Here Be Tryants: A Kingmaker saga.

Game Master Joy

The Character has been disowned from his monastery for his focus on what he considers the more subtle and useful ranged weapons, and seeks to create his own order of Monk-assassins, but before he can do this, he needs to find his own source of funding, and place to set up a monastery/training grounds of his own.

===Defense===
AC 17 Touch 17 Flat footed 14
HP 8
Fort +2 Ref +4 Will +3

===Offense===
Speed 30Ft.
Melee Unarmed +4 (1d6+2/x2)
Ranged x10 Chakram +4 (1d8/x2/30Ft); x2 Rope Dart +4 (1d4+2/x2/20Ft.); Grappling hook +4 (1d6+2/x2/10Ft)
Special Attacks Flurry of throws (flurry with thrown weapons only)

===Statistics===
Str 14 Dex/[b] 18 [b]Con 10 Int 12 Wis 16 Cha 8
BAB +0 CMB +2 [b]16
Feats Dodge; Finesse; point-blank shot, Quick Draw, Improved unarmed, Prof (All thrown weapons)
Skills Acrobatics +9, Climb +5, Bluff +0, Perception +7, Stealth +8, Survival +8
Traits Acrobat (-2Accelerated climb, not -5), Orphaned, Brigand (+1Bluff, Diplo, Intimidate, Sense Motive V. Brigands, thieves, and Bandits)

The monks told him he was just about 10 years old when they took him in. By his count that's 10 years of living in the wilderness by himself, 10 years without the structure and disipline he's come to love. A name, some discipline, and a path to walk in life doesn't seem like much to people with regular lives, but to a kid that couldn't even speak, it was a blessing beyond what Cathal ever imagined.

After a few years as the monastery servant boy, Cathal began to shis some aptitude for the fighting meditations the monks performed. At first they began to teach him the way of the fist, but they discovered his talent lay in the more deadly ranged weapons they taught at this particular monastery. First, the Chakram, then the rope dart, Cathal quickly mastered these difficult weapons. Yet, when it came time to test for his first level of Shou-jie (burn scars marking his initiation into the deeper levels of the order), Cathal found that his survival instinct took over, and Cathal murdered the other child that was his opponent in the trial of combat.

Instead of receiving his Shou-jie, Cathal was put in manacles and branded with a ring around his are. After two maddening years of silence as punishment for what one friendly monk claimed was an accident, Cathal was allowed to attempt the ceremony again. This time when his instinct took over, Cathal was able to resist, and simply left his opponent viciously maimed. The monks didn't take well to the obvious violence in Cathal's heart, and banished him from the monastery.

Without the structure, and no clear path, Cathal traveled aimlessly. Ultimately making it from the mountains of Taldor all the way to Brevoy. In his travels he found that banditry was the best way to get food and money, so he slowly collected a small band of men his age around him. After reaching Brevoy with his Redfish Bandits, Cathal decided to disband the group and settle into a life inside a city.

Not satisfied with the amount of violence in his life, Cathal took to adventuring, where he saw that grouping with a band of murderous vagrants was not only common, but ccelebrated. His ultimate goal in life has become opening his own training ground for his particularly subtle yet violent style of martial arts.

Consumed, Nyall studied long and hard, looking into druidic circles, druid teachings. He spent his meager allowance in the pursuit of power. If nature rewarded those who were strongest, then that is what he would become.

Nyall has had a number of mentors since beginning on the druid's path. His ambition and lust for power tending to place him at odds with his mentors. Some respected his outlook on the natural world, but too many were troubled by the darkness that fed this perspective.

So Nyall has continued on this path alone, determined to achieve his ascendance to power, his transcendance to becoming a Naga.

There appeared to be a consensus that evolution often occers as mutation, but then the mutation becomes the norm. This got his curiosity, but he did not think about it until he had witnessed a raid on a hidden shrine to Lamashtu.

Doing study on the deity, he found that even though she is considered one of the most foul deities, he became more interested and sought out any surviving members who set up the shrine. Many went out swinging, however he managed to speak with a man who had been born with a horrible disfigurement.

His excuse was he was doing research, but he began to apply this research to himself, marking himself to Lamashtu. He also became fascinated in Transmutation magic and ways to make it perminant, however he did not fully focus that school and instead trained to be able to cast spells from other schools that most wizards like him would be unable to access.

When the option came about heading south and possibly starting up a nation he saw this as a way to continue to spread the word of Lamashtu and start building up new races for her through mutation. It will take sometime, but he is very patient.

It was a week earlier that she had found the invitation to join in the expedition into the Stolen Lands. The young knight she had gotten it from no longer needed it. Sleeping, he had been no match for her story’s nightmare. A great serpent, its bite had severed the man’s juggler, although he was really not much more than a boy, while it had strangled him with its tail.

For the past several years, she had served a number of higher ranking families in Issia. Nobles and merchants alike. Unlike other better educated and raised individuals, Gileta did not have the luxury of a pampered upbringing. Her mother was a Varisian, part of a caravan that had travelled the long road to Brevoy. Unfortunately, the caravan never made it to the land of the Rogarvian Kings. It was set upon by bandits, while traveling north on barges up the Sellen River. Most in the caravan were killed and their meager belongings taken. During the raid, some amongst the bandits desired not only the wealth, minimal though it was, but also the beautiful Varisian women as consorts, slaves or worse. Gileta’s mother, Iolana, was one of these women.

The night after the raid, the bandits celebrated, and their captives were used as entertainment. For Iolana, her captor had the pointed ears of one with elvish blood. Iolana never learned the name of her captor, and abuser.

In the late night hours, but an hour from dawn, Iolana’s captor fell asleep. Although she desired to drive a dagger into his heart, she instead grabbed what she could, and fled while the camp lay asleep in a drunken stupor. Other than a dagger, a wineskin, and some food, she left with little other than the clothes she had on her back. The only thing she was able to find as she fled, of any value to her, was an aged harrow deck that had belonged to her mother before her.

With these meager belongings, she ran, and ran, and ran. She gathered berries that she hoped were edible, and tried to consume as little of the food as she could, but with little in the way of navigable roads, she was forced to slowly make her way along the banks of the river, spending most of her time hiding from predators and other threats, real or perceived.

After a week on the trail, and nearly starving to death, she stumbled upon a camp where a merchant had anchored for the night. Knowing that remaining alone was a death sentence, Iolana hesitantly made her way to the camp site and, after briefly being interrogated by the guards, was allowed to stay with the caravan, eventually arriving in Brevoy and Port Ice.

By the time that Iolana arrived in Port Ice, it was apparent that she was with child. Something that horrified her, yet at the same time brought her joy. Seven months later, Gileta was born, and from the earliest days, it was clear that the father was the elven blooded bandit.

Although skilled at entertaining, and other sleight of hand occupations, Iolana realized that with a child, she would have to remain in Brevoy, that any return to Varisia would have to wait. So, for ten years, while she raised young Gileta, Iolana worked. Occasionally serving as an entertainer, but usually in more menial tasks, as a house cleaner, farm worker, and in any other job that the lords and merchants of Issia might be willing to pay.

During her youth, Gileta ran and played with other children, usually the children of whichever noble or merchant was employing her mother on that day. At night, she would listen captivated when her mother would tell stories of the Variaian caravan she had travelled with and all the interesting places it had gone. While for most people, this would have been an interesting history lesson, for the affable Gileta, these stories were a catalyst for her imagination. Gileta began to take her mother’s stories and tell them to her playmates, but to expand upon them. She would add red dragons, a common theme in Brevoy, as well as demons, which she had heard of in stories about the Worldwound, devils, from the children of Chelaxian merchants, and other evil creatures.

Perhaps Gileta would have followed in her mother’s footsteps, spending her life working for the moderately wealthy of Brevoy. However, she was twelve when the Rogvarians suddenly disappeared. This might not have been a great problem, except that Iolana was serving as a maid to Lady Demetria Rogvaria, the wife to Baron Kardan Rogvaria, 45th in line to the throne. Distant and as irrelevant as the Baron might have been, he and his family disappeared that night. And, so did Iolana.

With her mother, the only family she ever had, gone, Gileta became despondent. For a time, she wandered and lived off what she could find. Scraps from behind a bakery, food stolen from a vendor, whatever was available. Soon, however, she began to tell her stories again. While many were the happy stories that people wanted to hear, they often had darker undertones. It was not long before her skill at spinning tales caught the ears of the nobles and merchants of Port Ice. So, she was hired to tell stories to the children of these well off individuals. Stories lead to babysitting, which soon lead to being retained by merchants and nobles to serve as a nanny, much as her mother had done on occasion.

Gileta assumed that this would be her lot in life. Serving those with resources by caring for their children. During this time, as she approached seventeen or eighteen years, she began to develop strange abilities, which she used to improve her stories. First, she discovered she could cause cause dim light to appear around a nearby person or object, an affect which usually caused children to shriek in fear. Next, she discovered she could create small balls of light, which she used to great effect with her stories. Finally, as she neared eighteen, she learned to cause all light to disappear for a brief time, something that certainly made children fear what might happen (bump in the night). As these powers developed, her stories continued to become darker and darker, often with the heroes not being the good guys.

Finally, just after her twentieth birthday, the eighth since her mother disappeared, she was telling a story about a great serpent summoned by a dark Cheliaxian wizard. As she continued the story, she felt a strange magical force building within her, similar to what she felt when she made the light and dark magic. Suddenly, as her story reached its climax with the serpent escaping from the careless wizard and attacking a nearby town, a fluttering was heard and it appeared as though a million cards were suddenly exploding from her pocket. The cards suddenly coalesced in front of one captivated child who clapped in joy. The joy was short lived as the cards formed into what appeared to be a snake or lizard with scales the shape of cards.

As suddenly as it had appeared, the creature leapt forth and attacked the boy. Not knowing what to do, but not wanting her charge to be hurt, Gileta jumped forth and slashed at the creature with her dagger. Despite her attack, the card monster kept grabbing and crushing the boy. After several more swipes with her dagger, the creature suddenly fragmented into a million cards once more and appeared to disappear into her pocket. While the boy was saved, her job with the merchant family was not.

After being dismissed, with stern warnings to never come to the home again by the confused parents, Gileta left unable to comprehend what had happened. With the little money she had saved over the years she had worked, together with that which she had “borrowed” from prior employers, Gileta returned to her small apartment to determine what had happened.

For three months, she sought to call forth whatever power had created the card creature. Unfortunately, she was unable to do so. So, finally, she decided to return to telling her stories, having run out of what little she had saved. The first night as she was telling another tale in a small tavern, to earn food and perhaps some tips from any patrons who felt generous, she once more felt the strange feeling. Not wanting to injure anyone as had happened the prior time, she suddenly stopped her story and fled the establishment, to roars of laughter and insults from the crowd.

While she did not make any money that night, she did learn that it was the telling of stories that caused this card thing to come forth. With practice, she soon learned to call forth the creature. Amazingly, it was able to speak to her, perhaps not with great intellect, but with the ability to at least understand what she said and wanted. Deciding that this could make her the greatest story teller of all time, Gileta began to use the creature in her stories, having it suddenly appear and leap forth from her pocket, the pocket in which she kept her mother’s beloved harrow deck.

This new trick, together with her other magical abilities, once more enabled her to earn enough money to live and pay for her Port Ice apartment. As might have been expected, it did not take long for her to once more have an accident. She was telling a story of Nidal and the shadow beast that live there. As she had done many times before, she called down the darkness and then summoned the creature, which she had taken to calling Serpcar, meaning Snake of Cards in her mother’s native Varisian.

Well, the darkness fell and she sensed Serpcar appear. But, then, some intoxicated man in the audience attacked her. Before she had a chance to scream, Serpcar was there biting and constricting. The man hardly had time to gurgle before his breath had been crushed out of him. Moments later, the darkness disappeared and there on the stage was Gileta with Serpcar at her feet wrapped around the lifeless body of the man.

Gileta was arrested and she assumed would soon find herself in the gallows. With little hope, she began telling a story to summon Serpcar. Despite warnings, the guards were not vigilant, and she was able to summon the card snake. Speaking to it, the creature silently slithered behind the guard and struck, bringing the absent minded guard and his napping companion down with hardly a noise. Retrieving the keys, Serpcar unlocked Gileta’s cell and she made an escape, just as her mother had done from her captors all those years earlier.

Knowing that she no longer had a future, or even the possibility of living more than a day or two, in Port Ice, Gileta snuck to her apartment and retrieved the little money and belongings she had. Checking to make sure that her harrow deck was safe, she, under a moonless night sky, began to make her way south.

This was two months ago. She managed to make it just north of Silverhall when she ran into the foppish noble. The man told grandiose tales of his battle prowess and how he had won the right to help settle the Stolen Lands in a competition. As the man bragged, an idea, a devious idea from the darkest corners of her mind crept forth. She realized that this was the best way to rid herself of the Port Ice and Issian authorities.

She told the man that she too was traveling to Restov. They travelled together for several days. While in New Stetven, she purchased several flasks of strong alcohol, of the type the foppish man had said he preferred. Two nights later, Gileta knelt next to the lifeless corpse of the man. Deciding that he truly no longer needed the equipment that he wore, she took it from him, together with his weapons and the certificate authorizing her to aid in the settlement of the Stolen Lands, and proceeded on her way to Restov, leaving the man in a shallow grave a few paces into a copse of trees.

So, now Gileta sits in the corner of the tavern, not the priciest of taverns in Restov by any means, and watches, hoping that the Port Ice authorities have no power here, and that she is able to pull off the subterfuge and be allowed to join those being designed to conquer and settle the lands to the south.