About Balin KatonahBalin Katona
Init +5; Senses Darkvision 60', Low-Light Vision, Perception +3 AC 13 (+3 dex) hp 7 (1d8-2, +1 favored class) Melee Club (cane) -2 (1d6-2)
Speed 30 ft. Str 7, Dex 16, Con 8, Int 16, Wis 16, Cha 11 Fort +0, Ref +3, Will +5 Base Atk +0; CMB -2; CMD 11 Feats
Skills (2 + int mod), asterix denotes class skill
Traits
Languages
Racial Traits
Class Abilities Death Magic (death/undeath domain/subdomain; no second domain) Corpse Companion (Su):
With a ritual requiring 8 hours, an undead lord can animate a single skeleton or zombie whose Hit Dice do not exceed her cleric level. This corpse companion automatically follows her commands and does not need to be controlled by her. She cannot have more than one corpse companion at a time. It does not count against the number of Hit Dice of undead controlled by other methods. She can use this ability to create a variant skeleton such as a bloody or burning skeleton, but its Hit Dice cannot exceed half her cleric level. She can dismiss her companion as a standard action, which destroys it. Bonus Feat: Command Undead Death’s Kiss (Su): You can cause a creature to take on some of the traits of the undead with a melee touch attack. Touched creatures are treated as undead for the purposes of effects that heal or cause damage based on positive and negative energy. This effect lasts for a number of rounds equal to 1/2 your cleric level (minimum 1). It does not apply to the Turn Undead or Command Undead feats. You can use this ability a number of times per day equal to 3 + your Wisdom modifier. Magic
1st-Level/ 2+1
Equipment, Worn
Appearance Balin Katona is a man of middling stature and slender frame. Standing just over 5' 6" in height he is often towered over by other men his age. Determining what that age is, however, is difficult. Balin is clearly something other than human, in the way his pallid skin, tapered ears and angular bone structure reveals. An untrained eye may mistake him for having elven blood, but the sunken quality of his eyes, hairlessness, pale gray eyes and the dark circles around them betray the overall sickness within, and lends a more scholarly mind to unsettling conclusions. Balin's dhampir nature is one that he does not actively conceal, but he will not reveal the truth openly or of his own volition. In fact, the spectacles that Balin wears are part of an old ploy to hide his true nature, prescribing to others that he has poor eyesight -- when the fact is his eyesight is keener than most. The glasses do little themselves, but they give Balin some measure of comfort. Choosing to dress well, Balin typically wears the attire of an Ustalavanian aristocrat in the form of a four-buttoned jacket, vest, slacks and white cravat wound around his throat. The embroidered mantle worn over his shoulders instructs a learned eye that he graduated from the Caliphas academy of the arcane as a theological scholar of the necromantic arts specializing in study of the undead. Background
Balin was raised on a lie. When Balin was seventeen, he was a struggling cleric in training within Caliphas' clergy of Pharasma. Finding no comfort in the stoic, dour and loveless faith he saw Pharasma's as, Balin grew to resent his family as some teenagers are wont to do. In rebellion, Balin applied for study at the University of Caliphas as soon as he finished his indoctrination to the Pharasman faith to study arcane magic and tactics against the dead. In truth, Balin wanted to learn more about himself and his nature without having that information filtered through the lips of a Pharasman cleric or the lens of liturgical scriptures. It was in his sixth year at the University of Caliphas that Balin met Jalos Skorrsen, an Ulfen necromancer from the far off lands of the Linnorm Kings. Jalos immediately recognized Balin for what he was and the prodigal mind of the apprentice wizard. The two shared similar curiosities and interests, and quickly hit it off. Balin would come to be Jalos' understudy in necromancy, and in secret began to be introduced to more apocryphal studies, such as cruormancy, or blood magic. Appealing to Balin's innate curiosity for the power of blood, Jalos' instructions led Balin down a path of more liberal use of necromancy out of the prying eyes of the other instructors. Eventually, Jalos informed Balin of his true nature, nor only as a dhampir blending in to human society, but also as a follower of "the reaper of reputation", Norgorber. Jalos began teaching Balin about the danger of "forbidden" arts such as cruormancy, necromancy that raises the dead, and other dangerous magics when applied in the hands of the unskilled or the unscrupulous. After two years, Jalos was confident enough of Balin's understanding that he brought him on a trip from Caliphas to the county of Ulcazar in the Hungry Mountains. Here, Jalos introduced Balin to the Anaphexia, a group of secretkeepers of Norgorber sworn to protect the world from secrets it was not meant to know, at any cost. The Anaphexia had long had their eye on Balin, and within their hidden monastery he discovered that the upper echelon of the Anaphexia, silent monks who maintain the absolute secrets of the faith, had known of his birth. Balin's birth mother, Claria Katona, was secretly a member of the Anaphexia and in a romantic relationship with one of its numerous dhampir members; Balin was their child. When Claria's family learned that she was pregnant with the spawn of a dhampir, members of the Katona family murdered Claria and took her child to raise as tool to their order as a hunter of the dead, in the hopes to capitalize on its inborn ability to detect undead. Horrified by the truth, Balin returned to Caliphas several months later against Jalos' wishes. Here, Balin simmered in quiet rage over the murder of his mother and the lie he had been told. Eventually, Balin confronted his adoptive father Alfonse Katona over the incident. The confrontation turned into an argument, which eventually escalated into violence. Balin was beaten within an inch of his life for daring to suggest that his mother was murdered by a member of the Katona family, but Alfonse spared Balin's life, not knowing how he had come upon the truth. Three nights later, in repayment for sparing his life, Balin absconded into Alfonse's bed chambers at night and slit his throat in his sleep and in invoking a ritual taught to him by the Anaphexia raised Alfonse's corpse as a zombie. Under cover of darkness, Balin fled with Alfonse's animated corpse into the night. In a later fit of rage he would set that arisen creature ablaze with alchemist's fire and watched it burn down to little more than bones. These charred, skeletal remains would be raised once more and accompany Balin back to Ulcazar. The heresy Balin wrought in reanimating the corpse of Alfonse severed him from Pharasma's graces, but by the time he had returned to Ulcazar he had already made up his mind to devote himself to what he believed was a truer power, the power of knowledge and secrets. Balin turned to the Anaphexia and joined their order and the faith of Norgorber. Knowing that they could never send him back to Caliphas after Alfonse's murder and the disappearance of both his body and his adoptive son, the Anaphexia chose to dispatch Balin to the remote city of Magnimar in far-off Varisia after his training in the order was complete. It was here that Balin studied thaumaturgical arts and began his apprenticeship in the arcane school of necromancy. During this time, Balin became acquainted with Professor Lorrimor during his numerous lectures in crowded auditoriums. Lorrimor's research into the undead and the transmigration of souls to the Boneyard and beyond was of specific interest to Balin, both in understanding his own nature and that of his vampiric "cousins." In private meetings with Professor Lorrimor, Balin revealed to the old man the truth behind his heritage, and Lorrimor in turn studied Balin as much as he taught him. While the revelation of his true work as a Secretkeeper of Norgorber in the Anaphexia was never a topic, Balin's ancestry and the manner in which he was brought into the world became a topic of discussion and research for both men. Eventually, Professor Lorrimor's work would take him away from Magnimar, but his earnest nature and acceptance of Balin's lineage would always hold a specific place of respect in Balin's otherwise black heart. When word of Professor Lorrimor's passing came years later, Balin would take leave of his studied in Magnimar and travel with Alfonse back to Ustalav in order to attend his respected mentor's funeral. ________________________ CORPSE COMPANION
DEFENSE AC 21, touch 12, flat-footed 19 (+5 armor, +2 Dex, +2 natural, +2 shield)
OFFENSE Speed 20 ft.
STATISTICS Str 15, Dex 14, Con —, Int —, Wis 10, Cha 10
Appearance
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