The Gem [RPG]

NO SPOILERS

Oza

Gary Kloster's The Gem, a 4-part series of free Pathfinder web fiction (available here), is something very different than the norm.  Rather than featuring adventurers and Golarion's well-established locations, The Gem spotlights the apprentice shaman of a small village in the Mwangi Expanse.  A prequel to the Pathfinder Tales novel Firesoul, The Gem is about coming of age and coming into power, plus the threats posed by outsiders who have more greed than wisdom.  There's plenty of action and some great cliffhangars.  Although the main character, Jiri, still needs some additional definition in order to be fully fleshed-out, on the whole this was a solid story with a protagonist much different than the norm.

SPOILERS

In the village of Thirty Trees, Jiri is a young woman with fire powers she has difficulty controlling.  After a terrible accident, she's not fully trusted by her fellow villagers but has a kindly older mentor named Oza.  When Oza has to leave the village on a brief trip, he leaves Jiri in the role of village shaman.  That's of course when danger comes in the form of outsiders who are attempting to bring back the intact egg of a monster I hadn't heard of until this story: a grootslang!  Grootslangs are a monstrous mix of elephant and serpent with six fangs (!), but in this story they almost seem like something out of the movie Alien as one bursts from its egg and starts a grisly killing rampage.  It's exciting stuff, but the story has a nice arc and is more than just fight scenes.  I'm not necessarily over the moon about The Gem, but I'm curious to see Jiri in a longer story like Firesoul.