The local apparitions were increasingly inhospitable as Samo and Nahoa made their way to the feet of the mountains and into the sun-blasted wastes that the orcs of Belkzen claimed as their hold. Though her grandmother’s spirit was with her as always, the little spirits she knew best from the north—those of river and wave or those who hid in the shade of the taiga—had stayed behind in the places to which they were accustomed when Samo headed south.
She had reached out to the spirits of this unfamiliar place looking for aid and information only to be met by a recalcitrant and surly apparition who seemed to chase away any other local entities. He was Orc and he was Battle, though Samo doubted he was any particular orc or specific battle; rather, he seemed an amalgamation of the most prominent attributes of this hard place. Her grandmother’s presence had retreated to the back of her mind as she made this new spirit the primary focus of her meditations, seeking to establish a bond that would allow her to draw upon their knowledge of their environs. The spirit warred and wrestled with her as they communed, though she sensed no malice; it seemed instead that the spirit’s language was simply one of conflict. Perhaps, she quickly realized, fortunately so.
A pair of spine-covered, wild-eyed boars snorted their challenge from a nearby rocky protuberance, the hard-edged nails of their feet tearing troughs in the earth.
“Nahoa,” Samo cried, “watch out!”
The large man smiled a grim smile as he looked up at the bristle boars. Samo felt an echo of approval from the orcish battle spirit she had been entreating, the apparition’s former reticence slipping away as their knowledge of battle and Belkzen filled her mind, along with some other interesting information.
“Do you see there, up behind them, Nahoa?” Samo’s question was met with a nod from her mighty companion, though he did not take his eyes off the dangerous creatures.
“I do.” Nahoa’s hands gripped his spear tightly before he thrust down into the ground. “Piglets, it would seem. Food in the mountains must be scarce for them to have brought their whole family to hunt and scavenge this far in search of it. Maybe...”
Without finishing his thought, the former farmer reached into his pack, feeling around until his fingers closed on a leaf-wrapped package. Pulling it forth, he carefully unsealed it, revealing a cluster of smoked tubers he’d prepared a few days earlier. He threw the bundle carefully toward the boars, hoping the food might be enough to persuade them to stand down. His offering was perhaps too late or too aggressively delivered, however, for as the tubers sailed through the air, so too did the spine-covered bodies of the two boars.
Samo reached for her magic to fling spears of light and spirit at the boars only to find the battle apparition all too eager to respond with their own power instead. Magic of joyful aggression whirled through her, and before she realized it, she was springing into battle alongside Nahoa. The large warrior had left his carved spear behind, clearly hopeful that his great strength could subdue at least one of the beasts without orphaning their young and stranding them to a slow death by starvation.
As Nahoa and the larger of the two boars crashed to the ground in a tumble of red-stained dust, Samo’s war gavel spun in her hand with remarkable lightness, crashing into the other beast with a strength and impact beyond what her slight frame should have been capable of. She turned with the impact, letting the boar’s quills scratch along the wooden plates of her armor as she prepared another strike. The battle spirit’s magic guided her, and she howled out a word in Orcish—no doubt the spirit’s language coursing back through their bond—that caused her war gavel to strike with unnatural accuracy, amplified by a power that enabled the gavel to tear soul as much as flesh.
Samo heals Nahoa. Illustration by Oleksii Chernik.
The boar squealed in pain and danced away as Nahoa surged up from the ground, lifting his own boar over his head and hurling the creature back toward the outcropping from which it had first approached. Both boars, in quite unboarlike fashion, fled back to their young, one snatching up the bundle of tubers as it went. Samo unleashed a mighty Orcish war cry, proclaiming her victory, as the magic of the battle apparition finally left her.
As she turned sheepishly toward Nahoa to apologize for the display, she realized that her companion was more badly wounded than had been initially apparent. Even as the mighty young man cast her a weak grin of confidence, he collapsed to the ground, his body covered in brutal tears and punctured through with dozens of quills. Samo rushed to his side, pulling the quills from his flesh using the techniques taught to her long ago. As she did so, she concentrated on pushing the battle apparition aside to allow her grandmother’s nurturing spirit to flow through her once more. The war spirit gave ground grudgingly, and Samo nudged her clan hat down her brow, finally thrusting the battle apparition to the back of her consciousness and allowing her grandmother to reassert herself in Samo’s soul. As she did so, healing magic from their bond flowed freely through Samo and into Nahoa’s wounded flesh.
When the last of Nahoa’s wounds sealed closed, the big man opened one eye to look at Samo.
“How about next time, I go first, and you hang back and protect me with your magic, eh? I’m getting tired of waking up to you covered in my blood.”
About the Author
Michael Sayre is Director of Rules & Lore at Paizo and previously worked on the Organized Play team. He’s also a prolific freelancer, having contributed to numerous Paizo books and publications from other publishers, such as Lost Spheres Publishing, Rogue Genius Games, and many other companies in support of the Pathfinder RPG and other table-top game systems.
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.
Samo and Nahoa make their debut in Pathfinder War of Immortals this October. This rulebook introduces their classes (the animist and exemplar, respectively) into Pathfinder Second Edition, allowing players to channel powerful nature spirits or become a demigod unto themselves. Within, you’ll also find mythic rules to allow characters of all classes to tell stories of legendary scope, all set against the cataclysmic event of the Godsrain and ensuing War of Immortals. War of Immortals is available for preorder now in hardcover, special edition, and pocket edition and will also be available as a retailer-exclusive sketch cover while supplies last. Read more of Samo and Nahoa’s adventures in War of Immortals and Pathfinder: Before the Godsrain, and look for their special guest appearance in November’s Godsrain novel from Liane Merciel.