Arloric Dziergas-Highbough's page

1. Arloric is a bardic acolyte of the Green Faith and assistant groundskeeper for Truestone Park in the city of Kenabres.

2. Physically Arloric is a tall, strapping young man, with stern Kellid features and dark reddish-brown hair, and his beard is just beginning to come in. He wears an eyepatch over his left eye in a small attempt to cover his facial scars and disguise his demonic-looking left eye. His right eye is sky-blue indicating the favor of the spirits, but his left eye is black with a golden iris, surrounded by scars from a mighty demon's claws.

3. Arloric was born on a farmstead outside of Kenabres, which was attacked by a demon that managed to slip past the Wardstones when he was just a child. His parents were slain before his eyes, and he nearly died at its claws as well. The demon was slain by his uncle, the druid Crocris, and the Prelate of Kenabres, Hulrun Shappok, but not before it wounded Arloric and put him in a coma lasting weeks. Arloric awoke with a transformed eye and unusually strong stamina that left him with many questions.

4. The descendant of Sarkorian refugees, and in fact descended from the legendary warlord Uloric Dziergas himself, Arloric has trained himself to fight when he isn't tending the park, hoping to one day join the crusaders out in the Worldwound to battle the demons there and maybe reclaim some small part of what was once Sarkoris for his people.

5. Arloric feels great comfort around growing things, and can be seen tending the Park, rain or shine. He seems to draw as much life from the gentle warmth of the sun as he thrills at the crack of lightning and roll of thunder. Some stormy days he and his megaloceros, Red-Branch, will run in the wilds outside the city like the day they first met.

1. Arloric's greatest dream, which he's held since he was a boy, is to heal the Worldwound once and for all and build a new Sarkoris from its ruins.

2. As Arloric advances in Mythic Tiers, I plan on having him take Divine Source several times, so I think it'd be pretty cool for him to find the descendants of Sarkorian refugees and some of the crusaders alike rallying to him as Golarion's newest god. I do plan on taking the Apotheosis story feat to reflect this, as well.

1. Though Arloric is greatly embarrassed by it, he has quite the crush on Crusader Queen Galfrey.

2. Despite what Arloric believes, he is not truly human. There is an Abyssal taint in his blood, passed down from his ancestors who first fought the demons of the Worldwound. When the demon who injured him spilled his blood, it awoke that taint within him, making Arloric into what can only be described as a tiefling.

1. Crocris, the half-elf druid who tends Kenabres' Truestone Park, is Arloric's uncle and foster-father after Aloric lost his parents to the demon that nearly killed him as well. He led the charge to save Arloric, protected him from Prelate Hulrun's wrath, and taught him how to understand the cycles of the world and the wonders of nature. He can interpret old Sarkorian artifacts and druidic lore, and there's always a place at his hearth and table for Arloric.

2. Though the day-to-day affairs of the city take up most of his time, Hulrun Shappok, the Prelate of Kenabres, remains suspicious of demonic taint in Arloric since Crocris persuaded him to spare the lad after the demon who wounded him was slain and Arloric awoke from the coma. As Arloric has proven sincere loyalty to Kenabres and Mendev ever since, Hulrun knows not to send his witch-hunters to bother the pair, lest he give them an actual reason to betray the city, but the old inquisitor's faith in Iomedae makes it hard for him to abide the strange old ways Crocris insisted on teaching Arloric. Should Arloric show sufficient respect to Iomedae and service to the city, Hulrun may soften and offer Arloric limited access to the resources of his witch-hunters.

3. Most crusaders regard Arloric with a disdainful sneer, as they're wont to do to the descendants of the "heathen" refugees. One exception to this has been an older knight named Baleon D'Van, a paladin of Iomedae. He was a member of the posse of crusaders who helped Crocris save Arloric as a child, one of Baleon's earliest acts upon arriving in Mendev, apparently having experienced a similar ritual to the one Arloric had been kidnapped for. In the aftermath of that doomful day, Arloric sought Baleon out, perhaps hoping for answers. Unfortunately, Baleon, or Bale, as Arloric came to call him, couldn't offer anything like that to Arloric. But they came to agree that both of them NEVER wanted someone to suffer through something like that again, and Arloric practically begged Baleon to teach him how to fight. After Crocris gave his permission, Arloric began drilling with Baleon regularly, soon learning how to use the heft and agility of a greatsword in battle.

1. Arloric still has nightmares about the demonic cult that had captured him and the dark rite they subjected him to. They had struck his family's farmstead, just outside Kenabres, in the dead of night. He remembers his mother screaming for him to hide while his father attempted to fend them off outside. He remembers his mother valiantly trying to protect him with her own blade before watching her cut down before him. He remembers the strange man, clad in red robes, grabbing him and dragging him by his hair as his home burned behind him. The rest is mostly a blur, the shock of losing his family so quickly drowning out everything else until the ritual began. He recalls the droning chants and the intense pain when the magic first flared up, and as it twisted his body. The next parts are more pleasant. The chanting interrupted by another note, the horns of crusading heroes, the druidic chants of his uncle Crocris intertwined with an Iomedean battle-hymn, the pain abating as the cultists broke ranks and the rite stopped. No other even in Arloric's life has affected him so profoundly, and even today he still struggles to understand and cope with what it's done to him.

2. One of Arloric's more pleasant memories was when he first saw Crusader Queen Galfrey, back when he was a teenager. Galfrey had come to Kenabres on one of her regular tours of Mendev's defenses along the border. The Prelate had arranged for a grand celebration to greet her, and Arloric was eager to push and jostle through the crowd to get a chance to see the holy monarch. When she rode through the city, armor glittering in the sun and a stern, yet gentle look on her face, Arloric was immediately smitten. Any other time Queen Galfrey has come to Kenabres, Arloric has made sure to be in the audience, which earns him no small amount of ribbing from his friends.

3. One of Arloric's proudest moments was when he first met Red-Branch. He recalls he had been arguing with Crocris about how some crusader had treated him or something, and Arloric had stormed away from Truestone Park in a fit of pique. He'd walked through Kenabres and out the northern gate through the Crusaders' Camps, when he'd heard whoops and dogs baying, as if someone was hunting. He got a closer look and saw some low templars chasing a majestic stag, while dark clouds began rolling in. Arloric could tell from the massive pair of horns adorning its face that it was more than an ordinary stag, but a megaloceros. It began to rain as the chase continued. He watched in shock as one templar's spear caught it in the flank, but instead of running, the great beast turned and charged at the man, goring him on its massive antlers. The templar was killed instantly, and a clap of thunder rang out overhead. The shock of seeing this and the growing storm made the others realize their game might not be worth the effort, calling off their dogs and fleeing. Arloric approached the megaloceros and was surprised as it stared at him but didn't react. He tended to the beast's injury and prepared to return the templar's body to his fellows, as custom required, and was surprised when the stag began to follow him. He smirked a bit as he returned to the Crusaders' Camp with the stag in tow, as it scared the low templars as he returned their fallen comrade, and snuffed aggressively at the guards when they refused to let it through the gates. When he returned to the Park, Crocris was stunned at the megaloceros' arrival and even more at Arloric's tale. He called the stag Red-Branch, as his bloodied antlers looked like the branches of a great tree.

1. As a druid, Arloric's first loyalty is, naturally, to the tenets of the Green Faith and the will of nature.

2. Arloric is one of the last keepers of lost Sarkoris' culture and traditions, and one of his dreams is to purify his ancestral homeland of the demons that corrupted and despoiled it.

3. One of Sarkoris' oldest and most sacred traditions is loyalty to clan and kin, and Arloric deeply respects these bonds, whether to those of his blood like his uncle, Crocris, or those whom he's shed blood with on the field of battle.