Inside Pathfinder Comic: Wake the Dead

Hi, my name is Fred Van Lente, writer of comics and prose (my latest novel, Never Sleep, debuted a few weeks ago: check it out if you like historical thrillers about America's first female private detectives). The fine folks at Paizo asked me to drop by to tell you a little bit about my new Pathfinder comics series, Wake the Dead, premiering from Dynamite in May. This is volume eight of the long-running Pathfinder series, and we're doing something a little different this time out.

While I've enjoyed chronicling the adventures of everyone's favorite Iconic PCs, i.e. Seoni and friends, both in the Fumbus comics one-shot and in the Guns & Gears flash fiction on this very blog, Wake the Dead takes up with a new party of Iconics of different classes. All these characters have appeared in the comics before in supporting roles, but this is the first time they’ve met each other, and certainly the first time they've gone adventuring together as a group.

Harsk is the one returning “main” character in the group. The dwarf ranger was delayed in rejoining his usual adventuring party, Seoni’s team, in Absalom in the Fumbus book. Those of you who read the Guns & Gears fiction know the Pathfinder Society sent them off on an adventure to the Arcadian coast; while he awaits their return, Harsk has agreed to do a separate mission for the Society to the arcane state of Nex, where he's to meet with a defector from the undead nation of Geb with valuable intel.

But Harsk isn't the only person braving the Awful district of Ecanus and the Mana Wastes to meet with the defector. The Firebrands have sent two of their newer members. Lem is the bard in the group, an eternal optimist, and a bit of a diva, and probably my favorite to write of the bunch.

Sajan is his mismatched partner, a stoic and humorless monk still on a quest to find his missing sister. The Firebrands have agreed to help him pick up that cold trail if he brings back the information this defector allegedly has.

However, in addition to the Pathfinders and Firebrands wanting to get their hands on the turncoat, she has information that could prove vital to the Knights of Lastwall too. They’ve sent the paladin Seelah into Ecanus to investigate. As a child, her family fled Geb and its horrors, so she has no love for that nation or the undead in general. Will her personal stake in this mission be a help, a hindrance, or a bit of both?

For Quinn the investigator, grabbing the defector is just another job in one sense, but in another, it's a tantalizing mystery: he does not know the identity of the client who hired him and is paying his daily fee (plus expenses). He'll only find out when he delivers the turncoat to Alkenstar.

Then, when the Gebbite necromancer Nyctessa shows up with her own inscrutable agenda and her rather, well, morbid sense of humor, Quinn's curiosity deepens further: okay, maybe it's not just a job to him after all.

So all of these Iconics with competing missions converge on the same spot in Ecanus's viscera-splattered Awful district to rendezvous with this defector—but only one can take the contact away with them. What happens next? Will they be at each other's throats, or will they work together to survive the night?

Needless to say, I can't wait for you to read the first issue of Pathfinder: Wake the Dead and find out.

Pathfinder: Wake the Dead comes out June 2023! Don't forget to ask about it at your Friendly Local Comic Shop Today!