Catalina Estrati's page

Catalina stands quite tall at six feet and weighs around 150lbs. She is slender but athletic with long, curling black hair that hangs down just below her shoulder blades. Her eyes are light blue, but due to her aasimar heritage, they glow a tad eerily in low-light and dark conditions. She is quite pale and her skin shimmers with a subtle silvery, metallic sheen in the light. She hails from Ustalav and has many qualities typical of an Ustalavian: thick, expressive eyebrows, high cheekbones, and gaunt features.

Her arms and hands are marked with old, puckering scars from various gunpowder accidents from her years of trial-and-error learning to shoot and care for her pistol, but only her hands are really easy to see. She is generally seen dressed in all black: a simple dress, skintight pants underneath, and knee-high leather boots. She wears a few simple necklaces with symbols of Pharasma.

Around her waist is a belt where she carries pouches of esoterica: random folklore remedies for illnesses, monster-hunting items, and all kinds of odds and ends to help her battle her foes. She has a holster for her pistol on one hip and another holster for her hand mirror. Over her clothing, she usually wears a black leather trenchcoat that, while it looks well-taken-care-of, has definitely seen better days. There are strange claw marks, patches of repair where it seems like acid might have burned through, and ragged edges along the hem from general wear and tear.

Catalina is strangely and unsettlingly pretty and keenly aware of it - her eyes, her skin, and her esoterica lend her an intimidating quality that she capitalizes on to keep people at a distance. Her expression is generally pleasant, and around friends, she smiles and laughs easily.

Catalina is a typical superstitious Ustalavian, but prolonged exposure to other cultures and people has more or less trained the stereotypical suspicion of others out of her. She and her parents, also Aasimar, traveled and explored Garund, especially the Mwangi Expanse, in search of treasure and history. Her parents took her along with them to keep her safe, as traveling in old ruins and temples did tend to be safer than leaving a small child in Ustalav. Catalina knew no other life and was quite happy with her nomadic lifestyle. Her parents encouraged her to integrate into the various cultures and peoples they were studying, so Catalina picked up many mannerisms and sayings from various cultures around Garund, oftentimes mixing them up in rather a rather comical fashion.

When Catalina was around 10 years old, her parents were exploring a temple deep in the jungles of the Mwangi Expanse with the permission of the Ekujae people. Catalina was with them when a deadly trap was sprung within the temple. The temple floors dropped out from underneath her parents, and Catalina watched as they were gruesomely impaled on horrifying wooden stakes underneath. Catalina was stuck with the bodies of her parents for several days before the Ekujae guide returned to check on them (as per the terms of their agreement). Finding Catalina’s dead parents and a hysterical child on the edge of madness, the Ekujae guide took Catalina back with the tribe and nursed her back to health (more emotional than anything else). They eventually helped her make her way to The Shackles, where Nikolai Grokov, a close friend of her parents, made his home.

Catalina spent the rest of her youth with Nikolai Grokov, a grizzled, orcish thaumaturge who took her under his wing as a favor to her parents (something worked out before their untimely death). He was not a cruel guardian by any means but was not very emotionally available–something she struggled with at the beginning of their time together, as her parents were very loving and attentive. He traveled much of Garund with Catalina, teaching her to use a gun and a mirror to her advantage as they both explored ruins and hunted local monsters for backwater settlements around Garund. His parenting style and teaching technique were very much “F*** around and find out” - Catalina was left to make many mistakes and learn harsh lessons from said mistakes. Nikolai only intervened when the mistakes seemed as though they would be fatal.

Nikolai Grokov eventually died on the last hunt they were on, four years ago. They had thought that they were up against a simple ghoul terrorizing a jungle village, but soon discovered they were in over their head, as their foe was actually a powerful Lich. Catalina managed to escape as Nikolai distracted the lich, and when she returned later to possibly rescue her mentor or recover his body, she found no trace of either the lich or Nikolai. She is, to this day, unsure of where they both ended up.

Catalina still visits the Ekujae people here and there as she feels an obligation to them for helping her when her parents were killed.

Despite all the trauma, Catalina is remarkably cheerful. She makes every attempt to integrate within the culture she is currently studying at the time, as she has found that folkloric remedies and occult things are easier to discover if she is making an effort to get to know the people beyond a surface level. She can be very intense and open with her personal history right off the bat, as this is how her mentor tended to be as well. She is usually seen with a smile on her face and is quick to laugh. She uses her Harrow deck to guide her in making big decisions and will perform readings for anyone who asks. She will often get fixated on minor details and try to connect them back to the supernatural and superstitious.

Catalina is very much of the work hard, party hard mindset. She can be very flirtatious and has had dalliances in the past, but nothing long-lasting. Nikolai always had them on the move and such relationships were never viable, as her work always came first. She finds the prospect of attachments extremely anxiety-inducing, but she will rarely show it on the surface. Some of her hang-ups stem from losing the people she loved the most.

Aasimar: You descend from celestials or were touched by the celestial realms, gaining an air of awe and grace, as well as features distinctive to your celestial forebears. You gain the aasimar trait, in addition to the traits from your ancestry. You also gain low-light vision, or you gain darkvision if your ancestry already has low-light vision. You can choose from aasimar feats and feats from your ancestry whenever you gain an ancestry feat.

Angelkin (Ancestry Paragon): You descend from an angel—a winged messenger from Nirvana or one of the other celestial realms—which gives you a knack for cultures and languages. You gain the trained proficiency rank in Society. If you would automatically become trained in Society (from your background or class, for example), you instead become trained in a skill of your choice. You know the Celestial language, and you gain the Multilingual skill feat.

Celestial Eyes: You gain darkvision.

Low-Light Vision: You can see in dim light as though it were bright light, and you ignore the concealed condition due to dim light.

Multilingual: You easily pick up new languages. You learn two new languages, chosen from common languages, uncommon languages, and any others you have access to. You learn an additional language if you are or become a master in Society and again if you are or become legendary.

Blessed Blood: Your freshly spilled blood is sanctified, and ingesting it causes effects similar to those of holy water. Whenever a fiend, undead, or creature with a weakness to good damage drinks your blood or deals piercing or slashing damage to you with jaws, fangs, or a similar attack, that creature takes 1d6 good damage. You gain a +4 circumstance bonus to Crafting checks to Craft holy water using your own blood as one of the ingredients.

Celestial Lore: You were raised with an aasimar or celestial relative, or you've devoted yourself to researching the secrets of the celestial realms. You gain the trained proficiency rank in Diplomacy and Religion. If you would automatically become trained in one of those skills (from your background or class, for example), you instead become trained in a skill of your choice. You also become trained in a Lore skill related to the celestial realm from which you trace your lineage (usually Elysium Lore, Heaven Lore, or Nirvana Lore). Catalina has Heaven Lore.

Halo: You are surrounded by a halo of light and goodness at all times. Your halo sheds light with the effects of a divine light cantrip. A cantrip is heightened to a spell level equal to half your level rounded up. You can suppress or reestablish the halo with a single action, which has the concentrate trait.

Feather Step: You step carefully and quickly. You can Step into difficult terrain.

Cat Fall (Expert Trained Acrobatics): Your catlike aerial acrobatics allow you to cushion your falls. Treat falls as 10 feet shorter. If you’re an expert in Acrobatics, treat falls as 25 feet shorter. If you’re a master in Acrobatics, treat them as 50 feet shorter. If you’re legendary in Acrobatics, you always land on your feet and don’t take damage, regardless of the distance of the fall.

Intimidating Glare: You can Demoralize with a mere glare. When you do, Demoralize loses the auditory trait and gains the visual trait, and you don’t take a penalty if the creature doesn’t understand your language.

Quick Recovery: Your body quickly bounces back from afflictions. You regain twice as many Hit Points from resting. Each time you succeed at a Fortitude save against an ongoing disease or poison, you reduce its stage by 2, or by 1 against a virulent disease or poison. Each critical success you achieve against an ongoing disease or poison reduces its stage by 3, or by 2 against a virulent disease or poison. In addition, you reduce the severity of your drained condition by 2 when you rest for a night instead of by 1.

◆ Quick Draw: You draw your weapon and attack with the same motion. You Interact to draw a weapon, then Strike with that weapon.

Implement’s Empowerment: The power of your implement can also be turned to the more common task of combat, its power adding to and amplifying the effects of runes and other magical empowerments. When you Strike, you can trace mystic patterns with an implement you're holding to empower the Strike, causing it to deal 2 additional damage per weapon damage die. Channeling the power requires full use of your hands. You don't gain the benefit of implement's empowerment if you are holding anything in either hand other than a single one-handed weapon, other implements, or esoterica, and you must be holding at least one implement to gain the benefit.

Weapon Initiate Benefit: Your weapon trembles slightly in your hand, seeking out your foe's weakness to it and interrupting their actions. You gain the Implement's Interruption reaction. At 5th level, when you gain thaumaturgic weapon expertise, your instinctive knowledge of your weapon implement also grants you the weapon's critical specialization effect.

Thaumaturge Weapon Expertise: You've learned the secret ways your weapons work most effectively. Your proficiency ranks for unarmed attacks, simple weapons, and martial weapons increase to expert.

Mirror Initiate Benefit: You learn how to use your mirror to project another version of yourself whose realness is a matter of perspective. You gain the Mirror's Reflection action.

◆ Mirror’s Reflection: (illusion, magical, manipulate, thaumaturge)
Requirements: You are holding your mirror implement.
You reflect an illusory image of yourself into another unoccupied space within 15 feet that you can see. You are treated as being in both spaces until the start of your next turn. For example, you can attack, Seek, and provide flanking—even with yourself. You occupy both spaces.

Your mirror self mimics your actions exactly, but any effects you generate come from only one of your positions; you decide which each time you act. For example, if you made a melee Strike against a creature within reach of the reflection, you'd mime the actions of the Strike, but only the reflection would actually make the Strike. Anything that targets or would affect your reflection affects you and uses your statistics. Something that would target or affect both of you affects you only once. For example, a fireball that included both of you in its area would require only one save from you and damage you no more than once. When you move, you choose which square to move from, but the mirror effect ends (see below).

Some events force you to determine which image is the real you, and then end the effect and cause your mirror self to disappear; this happens automatically at the start of your next turn. It also happens if you choose to move out of your space. Other benefits of this implement add more events that can end the reflection. The effect also ends when you fall unconscious, at which point you decide which version is truly you.

◆ Exploit Vulnerability: (esoterica, manipulate, thaumaturge)
Frequency: Once per round
Requirements: You are holding your implement.
You scour your experiences and learning to identify something that might repel your foe. You retrieve an object from your esoterica with the appropriate supernatural qualities, then use your implement to stoke the remnants of its power into a blaze. Select a creature you can see and attempt an Esoteric Lore check against a standard DC for its level, as you retrieve the right object from your esoterica and use your implement to empower it. You gain the following effects until you Exploit Vulnerabilities again.

Critical Success: You remember the creature's weaknesses, and as you empower your esoterica, you have a flash of insight that grants even more knowledge about the creature. You learn all of the creature's resistances, weaknesses, and immunities, including the amounts of the resistances and weaknesses and any unusual weaknesses or vulnerabilities, such as what spells will pass through a golem's antimagic. You can exploit either the creature's mortal weakness or personal antithesis (see below). Your unarmed and weapon Strikes against the creature also become magical if they weren't already.
Success: You recall an important fact about the creature, learning its highest weakness (or one of its highest weaknesses, if it has multiple with the same value) but not its other weaknesses, resistances, or immunities. You can exploit either the creature's mortal weakness or personal antithesis. Your unarmed and weapon Strikes against the creature also become magical if they weren't already.
Failure: Failing to recall a salient weakness about the creature, you instead attempt to exploit a more personal vulnerability. You can exploit only the creature's personal antithesis. Your unarmed and weapon Strikes against the creature also become magical if they weren't already.
Critical Failure: You couldn't remember the right object to use and become distracted while you rummage through your esoterica. You become flat-footed until the beginning of your next turn.

Mortal Weakness: After identifying a creature's weakness, you use a thematically resonant bit of esoterica to attune your attacks to your discovery. Your unarmed and weapon Strikes activate the highest weakness you discovered with Exploit Vulnerability, even though the damage type your weapon deals doesn't change. This damage affects the target of your Exploit Vulnerability, as well as any other creatures of the exact same type, but not other creatures with the same weakness. For example, when fighting a pack of werewolves you might use silver shavings or crushed moonstone to deal damage that applies their weakness to silver to your attacks against any of the werewolves, but you wouldn't apply this damage to any other monsters with a weakness to silver.

Personal Antithesis: You improvise a custom weakness on a creature by forcefully presenting and empowering a piece of esoterica that repels it on an individual level; for instance, against a tyrant, you might procure a broken chain that once held a captive. This causes the target creature, and only the target creature, to gain a weakness against your unarmed and weapon Strikes equal to 2 + half your level

Sympathetic Vulnerabilities: Prerequisites: Exploit Vulnerability, mortal weakness or personal antithesis

When you apply your will to invoke a vulnerability, the result is more powerful, and the vulnerability ripples out in a web from your main target to affect a broader range of creatures. This has one of two effects, based on the type of vulnerability you invoked.

While you have mortal weakness applied, your Strikes also apply that weakness against any creature that has that weakness, not just creatures of the exact same kind. For instance, if you used mortal weakness against a red dragon to apply its weakness to cold to your Strikes, those Strikes would also apply to the weakness to cold of fire elementals or any other creature with a weakness to cold. While you have personal antithesis applied to a non-humanoid creature, you can apply your custom weakness to all creatures of the exact same kind. For example, if you used personal antithesis against an imp, the custom weakness would apply to other imps but not to other non-imp devils.

Root-To-Life (◆ or ◆◆): (esoterica, manipulate, necromancy, primal, thaumaturge)
Marigold, spider lily, pennyroyal—many primal traditions connect flowers and plants with the boundary between life and death, and you can leverage this association to keep an ally on this side of the line. You place a small plant or similar symbol on an adjacent dying creature, immediately stabilizing them; the creature is no longer dying and is instead unconscious at 0 Hit Points.
If you spend 2 actions instead of 1, you empower the act further by uttering a quick folk blessing to chase away ongoing pain, adding the auditory trait to the action. When you do so, attempt flat checks to remove each source of persistent damage affecting the target; due to the particularly effective assistance, the DC is 10 instead of the usual 15.

↺ Implement’s Interruption: (evocation, magical, thaumaturge)
Trigger: The target of your Exploit Vulnerability uses a concentrate, manipulate, or move action, or leaves a square during a move action it's using.
Requirements: You're holding your weapon implement and are benefiting from Exploit Vulnerability against a creature. The creature must be within your reach if you're wielding a melee weapon, or within 10 feet if you're wielding a ranged weapon.
Adept Benefit: When your implement lashes out at your foe, even a close miss brings the weapon close enough to do harm. When you use Implement's Interruption and fail (but don't critically fail) the Strike, you deal 1 damage of the weapon's normal type, possibly applying any bonus damage due to the target's weakness.

Esoteric Lore (Expert): Your experience with the unknown, as well as the tales you've exchanged with other thaumaturges, has taught you about strange phenomena of every kind. You become trained in Esoteric Lore, a special lore skill that can be used to Recall Knowledge regarding haunts, curses, and creatures of any type, but that can't be used to Recall Knowledge of other topics. Unlike a normal Lore skill, you use Charisma as your modifier on Esoteric Lore checks. You also gain the Dubious Knowledge skill feat.

Dubious Knowledge: You're a treasure trove of information, but not all of it comes from reputable sources. When you fail (but don't critically fail) a Recall Knowledge check using any skill, you learn a bit of true knowledge and a bit of erroneous knowledge, but you don't have any way to differentiate which is which.

Ammunition Thaumaturgy: You're so used to handling your implement, weapon, and esoterica in the heat of combat that adding a few bullets or arrows to the mix is no extra burden. You can Interact to reload a weapon using the hand holding your implement.

◆ Risky Reload: Requirements: You're wielding a firearm.

You've practiced a technique for rapidly reloading your firearm, but attempting to use this technique is a dangerous gamble with your firearm's functionality. Interact to reload a firearm, then make a Strike with that firearm. If the Strike fails, the firearm misfires.

Lightning Reflexes: Your reflexes are lightning fast. Your proficiency rank for Reflex saves increases to expert.

Scroll Thaumaturgy: Your multidisciplinary study of magic means you know how to activate the magic in scrolls with ease. You can activate scrolls of any magical tradition, using your thaumaturge class DC for the scroll's DC, rather than a particular spell DC. If a spell is on the spell list for multiple traditions, you choose which tradition to use at the time you activate the scroll. You can draw and activate scrolls with the same hand holding an implement, much like you can for esoterica.

Terrifying Resistance: The spells of those you have Demoralized are less effective on you. If you succeed in Demoralizing a creature, for the next 24 hours you gain a +1 circumstance bonus to saving throws against that creature's spells.

Resolve: You've steeled your mind with resolve. Your proficiency rank for Will saves increases to master. When you roll a success on a Will save, you get a critical success instead.

Weapon Specialization: You've learned how to inflict greater injuries with the weapons you know best. You deal 2 additional damage with weapons and unarmed attacks in which you are an expert. This damage increases to 3 if you're a master, and 4 if you're legendary.

Know-It-All: Having heard every rumor or story in the book, you know that if you've heard of something in the first place, you've probably heard about it at length. When you succeed at a check to Recall Knowledge, you gain additional information or context about the given topic. When you critically succeed at a check to Recall Knowledge, at the GM's discretion, you might gain even more additional information or context than normal.

Free Archetype Level 8 - Advanced Shooting - Running Reload ◆: You can reload your weapon on the move. You Stride, Step, or Sneak, then Interact to reload.

Level 8 - Skill training - thievery.

[dice=Striking Dueling Pistol]1d20 + 16[/dice]
[dice=Pistol damage, piercing/bludgeoning, weakness 5 (EV)]2d6 + 2 + 4[/dice]
[dice=Pistol, fatal d10, piercing/bludgeoning, weakness 5 (EV)]3d10 + 2 + 4[/dice]

[dice=Striking Dueling Pistol]1d20 + 11[/dice]
[dice=Pistol damage, piercing/bludgeoning, weakness 5 (EV)]2d6 + 2 + 4[/dice]
[dice=Pistol, fatal d10, piercing/bludgeoning, weakness 5 (EV)]3d10 + 2 + 4[/dice]

[dice=Striking Dueling Pistol]1d20 + 6[/dice]
[dice=Pistol damage, piercing/bludgeoning, weakness 5 (EV)]2d6 + 2 + 4[/dice]
[dice=Pistol, fatal d10, piercing/bludgeoning, weakness 5 (EV)]3d10 + 2 + 4[/dice]

[dice=Rapier]1d20 + 16[/dice]
[dice=Rapier damage, piercing]1d6 + 4[/dice]
[dice=Deadly d8]1d8[/dice]

[dice=Rapier]1d20 + 11[/dice]
[dice=Rapier damage, piercing]1d6 + 4[/dice]
[dice=Deadly d8]1d8[/dice]

[dice=Rapier]1d20 + 6[/dice]
[dice=Rapier damage, piercing]1d6 + 4[/dice]
[dice=Deadly d8]1d8[/dice]