Henos Vittori's page

And now a Rival to oppose the Arcanamirium faction missions, who may also provide a Boon (in this case, one option inspired by Adventurer's Armory).

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Invoker Henos Vittori has come to Absalom with something to prove. Not fortunate enough to be of a dominant House, he’s always felt that he’s had to work twice as hard to prove himself, and while he was forced to kowtow and curry favor to survive the preferential politicking and privilege that dominated in the Korvosan Acadamae, has always felt that he was either looked down upon by his higher-status peers, and even more so by actual Chelaxians. In Absalom, most of his ‘peers’ have no idea whether his family in Korvosa is connected in Ergoran or not, and so he plays the part of the disaffected noble, ‘at liberty’ in a town that, for all his pretensions, is nothing compared to the glory of Cheliax. (Having never actually been to Cheliax proper, he’s built it up as something far more fabulous than it is, and would be sorely disappointed to find out how greatly Absalom overshadows the Cheliax of his dreams…)

In his first week, some ‘pathetic dabbler’ from the Arcanamirium showed him up in a spellduel. He’s assured those he was trying to impress with the superiority of Academae training that the little gnome cheated somehow, but is enough of a realist to know that he brought this humiliation upon himself by challenging someone he knew nothing of, and while not ideally prepared for dueling, having allowed himself to become overconfident and challenge the other mage to a duel on the spot, rather than more sensibly agreeing to meet him a few days later, after preparing spells less suited for showing off to the rabble he was entertaining, and more suited for quickly incapacitating a rival magician.

Using local connections, Henos has learned that his gnomish rival, who seems blissfully unaware that Henos has held a grudge, is a renowned spellcrafter, and has at least two unique spells to his credit, and is hard at work on a third, seeking adventuresome sorts to locate some rare reagents and components for his research.

Henos merely has to find a way, using spells and local lowlife contacts, to foil the gnomes’ research, preferably by tricking the adventurers into bringing him improper reagents, causing a spectacular, and hopefully explosive, research failure…

Boon: If anyone helps Henos in his goals to ruin that annoying little gnome, or to otherwise help him show off the obvious supremacy of Academae training to Arcanamirium 'dabbling,' Henos may reward them with some special techniques he has learned.

First, Henos has developed a technique that expends a flask of Alchemist’s Fire during the conjuration of one or more fiendish riding dogs to summons dogs with the ability to spit alchemists fire as a standard action as a ranged touch attack with a 10’ range increment (50 ft. maximum range). Once a dog has spit fire in this manner, it has to wait 1d4 rounds before it can spit fire again. The dogs take no damage from their own attack, but can be damaged by alchemical fire from each other or other sources. Henos can teach any spellcaster able to conjure fiendish riding dogs this trick with three days of training.

He can assist someone who has taken the Improved Familiar feat over the course of six days to summon a fiendish version of a traditional familiar that has the advanced simple template or the giant creature simple template, so long as that individual is at least 5th level (or 7th level, for both templates).