Weekly Wonders - Eldritch Archetypes Volume XIV - Archetypes of the Wind Walker

Archetypes of Wintry Madness

The eldritch, the strange, and the weird are often relegated to the domains of villains and NPCs in fantasy, with the good guys being the ones who stand in the way of the dark things that remain just beyond our perception, which we can never truly understand. But sometimes, it can be fun to take on the mantle of the otherworldly, and to embrace the alien terrors of the cosmos. Each installment of Weekly Wonders: Eldritch Archetypes contains five archetypes for eldritch characters—those that are weird, alien, and otherworldly, who don’t fit in with normal society—as well as a cleric domain devoted to a specific mythos entity or race.

For this book, we focus on the Wind Walker, a primal deity of cold, whose voice whispers on the northern winds, driving men to madness, and to consume the flesh of their fellows. Inspired by the legends of the wendigo, the Wind Walker is an unnatural force of corruption, an endlessly-hungering deity of frost and madness. The archetypes in this book build on these themes of hunger, cannibalism, arctic frost, and, of course, the ability to walk the northern winds.

This book includes the following archetypes:

• The windwalker bloodline, for bloodragers, that draws power from hunger and from eating the corpses of humanoid creatures.
• The order of the wendigo, a cavalier archetype whose weapons are rimed with frost, and whose mounts gain the ability to walk the northern winds.
• The wendigo kin, a druid archetype that specializes in swallowing her foes alive.
• The arctic channeler, a kineticist archetype with access to several unique snow- and ice-themed talents, and the ability to reduce burn through cannibalism.
• The caller of the north wind, a skald archetype that can conjure arctic gales and absorb the skills of those whose bodies he consumes.
• A bonus cleric domain for those who worship the Wind Walker.

Whether you're about to embark on a campaign of eldritch horror (such as the official Paizo adventure path dealing with strange and alien entities), or you just want an excuse to play a servant of the unknowable and uncaring cosmic entities of the Cthulhu mythos, this book has lots of tantalizing options to offer. Even GMs can get in on the fun, as several of the archetypes here are perfect for insane cultist NPCs as well, and can make for exciting and memorable encounters.