s hands, but she smoothly loaded it once again.
“I guess this is hurting me more than it’s hurting you. I don’t have any more time for this.” Nhalmika aimed her scattergun at the snow and leapt from the top of the cliff. She pulled the trigger and the recoil propelled her even higher. Another energy blast shot across the snow where she’d been only a second ago. She had to admit the bear’s aim was good. Especially for a bear.
Illustration by Roberto Pitturru from Pathfinder Guns & Gears.
Nhalmika could see the beast bandits looking up at her. She reached the top of her arc and descended into the canyon. Her trajectory was taking her down to the wicked ice sculpture, where its prongs and spikes would impale her before she ever got close to the howling bandits’ claws. She swung her scattergun around as she fell and pulled the trigger.
For a split second, she wasn’t certain she’d reloaded after launching herself from the cliff. But her fingers knew their work and had reloaded in mid-air without any conscious direction. The round exploded from the barrel and slammed into the sculpture, shattering the frozen rune into a spray of icicles. Nhalmika reached out and snatched the flask as she completed her fall.
The bandits were bloodied from the ice fragments but didn’t seem to notice in their rage. Nhalmika could now see their faces up close, and she wished she couldn’t; they were twisted masses of animalistic snouts and snaggled teeth beneath hate-filled red eyes. Nhalmika hit the snow, rolled, and sprung to her feet. Having survived the fall, she had to grudgingly admit that maybe snow was good for something after all.
Seriously outnumbered and worried she’d see that strange energy-mirror bear lean over the canyon rim, Nhalmika ran. Her legs pumped furiously, but the snow was too deep for her to traverse quickly. Her benevolent thoughts toward snow only a few moments ago evaporated quickly and entirely.
The bandits—being significantly taller than she was—were having much less trouble. They roared and howled as they ran after her, closing in as Nhalmika reached the opening to the canyon. The wounds the bandits had suffered from the explosion were already almost completely healed. Nhalmika still didn’t know what they were, but right now she would have traded them for a whole pack of Mana Waste mutants. Preferably slower ones.
At the mouth of the canyon, Nhalmika stopped and turned. She wasn’t going to escape, and she wasn’t going to survive, but she might take a couple of the monstrous bandits down before they overwhelmed her. At least some of these brutes would have eaten their last horse! She aimed at the bandit in the middle of the pack and fired.
Nhalmika’s scattergun emitted a strange clunk and a gout of fire from the barrel. In a horrifying second, she’d realized what had happened. She’d reloaded by instinct again, but this time she’d had the small magical flask in her other hand. She hadn’t put a round in the gun; she’d loaded the flask in there instead, without realizing it until now.
But now was too late. The flask rocketed from the scattergun’s barrel and struck the central bandit in the face. The impact caused a geyser of water to drench all the bandits at once. Before Nhalmika could even lower her gun, the water became slush, then froze solid. The bandits were trapped.
Nhalmika took a few cautious steps forward. When she saw the bandits couldn’t burst free of their icy prison, she took a few more steps, then quickly scooped up the flask from the snow. To her surprise, it was still intact. And it wasn’t even cold!
“You’ve been a lot of trouble,” she said to the flask in a gentle, chiding tone. “I’m getting you to Ivlanton, then I’m walking south, and I’m not stopping until I can’t see a single snowflake.”
About The Author
Ron Lundeen lives in the rural hinterlands outside of Seattle, Washington, where he finds the climate a pleasant change from his native Illinois. After a career as a corporate attorney, Ron took a full-time position with Paizo, Inc. as a developer, working with freelancers to create fabulous worlds and monstrous threats for the Pathfinder and Starfinder roleplaying games. He now serves as development manager overseeing the Pathfinder development team. He also designs games in his free time, creating a dizzying variety of perils, plots, and legends. Ron’s favorite RPG design work is adventure writing, to help others share exciting stories with their friends. Although his first game design credit came back in 1993, Ron has recently written for Paizo, Wizards of the Coast, Ulisses Spiele, and many others. Ron also runs a gaming company and RPG writer advice blog, which you can visit at www.runamokgames.com.
About Iconic Encounters
Iconic Encounters is a series of web-based flash fiction set in the worlds of Pathfinder and Starfinder. Each short story provides a glimpse into the life and personality of one of the games’ iconic characters, showing the myriad stories of adventure and excitement players can tell with the Pathfinder and Starfinder roleplaying games.
