Shekebbet's page

Str 10 (+0), Dex 14 (+2), Con 13 (+1), Int 18 (+4), Wis 12 (+1), Cha 10 (+0)
(2 + 6 + 8 + 10 + 4 + 2 = 32, +2 Int, -2 Con)

HP: 7, AC: 13 (+2 Dex, +1 natural armor), Spd 30 ft., Init +2, Saves: Fort +1, Ref +2, Will +3, BAB +0, Grapple +0, Atk: +0 Quarterstaff (1d6 B)

+2 Int, -2 Con, +2 racial bonus to Balance checks, 60 ft. darkvision, +1 natural armor bonus, +2 racial bonus to Decipher Script, Forgery and Knowledge (runes)

Proficient in Quarterstaff and no other weapons, no armor and no shields, access to all Simple and Complex spells

Runecaster (use knowledge runes in place of spellcraft to identify spells, use Runic template (increases standard action to full-round action, doubles casting time otherwise, targets of spell must use Int modifier instead of Dex, Con or Wis modifier for saving throws), Unique Spell (parrying staff)

Languages: Common, Draconic, Giant, Verrik, Goblin, Litorian
Skills (2 (class), +4 (Int), x4 (1st level) =24): Alchemy (Int) 2 (+6), Concentration (Con) 4 (+5), Decipher Script (Int) 4 (+10), Innuendo (Cha) 0 (+0), Intimidate (Cha) 0 (+0), Knowledge (arcana, Int) 4 (+8), Knowledge (runes, Int) 4 (+10), Search (Int) 4 (+8), Speak Language, Spellcraft (Int) 2 (+6)

Magister’s Staff (0 gp, 4 lbs), Backpack (2 gp, 2 lbs), Bedroll (1 sp, 5 lbs), Rations x5 (2.5 gp, 5 lbs), Waterskin (1 gp, 4 lbs), Flint & Steel (1 gp, -), Signal Whistle (8 sp, -), Belt Pouch (1 gp, ½ lb), 4 flasks Alchemist’s Fire (80 gp, 5 lbs), Map or Scroll Case (1 gp, ½ lb), 10 sheets Paper (4 gp, -), 1 vial of Ink (8 gp, -), Inkpen (1 sp, -), 10 Candles (1 sp, -), 1 lb Sealing Wax (1 gp, 1 lb), Signet Ring (5 gp, -), Book of +2 Knowledge (runes) (40 gp, 1 lb), Adventurer’s Outfit (5 gp, 2 lbs)

Encumbrance (Lt 33 lbs, Med 34-66 lbs, Hvy 67-100 lbs): 30 lbs carried
Cash Spent: 88.4 gp, Cash Remaining: 11.6 gp

0 (2 +1/day, 6 readied) – Bash, Canny Effort, Detect Creature, Detect Magic, Lesser Repair, Lesser Telekinesis
1st (1 +1/day, 4 readied) – Fireburst, Lesser Transfer Wounds, Object Loresight, Parrying Staff*

Parrying Staff
Transmutation
Level: 1 (Exotic)
Casting Time: Standard Action
Range: Touch
Target: The Magister’s Staff
Duration: 1 hour / level
Saving Throw: Will negates (harmless, object)
Spell Resistance: Yes (harmless, object)

Parrying Staff enhances the defensive properties of the Magister’s staff. As long as the staff is in hand, it provides a +2 shield bonus to the bearer’s armor class, even in a round where the staff is also being used offensively, and a further +2 bonus to any armor class benefits gained from use of the Fighting Defensively or Total Defense actions, or the use of the Combat Expertise feat. The +2 bonus is also added to the staff's hardness score for the duration, and to opposed checks to resist being Disarmed.

Diminished Effects: The duration is reduced to 1 minute, and the bonuses are reduced to +1.

Heightened Effects: The bonuses are increased to +3.

The boy who was once named Soren grew up in Khorl, son to a local scribe who made good coin writing inventories and contracts for a local shipping concern, and who spent more time at the offices near the docks than at home. Soren was raised by a girl several years his senior named Tula, who was also a junior scribe in his father’s employ, and who trained him diligently as he grew in scriptwork and figures, so that he too could join his father’s enterprise.

Tula had an obsessive interest not merely in the written word, but in runes and the lore of the ancient dragons, and Soren knew that she had grander plans than to be just another scribe, but had no idea what secret paths her studies had taken her. He shared her love of runes, which she seemed to regard as mathematical in nature, but which felt, to his eye, like living things, which must be carefully prised apart before their secrets could be gained. Her fascination with dragons did not pass to Soren, and he regarded them as frightening beasts, who had nearly destroyed the world, before the giants came and made things right, a position which he learned not to express in her presence, as it would lead to cold stares and angry silences. He knew that she corresponded regularly with scholars of rune-lore from distant lands, but she would never share with him these documents, and he put the matter out of his mind, too caught up in other discoveries.

He was not yet a man, by the standards of inheritance, but long past being a child when Tula shared with him that she would no longer be working for his father, or with him, as the correspondents she had been working with on her rune-studies were coming into town, and she would be leaving with them. Their relationship had progressed farther than his father would have approved, far beyond teacher and pupil, and Soren cursed her as he stormed out into the night.

The following day, he traveled to the docks, to see the mystery ship that people were talking about. Hooded figures, unnaturally slim and wrapped up as if against the cold, stood watch on the intricately carved prow of the ship, fashioned in the shape of a slender dragons neck. The dockmaster, a no-nonsense giantess renowned for being almost as wide as she was tall ordered the ship docked at the farthest and least convenient pier in her booming voice, and stomped dourly down to greet the ship’s captain, exchanging words out of earshot of the gathering onlookers. The ship remained there the full day, and none of the tall figures departed, but several people came and went, bringing supplies, each of them suffering an inspection from the surly giantess.

Soren was quite sure that he had seen Tula board the ship as well, as he recognized her cloak, but he was called away to assist his father before he could see her depart. Later that evening, he snuck out of the house, and traveled by side-street to Tula’s apartment, a journey he had been making more and more frequently in the past months. He found her door ajar, and while no lantern was lit, a hooded figure shuffled around in her quarters, securing her books and papers in a satchel. He confronted the thief, pulling its hand away from his lover’s things, only to recoil as the slim wrist he had seized proved to be cool and dry and covered with fine scales, not the limb of any human person at all!

‘Soren,’ the creature hissed from lipless mouth, its yellow unblinking eyes reflecting the light of the moon outside. His blood froze as he recognized the bracelet that he had given Tula hanging from that same wrist, and the light green cloak she favored hanging from its back. ‘You should not be here. I am leaving this place. Leaving this *life.* You never understood, and you never will.’

He ran out into the night, shocked to hear Tula’s words from this scaled creature, and was conflicted and yet relieved to learn that the dragon-prowed ship had left during the night. It was days before he worked up the nerve to return to her apartment, to find that she had left behind none of her precious books and papers, save a single folded sheet of parchment, weighed down by a silver bracelet that she had once received from a doting boy.

The parchment contained runes such as Soren had never seen before, and it was many months before he had deciphered even the least of them, but once the fire to learn had been ignited within him, it was not easily extinguished. His father was delighted at first with his son’s newfound studiousness, if somewhat perplexed by the esoteric nature of the tomes he sought out, and when Soren passed the necessary tests of cleverness, he too was contacted by the same ‘correspondents’ who had communed with Tula. During the three years he spent on these researches, he took on greater and greater duties from his father, eventually working directly with the city guard, penning postings of laws and curfews, or accounts of trials and verdicts, and there he met another young man of Khorl named Pendrick, who filled his head with tales of the giants the same way Tula had with tales of dragons. They had little in common, but when Soren’s slight frame and scholar’s robes would draw derision from some of the coarser guardsmen, Pendrick would stand up for him, and when Pendrick needed help finding the words to fill out a requisition, or to impress a ladyfriend, Soren would help him as well.

All the while, he stayed on course in his arcane studies, some stubborn boyish part of him thinking to prove himself to Tula, that he could indeed understand her, while another equally stubborn part of him wanting merely to master these runic secrets of arcane power, to, like Tula, leave this simple destiny to be nothing more than a scribe like his father before him.

The nature of the Mojh being what it is, it would come as no surprise to those who know that after his transformation, the boy who was Soren would no longer have any but the most academic interest in the woman who was Tula. Shaken by the transformations effects on his very soul, the Mojh now named Shekebbet has chosen to not depart on the dragon-prowed ship, not to leave with Tula, but to instead seek out his destiny in this town of his birth, seeing it now with new eyes, and sensing that perhaps there are opportunities here, lore that would remain lost if none remained to seek it.

[Yes, that’s right. Soren gave up his humanity and became a Mojh *to impress a girl.* Ain’t love grand?]