What does the fox say?
Um…Celestial, Common, Draconic, Infernal; speak with animals and truespeech,
apparently.
Anyway, fans of Sir Didymus, rejoice—the vulpinal is here!
And Sir Didymus is actually not a bad role-playing model,
because these foxlike agathions (guardinals to you 3.5 fans out there) only
reach about 3 feet high, but are doughty and adventurous in spirit. Add a bard’s love of storytelling (and story
collecting), and you have your typical vulpinal. At CR 6, they’re hardly the Outer Planes’ heaviest hitters, but
their courage more than makes up for their lack of Hit Dice. And since they are so down to earth, a
vulpinal is likely to be the closest thing many adventuring parties have to a
true friend—not a mentor, sponsor, familiar, ally, or liege like other
celestials, but a bona fide boon companion.
A mighty curse
turned Cartherix the True’s lillend companion Alora into a medusa-like monster
that revels in her new petrifying powers.
Desperate to save Alora from herself, Cartherix is hopping the planes
looking for something to reverse the curse. As potential cures become more and more outlandish, he is
taking more and more risks, which could put him in conflict with adventurers
guarding unusual artifacts (or chasing obscure cures of their own).
Yuki Todoro is destined
to lead her kitsune clan to greatness.
Unfortunately, at the moment Yuki is a shiftless, teenage kitsune
trickster (see the Advanced Race Guide)
uninterested in her clan or responsibility of any kind. Her clan’s patron spirit, a vulpinal
named Uncle Ono, is determined to awaken the goodness within her. Currently
that means making sure Yuki’s schemes go catastrophically wrong, while using
his magic to instigate encounters that will teach her wisdom, prudence, and moral
lessons—encounters that tend to involve heavily armed strangers.
An agathion is a creature
of pure good—making one’s fall especially tragic. In Potter Swift’s case, he has not fallen per se; rather he is under the control
of a fiendish parasite. The
infected vulpinal now delights in arson, using flame arrows to set a different building on fire every night and major image to throw the Watch into
confusion. If he is not stopped,
Crescent City could burn to the ground.
If he is slain, the parasite will drag the agathion’s celestial
substance into the dark.
—The Great Beyond
62–63 & Pathfinder Bestiary 2 22
One of the first and best cosplays I ever saw was a girl at
my first Otakon who went as Ambrosius with a Sir Didymus plush clinging to her
back.
I’m not a stat block expert, but it looks like The Great Beyond’s vulpinal was
developed in a slightly different fashion than the Pathfinder Bestiary 2’s.
The former book also has more real estate to devote to the vulpinal’s
habits and personality.
I had a snow day today. Not my usual “Everyone else got a snow day but me” day. Not a “Snow day but because of
deadlines you have to work anyway” day.
But an actual snow day!
What’s that you say?
I probably should have written more blog entries? While I acknowledge the wisdom in your
words, I must remind you:
SNOW. DAY.
Hey, want a radio show featuring new music from bands like
Hey Marseilles? Here! Do you want, about halfway through that
new music, to suddenly feel old because Green Day’s Dookie, Pavement’s Crooked
Rain, Crooked Rain, and Beck’s Mellow
Gold all just celebrated their 20th anniversaries? I got that, too! Enjoy!
(If the feed skips, let it load in Firefox or Chrome and
then Save As an mp3. Link is good
till Friday, 3/7, at midnight.)
The vulpinal was one of a number of outsiders that showed up in earlier form in my home 3e Planescape campaign. Since a number of outsiders or their names at least weren't OGL, it opened up space for new ones to fit some of the same and similar thematic niches. The vulpinal was one of them. One of my players really really really liked foxes, and rather than a kitsune, they wanted to play an aasimar. So to justify a fox themed aasimar, shazam! Suddenly there was a fox-themed guardinal called the vulpinal, fitting right in with the 2e/3e naming conventions they had. When pathfinder was making new agathions, it seemed like a good fit and provided an opportunity in TGB to give them a good bit of ecology as well. I think one of them shows up in my Enworld storyhour, and they're mentioned for that particular PC's origin story as well therein.
ReplyDeleteAll of the outsiders in TGB were updated (some considerably so) in the Bestiary 2 to PF rules. I think the changes were for the better actually since the monsters were developed IIRC by multiple people when they were updated to PF rules. Also, being a core book the stat block format was understandably briefer than the format seen in TGB or in the bestiary portions of APs that have a longer word count for in-setting ecology.