Maxwell Lionheart's page

Maxwell Lionheart #2
Male Human Warpriest 3
CN Medium humanoid (human)
Init +5; Senses Perception +5
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Defense
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AC 17, touch 11, flat-footed 16 (+6 armor, +1 Dex)
hp 27 (3d8+9)
Fort +5, Ref +2, Will +7
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Offense
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Speed 20 ft.
Melee gauntlet (from armor) +5 (1d3+3) and
. . heavy flail +6 (1d10+4/19-20) and
. . unarmed strike +5 (1d3+3 nonlethal)
Warpriest Spells Prepared (CL 3rd; concentration +6):
. . 1st—divine favor, divine favor, infernal healing, protection from evil
. . 0 (at will)—light, resistance, stabilize, virtue
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Statistics
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Str 16, Dex 12, Con 14, Int 10, Wis 16, Cha 8
Base Atk +2; CMB +5; CMD 16
Feats Furious Focus[APG], Improved Initiative, Power Attack, Toughness, Weapon Focus (heavy flail)
Traits exposed to awfulness, indomitable faith
Skills Climb +3, Heal +9, Knowledge (religion) +6, Perception +5, Sense Motive +9
Languages Common
SQ aura, blessings, blessings (darkness blessing, madness blessing), enshrouding darkness, fervor 1d6, madness supremacy, sacred weapon
Combat Gear potion of mage armor; Other Gear masterwork chainmail, scale mail, heavy flail, fighter's kit, wooden holy symbol (Groetus)
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Special Abilities
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Aura (Ex) The character has a strong aura corresponding to his deity's alignment.
Blessings (4/day) (Su) Pool of power used to activate Blessing abilities.
Enshrouding Darkness (Su) Touched ally gains concealment for 1 min, unless foe can see in Su darkness.
Exposed to Awfulness (1/day) Vs Death/Incapacitation by demon: Reroll saving throw as free action, keep 2nd result.
Fervor 1d6 (4/day) (Su) Standard action, touch channels positive/negative energy to heal or harm. Swift to cast spell on self.
Furious Focus If you are wielding a weapon in two hands, ignore the penalty for your first attack of each turn.
Madness Supremacy (Su) As a swift action, foe in 30 ft replaces some conditions with confuse for 1 rd ("attack self" or "attack nearest creature" only).
Power Attack -1/+2 You can subtract from your attack roll to add to your damage.
Sacred Weapon (3 rounds/day) (Su) As a swift action, grant weapon enhancement bonus or certain powers.

If there were ever a man down on his luck throughout every stage of his life, Maxwell is most certainly that man.

At the age of 12, he lost his father and mother to the fourth crusades, as both were deeply seated in the faith of Iomedae. That aside, they ended their lives unjustly at the tip of a goat-demon's blade, according to the wounded paladin that had come to deliver said news. At the time, Maxwell couldn't hear anything else the man had said. Looking back, the muffled, silent words and the flapping of gums muted by the sound of static despair were likely something to do with fighting through it, or that they died for a just cause. The world wound wasn't just, he thought to himself. It was a slaughter for the good and foolish.

Losing his parents forced him to grow up fast, and he ended up shunning the worshipers of the more good-aligned deities. All-the-same, he didn't hate them for what they stood for, he merely hated that for their cause, his parents had lost their lives. Senseless death was stupid death, and when the abyss can repopulate itself on the very souls that it reaps, the idea of fighting seems all the more senseless.

Truly, at such a young age Maxwell as gripped with a deep, dreadful sense of despair. He saw the world in gray and white, and found that he had lost hope. That same day, and not 4 months after his parents deaths, a powerful demon nearly broke the barrier to Kenabres, piercing his shoulder in the process with it's foul weapon. The sickness that it carried nearly claimed him. As he leaned against the hay cart he had been filling so recently, with his eyes closing slowly, he was happy for only a moment believing that death would allow him to meet his family.

But death did not come. Nor would it ever.

In his coma he saw the boneyard, the hundreds upon thousands of souls spiraling into it with a frenzy unlike anything he'd ever seen. Tormented souls, souls that wanted to do more, souls that were angry that they'd been put to rest. Vengeful spirits, every last one of them. People that died didn't want to enjoy their deaths, they wanted out. Death was a prison, not a release, he thought to himself. The world went black, and in the calamitous stars of the void that he found himself in, he saw, laying on a gray bit of sand along a strange island in the darkness and madness, a symbol.

The symbol was that of the religion that belonged to Iomedae. Beneath the sand next to it, Gorum. He sifted through the sand as it turned to dirt, and the dirt as it turned to mud, and the mud as it turned to stone, unearthing these symbols, and casting the dirt away. It felt as if it had taken weeks, but finally, at the bottom of it, he found a material he couldn't remove. His fingers were filthy with mud, and fingernails had abandoned him to let loose the flow of blood from his hands, aching in pain, yet still he persevered.

With a surge, the strange orb in the dark sky of loneliness, madness and silent solitude cast him off of it, along with the stone, mud, dirt, and sand. As he fell away, not the floor but to the dark tendrils of the abyss, he saw it turn to face him. A moon, bedecked in a skull's grimmace that cried black tears that filled this place. This damned place, did it fill to the brim, and this damned place he had been for so long. The desire to die had left him, but so had the desire to live, and in that symbol, he heard, in the darkness, the name, "Groetus"

He awoke from a coma, his left eye had been removed and replaced with bandages of strange make. Again, he looked about as the alchemists, the clerics, all of whom had kept watch on him scuttled about. One noticed him and left him be, only to return with a queer look in his eye. He saw his mouth move, but no words came, yet again. He had been deafened to good intention, and he had come to the conclusion that this whole thing, this town, these walls, the crusades.

All of it was meangingless.

Skip forward 24 more years, at the ripe age of 31. He had found love not long ago, in his den of hopelessness. A woman named Calistria, who saw the good in everything, even him, who was always eager to point out flaws in anything, especially himself. He had taken up the vestments of Groetus, the God of Misery and Madness, praying that the power that was take interest in him every day since he recovered from his Coma.

Little did he know that Groetus, whom never takes interest in his worshipers, should never gaze upon the lives of those he has influenced more than once...

Somehow a demon had made it through the walls, whether beneath the city, with immunity to it, whatever, it had made it. His house burned to the ground, his dead childs reduced to ashes that he could only watch burn as his son screamed in agony, claimed by the unholy fire. The man watched his son's soul erode at the edge of the abyss, claimed, to create another soldier for the world wound. His wife faired no better, impaled by the same ilk of fiend that claimed his father and mother, a schir. The woman lay impaled, and he, beneath the ruins of his own home, his hand impaled by a beam of wood and his hip, too.

Upon the glaive did that demon take away his wife, back to the wound to defile her corpse or worse, but in that moment, even as the guards arrived, he heard silence. The fires didn't burn, and the wound didn't hurt. All he felt was anguish as he removed the woodbeam from his stomach and hand, standing up and walking toward it, badly burned all over his left side. The guards, they motioned for him. He could feel them yelling as he walked slowly in the direction the fiend had went, and had one of them not tackled him to the ground and knocked him unconscious he would have followed them to the very pits of the abyss.

He awoke again, this time silent. With tears in his eyes he prayed to the god of misery, not for power, but to not look at him ever again and only grant him the power he'd need to die, as his wife and child, mother, and father had.

And so he did, but not before planting the seeds of madness... And so, Maxwell peered into the abyss of his life, and future.

And it peered back.

Maxwell is a depressed individual who sees no point whatsoever, short of dying with dignity and killing demons, in the crusades. To him, they are a waste of time and effort, and if he didn't have a vendetta against the fiends that pushed him to near-insanity, he would have washed his hands of the place.

He is quick to point out flaws in others, himself, plans. If it has even a slight chance of failure, he makes sure that everyone knows it. Despite this, he is still reliable, but rarely takes into consideration his own well-being. Not bound by the religious doctrine of a paladin, Maxwell takes no joy in killing demons, fiends, or undead, rather they do nothing more than stir dark thoughts in him.

To say that Maxwell has righteous fury is an understatement. It is not righteous in the least, and is nothing more than pure hatred for the fact that the demons took everything from him. His eye, his child, his wife, and his parents, and even a few of his friends, and now, even his money.

Maxwell joins the fifth crusade with just the mere hope that he dies killing what he hates the most, and doesn't fear death as it is no worse than actually being alive.

While it isn't his in-character intention, Maxwell can still become good. His hatred could turn into righteous fury, but he will never turn his face away from Groteus, his deity, despite the things the god had done to him. He could be redeemed, becoming Chaotic good in a way to where he believes that no one should experience the misery that he has, and avidly preventing anyone from doing so.

At the beginning, however, he typically finds relief in the fact that others can feel pain as deep as he has, but at the same time doesn't believe anyone in the entire city is as deep in the darkness as he is, though he does welcome them to join him.

Maxwell is officially out of gold, and happens to be flat broke as he prepares to join the fifth crusade. He spent all of his savings from his lifetime, a measily 100 gold on 2 potions. 1 of cure light wounds, and 1 of mage armor, and he's honestly even sure they actually work.

He stands at a modest 5'6 with someone thin, yet wholesome brown hair that's matted from lack of washing. He wears a somewhat dirty blue and yellow vestment over his scale armor, but he makes it a point to wear his metal greaves and rusted gauntlets as he holds his Heavy flail off to his hip which has 3 smaller metal balls on it, rather than 1 large one.

Seeming to always have a look of disdain, the man rarely smiles, and when he does, it's usually after someone's been mocked, or if he himself just wants to display his level of apathy towards a situation.