About RaldoraCrunch:
Raldora
Female Fetchling Summoner (Shadow Caller) NG Medium Native Outsider Init +2, Speed 30 --------------
Leather Armor - +2 AC; +2 Max Dex; 0 Penalty; 10% ASF (Ignored) ---------------
Light Crossbow- +2 / 1d8 [Crit 19-20/x2; Range 80] ---------------
House Traits: Well Traveled - +1 Knowledge(Local) and (Nature)
---------------
Shadow Blending (Su) - Increase miss chance while in dim light to 50%
Shadow Caller Class Skills - Remove UMD, add Stealth
---------------
---------------
---------------
1-st Level: 2/day
---------------
Leather Armor - 10gp Pathfinder's Kit - 12gp
Unspent Gold - 1gp Campaign Background:
In the superstitious, magic fearing lands of Ustalav, it is difficult to make a living if you at all out of the ordinary. With luck, a simple stranger will get little more than a few dark mutterings as he makes the journey through the countryside to one of the more welcoming cities. For those showing hints of magic, the reception at the various small villages can be… considerably worse.
Raldora, by her very nature, goes well beyond that mark. Light grey skin, pupilless yellow eyes (with just a touch of green mixed in), snow white hair, and an elven litheness with an otherwise human physique makes her, as with all fetchlings, rather unnatural looking. So it’s probably with little surprise that when she walked into the first town she came across within Ustalav’s borders, she quickly found herself fleeing from a mob. Having her shadow walking beside her as a four-legged beast probably didn’t help things either. /////////
I hunt. Feed you. The eidolon’s mouth doesn’t move, but its voice sounds in Raldora’s mind, a mix between hollow shadow and a dragon’s rumble. She chuckles a bit at that and gives it a small pat. The Eidolon, named Dux, was right of course. It might be rough living for a bit, but she wouldn’t starve with Dux able to take down game for her. And she’d be sure to release it back to its home before venturing into the next town. For the moment, however, Raldora was content to sit for a while and recover her energy after that run. In fact, she might even go for a brief nap… ///////// Raldora woke up with a jolt as a wagon clattered to a stop in front of her. She quickly glanced to her side, fearing the driver had stopped to try and put down Dux, but saw only her actual shadow. Her eidolon had returned to its plane when she fell asleep, after all. As it turned out, she needn’t have worried. To her surprise, the driver of the wagon turned out to be the esteemed Professor Lorrimor. A great stroke of luck as well, as the Professor was traveling in the same direction, and was more than willing to trade transport for nothing more than a few questions. Fetchlings weren’t common to begin with, and one in magic-fearing Ustalav was a rare sight indeed. For Raldora, however, the temptation of seeing with her own eyes the apparent splendor of Karcau was enough for her to attempt the journey. This reason for travel was one of many things Lorrimor asked about. He also asked about her home, both the Shadow Plane itself as well as her kind’s community in the Prime Material. Cultural and psychological differences, physical differences (besides the obvious), and so on were also points of discussion. He even managed to find out she was a Summoner, and got her to summon her eidolon for observation – she didn’t think her connection to Dux was anything to be ashamed of, though she agreed with Lorrimor’s suggestion to not have him summoned when traveling through a town or city. For her part, Raldora asked plenty of questions about where Lorrimor had traveled, and the professor was more than willing to pass the time telling stories. If the young fetchling had yearned for travel before, now she was overwhelmed by the number of places she learned about. Before too long, however, the pair had reached the next town. There they parted ways, but with the promise of staying in touch. Indeed, though it was infrequent and opportunistic, Raldora and Lorrimor exchanged correspondence several times over the next few years, sharing knowledge of new locations and some information on Raldora’s abilities as a Summoner. Still, it came as a shock when she learned that he had died. As luck would have it, she was close enough to attend the funeral, so she delayed her current plans and headed for Ravengro to pay her respects to a good friend. General Background (Warning! Long!):
”’You’re not ready yet, Raldora.’ ‘Maybe in a few years, Raldora.’ Hmph, I’ll show him…” Raldora, a wizard’s apprentice only barely out of her teen years, muttered to herself as she etched runes copied from her master’s spellbook onto the granite floor. While the elder fetchling had said multiple times he saw great potential in Raldora as a conjuror, he had yet to let her create anything more complicated than a bit of magic slime to cause others to slip and fall. Hilarious at times, perhaps, but hardly exciting at all.
Now, though… her master was out on an errand, and he had left his spellbook open to an… interesting ritual. She didn’t quite understand what it was supposed to summon, but that didn’t matter. If she could show that she could summon this… whatever it was, surely her master would realize she was ready to move on. She put the last touches on the runes, and stepped back to check them and make sure they were correct – she was confident, not stupid. Seeing that they were all good, she strode to the other end of the chamber. It was a bare room, except for the single torch and door both bisecting the room. The single light caused large shadows, and her body, as with all fetchlings, fuzzed slightly in the dim. Not that the low illumination mattered to them in general, or her in particular now as her eyes easily made out the script in her master’s spellbook. The spell took a good minute or two to recite, but Raldora grinned as the runes began to glow slightly as she finished, proving she made no mistakes. Oddly, however, nothing else seemed to happen. Frowning now, she left the bookstand to take a closer look at the runes, wondering if it was just taking time, or if she had made some small error somewhere. Just as she passed the door and torch though, her master suddenly ran up to the doorway. Realizing within a moment what was going on, he shouted, Raldora! Wait!” It was but a moment too late. As Raldora finished the last step she was taking and started to turn, intending to ask what was wrong, the torch flickered slightly, causing Raldora’s shadow to shift just over the edge of the runes… and stuck. For a moment, time seemed to freeze… and then Raldora could only scream as she felt herself be ripped away from the Prime Material plane. //////// Awareness. Existance. It did not know what it was, where it came from, or even what it was, but it knew it was. ”AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!.” Other. Fear. Panic. Protect. Protect? It had confusion for a moment. The fearsound had not been its, so why was there a protectdesire? Was the Other something to it? ”HELP!!” Mistessdistress. Help. Protect. It began to understand. The Other was… Mistress? Yes, that felt right. And Mistress was calling for help. It wanted to help, but first it needed to know. It extended its awareness. It was formless, but it was connected to Mistress, and Mistress had Form. It could sense more Others too, others with Form. They were Mistressfearsource, it realized. They were what needed to be stopped to help Mistress. But first it needed Form… ///////// Raldora screamed again in fear as she backed up against the invisible barrier, creatures of the Plane of Shadow she did not recognize continuing to crawl toward the magical circle. Instinctively she knew that if the circle was broken she would lose her only way back home, but she could do nothing but watch while the creatures advanced. Protect. Need Form. The mental voice sounded hollow, shadowy… but not unfriendly. With only three words to work on, however, she didn’t understand what it meant. Protect though… for some reason, her mind produced the image of one of the guard dogs that protected the few livestock the fetchling colony kept. Wouldn’t it be nice to have one of those to protect her now. Yes… Raldora had little time to ponder what that meant before she realized something had happened: her shadow, formerly diffused from the lack of any major light source, had suddenly sharpened, as if she was standing outside during a bright afternoon. And it didn’t stop there, becoming a deeper darkness than it had ever been, and growing larger… she realized with a start that it had actually detached from her! And it was outside the circle! She could only watch in amazement as it continued to grow darker, soon rivaling the most lightless caverns. Just when she didn’t think it could be any blacker, it seemed to… shift… and suddenly her formerly two-dimensional shadow appeared to be a three-dimensional blob. Belatedly, she realized one of the creatures was about to reach the circle. But before she could even think to scream, her shadow surged towards it, slamming into it and knocking it away. She realized then that it wasn’t a formless blob anymore. It had morphed into the same shape as the guard dogs she had just thought of… or at least, a grim shadowy version of it. With plenty of extra teeth it revealed when it growled at the rest of the creatures approaching the circle. That was enough for the rest of the creatures to decide to back off. For a few minutes, nothing else happened. Just as she was wondering What now? she felt another pull, this time much more gentle than the original. As if sensing she was about to be taken away, her… shadow… sunk back down into two dimensions and shifted back to her form, reattaching just before she was pulled back through the barrier between the planes. /////////// Between recovery time and the punishment for trying to trying to cast a spell from his spellbook, it was quite some time before Raldora and her master talked about what happened. It was not a conversation that could be skipped, however, especially given the changes it implied. ”Your shadow protected you?” Raldora’s master asked, and Raldora nodded. He stroked his chin for a moment at that before asking another question, ”Do you mean your shadow scared the creatures away?” ”No sir, it… turned into a creature itself, almost like the guard dogs for the fields. I think I thought of one of them when I heard the voice the first time.” ”Interesting…” the wizard walked over to a shelf and pulled a book, leafing through it quickly. ”Yes… that spell was intended to be a trap for invaders, but for one of us… it’s possible your shadow was bound to some entity from the Shadow Plane when you were transported, or perhaps some fragment of yourself… It’s impossible to say.” “If that is the case… could you try to call it again? It should be linked to you mentally, if my guess is correct.” Raldora nodded, and closed her eyes to concentrate. She didn’t really know what she was trying to do, but she tried imagining her shadow repeating what it had done while she was trapped. If whatever her shadow had become was indeed mentally linked, it would get the idea, right? Yes, Mistress. She jumped as the voice spoke within her head again, and both she and her master watched as her shadow shifted, repeating the same process it had in the Shadow Plane. Now that she wasn’t panicking, she realized two things – it was very difficult to move while her shadow was morphing, and it was taking a bit of time to work. If her master was right, it very well might be because she was reaching to the Shadow Plane to bring forth… whatever it was she was summoning.
”My power comes through my eidolon? But then…” ”Yes, that means I can no longer teach you. The only thing that will help you improve now is practice and experience… And yes, that means you get to travel.” Raldora had brightened at that news – while she never exactly regretted electing to study magic, she had always wanted to see the world as well. Getting to do both at the same time… ”I would suggest you spend at least some time getting used to your new powers before you sprint off, of course. Also…” he looked at the eidolon, who was apparently content to just sit beside its ‘Mistress’ for the time being. ”You may want to consider giving your eidolon a name. I much doubt there would be any difference, but I imagine calling it ‘eidolon’ might get irritating after a while. Besides, even a creature of dusk deserves a name.” Surprisingly, the eidolon actually spoke then, its voice sounding hollow even outside Raldora’s mind. ”It is… dusk?” It sounded like a question, but the way it pronounced ‘dusk’, with an almost silent ‘k’, sounded right to Raldora. ”Dux then,” she said, nodding. ”I think I may have to teach it a bit as well. Having a travelling companion that refers to itself in the third person all the time might get a little annoying.” Her now-former master nodded. ”It is your decision, of course. Now come, I may not be able to teach you magic any longer, but there are still some things I can teach you about traveling…” |
