Maqej Ortiz's page

It's been said that there are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man; After meeting Maqej, you'll need to add a fourth. He is the physical embodiment of fear, able to make even bold paladins quake in their boots. Fear is his business and his life, and all wise men fear him.

Step 1: Write five things about your character’s concept and background. These five things should be the most essential parts of your character. You don’t have to stop at five though, it’s just a minimum.

1) Maqej has two forms and two names. Most know him as Mark, a skinny and short adult male with auburn hair and amber eyes, light brown skin, and usually dressed in biker leathers. A select handful, though, know his true name of Maqej and his true form of a full blooded ifrit. When in his true form, his hair flows and flickers like actual fire, with a pair of horns curling up through the front of it, and his eyes glow with a fiery intensity that reflects the heat of his soul. His skin is a very dark grey and almost scaled, with bright orange glowing through the cracks, along with a swirling, dizzying amount of tattoos all over his skin. He is also much larger in this form, almost six and a half feet in height and covered in huge muscles.
2) Maqej operates a haunted house in the town of Fever called Fevered Nightmares. When in business mode he operates as Mark, but when the house is open he actually operates as Maqej out front. In his "costume", his job is to settle fear in his customers before they even get into the house, making them more susceptible to the scares inside the house.
3) Fear is something that drives Maqej in all he does. Being around people who are afraid energizes him, so much so that he almost feeds on it. He has spent his life honing that, learning how to strike fear in those around him, even those that normally don't scare so easily; in many ways, those are his favorite targets.
4) There is a lot of anger boiling just under the surface in Maqej. He has spent his entire life having to hide who he really is from those around him, having to pretend that his true form is a "costume" that is used as a sideshow to draw in customers. It is absurd. He has a lot of pride in his ifrit nature, stubbornly maintaining a traditional ifrit name when possible, and longs to live his life out in the open.
5) For some time now, he has spent a lot of time running jobs for Valda. She came to Fevered Nightmares just once, and immediately recognized Maqej for what he really was; yet rather than scare her away, she offered a real chance at friendship with Maqej rather than Mark. That meant a lot to him, and makes him willing to do pretty much whatever she asks of him, as well as very protective of threats against her.
6) Maqej grew up on the outskirts of society, leading him to be not a very good people person despite his business owner role. So he comes off odd to other people (Stigmatized drawback), and is alternative nature makes animals outright hostile to him (Animal Animosity drawback).
7) Maqej loves to ride. He spent more of his business income than is entirely wise on a nice black Harley Davidson Road King. He lives in a tiny apartment above the grounds for Fevered Nightmares, with fairly rundown appliances and ratty though comfortable furniture, but he spares no expense on his bike.

Step 2: List two goals for the character that you, as a player, would like to see accomplished in-game during the campaign.

1) I would like to see him be of significant value to Valda, such as saving her life or doing something nobody else can do for her.
2) It would be fun to turn his haunted house into a sort of shelter for the odd of Fever, a way to let people be who they are in an environment where it is safe to do so.

Step 3: List two secrets about your character. One is a secret your character knows, the other a secret he is involved with but isn’t aware of yet.

1) Maqej is afraid of spiders. He doesn't like people to know this, as it doesn't go very well with his intimidation image, but those 8-legged freaks just really freak him out down to the bone.
2) Maqej doesn't know that both of his parents are ordinary humans (per the PathfinderWiki, "Sometimes, an ifrit is born to two human parents, either as a result of a curse or magic"). He assumes that he comes from a line of true ifrits, but in reality he is the result of a dark ritual gone wrong when his mother was pregnant. This is bad in two ways; one, he doesn't have the strong ties to ifrit heritage he believes he has, and two, it was entirely possible that he could have had a normal life were it not for his parents poor choices. His change in nature led to his mother dying in childbirth; his father was not present at the time, and he was taken into an orphanage. Presumably, his father is still out there somewhere.

Step 4: Describe three people who are tied to the character through blood, romance, honor or plain friendship. Two of them are friendly to the character, one is hostile or unfriendly. All can do something useful for you if you can get the situation to line up.

1) Valda Simmons was the first person to ever show him kindness and friendship after knowing what he really was. This was not insignificant to him, and because of it he now values her friendship more than anyone else's, and longs to be able to repay that kindness.
2) Joshua Harrison, or Joss, is the primary manager of Fever Nightmares. While not close friends, Mareq trusts him to run the business while he is away. He is a straight, and has no idea about Mareq's true nature, but he is a friendly enough sort and willing to overlook certain oddities.
3) John Ortiz, known as Gino, is Maqej's true father. They've never actually met, but Gino wouldn't care much for him if they did. In his eyes, Mareq is both a sign of his failure and the one responsible for the death of Mareq's mother Cheryl.

Step 5: Describe three memories that your character has. They don’t have to be elaborate, but should provide some content and flavor.

1) Maqej was cold. Cold and hungry. Cold and hungry and afraid. Three things that he absolutely hated to feel. He was on the streets again, kicked out of another home, and struggling to survive. What was worse, he could hear someone coming. He couldn't deal with this right now; the sudden stop, the shudder, the wide eyes, the scream. He was still very young at the time, not yet able to take care of himself yet, not yet able to hide. And people always hated him. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get handouts from people when you looked like a monster? Never mind that you're weak as a kitten, that you haven't the strength to kill a bug; if you look like a monster, you are one. He looked frantically around, trying desperately to find some place to hide, but there was nothing! S!@@ s@&@ s&@&, here they come! He squeezed his eyes shut, begging desperately for a way out, wishing there was something he could do, but knowing all the time that there was nothing. As expected, he heard the steps stop, the inhalation of breath, and then...

"Oh you poor thing! Are you out here all by yourself?"

He cracked open his eyes, and sees that rather than the dark grey cracked hands he was used to seeing, his hands were a smooth light brown; dirty, but normal. His eyes widened, and he whipped his head around frantically, until his eyes landed on the dirty window next to him. In the warped dirty glass he could see a reflection, but the image was not his own. Dirty auburn hair, unkempt but normal looking, topped his head; his wide eyes were an unusual but human looking amber color. He was still too skinny and too dirty, but he looked normal. It bore thinking about, maybe even freaking out about, but for right now he was too cold and hungry to care. Whatever happened to him, he would accept it for now.

"Yyyes.." he replied, shivering, "please, hhhelp..."

It was the first time he had changed, but it wouldn't be the last. It would take him a while to gain full control over it, but control it he would; and he would never again be that cold or hungry.

2) Maqej was manning the front of Fevered Nightmares, and it was a busy night. A good number of people lined up, and he could feel their fear of him. They even pay me for it... he thought to himself, a manical grin spreading across his fiery face. The screams coming from the house behind him added to the sweetness of the night, but there was something hollow about it too. He tried not to think about that. Instead he paced around, growling and glaring at various people, until his gaze met a gaze that did not immediately flick away. Instead, her dark brown eyes widen and her eyebrows shot up. "Magnificant..." she said under her breath, looking him up and down. She walked up to him, looked him in his fiery eyes, and said low enough so that only he could hear, "I see you, ifrit."

His eyes widened in shock, and then glanced frantically around. Did anyone else hear that? Is this it? All she did was laugh, though, laying her hand lightly on his muscled arm. "Don't worry, I won't tell." She handed him a card, and said "Give me a call sometime, if you want to do something more with your time than scare the locals..." She turned and walked slowly away, and he wrestled over his own emotions as he did. He alternated between gladness that she wasn't sticking around, and disappointment that she didn't stay. Conflicted, he continued going through the motions, but the whole time that card burned in his pocket and Valda remained on his mind. He knew he would call her, and while he didn't know what she would say, he had a feeling that his entire life was about to change.

3) His amber eyes flowed over the beautiful new bike as the dealer handed over the keys. He barely saw the man, but he felt those keys hit his hand. He could smell the new leather, the scent flooding his nose and invoking all sorts of good images in his head. He ran a hand along the body of the bike, feeling the smooth black metal beneath his hand as he slowly came up to the front of the bike. He swung his leg over and sat on the bike, hearing the leather creak as he settled in. The dealer was muttering on about some inane thing or another, trying to play up the buddy system, as if it would help him get the sale; as if it was needed at all. Maqej had been saving for this bike for years, and had his eyes nowhere else. He put the key in and turned on the bike, and then started up the engine. It roared to life, drowning out that inane chatter, and he was in love.

As he pulled the bike out for the test drive, he knew that the bike would be his. He had ridden before, of course, but never like this. The roar of the engine, the smooth handling, the feel of the wind, it was everything he had ever hoped for. This thing would be worth every penny he spent on it. Not that he'd be paying full price; the dealer was a normie, and Maqej felt confident he could intimidate the man into a good deal. This baby was as good as his.