Shale Withe's page

About Shale Withe

Shale, from an early age, had been training long and hard to become a Riftwarden. Her family, the With family, celebrated many generations of accomplished members of the Riftwardens. Growing up on the stories of conquering the evils of the multiverse and the wicked Blackfire Adepts, joining the Riftwardens felt like her destiny.

She was found to have no arcane talents, as many Riftwardens tend to prefer, and so was going to take up worship of a deity.

Eager to please her family, made of many generations of Riftwardens from Golarion, she made her way into her family's libraries for "study". She came across several scrolls that spoke of a ritual for communing with outside forces, and she surmised that this ritual would allow her to speak directly to Black Butterfly, her current favored deity as a protector of the vastness of the dark skies of the Material Plane. She hoped that she could be recognized by the obscure deity and perhaps granted a boon to aid her.

Hastily putting the ritual into action, she did not obtain all of the components she would have needed to compensate for a lack of help in the ritual's performance. The ritual still worked, but she did not find Black Butterfly. She instead saw a court of skewered corpses, and an eight-eyed smile. Moments later, a black, ghostly, and slender figure loomed over her and her ritual space. This strange entity had not only opened her mind's hidden psychic sensitivity, but bonded with her.

She still considers this ritual to be one of the greatest mistakes of her life.

Her family mostly agreed. Furious that she not only stole ritual scrolls but possibly injured her chances of becoming a proper Riftwarden, they had almost given up on her, when her father suggested that she prove herself worthy of another chance. Her father, an elven Tanglebriar hunter, had recently worked with members of the Pathfinder Society in combating the demons of the Worldwound, and suggested that joining the Society, gaining experiences valuable to any interplanar explorer, and possibly coming to better understand her new "companion" might have her redeemed in the eyes of the rest of the family.

Finding the Dark Archive's unique knowledge intriguing, Shale continues to strive in the Society to prove to her family and herself that she can still protect the planes like she had always wanted.