Dvight, son of Gadric's page

I want to play an Aberrant-blooded sorcerer with the Scavenging Gullet feat.

What a neat idea. I hope you get to play that character at some point.

I'm posting from the alias of a play-by-post character I designed for a campaign on these boards, but the GM flaked, and I took over as referee, so I've never gotten to play him.

Maybe someday.

"Tinthariel, you raise an excellent point. Some of the wisest arriors know when to avoid battles they don't need to win. But let's say that the giantess is a menace to civilians, and that she's beyond negotiation. And really, she's just a model for all the times our opponents stand across terrain that's difficult to traverse. We should have a plan in mind.

"Alia, feel free to join in the tactics discussion."

Dvight makes a kind of grimace.

"All right, let's say we kill the giant but his mother is on the other side of a crevasse, fifteen feet across, and she's throwing rocks at us. There's a narrow rope bridge spanning the gap, but it doesn't look very safe.

"Am I the only one among us who could attack her?"

Dvight takes the pebble from Artimus and places it next to the larger rock. He places his own a further distance away. "I should state up front that I am a mage; my countenance and axe sometimes confuse people. I would stand back a ways, using spells to blister the giant's skin and harden your resolve in battle. If the giant decided to rush me, my axe is my last line of defense.

"And Jylan, where would you be? Next to Artimus, swinging sword and shield, or at a distance with some missile weapon?"

It takes Dvight a moment longer to recognize that the tension is past. He turns to Jylan and says, "No tradition of dueling here? It really is a good custom, you know."

Exploring these ruins will be different then dwelling in the streets of a large city. We must have faith in one another to support ourselves, while we sleep and while we stand. Each of us clearly have our own talents and also bring along our own baggage, but we must shed that now and stand as a group or none of us will walk from the dungeon.

"So," Dvight agrees, and attempts to change the subject to tactical problem-solving, as well as furthering the introductions. He tosses a small pebble to everyone around the fire. "Among my people is a saying, 'The midst of the fight against a vampire is the worst time to discuss who should have brought Holy Water.' If we come to fight a giant, who would stand in the forefront?" And he sets a larger rock in the sand before him.

Ooooh! Big bad strong man wants to threaten little girl.

If you're going to do anything you'd better make sure I'm dead. I've discovered on more than one occasion, even the strongest and baddest of men must sleep sometime.

Dvight replies very quietly, no expression showing on his features. "If I thought you were a little girl, I would send you back to your household until such time as you were safe to be on your own. I've given you credit for skills and abilities, and for some promise to live up to your potential. In return, you've behaved like a spoiled vixen and --"

He stops himself, and thinks for a moment. "I have taken your words as a threat. Perhaps you have taken mine the same way. But I intended mine as warnings. Perhaps you spoke likewise. Is yours a culture that settles these offenses by combat to first blood?"

With that, Dvight stands and readies his axe. He speaks an unfamiliar word and the flickering green lights around the weapon are gone.

"Tell me Dvight...are you good with your sword?"

Dvight might be willing to fight alongside the woman, but he's not interested in being another of her conquests. His features turn suddenly scaled, and his hands shift into cayman-like claws. His voice comes out in deep hisses "It'sss an axe, ssstrumpet. And itsss touch isss corrosssive to flesh. Asss to my ssskillsss with it, you'll find out sssoon enough."

"I cannot say that I approve of some of your past actions, Mi'lady. Charity to those in need is a virtue and those who would withhold such offerings when they themselves live in decadence they deserve a lesson of humility. Taking claim of their riches through trickery is an act of greed and a conflict of sins doesn't balance the scales."

Dvight's features resume their normal demeanor. There's my paladin, he thinks, and a smile forms at the corners of his mouth.

"Artimus, we'll likely need an ally with the cunning skills Chyressa proffers, someone who can open both doors and hearts. And if we decide to wait here, looking for someone to come along with both those skills and such virtues as you so value, I'm going to get to work on building a house in the meanwhile."

He turns to look at Chyressa, all the while talking with the paladin. "I imagine you're right, though. Faced with real evil, our callow beauty is likely to make some hard decisions and wise herself up. Because: all those men and women who have gone off, intending to sack Tsar for her riches, and never returned? She strikes me as smarter than all of them."

Artimus and Chyressa both have a way with words, Dvight reflects, but in wholly different directions.

"Artimus, Jylan, our interests seem to run like rivers, joining together into a greater body. In Tsar, Jylan might redeem his father's legacy and Artimus might earn one for himself. What say you, Chyressa? Does walking the ancient ruins of a demon-pact city sound like enough of a challenge for you, or will you go on collecting swords from fallen swains?

"Tintheriel, you seem troubled by all this. Is the adventuring life the right path for you? For truly do I say, there are days when it is the most glorious life imagined, with enemies fallen about you and treasures laid bare for the taking. But there is also danger and hardship, and a hardness that you must build within your heart. Does that brutal life call to you?

"If that is indeed where your path leads, why not join us? Our strength is in numbers, and I've come to appreciate the skills of a priest. (If not always the company.)

"Jylan, Artimus, it has been my habit to avoid fame and notoriety whenever possible, but if you wish the skalds to sing of our deeds, then it would help to have a name for the company."

The bronze-skinned half-orc turns to Artimus with a guarded expression. In the days you've known of him, he has kept to himself, speaking in brief phrases, as if an entire sentence would cost him dearly. In a rough place like Camp, that's sometimes welcome. But then he sighs. Perhaps he's been sizing you up, and he's come to a conclusion.

Settling in for a tale, Dvight reaches into an urn next to his seat and pulls out a eel, about 7 inches long. With the heel of his other hand, he smacks the creature's head, stunning it, and then pops the entire thing in his mouth. The cartilage crunches noisily.

"I'm a leading contender in the contest to see who in camp is from the farthest away. I learned the trade of the itinerant adventurer in the company of a band of mercenaries and bandits, under the leadership of a man named Valens. He'd promised to save my family from his raiders, if I would agree to join."

Dvight turns away to spit out some of the less edible parts of the eel. "He lied. I have called myself Dvight, son of Gadric, but Gadric is long dead now, and his name with him."

"After some years exploring nearby kingdoms and unclaimed wilderness, I unknowingly stepped through a portal to other worlds; and it's been among them that I've wandered. Some of them passing strange, some of them beautiful on the surface but rotten underneath, some of them wracked by warfare and strife.

"Always, eventually, I found demons. There would be the imperious Vrocks, the nasty little Quasits, the mountainous Nalfeshnee. Always corrupting folks, bringing hardship and woe. Always hungry for blood and souls. It was the one constant -- well, that, and roses; apparently, every dimension has roses. So, I've learned a hearty distaste for demons.

"Two months ago, I was making my way through an experimental outpost of the Daxii, genius-level mummified dire apes, masters of their world, servants of the demon lord Orcus. The Daxii had abandoned the outpost for some reason, not hours before I arrived. I found there a nexus, a kind of gateway across realities: artificial, usually lasting a day or two, and unstable. Three kinsmen passing through a nexus might end up miles apart, or stranded on different worlds.

"I ended up here. Well, about twenty days travel that way, but here, on your plane. I learned your tongue, and heard tales of this 'Tsar,' that it was the undisturbed ruins of a city built to serve Orcus. I don't know for sure whether I followed any of the Daxii here, but if I did, I'll lay good odds that they would have headed for Tsar.

"I have no way to return to my own lands, and little real desire. I like your world. It is beautiful at sunset, the single silver moon is peaceful in the night sky. There are good people and intriguing cultures. And your eels are delicious, I must say. If I can find out what lies waiting in Tsar, and put my axe to it, and in the doing make this dimension a little safer, then that's where I'm called."

And with those words, he looks around, perhaps a bit ashamed at revealing all that.

"And you, Artimus? What deeds have you done, what terrors laid to rest, on this new path of yours?"

Artful Dodger, are you waiting for something? I'm happy as a clam to keep meeting the other PCs in character, but is there something else we ought be doing?

Dvight smiles --and oh, such a smile he has-- at Jylan's stories. He's heard a half-dozen people claim to have plumbed the depths of Rappan Athuk, but this man's words carry an air of truth. "So you've set foot in Rappan Athuk, swordsman? That place is notorious! What kind of atrocities did you find down there?"

So, in our revised history, Dvight is new to this world.

A few years ago, he was investigating an abandoned --indeed desecrated-- temple, and found a one-way portal in the underground vaults, which took him to a succession of demi-planes, strange worlds, and alien landscapes. One thing he could count on, wherever he went: the demons of the Abyss, of Pandemonium and Tartarus, were constantly on the prowl to seize any life they could torment, any soul they could befoul.

Most recently, Dvight has made his way 'cross lands where the Daxii, intelligent mummified dire apes, were locked in a battle against their former slaves, the leech-folk. The leech-folk shamans were attempting a grand Eldritch Confluence, the better to cut the Daxii off from their astrological power sources. (Dvight had hired on as a mercenary captain in the service of one of the last surviving caches of humans. He avoided the mummies, and despised the treacherous leech-folk.) In the aftermath of one of their battles, the Daxii had left open a nexus to other worlds, through which they sought some particular relic of their undying lord, Orcus.

Dvight made his way through the nexus to this world, which remnd him much of his native lands. He learned the local tongue, and upon hearing of Tsar and its fabled ties to Orcus, proceeded to the Camp, where he hopes to learn more.

Bloody Rugburn, I imagine that, in a 3.5 campaign, Tintheriel would likely have been a Favored Soul rather than a Cleric. Am I on the right track with that?

I also imagine that Dvight would find it easy to get along with him. Dvight has met a number of holy men in his travels, and it seems to him that their favorite thing to do in all the worlds is tell him about their deity and their tenets and such. Some have tried to recruit him for their zealot crusades. Others have tried to kill him for blasphemy, or just because they were short of sacrifices that week. In any case, Tintheriel's simplicity is a welcome relief.

(He's not sure what to make of Artimus, though. His relations with the couple of paladins he's met have been strained.)

--+--+--

Artful Dodger, if we can say that Dvight spent some time of his wanderings on some alien planes --perhaps one extended adventure, where he passed through a gate in some ancient crypt's basement, and has only recently come to this dimension, which is much like his home-- then I feel fine swapping out Knowledge (history) for Knowledge (the planes).

It's a little more exotic a background for him than I'd originally planned, but it still fits his personality (in a "Jirell of Joiry" kind of way), and it makes more sense for a Sorcerer than a simple fighting man. I could even posit that "half-orcs" are the dominant race in his homelands.

And, lastly, would you allow an acidic weapon, or would you rather stick with the four energy types that Pathfinder allows?

I had to drop the level of Barbarian, I'm afraid. It was a fun idea, but losing a caster level both from a level in Barbarian, and from taking the first level as Dragon Disciple was too much.

So, here's the math:

I was surprised to find out that, of all the energy types, Pathfinder does not allow acid as a valid weapon enhancement. Dvight would have preferred to wield a copper-bladed magical greataxe that did acid damage, but a magical brass weapon that does sonic damage is an acceptable consolation.