Since we’re now only about fourteen weeks away from the release of Lord of Runes, published by Tor and Paizo, it’s time to get something straight. You do not need to have read any of the previous Radovan & the Count stories to start with Lord of Runes. You really don’t! Honest. I am not messing with you on this.

However, experience suggests that some of you just won’t believe that, or you’ll believe it but you’ll still want to start from “the beginning,” which is a tricky thing to define with the boys, since I’ve written a few flashback stories.

If you want to catch up on the boys’ adventures, I suggest you tackle them in publication order. In this post and a bunch to follow, I’ll guide you through that order.

Start with Hell’s Pawns, originally published as the Pathfinder Journal in the Council of Thieves Adventure Path. This is the first Radovan & the Count story, and it’s unique in a couple of ways.

First, it’s told in present-tense, because I’d been binging on film noir and saw Radovan as a sort of hard-boiled detective type. Sure, the elevator pitch has always been “Holmes and Watson meet sword & sorcery,” but that’s not a very good way of describing the actual personalities of the characters. “Holmes and Marlowe” makes more sense, but only if you know what that means, and many don’t.

Second, it’s strictly Radovan’s point-of-view. I’d originally conceived the story as alternating between the boys’ points-of-view. Once I got down to writing, however, I felt the story didn’t have enough space to divide it among the two protagonists. For that structure, I wanted to wait for the extra space a novel affords. Also, I didn’t start to hear Varian’s voice until the third or fourth time I rewrote the early chapters of Prince of Wolves, which is a tale for another time.

Hell’s Pawns is the published story I’d second-most want to revise for a couple of reasons. I hadn’t quite found Radovan’s voice yet, and I would love to expand it to show the same investigation from Varian’s POV.

There are two ways you can read Hell’s Pawns. You could buy all of the Council of Thieves Adventure Path, which would cost about $120 and which I recommend only if you want to run that AP (it’s good, and it was the first AP designed for the Pathfinder RPG rather than D&D 3.5). Alternatively, you could buy the .epub version for $5. That might seem a trifle high compared to the cost of the novels, but these novellas are lavishly illustrated, so that’s a bonus.

Anyway, I always fear that people going back to Hell’s Pawns after reading the novels may be disappointed by the different style and the single POV, but a surprising number of readers cite it as their favorite. It’s the first and so-far only look at Varian’s house in Egorian, not to mention the capital of Cheliax itself. There are several characters there who remain near to my heart and who I’d probably revisit if I were to write a novel set there.

Fun facts: Radovan was originally a half-orc, but someone else had already pitched a story with one, so James Sutter suggested a hellspawn as an alternative, thus earning his keep in a single stroke. Also, Radovan’s name was Sabuto, and he was half-Tien rather than Ustalav. The original story pitch, which I changed substantially before writing, included a vampire. I really wanted a vampire. Thus, I introduced one later, although it became a very different sort of vampire.

Now go! Read Hell’s Pawns, and then come back here (or go to Paizo or Goodreads) and tell us what you think of it.

P.S. Now is a good time to sign up for the newsletter that I’ll likely send in May or June. There could be a giveaway involved.

Did you happen to see the first part of Mordicai Knode’s interview of me at paizo.com?

How about the second part, right here on on this blog? I’d love to see some comments there.

Speaking of Mordicai, a few weeks back he posted a wonderful review of King of Chaos at tor.com, to go along with the one he did earlier of the first three novels. If you like his review, drop a comment over there and make him look like the big shot reviewer he is.

Perhaps you missed the first free chapter of King of Chaos, posted courtesy of the fine folks at Black Gate. More sample chapters are on their way.

And maybe you now have time to read the first chapter of “The Fencing Master,” also at paizo.com. Some readers say very kind things about it in the comments. Chapter Two comes next Wednesday, when the plot definitely thickens.

Finally, if you’re interested in the earliest tales of Radovan and the Count, I’ve pinned a reminiscence here. Once I see ten comments (from 10 different people, mind you, not 10 from one guy), I will put together one on the Master of Devils period.

Since most readers first met the boys in Prince of Wolves or “Hell’s Pawns,” I’ve been waxing nostalgic about the times I wrote those stories. Here are a few thoughts on the first novella, novel, and short story featuring Radovan and the Count.

When James Sutter first asked me to pitch ideas for a Pathfinder Chronicle to accompany the Council of Thieves Adventure Path, I gave him four or five different ideas. One was a revision of a sketch I’d sent another editor a few years earlier. That editor failed to reply for eight months, then passed without explanation before quietly leaving the publisher. When James picked that revised pitch, I felt the hand of fate on my shoulder.

Originally inspired by an idea in Infernal Affairs, the Hong Kong movie that inspired Martin Scorsese’s The Departed, the resulting story, “Hell’s Pawns,” bore little resemblance to either film. In fact, more readers have pointed to Village of the Damned as an influence, which in retrospect is almost certainly true, although I wasn’t conscious of it at the time.

The femme fatale in the original outline was a vampire with her own agenda, but that subplot was one of the first elements to be discarded. Instead, because I’d been binging on film noir the month before James and I first talked, the plot took an even darker turn. Also, my original intention to tell the story in alternating points-of-view turned into the classic first-person, present-tense narration of a hardboiled anti-hero. Radovan’s voice emerged from those of about two dozen movie tough guys.

For thematic reasons, I wanted both of my protagonists to be half-human and of illegitimate parentage. In fact, I had thought to include the word “Bastards” in an early title, but “Bastards of Erebus” was already one of the Adventure Path titles, so that was another early change.

Radovan was originally a half-orc of Tian descent. Because Howard Andrew Jones had already called dibs on a half-orc character, and because my story was to be set in Cheliax, Empire of Devils, James suggested a tiefling or hellspawn, as we came to call them. That was the first of many good suggestions James offered, as well as the beginning of my speculation on what made Radovan different from others of his kind.

Radovan’s name changed a couple of times, first because James felt a Tian character would be too unusual in the Chelish setting, later because I picked a name that began with V, and we didn’t want V&V protagonists. I wanted Varian’s bodyguard to be an outsider even in his human ancestry, preferably from a country with a strikingly different culture from Cheliax. It took me a short time to decide on Ustalav as the birthplace of his parents. “Radovan” was my second or third name choice, but the moment I wrote it down, I couldn’t imagine any other name fitting the character.

Incidentally, both Radovan and Varian are real-world names. Most of the names I choose for Pathfinder Tales characters are real but less commonly used in North America.

Varian was always Varian and a half-elf, because I wanted a character who had lived through several generations of the great changes in Cheliax. I picked House Jeggare from the campaign setting because of their fabulous wealth and the family history linking Cheliax to Varisia. It tickled me to think my wealthy nobleman might visit places with rivers and streets named after him, not to mention encounter statues of his famous ancestor, Montlarion Jeggare. One of the early ideas for the first novel would have taken one or both of the boys to Varisia instead of Ustalav.

Starting Prince of Wolves was a struggle for a couple of reasons.

First, I had four early chapters that delayed the beginning of the plot for far too long. Two of them died in a fire, and the others eventually became the short story “The Lost Pathfinder.” A similar thing happened later in Queen of Thorns.

My other problem was deciding on the narrative style. I didn’t want to continue with the present-tense narration of “Hell’s Pawns.” At the same time, I was considering a shift to third-person narration. I had Radovan’s first-person voice and was happy with it, but it took me three revisions of the early chapters to decide. It was one of those instances in which James’ advice was, “Just figure out which works best.” That didn’t make things easier on me, but once I finally worked out Varian’s voice, I was glad James had left me to work it out on my own. Third-person would have been a safer choice, but I didn’t want to abandon the intimacy of Radovan’s first-person voice. What I needed was to find a voice for Varian that was equal to Radovan’s but completely different. This proved an even greater challenge when I introduced a third POV character in Master of Devils and then in King of Chaos.

I left the flash-forward, third-person, present-tense Radovan prologue in Prince of Wolves to act as a pointer past the exposition-heavy first chapter, a promise that action was coming. It makes the book asymmetrical, but I’m glad we left it in there. To me it feels like a movie trailer.

While those early Varian chapters now seem a bit thick with fancy vocabulary and complex sentences, I’m also glad of the decision to tell his half of the story in first-person POV. His diction has since lightened up, even by the end of Prince of Wolves, but in the struggle to find his voice in those early chapters, I began to understand much more about his character. The epistolary approach scared James in the beginning, but I’d always planned to abandon it at the right moment later in the book. I knew it was a trick that would grow tired if I tried to do it every novel.

Recently I realized that the adventures of Radovan & the Count have exceeded half a million words and somewhere around 40% of my published fiction. Some of it has appeared in novels, some in Adventure Paths, some in Wayfinder magazine, and some on paizo.com. It’s no surprise that some folks have questions about where to start. The simple answer is “anywhere you like,” but I think the best entry points are “Hell’s Pawns,” Prince of Wolves, or Queen of Thorns. Here’s a list of all the stories in publication order, with notes indicating the two stories that occur in “the past.”

“Hell’s Pawns.” This novella originally appeared in the Council of Thieves Adventure Path. It’s distinct from the other stories in that it’s told only from Radovan’s point of view and in the present tense.

“The Lost Pathfinder,”* The first instalment of Paizo’s free web fiction feature is a bridge between the first novella and the first novel. It’s also the first appearance of Count Jeggare’s POV, even though I wrote it after Prince of Wolves.

Prince of Wolves was the first Pathfinder Tales novel. Months after I wrote it, I realized just how many elements it has in common with Black Wolf, my first full-length novel set in the Forgotten Realms. I won’t spoil them for you here, but if you dug one, you’ll probably dig the other, although I think Prince of Wolves benefits from ten years’ more writing experience.

“A Lesson in Taxonomy.”* While this is chronologically the first story, don’t read it first. Read it after Prince of Wolves, or at least after “the Lost Pathfinder.” Trust me on this. It’s told from Varian’s POV, and it introduces the character of Prince Kasiya.

“A Passage to Absalom”* is a mystery set aboard a sailing ship. It bridges the events of Prince of Wolves and “Husks.” This one is told from Varian’s POV, even though the boys are together during the entire story.

“Husks” is another novella, this time from the Jade Regent Adventure Path. It’s an homage to some of my favorite samurai and yakuza films. Once again, Radovan and the Count are together the whole time, but the story’s entirely in Radovan’s POV. Until Queen of Thorns, this was my editor’s favorite of the stories.

Master of Devils is my love letter to three types of kung fu movies: romantic intrigue, hard-hitting action, and high fantasy. In addition to Radovan and Count Jeggare, it features a third point-of-view character.

“Killing Time”* is a nasty little tale set in Absalom, just before the events of Queen of Thorns. This one is best enjoyed after reading “A Lesson in Taxonomy” and Master of Devils.

Queen of Thorns is the third Radovan & the Count novel, this time set in what Radovan calls “Elfland” and the count knows to be the elven nation of Kyonin. The boys work side-by-side almost the entire novel, along with an unusual assortment of gnome and elf companions.

King of Chaos follows soon after Queen of Thorns. The events of the story dovetail into the Wrath of the Righteous adventure path, which will become especially noticeable in the AP’s fourth instalment. Like Master of Devils, this one features a third POV character, this time one who receives equal time.

“The Fencing Master”* is the last web fiction story featuring Varian’s POV. It takes place decades after “Taxonomy” but decades before “Hell’s Pawns.” Despite its place in the chronology, you’ll probably enjoy it more if you read it after a few of the novels, especially Queen of Thorns.

Two years after the events of King of Chaos, Radovan & the Count arrive in the Varisian city of Korvosa. There Varian hopes to find out once and for all why the masters of the Acadamae never “diagnosed” him properly. Instead, he finds an unexpected bequest from an old colleague, one that leads to an even deeper mystery of the Count’s arcane origins and ultimately the Lord of Runes.

Have you read most or all of the stories? Which are your favorites? And where in Golarion would you most like to see the boys go in the future?

These stories are still available free at Paizo’s web fiction page.

All illustrations ©Paizo Publishing, LLC®.

Black Gate is one of my favorite sites, focused on fantasy but with a diversity within the genre that keeps it fresh and often introduces me to things I hadn’t discovered. Also, the folks at BG share many of my non-fantasy interests. For example, Bob Byrne posts a regular Sherlock Holmes feature.

Last week Bob invited me to contribute an essay based on the “Holmes & Watson” pitch that launched the Radovan & the Count novels. That led me to consider both the limitations of the “elevator pitch” and the perils of “pinching” ideas from famous books and movies. You can read it right here.

Black Gate publishes not only cool essays but also fabulous fiction. Last month, an excerpt of King of Chaos (Chapter One, introducing Oparal) hit their #1 spot, buoying their previous excerpt of Queen of Thorns (Chapter One, featuring Count Jeggare) to #4.

My fellow Pathfinder Tales scribe Howard Andrew Jones appears in the #3 position with an excerpt from The Bones of the Old Ones, the second novel in his excellent Dabir and Asim series, which you really should go read right now. It’s a thrill to see the two of us on a list of so many talented writers.

Check out the complete catalog of Black Gate’s free fiction.