About Hel BlackfistHel Blackfist is a short, moderately attractive young woman of apparently eighteen years. Her moderately-breasted athletic body is compactly lithe, which she keeps in ready stillness that can explode into sudden motion. Her eyes are ashen grey, her hair a deep black which she keeps tidily clipped in a jaw-length bob cut. Though she favors little makeup, she does have a tendency to heavily kohl around her eyes, perhaps to draw attention there instead of to the blackened-to-the-elbow left hand and arm, her eponymous 'Blackfist'. Hel typically wears clothing that keeps her cool, preferring to the point of irrationality clothing out of which she can get in a heartbeat or two, a psychological artifact of the fire she escaped. Background, Motivation, and Personality:
The woman now known as Hel Blackfist has been through fire and hell already. At one time, she was a calm, quiet, courteous mouse of a girl in the Andoran town of Alvis. Following her parents in their roles as librarians, she dressed primly, kept her head down, and was almost overwhelmingly socially maladroit and shy. Her father taught her other languages; her mother showed her the art of the bow, such as is fashionable for young ladies. One of the best things of her upbringing, though, was her chance to read fantastic, obscure, and even forbidden tracts, for though her parents were devout Iomedaeans, they weren't close-minded; in their librarians' minds, knowledge, even evil knowledge, must be preserved, for without the knowledge of evil, what is good?
All this changed in her fifteenth year when a witch-hunter of Iomedae with more zeal than compassion discovered their well-tended section of 'evil' books - discussions on the worship of Asmodeus, diabolism, and other similar themes. Without benefit of a trial, the witch hunter declared the 'evil tomes' evidence of the small family's evil, and brutally battered the three into submission - or at least helplessness. Lashing them to their own bookshelves, the fanatic spread oil about before torching the library, intending that the books would be the timber necessary for the purification of their souls. The library was, however, a haven of light and knowledge, with windows high up so that the light of the gods could bring light to the people; all sorts of religious symbolism of enlightenment and goodness. As a result, the typical fate of those burned at the stake (death by smoke inhalation) was not theirs; though the girl managed to first work one hand out of the binding rope (shredding the skin off her left hand and forearm in the process) and then free herself completely, she experienced second-degree burns from where her clothes blazed up, both at that time and once she finally dashed through the inferno and out the front doors. More damaging, though, was her failed attempts to free her blazing parents, her emotional agony at witnessing their own terrible deaths as the fire claimed their screaming selves. She would in time heal physically, even without any real scarring; only the skin color on her left hand and forearm would come back in with a massive pigmentation change - black black black, ending only near the elbow in streakiness as it changed back to her normal pale coloration. However, escaping the flames didn't end her torment. Though the witch hunter didn't get the chance to put a blade through her heart when she escaped the fire (too many witnesses), the compassion of the locals wasn't much better - and in many ways was much worse. The fifteen-year-old was placed by the locals in watchful foster-care with a good but childless couple - a strict harridan of a woman who felt that to spare the rod was to spoil the child, giving lessons to the girl by day and lashing her for nearly any fault. The husband was, in his way, much worse; intimidated and deprived by his wife, he began to 'woo' his new charge, advances that eventually became outright sexual assaults which taught her everything she never wanted to know about the hatred that lies in men. The only thing that prevented her from running away was the knowledge that the witch-hunter was still near, for every now and then she would discover indications left by him - a heat-shattered piece of ceramic sculpture, a half-burned page, various other prizes from the library. So for almost three years she suffered under the care of the couple, praying for someone, anyone to deliver her. For nearly three years, her strength of will, strength of body, speed of hand, and durability were unwittingly heightened by the cruel woman and the fornicating man. The wife made her perform menial tasks, then do them again if they didn't meet the woman's impossible expectations. And all too often, when the husband visited her bed late at night, she bruised her hands on that sturdy frame, or upon the stone of the wall, an apparently futile expression of pain and terror which would bear vengeful fruit. She did her best to mouth the praises and platitudes of Iomedae, to return to being the submissive mouse she'd been before the library pyre, but the subtle torments of witch hunter and the couple, hidden in the middle of 'free Andoran', only stoked the hatred and rage within her. For three years, she kept them hidden, stoking their fire, turning burning coal into blazing diamond and honing that diamond into a razor edge. Came the day of her eighteenth birthday; before the town council, the pair proclaimed her a righteous woman, and she was officially given her majority. That night, as the man relaxed in his den after his wife went to their chill wedding bed, the girl came submissively to him in a diaphanous gown. Straddling him and taking him inside her was the perfect way to get close enough and distract him enough for the first blows of her stone-calloused fists to take him by surprise. His useless seed on her thigh and the blood from his smashed skull on her hands, she left him dead behind her. Taking up the man's hunting bow, with blood still on her hands she walked upstairs and, from point-blank range, pinned the woman to the bed with her mother's arrows. The moment of shock gave her just enough time to stuff a stocking into the woman's mouth to muffle her screams before taking her time to kill the harpy - legs, arms, chest, mouth, and finally heart. After pulling and cleaning the arrows, she calmly dragged the husband's body up to the bedroom, then cleaned herself up, put together what small portable valueables there was to take from the place, and got some sleep. Very early the next morning, she then set fires in her own room, the great room, and the couple's room, ensuring that the house would go up in flames, and locked the house up behind her. Enough of the evidence vanished in the subsequent blaze for it to be clear that the three members of the 'family' died due to the early-morning fire - the woman and herself in their sleep (though supposedly the fire in her little room was hot enough to shatter bones to fragments - in truth, splinters of beef, pork, and chicken bones), while the father having woken up smashed his head in against the corner of a chest. The facts being obvious, no further investigation was performed; a tragedy for certain, but of such things is life made. Before the fire had even truly blazed up, Hel Blackhand was already on her way out of town, heading west to Cheliax. She'd heard of the Glorious Reclamation, and has become determined to destroy it to a man if she can - destroy it, and move on to the entire religion of Iomedae. Never rich, she is willing to turn her hand to whatever she must, and has actually found that she has a head for gambling - mostly card-type games, ones where reading your opponent is more important than luck or tactical skill. Though she cannot bluff worth a damn, she has a knack for reading others' bluffs, and for unnerving opponents at the table. Having travelled from Alvis to Ostenso, Ostenso to Laekastel, thence to Remesiana, Hel decided to take the 'northern route' to Egorian (where she figured she'd find allies for her cause). As she is working her way across Cheliax, in each city she has to pause to renew her money supply, and so she has fallen in (through a few dozen card games) with the ambitious Cimri Staelish.
Technicals:
Hel Blackfist 2 Female human (pyure) zen archer monk (unchained) 2 (Advanced Player's Guide, Pathfinder Unchained 14) LE Medium humanoid (human) Init +4; Senses see in darkness; Perception +9 --------------------
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Feats Deadly Aim, Dodge, Improved Unarmed Strike, Perfect Strike, Point-Blank Shot, Precise Shot, Weapon Focus (shortbow)
Skills Acrobatics +8 (+16 to jump), Climb +6, Craft (bookbinding) +7, Craft (bows) +7, Craft (calligraphy) +7, Disguise -3, Escape Artist +8, Fly +7, Intimidate +9, Knowledge (history) +7, Knowledge (local) +4, Knowledge (religion) +7, Perception +9, Perform (dance) +2, Profession (barrister) +8, Profession (gambler) +8, Profession (librarian) +8, Sense Motive +9, Stealth +8, Use Magic Device +8
Combat Gear arrows (40), knife, sansetsukon[UC], shortbow, oil (3);
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As Azlant crumbled, a group of Azlanti interested more in things beyond this world somewhat withdrew from the empire. Semi-isolated in relation to the rest, when Azlant went off its weird merry way, fell, and all that, they managed to survive relatively unscathed. However, their survival came more as a result of peculiar relationships, and while their bloodlines may have been diluted less than most, these 'pure Azlanti' - their pronunciation of which has since led to the few who have interacted with them as calling them simply 'the Pyure' - tend towards being physically fit and extremely fast on their feet. While their intellects have perhaps been reduced overall from their Azlanti forebears, and their self-imposed isolation has made them detached from the rest of the world, this has not come without benefits. Instead of delving into politics and conquering other 'lesser' people, the Pyure instead sought to understand the so-called 'long view', leading them to extensive interaction with natural and planar beings: demons, devils, and all sorts of celestials, as well as the First Folk (fae) and the Eastern kami spirits; this latter has dovetailed into an extensive study of dragon-kind, and an examination of the long-lived elves as a 'feasability study' (as it were) of the consequences of extended lifespans. Dealing with such beings has had something of a 'survival of the fleetest' effect on them, improving their mobility to almost double that of the standard human. Such interaction leads, also, to interbreeding, though the Pyure have always been careful to 'blend' the bloodlines of such children back into their genome; they have, as a result, gained both an extended lifespan (using the half-elf line on the age charts for both starting age and aging effects), as well as developed a capacity to see in all sorts of darkness. In addition, they so frequently interact with extraplanar entities in different environments, they tend to train their children from early on how to be familiar with magic items that will aid their survival, as well as in aerial agility (i.e. the Fly and Use Magic Device skills become racial class skills). -------------------
In actuality, Hel's parents were a couple who decided to start investigating the 'outside world' (i.e. the mundane one), taking on the personas of librarians to both collect information and gain access to people interested in gaining information, people they themselves would be able to subtly question. The witch-hunter's fanaticism perhaps becomes cued when he realizes that their daughter is not aging as fast as she should, and so the problems began.. His actions, however, would not be approved of, and so though the town's officials believe her to have been eighteen (which is what her appearance suggests), she is actually twenty-five years old. --------------------
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