About Jacen The MutilatedBackstory:
Chaos. Entropy. Collapse. Anarchy. Pandemonium. The enemy of all.
“We live in a world where even Gods can die,” the armored form bellowed, “A world where mere goodness and kindness are not enough. A world where wicked and selfish thoughts are useless distractions. Naïve idealism has no place here!” The man had, at this uttering, surmounted a platform erected before the crowd of young, stern, and eager faces. Each body rigidly at attention, eyes following the ironclad figure’s every movement. “If men such as you hold any aspirations of grandeur, of fame, of heroism, or glory, you had best leave now. We are not self-serving. We are not in pursuit of prestige. We are not” his sneer was audible behind the jagged faceplate of his helmet “Adventurers. We are practical. We are effective. We are this world’s last line of defense against armageddon itself. No one of us is more important than the other. No one of us is inexpendable. Our world will not end with an explosion. It will collapse and crumble from the complacency of the masses, fearing for their own petty lives. We are not slaves to fear like they are. We are HELLKNIGHTS! FEAR IS OUR WEAPON, AND ORDER IS OUR ARMOR!” To uproarious cheers and applause, the Paralictor raised his black gauntlet. One pair of eyes burned brighter from his audience than all others: with meaning, hatred, and purpose. These were the eyes of Jacen Solis “The Mutilated.” He had reason and conviction beyond all others. Every man and woman here had lost something, but fervor cannot effectively be driven by loss. Jacen had more than loss, he had conviction. He had felt the blades of lawlessness cut through his skin like a knife through his very soul. Years back, Jacen had awoke from his usual routine as supervisor of a outer Chelish plantation: drive the slaves through their workday, go to the local tavern, get blind drunk, go home with one of the many women who doted on him (he was quite a strapping looker back in the day), wake up hungover, repeat. The difference today was that Jacen didn’t wake in an alley, a field, or a latrine as per usual. He awoke in a dark room naked, bound, and gagged, surrounded by men in cloaks who chanted strange words. Well, mostly men. In the center, hood down around her shoulders, was the young redhead he had bedded the night before. “Aw, you dumb, pretty thing,” she mocked, “You’re the worst lay I’ve had in ages!” With a cackle and a sharp kick, she drove a sharp heel into his nethers. He began to bleed. This was only the beginning of the torture. The woman and her cabal began to use his blood to draw runes and circles on the wooden floor of the cellar, and every time a wound proved insufficient to sate their needs, they opened a new one. Only once completed did the chanting resume. Jacen’s body was covered with lacerations, bruises, bones broken through the skin… some of his organs had become completely visible. His face was in particularly bad shape: an eye nearly gouged out, an ear half-removed, pieces of cheek left barely connected to the rest of his flesh. As the chanting came to a zenith, Jacen began to float off the floor. An unbelieveable amount of energy began flowing from the blood-arrays and runes the cultists had inscribed. Word of a language uknown invaded Jacen’s brain, every syllable feeling like the scraping of teeth on the chalkboard of his mind: “આ મનુષ્ય શું મૂર્ખ છે” The cultist all heard the same. The few that understood Abyssal recognized it as an eons-old Demonic saying: “What fools these mortals be.” At this declaration, Jacen’s wounds began to somehow fester and heal simultaneously. A shockwave rocked the room, knocking the cultists off their feet and hurling each into the walls of the basement, killing most of them instantly. His bindings disintegrated, Jacen ran naked and barefoot from the basement, discovering that he was in the cellar of the tavern all along. As he left the building, however, he felt whatever adrenaline he had fly from his body, and everything went black. When next he woke, he was in an infirmary bed, wracked with intense pain and a man in armor towering above him. Gradually, as he recovered, Jacen learned what had happened: the shockwave had alerted a nearby patrol of the Hellknights of the Order of The Godclaw, who found him, discovered the cellar ritual, and were able to dispatch some of the remaining cultists. It appeared, however, as if some had escaped. He also learned that the ritual was supposed to accomplish something , but exactly what was unclear… The Hellknights had burned the tavern to the ground for good measure, and were keeping Jacen for observation and recovery. And rightly so.Jacen’s trials were far from over. Nightmares about the rituals persisted: the terrible voice in his mind, the feeling of overwhelming power, the torture endured at the hands of his captors; all of these haunted his dreams during his recovery. His night terrors aroused alarm from the Hellknights, fearing the man may succumb insanity… or worse. A Hellknight was stationed at his bedside at all times to watch Jacen, and to extol the necessity of Law and encourage him to fight the chaos that raged inside him tooth and nail. The nightmares persisted, however, long after his physical recovery. Seeking to help him further (and keep an eye on a possible chaotic corruption), the Hellknights employed Jacen where his skills as a former slave-driver made him the most helpful: administering lashes. The Godclaw apprehended a great many lawbreakers whose infractions didn’t merit the death penalty, and so Jacen’s abilities were quite useful to the camp. His long bedside lectures and fear of falling to the demonic influence of the ritual fully indoctrinated Jacen to the Hellknight way of thinking. Through hard work, study, and devotion, Jacen worked his way from being a simple civilian under surveillance to becoming an Armiger of The Godclaw. Though not a fully-fledged Hellknight, Jacen had finally found a purpose in his life. Coincidentally (though not to his knowledge) his nightmares suddenly waned at the same time, and he became the poster-child for the rehabilitative properties of structure and law. Jacen began exhibiting supernatural abilities from his prayers to The Godclaw. In his eyes, the pantheon had marked him as a true believer, and he would not let them down. This “approval” inspired him to began pioneering a fighting style that would utilize his skills with a whip in a lethal fashion, with the hope that he’d someday be of use on the field of battle against the forces of chaos. When leather whips proved ineffective against the armored practice dummies he’d concocted, Jacen asked the smiths at the camp to fashion him blades and spikes that he could attach to his weapons. Through months of practice he became proficient in these “Scorpion Whips” as he heard the blacksmith call them, and became apt enough at their use to wield two at once! Now hearing the speech of his Paralictor, Jacen immediately volunteered to journey to Kenabres to fight against the demonic hordes of the Worldwound. He was ready. The Godclaw had spoken, ridding his mind of chaos and showing him the way to do their will. Whips in hand, the time had finally come for him to exact punishment on the forces that had ruined his body and addled his mind. Chaos. Entropy. Collapse. Anarchy. Pandemonium. The cancer that is the Worldwound. He would see it all vanquished from the world, no matter the cost. His Driving Force, Goals, and Personality:
Jacen is a zealot of the highest order. He has no tolerance for chaos, frivolity, mess, insubordination, or anything of the sort. Having come a long way from being an inebriate slave-driver, he’s now a model Armiger with aspirations of someday becoming a fully-fledged Hellknight.
Like most following Hellknight ideals, good and evil mean very little to Jacen, often describing them as “ineffective moralistic squabbling.” He gets things done by the book, by the letter of the law, and doesn’t care much about the spirit. After all, humans who don’t follow the law are no better than demons themselves. He’s seen that firsthand.
Though he is a master of punishment with the whip, Jacen is no sadist. His lashing of others has been simply out of duty to punish offences and enforce structure, often saying, “If I broke the rules, I’d want the same done to me.” He staunchly believes that sometimes harming the right people in the right way can bring greater order to the world: Crime must be punished; Chaos must be quelled. In that same vein, he journeys not to the Worldwound for glory, but for the greater good of the world: the sooner this chaos, this entropy, is banished from the material plane, all beings on it will be safe from armageddon. He seeks no praise for his work, and thanks or compliments make him extremely uncomfortable and occasionally embarrassed. Appearance:
Once a handsome and strapping young man, Jacen’s scarred visage is like seeing a defaced piece of art: all the more tragic for once having been beautiful. Though Clerics of the Godclaw were able to heal the functional damage, the aesthetic damage to Jacen’s body proved to be irreparable, as though they were not scars at all. The ones run his cheek, forehead, and around his right eye are all that most get a glimpse of. Once his armor is removed, it becomes apparent that the scars line nearly all parts of his body. In some places, chunks of flesh are merely missing, creating strange divots in his limbs and torso. Part of one of his ears is also missing, giving his head a bit of a lopsided look.
Jacen stands at 6’2”, and has a particularly muscular frame from years in the fields and then years of training with the Hellknights. His strawberry-blonde hair has a tendency to stand on end, which often looks quite peculiar with his beginnings of a receding hairline. He is usually seen wearing a suit of Lamellar armor with two bladed whips and a crossbow tied to his belt, a fully-loaded pack on his back, and an amulet with the symbol of The Godclaw around his neck. Crunch:
Jacen "The Mutilated" Solis
Human fighter 1/warpriest of The Godclaw 1 Gestalt(Pathfinder RPG Advanced Class Guide 60) LN Medium humanoid (human) Init +3; Senses Perception +2 -------------------- Defense -------------------- AC 19, touch 13, flat-footed 16 (+6 armor, +3 Dex) hp 11 (1d10+1) Fort +3, Ref +3, Will +4 -------------------- Offense -------------------- Speed 30 ft. (20 ft. in armor) Melee dagger +5 (1d4+4/19-20) or . . dagger +5 (1d4+4/19-20) or . . scorpion whip +4 (1d6+5) or . . scorpion whip +4 (1d6+3) Ranged light crossbow +4 (1d8/19-20) Space 5 ft.; Reach 5 ft. (10 ft. with scorpion whip, 10 ft. with scorpion whip) Special Attacks blessings 3/day (Law: axiomatic strike, War: war mind), sacred weapon (1d6, +0, 0) Warpriest Spells Prepared (CL 1st; concentration +3) . . 1st—bane (DC 13), protection from chaos . . 0 (at will)—detect fiendish presence, detect magic, mending -------------------- Statistics -------------------- Str 18, Dex 16, Con 12, Int 10, Wis 14, Cha 8 Base Atk +1; CMB +5; CMD 18 Feats Exotic Weapon Proficiency (scorpion whip), Exotic Weapon Proficiency (whip), Two-weapon Fighting, Weapon Focus (whip) Traits stolen fury, whip specialist Skills Acrobatics -2 (-6 to jump), Knowledge (religion) +4, Sense Motive +6, Spellcraft +4 Languages Common Other Gear lamellar (steel) armor[UC], crossbow bolts (20), dagger, dagger, light crossbow, scorpion whip[UC], scorpion whip[UC], bedroll, belt pouch, branding iron, custom shape, flint and steel, hemp rope (50 ft.), holy text (Tenets of the Order)[UE], manacles, masterwork backpack[APG], mess kit[UE], pot, soap, spell component pouch, torch (10), trail rations (5), waterskin, wooden holy symbol of Godclaw, wrist sheath, spring loaded, wrist sheath, spring loaded -------------------- Tracked Resources -------------------- Blessings (3/day) (Su) - 0/3 Crossbow bolts - 0/20 Dagger - 0/1 Dagger - 0/1 Torch - 0/10 Trail rations - 0/5 -------------------- Special Abilities -------------------- Blessings (3/day) (Su) Pool of power used to activate Blessing abilities. Sacred Weapon (Su) As a swift action, grant weapon enhancement bonus or certain powers. |
