About ZayPhysical description: Zay stands about five-and-a-half feet tall with a slim build and sun-browned skin. They have wiry forearms and hands scarred from years of hauling nets and lines. Zay's straw-colored and sun-bleached hair is shoulder-length but usually pulled back into a utilitarian tie. Despite sixty years of life, spent largely in the out-of-doors, Zay looks no older than their late teens (thanks to their touch of otherworldly blood), with a smooth and unlined face which also makes their gender somewhat indeterminate. A pair of blue-green eyes regard the world with a distant calm. Zay favors earth colors and frequently wears adornments of leather, beads, shells, and feathers. Zay generally passes for human, but with extended observation one might notice that there is a partial, fleshy webbing between their thin knobbly fingers as well as their toes. Stats:
Zay
Undine druid (undine adept) 8 (Pathfinder RPG Advanced Race Guide 176, Pathfinder RPG Bestiary 2 275) N Medium outsider (aquatic, native) Init +4; Senses darkvision 60 ft.; Perception +15 -------------------- Defense -------------------- AC 15, touch 15, flat-footed 11 (+1 deflection, +4 Dex) hp 83 (8d8+32) Fort +9, Ref +7, Will +11; +4 vs. the spell-like and supernatural abilities of outsiders or fey with the aquatic or water subtypes, and [water] spells Resist cold 10 -------------------- Offense -------------------- Speed 30 ft., swim 30 ft. Melee quarterstaff +7/+2 (1d6+1) Special Attacks wild shape 3/day Spell-Like Abilities (CL 8th; concentration +8) . . 1/day—hydraulic push[APG] Druid (Undine Adept) Spells Prepared (CL 8th; concentration +12) . . 4th—control water[D], freedom of movement, . . 3rd— . . 2nd— . . 1st—cure light wounds, cure light wounds, cure light wounds, heightened awareness[ACG], obscuring mist[D], snowball[UW] . . 0 (at will)—create water, mending, purify food and drink (DC 14), spark[APG] (DC 14) . . D Domain spell; Domain Water (Oceans domain[APG] subdomain) --------------------
Backstory:
Some sixty years ago, a humble Alman fisherman found a strange catch in his nets: a woman with sea-blue skin and eyes like a storm, cursing roundly as she struggled to free herself from the rope and steel that held her bound. The fisherman, Adanar, apologized profusely to the "sea spirit" and cut her free, though she did not appear immediately grateful-- she swam off in a huff with a more disgusted, watery curses in her wake. As superstitious as most sailing folk, Adanar was left to dread poor luck for offending one of "Gozreh's daughters" as he imagined it.
But the sea-woman came back, out of some curiosity or caprice. Adanar became accustomed to realizing he was being watched, from the water; to seeing her head part the waves with hair like seaweed glinting under the bright sun. Over time, the wary spying turned into something more playful-- perplexing pranks, his cap or smoking pipe mysteriously vanished, a handful of shells left in their place-- and, eventually, to conversation. He learned her name: Casza. And she asked him many questions, of what life was like above the waves, and he in turn asked her of the world beneath them. She brought him good fortune, not the ill luck he had feared: when she stole his cap for the tenth time, the oyster left behind held a pearl; when she led him on a taunting chase and swam circles around his boat, it was to guide him eventually to rich shoals of fish. To Adanar, it felt like some sort of waking dream, the hours he spent with Casza a surreal haze when he was not around her. He spoke of her to no one, even when other fishermen asked to be let in on his rich catches or queried where he had found pearls; he imagined that speaking of her would end whatever fey spell drew her to him, and that she might vanish like so much foam on the sands. But she was very real, and the consequences of their time together real as well. One day, in one of their games of chase, she allowed him to catch her-- and a meeting of wave and shore followed, to be overly poetic and coy about it. And then, he did not see her for months, and months... only to be startled when she emerged from the waves on a rainy day and handed him a tiny, crying bundle, her eyes darker than the depths of the sea now. Our child cannot breathe underwater, she said, and no sooner had he taken the babe into his arms than she disappeared again, gone beneath the waves as if she had never been there. Stricken at the revelation that he was a father, Anador nevertheless accepted the child as his own, and, unsure of what else to do, took the babe to the nearest shrine of Gozreh for a naming. The old weatherwitch who served at the shrine suggested Zay, an old word for the ocean, and told Anador that the child was likely to be... strange, and that, if he wished, she would take the infant off his hands and provide a home for young Zay. Anador had known himself to be a father less than a day but all the same he staunchly refused. The boy is mine, I'll raise him, he said. The witch had sucked on her teeth and shrugged and said I'm not so sure you have a boy there, but as you will. So, Anador took Zay home. The old woman's words of Zay being a strange child turned true enough. Zay spurned milk but drank seawater; Zay was not yet a year old when small, sharp teeth began to sprout from their gumline, and Zay's food of choice from early on was morsels of fresh, raw fish. Zay took to water like a fish, swimming before walking; Zay imitated the hoarse cry of a seagull before speaking a word of Common. Anador took it all in stride as much as he was able; yes, the child was different, but he was Zay's father, and to him it was that simple. There was a bittersweetness to it all, as Anador could not help but be reminded of Zay's mother with every sight of the child, yet, with Casza everything had been play, nothing real, only the strange exotic mystery of his inhuman visitor. Zay was every day a reminder of the mundanity of life: there is nothing otherworldly about changing a diaper or trying to brush out the knots in the hair of a screaming toddler. Anador's neighbors peppered him with questions about the origin of his son (as Anador claimed Zay to be), but Anador did not explain Zay's origins to them, feeling it would impact the child's chances of being accepted. It made no real difference: while Zay looked human enough (unless one looked close enough to determine the slight webbing between the child's fingers and toes, or the slightly-too-many teeth, or noticed the vividly blue-green eyes), their behaviors marked them as other. Some called Zay a changeling; others said Gozreh in her female aspect might have been the mother; others said perhaps the child simply washed up on the shore. But Zay was strange, and the fisherfolk of Almas knew it. As Zay grew older, however, it became obvious that while they might be different, they were also useful. Zay seemed instinctively to know where good fishing might be found, when a storm was coming, and if you happened to lose something valuable over the side of your boat Zay was the best choice to ask to look for it. Slowly, the fisherfolk began to accept Zay, for a certain value of "acceptance" -- still other, to be sure, but... useful. If Zay warned that in three days the weather would turn bad, the neighbors listened. The other fishermen tried to pay Anador to allow Zay to sail with them, in order to guarantee a better catch (to which Anador always responded that it was Zay's choice); as years went by and Zay grew older, the captains of the true sailing ships also came calling, having heard of a boy (some stories said a girl) who brought good luck to any vessel that he (or she) boarded. But Zay preferred to sail with their father. Anador alone did not treat Zay as some sort of fortuitous fairy who might dispense favorable weather or fill the nets; Anador treated Zay as he had always done: as his child, nothing more, nothing less. Even when Zay ventured tentatively to Anador one night that Zay was not entirely sure Zay was in fact Anador's son, Anador simply shrugged, and refilled his pipe with the tobacco he favored, and said that aye, well, you're your own creature, and if you're being my daughter instead then as suits you. Either way you are my child. Zay's father was the solid anchor of their life. Though at times Zay longed to travel, seized with an almost unbearable desire to see what lay behind the glittering horizon of the sea, Zay's love for their father kept them at home for years-- many, many years. Anador grew from young man to middle years as Zay grew from infant to youth, but Anador kept aging, and greying, while Zay seemed to hang suspended at some indeterminate age of past-childhood but just-shy-of-full-adult-- at least in body. (Zay is alternately amused and annoyed by people taking them for a youth, given they've seen six decades come and go, but Zay's physiology seems in no hurry to progress to an older appearance.) In time, the fate awaiting all mortals affected Anador as well, and through it all, Zay was faithfully present-- when Anador could no longer fish, Zay took the boat out alone; when Anador could no longer feed himself, Zay fed him and cared for him; and, when Anador eventually passed from the world, Zay saw to his funeral in an Almas cemetery. And then Zay packed up all that they owned in the world, and headed for the docks. A year has passed since Zay buried their father. Since then, they have seen a great deal, switching between ships when they tired of this or that trading route. Though at times Zay has had friendships, it is more common that their somewhat-odd mannerisms and sense of otherness still set them apart-- ships' captains and crews alike tend to regard Zay as more good luck token or friendly spirit than a full person. When the coast of the new continent came into view, Zay felt a deep desire to disembark and try to live in this new land, so empty of massive cities-- to try living alone in nature with no-one else to try and please or help. Of course, then Zay realized there was trouble in the colony.... |
