Set in the world of Golarion at the time of the early Pathfinder Adventure Paths, the comics revolve around an adventuring party made up of six members of the Pathfinder Iconics (the example characters from the Core Rulebook).
- Seoni, Lawful Neutral human sorcerer, the de facto leader of the group who keeps their divergent personalities from breaking the team apart.
- Valeros, Neutral Good human fighter, a hard-partying musclehead.
- Merisiel, Chaotic Neutral elf rogue, outwardly free-spirited but inwardly terrified of being alone.
- Kyra, Neutral Good human cleric of Sarenrae, a courageous soul who traveled from a faraway land.
- Ezren, Neutral Good human wizard, an aspirant to the Pathfinder Society who took to adventuring late in life after trying to clear his father's name only to learn the accusations were genuine.
- Harsk, Lawful Neutral dwarf ranger, an expert crossbowman who guides the team through the wilds of Avistan.
Their adventures often intersect with other Iconic characters as they battle monsters and investigate ancient sites in Varisia, beginning with goblin raids outside the small town of Sandpoint.
Paizo has also released adventure modules based on the comic storylines, and the omnibus editions include additional adventuring material to run.
Comics:
- Main series:
- Dark Waters Rising (Pathfinder Issues #1-6, August 2012-April 2013, collected 2013) - written by Jim Zub
- Of Tooth and Claw (Pathfinder Issues #7-12 and 2013 Special, May-November 2013, collected 2014) - written by Jim Zub
- Pathfinder: City of Secrets (six issues, May-October 2014, collected 2015) - written by Jim Zub
- Pathfinder Origins (six issues, 18 February-July 2015, collected November 2015) - written by Eric Mona, F. Wesley Schneider, and James L. Sutter of Paizo
- Pathfinder: Hollow Mountain (six issues, 11 November 2015-27 April 2016, collected September 2016) - by Mona, Schneider, and Sutter
- Pathfinder: Runescars (five issues, 27 May-27 September 2017, collected 2018) - by Schneider and Sutter
- Pathfinder: Spiral of Bones (five issues, collected January 2019) - written by Paizo developer Crystal Frasier
- Spin-offs:
- Pathfinder: Goblins! (five-issue anthology, August-December 2013, collected October 2014)
- Pathfinder: Worldscape (Massive Multiplayer Crossover with other Dynamite series)
Tropes:
- Actually Not a Vampire: Kyra's Origins Episode depicts her going out to a ratfolk village on a vampire hunt with Seelah the paladin and some Boxed Crooks they freed from the local prison as muscle. Unfortunately, they find their preparations of garlic and so forth are all for naught: the blood-drinking creatures attacking the village are chupacabras, not vampires.
- All There in the Manual: The omnibus editions contain additional articles about some of the locations and characters in the comic, and even some playable tabletop encounters.
- Anguished Declaration of Love: Kyra falls fast and hard for Merisiel and works up the courage to make a Love Confession after the elf is wounded by the black dragon in issue 9.Merisiel: Kyra, why are you crying?
Kyra: I... I feel quite blessed to be part of this group, Merisiel. I was not expecting to travel with others or share their company. But you... your quick wit and your whimsical ways... When I thought you'd been killed by the dragon, I... Something just... broke inside me. I... didn't want to be here without you. In that moment... I couldn't bear it. I needed to save you, to protect you. I couldn't fail you or see you snuffed out from my life... So selfish... The intensity of that scares me. The emotions are too raw. I'm not a young girl who should be infaturated with another in such ways. It isn't fair to you... or fair to me. How would I even—
Merisiel: ("Shut Up" Kiss) Don't cry anymore. These thoughts and feelings are beautiful. I care for you too, Kyra. I want us to be together. - At Least I Admit It: At the start of Origins #4, Venture-Captain Heidmarch somewhat angrily calls Merisiel a thief: apparently she stole an artifact from a party of Pathfinders several years ago. Meri retorts that the Pathfinders had stolen the item in question from a tomb to begin with.note Merisiel: You want to split hairs? I'll lend you a knife.
- Back-to-Back Badasses: On Stjepan Šejić's cover for Origins, Kyra and Seelah are depicted standing back to back with their swords raised. This exact pose doesn't occur in the story, but they do fight together against a chupacabra infestation.
- Bar Brawl: A bar patron starts harassing Seoni in the first chapter. She dazes him with a cantrip when he won't take a hint, prompting his mate to throw a punch—which promptly gets the both of them knocked out cold by Valeros.
- Big Eater: Kronkshaft in Goblins #4, who's described as being able to eat faster than any other goblin. The story described how he eats a pack of gnomes, and does a search for the biggest of food - dragon meat. When the goblins telling the story go to sleep, the new goblin snatches the meat cooking on the spit with his dragonclaw sword, departs saying Kronkshaft is still hungry.
- Came Back Wrong: Parodied in Hollow Mountain #2. Oloch knocks out several of Valeros's teeth with a surprise attack. Kyra grows them back with a healing spell, but it seems they didn't grow back in quite the same way they were before.
- Continuity Snarl: Hollow Mountain has the comic party kill Alaznist's Castellan, which according to Lost Omens' canon took place in 4716. However, the next arc, Runescars, takes place in Korvosa during the reign of Ileosa Arabasti, which canonically ended a full eight years earlier.
- Discriminate and Switch: In Hollow Mountain, Damiel, Iconic Alchemist and an elf like Merisiel, criticizes the relationship between Meri and Kyra. Meri asks him if he has a problem with them because they're both women, and he retorts that, no, it's because they're an elf and a human: Meri is already roughly a hundred years older than Kyra, and when Meri is middle-aged, Kyra will probably be dead.
- Distant Prologue: The prologue to Hollow Mountain takes us back all the way back to the last days of Thassilon, where Alaznist, Runelord of Wrath and mistress of the mountain, entombs herself in her Runewell just as the first meteors of Earthfall
begin to strike. We then fast-forward nearly ten thousand years to the comics' present day in the mid-4700s. - Enemy Mine: The Hollow Mountain storyline has the Good/Neutral main party, exploring the Thassilonian Runelord ruins in the mountain for the Pathfinder Society, collide with a Neutral/Evil party comprised of Seltyiel (Iconic Magus), Damiel (Iconic Alchemist), Meligaster (Iconic Mesmerist), and Oloch (Iconic Warpriest), who are just there to loot the place. The two parties briefly come to blows before Seoni and Seltyiel talk them into working together since they don't have exactly the same goal. In a further twist, they then get Party-Scattered into two jumbled groups of both parties after encountering Alaznist's Castellan.Ezren: You can't trust them.
Seoni: I don't. But we Varisians have a saying: "A road shared is better than a road alone—but a road short-shared is best." We'll part ways as soon as we can. Hollow Mountain is big enough for all of us. - Framing Device: Origins is a chain of Origins Episodes for the main cast members, framed as final interviews to be inducted into the Pathfinder Society.
- Hero of Another Story: Other characters of the Pathfinder Iconics routinely pass through the party's storyline amidst their own adventures, particularly in Origins: Valeros fought together with Iconic Barbarian Amiri once upon a time, while Kyra hunted vampires with Iconic Paladin Seelah, who later headed to Mendev to join the crusades (and became a party member in Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous).
- Interspecies Romance: Merisiel, an elf, and Kyra, a human, become the comics' Official Couple by the end of the first story arc.
- Leeroy Jenkins: In issue #1, the party stakes out Sandpoint's rubbish tip, thinking they're up against only a few goblins scavenging it. Instead, a large raiding force appears, headed for town. Rather than try to sound the alarm and lose precious time, Valeros goes leaping in without bothering to plan, forcing the others to run in after him to back him up. This is not the only time this happens, either:Kyra: Sarenrae, lady of mercy, please heal this idiot, that he may learn the foolishness of charging in without looking.
- The Man Behind the Man: In the first arc, both the goblins and the black dragon are being driven by a cult of Lamashtu, goddess of monsters.
- The Paladin: As a scimitar-wielding cleric of Sarenrae, Kyra is about as close to a paladin as you can get without actually having levels in the tabletop class. She readily joins in slaying monsters and single-handedly defeats a ghoul ambush of the party via Turn Undead, but though demanding of people's moral standards, she's also a capable and gentle healer with a soft side.
- Put on a Bus: In Hollow Mountain, Harsk has taken off with Amiri rather than join the rest of the party in a mission from the Pathfinder Society.
- Red Skies Crossover:
- Hollow Mountain takes place sometime before Return of the Runelords. It turns out that the comic party killed the Castellan of Hollow Mountain right before Alaznist, last Runelord of Wrath, arose from her runewell.
- The Runescars arc takes place in Korvosa in parallel with the early part of the Curse of the Crimson Throne Adventure Path. The party collides with both the Order of the Nail Hellknights and Queen Ileosa Arabasti's Grey Maidens, but the story doesn't directly deal with the budding revolution that is the main subject of the AP.
- Ship Sinking: After having flirted with Merisiel a bit in issue 1 and her partially reciprocating, Valeros later learns that Kyra and Meri have become a couple and never tries his luck with her again.
- Ship Tease: The first issue has some light flirting between Valeros and Merisiel, the latter of whom even states she's not in the mood for him at the moment but might be at another time. That ship is solidly sunk when she gets together with Kyra at the end of issue 9: Valeros realizes later that they've become a couple from how they're acting, and after Kyra confirms it, he never flirts with Meri again.
- Shout-Out: The guest artists had tons of fun with the alternate covers. Sean Izaakse's cover◊ for Hollow Mountain #1 is a spoof of the theatrical poster for A New Hope, with Kyra and Merisiel playing Luke and Leia. Not to be outdone, Sebastian Cichon's cover◊ for Hollow Mountain #6 riffs on the poster for Return of the Jedi.
- Take a Third Option: In the last chapter of Origins, the party is brought by Venture-Captain Heidmarch to an imprisoned Amiri, who is possessed by the devil whose cult she and Valeros fought in his story, and ordered to execute her lest the devil grow strong enough to destroy all of Magnimar. Merisiel takes out Soulsplitter, the magic dagger she acquired in her chapter, and stabs Amiri with it—and as the dominant personality, the devil is destroyed but not Amiri. Kyra then quickly heals Amiri. This deeply impresses Heidmarch, who welcomes them to the Pathfinder Society.
- The Team: The main comic series revolves around a six-member party of the Pathfinder Iconics, led primarily by Seoni with her commanding personality and deeply practical attitude.
- Trading Bars for Stripes: Origins issue 2. Seelah, a paladin of Iomedae and a Reformed Criminal herself, releases two condemned murderers for extra muscle when she and Kyra go to clear out a vampire infestation. She plans to take them north to the Mendevian Crusades with her afterward, but neither man survives the mission.
- Unreliable Expositor: In Origins, Amiri recounts how she was driven from her tribe for being a better fighter than any of its men and embarrassing them, and took her BFS from a frost giant she slew. Her speech bubbles are overlaid on a panel showing the real story, that the giant was long dead and she took the sword from its frozen cadaver.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Kyra is introduced having her morning meditations rudely interrupted by Valeros running outside to vomit after going on a bender the previous night. She reads him the riot act for disrespecting his body and soul, to which he actually expresses some contrition.
- Your Soul Is Mine!: Soulsplitter, the magic dagger that Merisiel steals from a Nidalese manor in Origins #4, causes the soul of anyone it kills to be destroyed. Meri stabs the possessed Amiri with it in the Framing Device's finale, on a (correct) hunch that since the devil controlling her is the dominant personality, the dagger will destroy it and leave Amiri's soul intact.
