Sour Heck's page

About Sour Heck

Sour Heck is a stony-faced Ustalavic mongrel, descended from an assortment of rowdy, randy Varisians and Kellids and Sczarnis. “My family fled ethnic persecution in the city,” he drawls, “but my mother tracked us down us eventually.”

He speaks with the barbarous accent of the Graidmere swamp where he grew up. “When I was young, my family lived on a gray stew made from strained swamp mud and bilge rats old or sick enough for us to catch. Later, we fell on hard times.” However, when he’s at a tavern or campfire, telling a story of days long gone, he does a hundred different voices: peasants, merchants and nobles; wizards, whores and priests; humans, dwarves and orcs. It’s easy to close your eyes, lean back, and imagine the voices really are the heroes and monsters of legend.

Little Heck learned the talespinner’s art as a child from a Numerian skald who washed up somehow on the slimy banks of Graidmere. “Old Krusp taught me spears and slings and battle-songs too. I became the most feared warrior in the swamp, until my sisters made me stop singing.” Heck traveled as the skald’s apprentice for years, bringing the oral history of the world to the most remote and ignorant corners of Ustalav. Performing beside his teacher, Heck discovered an unexpected talent for making even the most beaten-down Ustalavic peasant laugh.

Sour Heck himself never laughs, or even smiles. He’s tall and darkly handsome, with sympathetic black eyes, but seems to carry an invisible boulder of pessimism as he trudges down the road. His morose attitude is such a pointed exaggeration of the Ustalavic national mood that it is impossible to take seriously. Every other sentence he speaks is a slice of gallows humor, spread thickly with irony, aimed to startle a chuckle out of an audience. Without even speaking, Sour Heck gets laughs with a well-timed arched eyebrow, a painful hunching of his shoulders, or a stinging palm to his face whenever life seems to be a particularly ludicrous farce.

For a while he traveled with a Kellid war band that offered protection from bandits to merchants on the road, but left when they discovered robbing merchants as road bandits was less work and just as profitable. He tried his luck as a jester in the courts of Caliphas and the salons of Karcau, but found the line between amusing and offending nobles too thin to walk safely. Most recently he has become a kind of professional mourner, playing traditional Ustalavian funeral drum music and lifting the moods of the bereaved with strangely fitting black comedy.

Sour Heck seems like the least likely threat to the myriad terrors that haunt Ustalav by night. But he's slouched his way to every corner of the nation, from the desolate slopes of the Hungry Mountains to the teeming wharves of Lake Kavapesta, from the most decadent lodges in the Lozeri woods to the most dismal hovels in Graidmere swamp. Along the way, he's met saints and scoundrels, spellweavers and swordswingers--heroes, in short. He's drunk with them, mourned with them, made them laugh amidst tears, kindled friendships on battlefields. He's also warned them--casually, ironically, sometimes apparently by accident, he’s warned them--that the Whispering Way, a cabal of necromancers who aspire to the to the power of Tar-Baphon is shaping a sinister plot in the shadows of Ustalav.

To the most promising of these heroes he tells the tale of the Hawthorn Society, a covert order dedicated to ending the threat of the Whispering Way and their ilk. He doesn't exactly urge people to join. "They're doomed, of course," he says. "Then again, so is everyone else."

Of all the rag-tag groups ever to challenge unspeakable evil, the Hawthorn Society is surely among the rag-taggiest. Some might think it a joke. But like all Sour Heck’s jokes, there’s a grim truth at the heart of it. If the dark powers don't fear the unfurled war-banner of the Hawthorn Society, perhaps they should...and perhaps they will.

STR 14 (+2)
DEX 10 (+0)
CON 14 (+2)
INT 10 (+0)
WIS 10 (+0)
CHA 22 (+4)

AL: N
Initiative: +10
Size: Medium
Speed: 30'
HP: 90
Languages: Common, Skald, Varisian

Defenses:
AC: 18, Touch: 11, Flat-footed: 17
CMD: 20
Fort: +13, Ref: +12, Will: +14

Offense & Weapons:
BAB: +8/+3
+3 Longspear +13/+8 1d8+6 crit x3
Masterwork dagger (melee) +11/+6 1d4+2 crit 19-20 x2
Masterwork dagger (thrown) +9 1d4+2 crit 19-20 x2
Masterwork sling +9/+4 1d4+2 crit x2

Feats:
Arcane Strike (Take a swift action to make your weapons deal +3 damage and count as magic for the purpose of overcoming damage reduction for one round.)
Discordant Voice (Whenever you are using bardic performance to create a spell-like or supernatural effect, allies within 30 feet of you deal an extra 1d6 points of sonic damage with successful weapon attacks. This damage stacks with other energy damage a weapon might deal. Projectile weapons bestow this extra damage on their ammunition, but the extra damage is dealt only if the projectile hits a target within 30 feet of you.)
Flagbearer (As long as you hold your clan, house, or party’s flag, members of that allegiance within 30 feet who can see the flag (including yourself) gain a +2 (due to Banner of Ancient Kings) morale bonus on attack rolls, weapon damage rolls, and saving throws against fear and charm effects. You must hold the flag in one hand in order to grant this bonus. If the standard is taken by the enemy or destroyed, this bonus becomes a penalty, affecting all creatures that the bonus previously affected for 1 hour, or until you reclaim the lost flag.)
Great Fortitude (+2 on Fortitude saves)
Improved Initiative (+4 bonus on Initiative checks)
Iron Will (+2 on Will saves)
Lingering Performance (Bard performance effects continue until new performance starts or 2 rounds after performance stops)

Traits:
Chance Savior (+2 trait bonus on Initiative checks)
Resilient (+1 on Fortitude saves)

Class Features
Bardic Knowledge (+5 to knowledge skills, use untrained)
Bardic Performance (30 rounds/day, begin as standard or move action)
--Countersong/Distraction (Give allies perform roll for saving throw)
--Inspire Competence (+4 competence on a skill check)
--Inspire Courage (+3 morale on charm/fear saving throws, +3 competence on attack and weapon damage)
--Fascination (Fascinate up to four creatures in 90’ with performance, DC 21)
--Suggestion (Make a suggestion (as per the spell) to a creature already fascinated. Requires a standard action to activate in addition to the free action to continue the fascinate effect. DC 21)
--Dirge of Doom (Cause enemies within 30 feet and able to see and hear the bard’s performance to take become shaken.)
--Inspire Greatness (Give himself or a single willing ally within 30 feet 2 bonus Hit Dice (d10s), the commensurate number of temporary hit points (apply the target’s Constitution modifier, if any, to these bonus Hit Dice), a +2 competence bonus on attack rolls, and a +1 competence bonus on Fortitude saves.)
--Dance of the Dead (Cause dead bones or bodies to rise up like animate dead, but the created skeletons or zombies animate only for the performance. Bodies or bones cannot be animated more than once using this ability. Requires no components and does not have the evil descriptor.)
Haunted Eyes (+4 to save vs. fear, energy drain, death effects, and necromantic effects.)
Haunting Refrain (Can use Perform (Percussion) instead of Intimidate to demoralize, with a +5 bonus. Saving throws against fear effects he creates are at -3.)
Secrets of the Grave (+5 to Knowledge (religion) checks to identify undead. Mind-affecting spells affect undead. Add three arcane necromancy spells to spells known.)

Skills:
[6 (Bard) +1 (human)] x 11 (lvl) = 77
Bluff +17 [8 rank + 3 class + 6 charisma]
Diplomacy +20 [11 ranks + 3 class + 6 charisma]
Disguise +10 [1 rank + 3 class + 6 charisma]
Knowledge (Arcana) +9 [1 rank + 3 class + 5 bard]
Knowledge (Dungeoneering) +9 [1 rank + 3 class + 5 bard]
Knowledge (Engineering) +9 [1 rank + 3 class + 5 bard]
Knowledge (Geography) +9 [1 rank + 3 class + 5 bard]
Knowledge (History) +9 [1 rank + 3 class + 5 bard]
Knowledge (Local) +14 [6 ranks+ 3 class + 5 bard]
Knowledge (Nature) +9 [1 rank + 3 class + 5 bard]
Knowledge (Nobility) +9 [1 rank + 3 class + 5 bard]
Knowledge (Planes) +9 [1 rank + 3 class + 5 bard]
Knowledge (Religion) +11 [3 ranks + 3 class + 5 bard] (+16 re: undead from Dirge Bard)
Linguistics +4 [1 rank + 3 class]
Perception +14 [11 ranks + 3 class]
Perform (Comedy) +8 [1 rank + 3 class + 6 charisma]
Perform (Oratory) +8 [10 rank + 3 class + 6 charisma]
Perform (Percussion) +20 [11 ranks + 3 class + 6 charisma] (+25 when used to demoralize per Haunted Refrain)
Sense Motive +8 [5 ranks + 3 class]
Spellcraft +4 [1 rank + 3 class]
Stealth +4 [1 rank + 3 class]

Combat Gear:
+2 chain shirt
+1 ring of protection
+1 amulet of natural armor
+3 longspear
+5 cloak of resistance
Headband of charisma +2
Masterwork daggers x 2(belt and boot)
Masterwork sling
Sling bullets (20)

Other Gear:
Banner of the Ancient Kings with a Fortifying Stone attached (affixed to +3 longspear)
Belt pouch x 2
Bodhrán (masterwork musical instrument, percussion)
Noble's outfit (worn)
Spell component pouch
286 gold, 9 silver

Handy Haversack, containing:
• Acid (x4)
• Alchemical grease (x3)
• Alchemist’s fire (x2)
• Antiplague
• Antitoxin (x2)
• Artisan's outfit
• Backpack (masterwork)
• Bedroll
• Blanket
• Chalkboard (+ 9 pieces chalk)
• Clay mug
• Cooking Kit
• Crowbar
• Disguise kit
• Explorer's outfit
• Fishhooks (x2)
• Flask of holy water (x6)
• Flint & steel
• Grappling hook
• Lantern (waterproof) with 4 pints lamp oil
• Masterwork artisan’s tools (Craft: Cloth)
• Mess kits (x5)
• Pitons (x2)
• Potion of Lesser Restoration x 2
• Pulley
• Rope (50’)
• Rope of Climbing
• Sacks (x4)
• Scholar's outfit
• Scrivener’s kit
• Sewing needle
• Shaving kit
• Spare sling
• Spare spell component pouch
• Smokestick
• String (50’)
• Tanglefoot bag
• Thread (50’)
• Trail rations (20 days)
• Wand of Cure Light Wounds (50 charges)
• Waterskins (x5)
• Weapon blanch, adamantine
• Whetstone

Special Abilities:
Spells/day: 1st: 7; 2nd: 6; 3rd: 53; 4th: 3
Spell DC: 16 + spell level

Spells Known: (Including bonuses from Dirge Bard* and Human Favored Class+)
Cantrips: 7
Dancing Lights
Disrupt Undead*
Ghost Sound
Know Direction
Mage Hand
Open/Close
Prestidigitation

Level 1: 9
Disguise Self
Expeditious Retreat
Feather Fall
Hideous Laughter
Remove Fear
Silent Image+
Undetectable Alignment +
Unseen Servant+
Bardic Masterpiece: Triple Time

Level 2: 9
False Life*
Glitterdust
Invisibility
Mirror Image
Rage
Shatter
Silence+
Suggestion+
Tongues+

Level 3: 6
Daylight
Dispel Magic
Fear
Good Hope
Glibness
Haste+

Level 4: 4
Dimension Door
Enervation*
Freedom of Movement
Modify Memory