Community & Social Media Specialist
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Prepare for the new Pathfinder Society and Starfinder Society metaplots with new Player's Guides, NOW AVAILABLE! Read Alex's blog for a little more info and get the guides!
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A question, if I may- What is the ETA on organized play sanctioning for these documents? Gen Con seems likely given that's when the new releases and High Seas are scheduled to be santioned, but we're still waiting for an official answer about the Guilt of the Graveworld Player's Guide sanctioning, so you can understand my uncertainty.
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In the Organized Play Rule Updates - Summer 2026 blog post, the Pathfinder section specifically said it was getting a player guide, but the Starfinder section did not. I had just figured that with the Absalom Station book coming out soon, it wasn't needed, so I was surprised and excited to see one for Starfinder too!
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Incredible work on the vulkarisu; it has been a big hit with my friends in terms of art, mechanics, and the way the fiendish contract one reminds them of me. XP
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Is this year 7 of the Pathfinder Society? On page 6 it says to read 7-15 to learn more about the compass, but wouldn't that be part of this year? I'm very new to Paizo games so maybe I just accidentally missed year 7.
Yes, The year of Battle's spark was season 7. The compass was recovered in 7-15 as a sort of teaser for the upcoming season (This has been the norm for a few years. There were multiple Chelaxian acts of aggression in season 6, the Pathfinders first encountered the Deskari cult from season 6 in 5-19)
Wait, Vulkarisu? What the heck happened to the Kitsune? o_o
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Vulkarisu and kitsune view each other as distant relatives. Vulkarisu don't appear in PF1e. So I'm guessing the Gap happened.
Vulkarisu first appeared in the SF1e comic book. I don't know the Pathfinder comic books, but if kitsune are not in a comic book, that's more evidence they are not the same species.
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I swear. What is UP with gothic horror ghosts and haunting paintings of themselves? Isn't that RIGHT haunted painting of my great great uncle Ebenezer?
Ebenezer's Painting: Did you kill the OTHERS?
...I SHANT!
Ebenezer's Painting: YOU MUST!!!
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Community & Social Media Specialist
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| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I swear. What is UP with gothic horror ghosts and haunting paintings of themselves? Isn't that RIGHT haunted painting of my great great uncle Ebenezer?
Ebenezer's Painting: Did you kill the OTHERS?
...I SHANT!
Ebenezer's Painting: YOU MUST!!!
Yes, the painting of Ebeneezer. The painting chosen specially to be the haunting of Ebeneezer. Ebeneezer's painting.... That... painting?
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I swear. What is UP with gothic horror ghosts and haunting paintings of themselves? Isn't that RIGHT haunted painting of my great great uncle Ebenezer?
Ebenezer's Painting: Did you kill the OTHERS?
...I SHANT!
Ebenezer's Painting: YOU MUST!!!
Speaking of Ebenezer, Johnny Depp is playing him in a December movie.
Contributor
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My children returneth! Here's a story about the vulkarisu that I originally shared on Reddit.
Hello! I was the vulkarisu’s original writer back in SF1. They’re actually one of the last races to be added to SF before the edition swap; I was contracted by Paizo to add playable elements to the Dynamite Comics line for Starfinder, and with a couple exceptions I had a lot of freedom about what sort of content I added to each comic book. For example, the plot of the comics revolves around the conflict between these two alien species that share a world together, so I was required to write stats for them in Books 3 and 4 (I believe those were the volumes anyway). The vulkarisu were one of my original pitches.
See, in the first volume of the comic book the comics give a brief rundown of the Starfinder setting, and in that rundown they illustrate different ancestries discovering Triune’s signal, which gave way to the construction of Drift engines. For that important piece of information, the artist shows blueprints inscribed on a wall in a cave, surrounded by squoxes. Only the squoxes are clearly anthropomorphic, standing upright with tools and spears and wearing loinclothes. Now, everyone who knows ME knows that I love kitsune and foxes in general. I am ALSO the freelancer who wrote the original Squox entry in Starfinder Alien Archive 2, making me very familiar with what they could and could not do, so when I saw that the artist committed to something that obviously didn’t exist in the setting yet (squox people), I pitched the vulkarisu to my developer and now-partner, Dustin Knight. We got the green light from then-Creative Director of Starfinder, Thurston Hillman, and the vulkarisu were created. The Second Edition version was likely written by Dustin Knight and developed by Jessica Catalan, but I haven’t seen anything confirming that.
My original pitch for the vulkarisu were that they were ‘cousins’ of kitsune. My thought was that Daikitsu blessed Kitsune with her domain of Change, allowing them to shapeshift, where Vulkarisu were blessed with Community, which made them extremely adept at learning and using languages. In SF1, I didn’t have a ton of space to explore this mechanically so I had to express this with a limited version of true speech. I like the more nuanced expression in the Player’s Guide, and I really like the expansion on what being bound to Hell means for some vulkarisu. I also find the change in art direction for the vulkarisu fascinating; both they and squoxes were originally more squirrely with vulpine heads and tails, but Second edition leans more on them being foxes with a few squirrel traits. I kinda prefer this better; I would rather play a fox than a squirrel, but your mileage may very!
At any rate, I am very happy to see my babies here, and I hope everyone will continue to play Vulkarisu and Kitsune across the Pact Worlds and beyond.
Dustin and I played vulkarisu at GenCon this past weekend! He's Dyce, an opportunistic scrungler operative while I'm Esqkr, a hero-in-training who always charges in guns blazing, much to Dyce's chagrin. Much fun, very excited. Hope to hear about the vulkarisu everyone builds.
I hope we get Kitsune back at some point. And others, like Kholo, Nephilm, Dhampir. There's far too little to spend ACP on for SFS2E at the moment, which makes sense since its new, but I hope for a lot of ancestries to return.
I've heard lots of rumblings from people who are like, "I don't want Starfinder to replace X ancestry from PF2." Luckily for you and the many others who share your concerns, all those ancestries are already canon in the Starfinder universe and had statistics in First Edition Starfinder, so they're certainly still around. And despite being the vulkarisu's creator, I certainly don't want to see them replace kitsune!
If I was a betting man (which I'm not), I'd guess that Years 1 and 2 (aka 2025 and 2026) were years focused on building up the Core chassis of Starfinder to make sure that it stands alone as a setting and a game without Pathfinder, and henceforth we'll start to see a lot more, "Mixing of the Streams," as it were. Pathfinder 2E just got Invaders from the Dark announced at GenCon this week. It's a new Adventure Path focused on aliens invading Numeneria, and it very specifically states that it'll be an adventure that highlights how to combine Starfinder and Pathfinder.
Now, you might be thinking, "Alex! I don't want to play on Golarion! Lose that pointless planet and give me Absalom Station instead!" And I'd understand you. However, I've also done Know Direction: Beyond for many years, and I can confirm that Starfinder has historically been less of a focus for Paizo than Pathfinder because its fan base is smaller. (I heard a rumor on the convention floor at GenCon that Starfinder may have outsold Pathfinder for the first time since 1E's rulebook was released, but I wouldn't trust that unless Paizo tells us that it's true.) Taking this into consideration, it isn't hard for us to picture fantasy in Sci-Fi (see: Conan the Barbarian) and Starfinder is derivative of Pathfinder, so the better crossover would be to put Starfinder's rules and IP into Paizo's flagship product line (the APs) and try to promote the game to all those Pathfinder fans who might not know how good it is to mix chocolate with peanut butter.
Now, why do I bring up Invaders from the Dark when the topic is, "Please give me kholos and kitsune and everything else in Starfinder?" Simply, if we're going to see chocolate in your peanut butter (aka Starfinder in Pathfinder), then it stands to reason Paizo might be more ready to put peanut butter in your chocolate (aka Pathfinder ancestries updated and spotlighted in Pathfinder). I am also hoping to get to play a star fox in 2E someday, but I have faith that it'll happen, especially if people keep talking about it!
I plan on playing an operative named muffins who will stay in pest form and use hit and run tactics with her jaws strike in said form