Bate Mael's page

Bate Mael
??? Tengu [Ganzi] Witch [Pact Witch of the Maelstrom] 1
Chaotic Neutral, Medium, humanoid (tengu)
Init: +3; Senses: Low-light vision, Perception +8

DEFENSE
AC: 14 T: 13, FF: 11 (+3 Dex, +1 Armor)
HP: 7 (1d6+1)
Fort: +0; Ref: +3; Will: +3

OFFENSE
Speed: 30 20
Ranged:
... Light Crossbow +3 (1d8 P)
Melee
... Dagger -1 (1d4-1)

STATISTICS
STR 8 + 0 = 8
DEX 14 + 2 = 16
CON 12 - 2 = 10
INT 16 + 0 = 16
WIS 10 + 2 = 12
CHA 14 + 0 = 14

BAB: +0, CMB: -1, CMD: 12
Feats: Skill Focus (Linguistics)
Traits: Self-Taught Scholar, Pattern Seeker
Hexes: Evil Eye

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Witch Spells Prepared
... 0th: Detect Magic, Touch of Fatigue, Detect Fiendish Presence
... 1st: CLW, Burning Hands
Languages: Common, Tengu; Elven, Strix, Infernal; Jistkan, Protean

Skills:
... Knowledge (Arcana) +7 (3[int]+3[cs]+1[rnk])
... Knowledge (History) +7 (3[int]+3[cs]1[rnk])
... Knowledge (Planes) +7 (3[int]+3[cs]+1[rnk])
... Knowledge (Religion) +4 (3[int]+1[rnk])
... Linguistics (3[int]+3[cs]+4[race]+1[rnk]+3[familiar]+3[feat]) +17 [+1 to decypher]
... Perception +3 (1[wis]+1[rnk]+2[race]+1[trt]+3[cs])
... Spellcraft +7 (3[int]+3[cs]+1[rnk]) [+1 scroll]
... Stealth +5 (3[dex]+2[race])

Other Gear:
... Witch's Kit
... Wooden Holy Symbol of Asmodeus (worn)
... Light Crossbow
... Dagger
... 30 bolts
... Haramaki
... 110gp

Lex The Myna Sage Familiar (using Parrot statistics)

1. What is your character’s name?
Bate Mael

2. How old is your character?
Unknown to even Bate, but roughly around 30 years old.

3. What would somebody see at first glance (i.e. height, weight, skin color, eye color, hair color, physique, race, and visible equipment)?'
Most individuals aren't exactly familiar with differences in tengu appearances, but the large multi-colored tail is a dead give-away that the Maelstrom has at least influenced the individual to some extent, but it's not to the point that magic no longer recognizes them as huamnoid, however.

4. What additional attributes would be noticed upon meeting the character (i.e. Speech, mannerisms)?
Their speech is inundated with slang, unless they try to give off the appearance of being more sophisticated than they actually are

5. Where was your character born? Where were you raised? By who?
Bate was born near Kintargo, but they were quickly abandoned in the bigger city for their chaotic nature. They were raised by a family of Irori worshippers of the Sacred Order of Archivists.

6. Who are your parents? Are they alive? What do they do for a living?
They have no idea who their biological parents are, but their adoptive parents are missing, and the tengu has no idea where they are or where they went to, as they went missing shortly after martial law was established.

7. Do you have any other family or friends?
Any poet, historian, archaeologist, or linguist is bound to have heard of the crafty feathered individual, as they've forged many credentials to gain more standing than is expected of some lone orphan in Kintargo. Their best friend, however, is their parrot familiar named Lex

8. What is your character’s marital status? Kids?
None whatsoever.

9. What is your character’s alignment?
Firmly chaotic neutral, but not to the extent that it'd harm a party. They'd much rather rules be descriptive that prescriptive, mere guidelines that you can't stray from too often, less you no longer be understood.

10. What is your character’s moral code?
They have an... odd moral code. They believe that life's rules and laws should be like language, ever-changing and descriptive, rather than static and prescriptive. They realize that things such as murder need to be accounted for in a society, but defining strict, rigid rules tends to harm more people than it helps.

11. Does your character have goals?
Their main goal is to find their parent, but they have a few other goals in "service" to Ydajisk, mostly preservation of literary works that Thrune would like destroyed due to their content.

12. Is your character religious?
Very, but not to any popularly worshipped deity. The main reason they've been able to avoid the lawful thumb of Cheliax is because practically no-one is familiar with the eccentric book-collector that is the Mother of Tongues. That, and their obsession with contracts and language leads everyone to believe they're just some Asmodean.

13. What are your character’s personal beliefs?
They believe in freedom in all its forms, both freedom from tyrannical governments and freedom of information that isn't inherently dangerous (do not go spreading explosive runes under the guise of information!)

14. Does your character have any personality quirks (i.e. anti-social, arrogant, optimistic, paranoid)?
They are flippant and irreverent at times, and deeply serious at others, depending on when the situation calls for it. They tend to delve into poetry at times in casual conversation, finding standard sentence structure a bit too limiting, so they end up sometimes sounding like a bard without any of the magical enhancements to their words.

15. Why does your character adventure? Why would you join the rebellion?
They adventure, and join the rebellion, to hopefully find their family, as well as to screw with the diabolic nation of Cheliax in reverence to the spawning chaos of the Maelstrom that the Mother of Tongues resides in.

16. How does your character view his/her role as an adventurer?
Beyond a witch, they view their role as someone who can help the party avoid notice with enough forged paperwork and someone else's suave. They've forged their way through life, and they can lend their expertise to any adventuring party that needs it.

17. Does your character have any distinguishing marks (birth-marks, scars, deformities)?
Other than the big protean-esque ganzi tail where their normal tailfeathers would be, they have no deformities to note.

18. How does your character get along with others?
Oddly enough for a worshipper of a literal protean, they get along well with most everyone, even those that are relatively lawful in comparison, so long as those laws don't become a noose right in front of their eyes. They are very cautious around Druids though, as they've heard tales of people who believe sentience in itself, and thus language, are evil things.

19. Is there anything that your character hates?
Devolutionist Xenodruids are their primary hatred, even above the country that presumably kidnap-murderered their parents, as to be without sentience is to be without language. A close second, however, is the iron fisted-rule of Cheliax, for obvious reasons. Oh yeah, and the Order of the Rack, obviously. But who doesn't have an undying, religious desire to wipe out an entire order of Hellknights? (She keeps the last one relatively secret, second one a little less so, and goes on tirades against devolutionist Xenodruids since it's not as likely to get Cheliax mad)

20. Is there anything that your character fears?
The main thing that Bate fears is losing their ability to speak, if they know someone has Aphasia or similar prepared, they will go out of their way to take them out specifically, as losing language loses connection to the chaotic god that they've found solace in since childhood.

Bate is a very androgynous tengu with heterochromia, owing to the chaotic influences of the Maelstrom. Their feathers are primarily black, as most tengus' feathers are, but there are occassional flecks of multicoloured feathers owing to their pact with the Maelstrom, i.e. they were not always there. They stand at roughly 5 foot and 3 inches, and their usual clothes consist of robes colored in cream-white along the center, with blue extremities. Note: these are dyed cloths sewn together, not embroidered, so as to avoid the proclamations by the city's crazy hellbound lord-mayor.

Their most striking feature, however, is the prominent feathered ganzi tail that is always visible, barring the occasional use of magic to hide the tail entirely when called for. Iridiscent, flashy, and gives away their Maelstrom influence almost immediately. They always carry a nearly-rotting wooden holy symbol of Asmodeus around their neck to fool people into thinking they serve the fiend.

Bate is the only child to two unknown Tengu parents, who never again tried for a child after the horrifying experience that was giving birth to a creature with such a tail and such a very obvious taint of the chaotic Maelstrom all over them. Their adoptive parents were Irori Archivists who fled when Barzillai Thrune took over as lord-mayor of Kintargo. Their inherent chaotic nature often clashed with the lawfulness that one needs to worship Irori... that was until she found a Protean Lord that isn't at a constant forever-war with the forces of law. The forces of law, of course, have wonderful libraries, and it'd be a shame to sack them completely.

It was with this discovery, in some long-forgotten tome consisting of different demigods of Axis, the Boneyard, and the Maelstrom, that Bate found of Ydajisk, The Mother of Tongues. It wasn't long until the, then-young-adult, Tengu began pouring through tomes and working at Crissali's Fine Tomes to earn a meager living. Not long after, they found a tome that would forever change their life (whether it's for the better or worse depends on one's view of Law vs. Chaos): a tome on how to form a pact with Hell. Of course, the innately chaos-oriented Ganzi couldn't stand the idea of working with literal Hell, so they figured that if they poured enough research, they could form the same pact with a different plane, the one that gave them feathery, obvious tail.

Days after they finally went through with the plan to form a Pact with the Maelstrom itself, they found a very, very chatty Parrot that whispered arcane secrets in their ear. Of course, both of them being chaotic creatures, they haven't much progress in any kind of arcane magics, but the tengu was glad to have someone to talk to after the disappearance of their adoptive parents.

As for Barzillai Thrune? A potential reason the tengu's adoptive parents went missing soon after he showed up? Eventually, everything changes, there was no need for an endless war against the forces of law to see them collapse. Of course, causing a little bit, or a lot of chaos certainly doesn't hurt, so the tengu is keen on protesting whenever possible, confident that in death the pact with the Maelstrom will lead to a quick judgement by Pharasma. After all, why fear death when you'll merely be sent to cause more chaos?!

So, the linguist, poet, historian, and potential future archaeologist bides their time until an inevitable revolution against the Thrunies, lying in wait while acting as a reasonable figure and translator in the community, owing to tengus' inherent mastery over languages.

Bate is chaotic, to put it simply. They scoff at any kind of laws, knowing that inevitably they'll change. Though due to Ydajisk's nature as a Protean Lord of something with as many inherent rules, no matter how everchanging they are, as language, Bate takes a similar stance to laws and rules on the Mortal Plane, and thus "plays nice" with them in the knowledge that, sooner or later, they'll collapse into beatiful chaos --- or better yet, like the double pendulum, cause chaos themselves.

Bate has next-to-no fear of death, barring of course damning their soul to Hell through some esoteric means, of course. They're confident in their decision to side with the Maelstrom, and Ydajisk in particular, which informs most of their decisions. They'll often delve into metaphors or similes with language to describe a circumstance, or suddenly break out references to, or wholly newly-composed, poetry to get a point across.