Perhilion Brightpebble's page

Arcanist, 1

Str 9, Dex 12, Con 14, Int 17, Wis 10, Cha 14
HP = 8
Initiative = +5 (+1 Dex + Improved Initiative)
Low Light Vision

Saves
Fortitude = 2 (Base 0 + 2 con)
Reflex = 1 (Base 0 + 1 dex)
Will = 2 (Base 2)

AC = 12 (+1 Dex +1 Sized) Flat Footed 11 Touch 12

BAB = 0 (Str -1 size +1)
CMB = -2 (Str - 1 size -1)
CMD = 10 (+1 Dex - 1 Size)

Trait: Magical Lineage (scorching ray)
Feat: Improved Initiative

[Gnome Magic[/b] Dancing Lights, Prestidigitation, Ghost Sound or Speak With Animals 1/day
Arcane Reservoir 3/4
Exploits
Dimensional Slide - Teleport 10' as Move or Withdrawal Action

Spells
All cantrips
First - Color Spray, Grease, Magic Missile, Summon Monster 1, Charm Person, Burning Hands

Acrobatics = +1
Appraise = +3
Bluff = +2
Climb = -1
Diplomacy = +2
Disguise = +2
Fly = +1
Heal = +0
Intimidate = +2
Knowledge (Arcana) = +7
Knowledge (Local) = +7
Knowledge (Planes) = +7
Perception = +2 (gnome racial)
Ride = 1
Sense Motive = 0
Spellcraft = +7
Stealth = +5 (+1 dex, Size bonus +4)
Survival = 0
Swim = -1
Use Magic Device = +6

Perhilion is not large for even a gnome but he is robust and energetic. His skin is dark brown with a blue tinge. He has dark blue hair, usually groomed to stand straight up, with streaks of lighter blue in it. He likes to wear fine clothing with rustic boots. He does not like robes. His eyes are big and liquid and very dark.

The Acadamae at Korvosa attracts magical talent from all over Avistan. Spellcasters from the Land of the Linnorm kings to Geb come there to study. Even given that diversity a gnome student is something of a rarity. Magical talent is not rare among gnomes but the discipline to pursue it in an academic setting is less common. So young Perhilion’s family saw an opportunity in his bookish ways. His father was a bard of minor talent who settled for a living ghostwriting songs and poems for more famous performers who were largely commissioned to produce tripe venerating egotistical small-time lords and ladies. His mother was a performing sorcerer with a knack for ray spells, her small arsenal of trick-shots earned enough money to supplement the family income until the locals grew bored of it at each stop. Always travelling, always marginal they realized that innate magical talent in their young son was married to a seriousness of mind that was rare. They reasoned that he might be able to gain entrance into a serious magical college and live a bigger more interesting life than they had been able to.

So they bet everything on shooting for the top, and travelled to Korvosa. The Acadamae’s fierce reputation made it sound like an ideal place to stave of the bleaching for an overly serious gnome. The entrance examinations were tough, even tougher on an unlikely candidate like Perhilion. He thrived under the pressure never breaking, never turning away from terrifying illusions and fiendish puzzles. In the end the Acadamae was still dubious, he required the sponsorship of one of its members, a very impressed half-elven wizard named Aloria Sundowner. She arranged for a scholarship package for Perhilion and was even able to help find his parents employment in Magnimar, so they were able to at least remain in the region.

For the early dreary years of apprenticeship Perhilion did what it took to succeed in the Acadamae. It was a mixture of scholarship and grunt work. Student’s competed with each other in often dangerous ways for the opportunity to undertake special assignments and prove their worth to aloof and exploitative professors. Perhilion was no exemplary leader of the class but he made it through with the benefit of talent and a tight alliance with a few of his fellow students.

He and his friends became interested in raw, primal magic. The fundamental essences of things. They did a great deal of reading and studying about other planes of existence and worked up theories and ideas about magic as an essential force constituting the nature of all things. It was when these studies were at their most interesting that Perhilion felt his natural magical talent at its strongest.

One evening alone while this cycle was at it’s apex he attempted a simple conjuration spell with a few on the fly ‘customizations.’ To his surprise the spell was viable! It worked! All too well.

The arcane power within surged into an unstoppable torrent, pouring out into dimensions beyond. A curious outsider saw the chance to step through. The strange haunting songbird summoned before him was not under his control. It spoke to him in a language he did not know. Seeing he did not understand, it instead sang him a song. That terrifying melody took him places he hopes never to go again. Enthralled in the outsider’s music he saw visions of the end, the bleaching spreading over the land. His parents wispy and pale, even his human and elven friends with white hair and vacant stares. He passed out at some point. When he awoke from his nightmarish dreams the outsider was gone.

He did not report the incident. He didn’t see the point. So his instructors could not understand when the time came for exams that he point blank refused to cast summoning spells. He insisted with obvious fear that he simply could not do it. This elicited no sympathy from the Adadamae. Summoning is required. His ultimate refusal to do so led to his expulsion.

He wandered the streets of Korsova with a few gold in his pocket. Stunned at what ad happened to him, shattered at his fall from grace he could not inform his parents, nor face his friends at the Acadamae, he wasn’t even sure they would talk to him. It wasn’t long before he found shiver. It’s capacity to remove fear, to dull pain, was irresistible to him.

He wound up a small time dealer to support his habit and his grubby existence in the back alleys of Korsova. Just living from one moment of oblivion to the next. A dealer who takes from his own supply is a poor businessman and he soon found himself with a mounting pile of debt to dangerous folk. As time went by he worked more and more desperately to service his debt. One of his opportunistic creditors decided that his Academae connections offered a good opportunity to expand into more prosperous clientele and ordered him to try pitching shiv to some of his former classmates.

Terrified at he prospect of approaching anybody from the Acadamae and unable to defy his creditors he lurked outside the grounds with no idea what to do. He was not as inconspicuous as he had hoped. One of the people who spotted him was the wizard Nimiyah, a Vudrani wizard from far away Nex, and one of his good friends at the Acadamae. She saw a pale ghost of her old friend, his bluish skin turning lighter, his hair beginning to streak with gray. Silently she slipped away to speak with Aloria. Together they located and confronted him. But where he was expecting condemnation he found compassion. Before he realized what was happening he was bundled into the back of a wagon full of thileu bark, bound for Whistledown.

There his friends paid for three months worth of lodging ahead of time. And a sympathetic elderly gnome named Montague brought him water and soup as his body was wracked with withdrawal. Visions of terrifying outsiders and apocalyptic bleachings tormented him but the kindness of Montague and the reminder of who he once was drew him through. When at last he was able to emerge from his bedchamber and stand on wobbly legs in the sunshine he found he had a package. Nimiyah had located and sent him his old spellbook, unlooked at for more than a year.

Now he has begun to study his spells once again. He avoids the section on summoning monsters but he can feel that old link between the words on the page and the raw magic within rekindled, and he is exploring ways to touch that without fear. His bleaching has been arrested, but gnomes in Whistledown are aware of what has happened, and he doesn’t like the look in their eyes. So he has carefully brushed blue dye into his hair and set his eyes forward. Looking for destiny away from Korvosa and Whistledown.

Perhilion is feel both incredibly energized about exploring the future and incredibly stuck where he's at. He wants to continue his investigations in to the raw nature of things, essential magic and extra-planar phenomenon, but he is afraid. He knows his first priority should be dealing with the fact that he owes big money to dangerous people with long memories, it's not even clear if any amount of money could buy forgiveness from them now. But the problem is so bound up in his painful past he'd rather not address it. Similarly he knows he needs to move forward investigating the blot but he's very afraid it will lead the one place he doesn't want to go, summoning magic.

I've been thinking that if he advances in the future he will take familiar as an exploit, to gain a familiar he really does not want to have. The creature would be GM's choice and it would be trying to convince it to leave while it continually harasses him to face his fear of summoning spells. How he deals with the question would be contingent on what happens in the meantime.