Sarah, Bitter-Rose's page

Sarah, Bitter-Rose
Female changeling witch (seducer) 1/ bard (court bard) 1/gestalt 1
NE Medium humanoid (changeling)
Init +2; Senses darkvision 60 ft.; Perception -1
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Defense
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AC 12, touch 12, flat-footed 10 (+2 Dex)
hp 9 (1d8+1)
Fort +1, Ref +4, Will +1/+2(fey)
Resist
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Offense
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Speed 30 ft.
Melee Dagger +0 (1d4, 19-20/x2)
Spell-Like Abilities (CL 1st; concentration +4)
. . 1/day each—dancing lights, detect magic, disguise self, pass without trace
Witch Spells Prepared (CL 1st; concentration +4)
. . 1st—Ear Piercing Scream, Sleep
. . 0—Guidance, Light, Putrefy Food and Drink
Familiar Spells Known
. . 1st—Ear Piercing Scream, Haze of Dreams, Sleep, Cure Light Wounds, Nereid’s Grace, Mount, Mudball
. . 0—All
. . Patron Plant
Bard Spells Known (CL 1st; concentration +4)
. . 1st (2/day)—recharge innate magic, silent image
. . 0 (at will)—ghost sound, message, prestidigitation, read magic
Hexes
Charm, Coven, Cauldron
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Statistics
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Str 10, Dex 15, Con 12, Int 16, Wis 8, Cha 18
Base Atk +1; CMB +4; CMD 15
Feats Extra Hex
Traits Noble Born (Medyved), Extremely Fashionable
Skills bluff +8/+10 (if sexually attracted), craft (alchemy) +11, diplomacy +12/+14(fey), disguise +8, knowledge (nature) +7, knowledge (arcana) +7, knowledge (nobility) +8, linguistics +7, perform (song) +8, spellcraft +7, use magic device +8
Languages Common, Aklo, Elven, Goblin, Sylvan
SQ Hag Magic, Witchborn, Heraldic Expertise, Bardic Performance (Countersong, Distraction, Fascinate, Satire) 8 rounds/day, Familiar (Flowering Lattice)
Other Gear Witch’s Kit (21 gp), Courtier’s Outfit (30 gp), Jewelry (50 gp), 37 gp

Character Image

Sarah displays no outward indication of her changeling heritage. Her hair is long, falling nearly all the way down her back and is autumn red. Her features are soft and youthful--her skin is pale with just a touch of color and her features understated. She wears a crown of roses upon her head (actually her familiar Alraune, who whispers secrets to her while Sarah speaks) and wears a green dress interlaced with golden flowers that she managed to take with her when she left her home. She still has a few favored pieces of jewelry as well, most prominent being a silver necklace shaped like leaves and inset with emeralds. Her voice is soft and kind--a classic soprano--and her eyes are soft and gentle green. She is fond of plants of all kinds but especially flowers, the brighter the better, and sometimes sings to them when she gardens.

But all this belies the corruption beneath her skin. When she pricks herself, her blood flows slow like sap and some of it is shaded amber instead of red. Her heart has begun to rot in her chest--if one were to cut her open they would find a strange gnarled root there instead of flesh and blood. Sometimes, when she is still, it simply stops beating. As Sarah’s power grows, her form will likely grow stranger with it, a prospect she gladly embraces.

When she uses magic to disguise herself, her favored face is Mother Sorrow--a gnarled old woman who looks to be more tree than person, with skin wrinkled and cracked from life under the sun and a hundred hard years, a nose like a broken branch of a tree and twisted black nails.

Sarah Medyved was born to a minor branch of the Medyved family in New Stetven. Sarah was the oldest child of three--a middle brother and a much younger sister. Her early life was rather uneventful--she spent much of her time in her parent’s garden, reading books and tending to the flowers. There was nothing to indicate anything unusual about her heritage--she was the spitting image of her mother in looks if not in personality. Her parents were consummate social climbers--their branch of the Medyved family had fallen out of favor, though times were certainly not hard for any of them. Her parents rather obviously favored her siblings, who behaved more appropriately for little nobles, but Sarah did not care as long as she had her books and her garden.

In an attempt to secure greater social standing for their family, Sarah’s parents decided to marry her off to a member of the Surtova family. At first, Sarah acquiesced--she had figured that an arranged marriage was in her future and in all the fairy stories that she had read even the ugliest of monsters could be made a handsome prince by true love.

Edvard was not an ugly monster, it was true--at least not on the outside. The young scion of the Surtova family had a reputation as a bit of a cad--but the more Sarah learned of him the more she grew to hate and fear him. He had been betrothed before but his fiancee had disappeared under unknown circumstances--and all the rumors indicated he had been unspeakably cruel to her. Increasingly, he showed that cruelty to Sarah--humiliating her in public, openly speaking of his desire for other women and in one case, he even his Sarah. This man could not be her future husband. Sarah would not allow it.

So at a ball hosted by Edvard’s family, Sarah refused to dance with him. When confronted, she told everyone there all that she had learned of the man--expecting that this would lead to the end of their betrothal. It did, in a way. Her parents locked her in the garden and burned her books in front of her eyes. They told her that she would stay there without food until she had learned to be a proper noble and earned back Edvard’s favor--how she was going to do that locked in the garden was up to her. Regardless, she was disinherited--she had better hope that Edvard would be willing to care for such a wicked wife. No one in the manor attempted to speak to her--at first, she assumed that they had been forbidden to do so. But one day she overheard her brother talking to one of the knights--he was mocking her predicament and was glad that with her out of the way he would be technically the eldest child.

In the garden, Sarah thought that she would surely die. She thought perhaps this was preferable to the life her parents wanted for her--so she found a spot of soil in the garden and laid there, ready to waste away into nothing and rot into the soil to feed her favorite flowers. But as she laid there, something happen--the flowers began to speak. At first, Sarah thought that it must be a dying dream--soon she would be in the Boneyard, where only Pharasma could judge her. But soon she realized that it was real. The flowers told her their secrets--how to sustain herself on just a few of their berries and a bit of dew. They told her which of them were panaceas and which of them were poisons, and how the slightest kiss from belladonna or lords-and-ladies could be quite deadly--a flower’s love was both bitter and sweet.

With her song, Sarah lured one of her father’s knight’s to the garden. She convinced him to slip a little bit of a nectar into her family’s food as a favor. Slowly but surely she began to influence the staff of the manor while sickening her family. Soon, all four of her relatives were bedridden--and soon they could not pay for their staff, who began to abandon them. Sarah was at last able to slip from the garden when the guards left the manor. She found her parents in their bedroom, sick from the poison that Sarah had been giving them. They could still survive, if properly treated. Sarah took her father’s hand and promised him that she knew how to treat his illness. She took him to her garden and their, she buried him alive--a final gift to the plants who had given her so much. She felt no need to harm her mother or siblings--they would all be destitute soon enough without their father to care for them, which was a punishment much greater than murder, in Sarah’s mind.

With the manor in ruins, Sarah used her magic to escape New Stetven unharmed and unsuspected. She disguised herself as a crone--a form she is increasingly fond of taking--and made her way to Restov. She abandoned her old name and family crest and began to call herself the Bitter-Rose, in honor of the flowers who had helped her escape her fate in New Stetven.

Since then, she has realized that her nature cannot be fully human; Her research indicates that she must be a changeling. She does not know if she was switched at birth with her parents’ true daughter; she does not truly care. Part of her thinks that it was the gift of her bitterness that transformed her.

Sarah is incredibly guarded and two-faced. She presents an outward personality of sweetness and light in hopes that others will let down their guard around her so she can learn if they are a threat and to gauge any weaknesses that she might turn against them.

Sarah’s heart has been poisoned by her bitterness--she has a growing vindictive streak that she occasionally indulges. Seeing other people happy fills her with spite and a desire to make them know sorrow as deep as hers. Though she has not murdered anyone since escaping she occasionally indulges herself in plots and intrigues--sometimes to gain knowledge for use in blackmail, sometimes for the simple joy of cruelty. Though she is fairly adept at disguise and misdirection, all it would have taken would be a simple misstep to bring the whole town down upon her and get the coven kicked out of Restov.