Adol Cristin's page

-I will bring hope where there is none.

-I will fight to protect the weak and innocent to the best of my ability.

-I will act now rather than later if I believe the lives of my companions or the innocent are at risk.

-In battle, I am the sword of my allies. I will never abandon the front while a battle is raging.

-A sword can be used to not only slash, but also parry, stab, throw or bash. It is a versatile tool that can defeat enemies in many different ways.

-I show no mercy to my enemies until they are incapacitated. Should they inflict preventable harm after surrendering, the blame lies with me as their guard.

-I am not above showing mercy to the truly penitent. However, criminals must still answer for their crimes.

-If I am faced with an evil too great to risk showing mercy to, I will end it. I will not take such a decision lightly.

-I will do my best to act in accordance with the customs of the local populace, so long as they are legitimate and I feel they are not designed to protect the evil at the expense of their citizens.

-I will freely offer my aid if I believe it is needed, and will never ask a personal reward for any of my services. If I ask something at all, it must not endanger anyone and must directly benefit the local populace instead of myself.

-Should I be placed in a position of leadership, I will take responsibility for the safety of my subjects, and rule in accordance to my code, conscience, local customs and the teachings of Estivas.

-Should a conflict arise between any of the other commendments, my loyalty ultimately lies with the weak and innocent. My actions are then those I judge to be best for the common good, to the best of my conscience. I will never engineer such an occurence to deliberately ignore any of the other teachings.

-Adol will usually have power attack active at all times since the damage during his own turn greatly depends on it. Even if he trips something without attacking first, it will be with the power attack penalty.

-He parries every incoming ranged weapon or ranged spell attack against himself or an adjacent ally with cut/smash from the air. This excludes supernatural abilities since they are fluffy. For these ranged parries to be possible, he has to be aware of the incoming attack. Since it has effectively no other cost, he can technically parry an infinite number of incoming projectiles. (Can I have a scene like that? please? :) )

-He takes a normal melee attack as an AoO against most targets.

-If a melee target is moving towards the group and provokes, instead of a normal attack Adol will use improved trip, then an AoO when the melee target stands up (if it does).

-If Adol is getting swarmed with many upcoming targets or they are already around him in range, he spends 1 MP as a swift (if he has both and doesn't need to heal) for the mythic Combat Reflexes effect.

When sanctuary *IS* up.
-This usually means Adol has taken serious damage during his previous turns. It can only be put up by him healing himself or another with lay on hands. If possible, he fullattacks first and then heals himself with LoH after the attack, so putting it up doesn't interfere with attacking in his own turn. The willsave DC is 10 + 0.5xpaladin level + cha mod. Currently that is 24. Adol might want to heal himself any time he drops below +/-75% hp and definitely wants to below 50%.

-He will probably want to partially take advantage of the defensive sanctuary effect while it is there. As a generic rule of thumb Adol would only break it if roughly half the enemies have already had their turn since it was used and then an AoO is provoked, or a spell attack that can be parried comes through sanctuary. If he choses to break sanctuary, he uses the tactics above.

1. What is your character? Where are they from?
Adol is a paladin formerly in the service of Iomedae, hailing from Galt in Golarion and a former venture captain for the pathfinder society. He is known for being a gullible buffoon, which has gotten him into trouble on numerous occasions. For one, he was tricked by a rogue into worshipping a false god, which eventually let to his expulsion from the order of the sword when he was tried for heresy. The twist - as it turned out, he himself had unknowingly assumed the identity of this god, and became stronger the more influence his new cult gave to this 'false god'. He himself is unaware that he is now a god and simply believes it is a natural result of progressing his martial training, along with the power he gains from divine worship of his 'patron', as he once gained from Iomedae. More on his ascension and cult are described under those topics.

A brief personal character background on Adol: Adol hailed from Galt and saw part of his family murdered during the many revolationary struggles. Only he and sister were saved from the guillotine by a mysterious stranger. As he was a child back then, his memories of his rescue are hazy. However, from that point on he vowed to one day return to Galt to at least save his parents' souls and if possible restore order. He has since trained fervently to this goal both as a paladin and broadening his knowledge of the world as an agent of the pathfinder society. Eventually, throughout many adventures and facing many dangerous adversaries, he succeeded in the first goal, but did not have time to go to the second when he was suddenly in charge of a cult.

Adol is a famous adventurer in Golarion of whom many extremely far fetched stories do rounds; some say he fought a runelord one on one in a sealed tomb and lived. Others say he once literally bit a dragon to death with his teeth. Yet others insist that he released an elemental god from a supposedly unbreakable prison. These tales are mixed with amusing accounts of how he was allegedly tricked by the same certain rogue to perform a barrel dance on the Absalom markets naked, claiming this was the divine ritual of Estivas, his 'diety'. All of these stories, for better or worse, are true.

2. What is your character's portfolio?

Adol's main portfolio consist of good, law, travel and protection. In general, he does his best to care for and protect those that are less able to fend for themselves. He hates disorder and chaos as it reminds him of his homeland of Galt and how these circumstances can lead to a spiral of abuse of power, suffering of innocents and revenge. He has also seen enough to know that the huge threats that people need protection against aren't always the ones that come knocking on your door by themselves. Thus, he often actively seeks out these dangers to remove them. He believes that even in the absense of found danger, no journey is ever truly a wasted one: there is always something useful gained, whether it be new friends, strategic knowledge of the area, or simply a means to remain fit and better able to defend yourself and those close to you.

3. What does your character look like?

See the top of the page.

Adol was once a a jovial youth who constantly enthousiastically asked others about their local customs and traditions, and whom could be tricked into believeing whatever you claimed simply by insisting it was true. However, since being semi-forced into a position of rulership, the responsibility of the crown as Thurok of Arl forced him to quickly grow out of his more extreme gullibility. The same was true for when he fought in a number of skirmishes in the Taldan Civil war, fighting for the queen.

He takes his duties as a prophet of Estivas, a ruler and a protector all very seriously, and his mind tends to wander over what is and isn't required of him. Often, he feels overburdoned, and that he might be the wrong person for the tasks that were given him. However, he sees it as his duty to persevere. At times, moments of his gullibility and love for his former hobby of travelling still shine through. Perhaps he could return to that life and person, if he was ever free from his tasks.

Unless provoked, he tends to see the good in people. He might be open to enemies that they want to change their ways, since no one is beyond hope, though this depends on the serverity of their crimes. Of course, even if they want to repend, this doesn’t change that they need to be punished for crimes committed first.

In spite of what might be expected, Adol doesn't do shields. His previous experiences with all end with the shield destroyed, sundered, pilfered, or otherwise getting in the way. The two of them don't seem to mesh that well. Instead, Adol relies purely on his own skill and faith in Estivas (himself) for protection.

4. How did your character become a demigod?

Adol 'ascended' during a foray into a tomb of a forgotten crusader in Lastwall. It was hypothesized that the wards holding the ancient lich Tar-Baphon trapped were weakening due to a something there causing one of the critical wards to malfunction. During the expedition, he found a single word written on a wall in the complex: Estivas. It seemed this word only operated the level of water in a pool, but both the accompanying wizard and rogue talked him into believing this part was of critical importance, and that reciting this over and over during a flamboyant dance was they key in restoring the lost wards of the complex, as well as purifying the desecrated grave of the knight the wards were bound to. To everyone's surprise but Adol's (since he didn't know any better), this actually seemed to work.

Afterwards, the rogue, pretending to be Iomedae, wrote in his chronicle that Estivas was indeed the secret of the universe and that it was to be worshipped and sought after alongside her. Since then, he has championed the cause of 'Estivas' alongside Iomedae until he was charged with heresy and discharged from the order because of this. Despite this, he is still convinced that Iomedae herself instructed him to do so. Perhaps this is even true, and that it was Iomedae who pushed this rogue to do so, setting him on this path.

Ever since the events in the tomb, he began his string of increasingly diffcult feats that should have been impossible to mere mortals. Among the other examples named previously, he survived being shot succesfully around 60 times in under 30 seconds and constantly resisted being erased from reality by an inevitable. My personal explanation for all this madness is that Estivas was indeed the name of the forgotten legendary crusader and that restoring the wards passed a small vestige of mythic power onto Adol, who then unknowingly assumed his mantle/identity of a guardian of Golarion.

Growing stronger since then is probably the result of a combination of his own advancement, being present when these powerful entities died and their mythic power dissipated and the growing popularity of the cult of Estivas, which grew in popularity with his own reputation.

Throughout his career, he has fought and killed multiple creatures of varying levels of mythic power (multiple dragons, enemy champions with 7 mythic levels, inevitables, etc, can name specifics if wanted. Surviving these probably means he has no shortage of enemies seeking revenge). He was also present when one of his companions recently accepted a deal from Deskari, when she ate one of his hearts heart and in doing so became a demigod herself, a new demon lord of the abyss. He still blames himself for not being able to dissuade her from this course.

The final push for his own ascension came when he visited the red moon of Akiton circling Golarion in persuit of an extremely dangerous Champion. This champion had taken over the planet by force and was ruling it in typical tyrannical fashion, and was worshipped as a god, just as the people there were accustomed to worship anyone visiting them from Golarion as a god. Ironically, while Adol went there with the side goal of convincing them to drop these practices, he wound up as the resident worshipped god when he overcame the servants of this entity in a very public Arena event and consequently slew this champion himself. No amount of insisting otherwise could convince the populace to not worship Estivas/Adol afterwards, and it has since been the base of his cult.

Throughout all of this, Adol still believes he is in fact not a demigod and that it is Estivas providing for his believers, not he himself.

5. Where does your character live?
Adol relocated to the center of his cult on Akiton, a moon circling Golarion. The city has a portal connected to Golarion, specifically to locations related to some Decemverate members, the secret leaders of the society (I am assuming you know all this about the world/setting, but just in case). His connections in the pathfinder society combined with the resources at his disposal as a hero/prophet to the general populace of at least some of the cities of Akiton provide him with the means to get where he needs to be. The society also provides him with intelligence to know when he is needed (if divine instruction to do so is lacking), which is a good thing since he tends to be very busy trying to civilize the barbaric tribes of the moon. This is also what forced him to resign from the official position of venture captain, since he could no longer handle these duties alongside taking care of matters on Akiton.

6. Where in the verse is your cult centered?
-See above.

7. What sorts of people worship you?
-Adol has a reputation of a nearly legendary swordsman. He attracts followers from all walks of swordsmanship, especially swashbucklers due to the flamboyant nature of some aspects of his 'faith', and barbarians due to the ferocity with which he is known to fight (and since most of the people from Akiton are traditionally barbarians). His followers tend to be either wandering warriors supremely confident in their ability to turn fights single-handedly (with perhaps a bit of luck on their side), frontline commanders emphasizing leading by example, or shield bearers who truly believe in putting yourself in harm's way for the weaker ones behind you. Either way, they all seek to bring hope where previously there was none and prefer to act immediately rather than later.

8. Who is your Herald?
Koria Vos is Adol's Herald. She is the main priestress of Estivas, the effective religious leader below Adol himself. She gained mythical abilities directly after Adol became worshipped for killing the ursurper on Akiton. This allowed her to resurrect her dead brother Kol Voss, who had been beheaded by Skelg the ripper in a legendary Arena fight surrounding these events only an hour or so before. Ever since, she has viewed Adol as a patron saint and converted to the faith of Estivas. Along with the brother, she tries to smooth things over between Adol and the barbarian tribes where she can. She often insists on accompanying him wanting to ensure his survival, since she sees in him a chance to genuinely forge a better fate for her people.

She is a reddish skinned Savage woman from the moon tribe, standing well above a head taller than most women of other races. She wears a suitable outfit of mostly Behir leather (as a sign of status) adorned with wool, and a long bone staff made from a behir talon. It’s a point of contention between Adol and her, since Adol admires the magnificent beasts and has unknowingly selected them as his sacred animal. However, she insists is is tradition for those with high ranks to wear this as a sign of power and respect.

Unlike him, her skin is fair instead of scarred, a sign of a life of crafting and worship on the savage planet. Adol once bought her priestress robes from Golarion, which she tore up and now wears scraps of as a badge of honor. The between these scraps, she wears remnants of what looks like a barrel, giving her overall a somewhat savage but also strange and comical appearance.