Loosey's page

Loosey is an unusually tall and well-built young woman of apparently about twenty years old; she is the picture of health and remarkably pretty. Her skin color is golden brown, with features similar to a Keleshite human, though she has a slight glow about her like she is happy or blessed. Her hair is almost black, usually pulled back and tied with a cord of leather, and she dresses like a scholar in light blue woolen robes with orange trim. They are just bulky enough that she probably has light armor underneath, though it doesn't look very heavy, and there is a slight clink of metal as she moves. She wears lots of cheap and gaudy-looking jewelry, including dark blue painted wooden earrings and a bead necklace with the outstretched palm symbol of Irori on the centerpiece. On her face are a pair of wire glasses with blue lenses, though they often perch on her nose rather than directly over her eyes. She carries a well-crafted longspear made from ash on her back and she wears a satchel at her hip. On her belt is a pouch stuffed with scrolls and another pouch with spellcasting components. She wears comfortable sandals and leggings beneath her skirt.

In social situations, she smiles pleasantly as if she genuinely enjoys interacting with other people, and her voice lilts in a practiced way, though it seems more like natural charm than artifice. She rarely blinks, and then suddenly does, as if she has had to remind herself internally to do so. She also stops occasionally as if listening to something no one else can hear, and nods as if she has received excellent advice. She does not realize she is doing this, and rationalizes to herself it as her "instincts", perhaps divinely inspired by Irori (who she has adopted as her patron god, though she knows almost nothing about Him). If pressed, she might realize she can "hear" what might be "voices" guiding her. This is how she interacts with spirits and the spirit world, from which she draws most of her supernatural powers.

She is strangely calmed by the color blue. She finds it soothing and peaceful. Likewise, she is frightened and sickened by the color yellow. It makes her obviously uneasy and makes her body tense. It is as if she has some connection deep in her soul to something yellow and awful, and seeing the color briefly joins her to it. The association is torturous and it is almost mentally unbearable for her. For this reason she wears blue-colored lenses in her glasses, which cancels out yellow things in her line of vision. When looking through them she cannot distinguish most colors, much like the black-and-white of darkvision in darkness, but she is also not affected by her chronomantic aversion, so it is an acceptable sacrifice to her.

Personality-wise, she is extremely naive, but she is kind and law-abiding. She feels most comfortable obeying authority and following the rules. When in doubt she prays to Irori and the spirits for guidance. She wants very much to learn more about who she is and where she came from, because she believes she has a higher purpose and she thinks discovering her origins will help her identify what it is. Otherwise, she is generally optimistic and light-hearted, as if she is trying very hard not to think about unpleasant things and focusing on the positive to keep her spirits up.

Like the others who recently departed from the asylum, Loosey is also something of an amnesiac, having woken up about a year ago at the Sincomakti School of Sciences with no memory of who she was or how she came to be there. Fortunately for her one of the faculty took a liking to her and helped her adapt to her new circumstances. While staying there, she discovered that she is a self-styled "disciple of Irori," a spirit-seer, divine spellcaster, and people person.

In fact, part of the reason why Dr. Meirtmane agreed to sponsor her was that he thought she looked like a young woman he had seen before, though it took him several months to recollect where: in the company of Count Haserton Lowls IV, the ruler of Versex. He theorizes that Loosey is a relative of the Count's, and privately believes that Lowls is somehow responsible for her condition. Dr Meirtmane has an intense dislike for the man, based on their interactions in the past, and rather than seeking him out at his estates on Iris Hill, he advised Loosey to speak to a woman named Cesadia Wrentz in Thrushmoor instead. She runs a business called the Sleepless Detective Agency, and it so pained Dr. Meirtmane to think of what life must have been like for this bright, hopeful young woman before she escaped the hateful count's influence that he wrote her a glowing letter of introduction and paid for her travel and lodgings to help her get in the door.

For the last few months Loosey has been working for Wrentz, doing odd jobs solo, as her boss determines her capabilities, strengths, and weaknesses. According to Wrentz's assessment, Loosey is almost ready to begin working as part of a team, and she promises the young woman that she is watching for an opportunity to do so. Once she finds a good group that balances Loosey's naivety and lack of knowledge and experience, she says she will try them out on some more immediate local problems before she sends them after Count Lowls directly. Loosey is content to wait patiently, though not without some trepidation and worry. She does not think she can keep secrets very well if it should come to that.

(There are some minor spoilers for Book 2 of Strange Aeons here, so readers beware! I have played through all of Book 1 and I did some cursory research on important figures in the adventure path to be able to write a convincing background, but I believe I do not know enough about what they are doing to ruin the story, for myself or for others.)

As far as she knows, her name is "Loosey," but it is pronounced "Liùshí" and it is short for "Liùshí Dào Zǔzhòu". It means "sixty" in Tien, and her full name is "sixty curses". That is the purpose her body was designed to achieve, a purpose of vengeance and hatred. However, Loosey is living proof that no one in Golarion must fulfill the intentions of their creator, but can instead forge their own path, and use their powers for their own goals and in service of their own ideals.

Loosey does not know where she was born or by whom she was raised. She does not have any memories from before about a year ago. This is because she was only sent here recently from the Boneyard, by servants of the goddess Pharasma, as she is the result of a cosmic error. Though she appears to be human, she is actually a shabti: a constructed soul designed to take the place of another in the afterlife. She was fashioned out of alchemical gold by a cultist of Hastur in his quest to become immortal. Her purpose was to take his place in the afterlife if he should die, transferring his soul into her vessel and thus allowing him to continue living in her golden body while she would be spirited off to whatever reward or punishment should have befallen him.

To activate his surrogate spirit, he needed to perform a human sacrifice to his mad god. He intended to kill his adopted daughter, who he found expressly for this purpose, but he came to appreciate her involvement in his life and activities, and he kept delaying her death. Of course she inevitably turned on him and killed him herself, sacrificing his soul to Hastur instead. This triggered Loosey's journey to the afterlife, but her creator's soul was not moved into her vessel, so the substitution was incomplete.

This presented Pharasma with a conundrum: Loosey could not be judged, since she had never lived, but the soul that she was to replace had already passed on and was not as it should be. This left Loosey's soul in a paradoxical stasis. Eventually, the goddess decided that Loosey's soul should be sent back to her body, as a sort of an administrative resurrection to correct the error. The statue that was to have been her creator's immortal surrogate body instead became hers.

Loosey awoke at the Sincomakti School of Sciences, where after her sudden appearance in underground storage and difficulty explaining her presence she was lucky enough to be discovered by Dr. Henri Meirtmane, who thought she looked familiar and vouched for her. He very kindly looked after her and helped her get her bearings, believing that she was a traumatized amnesiac, and he was delighted to discover that she was also an extremely fast learner. What he didn't realize what that he wasn't her only teacher, for she also had a direct line to the spirit world, and the spirits constantly advised her what to do and say.

The reason that Loosey looked familiar to Dr. Meirtmane was because her creator had fashioned the immortal body to resemble his adopted daughter, Melisenn Kororo-- the woman he intended to sacrifice. Dr. Meirtmane has seen Melisenn on the School campus a few times, though always fleetingly as he never taught her a class. But Melisenn struck up something like a friendship with Count Lowls, and once or twice Dr. Meirtmane saw them together before Lowls had a terrible falling out with the School and severed all further contact forever. It is true that Loosey and Melisenn look enough alike that they could be sisters, although Loosey is about ten years younger and ten inches taller.

It took him almost six months, but Dr. Meirtmane finally remembered where he recognized Loosey from. He told Loosey everything he knew about Lowls, which was not very much and unfortunately did not paint a very rosy picture. Dr. Meirtmane darkly suspected that the count was responsible for whatever trauma or curse had destroyed Loosey's memories, and feared what Lowls was capable of. For that reason, he suggested that Loosey head to Thrushmoor to find friends and backup instead of charging up to Iris Hill in search of him. He recommended she look up Cesadia Wrentz of the Sleepless Detective Agency-- one of his former students had joined the company several summers ago and had nothing but good things to say. He wrote the poor girl a glowing letter of introduction and paid all of her travel expenses.

Fortunately for Loosey, Wrentz was willing to take on the strange young woman on a preliminary basis, based on Dr. Meirtmane's letter and her performance at her interview. Since then, Loosey has worked mostly simple find-and-watch jobs, and she has been able to achieve success without too much trouble (though she almost botched one job by misunderstanding the purpose of alcohol in the tavern where she was gathering information). Wrentz paid Loosey in quality equipment and good advice, as she believes in fostering a good working relationship with promising agents. Going over her reports, however, Wrentz has decided that Loosey's naivety is something of a liability. She hopes that she might do better when matched with less idealistic agents who have more experience with underhanded activities. She is aware that Loosey wants to investigate Count Lowls in particular, but before she tells her that the Count is no longer at his estates she wants to see how the young woman does when working with the sort of crafty criminal miscreants that she usually contracts.

Loosey is often bothered by spirit visions, in particular a glowing yellow symbol with three loops spiraling from a center point. To Loosey these look like claws or tentacles. (This is because her soul is still joined with her tormented creator's, far away in Hastur's realm, and is the source of her aversion to the color yellow.) With Dr. Meirtmane's help, she found a way to calm her thoughts and ease her sleep. Looking through a book of symbols to try and identify the source of her nightmares, she stumbled upon an image of a blue hand in a circle. This idea immediately brought Loosey a sense of inner peace and tranquility for some reason, and with some research the good doctor was able to tell her that it was the holy symbol of Irori, the Vuldrani god of enlightenment, self-perfection, and healing. This discovery has set her on something like a contemplative path, and she has declared herself to be a disciple of the god, though her methods of worship are decidedly unorthodox. Fortunately no one else knows, since Irori and His worship is barely known in Ustalav.

As part of her meditations into the spirit world, she has instinctively performed a ritual designed to bring a messenger spirit of her deity to her, what the textbooks usually refer to as a familiar. She expected her calling ceremony to bring her an animal, since lesser living things are usually the best way to join a mortal psyche to the world beyond, but instead she found a floating collection of smooth stones, one large one and many small ones. They glowed with a pale blue light, and assembled themselves to resemble an outstretched palm. Over time, Loosey has learned to read the "sign language" that is the only way her familiar communicates. She believes that if she can demonstrate that she is worthy of this servant creature, the Master of Masters will reward her by placing her familiar in a more-evolved body-construction in time. She does not realize the spiritual significance of her calling a construct familiar, that it is a clue to her own constructed nature.

Name "Servant of Servants," or sometimes "Servy"
Description A floating collection of glowing blue stones, arranged to resemble a hand.

Abilities Str 4 (-3), Dex 15 (+2], Con —, Int 7 (-2), Wis 14 (+2), Cha 5 (-3)

Size Tiny
Space 5 Reach 0

HP 18 (half master's hp)
AC 17* (10[base]+2[DEX]+1[dodge]+2[natural armor]+2[size], +4*[vs AoO])
Move 0', fly 30' (average)
Init +2
Senses blindsight 30'
Immunities construct traits

Fortitude +2 (+2[base]+0[CON])
Reflex +4* (+2[base]+2[DEX], *[improved evasion])
Will +4 (+2[base]+2[WIS])

BAB +3

Weapons
• slam +7* (+3[BAB]+2[DEX]+2[size], -1*[Power Attack]) (1d4-3* bludgeoning damage) (1d4-3[STR], +3*[Power Attack]), 20/x2 critical, reach 0

Ioun Wyrd ioun affinity, share iouns

Feats Dodge, Mobility*

Skills Diplomacy 4-3, Escape Artist 3+2, Fly +10, Perception 4+5, Profession (librarian) 4+2, Profession (scribe) 4+2, Sense Motive 4+2, Stealth 1+12, Use Magic Device 4-3

Familiar 4 alertness, deliver touch spells, empathic link, improved evasion, natural armor adj +2, share spells

Gear none

I realize the party already has a witch, so a shaman may seem to overlap. Hear me out, though: Nyarai looks like mostly support so far, with Fortune and Protective Luck as hexes, and as a hedge witch archetype there's two healing hexes that are required. Loosey is incredibly versatile, and focused entirely on debuffing hexes. So I don't think we're likely to be doing the same things very much.

Loosey is primarily a debuffer, and secondarily a blaster. She has mostly force-based damage in the form of magic missile and spiritual guardian when she's not hexing the enemy. She gets to take cleric and psychic spells with her favored class bonuses, so she will have access to some useful tools like blessing of fervor and ethereal shards. She gets to pick two (and eventually up to five) shaman or witch hexes every day, tailored to whatever we need. And, she's a full prepared divine caster who gets level 9 spells at level 17. She may not be a wizard but she's at least as versatile!

For skills, she's got good Diplomacy and Sense Motive to fulfill the party's need of a face character. She can gather information pretty well and she might be able to talk her way out of a problem if we get in such a fix. Her familiar is pretty sneaky and extremely tough, in case we need another scout, and it will be able to use wands and scrolls with a pretty good UMD score at level 7.

I've also invested in Scribe Scroll, to give her more versatility with a library of useful consumables. (That's also a good way to get useful spells on multiple lists out of her mind and into Ethyl's formula book or Nyarai's veil.) Using the Arcane Enlightenment hex, that means she can prepare and scribe any spell on the wizard spell list.