About The False MarkessaOLD CULTS PATRON: The False Markessa
Formulary (4+ 1 1st at 2nd, 1 1st at 3rd, 1 1st and 1 2nd at 4th. cure light wounds, disguise self, endure elements, enlarge person, expeditious retreat, jump, reduce person / alter self, barkskin, bull’s strength) Quote:
‘The False Markessa’ was once a simple healer and apothecary, albeit one with a fairly unpleasant outlook on life and fairly mercenary in the use of her skills. A chance encounter with a crazed cultist who had been left for dead ended up with her at the mercy of the man whose life she had saved, and he made some crucial changes to her brain in the course of his own surgical explorations. From him she ‘learned’ the ways of the Old Cults, and was ‘awakened’ to the glory of the things that sing in the silence. Fascinated more by her ‘mentors’ surgical techniques than by his faith, Markessa came to regard herself as a false copy of some ‘True Markessa’ that existed far beyond the surface of Golarion, among the cold stars, ever watching ‘the False Markessa’ for signs that she might be worthy of ascending into the starry heavens to join her true self. She captures people and practices her chirurgy upon them, attempting to ‘perfect’ them into the sorts of glorious beings she sees in her dreams, perceiving the flailing results of her partial successes as proof that she is getting closer to perfection. Given her precarious mental state, if she were ever to perfectly capture the images she sees in her feverish drug-induced hallucinations, she would probably immediately kill such a success, both offering it up as a glorious sacrifice to the True Markessa and jealously killing the creature that, unlike herself, has come so close to undeserved perfection… For now, she has a shambling entourage of pathetic creatures, once healthy people that she has ‘improved’ with her arts. She gives them derisive names, like ‘Long, Tall Sully’ (a man who has been stretched to freakish height, but gained not an ounce of muscle or mass, becoming a skeletally thin individual with the reach of a Large creature, but not much stronger than the average commoner) or ‘Many-Eyed Ethyl’ (whose gains a bonus to Perception checks due to the many eyes scattered around her body). All of her ‘perfected men’ serve the Old ones, due to surgeries she performs upon their brains, and mostly regard their twisted and freakish states as blessed signs of favor from the elder gods. They treat The False Markessa as their high priestess and angel-of-flesh, who cut away their imperfections and revealed the holiness within them. While she generally sculpts her perfected souls with little care for convential standards of beauty, adding or subtracting or modifying limbs with a madwoman's eye for 'beauty,' she usually keeps at least one perfected to appear much like herself, and uses this 'doppleganger' to stand in for her, and as a patsy for when she needs to arrange her 'death' to stave off some persistant opponents. She also tends to keep exactly one surgically-beautified male as her current consort, but tires of them quickly, and one unusual way to uncover her presence in an area is the odd appearance of remarkably handsome (but unrecognized by the locals) corpses of 'perfected' consorts that were discarded when she tired of them. Boons Those who supply The False Markessa with new ‘raw supplies’ upon which to practice her craft and show the glory of the Old Gods will earn her favor, and her absolute first choice is to reward those who aid her with the gift of ‘improvement,’ to grant them abilities similar to the effects of 1st and 2nd level spells available to her (and unique new appearances, and a fanatical devotion to the Old Cults, obviously…). Those who manage to avoid such ‘gifts’ may be offered the services of some of her ‘lesser successes’ (such as Long, Tall Sully), although they should be warned that these individuals loyalties will always be first to the Old Cults (and, as their servant on Golarion, to the False Markessa). |
