xeose4's page

Arazni was the most compelling character in the AP.

It's a shame she's out of the rest of the books. They really could have used the structure of having her continued patronage and presence moving the players through. It's a major misstep to just toss one of the most nuanced characters PF has introduced to Golarion in a long, long time like this. Having gone through both 5 and 6 now, having Arazni available for keeping the players on track and providing them a reason to do the (thing that happens in 6) would have helped a lot, particularly given that, for example, no one in my playgroup cares about Absalom. I doubt many players outside of PFS have even heard of it. Personally, I wonder why it can't take care of the Tyrant itself.

Obviously it's too late to do anything about here, but maybe in the future PF can keep its genuinely compelling characters around and utilize them more effectively.

This ending was trash. I cannot begin to imagine the rage my players would feel if I sprung that on them at the end of this campaign. Sure, there's an excerpt about "oh but if that's too harsh you can X" but that's baloney. There's one ending in mind.

PF needs to do an announcement about APs "not being for everyone." I am fine with just about anything, but the laziness of endless dungeon crawls, pages of bio for npcs the pcs have literally no reason not to instantly kill - seriously, they're undead monsters who serve the Tyrant, why are they chatting them up - and then to top it off with the Magical McGuffin Magically McGuffining ad infinitum is about the least imaginative end to the PF1e run I can think of. Good thing there are no consequences, Absalom is perfectly fine, and they don't even have to worry about any heroes to recognize in the future!

I would have opted out of this without a second thought.

The new formatting is really ugly.

This looks like a 4e book or a videogame manual with random font-size changes, and sometimes the font itself is different?

I really can't underscore how much the stat blocks in particular look like PF trading card excerpts stuck into the middle of pages. I don't follow the PF card game for a reason. While I generally like the APs, having such a large portion of them look like cheap Dragon Age RPG knock-offs or something makes me less interested in seeing more.

Sorry that I brought up a lot in my post. I feel that there are times that the message 'oh you can house rule that' or 'oh there is home brew for that' when the reality is that, if paizo content isn't produced, I don't get to use it. I honestly don't care if the shifter is terrible or the book is poorly edited; what I care about is that poorly made material that is clearly divisive takes up design space, at the expense of things like the following:

Cernunnos, empeyreal lord of the wilderness not getting any material in six years.

As one reviewer pointed out, no additions or corrections to mounted combat.

As another reviewer pointed out, magical plants significantly more expensive and less viable then the creation of a magic item equivalent.

Zero expansion of campaign, build points, wilderness buildings, etc, despite bandits and settlement building being a big and popular deal.

Details of how the 20 core deities, the other emperyeal lords, demon lords, or green faith ,interact with the eldest.

The Green Faith getting any updates at all.

Monster settlements.

Yes, I can house rule and home brew whatever I want. However, as evidenced by the people waiting for this to hit PFS, if I am NOT in a home brew game, I don't get to use this material. I don't get answers, and it will be another three to six years before something else comes out.

In short, a deeply divisive, poorly edited starter class meant to be a "quick pick up" for people who don't understand druids and don't want to read a basic guide stole design space in a book that was - based on previous editions of the ultimate series - meant to be a go to quick guide for "title"-related material. This is in addition to wilderness related reprints, which anyone interested in wilderness material already had, either in part or in full. Like... As I said, the design decisions seem less than informed by paizo material and more to just be some stuff thrown together to create a poorly edited, poorly received, clearly divisive book. One person said they thought the book would be fine if the shifter didn't exist; I think people would still be less than enthused, but simply have less objectively contentious targets.

Anyways tldr i think some broader questions could be asked on other fronts earlier on to prevent a great deal of irritation and headaches on the back end

Oh for sure we need those. I even asked James Jacobs in his thread about the absence of boons for cernunos (CR 30!), and he replied saying it's probably from some miscommunication between the designers (in the CotR he is listed as a minor empyreal lord. Yeah).

Ps: cernunos's favired weapon is the club.

woah it is? do you have a source for that? because if there are things for it I would love to see them. even if Paizo just put it up online because it's been like a 6-year haitus on any material released for him and he seemed like he could easily be one of the very popular empyeral lords if he'd ever gotten anything other than his single bestiary entry...

what was the reasoning behind including a "basic" or "starter" class in a $50 niche book?

I ask because, of the 6-8 people in the twice monthly DnD group I play with, I am 1 of 2 that buys Pathfinder (or any DnD) material. the people who want/need "simple" classes (like the magus who, after 2 years of play, still does not understand that she can cast spells and attack at the same time, despite patient, repeated explanations to her) would never, ever pay $50 dollars for a book full of stuff they don't understand, nor would they ever even look.

I, as someone who loves this stuff, find it insulting that a $50 book contains a dumbed-down version of the Druid that's way less imaginative or useful than any archetype, and is the exact opposite of what all the player base wanted (either a great pseudo-lycanthrope class or a great shapechanger class). what makes this more ridiculous is that this comes after making the "un"Chained Summoner, which utterly failed to address the issue that everyone hated it for (the summon monster SLA) and smashed utility/spellcaster eidolons into the ground - like even if the playtests in the past have been "toxic garbage fires" - why not at least shop the idea to people outside of the dev team to see what might be actually wanted by the community?

$50 dollars for a poorly-edited book (which nobody can refute), with %50 filler feats (which absolutely is true, they're bloat that nobody will take and most DMs will ignore - I don't even see DMs waste people's time with Handle Animal checks in PFS) and a class that is clearly for an audience that is not going to buy the book in the first place... Like is this going to be the quality level of PF "Ultimate" books from now on? Books that used to be staples are now just "eh we threw some stuff together, whatever, the community won't know any better, they're toxic anyways, don't like? just tell them to go 3pp"?

I don't actually care that the shifter is a lackluster, forgettable class that (as people point out) is objectively worse than existing stuff; that's fine. some people like boring stuff. sometimes I'm one of those people! what I AM disappointed with is the decision to dedicate design space in a niche book to material for newbies, apparently not put much investment into what the community is looking for, and then on top of it all, not even do a good job with the final product. I mean come on the class is made for people who "want a quick pick-up class" (i.e. meaning they don't understand wildshape), but you call it Shifter (guaranteeing confusion with the shifter race, which actually has negative synergy with it), and expect these people who don't get PF rules to instead buy a book about Wilderness instead of just looking up a basic guide to druids online (which is free)?

come on. at this point I don't know if I'm more irritated at the low quality of this book or the response to perfectly justified criticism of dev responses to this thread. a quarter of the negative reviews were from people who explicitly stated here, in April and May, almost 6-8 months prior to the book's release, that they were reasonably led to believe they were getting X and then were disappointed to see that the book gave Y. it really wasn't possible to just state that the shifter was going to be "an entry level wildshape class" before the book came out?

I dunno. long time Paizo fan who normally does not care about power level and whatever, but still really really disappointed in a lot of the design decisions and then responses with this book here. it just seems like a slight bit of effort could have gone to making this thing perfectly palatable instead vying with Ultimate Magic for most divisive paizo book.

can we also get Cernnunos as a deific obedience and favored weapons too?

can we also get clear errata to state that classes that utilize any "-obedience" feat allow for the emperyeal lords as well as deities?

these may seem like trivial things but they're pretty important to the people who care

I would save my wish and instead offer it to the naive apprentice when the master leaves. The only demand I would have for the apprentice is that they leave an item at the start of what will inevitably be a rube goldberg series of events that ultimately cause a drip of wax to fall on the circle and free me. Then I would take my revenge on the mortal that dared to summon me in the first place, sparing the apprentice that they might start on an epic quest to avenge their master and ultimately defeat me before my plans can reach fruition.

I look at the pictures first. If it looks interesting, I see if there's an entry to accompany it.

In order of priority:

Art, NPC entries, bestiary entries, archetypes, encounters, lore bits, rereading those first parts, then misc. other stuff if it's in there.

Despite playing casters almost exclusively, I never read spell entries.

Lashunta are the exact same deal—hot women because "sex sells", ugly men because nobody wants to see attractive men. This is why I don't take the "sex sells" defense super seriously—most of the time, it's a one-way street.

I agree. While I do appreciate the deliberateness in making the Lashunta men not... total garbage... I do really struggle with the fact that they turned out they way they did in the first place. In some ways I wish that the lashunta had no males, and the lashunta women could be dismissed as simply another male fantasy, rather than this half-step that sometimes seems to lampshade them instead of letting it get called out for what it is. I mean, in some ways it's better than the stereotypical fantasy races because the devs are therefore challenged to justify how it's NOT sexist... but I don't know. In many ways it feels like more of the same, except worse, because while I can pretend that my orc women are just as brutish as the men, or that my male halfling is super handsome, lashunta lore makes it pretty explicit that it's just not possible to have that sort of character. Not because of the stats, but because the sexual dimorphism is so extreme in the opposite directions.

Kobold Cleaver wrote:

Lashunta are the exact same deal—hot women because "sex sells", ugly men because nobody wants to see attractive men. This is why I don't take the "sex sells" defense super seriously—most of the time, it's a one-way street.

Supposedly no one (From the demographic you're talking about) wants to see attractive men... And yet, when we do see them, it's because of male power fantasy. It's... Funny.

There's two different points here:

One is to your first part, about the demographic Kobold Cleaver refers to, which is true: they don't care to see attractive men, they don't make effort to include them, and those times that they do it's accidental.

Here is a thread I made a while ago where I just went through the Pathfinder bestiary and tallied the number of female-only creatures that are explicitly stated to mate with human males. Included are the number of male-only creatures that have their sexual activity referenced. Of the men, 3 might be considered attractive while the third is a frog/fishman. Some, specifically in Pathfinder material alone, are used inappropriately//poorly, such as incubi (which one might assume would be great infiltrators, seducers, or masterminds) which to date have only been used in Pathfinder material as cannon-fodder guards or gladiator champions.

There are more than 10 times as many female creatures that are explicitly stated to have sex with or seduce human males, with some 44+ entries. to be clear, 44 > 4 by an exceptionally large margin.

There is also a sub-point about the 21 core deities (I included Aroden, as he is mentioned so much) and how, of the 8 female deities, 5 are depicted in extremely revealing clothing (or no clothing at all), and 3 of them are explicitly stated to have sex as a significant part of their portfolio or identity, while zero male deities are depicted in anything revealing (much less fully nude) and only Cayden Caliean is stated to have sex (and that is done in the context of being a shameless womanizer).

When we actually take inventory of Pathfinder (and DnD material as a whole), the evidence is very not in favor of your first point. Material for people who appreciate attractive males very rarely gets created.

Your second point is that, when it does appear, people (i.e. the ones that you think that it is targeted at) dismiss it as a "male power fantasy", which is often true; those people (me being one of them) do dismiss it, because it it wasn't designed for us. The shirtless male barbarian raising his great axe above his head while fighting a shirtless male orc is in no way meant for those who appreciate attractive men, and it's certainly not the equivalent of opening a book to see an attractive demoness wearing very little clothing casting a spell at a priest. That the artist might have the talent and skill to draw barbarian and orc as attractive is incidental - the point is that the original intent of the people who commissioned both pieces was to appeal to one section of their audience's personal preferences, to the exclusion of another part of said audience.

Wei Ji the Learner wrote:

xeose4 wrote:

I just hope we don't have 50 books on different human nations in space, the way we do with current Golarion material. I can pretty easily create a new human character of any identity - if I'm going to pay for new material, it needs to be something more interesting than "here have twenty different types of human ethnicities, but this time in space!'

whatever the non-human races, I would like room to have their own ethnic variants...

Well, unless the definition of 'human' has gotten thrown on a rack and stretched so hard that it's now 'transhuman', though that could bump against IP like 'Eclipse Phase' and others?

Luckily, the concept of transhumanism isn't patented by EP. There are plenty of games out there that delve into it, like Nova Praxis and Transhuman Space. I'd love to see how Pathfinder delves into cybernetics, uploading consciousness, and body modifications.

lashunta consciousness uploaded into an android body?

I just hope we don't have 50 books on different human nations in space, the way we do with current Golarion material. I can pretty easily create a new human character of any identity - if I'm going to pay for new material, it needs to be something more interesting than "here have twenty different types of human ethnicities, but this time in space!'

whatever the non-human races, I would like room to have their own ethnic variants...

To be fair, some of the ways the Lashunta are most visible can seem sexist. One example is that most/all of the lashunta NPCs thus-far are female (to my memory right now) and the lashunta themselves are based off the pulpy sci-fi "space babes on dinosaurs" of the 60s and 70s. Kind of naturally lends itself to questions of that nature, but there is a post on the forums by one of the guys that put them in pathfinder about how they're supposed to be a very not-problematic race.

One thing that I'm surprised no one has mentioned about the Drow (in Golarion specifically) is that the male drow, when turned into driders, are explicitly stated to turn monstrous and have bug faces, while the females remain beautiful from the waist up. This is stated in whatever book has the hideous driders on the cover, for those who like to look stuff up. Imo that rather tips the scale towards the "drow are explicitly something" route, whether misandry or otherwise.

usually these get derailed with people pointing out that there are a few very powerful witch builds. :\

I'd agree though, that witches need far more exciting, thematic hexes - or stuff that happens as they grow. a winter witch can be stunning in how ice-themed they are, but a plant witch has like... nothing...

Any time a character kills a bird creature (harpy, roc, dire corbi) with a fire spell, its corpse automatically turns into a delicious stuffed turkey that they can eat to regain health.

"the Curse of Zuan" is referenced every single time someone rolls a nat20 followed by a critfail. this is because Zuan's player manages to be both spectacular and terrible, often with the same action. The very first example of this was the ranger, Zuan, catching the alchemist's firebomb thrown to him and applying it mid-battle (with an acrobatics nat20), followed by him rolling a critfail when he turned to fire it at the boss. The arrow left the bow, but the bomb dropped at his feet. Since then he has managed to fall off a cliff but land with grace, be dropped to 0 by a reefclaw but dodge the death frenzy ability (while prone!), and shoot himself with his own arrows many, many times - all while also beheading dragons with single swipes, backflipping up walls, and being the all-around DPS, tank, and skillmonkey. It's high or low, no inebetween, no matter what character this guy plays.

Whenever we fight goblins, they always hit each other on critfails. Any time a goblin dies, they have a 50/50 chance of either farting or catching fire as they hit the ground, regardless of what else is happening in the battle. One time this prompted the paladin//unicorn player to cry out "Why are they so flammable!" in in-character horror, and her voice was so perfect at the time that it's just become a permanent feature.

joana knows up. Civ IV yo!

Update: Read Death's Heretic this weekend. It was all right. Fast, easy read. Thought Salim was a fun enough character. Liked the focus of the narrative, how it stuck with Salim and the adventure at hand. Mostly. Thought the manner in which his backstory was buried and presented as a reveal was frustrating, but the main idea there made for a great source of internal conflict. Had some complaints, some disappointments, but I'll spare you those.

Thanks to everyone who recommended it. I'll prolly check some more of the Tales novels out when the opportunity arises.

Also read the first half of the Book of the New Sun quartet. Totally loved it. An absolute joy to read so far. Big, big thanks for that recommendation.

I had opinions on Death's Heretic as well. the sequel though knocked my socks off. if you could tolerate the first one, I'd urge a glance at the second. I don't think you'd regret it.

to be fair, I get why someone might come in looking askance at Pathfinder Tales. I grew up having a desperate... hate/hate relationship with the Faerun novels, many of which contained terribly misogynistic lines, terrible dialogue, and absurd treatment of people of all genders. in one example of a legit DnD book by a very, very popular author, a dad beats the tar out of his teenage girl because she won't prostitute herself to get her lazy mother a cure disease spell. after beating the tar out of her, she "looks at him and saw that it hurt him (to beat her) as much as it hurt her (to be beaten by her supposed guardian)." I mean... the author straight-exonerates the guy for knocking his daughter about for refusing to prostitute herself... previous DnD novels weren't exactly inured from this kind of stuff. it's way common, even through new stuff released in the last few years.

I came into the Pathfinder Tales extremely skeptical, more than ready to cast them into the flames and never read another again. unfair, definitely, but that's the history of the genre. while the Tales can be hit or miss, imo there is solid, solid effort on the part of the Paizo team to keep extremely talented authors on, with storylines that, at least more often than not, are worth it.

all you nerds have all these exciting and well-thought out literary opinions but where are all you and why aren't you part of the Pathfinder Tales Book Club discussions

tbh all four series have some pretty dumb points

for chapters 19 - 27

I had some questions about what you guys thought of the final gambit (well, at least the piece where it all tied together).

One of the most impressive things about Gad's gambit here is that his team essentially defeats a demon lord. After all, Yath can grant divine spells, manipulate reality, and garners worshipers (to a lesser degree than the Locust Lord to be sure, but it can still facilitate those things nonetheless). At the same time, the team isn't particularly high level - they express apprehension about fighting the balors, for example, and although Isilda is stated to be level 17 in the Worldwound campaign setting, it's also stated that she has grown to be "far more powerful" than she was in life. I've always taken that to mean she was maybe 10-13 during the Worldwound Gambit, and it was only through the loss of one of her divine patrons that Jerisa was able to make any ground against her at all - and Jerisa still lost rather handily. With that in mind, did it actually feel believable that this team could have pulled off this gambit? Does it feel "epic-level" (which is essentially what it takes to slay a demon lord)?

I'm not doubting anything, I am just curious what sort of reactions this ending might have garnered.

My second question was about the false deception - and particularly that both Gad and Calliard knew what was going on for most of the mission, while it was largely the reader that did not (since information regarding that is only shared through this overarching, third party perspective where we're only told what's happening in the present moment). There's good set-up for this, like mentioned earlier, where the narrator only shows specific moments and pointedly does NOT delve into the past relationships of anyone. In fact, I would argue that Jerisa and Gad having history together is almost just a red herring meant to throw the reader off from the fact that Gad and Calliard have as much or more history... well Gad and any of the party members, for that fact. After all, they all trust Gad nearly implicitly and follow him into terribly risky odds. Highlighting the seemingly one-sided romantic tension between Gad and Jerisa only distracts from what else is actually going on - just like Gad and Calliard were doing with the demonblood addiction. If you keep that in mind, the team was actually in significantly less danger than the reader might have imagined, as they are all roughly 6+, very clever, and certainly skilled at what they do. More importantly, though, they have a pretty good chance of trusting each other - or at least Gad's recommendation of that person - to have their back. Which says a lot, especially after something like Skinwalkers or Winter Witch where motivations are unknown and the party members often have very little loyalty to one another. As far as a driver of tension, however, did it pay off for you? Does the reveal reduce the tension, or is that unfair to include having time to reflect on it once the book was put down?

The third question was how do you guys feel about them as a team, in the end? Gad is a great leader that pulled a lot from his associates, to be sure, but in the end it's quite different from Firesoul (where they showed hints of liking each other and wanting to actually work together). In fact, it feels very uncertain that any of them like anyone else except for Gad. Does it add to the story, or detract to include those elements? How might the story be different if they seemed more interested in one another?

I dunno, I enjoyed the Worldwound Gambit, to be sure, and at the same time it is a bit different than the other Pathfinder Tales...

Sorry DB I was horribly sick last weekend - I could barely move and forgot to add a post about the WwG.

I 100% am interested in the Sweet Ichor journals, particularly speaking towards how they work as an ending!

So now we know for sure that Hendregan is a sorcerer, confirmed by Vitta exactly the way players do, haha. However, that doesn't mean he's still not multiclassed, as he could speaking also be an oracle with the fire mystery. Also, do you think he actually referred to the Words of Power, as in the optional spellcasting system in Ultimate Magic? I experimented with that option for a six-month campaign [I played an emberkin aasimar crossblooded sorcerer with the celestial and martyred bloodlines] and although it was fun, after a while it became tedious because the more words I learned the more option anxiety set in, so each of my turns took increasingly longer as I tried to customize the best combination for each situation. It didn't help that I translated all of the words to Latin and relied on a spreadsheet to actually speak the spells in character, but it was an interesting experience nonetheless. But I digress...the whole Hendregan situation is ridiculous, but in a great way. Although the forehead-slapping ordeal with him parting the sea of lava was 1/3 homage and 2/3 parody to a classic biblical scene, it was still – again – incredibly cinematic.

You know, it's cool that you feel this is confirmed when I read this as Hendragon actually being a wizard through and through - I don't believe for a second that he has a single level of spontaneous caster. It seemed to me much more like this was someone using their massive INT to great advantage - in debating (not diplomacing) the fire spirits, in the whole benefits of being thought of as a wizard, even down to the fact that it is VITTA, the non-spellcaster, who supposedly needs to explain what a magical bloodline means - when everyone just saw him know full-well what power he inherited as a birthright. I mean I might be totally wrong because I'm mainly drawing on the Eidetic Spellcaster feat from the old Dragon Magazine and "that's not pathfinder" but... man I just don't see him as a sorcerer - even though the language changes to call him "fire sorcerer" later on and stuff, I think it's a lie to throw the reader off the trail! sure Hendragon is crazy, but there's a cleverness there that I could not attribute to a high CHA individual...

I think Tiberio is a pretty low-level cleric, like maybe level 3 with many more levels of barbarian than anything else. Gad is absolutely a rogue: (charlatan), hah, and one of the most interesting things about Laws' tales is how well Gad shows it off. You can practically see the skill check that's the first successful bluff with each interaction!

Hendregon I think is a wizard with the eidetic memory trait that appears from time to time in 3.5/Pathfinder material (negating the need for a spellbook). I think he's also roughly "archmage" level (8-12 or so) based the spells he casts, although I wouldn't rule out that he might have some eldtrich heritage feats going on as well. It's always fascinating to see a caster that seems to straddle two classes, rather than just clearly fit one role.

The way the story is written is very different as well - much of the story is told very much as a movie, and I feel that makes what we, the readers see, much more deliberate. We don't see how Calliard and Gad know each other, for example, or how Gad is able to find Vitta so easily (in this otherwise war-torn, heavily ravaged nation plagued with adventurers and demons). When this style is compared to, say, Hunting the Beast, where we are in the heads of a bunch of different characters, it feels to me like there's a much higher level of suspense in the air. Probably what makes it feel like more of a heist caper too!

Well I probably shouldn't say that elves "never" go to the Worldwound - if any would, it's almost definitely the Reclaimers; in The Worldwound I think there's a line about why elves are found in the region, and those rare times that they are it's because they're researching new ways to fight demons in the Tanglebriar or else on quests somehow related to bringing knowledge of demons back to Kyonin.

I'm definitely with you on that, but "ticked off" is far off from being genocidal like the Reclaimers, which is what I was referring to about the elven outlook on humans. The thousands of years after the Retreat has almost let their view towards...

Aah, okay I see what you mean. It's good to hear a counterpoint at times, because often I see the human-centric view of Golarion as incredibly threatening to the other races, and when it's backed up by the stories of humans being either massive tools or straight-up genocidal themselves I'm usually more of the stance of "oh of course every other race on Golarion would feel pressured to declaring war on the bloodthirsty humans". After all, we saw that in Plague of Shadows where the Galtans just blithely slaughtered a young elf noble and her retinue (despite the obvious ramifications of pissing off her lord-wizard uncle, whose lands directly bordered their city), or even waaay back when in Death's Heretic where Neila's response to the fey being irritating (after she razed their ancestral home) was to demand their murder and the display of their corpses as warnings. I guess I'm so used to the use of genocidal slaughter as a way of dealing with every other race (on the part of humans) that I actually find it very refreshing when it's reflected back at - in Golarion's case - the most frequent perpetrators of it.

I see what you're saying, but another way to consider it is the Reclaimers are using the humans out of spite. Slavery serves one (or a combination) of three purposes: productivity, profit, or punishment; the latter of which is the most believable reason why the Reclaimers would be using the humans in this manner. Plus, I think it's safe to say that Dualal had no intention of letting any of them live after everything was said and done.

Hmm, okay I see what you mean - a way of getting revenge during this process of... getting revenge. Hah, yeah okay I can see where - while not the brightest idea - Dualal would be enamored of the idea (and why that would actually cause even more friction amongst her forces).

The Reclaimers are the elves that largely fight the Tangle in Kyonin; the corruption of Treerazor there is one of the main reasons why the elves rarely/never go north to fight the Worldwound. There's a whole organization of radicalized Reclaimers in the Second Darkness, and then I think that there is a PFS scenario called the Elven Entanglement where you aid their attempts to rescue stranded colleagues.

How do you mean "still feel strongly about humans in that way"? I tend to read the Reclaimers as very bitter people that, if you take the lore about how elves always psychically/physiologically adapt to their environment into mind, have been poisoned by the corruption of nature surrounding them. The fact that the demons infesting the wilds are invariably the result of human meddling can't help, and I can imagine that the crusades to end the Worldwound are a sore point on two fronts; both that no humans aid them in slaying Treerazor, whose presence on Golarion started loooooong before the Worldwound opened, and because the crusaders passing north run afoul of Kyonin's border patrols. I think there's even an elf PC from a Paizo employee whose backstory is that some crusaders going north slaughtered his entire elven village when he was a kid and took him with them as a slave. I mean, not gonna lie... if I were an elf, I think I'd be pretty ticked off at humans too.

Which imo leads to the one larger flaw in this - while I enjoyed the story (especially because Law does a great job of weaving in rogue diplomacy/gambits into wilderness settings - hey not everything has to be in a city to have social skill-checks!), in this case it seems like the Reclaimers would have erred on racial supremacy/secrecy and decided not to allow these rando humans to show up and aide them. I am also mildly amused, because reflecting back now I realize that Gad has continuously... well, spoilers. I'll come back to that later!

I think that the thornbeast was just an advanced tendriculos. Or it was made up, I'm not sure - I recognize the picture from a beastiary entry, and I'm betting that the forest creature was a tentriculos, which are the plants that arise from "the corruption of nature", but there are a loooot of plant monsters now.

Deadmanwalking wrote:

Off-topic: There are apparently just Winter Wolves who can assume human form. Rules can be found in Adventure Path Volume #68 (the second chapter of Reign of Winter). They're pretty much ordinary Winter Wolves except for the shapeshifting.

It's the location. Baba Yaga created a permanent magical effect allowing Winter Wolves to assume human form within the bounds of the city. It was part of the deal she made with them to get them to join her army when she took control of the region in the first place.

Isn't there an amulet that allows them to take human shape for a few hours? I thought I saw that listed somewhere, although I might be confusing a 3.5 amulet...

Robin Laws also wrote a 6-part adventure with Gan's team in the Wrath of the Rigtheous that is more or less the finish to the ID and WG - if you guys can get your hands on that...

on the other hand, it would be interesting to follow this book that (to my surprise) Dave Gross part-wrote with the rest of his Pathfinder Tales.

worldwound gambit has a different narrative style than many of the other pathfinder books.

Her novels and short stories featuring Arilyn Moonblade were some of my favorites from the vast FR collection.

That's some praise! And heartening to hear. I will definitely pick them up if I see them around - and I don't think that enough can be said about the dearth of female protagonists from that era (much less ones that operate as more than just lusty male fantasies). I also agree that opening with Ellasif helping her mother give birth in the middle of an intense, otherworldly battle is far and away an excellent start to a novel...

So we learned a lot of stuff in this next part of the book!

The caravan setting off from Korvosa has brought Declan and Ellasif togther... and I honestly don't know what to make of their interactions. On the one hand, we see that Ellasif views Declan with quite a bit of contempt, both for his magical inclinations and for his general ham-handedness when it comes to interacting with others. To be fair, I might be reading into it a bit too much, simply because I always get irritated when reading about two men peacocking at each other because a woman is watching, but the fact that Ellasif knows this and then is still... pretty okay with Declan "claiming" her... I don't get it. Regardless, some chemistry is happening between the two and we can see Declan turning more from Silvana to instead start viewing Ellasif as something more than just an ominous bodyguard. We also see the mystery of Silvana deepen as well. I'm curious to other people's thoughts on this budding romance... does this seem to have potential? Or does it feel shallow of Declan to abandon Silvana so quickly?

Another major mystery that starts to take shape is Declan's powers; it's clear he's not practicing any valid form of wizardry anymore, nor is he manifesting sorcerous divination powers. Instead, it's something completely outside the system and feels almost god-like in ability. He can conjure images of people and things he's never seen, can reshape the landscape from miles away, and yet doesn't even have an inkling of what might be going on. In terms of Pathfinder Tales characters we've read so far, he is easily the most power, and by a fairly large margin, if only because his powers seem to operate completely outside the game system. This is one reason I wanted to get to this book after reading it; what does this do for you guys? From a reader perspective, I mean. Other tales will have some loose parts, but as a whole they tend to adhere more to the system than less. This doesn't even have an analogue. So I really am curious; does it draw you guys in, or is it just a puzzle that feels out of place?

What bothers me is the comments I've read elsewhere about the scene in question. The degree of apologetics at play is disappointing. While in any other form of media, bi erasure is the norm, in most discussions of this scene, bi imposition is instead occurring. In other explanations they review the dialog from the Japanese version, and say that since the drugged character seems okay with it later, it's alright, which sounds an awful lot like saying that arousal equals consent.

I can see keeping it in or leaving it, but it's the amount of people justifying the scene or saying "it's okay, love is love!" disturbs me. Nothing about this is okay, and then to use GLBT-affirmative quotes to cover up the fact that a hetero dude just magically turned a lesbian "straight" without her consent??

As anti-censorship as I am, part of me just doesn't even want to give those people space to comment on it simply because of how much it makes my skin crawl.

I have to start by saying that I apologize for waiting a whole year to finally get to this novel. I have read every Elaine Cunningham novel from the Forgotten Realms, a campaign I never thought I would ever leave until 4th edition fast forwarded a century and essentially killed all of my characters, but I’m not bitter because that’s why I switched sides and went to Pathfinder! Anyway, just as she did with her Harpers novels, she has delivered again.

I too was feeling kind of bad that we took so long to get to this after Laine suggested it last year. I actually read this some time ago because I found it in a half-price bookstore and remembered said suggestion, so I'm happy to finally get to it! Out of curiosity, DB (and any others who have read her FR series), what's appealed about her writing/characters in the past? I personally have this very strong love/hate relationship with FR material, so I know both a great deal and relatively very little...

Like we had touched upon in Skinwalkers, the Ulfen culture really comes to life right away in this story.

I also enjoyed the Ulfen border-village. Previously it had been rather hard for me to believe/conceptualize how it was that Irrisen hadn't managed to simply overwhelm the neighboring kingdoms, but this is the most perfect way to showcase the explanation; NONE of the Ulfen villagers have NPC levels. hah! it WOULD be pretty tough to try and take a neighboring territory if all you have to work with are low-int monsters while they have a horde of barbarians and shaman.

On a similar note to DB, the jump to another time period was surprising. Also, the jump to Declan. Of the two I feel that I enjoy Ellasif more, though Declan's chapters have more interesting stuff going on (so far, at least). It's funny too, because they're both basically trying to find out about family members, both have (essentially) no other relatives, and no real friends or connections to the place they come from. For all that you noted, DB, they're opposites on many conventional levels (like gender, class, prime stat, and maybe even alignment), they are less opposites and more just like reflections of each other.

no no DB the feral hunter archetype gives the feral aspect an unlimited duration! so you can get the "pseudo-lycantthrope" feel from the aspect alone, but when you couple it with the also-cosmetic shift of the skinwalker you can almost get a full-on shifter feel.

I actually wondered if there there wasn't a bit of ex-cleric in Jendara, on account of the tattoos (holy symbols) and her continued mentioning of "feeling the power of Besmara". given her tracking ability, I wondered if she wasn't a ranger as well. there didn't seem to be any hint of barbarian (I totally agree), while she did often do a lot of tracking.

on another note, I felt there was definitely a difference between this and Firesoul. and between this and Mother Bears//Winter's Wolves, actually. Jendara worked really well as a pirate that I didn't know much about, but seeing her in long-form ... hmm, it felt like she was starting to get stretched a bit thin. it just got to the point where I stopped believing that she could have been the bloodthirsty pirate dedicated to Besmara that she kept telling people she was, just because there were so many times what she said she'd done in the past were so very at odds with what she said she was doing in the present.

take the battle scene with her sister, for example - her sister just launched a horrific attack on Jendara's home village, was clearly crazy and tortured a tone of people, and kidnapped her son; she is a terrible and crazy enemy. Jendara, however, stabs her and then... runs past her to her son, leaving her living, spellcasting enemy at her exposed back. I get that it was supposed to maybe inspire a sense of Jendara as a desperate mother trying to take care of her son, but I read it as her being very foolish. and the accumulation of those things had me less than invested in any of the battle scenes by the end of the book. the fights started being less "fights" and more "Jendara for some reason survives very poor decisions". the reason I mention her past is because, if these were the battles she'd faced previously... and she fought like she did in these examples, just running up and then swinging twice... the enemy just running away... she ignores another enemy to do some mindless task... the over-exposure to her way of fighting left me incredulous.

I will say that - in addition to the neat mythology piece - the homesteads, the little fish-towns, and the islands of the archipelago are far and away the strongest points. aside from a couple more... not anachronistic but just "out of place" pieces like the jarl having tea as an option, or the radically different feel of the capital compared to the islands less than a few days away, the world of the archipelago is really, REALLY interesting. I would enjoy an entire viking/nordic adventure path (or even just one module) that explores seafaring in a northern clime, with less emphasis on pirate ships and more emhpasis on that explorer journey.

the visit to the norns was a cool part of the story - the world of the archipelago was made infinitely more interesting by the return to some very nordic roots (in terms of mythology and environment).

what did you guys think of the whole "skinwalkers created via ritual", as opposed to other ideas like "partially cure lycanthropy" or "child of a lycanthrope"? normally, that's what I assume skinwalkers are (the children of lycanthropes that failed to succumb to the curse - or perhaps children of those bitten, thus not "natural" lycanthropes). I was surprised, too, by the combination of the kalvamen and skinwalkers. there was a certain element of "scraelings" to them that was interesting... but at the same time it felt like the world of Golarion is really small. like "wow, a three day boat-ride to Kalva? has it really been a hundred years since you last saw them?"

but I do have to say that I totally expected the story to go elsewhere; while I completely expected Jendara's sister to be alive and living with the Kalva the moment the amulet was found, I thought that the skinwalker she shot with the arrow was left behind, looking for "his mother's" amulet - which Jendara would discover only after an extended length of time, perhaps a battle, etc. then she'd sail with her nephew to Kalva, and find her sister/her body, and then team up with her nephew against the kalvamen invasion or something. I don't know why I assumed that, I just felt that... I dunno. yeah. with all the family-related stuff, maybe? anyways, probably would have melted poor Jendara's mind!

DB, if you're thinking shifter ideas, you should totally consider a hunter - feral archetype as a shifter!! it's a REALLY COOL combo-build that lets you get a lot of bang out of turning into your animalistic form!

Hi, a curious intersection of PFS and Pathfinder material happened this weekend.

At the table, the treesinger druid was told she needed two "attack" tricks in order to have her treant companion attack an undead creature, as "animals do not normally attack" creatures outside the limited "what animals attack" range (i.e. humanoids, monstrous humanoids, etc). However, her animal companion is not an animal; being a plant creature, does it need two attack tricks? Does it say somewhere that plants only attack certain creatures? Or does functioning as an "animal companion" cause it to function as an animal?

The DM at the table ruled that it needed two attack tricks, which was fine and understood by everyone as fairly reasonable. I was also curious how others might read this, however. If anyone else has any input, it'd be great to hear (in part because I feel this would be important for what plants as a type are allowed to attack as well).

I honestly did not think I'd like this book. I dragged my feet on ordering it and the prequel was interesting but didn't do a lot towards selling me; I was in this phase of having finished reading a lot of disappointingly... well, cliched stories that upheld very stereotypical american, heterosexual, patriarchal values. not gonna lie, the thought of trudging through yet another story where - even if the main character is female - that stuff manages to still shine through was very tough. I really, really did not want to do it.

but then this book had Jiri deal with a break-up by not moping about it, or her mentor's death by not sobbing for thirty pages, or have an extreme emotional impact due to her village's reaction. also she was not hung up on the romance she had been enjoying, and didn't blame herself for the villagers not listening. like, there was just so much that was so very refreshing about her attitude and how wonderful it was that she wasn't crippled by any of this.

similarly, the characters - by the end - actually liked each other. it wasn't like other baloney adventuring parties where, somehow, despite having risked life and limb and traveled together for months, everyone will gleefully slit each others' throats. in fact, even the Aspis adventuring crew - Patima's crew, that went into the Gorilla King's city - sounded as though it was a crew of normal, well-adjusted people who aren't emotionally crippled or otherwise broken in some way. everyone was able to function as a human being which just... I don't know, I feel that it added miles to the material. having Sera bend and be humorous, or Morvius go out of his way to share his wisdom (and some needed life lessons) make them feel like there is far more to life than simply hoping to find another questgiver before they get too hungry. more than anything, I wanted to see them actually tackle another adventure (instead of just hoping that they all retire from the adventuring life because I'm so tired of them sniping at each other).

there was just a lot to this book that kept me going because it was just so different. Jiri is a young (16?) girl who wasn't shamed for having a sexual experience prior to marriage. Morvius and Linnara have an open relationship (for one partner at least) and they are both open and accepting of it - and even more amazing, it's one where she is A) fully informed and B) it's not the man getting to have a million ladies on the side. he's bi, he's okay with it, and SHE is also okay with it. it was just a mature understanding of relationships that seemed to inform this and I have to say once again that it's these little details that make this easily one of my top three Pathfinder Tales books.

thanks for recc'ing this, DB, and thanks Mr. Kloster for writing it. sorry for being a putz with the book club discussion of it!

DB I sat this one out but omg this book was SO GOOD I have made such a horrible mistake

who are the heroes in this one?

I didn't get time during the week to post. Just doing it now because I'm late to everything!

Obviously I'd like to see Akina and Ondorum doing some more adventuring together. The dire events in Forge of Ashes will surely have brought them closer together than any of their adventures prior put together, so before they go back out into the Darklands it would be interesting to see how they help rebuild the defenses in the aftermath of the duergar war (which will likely need a name) and during the ordeal perhaps they will serve to dissuade the negative feelings the dwarves have about oreads. As progressive as we know Pathfinder to be, this could be an opportunity to enlighten another race rigid in their ways about interracial relationships, or maybe it would even be interspecies in their case. So I guess I'm going to stick with what I said awhile back about wanting to see offspring with the Dwarf Blooded oread feat.

Haha, you know, I feel that Akina would only be mad at Ondorum and blame him 100% for her getting pregnant. "You were there too" he might say, but that probably wouldn't help anything because him talking never solves anything. ever!

They'd probably look like infant versions of a certain member of the Fantastic Four at first, then start growing crystalline beards...

Even the girls? :P

No I kid. I like the idea. In fact, I guess I wouldn't be surprised if the next book jumps ahead, the way the online piece did, past the fairly traveled territory that Belabras mentioned of new relationships and the Vogt sank his teeth into the heart of the matter again. Sky's the limit, I guess (or the cavern ceiling, whichever a dwarf will hit first).

My final thoughts were similar to Belabras's - more exploration of underground races (I so badly want to see more of the darkfolk and expansion of them as characters), more elementals, maybe even some of the underdark fey (like the lampads!). The return of Garrulous - and this time he's even more talkative than ever! Even drow would be fun, so long as it's in the context of them adding to the dwarf/dark folk/whatever story... I mean I'm not going to lie, I do enjoy a good, evil dark elf. And it's also old news when it's like "bleh I'm a dark elf, bleh I'm evil what a surprise!"

Forge of Ashes hit a really fun itch and scratched it perfectly. The underdark/Darklands is so wide open, and I do hope Paizo continues with Vogt's presentation of it - it does a lot of make the world come to life. I have to say, I didn't want to put the book down because I was always excited to see what strange things they might interact with/encounter next (and I aws really really hoping for some base building action!).

In terms of what I liked less... I guess I didn't get the best feel for Akina and Ondorum. That's partly why I checked in with you guys. It feels like there's still a lot of room open to see what matters to them, and while they served well enough to get through this one short quest I am curious to know where they'll grow as people (since, relatively, we've seen so very little of them). I'm pretty open to another novel, I guess is what I'm saying.

Thanks for delurking Belabras, welcome to the PTBC! Thanks to you too for answering some questions, Mr. Vogt!

yeah it's probably worth commenting on: Whoever did the art order for this bestiary very much took some threads on the board seriously, which complained of the lack of attractive male figures compared to all the sexy succubus style fey/outsiders/etc. There are many more revealingly dressed lithe male figures in this bestiary compared to similarly attired male individuals

I was wondering about exactly this, thanks for posting your observation!

For those of who didn't see some of those threads, it's not just that the female creatures were "too pretty" but that there are some 48+ female-only creatures that either use their beauty against men or are explicit in that they copulate with (male) adventurers, as opposed to the 4 male-only creatures that are either stated to be physically appealing or have their sex lives mentioned. Part of it was the art, part of it was the creatures themselves. It's really awesome to hear there's some movement towards a middle ground. This might be the first bestiary I buy.

Waho, hey Belabras you posted too! The grootslang was something I'd never heard of and honestly sounded kind of dumb - I mean, I pictured some sort of... I dunno, pig/slithery thing. Then I googled it and one of the first images was a green elephant with a lot of trunks or something and I was like "oh... okay." I am pretty forgiving so I rolled with it, but then I scrolled down and saw the art and I was like "woah nelly, yeah I'd RUN too!"

Well, I mean that was after I decided to look up its stats and saw that it was basically a mean, evil, more wicked dragon (at least a dragon MIGHT be placated with treasure - these things???). That made me sit back and reassess Jiri's concern. I was also even more on the side of the Jall and like "Look Jiri just magic the boat back together - who cares if it hits a city, you're level 2?? 3?? Get it out of here!"

I really enjoy druids, so I was kind of curious after reading your post today, DB. Oza is most definitely a druid, probably with a shaman archetype, and possibly high level enough to have reached Timeless Body (judging from the artwork, that old man is in peak condition!).

To be fair though, we have only seen the nidalese wizard and Vera actually use spell components (with the maaaaybe addition of various enemy spellcasters and Salim), so I don't think that says much about whatever Jiri's abilities are. I recall reading other posts stating that she was a kineticist of sorts, but she was able to SNA too (the river dolphin) and cast a healing spell on the village kid. She also has some solid +wis going on and keeps referencing the spirits, so my guess is that she's just a flame spirit shaman that was casting burning hands over and over at the thing, which didn't even bother making a reflex save (or perhaps was successfully making every save very easily, either because her caster level is too low or even the hatchling of a CR16 monster is still way powerful). Alternatively, she may simply be a jungle druid with the fire domain, or just a -whatever- druid with the fire domain and thus have access to burning hands, fire bolt SLA, etc...

One thing I noticed right away was that Khar seemed to just fall out of the picture. Possibility of a returning villain already? I dunno, sometimes it's hard to get a feel for the characters or the author's writing from these brief snippets, and I often find myself wondering if these were written before, or after, the book itself. In some cases, like with Akina and Ondorum, it's exactly what we could have expected - the two of them were argumentative, yet drawn to each other, with some humor and the overall focus being on the two of them specifically. With James Sutter's pieces on Salim, the emphasis is always on Salim being a world-traveling, world-weary guy who plays by his own rules and never expects to hang around in one place for long, which also continues in the book(s). Other times we're just shown a snippet of something that happened either a long time before, or is relatively irrelevant, to what happens in the book (such as the prequel to Plague of Shadows or before the first nidalese book). I've gotten the impression that you're sometimes interested in examining this from a more expansive perspective, DB, so I'm kind of curious, if you (or anyone reading) feels like responding - what about this short snippet hooked you? Was it the action, the characters, the mechanics? What makes you interested in continuing Jiri's story?

edit: in the sense of making that step from reading free material on the internet to actually going through the effort of picking up a book, I mean.

[Sorry...I posted from my phone again yesteday, but it didn't go through...]

Dude that bites! I have gotten paranoid about posting on these boards because of the paizo post monster that keeps eating EVERYTHING.

What a finish, that was a full-on war! We've seen mass combat sever times in the PTBC, dating back to the battle of Silverlake in The Ccrusader Road, but the loss of life we were just witness to was staggering. It seemed to take hundreds of dwarven warriors to take out the scanderigs, which at first I thought were modified (ES), but are actually related to the Rise of the Runelords adventure path. Then I got thinking about all of runes that were brought up throughout the novel, especially at the soul forge, and although I don't recall it being correlated, does anyone think the device was Thassilonian in origin, perhaps having been created by one of them?

You know, when I first saw the dwarven forge I thought for sure it was going to be a creepy eldritch horror-forge - I was actually kind of disappointed it was just a thing to the dark dwarf god. I was hoping to see Akina fight horror-terrors from the great beyond! But it was kind of cool I guess that there was an awesome battle. Even if I was also super disappointed that Akina and Ondorum didn't just lead the scraelings into the rust monster nest! After seeing what the first one did to ONE of them, I thought for sure they would put two and two together and draw the whole hive down on them! I mean like I said I guess the hardcore battle scene with lots of action at the end waaaas soooort of coooooool... but man it would have been funny to see some dread rust monsters invade the evil metal dwarf god's plane.

I think it was stated in the book that it was originally built by the founder of the settlement in honor of Torag, DB. And maybe Mr. Vogt was just using runes in recognition of their typical pairing with dwarven lore? Although having Akina bump up against some runelord cultists would be sort of neat in the future...

Although Vaskegar was the leader of the duergar, I liked how Ularna took the spotlight from him as the main antagonist, and also how she survived in the end. Vaskegar being killed in gruesome fashion sated me enough that Ularna retreating wasn't anticlimactic. Maybe we'll see her again if there’s a sequel, as enemies who escape in the game often return for revenge!

Yeah, I noticed that too. Ularna was definitely the one in the spotlight for the battle scenes, although as far as villains go I thought that Vaskegar was solid. If it weren't for the irrational hatred of surface dwarves thing I would have felt more like rooting for him. I, too, am very interested in seeing a sequel, particualarly if Akina is serious about setting up shop in that settlement! More hardcore dwarf books are always the best.

Now that the book is over, where do you, DB, or you, Belabras (since you broke lurker ranks to step forward) see Akina and Ondorum going? We saw Ondorum definitely go through some major growth spurts, and as a result it seems their relationship has returned to whatever passes for normal. For that matter, was this one that spoke to either of you? There's a lot of promise for Akina's family too (should more show up), as well as her swearing to find her mother's soul...

What about looking at this differently? there have already been a number of DMs posting that they give their race boons away (when it's one of the baser races). There are 32+ playable races in Pathfinder. The people that DM the most at the convention I saw were also the ones who DM most on game days. Many people are fighting over validating those who volunteer to DM cons - so why not step it up? Give the con DMs BETTER race rewards, ones that are at no risk of ever being "given to the community" because they are by definition rare, just like these boons are rare.

Let the local GMs get the plane-touched, elementals, dhampirs. Reasonable stuff. Give the Con-GMs the unusual stuff like the Strix, the Gathrain, the Ghoran, fauns, androids, lashunta, kasatha, trixian, skinwalkers, kobold, lizardfolk, samsaran, merfolk, snirvblin, drow, changling, gillmen, centaur, w/e - the list is enormous. The characters feel like unique rewards, and there is no need to step them down. Plus, these characters won't even get played because those Con-GMs are still volunteering to GM local games, so it's not even like you have to worry about overexposure or ""menagerie"" effects. These characters are the rare elite that stuck it through this interracial, international, ancient and wide-spread organization of explorers, diplomats, and scholars. New players coming in see a reasonable way of expanding their options without paying 400 dollars. GMs see a reasonable way of building up their stars and seeing immediate benefit beyond getting to replay a single scenario. The people who want Con boons to be special still get special boons that are now actually special!

oh of course, because why would it be. PFS...

thanks pirate rob for sinking that ship while I was still safely in port - and thanks Bold Strider for the suggestion because I actually really like that build. totally doing this in my home game.

Hey ya'll,

I have decided that my PFS GM credit character should work a prestige class (since they'll leap up high enough to get there right away). The only one of PFS worth to me is the Spherewalker, but I am struggling with getting a solid foundation beneath it (while still getting in early enough for it to be worth it).

The best I can do right now is this:

1. Ranger (1)Iron Will*
2. Ranger (2) unnamed bonus feat
3. Ranger (3) Endurance*, unnamed feat
4. Fighter (1) unnamed bonus feat
5. Fighter (2) Deific Obedience (Desna), unnamed bonus feat
6. Speherewalker (1)
7. Evangelist (1)
8. Evangelist (2) (Spherewalker Aligned Class)
9. (evangelist til 12)

* = required for Spherewalker entry

That way by level 11 I have the full spherewalker experience, a little bit of religious flavor from the Evangelist (and deific boon), and I actually get to play it before retiring the character.

The problem is that I have no idea what would even be good for me to do on this character. I chose ranger because it has at least SOME spellcasting ability and spherewalker could level that, giving me some spells right away - even if the class itself plays better with charisma. I was wondering about some sort of knife-thrower to take advantage of the starknife stuff? I mean, I know it's not particularly good, but is there something that could help me out? I'm open to any race, stats, style at this point, if only to get some direction to start looking...

You know, the other good thing about the PTBC is that we get to compare our knowledge of incredibly obscure Pathfinder stuff! For instance, I knew that Ondorum is using an oread trait there that lets him use the spell "shape metal", while you just learned me about the duergar monk having a solid archetype that's actually quite strong. I had just assumed she was using racial BS and cheating!

So hey DB, as a monk player, what are you thoughts so far about Ondorum and his tactics? I ask because reading about monks is rare enough that that it's not quite the same as asking about the tactics of a wizard or something. Are you excited for the (at least hinted at so far) showdown between the duergar monk and Ondorum that's bound to occur? Also as an aside, did you enjoy the Emerald Spire? I like mega-dungeons, but that one seemed to be lacking flavor/theme to me so I never got further into it.

More generally:

For this week, as DB pointed out, we saw some deep diving into the ecology of the Darklands. In some cases it's pretty big stuff - how caravans band together, even if the races hate each other, because of the far, far deadlier creatures out there, and in some cases it's almost minor, like the fact that dark folk "feed" on light. One thing that I thought was spectacular (and again, one of the reasons I so heartily recommend Pathfinder Tales) is the way the earth elemental offered its gem to Izthuri, and the honor with which she received it. Like Garrulous, it makes it clear that these are creatures that have individual relations to each other outside of the encounter context. A) the dark folk don't just view the earth elemental as a mindless guardian that's just an obstacle to be slain, and B) the earth elemental isn't there to act as either a savior OR a mindless guardian! It's just a creature that has empathy to some degree and also has things that it personally cares about (its gem collection). It's a nice touch that makes me really hungry for more Darklands material - and not in the sense of "oh hey let me buy another campaign setting book" but the "let me get a ground-level view of how an encounter between a dark folk and a lampad might go!"

What did you guys find most appealing here? There's a pretty wide variety to choose from, with melee v spellcaster battles (in which Akina kicked butt), monster v monster battles (rootin' for Garrulous tbh!), and even friendship/alliance building (where, rough as she is, Akina is getting some pretty great circumstance bonuses to her diplomacies!). Right now, what's got you hooked?