Background: Transcendant deserter, Sage
Personality Trait: I'm willing to listen to every side of an argument before I make my own judgment. It is not stopping to think that clouds judgment, but brash action. Learning to see something for what it really is takes time and many sides to view it from, only then can you understand its worth.
Ideal: Knowledge. The path to power and self-improvement is through knowledge. The way of the Transcendent Order took me nowhere, yes perhaps I'm fast on my feet now, but my studies showed me so much more. I can use this power to help others.
Bond: I sold my soul for knowledge. I hope to do great deeds and win it back. Knowledge and Power, yes the price I paid to that fiend was high, but even a devil can die.
Flaw: Most people scream and run when they see a demon. I stop and take notes on its anatomy. When there is so much to learn, who doesn't forget their own safety sometimes?
Background Feature - Researcher: When you attempt to learn or recall a piece of lore, if you do not know that information, you often know where and from whom you can obtain it. Usually, this information comes from a library, scriptorium, university, or a sage or other learned person or creature.
Your DM might rule that the knowledge you seek is secreted away in an almost inaccessible place, or that it simply cannot be found. Unearthing the deepest secrets of the multiverse can require an adventure or even a whole campaign.
BACKSTORY
Introduced to the transcendent order at a young age Zethaya knew little else than the order's philosophy of action without thought. She spent much of her time honing her body in the grand gymnasium while the brilliant mind that lay undiscovered within her head went to waste. She struggled but repeatedly failed to bring her body and spirit to the kind of harmony that was expected of a Cipher, her thoughts trailing off easily, trailing off into contemplation and pondering about her place among the Ciphers and the viability of their philosphy.
She found that she did not fit with the order nor their way of seeing the world. Zethaya found too much enjoyment in the exercise of her mind, stealing away to libraries to absorb knowledge and find more to think about. She found fascinating tomes about the creatures of the outer planes, especially the lower planes. Before coming of age she had decided to abandon the Order, using what fighting ability she had aquired along with a few jobs as a librarian to earn her keep at various libraries and other places of learning, where she studied the fiends of the lower planes and the magic used to contact them. Before long she was obsessed with devils, not because she felt a personal connection with them, but more in the way a scholar becomes obsessed with a particular type of creature, like dragons.
She learned more about the magic of communing with these fiends and started becoming convinced that their power, while inherently evil could be coaxed and manipulated to serve a good purpose, in the hands of soeone who understands how they work. Zethaya, now known both by the Order whom she abandoned and by many peers in her studies who had seen her work as the Heretic, set to work contacting a fiend of the inferno and making a fateful request. The devil granted her power and knowledge, in exchange for the most valuable commodity a mortal can offer a fiend. A price she is determined to reclaim one day when she dives Once more into the Abyss. Or Baator to be precise.
