About Caterine CerdantesPROPHETS OF THE KALISTRADE PATRON: Caterina Cerdante
Spellbook (all cantrips, spells prepared + disguise self, grease, magic missile, protection from evil, silent image, shield, alter self, continual flame, resist energy, rope trick, bull’s strength, eagle’s wisdom, cat’s grace, beast shape I, secret page, shrink item) Caterine Cerdante fled Galt by a frantically-cast teleport spell from a scroll, clutching a basket holding her newborn twin infant sons and her life’s savings. In the distance, the howling mob had finally burst through the rain of fire her husband had laid down with his necklace of missiles, and he was dragged down as she faded from view, wishing she could take back the spell as the mob surged forward… It has been almost a decade and a half since that night of fire and loss, when she survived a difficult birth to bring two lives into the world, but lost a husband and a home in the process, and she is not recognizable from the weeping soon-to-be widow of that night, severe in appearance and immaculate in her fine prophet’s robes. Caterine used the funds her husband had prepared for their arrival in Druma to set herself up, a widow raising two children and running a business that started out selling scrolls, potions and alchemical supplies she crafted herself, but has expended as she has recruited a team of experts and adepts to handle the alchemical supplies and basic scroll work, while she saves the more significant commissions for herself, such as wands and miscellaneous items. By necessity, in the cut-throat mercantile land of Druma, she has become a shrewd and pragmatic businesswoman, and prefers to sell expendable / consumable items, to get the repeat business, instead of focusing on items that she can only sell once. Her sons are in their early teens now, and she has re-married, out of convenience, not love (she feels that her heart burned away that day in Galt), to a sensible and handsome Druman male at least 10 years her junior who handles her day-to-day business interests with cool professionalism and doesn’t seem terribly put out by being bound to a loveless marriage. In truth, her husband Lenstra, recognizes that he has married well above his station, and that he is far more successful as her trophy husband than he would have been on his own, so he bends his efforts to keeping her satisfied with his performance, as husband and, perhaps more importantly in her eyes, as business partner. His relationship with her sons, not terribly much younger than himself, remains cordial, in public, and non-existent in private, as they ignore him completely. Stanis and Radu recognize that their mother has social expectations to fulfill and consider this unwanted step-father to be a means to an end, nothing more. Caterine had all-but forgotten her flight from Galt, save for the occasional nightmare, when the assassin came, hired by the vengeance-obsessed daughter of one of the many members of the howling mob that fell to her husband’s last-ditch arcane defense. The silent man from Daggermark passed like a ghost into the lands of the Kalistocracy, and would have had more success at his task had fourteen year old Stanis not pushed his mother aside and taken the poisoned blade meant for her heart into his own. The assassin fell to a combination of her own arcane retribution, the outraged, if inexpert, attacks of her husband and other son, and the retinue of martial artist bodyguards from a Prophet who seeking to make a business arrangement with her at the time of the attack. (Until that time, she had always regarded the Druman practice of travelling with a quartet of these bodyguards to be excessive, and had skimped on the practice. No more.) She paid an extravagant sum to have her son raised from the dead, although the formerly roguishly sly-tongued Stanis has grown darker and more reserved since his experience, and Caterine is troubled by the change in his character, having once fretted that he would never make a suitably stoic Prophet of the Kalistocracy, but now wishing he would smile that infuriatingly inappropriate smile again, always challenging the decorum of a situation. Caterine’s primary goals are the safety of her sons and the success of her business. Anyone who can help her in either of those goals, which, at the moment, include such less-than-savory schemes as arranging a counter-assassination upon the Galtan woman who sent the Daggermark guilder after her, and arranging for her goods to arrive safely, and at the least cost possible, to destinations where they are to be sold, even if that might involve skipping some unnecessary and ‘unjust’ (to her eyes) taxes and tariffs. Boons Whatever one might think of her business ethics, Caterine is a brilliant arcane crafter, and has pioneered several techniques that would earn her great respect among more magically inclined Factions, such as the Arcanamirium, or even in far-away Nex, such as how to craft an efficient quiver or handy haversack using a precise and delicate combination of dimension door, shrink item and rope trick in place of the higher level secret chest spell, which remains beyond her ability. Of course, that would require her to share those techniques, which seems unlikely… Those who earn her favor may gain access to reduced rate potions and scrolls and even wands of low-level spells, as well as a few elixers or similar single-use wondrous items, or even the one lasting wondrous item she sells, being an invention of her Galtan husband that she refuses to abandon, and makes at least annually, in remembrance of him (although she’s quick to get rid of them, once the crafting is finished), the Floating Attendent*. She has also learned, through years of having to use scrolls of cure light wounds to ‘fake’ being a divine spellcaster to produce wands of that spell (which she finds are very good sellers), a few tricks that she is willing to share, that will grant an arcane spellcaster a +1 to Use Magic Device checks to read, trigger or activate a scroll or wand of cure light wounds. Finally, only the most favored of her allies, and never another member of the Kalistocracy (who would be… displeased, if they thought she used such techniques to gain advantage in business negotiations), she share a dose of the alchemical formula she calls her ‘secret.**’ *Floating Attendant
**Caterine’s Secret – This alchemical cosmetic is applied to hair, skin and nails to bring out vibrant natural color and provide a lustrous shine, which gives the wearer a +2 alchemical bonus to Bluff and Diplomacy checks against those who would find the wearer’s race and gender attractive so long as she has interacted with them for at least a minute before attempting the checks. The effect lasts 1 hour, although there is a bit of a tingly sensation during the last minute of its duration, giving the wearer a brief warning that the effects are ending. 20 gp. Craft (alchemy) DC 20. Power Component use: One can expend a dose of Caterine’s Secret to gain a +1 alchemical bonus to the DC of a single enchantment (charm) spell cast upon someone who would be affected by the cosmetic (someone who would be attracted to the caster’s race and gender). The caster can either expend a bottle of the cosmetic in hand, or use cosmetic that has already been applied, but expending worn cosmetic as an additional material component in this manner causes it to expire prematurely and without ‘warning.’ |
