This special free preview of Skirmisher Publishing's bestselling In theFootsteps of Hercules universal sourcebook is intended to give readers a good sense for what this title contains and includes its table of contents; foreword; introduction; overview of the pilgrimage route it describes; two segments of the trail; and the Asclepion of Lerna, one of the 13 specific places that appears in the full version of the book. 

In the Footsteps of Hercules is a system-free sourcebook devoted to a pilgrimage trail that can be used in con­junction with any fantasy role-playing game. This book describes the various sections of the trail and the prevailing terrain and conditions associated with them; how most pilgrims travel them; alternate ways some pilgrims choose to approach the trail overall or specific parts of it; the things they generally hope to accomplish along the way; and things they might encounter on it. 

The full version of In the Footsteps of Hercules contains a detailed entry on the title pilgrimage trail and entries on thirteen other places, communities, or events, including a bathhouse, farm, hermitage, hospital, hostel, monastery, oracle, port, shrine, stables, temple, tournament ground, and trade fair. 

This book was created as a specific example of a Pilgrimage Trail, one of the 85 general sorts of places that appear in Skirmisher Publishing's Adamantine-bestselling City Builder: A Guide to Designing Communities. As written, this trail is dedicated to the titular demigod and is set in a Dark Ages fantasy version of the Peloponnesian Peninsula of Greece and located within the company’s Swords of Kos Fantasy Campaign Setting. It can easily, however, be dedicated to any other appropriate deity or cause and dropped into virtually any other existing milieu and has deliberately been designed to be compat­ible with any of what Gary Gygax used to refer to as “a traditional fantasy campaign setting.”