Hourpen's page

Cavalier 1 (Huntmaster) / Magus 7 (Eldritch Scion)

Initiative: +5

Movement: 20

Armor Class: 17 (3 Armor, 4 Dex)
Flat-Footed AC: 13 (3 Armor)
Touch AC: 14 (4 Dex)

CMB: +2 (+1 to grapple)
CMD: +16 (+1 to grapple)
Flat-Footed CMD: +11

Hit Points: 45 ([d10, 7d8+1])

Saving Throws
Fortitude: +6 (6 Base)
Reflex: +5 (1 Base, 4 Dex)
Will: +4 (4 Base)

Spell Resistance
None

Bluff +11, Climb +3, Diplomacy +9, Handle Animal +8, Intimidate +8, Knowledge (arcana) +7, Knowledge (dungeoneering) +6, Knowledge (nature) +6, Knowledge (planes) +6, Perception +2, Ride +8, Sense Motive +4, Stealth +24, Survival +5, Swim +3, Use Magic Device +8

Feats
Weapon focus (rapier)
Boon companion
Weapon finesse
Intensified spell

Bonus Feats
Stealth Synergy
Fencing Grace

Traits
Successful Shirker Halfling
Two-world magic (know direction)

Challenge 1/day
Whenever an order of the staff cavalier issues a challenge, his target takes a –1 penalty on saving throws against spells and spell-like abilities for 1 round after the cavalier successfully damages the target. This penalty increases by 1 for every four levels the cavalier possesses.

Animal companion (replaces mount)

Edicts: The cavalier cannot refuse a spellcaster's request for aid unless it will interfere with his existing duties, or he believes the spellcaster seeks to directly oppose the cavalier's aims and goals.

Order: Order of the Staff

Skills: An order of the staff cavalier adds Knowledge (arcana) (Int) and Knowledge (nature) (Int) to his list of class skills. He may use Knowledge (arcana) to identify spells being cast by arcane spellcasters as if he were using Spellcraft, and may do the same with Knowledge (nature) for divine spellcasters. If the cavalier readies an action to strike a creature when it casts a spell, and identifies the spell to be cast with the appropriate Knowledge check, he gains a +1 bonus on the attack roll.

Tactician: Stealth Synergy

Eldritch pool (Su) (5)
An eldritch scion gains an eldritch pool of personal magical energy, equal to 1/2 his magus level (minimum 1) + his Charisma modifier. As a swift action, he can spend a point of eldritch energy to enter a state of mystical focus for 2 rounds. This allows him to use abilities from his bloodrager bloodline as though he were in a bloodrage, though he gains none of the other benefits or drawbacks of bloodraging. At 4th level, an eldritch scion can also use his eldritch pool as an arcane pool, gaining all the benefits listed with the magus's arcane pool class feature.

Disruptive Bloodrage (Su)
At 1st level, the DC to cast spells defensively increases by 2 for enemies within your threatened area. This increase stacks with that granted by the Disruptive feat.

Spellstrike (Su)
At 2nd level, whenever a magus casts a spell with a range of “touch” from the magus spell list, he can deliver the spell through any weapon he is wielding as part of a melee attack. Instead of the free melee touch attack normally allowed to deliver the spell, a magus can make one free melee attack with his weapon (at his highest base attack bonus) as part of casting this spell. If successful, this melee attack deals its normal damage as well as the effects of the spell. If the magus makes this attack in concert with spell combat, this melee attack takes all the penalties accrued by spell combat melee attacks. This attack uses the weapon’s critical range (20, 19–20, or 18–20 and modified by the keen weapon property or similar effects), but the spell effect only deals ×2 damage on a successful critical hit, while the weapon damage uses its own critical modifier.

Magus Arcana
Arcane Accuracy (Su)
Benefit: The magus can expend 1 point from his arcane (eldritch) pool as a swift action to grant himself an insight bonus equal to his Charisma* bonus on all attack rolls until the end of his turn.
Empowered Magic (Su)
The magus can cast one spell per day as if it were modified by the Empower Spell feat. This does not increase the casting time or the level of the spell.

Arcane Bloodrage (Sp)
At 4th level, when entering a bloodrage you can choose one of the following spells and apply its effects to yourself: blur, protection from arrows, resist energy (choose one energy type), or spider climb. These effects last for as long as you continue bloodraging, regardless of the spell's normal duration.

Spells / day
Lvl 1: 5
Lvl 2: 4
Lvl 3: 2

Spells Known
Lvl 0; 6
Know direction*, dancing lights, ghost sound, acid splash, arcane mark, detect magic
Lvl 1; 5
Color spray, vanish, shocking grasp, true strike, frost bite
Lvl 2; 4
Bladed dash, Frigid touch, fiery runes, mirror image
Lvl 3: 2
Fly, Vampiric Touch

Size Small; Speed 10 ft., fly 80 ft. (average); AC +3 natural armor; Attack bite (1d4), 2 talons (1d4); Ability Scores Str 13, Dex 16, Con 14, Int 2, Wis 14, Cha 6; Special Qualities low-light vision.

Skills
Fly +7, Perception +6, Stealth +7, Survival +6

Bonus Tricks (2)
Deliver (DC 15): The animal takes an object (one you or an ally gives it, or that it recovers with the fetch trick) to a place or person you indicate. If you indicate a place, the animal drops the item and returns to you. If you indicate a person, the animal stays adjacent to the person until the item is taken. (Retrieving an item from an animal using the deliver trick is a move action.)

Seek (DC 15) The animal moves into an area and looks around for anything that is obviously alive or animate.

Feats (2)
Acrobatic
Flyby Attack

Explorer’s outfit, Masterwork rapier, Net, Masterwork backpack, Monk’s kit w/out backpack.

Magic Items
Gray Master's Leathers, Armbands of the brawler, Bracers of armor +3 (not worn)

Hourpen’s childhood was idyllic by any standards. The rural hills in which the small village he grew up in was full of life in all seasons. Summer burst with greens, warm sun, and just enough rain to keep everything lively. Falls were cool, cushioned by the crush of brown of fallen leaves, the warm oranges a hint at the warmth of hearth and home in the coming winter, and a promise of the coming Spring. Winters were full of soft snow, good for further insulating homes lovely crafted into the rolling hillsides. Fires kept burning through the cold were made even warmer by stories, told to the children after the evening meal. And when Spring arrived life burst forth from the warmth of loving families. Greeted by budding plants and the hint of shoots peeking through the muddy melt of the receding snow.

Even in the new Spring Hourpen would beg his father to tell the stories. Tales of great adventure in the world beyond. Yarns of halflings that had become more than what the world told them they could ever become. The mystery of these stories were deepened by the simple fact that he had never truly felt fear, not the way his father described it. Even when his father read these stories, Hourpen could not quite imagine the threats his father described. Secretly he was sure his father made the stories up. But even still there was a part of him that knew such threats must be fought against.

It was on one such Spring evening he truly experienced fear. As the shrieks penetrated the earthen walls of his family's’ home, Hourpen’s father calmly stowed the book - before he retrieved his sharpest garden tool. When the door collapsed in pieces a giant of a man stormed through, pausing only briefly at outstretched arms of Hourpen’s father. The garden hoe did little more than scratch the man’s armor. Red covered the rug Hourpen’s grandmother had made the past fall. Though he felt himself run, all he could see was the shape of his father’s body.

When he came too he was in a strange place, like none he had ever seen. He would later learn that the great homes were part of a city as the grown ups told him. As he wandered, lost and cold a few generous souls offered him food. He carefully shared bites with the small puppy he cradled. An old woman had some tattered cloth that she carefully wrapped around his shivering body. He did not feel at home, but he was not so cold. Just as the reality of what had happened began to creep out from the dark, gentle hands moved Hourpen away from the rush of wagons.

The shock of remembering the impossible kept him from resisting the gentle hands. Warmth of the home calmed his shaking limbs. Tasting vegetables he could have helped his sisters plant in the family garden settled his stomach and lightened his soul. Amidst hurried slurps he looked up to the gentle hands. “Home?” Hourpen asked cautiously, as if speaking of such hope might endanger it.

“Don’t you worry honey. You can stay as long as you like.” The warm voice belonged to the gentle hands. Hourpen came to this conclusion as if it had always been true. Home? He thought. But what of the looming threats? Soon he would learn how to fight. It would be slow going, but he would do anything to protect against the things he had seen.

***
Huddled under his bed the slavers found him. Hourpen was frozen in fear. The giants had come. He did not know they were humans. He had only ever seen humans from a distance. They did not seem so large then. Terrified and full of loss something inside the young halfing died. His peaceful life had been splintered apart. The stories had died that night. When the heavy boot of the man crashed across his skull it was nearly a mercy.
In his unconscious state he dreamt of his coming birthday. His father had a surprise. They would be going on his first hunt. He had already picked out a fledgling. It was to be his hunting companion. With it he would practice the skills of his family. Together they would learn to safeguard their way of life. A home and a society that was destroyed that night. They took him for dead. Hourpen might have decided not to wake back up, but for the feeling of a small beak snapping at his partially clotted wounds.

***

The child learned quickly, ate well, and adjusted to his new home. Gentle hands worried over him all the same. He should be growing larger by now. For Hourpen there was no thought of these things. Only the threats.

She had kept her promise. He had a home. Even so Hourpen would look longingly from his window toward the treeline, for that was where he would see glimpses of his fledgling as it grew.

He snuck out one morning to run into the forest, he knew route by heart. He had but a cloak given to him when he first arrived. Thinking little of what he was doing, he ran into the forest.

It was in the shadows beneath the trees that Hourpen remembered that night. Though he hoped he would find his home in tact somehow, there was a part of him that knew what he would find. He had see it for himself all the same. Creeping carefully toward the treeline at the edge of where their village had been built, he found what he was looking for.

In awe he gazed at the remains. What power could do such a thing? Such a fire should have spread to the trees. Somehow it was only the homes that had been burned. Only the village that had been destroyed. Resting silently on a log at the edge of the destruction was a lone man. Though he wore an array of colors, there was something stark about him. He spoke to Hourpen without turning. “I dreamt of you halfling. We share and order you and I. We are the last of an order that your father was to teach you of. I will have to teach you with what time I have left.”

Like the moment at sunrise just before the birds begin to sing, the forest paused as if lamenting the loss. Hourpen would learn that it wasn’t the threat of slavery that his father planned to teach him to hunt, but something much more sinister. There was evil in the world that would see everything turned to ash. Before the man could teach him the full truth of this evil, Hourpen would have to help bury him.

The poison had been slow, but there was nothing to be done to stop it. The man made sure the halfling had help this time. A friend that would help Hourpen learn something more of himself, not simply the order that his father served.

***
And so it is that a halfling cavalier named Hourpen discovered instinct deep within himself that would help him learn to combat the magics that, when turned to evil destroyed all he had known.

When danger looms he reminds himself that he is not that young boy anymore. He can protect himself, he can defend against evil. And in time he hopes to deal a blow to the forces that aim to destroy all the peaceful places of the world.

***

Nestled southwest of Brastlewark along the Brastle river, little remains of the small village Hourpen called home. Inspiring its founding, a group of halflings had found interest in their woodworking abilities among the industries gnomes of Brastlewark. Little did they know that equally industrious slavers had been making use of the river to raid and transport slaves to Cheliax.

Egorian seems to be a likely spot for Hourpen to have been 'found' as human child. Returning home of fellow of his father’s order took Hourpen under his tutelage before succumbing to another form the evil magics had taken. Left with a close friend of the man, Hourpen then discovered that the generations of his family’s war against evil had cultivated arcane instincts of such. Instincts that he uses now to defend what he holds most dear. Freedom to have a home.