THE FIRST NOVEL IN THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING ELDER RACES SERIES! Half-human and half-wyr, Pia Giovanni spent her life keeping a low profile among the wyrkind and avoiding the continuing conflict between them and their Dark Fae enemies. But after being blackmailed into stealing a coin from the hoard of a dragon, Pia finds herself targeted by one of the most powerful—and passionate—of the Elder races. As the most feared and respected of the wyrkind, Dragos Cuelebre cannot believe someone had the audacity to steal from him, much less succeed. And when he catches the thief, Dragos spares her life, claiming her as his own to further explore the desire they’ve ignited in each other. Pia knows she must repay Dragos for her trespass, but refuses to become his slave—although she cannot deny wanting him, body and soul...

Grab your katana, ready your best kung fu, and prepare to discover a whole new world of exciting adventure The mysteries and wonders of the Dragon Empires are finally revealed The continent of Tian Xia stretches from the polar ice in the north to well south of the equator -- a realm where honorable samurai, devious ninja, martial artistry, strange spirits, and imperial dragons rule. The Dragon Empires Gazetteer also presents five new player character races -- the birdlike tengus, reptilian nagaji, shapechanging foxlike kitsune, reincarnted spiritualists known as samsarans, and the shadowy masters of trickery called the wayang. An overview of life in the Dragon Empires offers a look at a new core pantheon (including more than a dozen brand-new deities), several new factions, and the challenges faced by a land recovering from the recent fall of a continental empire.

Enter the mystical land of Tian Xia -- the Dragon Empires -- a new realm for players to explore. Player-friendly descriptions of more than two-dozen nations, new traits for each, details on five new character races (the birdlike tengu, the shapechanging foxlike kitsune, the shadow-wreathed wayang, the reptilian nagaji, and the spirit-bound samsaran), notes on local religions, new Asia-inspired archetypes, feats and martial arts styles, magic items, spells, and a system to track honor and dishonor provide numerous exciting character options. Each bimonthly Pathfinder Companion contains several player-focused articles exploring the volume's theme as well as short articles with innovative new rules for social, magic, religious, and combat-focused characters, as well as traits to better anchor the player to the campaign.

Campaign book; compatible with the "5E" edition rules of Dungeons & Dragons.

Apart from water, tea is more widely consumed than any other food or drink. Tens of billions of cups are drunk every day. How and why has tea conquered the world? Tea was the first global product. It altered life-styles, religions, etiquette and aesthetics. It raised nations and shattered empires. Economies were changed out of all recognition. Diseases were thwarted by the magical drink and cities founded on it. The industrial revolution was fuelled by tea, sealing the fate of the modern world. Green Gold is a remarkable detective story of how an East Himalayan camellia bush became the world's favourite drink. Discover how the tea plant came to be transplanted onto every continent and relive the stories of the men and women whose lives were transformed out of all recognition through contact with the deceptively innocuous green leaf.

Never has a land needed heroes more than Varisia. There, at the edge of civilization, barbarians clash with dark armored invaders, foul creatures lurk within the hearts of titanic monuments, and daring explorers unearth the secrets of a forgotten age of wizard-tyrants. This definitive Pathfinder guide equips players with all they need to face Varisia's dangers and mysteries, as well as dozens of new options for playing characters native to this wild region -- perhaps as a mystical thundercaller of the Shoanti barbarians, a daring bravo leading a caravan of Varisian wanderers, or an obsessed magic-user steeped in the lore of the sinister Thassilonian empire. New options for character backgrounds and campaign traits allow players to integrate their characters into any of the Adventure Paths set in Varisia -- such as the Rise of the Runelords or Shattered Star Adventure Path -- like never before! Varisia needs heroes, be one of them with the all-new format Pathfinder Player Companion: Varisia, Birthplace of Legends!

Alliance politics is a regular headline grabber. When a possible military crisis involving Russia, North Korea, or China rears its head, leaders and citizens alike raise concerns over the willingness of US allies to stand together. As rival powers have tightened their security cooperation, the United States has stepped up demands that its allies increase their defense spending and contribute more to military operations in the Middle East and elsewhere. The prospect of former President Donald Trump unilaterally ending alliances alarmed longstanding partners, even as NATO was welcoming new members into its ranks. Military Alliances in the Twenty-First Century is the first book to explore fully the politics that shape these security arrangements – from their initial formation through the various challenges that test them and, sometimes, lead to their demise. Across six thematic chapters, Alexander Lanoszka challenges conventional wisdom that has dominated our understanding of how military alliances have operated historically and into the present. Although military alliances today may seem uniquely hobbled by their internal difficulties, Lanoszka argues that they are in fact, by their very nature, prone to dysfunction.

They have been shunned and feared by society forever. Born of tainted bloodlines and raised in shameful secrecy, the tieflings of Golarion count among their ancestors some of the greatest evils of the Great Beyond. Yet not all tieflings succumb to the sinister compulsions of their evil blood -- some strive to rise above the stereotype and become heroes in their own right. This Pathfinder sourcebook explores all that it is to be a tiefling, including not only an extensive discussion of tiefling culture and society, but also presenting numerous variations on the standard tiefling character. Rules for tieflings of specific fiendish heritages, new feats and magic, variant tiefling abilities and tiefling appearances, and new options for inquisitors, summoners, sorcerers, clerics and more await discovery in this Pathfinder Player Companion.

Baron Roman Fedorovich von Ungern-Sternberg (1885–1921) was a Baltic German aristocrat and tsarist military officer who fought against the Bolsheviks in Eastern Siberia during the Russian Civil War. From there he established himself as the de facto warlord of Outer Mongolia, the base for a fantastical plan to restore the Russian and Chinese empires, which then ended with his capture and execution by the Red Army as the war drew to a close. In The Baron’s Cloak, Willard Sunderland tells the epic story of the Russian Empire’s final decades through the arc of the Baron’s life, which spanned the vast reaches of Eurasia. Tracking Ungern’s movements, he transits through the Empire’s multinational borderlands, where the country bumped up against three other doomed empires, the Habsburg, Ottoman, and Qing, and where the violence unleashed by war, revolution, and imperial collapse was particularly vicious. In compulsively readable prose that draws on wide-ranging research in multiple languages, Sunderland re-creates Ungern’s far-flung life and uses it to tell a compelling and original tale of imperial success and failure in a momentous time. Sunderland visited the many sites that shaped Ungern’s experience, from Austria and Estonia to Mongolia and China, and these travels help give the book its arresting geographical feel. In the early chapters, where direct evidence of Ungern’s activities is sparse, he evokes peoples and places as Ungern would have experienced them, carefully tracing the accumulation of influences that ultimately came together to propel the better documented, more notorious phase of his career. Recurring throughout Sunderland’s magisterial account is a specific artifact: the Baron’s cloak, an essential part of the cross-cultural uniform Ungern chose for himself by the time of his Mongolian campaign: an orangey-gold Mongolian kaftan embroidered in the Khalkha fashion yet outfitted with tsarist-style epaulettes on the shoulders. Like his cloak, Ungern was an imperial product. He lived across the Russian Empire, combined its contrasting cultures, fought its wars, and was molded by its greatest institutions and most volatile frontiers. By the time of his trial and execution mere months before the decree that created the USSR, he had become a profoundly contradictory figure, reflecting both the empire’s potential as a multinational society and its ultimately irresolvable limitations.

History will not be forgotten...or silenced. Darcy's mother may be dead, but that doesn't stop her from trying to warn her that trouble is brewing. For weeks Darcy Adams has been haunted in her dreams by her mother and images of her hometown; past and present. The dreams make no sense until a frantic phone call from her father in the middle of the night confirms what her mother has been trying to tell her. Shoreton is in trouble. Compelled by the desperation in her father's voice and her mother's warnings, Darcy travels across the country to the quaint coastal town she left behind years ago only to find it in a state of upheaval. The state plans to make changes that could doom the town, leaving the residents in a bitter conflict between those who crave progress and those determined to preserve their heritage. Meanwhile Darcy's dreams are becoming increasingly realistic and disturbing. There is more to the problems in town than meets the eye, as unexplainable encounters with strange people begin to occur. While searching for the connection, Darcy discovers a shocking secret confirming her ties to the future of the town, forcing her to delve not only into the town's past, but her own. Faced with a history she thought buried in her past, Darcy discovers that sometimes moving forward means looking back. The ghosts of Shoreton will not be forgotten...or silenced.