Khala Skawe's page

"Harder!!!"

Khala gritted her teeth and bit her tongue. I'll give *you* "harder", old-one, she thought to herself. But she grimaced, sighted the target anyway and pulled in her dangling harpoon, the weapon caught ludicrously in the armpit of the target-mannequin made of scraps of leather and stuffed with straw, topped with a rusty old pot for a jaunty helmet...

At least my aim is true, if not my strength. Better to wound the warrior and force him to adjust his tactics than miss... and face him in straight melee.

At least these were the tactics her grandfather would have her believe. Mighty Kav Half-blood, the not-quite Shoanti. The horse breeder. Former bodyguard and blacksmith. Mercenary. Kellid. Disgrace.

Khala sighed. Her grandfather, once vital, now spent, nodded in that way he thought wise, but Khala merely found irritating. "The head is a small target, and likely protected by a helm like our stolid friend here. If they are foolish enough to go bareheaded, no matter what a Shoanti might say, by all means crack their egg. Otherwise, hit them hard on the body, near a joint or in their vitals..."

Thus her days were spent when not paying endless rote lip service to the mighty dead. ...

The Skoan-Quah thought they knew death and its every caress. Every way and kind of ending, from last breath to shocked enervation. Thought they knew all about the Shoanti of every clan, recording their deaths and lineages. But they cared little for anything but their relics and their litanies. Their attitude toward her own father's death was one of mute veneration and nods of appreciation - one vibrant, one now headed toward Pharasma... Died before he could raise Khala properly, the creeping undeath changing him in agony before her very eyes before her clan had slain him also.. The Skoan-Quah had offered no succour when her mother had then wasted away in loneliness and despair at the loss of her childhood sweetheart, a loss none could console. Had only wondered aloud if it meant the clan would thus be endangered before sniffing and walking away.

The Clan. Death. Order. These things Khala took to be givens, raised by her unforgiving grandparents on a hardscrabble plain. Tending pigs, little, big, fat, cooked, skinned. Smelly. Mucky. Squealing. Like the people of the Skoan Quah..

"Wraith" some called her. Or "witch". Khala knew she wasn't that strange, in a world with much stranger denizens. Her one odd eye had earnt her her Full Name at initiation: "Warp-eye". The clan knew much more about the world she inhabited, and she would too one day. Until then she would carry her parents name. Skawe. Even though her hair was white, spirit-burnt it was said. And her one unlucky eye, a dark black in colour. Ill-luck. Bad fortune. Grandfather part-Kellid. Perhaps her locks were rather exposure to the mystic and eldritch powers that suffused the very earth and water about her clan-home. Khala knew. And soon, she would know more…

She had made a deal with the wolf-spirits when her parents first took her to the elders, before they and their endless war on the undead had consumed her father, and as a result, her mother. To ever-run on the steppes, and to never back down. To live for life, and not for death. Her grandfather had from her early years always seen the Kellid in her, or so he said, or so he wanted to believe, and said she wanted more than the Shoanti could give her. In truth it was more probably a vicarious kind of escape for him from his wife's people, an old and aged attempt to right some imagined past wrong provided by love, and fate. A blade Kav presented to her, a giant unwieldy cumbersome and fell-looking thing her great-grandfather had given her grandfather, out of sky-metal itself if she believed him. Set into the pommel a disc, with marks special to him and his Kellid kin. Her parents had advised against the gifting of such an unhallowed object, but Kav had gone against their wishes anyway, and once her mother had passed - who was there to judge?

The clan had tried to part her from her blade, the disc upon it seen as somehow impure and unholy, and vied to teach her the clan ways but she had responded with feral violence, that, though it had shocked them, had also made them proud, after a fashion, in a particularly Shoanti kind of way. She was not exiled...exactly...just....asked to walk the world and find her way before deciding where her true loyalties lay.

Her grandmother had been, like Khala, a "handful" and like Khala, been sent away for a time of proving - became a bounty hunter in another age, and trained Khala in between chores - gut cuts, tendon locations to slice - all the ways to kill a body fast and well. Her grandfather, now a cripple, though he too had once been a proud warrior - was little help beyond guidance in rudimentary harpoon throwing now, but the much notched giant greatsword and foul smelling scale armor had been her gift upon her fateful leavetaking. It had cost a small fortune to tailor the armor and clean the worst of the verdigris and imperfections out of the blade.

Now Khala finds the world outside the clanlands in uproar, the holy spirit of life and death now her own to find and interpret. Khala will reclaim her own sense of honor and prove the blessing of her now gone parents. No more fear. No more denial. To live. Free.

Khala appears as a tall, pale, snow-haired woman, broad of shoulder and corded with muscle. Unlike most Shoanti, even those of the Skoan-Quah who often use ash and paste to make themselves pale, Khala really *is* pale, possibly a gift of her part-Kellid grandfather Kav, and whispers abound that the blood of the witches of old Sarkoris flows in her veins. A carved blackened rib of some aquatic creature sits at her brow keeping her voluminous hair out of her eyes.

Khala’s left eye is surrounded by a dark whorl tattoo, and the eye itself is odd - both pupil and iris a strange sheen of ebon. Happily, Khala prefers to wink this eye just before she swings her greatsword, so the last thing her enemies see is the flash of a dark portal to the Boneyard.

As a member of the Skull clan, Khala favors bone ornaments in her hair and stitched, lashed and sewn to her armor, greaves, gauntlets and boots - a wolf skull sits at her groin. A harpoon case on one side of her back carries two harpoons, one of greater size than the other; and on the other a sheath for her fell oversized greatsword carries that blade when it isn’t in its usual place in her grip.

Hit Points: 8
Size: Medium
Speed: 25 feet
Ability Boosts: Two free ability boosts (Strength, Dexterity)
Languages: Common
Additional languages equal to 1 + your Intelligence modifier (if it's positive). Choose from the list of common languages and any other languages to which you have access (such as the languages prevalent in your region).

Bringing in lawbreakers lined your pockets. Maybe you had an altruistic motive and sought to bring in criminals to make the streets safer, or maybe the coin was motivation enough. Your techniques for hunting down criminals transfer easily to the life of an adventurer.

Choose two ability boosts. One must be to Strength or Wisdom, and one is a free ability boost (Wisdom).

You're trained in the Survival skill, and the Legal Lore skill. You gain the Experienced Tracker skill feat.

Key Ability: STRENGTH
At 1st level, your class gives you an ability boost to your choice of Strength or Dexterity.

Hit Points: 12 plus your Constitution modifier
You increase your maximum number of HP by this number at 1st level and every level thereafter.

Initial Proficiencies
At 1st level, you gain the listed proficiency ranks in the following statistics. You are untrained in anything not listed unless you gain a better proficiency rank in some other way.

Perception
Expert in Perception

Saving Throws
Expert in Fortitude
Trained in Reflex
Expert in Will

Skills
Trained in Athletics
Trained in a number of additional skills equal to 3 plus your Intelligence modifier

Attacks
Trained in simple weapons
Trained in martial weapons
Trained in unarmed attacks

Defenses
Trained in light armor
Trained in medium armor
Trained in unarmored defense

Class DC
Trained in barbarian class DC

Rage
You gain the Rage action, which lets you fly into a frenzy.
Rage [one-action]
Barbarian, Concentrate, Emotion, Mental
Requirements You aren’t fatigued or raging.

You tap into your inner fury and begin raging. You gain a number of temporary Hit Points equal to your level plus your Constitution modifier. This frenzy lasts for 1 minute, until there are no enemies you can perceive, or until you fall unconscious, whichever comes first. You can't voluntarily stop raging. While you are raging:
* You deal 2 additional damage with melee Strikes. This additional damage is halved if your weapon or unarmed attack is agile.
* You take a –1 penalty to AC.
* You can't use actions with the concentrate trait unless they also have the rage trait. You can Seek while raging.
After you stop raging, you lose any remaining temporary Hit Points from Rage, and you can't Rage again for 1 minute.

Instinct
Your rage wells up from a dominant instinct—one you learned from a tradition or that comes naturally to you. Your instinct gives you an ability, requires you to avoid certain behaviors, grants you increased damage and resistances at higher levels, and allows you to select feats tied to your instinct.

Barbarian Feats
At 1st level and every even-numbered level thereafter, you gain a barbarian class feat.

Your rage gives you the raw power and size of a giant. This doesn't necessarily mean you revere giants—you might scoff at them or even aspire to slay them! You could instead seem like a giant to other people due to your exceptional strength or larger-than-life emotions and ego.

Anathema
Failing to face a personal challenge of strength is anathema.

Titan Mauler (Instinct Ability)
You can use a weapon built for a Large creature if you are Small or Medium (both normally and when raging). If you're not Small or Medium, you can use a weapon built for a creature one size larger than you. You gain access to this larger weapon, which can be of any weapon type otherwise available at character creation. It has the normal Price and Bulk for a weapon of its size. When wielding such a weapon in combat, increase your additional damage from Rage from 2 to 6, but you have the clumsy 1 condition because of the weapon's unwieldy size. You can't remove this clumsy condition or ignore its penalties by any means while wielding the weapon.

Clumsy Your movements become clumsy and inexact. Clumsy always includes a value. You take a status penalty equal to the condition value to Dexterity-based checks and DCs, including AC, Reflex saves, ranged attack rolls, and skill checks using Acrobatics, Stealth, and Thievery.

This weapon is attached to a length of rope or chain that allows you to retrieve it after it has left your hand. If you have a free hand (including if you've just thrown a two-handed tethered weapon and have a hand holding nothing but the weapon's tether), you can use an Interact action to pull the weapon back into your grasp after you have thrown it as a ranged attack or after it has been disarmed (unless it is being held by another creature).