About KandruCrunch:
Female Tiefling (Hellspawn) Cleric (Ecclesitheurge) of Abadar 7
LG Medium Outsider (Native) Init: +2; Senses: Perception +15; darkvision 60 ft ------------------------------ DEFENSE ------------------------------ AC: 16, touch 12, flat-footed 14 (+2 natural, +2 armor, +2 Dex) HP: 57 Fort: +9, Ref: +6, Will: +12 Resist: Acid 10, fire 5, cold 5, electricity 5 ------------------------------ OFFENSE ------------------------------ Speed: 30 ft Melee: 2 Claws +5 (1d4-1 S) Ranged: +1 Heavy Crossbow +9 (1d10+1 P, 19/20) ------------------------------ STATISTICS (20-pt build) ------------------------------ Str: 8, Dex: 14, Con: 12, Int: 14, Wis: 19, Cha: 14 Base Atk: +6/+1; CMB: +5; CMD: 17 Traits: Varisian Immunity, Eyes and Ears of the City, Tempter's Tongue, Burned Feats: Armor of the Pit, Selective Channel, Rapid Reload (Heavy Crossbow), Precise Shot Skills: Appraise [Background] 8 ranks - +13 (+2 for items valued on weight, +2 to assess items' value) Diplomacy 8 ranks - +16 Heal 8 ranks - +15 Knowledge (Religion) 8 ranks - +13 Perception 8 ranks - +16 Sense Motive 8 ranks - +17 Profession (Writer) [Background] 8 ranks - +15 Languages: Common, Infernal, Draconic, Elven
Gear:
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GEAR/POSSESSIONS ------------------------------ Carrying Capacity Light: 26 lbs or less; Medium: 27-53 lbs; Heavy: 54-80 lbs Current Load Carried: 29.5 lbs Money: 415 GP +1 Heavy Crossbow (8 lbs) Crossbow bolts (20) (0.1 lb apiece) Bracers of Armor (+2) (1 lb) Key of the Second Vault (-- lb) Headband of Wisdom (+2) (1 lb) Belt pouch (0.5 lbs) Spell component pouch (2 lbs) Bag of Holding (Type 1) (15 lbs) - Bedroll (5 lbs) - Candles (10) (-- lbs) - Holy text (Abadar) (20 lbs) - Flint and steel (-- lbs) - Iron pot (4 lbs) - Mess kit (2 lbs) - Rope (50 ft) (10 lbs) - Soap (0.5 lbs) - Torches (10) (1 lb apiece) - Trail rations (5 days) (1 lb apiece) - Waterskin (4 lbs) - Merchant's scale (1 lb) - Crossbow bolts (180) (0.1 lb apiece) Appearance:
Kandru's appearance is fairly standard for a hellspawn tiefling - blue skin, horns, tail, etc. Her pitch-black eyes seem to blaze with zeal, and her red hair is kept in a neat, orderly ponytail. She holds her tall, gaunt frame in an upright, dignified stance, and she wears a small pair of spectacles for reading - though her hyperopia still means that she is quite a fine shot at long ranges. Her facial features have a certain sharp quality, often compared to a hatchet's blade behind her back, but her most noticeable facial feature is the massive burn marks covering the left side of her face, extending from just below her hairline across her face. Her fingernails are sharp talons that hold a wicked edge despite her best efforts, so she often wears gloves so as not to disturb others. During most occasions, Kandru dresses in the traditional white and gold robes of an Abadaran priest, emblazoned with the golden key of Abadar. When she undertakes the role of a Justicar, she adds a hood which conceals most of her head, as well as a gilded mask, featureless except for two eye-holes, which signifies her position. Everywhere she goes, she carries her lucky coin - a worn Korvosan copper pinch, almost valueless. Personality:
Kandru has a logical, orderly mind, which makes her very efficient in situations under her control. However, she is rather slow to adapt, so if forced into an unexpected situation, she may not be of immediate use. She has completely memorized the Order of Numbers and the Manual of City-Building, her faith's holy texts, and she keeps close at hand the abridged legal codes of Korvosa, Magnimar, and Riddleport (this last one is a rather small book). She enjoys writing, and is currently working on a rather weighty text of her own entitled The Principles of Free Trade, a spiritual and philsophical dissertation on the importance of order to an effective moral system. She also writes murder mysteries as a hobby, with several cheap texts written under her name detailing the fictional cases of Corian Colt, a Class-3 Abadaran Justicar. She often asks people if they have read her books, hoping to find someone who likes her work, but she is not very well-known as of yet. She collects coins from around the world, and she has a number of interesting coins from Tian Xia and Vudra - gifts from her friends in the temple. Kandru lives a relatively modest life, preferring to spend her free time writing or in prayer, but is not entirely socially awkward - she has a strong sense of humor and often tells jokes. She can come across as obsessive or abrasive at times, but she is more than capable of talking her way out of any situation she may find herself in. Backstory:
Kandru has only the dimmest memories of her parents - she was found abandoned on the doorstep of Korvosa's Temple of Abadar, taken in and raised by the priests as a novice. She was given the surname "Lostling," as is customary among those without families raised in the church of Abadar. Several of the other novices feared her intimidating appearance, but the senior priests stressed the importance of her contributions to the temple over her heritage. However, she did develop a lasting friendship with Ishani Dhatri, a fellow novice, who had a good heart like her. She demonstrated a keen mind and an encyclopedic memory for rules and regulations, and she memorized the entirety of both of Abadar's holy texts at a young age. As she grew older, she grew in zeal, becoming a mid-ranking Abadaran Justicar (Class-3) and eagerly assisting the Korvosan Guard in their duties. Her initial assignment to help root out corruption in the Old Korvosan guards ran into difficulties due to her literal-mindedness - she treated the bribes accepted by the less scrupulous guards as actual fees and taxes, keeping a meticulous list of the payments she witnessed and using them to try to create a 'unified system' of 'special fees' for Old Korvosa. In one instance, she witnessed a corrupt guardsman extort a five-sail bribe from a group of ruffians for 'disturbing the peace,' then confronted a later guard who tried to take seven sails for the same infraction by citing to him the 'official' fee for such an action. If left unchecked, this habit was more likely than not to get her killed, but the life of a cleric is a hard one.
Eventually, her superiors in the temple caught on to the fact that she was woefully unprepared to the task they had given her, reassigning her to a different Justicar branch where she would have to deal with more clear-cut criminals. During this time, she befriended a grizzled old seargent named Tatyana Sirov, who in turn appreciated her younger colleague's enthusiasm. Kandru became something of an amateur detective, peering over the shoulders of the actual detectives as they went about their business and avidly reading murder mysteries in her free time. Eventually, she decided to put this hobby to use writing her own stories, detailing the cases of the fictional detective Corian Colt in a handful of novels. During a recent riot over taxes in the Gold Market, however, she was called alongside the other Justsicars to bolster the ranks of the Korvosan Guard, but she was badly burned when a torch was shoved in her face by one of the rioters. She has spent a few days recuperating, but with the onset of the plague, she was called to action - like most of the temple's other clerics, she was sent to help heal the sick, but when her old friend Ishani told her about a band of people determined to find the source of the plague without the profit-based bureaucracy of the Bank of Abadar, she sought them out, hoping to aid them in their quest. Anecdotal Backstory:
Junior Banker Andis Kirisol's first notice of the new arrival to the Bank of Abadar was the knock at the door - though knock is too gentle a word for the cacophonous pounding that aroused the young priest from his slumber in the darkest hours of the night. Fog hung like a shroud over the streets of Korvosa as Kirisol groggily got up from his cot and made his way to the door, uttering an extremely unclerical oath as he stubbed his foot against a pillar in the dark. He paused, looking around sheepishly to see if anyone had heard his outburst, then offered a brief prayer to Abadar for forgiveness. He opened the door and glanced around to see who had so rudely awoken him before his gaze drifted downwards, to a simple basket filled by a bundle of rags. The young man smiled. Another foundling. Abadar will give this child a better life. He reached down to pick up the basket, moving aside the top layer of rags to see the new arrival...
...and recoiled, as if bitten by a snake. He made a move as if to dash the basket to the ground, but restrained himself. Inside, the hellspawn infant begain to wail, seeking a father that would never return to her, a mother who could not bear to raise a monster as her daughter. Kirisol looked down again at the child in the basket - at the blue skin, tiny horn nubs, and pitifully squriming tail - and noticed a strange coin on a string around her neck. He peered at it: a simple copper piece, with a hole drilled in the middle by a careful but amateurish hand. After a minute's thought, he closed the door and started towards the novices' quarters, still carrying the basket with him. Local superstitions aside, he had heard stories of hellspawn raised by caring and attentive guardians, growing beyond their infernal heritages into a force for righteousness. Perhaps some good could come of the night's activities after all... ---- The night before the Oath of Coins and Numbers, where the novices would be officially confirmed as clergy of Abadar, Ishani Dhatri sat on a bench in the temple courtyard, his eyes straining to read the text of the Manual of City Building, Abadar's holy text, by the light of the guttering oil lamp. Identifying a particularly tricky passage, he called over to another bench near him. "Okay, how about Section Three of the Preface to the Twelfth Meditation of Xhai Xen Xiao?" To his side, Kandru lay back on her bench, her tail idly twitching back and forth as she flipped her lucky coin. "That's an easy one, Ishani. 'At that time Abadar called me, Xhai Xen Xiao, the exalted architect, the worshipper of the god of Walls and Ditches, to cause justice to prevail in the land, to destroy the wicked and the evil, to prevent the strong from oppressing the weak, to enlighten the land and to further the welfare of the people. Xhai Xen Xiao, the governor named by Abadar, am I, who brought about plenty and abundance.' It establishes the legitimacy of the Code of Goka and affirms Xiao's authority to contribute to a holy text." She turned her head slightly to glance at her friend on the nearby bench. "How'd I do?"
---- The coin box crashed to the ground, narrowly missing the skull of Kandru Lostling, Justicar Fifth Class. Copper and silver pieces spilled out of the shattered receptacle, the latest in a long line of missiles - cabbages, eggs, rocks - that had rained down upon the beleaguered Justicars as they attempted to maintain order against the mob. What had started as a confrontation over King Eodred's new tax on fabrics had quickly escalated into a riot in the Gold Market, and the Justicars had quickly been called in to protect the tax collectors. In truth, Kandru empathized with the merchants - their livelihoods were at risk, and for the poorer merchants, the tax collectors were the instruments of their ruin, but at the same time, order must be maintained to ensure society endures, and change must come through the proper channels. As of yet, the white-robed, gold-masked temple troops had yet to fire a shot from their ornate crossbows, but the mob was furious, and if the Guardsmen didn't arrive soon...
Notable Acquaintances:
Senior Banker Andis Kirisol - dwarf cleric (Abadar). The one to find Kandru abandoned on the doorstep of the Bank of Abadar, and her father figure growing up. Once a high-strung Arkona clerk who joined the temple after the death of his wife and infant daughter to sickness, four decades of working the Bank's lower-risk accounts have mellowed him significantly, as has his role in the upbringing of Kandru - as a small child, she reminded him of his daughter, and he felt called to act as a father for the young girl who had nobody else. His gift for administration has landed him among the senior clergy of the temple, though his own lack of ambition and the limited prestige associated with his rank mean that even many of the ordained priests know him as little more than a face and a title. Despite his elevated rank, he has always cared for Kandru, constantly exhorting her to greater heights in her theological journey, and she visits him frequently to talk about esoteric legal and/or theological points and play rounds of a game of Imperial Conquest that has been ongoing for approximately two years. Protodeacon Zviadi Zakarashvili - human cleric (Abadar). Master of Novices at the Bank, and one of Kandru's earliest teachers. For as long as anyone can remember, the ancient priest has been around the bank, hobbling along its corridors with the aid of his distinctive silver-headed cane, and he certainly hasn't aged noticeably in the thirty years Kandru has known him. All the supplicants of the temple are his charges until they become fully-fledged priests of Abadar - a time frame which varies from as little as a year or two for those who come to the faith late in life to as long as eighteen to nineteen years for foundlings. The novices in his tutelage have a variety of rumors about his advanced age - some of the more superstitious ones whisper that he's a vampire, while Kandru and many of the more level-headed acolytes believe he's simply too stubborn to die. He has always been slightly strict with his pupils, but he does care deeply for them, and many of the clerics he has trained (including Kandru) stay in close contact with him. Brother Ishani Dhatri - human cleric (Abadar). A childhood friend of Kandru's. Unlike his friend, he came to the Bank as an adolescent, but Kandru helped him get on his feet at the Bank, and the two remained close friends until leaving the seminary. Their duties have relatively little overlap, so in recent years, they have taken to communicating through correspondence. Tatyana Sirov - human guard. Kandru's mentor at the Watch Citadel, an older woman with graying hair and a predisposition towards succinct answers. She taught Kandru the ropes of how to serve in the Watch - she isn't an investigator, so her aid with Kandru's more specialized tasks was limited, but she is fairly good at reading people, a skill she's tried to pass on to Kandru. Jondrik Karela - human peddler. A freewheeling Varisian inventor, he takes care to ensure that his harebrained schemes follow the letter, if not the intent, of Korvosa's laws. While on patrol in Thief Camp, Kandru noticed him haranguing a crowd about his latest device - a combination vegetable peeler and bread knife - and decided to watch, expecting him to be some sort of charlatan, only to find him scrupulously honest, telling the crowd precisely what his invention was capable of and what it wasn't. Impressed in spite of herself, she came back the next day to see his next scatterbrained scheme, and the two eventually struck up a strange friendship, based primarily on Kandru's Varisian heritage - raised in the Bank, she had little knowledge or understanding of Varisian culture and desired deeply to learn. She doesn't exactly approve of his borderline dangerous devices, but the two have an understanding of sorts - Kandru warns him off if one of his proposed schemes goes too far and actually violates some obscure Korvosan statute or some such, while in return Jondrik shares the occasional noteworthy piece of gossip from his cousin, a Sczarni fence. Revek - tiefling ratcatcher. An adolescent street urchin from Old Korvosa Kandru met when investigating a crime scene, he deeply impressed the Justicar with his eidetic memory for the twists and turns of the Korvosan sewer system. Kandru convinced him to redirect his talents to a more productive role than that of a small-time pickpocket, and he wound up working for the city as a ratcatcher. Given to a touch of paranoia, he has become convinced in recent months that Korvosa's rodents are all under the thrall of some ancient and potent rat king in a forgotten vault deep beneath the city, and despite having virtually no evidence for his wild claims, he has taken to entering the sewers armed. |
