Rafiq al-Rasheed "Shadowmaster"'s page

About Rafiq al-Rasheed "Shadowmaster"

Inspired by Rami Malek

There is an old Osirion saying: “The Damned are easy to find.” Never has that been more true than in the case of Rafiq Al Rasheed, perhaps the most damned man in the history of Golarion.

He was once a teacher and a scholar from the glittering land of Qadira and his life appeared to be perfect. He was engaged to a wonderful woman, he was an heir to inherit great wealth, and he had a brother and father who loved him.

None of these things were true.

Rafiq’s father died one night at dinner and when the authorities arrived to take away the body, they accused Rafiq of poisoning the old man. He was dragged away to jail, protesting his innocence all the way. Naturally he assumed that his beloved friends and family would defend him at the trial. They did not and without a defense, Rafiq was sentenced to a life of hard labor.

He spent five years breaking rocks in a prison quarry, moaning over the sad twist of fate that brought him to these circumstances. It wasn’t until he heard overheard a conversation between two guards about a wealthy lord who was rumored to have gained a vast fortune by engineering the imprisonment of his rival that Rafiq began to suspect his circumstances were not an accident.

For days he burned with rage and fury, obsessed at the idea that all his woes had been engineered by some unseen monster. Then one night, in his cell, Rafiq heard a whisper, “Who is there?” He asked.

“Your shadow.” Replied the Whisper. Through pure force of will, Rafiq had accidentally summoned an eidolon from the Umbral Plane and this eidolon was now bound to him forever. Together Rafiq and his “Whisper” escaped from the prison and set off to find the evil lord that had kept him in prison. He tracked the foul despoiler to a large house that had once been owned by Rafiq’s own father and he battered down the door.
In that moment, he understood the horror his life had become.

His brother and his fiancee had conspired to frame him for murder and they were
now living fat off the spoils of their fiendish plot.

In a fit of rage, Rafiq killed the lovers and fled Qadira. He reappeared five days later in Osirion where he threw himself upon the mercy of the Ruby Prince, begging that country’s leaders for protection. The Throne was fascinated by his story and granted Rafiq a position as one of the court magicians that served Osirion throne.

As time passed in that position, Rafiq was granted a dispensation by the Throne to act as an agent of Osirion inside the Pathfinder Society. When he arrived in Absalom, people who saw him claimed that his shadow seemed to move on it’s own….