Illustration by Wayne Reynolds
Introducing the first of the Advanced Class Guide's new iconic characters, Jirelle the swashbuckler. While the complete rules for making your own swashbuckler characters debut in the Advanced Class Guide this August, Jirelle herself features in the our upcoming Free RPG Day adventure, Pathfinder Module: Risen from the Sands, available at participating game stores Saturday June 21st. Jirelle is also a playable character in the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game Skull & Shackles Base Set due in August.
Jirelle may have been born and raised on a ship, and she might call the Shackles her homeland, but she never considered herself a pirate, even if only to distance herself from the darkest part of her childhood: her mother.
Today, Jirelle is a friendly sort with a biting wit and a charming personality. She makes new friends as swiftly as she strikes with her rapier, and while she has a flair for the dramatic (why merely attack a foe when you can make a show of it with a twirl of the cape or a somersault or two?), she never favors ostentation or glory over the opportunity to help a friend in need. Jirelle understands that the strength of one's relationships with friends, allies, lovers, and family make one strong. It was her mother's failure to forge such bonds that allowed a young Jirelle to escape from a life that would have likely seen offered as sacrifice to the shark demon Ovonovo before the close of her thirteenth birthday.
On the subject of her mother or her ship, the Bloodcrow, the typically light-hearted half-elf grows serious. Jirelle does not share the secrets of her childhood with just anyone. As such, few know how she engineered the sinking of the Bloodcrow and the death of her wretched elven mother off the coast of Tempest Cay. Jirelle often jokes that she befriends for life, with the playful, only slightly malicious glint in her eyes implying what might happen to those who would betray such friendship.
After escaping the Bloodcrow, Jirelle spent some time surviving as a street rat in the alleys of Drenchport. Armed with a fine rapier and clad in her her mother's magical cloak (the only two things she managed to escape the Bloodcrow's wreckage with), Jirelle kept every coin and bauble she earned in a thrice-locked chest she keeps well hidden and protected. At first, she'd hoped to save enough money to afford a move from the Shackles to distant Taldor, drawn by tales of a land where duels and extravagance and civility promised a better life. But when rumors of a strange, ghostly ship plying the sea-ways of the Shackles reached her—fearful stories of a vessel commanded by an imperious banshee and bound by undeath—Jirelle realized that in sinking the Bloodcrow she'd done the exact opposite of what she'd intended. Rather than spare the Shackles of a brutal pirate queen, she'd unleashed an even deadlier scourge upon the Fever Sea.
Today, Jirelle seeks the funds to someday finance a ship and crew of her own. She plans not to become a pirate—for a life of plunder and cruelty holds no appeal for the daring swashbuckler—but to finish the job she started on the eve of her thirteenth birthday. Jirelle knows she can't do this on her own, though. So she seeks true and able allies, knowing that only with bravery and trust will the Bloodcrow's days be numbered.
James Jacobs
Creative Director
