A Tale of Spots and Feathers (A Pathfinder Fanfiction)

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

Disclaimer: This story is posted on Royal Road and AO3 only. Any other instance you might come across online is stolen. Please access it on either of the genuine platforms instead.

"Claiming the land, claiming its pain, claiming its death..."

The Stolen Lands is a wilderness of rugged beauty, infested by bandits, monsters and other dangers, wedged between countries that know better than to try and claim it. One day, however, a neighbouring ruler starts to recruit adventurers, intending to break the rule of bandits on the Stolen Lands and organise it into a puppet state.

Guelder, an elven druid carrying the curse of lycanthropy, is one of the many who heed the call, and the one who ultimately prevails. It will be her task to bring law and order to the Stolen Lands, walking a thin line between building civilisation and preserving nature. As she gradually discovers the secrets of the land, she realises she has wandered to the playground of mysterious powers that use her as a pawn in their game, like they did so many others before her – and those powers do not want her to succeed.

Will she be able to break the cycle and build a kingdom that will survive her?

What to expect:

- Story set in the Pathfinder universe and magic system

- Original main characters

- Multiple PoV (3rd person limited)

- Occasional heavy topics and mild sexual content

- Competent female leads

- Aro-ace main character

- A nonbinary character, hints at LGBTQ+ topics

- Slow-burn romance subplot (straight and queer)

- Updates every 4 days

Originally a Pathfinder: Kingmaker CRPG (by Paizo/Owlcat) fanfic, but I hope readers outside the fandom will also enjoy it. I do not own the rights to the adventure path, the setting or the NPCs showing up in the story.

Cover image by gulaydayı (Pixabay).

Information

Status: Ongoing
Year: 2024
Author: Dormouse Pie

Royal Road Stats

Rating: 4.3/ 5.0
Followers: 51
Views: 40,966

Chapters(152 total)

Reviews

No reviews yet. Be the first to share your thoughts!

Community Reviews(3)

SaucingtonRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Tight. An enjoyable, unapologetic villain. The Stag Lord is drunk, cruel, but also falling apart. There's high stakes. He's torturing people and, oh no, objectiftying others. It was a fun way to open because instead of introducing the hero and exposing the villain you show the villain (at no point explicitly saying he's a villain or a big bad) and we become emotionally invested in seeing him lose. So a normal jailbreak scene becomes not about "We hope the hero succeeds" but this time is more of a "We hope the villain fails". Like a certain montage in The Shawshank Redemption.
In any comedy or drama we're obsessed with understanding the status of every character. You played a really fun game with that. He starts out the highest status, torturing people and (gasp!) wearing a scary hat. Then, you completely pull the rug out from under him with his drinking. It's gold. He goes from a cartoon to a 3d character. I want to see a whole 5-season series about this guy now.
And while heroes usually save a kitten and feed an orphan in the first scene, you reversed that so we get the main character who kicks a kitten and steals food from an orphan. The casual cruelty of flicking acid on the old timer while walking away defines his darkness so well. And you didn't spend 3 pages telling us how bad he was and what his tragic backstory was; you summed it all up in one acid splash. So we get to see what the girl barely avoided.
This was a LOT of fun.
Some more fund tropes:
The "Offscreen Moment of Awesome". We don't see her mauling people or hear the crunch and screams; we use our imagination as the minions give a terrified report. It is also useful because we readers need to focus on the stag lord's failure here, shining a spotlight on it, not the action of the jailbreak.
The "Man behind the man". The villain's "green-skinned beauty" boss may be exponentially worse. Maybe the Stag Lord is being victimized by this fey type harder than he's doing to his prisoners.
And "Villain decay"
SingerLainRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
I'm such a big fan of this story and these characters. The dialog and descriptions are so well written, and there are moments where I'm literally holding my breath waiting to read what happens next. I highly recommend this work if you love well realized characters and plenty of surprises!
AJ01Royal Road
★★★★★ 4.5
I came across this story from a Reddit post and i must admit I am really enjoying it so far.
It is set in the Pathfinder universe, I admit I am not familiar with it, but I am still able to follow the story.
It’s so easy and fun to read, I can’t wait to read more.