Pathfinder Chronicles: Faction Guide (PFRPG)

Is that a typo, or should it be read "must have at least 10 TPS, but spend 15 CPA to be a knight"?

That's exactly what it means.

Having purchased the Faction Guide and the NPC Guide at the same time, I decided to adopt some of the ideas from the NPC Guide to the Factions from the Faction Guide.

First, a Patron for the Arcanamirium faction, who might give a party odd jobs, in exchange for faction status or Boons. (Stats are available in the profile.)

Sage Rupur Kettletop doesn’t even remember life before he became a fresh-faced apprentice in the Arcanamirium, and sometimes forgets that there is a world outside of the complex, let alone outside of Absalom proper. Indeed, he hasn’t even seen much of the city, despite living there all of his life.

Lacking in personal initiative, Rupur spent several years providing spellcasting services for Arcanamirium clientele, until he began to notice the white hairs, and the blotchy pale patches on his formerly dark skin. The mind-numbing drudgery of casting utilitarian spells and translating documents for high-paying clients was eroding his spirit, and he seized upon a dozen or more ‘favors’ owed him to be shuffled into a research position. He has found new purpose in crafting spells that the world has never seen before. Since then, his skin condition has arrested, and he no longer finds fresh white hairs on a weekly basis, but he still has a few white streaks and mottled skin, appearing as if he had suffered some sort of skin disease.

Because of the nature of his research, he regularly requires expensive reagents of all sorts, many fantastical in nature, and few, if any, native to the Isle of Kortos. As a result, he feels that he has to ‘waste’ entirely too much time wandering around Absalom, knocking on doors and chatting up factors and tradesmen, trying to locate either the rare materials he needs for his research, or retain the sorts of people who can go fetch said materials. While he generally tries to make these excursions quick and to the point, he has, on occasion, been sidelined into wandering around Absalom, seeing marvels that he never knew existed only blocks away from where he spent his childhood in training and spellcraft.

He had recently found himself in need of components, and so has been forced to hit the streets again, to find some bold souls willing to fetch him a half dozen tiefling horns and at least a half-gallon of
blood from three different bugbears.

Boon: Rupur is hard up for cash, generally having expended most of his operating capital on rare components for his research. Anyone who helps him may benefit from temporary access to Arcanamirium research materials, allowing them a +4 to a single knowledge – arcana or spellcraft check (Rupur cannot, or, in this case, will not, escort someone into the libraries, but will instead go into the library to look up the requested information, and then report back to the petitioner).

He can also give an arcane caster training that allows them to use one of the special spells he has crafted, Kettletop’s Efficacious Escape, scribing it for free into a spellbook, or allowing a spontaneous arcane caster to replace one of his current 1st level spells with this spell, even if he would not be able to make such a replacement at this time.

Finally, he can create single-use Elixers of Kettletop’s Efficacious Escape (which are thrown to the ground, never consumed!) to reward non-arcane casters.

Stats for both the spell, Kettletop's Efficacious Escape, and the Elixir of Escape are in the profile.

And now a Rival to oppose the Arcanamirium faction missions, who may also provide a Boon (in this case, one option inspired by Adventurer's Armory).

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Invoker Henos Vittori has come to Absalom with something to prove. Not fortunate enough to be of a dominant House, he’s always felt that he’s had to work twice as hard to prove himself, and while he was forced to kowtow and curry favor to survive the preferential politicking and privilege that dominated in the Korvosan Acadamae, has always felt that he was either looked down upon by his higher-status peers, and even more so by actual Chelaxians. In Absalom, most of his ‘peers’ have no idea whether his family in Korvosa is connected in Ergoran or not, and so he plays the part of the disaffected noble, ‘at liberty’ in a town that, for all his pretensions, is nothing compared to the glory of Cheliax. (Having never actually been to Cheliax proper, he’s built it up as something far more fabulous than it is, and would be sorely disappointed to find out how greatly Absalom overshadows the Cheliax of his dreams…)

In his first week, some ‘pathetic dabbler’ from the Arcanamirium showed him up in a spellduel. He’s assured those he was trying to impress with the superiority of Academae training that the little gnome cheated somehow, but is enough of a realist to know that he brought this humiliation upon himself by challenging someone he knew nothing of, and while not ideally prepared for dueling, having allowed himself to become overconfident and challenge the other mage to a duel on the spot, rather than more sensibly agreeing to meet him a few days later, after preparing spells less suited for showing off to the rabble he was entertaining, and more suited for quickly incapacitating a rival magician.

Using local connections, Henos has learned that his gnomish rival, who seems blissfully unaware that Henos has held a grudge, is a renowned spellcrafter, and has at least two unique spells to his credit, and is hard at work on a third, seeking adventuresome sorts to locate some rare reagents and components for his research.

Henos merely has to find a way, using spells and local lowlife contacts, to foil the gnomes’ research, preferably by tricking the adventurers into bringing him improper reagents, causing a spectacular, and hopefully explosive, research failure…

Boon: If anyone helps Henos in his goals to ruin that annoying little gnome, or to otherwise help him show off the obvious supremacy of Academae training to Arcanamirium 'dabbling,' Henos may reward them with some special techniques he has learned.

First, Henos has developed a technique that expends a flask of Alchemist’s Fire during the conjuration of one or more fiendish riding dogs to summons dogs with the ability to spit alchemists fire as a standard action as a ranged touch attack with a 10’ range increment (50 ft. maximum range). Once a dog has spit fire in this manner, it has to wait 1d4 rounds before it can spit fire again. The dogs take no damage from their own attack, but can be damaged by alchemical fire from each other or other sources. Henos can teach any spellcaster able to conjure fiendish riding dogs this trick with three days of training.

He can assist someone who has taken the Improved Familiar feat over the course of six days to summon a fiendish version of a traditional familiar that has the advanced simple template or the giant creature simple template, so long as that individual is at least 5th level (or 7th level, for both templates).

Another Faction NPC, this time an Aspis Consortium 'heavy' who might be sent to deal with new recruits, or potential annoyances. Uses rules from the Campaign Setting (the Blade Binder feat).

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Tall, dark and marked with elaborate tattoos of fanged serpents coiling along his limbs and torso, Hemeshka Sobk has tight locks of hair that whip around his head like angry snakes when he fights. He screams and frothes in combat, the very picture of a berserk warrior, with sickle-like blade and spiked shield flashing as he surges forward with unlikely speed, given the weight of his armor.

Hemeshka was a burly, over-proud and aggressive child, who failed time and again the training of the martial practitioners of Irori, located outside of the town of Shiman-Sekh. Growing ever more wrathful, as his temper caused him to fail again and again to be accepted as a pupil by the monks, he abandoned this path and returned to his nomadic brethren, hoping to swallow the shame of his failure and forge a new destiny, only to be cast forth from his people after a violent reunion with his mocking brothers. Now without any purpose, he found himself hired as a caravan guard by a group of foreign strangers who had lost more men than they expected to the harsh desert.

Unfamiliar with their tongue, his abrasive commentary went unnoticed, and over the months working alongside these coldly effective warriors of the Aspis Consortium, he mastered their babbling tongue, as well as impressing them with his ferocity in combat against the myriad dangers of the desert.

Hemeshka prefers now to operate as far from Osirioni as possible, and even feigns ignorance of the customs of his homeland, to avoid assignments in the area. He finds that the rudiments of the fighting styles of Osirion that he picked up in his failures at the monastery are unfamiliar to the warriors of distant lands, who expect him to strike with his blade and defend with his shield, not to hopelessly entangle their blade with his own, and then brutally bludgeon them into unconsciousness with his spiked shield…

Every item of gear represents a vital lesson he has learned. Healing elixirs, because one can never count on an allied spellcaster. A restorative potion, due recover more swiftly from the effects of poison, or the chilling touch of an undead khaibit. Enlarge potions, purchased from the same Aspis transmuter who first demonstrated the effectiveness of that spell upon him. A spare temple sword, and some daggers for backup, in case he has a weapon struck from his hand, or sundered. A short bow, for those frustrating opponents that will not close for proper combat.

Hemeshka is typically assigned simpler tasks, but has proven quite adept at following orders, as he does not suffer overmuch from personal initiative, or the concept of greed. His failings are entirely in the area of self-discipline, as he remains easily angered, and if he fails in an assignment, it will be more the fault of his lack of temperance, and not a deliberate attempt to take advantage. His greatest ambition is to have an endless supply of strong drink and soft women, but he recognizes that he lacks the insight as to how exactly to make himself into the warlord he sees in his dreams, and so he has accepted that his lot is to follow the directives of his Aspis Consortium leaders, and to take the spoils that come with swift and violent resolution to any task they set before him.

When tasks are set before him that require skills not in his limited arsenal, he speaks quite reasonably, with diplomacy unexpected to a man of his grim appearance, hiring whatever temporary workers are needed for a given task, as he is not above hiring some expendable fools to clear the way, while his own men approach later to relieve them of the spoils of success, deal with whatever reduced opposition remains, or, in some cases, thank his employees and pay them whatever fee was agreed upon, if they appear to have quite handily dealt with whatever threat they were sent to explore, and he does not feel that his own men would be able to resolve the situation through his preferred stratagem when dealing with non-Consortium hires, a sudden but inevitable betrayal.

Boons: Hemeshka can teach another warrior the skills of Osirioni blade-binding (both the maneuver, and, eventually, the Feat), or how to use the foreign temple sword, although he will only do so for someone that he does not consider a potential rival or threat to his own position.

Anyone who trains in the techniques of blade binding for at least a week with Hemeshka gains a +1 bonus to blade-binding checks, which does not stack with the Blade-Binder feat, and does not operate against someone who has that Feat.

Anyone who trains for at least a week in the use of the temple sword with Hemeshka only suffers half the normal non-proficiency penalty, and can take advantage of the weapons bonuses to blade-binding or trip maneuvers.

As Hemeshka has some minor pull in the organization, he can also arrange for goods or services from Consortium suppliers without any usual markup, or perhaps even for a small discount (if the goods aren't marked up in that area).

And a Rival for those working for the Aspis Consortium (or a patron / contact, for those working against their interests!).

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Maokaori (mow-COW-ree) is a lean woman, taller than most Sargavan expatriate men, and with the darker coloration common to the demon-worshipping Bekyar. Her hair is cut short, raised up in spiky tufts with animal fat and bound in place with bits of fiber. She is no Bekyar, but is more than willing to allow the pale men to believe that, and worse things as well, staining her teeth reddish-black with the mildly toxic berries of the akabi vine, to make her smile all the more gruesome. She uses the same berries to dye her hair with the tint of copper metal.

Her faith is that of the horned hunter the sweaty men call Erastil, although she does not call him by that name, seeing him as a patron of fertility, the hunt, and law, particularly the sometimes cruel law of the wild. In keeping with those beliefs, she regards the beasts and plants of the Mwangi Expanse as a part of the natural world, and feels no regrets when she must bind them into service, for the protection of the greater whole, being willing to sacrifice an animal companion with little regret, so long as the animal’s sacrifice helps to protect the jungle itself from the intruders and their lumbering and pillaging.

As a youth, she lost her family to shadows in the shape of men, shadows that had a cold touch that brought death to those who stood to fight them. She knew that these night shapes had come from a taboo ruin that the foreign explorers had disturbed, and as her mother carried her away into the night, screaming in confusion as she saw her father fall and rise again as another of the shadow-men, she swore that she would repay this injustice. She now works behind the scenes to prevent the foreign fools of Bloodcove from pillaging too deep into the surrounding native ruins, sometimes leading them astray, sometimes leading them directly too ruins that she knows hold dangers that will cause them pain, and then increasing that pain by sending conjured animals or hindering magical effects that cut short their attempts to retreat. She has, in her overconfidence, been seen, and there is a price upon her head in Bloodcove, where she is called a demon-lover, a cannibal and worse besides. She smiles her predatory smile, and continues to become as much a bloody jungle-spirit as the monsters that took her father from her.

Any who would assist her, pale foreigner or no, in foiling a Consortium expedition, may earn her favor, and learn from her some secrets that even the Consortium has not yet plundered from the Expanse.

Boons: Maokaori has access to a limited supply of some unknown reptilian hide, thickly-scaled, that is treated as dragonhide (although lacking any special abilities relating to energy damage) for costs and use. For a favored ally, she can craft such armor, although she will never reveal the source of this hide. (Knowledge nature will reveal that whatever it is, the creature it comes from is aquatic in nature.)

She can also provide access to items crafted of a local form of darkwood that is paler in color, but stains a dark red when treated with the alchemical hardening agents typically used on darkwood shields and items. If the Consortium were to suspect the existence of another potential source of darkwood, they would spare no expense to interrogate her as to the whereabouts of this wood… In addition to the normal uses of such wood, she has crafted the equivalent of studded leather armor with ‘darkwood’ studs, at an increased cost of 100 gp and weighing 17.5 lbs, and can provide such armor to a fellow druid who has earned her favor. She has attempted several times to craft a breastplate of this wood, but her attempts have met with no success, as of yet.

Maokaori can teach another druids how to attract dinosaur companions (ankylosaur, brachiosaur, elasmosaur, pteranodon, stegosaur, triceratops, tyrannosaur, from the Bestiary), a ranger how to attract a deinonychus or velociraptor companion (PFRG p. 54) or a sorcerer or wizard how to attract a compsognathus (+3 to scent-based Perception checks or to Survival rolls to track by scent) or pterodactylus (+3 to sight-based Perception checks during the day) familiar, as well as familiarize a druid or user of the beast shape line of spells with the forms and abilities of various dinosaurs.

Stats for Compsognathus and Pterodactyl familiars in the profile.

IconoclasticScream wrote:

Is that a typo, or should it be read "must have at least 10 TPS, but spend 15 CPA to be a knight"?

That's exactly what it means.

Thanks, Sean. Any insight into their alignment- is it LG or NG?

Random Bellflower Network operative.
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Rosy-cheeked and always out of breath, ‘Mama Tatty’ is a round-faced woman, who bustles along with a sense of impatience. Quite the beauty, twenty years ago, Tatriana Figliosa (fee-lee-OHSA) has lived on the border between Cheliax and Andoran all her life. She’s raised her family there, and lost them to tragedy, a widow before her time. A lesser person would have melted across the border, but when her son died smuggling slaves across the border, and her husband days later, in a drunken assault on the Hellknight patrol responsible for the death of their son, she publically renounced them for their fool’s quest, and earned the ire of some of her neighbors, for so turning on her family.

She had never had much interest in the plight of the slaves. Certainly she had no intention of ever owning one, and the whole affair was distasteful to her, but she felt that so long as she avoided the practice, that this was ‘good enough.’ She encouraged her son to not ‘rock the boat’ and oppose the will of the government with his dangerous game. His death, and the death of her husband, she used as an excuse to more strongly reinforce her views, publically, while she quietly took up her son’s ‘fool’s errand,’ starting with the three Halfling slaves he had hidden in the long-forgotten root cellar beneath their barn.

It has been five years, and Mama Tatty is still known around town as the bitter old woman who may well have turned in her own family for smuggling slaves to freedom (a rumor that she has spread herself), while others quietly know her to be the strongest link in the local ‘underground railroad.’ She still works as an apothecary and the best midwife in the county, her family farmland having mostly been sold off, acre by acre, to sympathetic neighbors who know her true disposition, and are inclined to ignore anything ‘suspicious’ going on at the Figliosa farm after dark.

Even she sometimes has difficulty finding the line between her public and private personae, and those closest to her in the network have privately observed that as much as she honors the work of her son by continuing it, a deeper part of her resents the slaves she smuggles to freedom, for escaping to the life that was stolen from her family.

While she never goes out ‘in the field,’ either to farm, or to practice the Bellflower trade, she has grown quite skilled at smuggling Halflings (and other slaves, on occasion) to her property, and from there, past the border patrols into Andoran. She makes extensive use of her barn owl familiar, whom she never communicates with in the sight of others, keeping her connection to the ‘varmint’ that lives in her barn a closely guarded secret in the local community. Many slaves who have benefitted from her operation are aware of the creature’s uncanny intellect, as it guides them by night, using a specially wrapped sunrod to signal to the watching slaves when it is safe to make the dash to the next safe spot. Tatriana has recently begun to notice strange activity on the part of her familiar, as it has recently begun speaking to her in the voice of her deceased son. One part of her wishes to believe that her son’s spirit has returned in this form to continue his mission, and relieve her burden, while another part of her suspects that she is either descending into madness, or, and this idea angers her greatly, is being manipulated by the Andoran ‘avoral,’ some avian angelic creature of freedom, to keep her working the Bellflower ‘plot’ with the pretense of her son’s voice. As a result, she has become more erratic in recent months…

Boons: Mama Tatty has developed a few special items that she calls trinkets, and she may be willing to give one to someone who has helped her out of a jam, or helped some of her ‘lambs’ get to safe pastures.

The trinkets she might give out as boons, the Lady's Favor and the Witch's Cauldron, are detailed in the profile.

And the man that may end Mama Tatty's time at the tiller, a Hellknight operative tasked to seek out the lawless Bellflower operatives and the impudent slaves they are stealing away from the fair, but stern, hand of Chelaxian justice.
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Ladislao De Luca has been assigned to the border not as a chance to prove himself, but as a chance to get him the hell away from his superiors. His unwholesome fascination with the necromantic arts, his aggravating tendency to know something about everything, and to insist on sharing that unasked-for information, and his complete lack of political sophistication all combined to make him an annoyance and an embarrassment to his fellow clergymen. Technically, he's been more than successful enough that he should be a Signifier, at least, but he's been passed over for promotion repeatedly, and while he is often assigned a pair of lesser ranked Armigers to assist him in his patrol duties, he only barely outranks them, and they tend to find his command over them dubious at best.

His appearance is surprisingly well-rounded and healthful, for someone with such an unhealthy set of interests, and he looks nothing like a necromancer and ‘re-slaver’ who uses the corpses of slaves who did not survive his attempt to recapture them to assist him in his duties. On the other hand, he spares no cosmetics for his own use, and frequently doesn't look quite as immaculate as his gruesome litter-bearers...

De Luca travels on a litter borne by six people who appear freshly-slain, with the wounds of their murders decorated with red dye, where the blood-stains have faded to brown, and the bruises on broken necks of hanged men also colored with cosmetics to make the wounds angry and fresh-looking. Despite the death-wounds visible on their stiff faces, these dead men move with unnatural alacrity. Beside his litter, a pair of brutish armored hounds are held at bay by the armigers assigned to assist him, and they appear as terrified of the hounds as they are of their master.

Fast Zombie litter-bearers and tracking hounds described, but not statted up, in the profile.

Armigers assigned to work with De Luca are treated with far less affection than his hounds, and less attention to detail than his zombie litter-bearers. Indeed, he is less likely to accurately remember one of their names than the names of his zombies (since the zombies, at least, did something in life worthy of his ordering their execution). Despite the unpleasant nature of the work, they tend to survive the engagement, and come to appreciate how much of the tracking work is handled by the ferocious hounds, and how much of the chasing down and capturing of slaves is handled by the shockingly fast zombies of former abolitionists (and, invariably, some Andoran fool who was captured on the wrong side of the border and sentenced with helping slaves escape).

Boons Those who assist Ladislao in his pursuits, generally to apprehend slaves attempting to cross the border, or to reveal those who would assist them in their escape, but occasionally more esoteric interests into necromantic studies or alchemical formulae, might learn from him the necromantic practices that allow one to create a Fast zombie.

He also has independently researched a variation on two different Orisioni alchemical funerary oils.

The new alchemical items are described in the profile.

A unit leader among the mercenary Bloodstone Swords, who, because I haven't seen any Shoanti recently, I decided to make an exile from that ethnic group. I didn't come up with any special feats, spells, equipment, etc. for this one, because this ain't Skreyn's Register. :)
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Kalanoq’s Shoanti heritage is obvious to all who see him, from his imposing size to his guttural speech to his foreign weapons. Gruesome scars covering his left side, from shoulder to chest to back, and rising up to his neck, show where tribal tattoos were burned away when he was cast from the Shundar-Quah, although only another Shoanti would be likely to recognize the significance of those scars, or to his name, ‘smoke-in-the-eyes,’ an insult indicating someone who is a fool or is deluded, whose vision has been obscured or clouded.

Fortunately, his Bloodstone Sword companions care little for matters of honor or disgrace from some distant tribe they’ve never even heard of, and his uncanny tracking ability, way with animals, wilderness survival skills and unorthodox fighting style have won him much favor with his fellow mercenaries, as he charges like a silent berserker into a fight with brigands, hurling his strange weapons two-handed and often causing foes to fall like wheat before the flail, only to look up in time to see his greatsword, or the fangs of his yowling catamount companion, falling upon them.

His men treat him like any other resident of the River Kingdoms, recognizing that few live in these lands who do not have a past they wish to avoid being reminded of, and he has a reputation for returning with the same number of men he left with, making him popular with recruits, although it has been observed by his superiors that when the patrols he has led do encounter significant resistance, his men are as likely as not to be carrying him back on a makeshift stretcher…

Boons To those who do his unit a service, he may offer training in the unusual weapons of his people, such as the earthbreaker, klar or shoanti bola, and he has an assortment of such weapons cached away in various places, from sources that remain unclear. He can also supply shoanti ‘barbarian chew’ to someone whose temperament has impressed him. While he is not himself a berserker, his own teeth are stained from the habit, and he has located a local supply of the herb.

Kalanoq is also quite familiar with the local wildlife, and can assist a non-native Druid, Ranger or Wizard in locating a suitable companion or familiar.

And the accompanying rival, from Daggermark, with a specific reason to want the local Bloodstone Swords group to fail spectacularly and be dishonored. Stats, as always, in the profile. He's a Monk, who works as an Assassin. He's probably woefully unoptimized for that lifestyle, but he's an NPC and they make strange choices. :)
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Daggermark has a bewildering array of rogues, alchemists, apothecaries and assassins, and so the Kuthonite militant known only as Wither has chosen to take another path, focusing on the strength of his body, combined with a rapid flurry of attacks, either from his limbs, or in the form of tiny throwing spikes and blades known to the Tien as ‘shuriken.’ Wearing loose concealing clothing, his features remain a mystery to those who have not seen his face in their last moments of life, when he pulls his scarf down and looks into their eyes, to watch the fires of life flicker and fade. When his limbs are visible, they are scarred so heavily as to leave no doubt that he has been tortured extensively, but few would suspect that he has never known the touch of a blade or lash or burning brand that was not held in his own hand, as he regards pain as his sacrament to Zon-Kuthon. By scourging away weakness, he purifies himself, and leaves behind only that of himself which is as strong as bone, his weakness sliding to the floor with his unworthy blood.

When Wither has time to prepare, he takes advantage of his own immunity to disease to attempt to befoul food supplies of a target, so that they are weakened by contagion before he strikes, but he rarely has such an opportunity, and generally prefers to ambush his targets with a flurry of throwing blades, before closing in for the kill.

Recenty, a Galtran ‘noble’ hired him to dissuade a political rival from some council nonsense, and he had managed to get her away from her guards, using a ‘brigand attack’ as a bit of cover, only to be foiled in his mission at the last moment by thrice-cursed Bloodstone Swords mercenaries. The noblewoman survived, and his patron refused to pay him, as her accusations in council caused him some grief. His patron was not so foolish as to meet with him in person to discuss this breach of contract, but he sent the messenger’s head back, filled with venomous vermin, in the fashion of the kobolds, by way of expressing his displeasure.

In between jobs, Wither now seeks for information on the local Bloodstone mercenary patrol, led by a particularly large and ugly Shoanti. He intends to shame this mercenary the way he feels that he has been shamed, by taking his men from him one at a time, saving the fire-scarred brute for last…

Boons Anyone who helps him in his goals finds Wither to be scrupulously honorable, and he will pay exactly any agreed upon sum, or provide precisely a bargained-for service (no more, no less, although negotiations during unusual situations are always an option). To those who have earned his favor, Wither can provide instruction in the ways of unarmed combat, or reveal to a would-be saboteur the most effective means of procuring and administering contagious elements to the food supplies, clothing or cosmetics of foes without betraying their presence, to weaken an enemy in advance of a confrontation. While he has no love of poison himself, he can also serve as a go-between to purchase an assortment of different toxic agents, including some specialties of the Daggermark poisoner’s guild. Any poison of 500 gp or less value, he can acquire at a 10% cost reduction, thanks to past services for certain apothecaries, and any poison of up to 1000 gp at standard fares.

Nice work Set!

Nice work Set!

Thanks! That Bloodstone Swords group kinda felt like it came out of nowhere, so I was grasping at straws with that one. :)

It's a bit wonky how perfect Bards are for this 'Patron' role in almost any Faction, but I really want to avoid writing up a half-dozen Bards, 'cause that would get repetitive and boring.

A Church of Razmir patron, one of the 'priests' of that faith, based out of Absalom. Gosh, there are no avatars of masked women, are there? And no masks of Razmir, either. Blatant deist favoritism, Razmir will be revenged for this injustice!
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Corianne has buried her past as a failed Kitharodian student, and found new purpose as an iron-masked priestess of Razmir. Her beautiful face is now hidden from the world, and her birth name long abandoned, along with her childhood dreams and hopes. She revels in using her persuasive tones and the rhythmns of voice and meter to smother her rapt audiences in layers of comforting deception, teaching them of the man who became a god, and who chose to remain behind, instead of ascending from the Starstone Cathedral to take his place among the heavens, that he might better serve his faithful, creating a safe haven for them in the magical land of Razmiran.

She seizes upon small contradictions in the tales told in Absalom to plant a seed of doubt, and falls back upon the death of Aroden and the end of the Age of Prophecy as explanation for how the old order has changed, and it is time for the gods who truly care about the fate of men to walk among them and set things right. Playing on whatever fears seem most relevant to her target audience, that of Taldan privateering and treachery to a Qadiran merchant, or the spread of diabolism and unchecked slavery to an Andoran freeman, she makes the law, structure and security of Razmir (or, at least, the picture of Razmir she paints in their minds) seem like a place where such looming threats are distant things.

She avoids the street-preachers, scoffing at them, noting that Cayden Cailean and Norgorber passed the Test of the Starstone with no such rabble inflating their reputations. Razmir, too, she says, needs no such false evangelization, as he is already a god, like those before him, having passed unremarked into the Cathedral, and, unlike them, having chosen to remain on Golarion afterwards, to bring justice and peace to the lands that now bear his name, providing a safe haven for his faithful.

Corianne will be quite grateful to any who assist her in promoting the message of Razmir, or, more likely, downplay or discredit the messages of the other gods, whom she claims in a sad voice, have abandoned Golarion, with the death of Aroden, shaken to their core by the knowledge that they too can perish. She is very diplomatic in her commentary on the other gods, not wishing to sound as if she is attacking their choices, so much as highlighting the superior choice that Razmir made, to remain behind and succor the mortal races, rather than ascend and leave the races of man behind to claim some distant celestial throne. She has, however, found that the clergy of Iomedae are the most vocal in their opposition to her message, and she will reward most generously those who make a cleric or paladin of Iomedae look the fool, or be tarred with the stink of scandal. She has engineered a whisper campaign, saying that Iomedae, unlike the others who passed the Test of the Starstone, did so only because Aroden guided her through the process, as his current favored lover, leaving unstated that Iomedae earned godhood the ‘old-fashioned way,’ by sleeping with the boss, and that, unlike humbler Cayden, and subtler Norgorber, her arrival in Absalom was marked by parades and celebrations even *before* she entered the Cathedral, as if her Ascension was a foregone conclusion, most suspiciously…

As a result, missions may involve specific and subtle acts to undermine the reputation of the clergy of Iomedae, or to spread the message of Razmir, or to guard a ship bearing new pilgrims to visit ‘magical Razmiran,’ or to help her in other ways, ranging from altering written records, to whispering rumors in the right ears, to simply helping her arrange a miracle (often performed with the use of scrolls or purchased holy items).

Boons Corianne has an array of persuasive abilities, and those who have earned her favor may find her smoothing the way for them in some diplomatic engagement, leaving her mask and icy persona behind and appearing as a stunning Varisian beauty, if she feels that her Razmiri priest-persona would impede the mission. She is extremely knowledgeable, and can put allies in contact with a stunning array of citizens, running from clergymen to nobles to merchants to ship’s captains to poisoners.

Given a week’s time, she can acquire a one-use item of mass cure light wounds or mass inflict light wounds (same cost as a scroll, but able to be activated by a bard, as well as anyone with those spells on their spell list, without a Use Magic Device check required) that she uses on occasion to emulate the abilities of a cleric to channel energy. Such items are expensive, so she only uses (or distributes) them sparing.

Corianne can arrange for a bard ally, particularly one who has taken an interest in the Razmiran faith, to be able to learn any of the following spells as Bard spells; inflict light wounds (1), inflict moderate wounds (2), inflict serious wounds (3), inflict critical wounds (4), mass inflict light wounds (5), mass inflict moderate wounds (6). Such training takes one week if the bard has an available Spells Known slot, or one month if the spell is to replace a pre-existing known spell. Alternately, a month can be spent studying the nature of these spells, effectively adding them to the character’s Bard spell list, for the purpose of using spell completion and spell trigger items of these spells. An ally who wishes to take advantage of this training must make the journey to Razmiran, which may come with its own risks, as Corianne has not mastered these techniques herself...

And the inevitable rival who might have counter-missions opposed to the spread of the Church of Razmir. I could have built on Corianne's current agenda against the Church of Iomedae, but that would have been predictable...
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Sir Chalsedon 'Chalse' Pietroforte was smuggled out of the Duchy of Melcat by his adoptive mother, only hours before Razmir burned the capital to the ground. Already, he had been trained to take a position in the court, although he was low enough in the chain of precedence that he knew that he would never sit the ducal seat. With one night of fire, he shot to the front of the line of succession, but with no Duchy left to rule.

It has been almost 50 years, living in exile, and the Cult of Razmir has grown stronger year by year. Thanks to the elvish blood of his birth mother, a diplomat from Sevenarches, Chalse has aged more slowly than a human heir would have, and yet his years have only doubled his disappointment, as military action taken in his youth failed to dislodge the bloated tick that is Razmir from his once-proud nation. As the years became decades, he has come to believe that Diplomacy may now prove stronger than the blade he spent a lifetime training with, and begun honing his skills at statecraft again, hoping to rouse allies against the Razmiran contagion that has taken root in his homeland, stirring up neighboring nations to push back against the rabble-rousers and rogues that seem to make up the so-called ‘Church’ of Razmir.

Here in Absalom, he seeks lore, to bolster his case, and while his own research skills are merely adequate, he knows that his tale of woe can stir the hearts of those who may already have cause to mistrust the vandals of Razmir, so that he can persuade more scholarly sorts to uncover written records that will disprove the bewildering array of lies and half-truths spread by his thuggish clergy. Sir Chalse has also lowered his once-lofty standards, and begun to associate with some lower-born professionals, who might have a feel for the pulse of the underworld, where he suspects many Razmiri contacts, as the self-professed ‘priests’ are little more than thieves and conmen themselves.

Those who aid him, either in underworld matters related to uncovering acts of perfidy by local Razmirans, or by scholars who may help him uncover Razmiri lies, or, best of all, fellow diplomats and courtiers who might aid him in stirring local nations into pushing back the spread of the Razmiran filth, will gain his favor.

Boons Sir Chalse is an aristocrat without a country, and so finds that he has little but promises to offer in compensation. What funds his step-mother smuggled away in their flight have been devoted towards his mission, and keeping himself appropriately appointed, to represent his station, and while he can earnestly offer grants of land or noble titles within the Duchy of Melcat, that nation no longer exists, and will not so long as Razmir draws breath.

He does maintain respectable quarters within Absalom, and, if nothing else, can offer food and lodgings, for those who have done a service for his cause, although he often entertains, and would prefer if uncouth quests were to make themselves scarce when he is wheeling and dealing…

Possibly the last patron one would expect, from an order of rangers and paladins, an adept / expert who raises horses, hounds and hawks for the Eagle Knights (and other Andoren patrons)
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Anri grew up a slave in the Chelaxian house Varros, working in their ‘country estate’ at Longacre, managing-by-proxy both their stables and their kennels, due to his gift for working with all sorts of beasts. Years of seeing his best-bred horses and hounds bred to conjured beasts from Hell itself, to produce ever-more-brutal and intimidating creatures, broke his spirit, and he began to subtly encourage viciousness within the fiend-tainted creatures, escaping on a fast horse into the Whisper Wood during a mini-revolt staged when a dozen hell-bred hounds ran amok, attacking staff and noble alike.

The journey to Andoran is a hazy memory, and he scarcely believes the more fantastic details himself, of leaping off of the cliffs into the sea ahead of a Hellknight patrol, of being rescued by a ‘gray ship’ of Andoran privateers seeking slaving vessels to raid, and finding a new home, in the land of the eagle. Muttering that he was an animal trainer was sufficient to see him thrust into the care of an elderly woman who raised falcons, and had already lost one eye to the finicky creatures. His young hands and sharper reflexes were a welcome aid to her craft, and he soon found himself mastering the hawk as well as the hound and horse. Mirielle died six winters ago, and he now manages some of the finest mews in Andoran, surrounded by birds of all sorts, being trained for local freemen-of-station, as well as the more traditional hounds and horses.

He’s an unlikely-looking Eagle Knight patron, eschewing the flashy epaulets or similar signs of the more martial members of the faction, but he knows just about anyone who sits a horse or bears a falcon on their gauntlet, and relays messages by fast bird all along the eastern reaches of the nation, in addition to providing training services, not just of beast, but of man, teaching young knights how to best seat a horse, to fight from its back and how to direct the actions of hound or hawk.

Anri is most likely to retain the services of others to locate or transport new foals, pups or chicks, to replenish his stock, or to transport mature animals to various locations for breeding or delivery to a waiting patron. He remains possessive of ‘his’ animals, even after their sale, and is not above arranging for a mistreated animal to ‘escape’ from an abusive or neglectful owner, transporting them in secret to a distant candidate who will treat them more respectfully, and, most importantly, is far enough away to be unlikely to ever be seen by the former owner. These missions, naturally, are kept quiet, as few former customers would be pleased to know about this unofficial repatriation policy, and so he may find himself choosing non-locals for these sorts of missions…

Boons Anri’s bond with animals borders on the supernatural, and he can not only provide fully-trained animals at reduced rates to his allies, but can also select well-formed and healthy specimens that have a +1 to their strength, dexterity or constitution (pick one). He can only provide exceptional specimens of hawks, riding dogs and horses in this manner, and all will cost twice the normal price if sold normally (and still cost 50% more than normal to those who he favors). He has not developed a large enough breeding pool to provide exceptional specimens of owls, eagles, ravens, ponies or smaller dogs (or any other animal, for that matter). He is especially successful in the area of rearing horses of great strength, and an exceptional horse from his stables can have a +2 to strength, instead of a +1.

He can also train a man and a beast to work together with singular focus, with a week’s training affording someone a +2 to ride and handle animal checks with one specific animal, and allowing the master of a familiar or druid or ranger to be treated as if 1 level higher for the purposes of his bond to his companion (to a maximum of his character level). This latter bonus does not stack with the bonuses provided by the Boon Companion or Andoren Falconry feats, and only can apply to horse (including ponies), dog (including wolves) or bird (eagle, owl, roc) companions or hawk, owl or raven familiars. The latter bonuses also only apply to a single animal, and if that companion or familiar dies, the master must either have the animal magically restored to life, or return to Anri to train all over again to become ‘one’ with his new companion or familiar.

And an agent who works against the aims of Andora and its 'freemen.' Not the Chel one would expect, and hopefully not the first race you'd expect. He wouldn't be terribly good at his job if his loyalties were obvious, after all.
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Enosencio ‘Eno’ Soucy is a charming young halfling, whom the Eagle Knights remember rescuing from a life of slavery in Cheliax. None as yet suspect his true allegiance, to his home country of Taldor, or that he was planted into his placement so that he could be ‘rescued’ and infiltrate the Eagle Knights support network. He could care for Cheliax or its slaving tendencies, being a Taldan loyalist who believes that the lawless and anarchist ways are a threat not just to the nation of Taldor, but to the foundations of civilization itself. There have always been rulers, trained and raised and bred to lead and inspire, cultivated like fine wine, suited for their roles from birth, and for the Andoran madmen to suggest that lowborn rabble can unseat them and rule as wisely and well is an outrage to Eno’s sensibilities.

He works along the border between Cheliax and Andora, assisting the Eagle Knights in smuggling slaves to freedom, looking for opportunities to allow things to go tragically awry with their plans, damaging their reputation and their morale. If a tale spreads that an Andoran privateer sank an entire cargo ship loaded with slaves, to prevent them from being sold into a worse fate, he’ll be responsible for that story getting out and spreading, even if there will never be any visible connection between himself and the rumor-mongering. If an Eagle Knight of note falls in a failed slave-raid, struck down by a lucky blow from a Chelish mercenary, none of the escapees will note the tiny envenomed blade that struck him low and left him at the Chel’s mercy.

While he has made exceptions, Eno works very carefully to avoid being present on missions that he has sabotaged in this manner, so as to avoid making a connection between these ‘unfortunate incidents’ and his presence. Only when he is near discovery, or he deems a particular individual to be an unforgivable egalitarian buffoon, will he risk direct action in this manner, preferring to arrange for equipment failures and similar mishaps from afar, leaving contact poison on the shaft of an arrow, or sawing halfway through a saddle-strap, or spoiling the contents of a tanglefoot bag. As a result of his extreme caution, he is always looking for unsuspecting patsies to bumble a mission or otherwise work to undermine Andoren principles, and those who share his nationalist agenda (or one that he is pretending to hold, such as Chelish sympathies) may earn his favor.

Boons Eno can reward allies by putting them in contact with Eagle Knights, Chelish authorities or Taldan partisans, depending on whom they believe him to be, and can get his hands on an interesting array of poisons, which he can pass along to allies, regardless of their legality.

He can also provide access to charms similar to his own.

Stats for the Unctuous Charm available in the profile.

A simple Adept, this patron of the Green Faith is more remarkable for his race, as he's an awakened Huge oak tree with a Str 30 who can stab you for up to 6d6+15 with a huge spear! Hmm. No giant angry tree Avatars, either, so I had to poach Mairkurion's. Note that the exact process for converting a tree to an animated object then a plant then a sentient creature is not exactly clear, so I made some judgement calls...
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Urumulu only vaguely remembers the singing lady who once lived within his heartwood. She came and went, laughing and dancing, her hair always decorated with fresh wildflowers, daisies that would never wilt, nourished by her fey vitality. The angry men came, with biting axes and terrible fire, and the lady never came back. The sun felt harsh on his leaves, the wind bitter and the water tasted empty against his roots, for his heart had left with her. Then the old woman came, and she sang to him, joining him in his silent grief, until he felt his leaves fall away, shed to make room for new life, as if it were springtime already. He understood her words, and she explained to him many things in the fey tongue that he had heard, but always so distantly, as a meaningless buzzing, until now, when the words dripped with meaning and portent.

The old woman showed him how to lift his roots and shake off the soil of a century, and she led him to where she who was his heart had been buried, when the druid had discovered the body of the fallen dryad, abandoned by the men of the Consortium after their axes had finished their grim work. Urumulu, for that was the name he chose for himself, a babbling nonsense sound that reminded him of the soft thrumming of water against his roots, reached his branches to the stones that covered her, and found that fresh daisies had spring up from these barren stones. He took them and braided them into a new crown of flowers, which he wears still, as they have never wilted or faded, drawing whatever sustenance they need from himself, the way they once had from his fey lady.

The old woman is long gone, and he has grown powerful and wise. The walkers who call themselves druids once regarded him as a curiosity, he sensed, but as the years became decades, he is now a respected elder, despite having not mastered their own specific arts.

Urumulu takes a long view on most matters, as befits his years, and is quite concerned with matters of personal protection, keeping an assortment of defensive potions and spells at hand, tucked away within his branches, almost impossible to see from the ground. Great spears rest there, too, and he has learned to move his branches quite quickly, to ready spears for use with startling speed, and to strike with them with the brutal strength that comes of his great size and power. Encounters with both wanton shapeshifters and malicious unseelie fey have prompted him to carry defenses, and items of offense, against both of these not-uncommon dangers, and when he courts the favors of the little men, it is often to follow such despoilers into small caverns or settled areas, where he cannot pursue. He also barters for defensive items, always interested in finding some new trinket or token that might allow him to add more decades to his already long and learned life.

Boons Urumulu can instruct others in wilderness lore, or assist them in locating hard to find flora or fauna, so long as these creatures are sought for reasons he finds unobjectionable. He can also craft items, and will occasionally provide amulets of natural armor made from darkwood or similar trinkets to those he favors at reduced cost. Someone who truly impresses him, particularly a beautiful woman who has some quality that reminds him of his long-lost lady, may receive the woven-flower circlet that adorns his uppermost branches, which will provide a one-time inspirational bonus to the wearer, in time of need. He has given such a circlet away at least three times, and it is not clear if he still gathers the flowers from the grave of his dryad.

Stats for the circlet of flowers, Beauty That Never Fades, in the profile.

And a rival group, too small to truly be a Faction of their own, whose goals and tenets are antithetical to the teachings of the Green Faith, the Chelaxian Helltamers, druids and rangers in service to Asmodeus himself, represented by...
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Sarpedon Akhanti is one of a relatively small group of Asmodeus-worshipping druids and rangers who call themselves the Helltamers. They have begun developing a fantastic ‘Garden of Infernal Delights’ outside of Ergoran, surrounded by a series of magical wards that are one part of the protection of the surrounding community and another part to maintain the infernal environment that the thrashing vines and sinister-aspected wildlife native to Hell itself find comfortable. The Helltamers believe that the darkening of the roses in Ergoran, upon the death of Aroden, was a sign that Hell was coming to Golarion. Asmodeus grows ascendant, and Cheliax is only the foothold upon this world, which he will soon dominate entirely. With the god of the Hells, the creatures of the Pit will rise, and the natural order of Golarion will be forced to adapt, or perish.

The Helltamers wish to prepare Golarion against that day, so that the devastation is not too great, when the powerful ecology of Hell arrives to supplant and master the world, along with their dark master. With the assistance of certain sympathetic clergy of Asmodeus, an infernal blooded tiefling sorcerer who regards herself as a living example of the coming consanguinity of Hell and Golarion, and a few low-ranking conjuration specialist wizards, they conjure fiendish beasts, such as hell hounds and nightmares to mate with the most brutish and powerful Chelish war-trained hounds and horses, to produce fiendish animals that are native to Golarion, with a foot in both worlds.

Sarpedon is one of the second generation druids of the organization, and is among those considered to be among the future of the order, having passed his initiation as a Tender to rise to the rank of Assistant Caretaker. He spends his time attempting to secure spellcasting services from those capable of calling up planar allies or planar binding fiendish creatures to help with the breeding programs, and peddling the fiend-touched warhorses and attack dogs that are their primary source of income, at this point.

The Helltamers are always looking for sources of planar calling magics beyond their capabilities, and will often pay good coin for someone able to cast planar ally or planar binding, or with a scroll of same for sale. Additionally, they seek out samples of flora and fauna from all over Golarion, the deadlier or more spectacular or sinister, the better, and, while it is controversial among the order, they sometimes pit their own hell-blooded hybrid spawn against mundane Golarion native creatures, under carefully controlled circumstances, to ‘prove’ the effectiveness of their methods (as they always stack such matches in favor of their own creations, to justify the necessity of ‘strengthening the stock of Golarion for the arrival of Hell’).

Boons Sarpedon can provide access to Hellhide leather, studded leather or hide armor, at 10 to 20% off of its normally inflated prices, and is the person to consult if one wishes to bind into service a fiendish familiar, using the Improved Familiar feat.

Indeed, he can help one select a particularly well-aspected fiendish animal, with a +1 to either Str, Dex or Con, although this will cost an additional 100 gp over the usual summoning costs.

He can, of course, produce fiendish hounds or horses, which have the stats of mundane riding dogs or warhorses, with the fiendish simple template. Such creatures remain animals, but gain the extraplanar subtype, and are of both sinister infernal aspect and singularly vicious nature (with the horses in particular having jagged teeth and preferring the taste of meat on a regular basis, with a special fondness for the flesh of mundane horses). He will not sell such steeds, even to those who have done the Helltamers a great service, for less than five times the usual price, and can regularly demand twice that at auction for a well-appointed specimen. Note that these animals are trained to only respond to commands in Infernal, and a purchaser who does not speak Infernal may have to brush up on the relevant commands...

Stats for the special material, Hellhide, and for the Chelaxian Helltamer feat, available in the profile.

Gosh, I need to get away from Chelax for a bit, don't I? But, this is the Hellknights, so it's a bit unavoidable, I suppose. My first Inquisitor, since I was almost done writing up an Oracle of Justice, when I decided that creating an entirely new Mystery for a throwaway NPC was a bit over-the-top. I'll finish up the Oracle of Justice and post it somewhere else, later...
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When Aroden died, Malleus’ father watched Cheliax fall into disarray, with opportunism and unrest at every turn. His own father had been a priest of Aroden, and died, seemingly bereft of spirit, within the years of civil chaos that followed, and he swore that his own son would not inherit such barbarism. The rise of House Thrune was hardly the ideal solution, but the return of order was a necessary respite. If ruthlessness would serve the ends of law, then let justice follow on its heels, he thought, and he raised his own son with an unflinching devotion to recapturing the justice that was always at the heart of Imperial Cheliax.

Malleus is all too aware that he is associated with diabolists and those who would turn the law to their own ends with clever sophistry and faustian bargains and deceptive contractual shenanigans, but he was raised to respect the old laws, which could be as cold and unforgiving as any devils heart, but were also unbending before cunning wordplay or the ‘rights’ of those who consider themselves above the law. He has spent thirty years as a Hellknight, and is singularly unpopular not only with those the Hellknights pursue, but with the men and women in his own command who might have entertained the notion that their rank made them above the law.

His superiors alternately find his devotion to the law to be both refreshing and unsettling, depending on their own ethical purity, and have shuffled him around quite a bit, such that he and the men assigned to work with him, can be found in almost any corner of Cheliax. In some cases, these transfers have been all that has saved him from some rough ‘frontier justice’ at the hands of the families and friends of those he has brought to justice, and while he is hardly the most clever man, he is well aware that his gifts are equally respected and loathed.

Malleus has grown up surrounded by clever-speaking scoundrels, who feel that their erudition and their flowery pretensions somehow make them immune to the brutal simplicity of law and truth, fact and judgment. He has, many times, proven them wrong, and while some have paid the appropriate bribes and curried the appropriate favors to escape punishment, he closes his eyes and counts to ten, consoling himself that he has done his job, bringing them to justice. The failures of the courts are not his responsibility, and so long as he captures the lawbreakers, he refuses to grow bitter or frustrated at the sometimes flagrant abuses of the system once ‘privileged’ sorts leave his custody. As a result of these pernicious sorts, he has an instinctive trust of those he considers ‘too smart’ or who use clever language or make elaborate plays on words, as he has come to see ‘too smart’ people as natural lawbreakers, thinking that their cleverness somehow places them above the common law.

A servant of the law, first and foremost, loyal to a Chelaxian ideal that is a hundred years gone, Malleus may find use for non-Hellknights, to follow directives to investigate individuals that the Armigers under his command might quail to challenge (or even run and warn, their own loyalties being uncertain), and he is not above hiring shifty sorts to gather information, and then arrest everyone at the end of the day. If in the middle of an important investigation, he may find it necessary to hire temporary replacements for Armigers that have fallen in battle, or to escort ‘small fish’ to a nearby Hellknight gaol while he continues an investigation, or even to deliver wounded allies to a safe location, while he continues the fight, ill-advisedly, alone.

Boons Those who aid him in his sometimes quixotic missions of justice will find that Malleus has many connections within the Hellknights, and that he is certainly not the only member of his Order with an abiding hatred of corruption and those who would ‘game the system.’ He will never assist an ally in defying the law, but he is the best ally one could ever have if falsely accused, as he will pursue any inconsistency in the prosecution’s case with the tenacity of a bulldog, and, for all his lack of legalistic sophistication, is uncannily good at separating truth from falsehood and uncovering duplicity.

His mark is known in many places where he has travelled on assignment, and his reputation inspires fear in lawbreakers who may have previously thought themselves untouchable. Someone bearing a writ of inquiry penned in his hand and sealed with his Order’s waxen sigil gains a +2 circumstance bonus to an Intimidate checks to coerce the cooperation of certain GM-specified individuals (and a -4 penalty to Diplomacy checks on those same individuals, at the time, and, quite likely, for the rest of their lives…).

While the obvious Rival faction NPC for the Hellknights would be an Andoran Eagle Knight, I decided to go with someone who has a more personal and less lofty idealistic reason to oppose the Hellknight's draconian authority over the Chelish lands. And, with the Hellknights, that's 1/3rd of the Factions done.
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Zephiri had it all going her way, having arrived with a big splash, the most eligible bachelors of Westcrown falling all over her until she her use of addictive drugs in confluence with charm and compulsion spells to bolster her ‘popularity’ was uncovered, and expecting a polite slap on the wrist, she then spent a harrowing six months in Hellknight custody, in sentence for her crimes. The spells she used were torn from her spellbook, and a geas laid upon her preventing her from again using a charm or compulsion spell upon a citizen of Cheliax.

Not merely her fellow nobles, but *any* citizen of Cheliax of higher ranking than a slave! She was also tortured with the very compound she had used to augment her enchantments, exposed to a dose that would normally leave one pleasantly tingling (and, to a practitioner who knew what she was doing, more susceptible to arcane manipulation), and then beaten cruelly, so that even now the sight of the drug, still in vogue among her peers, makes her shaky and fearful, timid as a mouse, afraid that the cat is watching. She finds it difficult to engage in the sorts of parties she used to frequent, and her old friends shun her, not merely because she used her enchantments to live it up, but because she returned six months later a frail and fluttery thing, terrified of her own shadow, and they realize that the only reason the Hellknights released her from custody is to serve as a warning, that this too could happen to them, that they too, are not above the law.

Never a large girl, she came out of Hellknight custody almost skeletally thin, her ivory skin stretched like parchment over her bones and her eyes perpetually shadowed, as from the fists of her captors. Her wits and her health had never been able to survive a life of hedonism and drug abuse, and while her body and soul was purged of any desire for such things during the latter months of her captivity, her health of mind and body never returned.

All the best places to be seen now have a standing disinvitation for the Paracontess Mariposa, and she feels a social outcast among the society that was eating out of the palm of her hand, in a past that seems distant and alien to her now. And so she sequesters herself in her manor, plotting revenge on those damned Hellknights, who destroyed her dreams, who stomp all over what it means to be a noble.

She dabbles ever more with forbidden lore and seeks like-minded souls who also wish to return Cheliax to the old ways, where nobles where the law, and were not subject to being dragged away by overzealous lowborn thugs with pretensions of authority. She seeks allies, very quietly and carefully, wishing to maintain her pretense of being cowed and afraid of defying the Hellknights again after their object lessons, and may use go-betweens to arrange the services of those she does not know personally, sending them on missions to help conceal the improprieties of other feckless nobles, or to reveal the improprieties of Hellknights...

Boons The Paracontess is very careful about who she meets, and those who work for her may never know whose interests they serve, as, for all her bravado from the security of her own manor, she remains deathly terrified of a return to the Hellknights tender mercies.

Those who serve her interests well may find themselves similarly bailed out of difficulty with Hellknight justice, or, for those who earn her personal trust and have the arts, be trained over three days time in the secret technique that the Hellknights attempted to stamp out of her brain with their brutality, how to combine the use of certain drugs to enhance the effects of enchantment spells upon a subject.

In the day, she would leave braziers of a relatively common herbal drug around, and built her magic upon the stupefying effects of the smoke, but she has refined the technique to function similar to the Power Component rules from Adventurer’s Armory. She no longer has to administer the drug to the recipients, but can simply expend it as an additional Material Component, automatically gaining the benefits of the component.

[Originally, against those exposed to the smoke of this burning herb, which remains somewhat fashionable at upper-class Chelaxian gatherings, her secret techniques allowed her to either strengthen a mind-effect, or to, in her own words, ‘deepen’ it. If she chose to strengthen it, the spell is harder to resist and there is a +1 to the DC to resist any mind-affecting charm or compulsion spell she casts. If she chooses to ‘deepen’ it, she gains +1 CL to determine duration or other level-based variables. The drug takes a minute to saturate from the air into the bloodstream of those within the affected area, making this tactic not useful in a combat situation, but for subtler machinations, a brazier of incense costs only 20 gp and gives a pleasant smell and a tingly feeling of lassitude to those in the affected area, in addition to making them more susceptible to the enchantments of a spellcaster who knows her secret techniques. With her advanced techniques, the caster simply has to have a dose of the drug in hand and expend it as an additional Material Component.]

Due to the Hellknight conditioning, she can no longer take advantage of this technique, but nothing would please her more than for it to be used against the Hellknights by other parties.

yoda8myhead wrote:

Is that the full authors list, or is this like other recent books in the line with only a few of many authors listed on the cover?

What James said. I wrote up two factions, which was a pretty small amount of material given the number of groups covered. As I recall a number of other folks also worked on this one besides the cover billing big names *wink* and me.

Okay, which factions did you cover?

And I might as well ask this here: this tome aside, which books have the best information on the Hellknights?

And I might as well ask this here: this tome aside, which books have the best information on the Hellknights?

According to the Blog AP 27 and 28 have the most information, as far as I know. (Council of Thieves 3 and 4, What Lies in Dust and The Infernal Syndrome. )

Patron for the Kitharodian Academy *and* the Church of Shelyn (since I'm sure as heck not doing Faction NPCs for all 20 'Religious Orders' for the main dieties). Oh, a Bard! That's a shockingly bold choice for a Kitharodian patron... :/
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Baythani is an established priestess of Shelyn, although her means are hardly traditional, as she has followed the path of the bard, and serves as a wandering inspiration, travelling the lands and spreading the message of the lady of love, beauty and the arts, along with her retinue of devout artisans and ‘seekers after beauty.’ She serves as an ambassador for the Kitharodian Academy, travelling from noble patron to noble patron, ensuring the livelihood of her alma mater, providing fantastic performances with her travelling troupe, and, some say, providing earthier incentives for specific lords and ladies.

She frowns at such low, petty rumors, having only eyes for her constant companion, serving as both cohort and lover, the graceful and supple Shelyn-worshipping glaive-wielding monk who has left her birth and family names behind and answers only to ‘Petal.’

While it might be assumed that her travelling troupe is primary made up of similar performers, she has drafted from the great theatre many strong-backed and clever-handed craftsmen, and her own villa is a magnificent sight, serving as an inspiration to all who visit. The Academy regularly schedules events at her villa, which they coyly refer to as ‘informal gatherings,’ but are socially significant events in their own right, in which aspiring artists can seek out patronage, and not merely singers and dancers, but also craftsmen and architects and gardeners who work in the latest styles, showcasing their work in Baythani’s own halls and courtyard, so that those invited are inspired to retain these young masters to brighten up their own manses and topiaries. In this manner, Baythani is making the careful transition from supplicant, always on the road capering for support from jaded patrons, to becoming something of a patron herself, something she much prefers, as the road no longer inspires her the way it once did.

Due to her increasing desire to stay at home and enjoy the glamorous surroundings her career has allowed her to build, she finds it increasingly necessary to patronize young aspiring artists, to send them on the sorts of favor-currying missions that the Academy always has need for, to re-secure the patronage of nobles who might begin to feel that the Academy is out of sight, and out of mind.

Boons While she may sometimes feel like the Academy is teetering on the brink of financial ruin, always scurrying to find new patrons, Baythani knows that the resources of the Kith are vast, and not at all measured in coin. Those who do her a service may be put into contact with artists and artisans of many sorts, with prodigal skill in almost any craft, including some that can have many alternative and interesting aspects, such as career stage-costumers who can dress up a farm-wife to appear as a duchess, and show her the proper carriage and poise to carry off that ‘role.’

Her pull in the church of Shelyn is less impressive, but she can still secure healing services from the adepts in her retinue, or allied clergyfolk, as well as assistance from the Shelyn Monks, glaive-wielding acrobatics who put the artist into ‘martial artist,’ and who regard Petal as one of their ‘Flower Masters.’

Updated Shelyn Monk feat in the profile, not that she has it, it's just something her cohort / girlfriend has.

Why would the Kitharodians have a Rival anyway? Who has a sinister plot to rid the world of a bunch of bards? Someone with a personal reason, and a political agenda that he considers the Academy to stand in the way of, perhaps? Oh yes, he's a bard, too. Fight Bard with Bard, I always say. Well, no, I never say that, but I just did. :)
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Despite growing up surrounded by the Kitharodian Academy, as the bastard son of Baythani DiConti Bianche and an unknown father, ‘Ren’ felt little more than contempt for the excesses and indulgences around him, all spectacle and costume and pretty words that, to his mind, represented the decay of the once-glorious Taldan empire. He could read about and re-enact glorious plays about the armies of Taldor or the Armies of Exploration, but it seemed like the cream of Taldan society was content to sit on their ever-expanding arses and do nothing to bring that sense of glory and accomplishment to Taldor.

His distant mother was only part human, and he blamed her otherworldly half for the whimsical fancies that seemed to occupy her time, and he began to see the magnificence of the Kitharodian Academy as a leech, sucking the life out of Taldor, keeping them fed and entertained, while their significance was sucked away and lesser nations like Andora, Cheliax and Qadira siphoned away the influence and import that was once Taldor’s alone. They sat and listened rapt to stories of heroes that they would never be, and that, for all the money they poured into ‘the arts,’ they guaranteed that Taldor would never be again.

After one last argument with his mother about these matters, Ren joined the army, and turned his bardic talents to securing officer status for himself, serving to provide spellcasting services and rousing leadership to the rank and file on the border, but always stymied by the lack of true action, other than the occasional skirmish, that ended as soon as it began, it seemed. Always he heard the same frustrating refrain, that bolder action against their neighbors, any attempt to recapture faded glories, was a fool’s errand, as Taldor’s army was not strong enough to engage in a major campaign. And why was the army not up to the task? Certainly not for lack of fire in the hearts of the Taldan soldiery, no, it was because too much of Taldor’s treasuries were tied up in fripperies like the Kitharodian Academy!

And so he has turned his sights on stirring up nationalistic pride, attempting to turn the very patrons of the arts his mother introduced him to, to support for the army, and to, as they say, ‘beat the drums of war.’ His mother, in her frustrating way, has dismissed his crusade to resurrect the sleeping giant that was great Taldor, even claiming that his entire life’s ambition is just a sign of ‘childish rebellion,’ but her words have only strengthened his resolve.

Like-minded souls will find his plans unfocussed, but he seeks both ways to discredit the Kitharodian Academy, and to provoke some sort of pretext for military action against one or more of Taldor’s neighbors. His original intent was to attempt to stir up trouble on the Qadiran front, but has been re-assigned abruptly to the Andoran border, instead, and he suspects political discomfort with his words and actions, as he stirred up nationalistic fervor to a degree that left other officers uncomfortable and unsure of their ability to maintain a smooth flow of command. He’s now learning the lay of the land along the Andoran border, more quietly stirring up discontent with the rebellious and ingrateful peasants who stole land from the empire and rudely and illegitimately usurped the authority of their betters during their proletariat coup. Missions to antagonize Andoran border patrols into aggressive or provocative action, or, in the most extreme cases, to frame Andorans for attacks on Taldan holdings (even if they were obvious humanoid or bandit attacks), to stir up talk of retaliatory strikes, will be his bread and butter, and he has squirreled away an assortment of ‘evidence’ to be discovered, such as Andoran military tabards and equipment. He will also happily seize any chance to make a Kitharodian performance suffer, and an ally who can arrange an incident that will cause such a performance to be less-than-thrilling will please him greatly.

Boons During his investigations, Corporal Bianche has discovered a lively cross-border smuggling operation, with participants on both sides, and can blackmail the participants on the Taldan side of the border to provide services to his allies. He can also rouse up some rabble on short notice who will assist with varying levels of thuggery, particularly if he can paint the target as an Andoran sympathizer.

Woot, back from fireworks! Time for a random Kusari-Gama Patron, who may or may not be getting herself in over her head, seeking out potential recruits among the devil-monks of Cheliax...
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Born without breath, a dead child, she was brought to life by the touch of curative magic from the attendent priest. As often happens with such children, snatched from death at the moment of their birth, her hair grew in white, an unnatural color for the dark-complexioned people of her homeland, associated with ghosts, with a soul that has already come one step closer to the spirit world than the world of the living, and not expected in anyone not of advanced age and wisdom, with, as the westerners say, 'one foot already in the grave.'

Her natural beauty obscured by runic tattoos and a sometimes harsh and humorless mien, Mikara Kandalahar is one of a half-dozen scouts, coordinated from a central temple in Jalmeray, sent to scour the lands for chosen warriors, to join the Kusari-Gama. She travels with a retinue of experts, diplomats, low-level monks and adepts, each of them dedicated to the cause, and assisting her in locating, analyzing and judging the performance of the living weapons the Kusari-Gama seek to recruit. Those with both the skill and the temperament are referred to those higher in the organization than herself, and she is no final judge of the worthiness of a potential recruit. Avistan is her territory, and she has struggled to master the Taldan tongue, so that she might recruit from Absalom, Andora, Cheliax and Taldor, among other lands. Others, known only to her by name and reputation, handle the recruitment of potentials from Qadira, Osirion or the Mwangi Expanse, and she recognizes that she has the lands with the least and furthest-separated groups of potentials, as befits her low station within the Kusari-Gama.

She is eager to change that status, and spends much time travelling the lands, refusing to accept the hospitality for long of the jaded Taldans and Absalomi ‘patrons’ who wish to invite her colorful and ‘exotic’ retinue to their parties the same way that they would like to have elephants in their parades, to ‘show them off.’ She has found the Andoran situation to be tiresome, with far too much emphasis on heavily armed and armored knights, who, to her mindset, lack physical, mental or spiritual discipline (or, at least, the sort of discipline that her order believes to be necessary, in the coming days). For all their distasteful associations, the Chelaxian martial artists, with their devil-emulating techniques, are of more interest to her, and some in her retinue have come perilously close to insubordination with their carefully-phrased doubts of her interest in these diabolists and their fighting styles…

Mikara has only a bare minimum of permanent retainers accompanying her on her mission, and so finds it necessary to sometimes recruit temporary help from locals, either in seeking out rumored monasteries, which are rarely conveniently located, or terribly well-documented, or in defending recruits whom she believes are in danger from sinister forces that oppose her mission, or in escorting potentials to safe transport from the point of recruitment to Absalom, and, eventually, the Kusari-Gama training temple on Jalmeray.

Boons Can have a member of her entourage tattoo a valued ally with a special Tien glyph of Knowledge that allows the recipient to use his Wisdom modifier in place of his Intelligence modifier for a single Knowledge skill, or a glyph of Strength that grants him a +2 bonus to checks made with one Strength-based skill.

She also has access to secret techniques that would require a monk or cleric of Irori to travel to Jalmeray or the Tien lands to be inscribed with one of two special alchemical silver tattoos that can either function as a holy symbol, for a cleric, or allow a monk to treat his unarmed attacks as if made with a silver weapon for penetrating DR, so long as he spends a ki point to ‘charge’ the tattoos with power for a single round (as a swift action). Tattoos that confer bonuses related to the Healing, Law or Rune Domains are also available, at the temple in Jalmeray, and a disciple of Irori may benefit from a tattoo that allows them to decipher written scripts or inscribe arcane marks, imbue an unarmed strike with Lawful properties by expending a ki point or channel energy attempt, or gain a small bonus to damage healed (to self or others) via cure wounds, channel energy or wholeness of body.

On a more mundane level, her retinue has an assortment of unusual weapon options, such as battle poi, or Mikara’s own weapon of choice, the meteor hammer, and can provide training in such exotic weaponry, or even teach local craftsmen how to manufacture them.

And a Rival to the Kusari-Gama, who might have missions counter to their interests, from the brutal, and brutalized, dead-eyed Monks of Nidal. Stats, as always, are in the profile.
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Urio left Nidal with a mission, to prove the superiority of the Zon-Kuthonite fighting style against that of the soft and mewling fighting arts of surrounding nations. At least, that’s the story that gets told, and widely accepted, as the pale-skinned warrior-monk travels the land with his cold, dead eyes and his black silk and leather clothing, carrying a brutal length of chain as his primary weapon. He has another purpose, and is one of the publically seen Nidalese wanderers abroad, meant to draw attention to himself, to obscure the presence of the more numerous unseen agents. He knows that he is little more than bait, to draw out the enemies of Nidal, and accepts this role with the same grim resignation that he accepts the pain of life.

Much about him is a lie. The name he gives is not the name he was born to, and he remembers that name not at all, having had it stripped away during his brutal childhood training. His clothing was given to him, and he had never worn silk, or anything other than tattered burlap, for that matter, until he was sent on this mission into the soft lands filled with people too weak to survive that which comes. He has found, to his surprise, some that seem to almost understand the truth, but he was warned in advance to never be deceived by these appearances. The devil-worshippers of Cheliax almost seem to have apprehended the darkness that comes, but they do not harden themselves to fight it, merely celebrate and drink themselves into stupor, as the world begins to burn and blacken around them.

He has discovered the Kusari-Gama, and while he is unsure of their purpose, he has captured one of their recruits, who knew the rudiments of their beliefs, but had not yet been initiated into the greater secrets. The hardships and dire times they seem to be preparing for might indeed be the same trials that his teachers in Nidal spoke of, and he wishes to capture some of the higher ranking initiates of the Kusari-Gama, to send them back to the Umbral Court, to be broken, that their secrets be revealed, perhaps as truth, perhaps as lies. He suspects that the Kusari-Gama, which appears to be recruiting the most promising ‘hardened’ warriors of strength and grace, and sending them away, never to be seen again, might be working for the unseen enemy, removing any whose strength of purpose might stand against it, in the final days…

While he is unlikely to directly hire allies, he will, if possible, manipulate others into assisting him (even if using them as expendable distractions, sending them to ‘rescue’ recruits that he tells them are being recruited against their will into a cult, with heads filled with lies).

Boons Urio is unlikely to reward unwitting allies with anything more than ‘the bag’ that he leaves them holding while the Kusari-Gama, local authorities, etc. surround them with pointed questions as to why they just helped some unknown party kidnap and / or kill a bunch of young novice martial artists…

On the rare instance that he might find a fellow Kuthonite, he can teach them only very macabre things, such as how to use the Heal skill to thread a fine wire between the bones of a captives’ wrist without causing any significant injury, so that they would tear their hands and forearms apart in attempting to break free.

He can also supply allies with self-igniting smokesticks that are doused in a small amount of alchemical fire and wrapped carefully, to prevent the alchemist’s fire from igniting until they are broken open (as a standard action). These smokesticks cost twice as much as normal, due to the special treatment and oil-soaked wrapper required.

I didn't catch why all of these character write ups are being posted here, but I certainly do like and appreciate them.

I didn't catch why all of these character write ups are being posted here, but I certainly do like and appreciate them.

'Cause I thought this would be a neat place to put them, mostly. The Factions seem like they could use some contact people / Patrons to assign those faction missions (and some built-in enemies), and after reading the book, a few just jumped out at me.

Others, not so much, but I hate not finishing what I've started. :)

Glad you like them! (Feel free to modify any to suit your tastes, and a few of them are flexible enough that they could represent a completely different faction, with minimal tweakage.)

Lantern Bearer Patron, whom I decided to make something less common than ye olde Ranger.
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Uinseach of Leaping Shadows grew up with an aunt in the Lantern Bearers, although he did not understand the significance of her interest in him until he was older. As a child, he was always a troublesome child, getting into fights and showing a fierce and cruel temperament, petty, vindictive and full of spite and contrariness. His aunt convinced his parents that she should remove him from the community, taking him to join her in a spiritual retreat, and the community leaders pointedly agreed with the plan to get this disruptive child away from their own children.

He knew nothing of the Lantern Bearers, only that aunt Siobhannon had many unusual and secretive friends, in elven communities scattered around the region, some of whom he’d never even heard of. From one of these mysterious friends, he learned secret rites to purge the darkness from his soul, causing it to erupt forth in a painful and traumatic ritual, as a clawed feral creature of pure darkness and spite. No matter how amazingly free he felt, with the anger and the destructive urges cast forth in this manner, laughing like the carefree child he have never been, he learned that it was ever his responsibility to keep his inner darkness from terrorizing the world. He could not just cast it free to wreak havoc upon the innocent, but must remain bound to the dark beast that once lived within him, to keep it in check. Within him, it was tainting his soul, it’s own violent and destructive impulses overwhelming his own inner goodness, and he learned to keep the beast leashed, manifest in the world, but more or less subject to his will (although the Beast was never an eager servant, unless the cause was violent…).

He has practiced caging the Beast within himself for longer and longer times, under his aunt’s encouragement, as she has warned him that simply casting it forth and pretending that there is no part of himself in that black anger is a fool’s wish, that he must accept his own part in bringing this creation into existence, and not delude himself into claiming no kinship with his Beast. He struggled with this teaching, wishing to believe that it was a possessing spirit, or some malicious fey trickster-spirit left over from the First World, and not a part of himself, but he is slowly coming to recognize that the Beast is not his shadow opposite, darkness to his light, but a thing that he nourished and allowed to grow within himself for decades, not knowing what seed he was watering with his resentment.

He has learned of other elves, known to few, and opposed by his new allies among the Lantern Bearers, who have surrendered to the darkness they allowed to grow within their souls, so that, instead of casting it forth and learning to control it, it consumed their souls, and now controls them, instead. Creatures of cruel malice, darker than any wicked sprite and uncaring trickster, these ‘drow’ have turned to the worship of demons, finding no gods cruel and vicious enough to suit their fell natures.

He know travels among the border communities, seeking information about these dark elven folk, attempting to quietly scout out any potential sightings among the men and gnomes and halflings of nearby territories, without revealing any information of significance, and allowing anyone who seems too curious to believe that he is charting the activities of wicked fey, or the underground dwellers some call the ‘dark folk.’

Boons Someone who has assisted him in his mission to track down the movements of the drow, or to conceal such information from the general public (particularly the non-elven public), will earn his favor.

He can provide access to certain elven crafted items that might not be available otherwise, such as durable arrows, and can teach a spellcaster in a single day how to perform a ‘Power Component’ stunt involving using a flask of black adder venom as an additional Focus component while summoning vipers with conjuration (summoning spells), so that a single conjured viper will produce potent venom (+1 DC). If the dose of black adder venom is instead expended as a material component during the spellcasting, any or all vipers summoned via summon monster I – III or summon nature’s ally I – III impose a +2 DC to the efficacy of their venom.

Stats for his Eidolon, 'The Beast of Leaping Shadows,' are also in the profile. Despite his disassociative issue with his 'evil' being contained within the Eidolon, both he and it are neutral, although he acts a bit more carefree and 'good' while it is manifest, and it acts surly and vicious.

And if there's a Lantern-Bearer mission to be assigned, there's someone out there who could either be the target of that mission, or working actively against the Lantern-Bearers, like this guy.
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Sikarazi remembers worshipping the goddess, loving her with all of his heart, saving his passion for her alone. Other clerics of Calistria smiled at his wide-eyed reverence for the goddess, which, in another temple, among another people, might have been considered inappropriately personal, but among the elven followers of the goddess of lust, trickery and vengeance, was regarded as ‘a phase.’ Who didn’t entertain such thoughts about the goddess of lust, after all?

Channeling his dreams and fantasies into the study of the ways of the goddess, he grew fixated upon the darker aspects of vengeance, scripting out elaborate revenge fantasies, soaring past schemes to humiliate or shame a rival or betrayer, to meticulously plotted-out scenes of torture and worse. While Calistria is very much a fickle goddess of vengeance, she is also a goddess of strong passions, and his obsession with this one limited aspect of her nature, upon the vengeance, before even the passion, took him down darker paths than even her most cruel and spiteful followers would follow. Disagreements grew bitter, and those who attempted to counsel him to embrace the more pleasurable aspects of the lady’s faith were regarded as enemies, terrible fates planned too for them, lovingly detailed in his jealously-guarded journal…

He remembers waking to the silence. He prayed for hours, but the goddess’ touch never fell upon his brow, and the droning of the sacred wasps seemed alien, mocking, even. He felt the eyes of his fellow clergy upon him, the other elves of his community, and he knew in his soul that all could see his shame, that the goddess who had taught him of betrayal and retribution had herself abandoned him, after seeing him this far down a road he had walked in her name. People turned away from his angry glare, from the tears upon his cheeks, and he returned to the shrine and poisoned the waters that fed the sacred wasps, killing the holy creatures of the goddess, and defiling the altar, to show her how his love had transformed into hate, to share with her the lessons of vengeance he had learned.

Fleeing into the woods, a whispered voice promised him acceptance, and he found a new faith, and a new family, led along dark paths that he had never known existed. He has spend decades working his way back up the steps of the clergy, a new secret clergy, among a people he never knew existed. Andirifkhu is his new patron, and the demon-lord rewards his imaginative nature and his unforgiving excesses.

Sikarazi holds a special place within his heart for the elven followers of Calistria, and will take any chance to arrange the betrayal of such a person, to have them seduced, or framed for some terrible crime, to reduce them to a shattered wreck before ever laying a blade upon them. He has found few opportunities to do so, but still fills journals with disturbingly detailed ‘plans’ for what horrors he will visit upon any who fall into his clutches. Any elf will do, really, and he combines a sadist’s joy with a surgeon’s skill, frustrated in his ambitions by the inability of flesh and blood to long survive his lack of self-control, as he slashes too deeply and too angrily, causing wounds that he may not be able to staunch in time to save his captive for another round. He has been assigned to provide clerical support to a small unit of infiltrators and slavers who work on the surface, and any who help him, even non-Drow, may earn small tokens of favor from him, in return for their aid in reconnoitering or capturing elven individuals for his ‘studies.’

Boons Sikarazi has access to Drow sleep poison, and will sometimes give the mercenaries working towards his interest vials in payment for services rendered. He can also provide medical assistance to those injured in his service, but such treatments are never pleasant, and will usually leave behind a gruesome scar, studded with metal clamps or tightly bound by wire, in place of sutures, as he permanently leaves his mark on any non-Drow he treats.

To someone he especially favors, who takes a similar interest in pain, he can spend a week teaching them how to use mundane surgical techniques in combination with a cure wounds spell over the course of 10 minutes to improve the efficacy of the magical healing, so that the minimum damage healed by the magic is equal to the number of ranks of the Heal skill available, up to the maximum the die rolled allows. (Example; A Cleric with 5 ranks of Heal casts cure light wounds over 10 minutes. If he rolls less than 5 on the 1d8, the number is treated as five. If he had 10 ranks, the result of the die roll could still not exceed eight, so a cure light wounds would never be able to heal more than thirteen points of damage using this technique.) This technique expends one use from a Healer’s Kit, and leaves behind a terrible scar. Even a willing subject may have to be restrained, due to the painful nature of the treatment.

In a contrary mood, this 'Lion's Blade' is not at all a master of disguise or intrigue, and has never set foot inside the Kitharodian Academy. Still, he's got a job, and he gets it done.
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The Right Reverend Higgins Higgins Dunstable the Fourth calls himself the fourth in his line, but he’s actually the fifth ‘Higgins Dunstable.’ Nobody talks about his disreputable grandfather, and the numbering has been changed to help hasten the forgetting of that black mark on the family record. Coming from a line of Halfling stewards that work the fields west of the World’s Edge Mountains, the Dunstables have a special relationship with birds of prey, and every generation has had a Higgins Dunstable that has climbed the mountains and communed with Erastil, the family patron, seeking out the nests of various raptors, to populate the Dunstable Mews. Higgins the Fourth has gone one step further than his father, a Sorcerer who mastered the arcane ability of flight, and has bonded with one of the great rocs of the deep mountain clefts, whose fearsome visage adorn the tabards and shields of his clan. His entire family is thrilled at this development, and have showered him with unusual gifts, such as armor and saddle crafted specially for the animal, or potions of feather falling, ‘just in case.’

He serves the Lion’s Blades as a courier, as so many of his clansmen have over the years, taking on his father’s former duties as messenger and scout, delivering 90% official documents and 10% secret communiques, using the incredible mobility of his mighty aerial steed to good effect. He swoops over the lines, often travelling by night in dangerous times, trusting to his companion to guide them through the darkness, bringing communiqués and small, but vital, materials (potions and scrolls, most commonly) from encampment to encampment, and even flying behind enemy lines to pre-arranged meeting spots, to pick up or drop off new orders or intelligence, on those occasions where he is sent south from his families holdings, near the southern headwaters of the River Porthmos. The Lion’s Blade have regular need of swift courier services, and, barring magic, the Dunstables have always had some of the most reliable and speedy delivery services, through the use of various trained birds. Higgins the Fourth has taken this to an extreme, but still follows the family tradition, with his unique relationship with his fledgling roc.

He is profoundly protective of his companion, whom he has named Darius (and refers to as a ‘rukh,’ in the Qadiri fashion), and refuses to even land if the situation appears dangerous on the ground, using Ride-By Attack to snatch a required package, and similarly dropping non-fragile packages from the air, in passing, rather than risk injury to his feathered friend. Some of those he works with regard him as a bit of a fussbudget, and even a coward, due to this caution, but he cares little for their opinions, since it wasn’t them who climbed the World’s Edge Mountains as a child, seeking out a chick in the nest of the great rukhs, and risking being devoured in a single gulp by the territorial predators.

Any who helps rescue him from a jam, and especially, helps his companion, or assists him in the completion of a difficult delivery, will earn his favor. He is surprisingly un-versed in the secrets of the Lion’s Blade organization, like the rest of his family, serving only his very specific role. He has never opened a sealed package or read a document meant for the eyes of another, and his family (barring the unmentionable grandfather) has a trusted reputation in that field.

Boons The Dunstable Mews can provide trained falcons or other birds (owls, eagles, even ravens and courier pigeons) at reduced rates to those who earn the favor of Higgins the Fourth, and can even select specially-bred birds who are stronger, more dexterous or hardier than the average bird. (+1 to one physical attribute, but the cost for such a bird will be 50% higher than normal, and that’s with a ‘we owe you a favor’ discount, as the cost is normally doubled.)

A druid, preferably one of Erastil, can also be shown to the peaks where the great rukhs nest, during the season when it would be possible to attract a companion of that powerful breed, and with the right training, Higgins the Fourth can even instruct a ranger in how to attract such a companion over a month’s time. If that companion is lost, a druid who has learned the trick can replace it normally, but a ranger would have to return to the World’s Edge Mountains and spend a week replacing a lost rukh.

And who would serve as a suitable enemy for the Lion's Blades? A local scheming noble, who wishes to seize disproportionate power for himself, and is willing to risk Taldan security to do so! But that wasn't what I wrote up. Instead I came up with a foreign threat, purely mercenary in nature...
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Joff Gianti is currently known by the name of Harun Rais in the border communities of the Plains of Paresh in northern Qadira. A wandering purveyor of camels and horses, with his nomadic family, they bring news and gossip in their wake. He has spent four years building up this identity, and his ‘family’ is a trusted source of information about Qadiran border raids.

The entire family consists of imposters, some few trained in actual camel and horse trading skills (and they quietly tease ‘Uncle Harun’ for his lack of acumen in the family trade, to quell any questions his occasional misstatement could raise), and they bring news of terrible raids and imposters and untrustworthy locals, to stir up trouble along the border with Taldor. ‘Harun’ will occasionally stage one of these border raids himself, flying invisibly above isolated communities by night and raining destruction upon them, although he is far more likely to wreak carnage through misinformation and poisonous insinuations.

What none of the professional troublemakers he has adopted and seduced into his ‘family’ are aware of are his true loyalties, thinking him little more than a clever and powerful bandit, who is welcomed into communities that he plundered only a season past, under the guise of Taldan insurgents. Joff, and his sister Jhovan, are secretly members of an Absalom merchant family, that wishes to instigate a ‘minor’ border conflict between Qadira and Taldor, so that their family’s ships can snatch up the contracts of those Taldan and Qadiran shipping concerns that will be temporarily redirected for military preparedness actions. While their sailors and merchantmen prepare for a ‘war’ that may never come, the Gianti family will arrive conveniently at the docks where their contracted shipments await transport, and offer their services at a fair rate, hoping to both cash in quickly on the sudden influx of business, but also to poach some long-term contracts from those who will be reassured that the Gianti ships would never leave their customers waiting, and could never be pressed into service in some nationalistic navy.

Few of the brigands who travel with ‘Uncle Harun’ would much care, even if they knew his agenda, although some might question what sort of man would dedicate years of his life towards a long-sighted scheme to provoke two powerful nations to the brink of war, just to fatten his family’s purses…

Joff has not had contact with his sister Jhovan for six months or more, and while they do not regularly risk communication, he has grown concerned as to whether or not her own cover, as a travelling priestess-adept (generally of Abadar) on the southern border of Taldor, stirring up discontent in her own way, has been blown and she has been captured by the ‘prancing ponies,’ as he thinks of the Taldan military. He also greatly desires a chance to capture a reputable looking Taldan scout, well within Qadiri territory, preferably with carefully-planted evidence of atrocity at hand (doses of the same poison used on a nearby well, flasks of alchemist’s fire similar to that found to have burned down a caravanserai, etc.), whom he can torture, drug and enspell into confessing to Taldan perfidy, to stir up the local communities and border patrols.

Boons Those who assist him in tracking down the current status of his sister, or in helping to enact a raid or ‘provocation’ that stirs conflict between Taldan and Qadiran border patrols, will find that he can, as Uncle Harun, procure them camels and horses at reduced rates (although the quality of his stock is rarely exceptional, and he is more likely to supply pack-camels and workhorses than steeds trained for war or serviceable for racing). While he is unlikely to reveal his true nature to anyone, for any reason, unless they are already a member of his family from Absalom, ‘Uncle Harun’ can also arrange quiet transportation on merchant ships with morally flexible captains, or put disreputable sorts in touch with fences and black marketeers scattered around northern Qadira.

He may teach a favored ally a ‘trick of the trade,’ such as how to use the Disguise skill to enhance an attempt to sell a sickly or poor quality camel or horse at the same prices one would command for a healthier specimen, or how to obscure or remove brands on stolen livestock, as well as dye their coats, or alter distinguishing features, so that they can be resold without incident. (DC 15 Disguise check to raise the DC to Appraise the animal by +2 for quality or by +4 to recognize provenance.)

This is exactly the product I been looking for in my homebrew campaign. I been reading this product and building my own factions. Fantastic work pathfinder. The best product I ever purchased from you guys next to the pathfinder players guide.

A Mendevian crusader who is more interested in bringing her men back alive than having them attain 'glory' posthumously, the Lady Laertes Benedictine, of Vigil. I decided to play around with some ideas from Cities of Golarion, for this one.
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Growing up in Mendev, after a stint in Lastwall, the calling of the paladin was the only choice that made sense to young Laertes, and yet she found the militant nature of Iomedae’s teachings to be perversely undisciplined. Her fellows all followed orders with great enthusiasm, and, to her mind, never learned to truly discipline themselves, being so caught up in doing what they were told, like well-trained warhorses. Where was the honor in being an automaton? She worried that her doubts and questioning would be seen as a betrayal, and certainly she got her fair share of dirty looks from those who toed the line, expecting to be rewarded for their lack of initiative and their gleeful reporting of improprieties on the behalf of their peers, and yet it was she who was accepted as a paladin, while some of the most obedient, and unquestioning, of her classmates never heard the call, and trained instead to become cavaliers and fighters and demon-hunting rangers.

Laertes learned that what she had secretly always believed was indeed true, that it took more to make a paladin than to check off a list of tasks and obediences, like following a mind-numbing and thoughtless rote pattern to assemble a chain-link shirt. But with those doubts, came the noose with which a paladin could hang herself, to fall and lose her way, and stumble into darkness.

She chose to focus on the healing arts, deliberately challenging herself in an area where she knew she was not the most gifted, as her insights had always come more slowly than some of her peers. Strength of arm and force of personality were second nature to her, but the graceful wisdom of the clerics, that would never be her strong suit, it seemed. She recognizes the value in smiting evil, but has heard too many tales of ‘heroes’ of her family and countrymen, who fell before their time, as their fellows seemed too concerned with glory and striking blows, than bolstering and succoring their comrades, so that more would return alive. She knows better than to criticize such tales of heroism, or to make these unpopular opinions known, as such views would be considered disrespectful at best and craven to the most pig-headed, so she continues her studies, supporting those she fights alongside, using her ability to channel energy not merely to smite the demonspawn, but to also heal her comrades, through the secrets of Mendevian Channeling.

Missions that will earn Laertes’ favor are not the traditional ‘kill X number of demons,’ but will be more likely to involve rescuing captives, escorting refugees, defending a prominent healer or even keeping a medical area safe from attack during a battle. Someone who can show her a new healing technique that might help to keep Crusaders alive to fight another day, whether it be surgical, herbal, alchemical or magical, will earn her favor.

Boons Those who already bear a Mendevian mark of justice and have earned her favor need only bring her a flask of holy water and she will cast a righteous blessing on them as soon as she is capable of doing so. She can also teach the necessary rites to cast the spell to any cleric or paladin who serves the cause, although the spell can only be cast by someone who bears at least one of the relevant marks of justice themselves. She can also teach the secrets of Mendevian Channeling, or provide access to Crusader’s Sigils, as well as other demon-fighting tools, such as cold iron weaponry or holy water (although bringing in shipments of either would be likely ways of earning her favor, as well, since the Crusade can never have too much of such things).

Righteous blessing spell, Mendevian Channeling feat and Crusader's Sigil magic item detailed in the profile.

A Rival / threat to the Mendevian Crusade would probably be a demon, a fiend-worshipping human(oid), a tiefling, a fallen ex-paladin, etc. Or, it could just be the result of someone messing with mother nature, with a dash of demon in the mix...
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Bleakfang is the result of a classic ‘a wizard did it’ situation. Apparently, neither worgs nor dire wolves were vicious enough for whatever crazed arcanist kept crossbreeding the two species, until he had a pack of intelligent and horse-sized 'dire worgs.' He, unsurprisingly, died at the fangs of his creations, and the coming of the Worldwound only made matters many times worse, as the few survivors of the ensuing carnage became tainted with abyssal corruption, and gained fiendish qualities. Bleakfang is the first pup to have survived the pack’s attempts to mate, after gaining their tainted condition, and he jealously slays any pup that displays the same qualities as himself (most notably, the wings), so that the remainder of his nine-member strong pack are ‘only’ fiendish dire worgs, and not, like himself, a magically potent half-fiend. (Even if the entire pack he travels with are eradicated in an encounter, and he has to flee using his black-feathered wings, there are always a few lower-ranking females squirreled away tending to pups, and he’ll be able to replace his losses within a few seasons.)

Unnaturally cunning, even for a fiend-tainted worg, Bleakfang has avoided the larger demons of the Worldwound, and struck out to the south to seize and dominate human prisoners, who are forced to raise livestock for the pleasure of their lupine overlords. Any attempting to flee the wolf-haunted hills discover that no skill they possess can evade the tracking skills of the pack, and they are dragged back to the community alive, to be devoured there as an object lesson as to what happens to those who attempt to flee the ‘mutually beneficent situation’ that Bleakfang has arranged. He plays at being the great protector of these fearful prisoners, having rescued them from the demonic threat to the north (although, in the event of a serious demonic incursion, he’ll abandon them to die without a second’s thought).

Boons Bleakfang will rarely interact (other than violently) with those outside of his pack, although those who help him or his pack survive a conflict with demons that have them outmatched, and who don’t seem weak enough to immediately betray, may earn some favor from him, although he will be quite cautious not to give away anything of value to himself, steering powerful potential foes towards demon enclaves or other places that might well be what they are specifically looking for, but are intended to eliminate one or more threats, depending on how the conflict pans out.

To someone who has seriously furthered his goals, bringing him new captives, for instance, or saving his own hide, he may gift them with a pup from his own pack, which will grow up to be a fiendish dire worg, not merely a powerful creature, but a ruthless, tyrannical and bloodthirsty creature, nothing at all like a wolf in personality, being motivated by selfishness and spite. As ‘gifts’ go, a fiendish dire worg pup is generally more trouble than it’s worth…

Stats for a fiendish 'dire worg' in the profile. As a half-fiendish dire worg, Bleakfang is notably tougher.

BTW I think it's really great that y'all are running so hard with this combo concept. :)

BTW I think it's really great that y'all are running so hard with this combo concept. :)

Thanks. Just having fun with the idea. Some of them just jumped out at me (like Higgins Dunstable or Maokaori), others, like the Bloodstone peeps, took a little thinking to figure out what I wanted there.

A Ninth Battalion patron. A dwarf, kinda a gimme. A bard, also seemed a good match, even if dwarves, with the charisma penalty, are hardly 'optimal' in that role. It has been brought to my attention that none of my NPCs have been married or had kids, and Erastil disapproves, so Mr. Hrafngeirr addresses that terrible oversight on my part. :)
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Styrkr was born to the Hrafngeir clan, famed for their arcane potential (usually binding to ravens as familiars) and their warriors’ preference for the longspear in combat, attacking in ranks. He proudly wears the family crest (a raven winged spear descending from the NE facing to the SW facing and backlit by a bold of lightning descending from the N/NW to the S/SE) on shield, tabard and cloak, but he did not have the arcane potential of his kin, and chose to begin his life following the path of the skald, so that he didn’t even master the family’s signature weapon until later, to the consternation of his kinfolk.

He was recruited into the Ninth Battalion while still completing his bardic training, strengthening his voice to boom down twisting passageways as he strove to impress into his memory the poetic epics that his people chanted during combat, or recited in downtimes, to retain their sense of history and community. He learned from their warriors the arts of battle, not content to remain on the rear lines exhorting his comrades to acts of glory, but wishing to partake in those acts himself.

In battles that never see the light of day, and go unknown to the surface world, he has faced terrible foes in deep places, and there he has found glory, and wisdom, and even love, marrying Byrnja, a shieldmaiden of the Ninth Battalion after she lost an eye and retired from the field of battle, feeling that she had given enough to the cause, and was ready to begin a new life, as wife and mother. He calls her his dark lady, for her raven-black hair, and dotes on her, and his children, wishing to also retire from the field, and now spending more time practicing the use of the dorn-dergar, while his waraxe stands ready, as he wishes to return home to his dark lady, and no longer craves the spatter of warm blood on his face the way he once did. Still, he is no coward, and if a front-line fighter falls, he will step forward without hesitation, calling upon the names of ancient champions to inspire not just his companions, but to bolster his own courage.

Boons Styrkr knows all the songs, and will teach a recruit or ally who has earned his favor one of the chants of the Ninth Battalion, to bolster their own abilities with tales of heroism from ages past. Such songs tend to not translate well into languages other than Dwarvish (and the tales of ancient dwarven heroes don’t really inspire non-dwarves as effectively), and so he may find alternate ways to reward non-dwarven allies, by providing them with access to dwarven crafted weapons, including masterwork axes, spears and crossbows, as well as most types of metal armor, at reduced prices. He can also provide access to scrolls, from his family connections, primarily of spells related to thunder and lightning, the favored tools of his clan, including an electrical variation on Scorching Ray that is not commonly known on the surface world.

His family jealously guards the alchemical formula to create ‘bottled lightning,’ an alchemical compound that can be thrown like acid, but inflicts electrical damage instead. Research continues to craft a version that retains its charge, causing lingering damage, like alchemical fire, but this has not yet proven feasible. He will part with flasks of the substance to those who earn his favor, but does not know the formula, and would not share it in any event.

The rival to the singing dwarves of the Ninth Battalion makes a lousy patron, being as likely to leave a knife in the back of an ally as anything else...
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The Dark Stalker and her crew, known to the dwarves of the Ninth Battalion as ‘Soot Black, and her Seven Little Men,’ neither knows nor cares what the dwarves call her (and wouldn’t get the dwarven joke in any event). Despite the assumption that ‘she’ is a she, the dwarves really don’t even know if ‘Soot Black’ is a female, or if her ‘little men’ are males. Since Dark Stalkers don’t leave behind corpses to inspect, that will likely remain a mystery. But the day that ‘her’ body vanishes in a blast of stolen light and warmth will not come soon, as the Dark Stalker who refers to ‘herself’ as ‘Stealer of Songs’ continues to plague the dwarves of the Ninth Battalion, sneaking through their lines with her entire retinue as if the guards were asleep at their posts.

Stealer of Songs has pioneered the use of alchemy to bolster her dark creepers abilities to move past the lines, using a variation on alchemical grease to lubricate cracks in the walls that even a small sized dark creeper shouldn’t be able to fit through, and forcing her ‘little men’ through with brute force. She has to take more caution, and her inhuman flexibility and intense training to force her larger, but still slender, body through the same seemingly impassible fissures. The dwarves, stout of form, and often clad in inflexible armor, and bearing bulky shields and weapons with many jagged protrusions, would be utterly incapable of matching her deeds, despite being close to her size. She and her creepers wear only flexible armor, usually reinforced cloth that serves as leather, or, in her case, soot-darkened mithral chain, partially concealed under yet more dark cloth. Their weapons are also simple and lack barbs or hooks or curved blades, for ease of passage through tight places, or the chinks in the thick armor of their foes…

She currently lives much closer than the dwarves would suspect, concealed within a collapsed section of passageway that the dwarves regard as impassible (and played out, making it not worth re-exposing, from a mining standpoint), and goes one step beyond the average dark stalker, not just despising the existence of light, but also despising the presence of *sound.* She ruthlessly trains her dark creepers to communicate only in hand signals, and has developed a very small ‘vocabulary’ of specific gestures and body motions that allow her followers and herself to communicate vital information silently in the midst of a pitched, and eerily silent, battle with their hated dwarven competitors for underground resources. Using her alchemical skills, she has developed a unique poison, one that uses rust monster droppings and special fungus, as well as centipede venom, to cause the victims larynx to freeze up, rendering them incapable of speech. The venom works best if ingested or inhaled, and she has found a way to fill the egg-sacs of underground dwelling cave eels with the venom and using it as a splash weapon. The venom lacks the potency that she desires, and dwarves have proven stubbornly resistant to the toxin, forcing her to trade the toxin to dark stalkers who deal with less hardy races, such as the deep-dwelling elvenfolk, while she seeks out arcane trinkets that could deafen foes or render them speechless or create magical areas of silence.

If anyone were to ever capture her, and unwind the black scarf around her neck, to reveal a jagged angry red scar across the otherwise luminscent perfect white skin of her throat, they might speculate as to why she loathes the sound of voices raised in song as much as she does. They'd be wrong, of course. She cut her own voice out as a sacrifice to who knows what dark power, although she can still speak in a guttural whisper, when the situation calls for it.

Boons Stealer of Songs doesn’t do boons. She’s ruthless to her followers, taking only those who have trained to her specifications (1st level Rogues with ranks in Escape Artist and Linguistics (dark sign)), and she’s even less generous to non-dark folk, even if their assistance (witting or no) has helped her to cause the deaths of dwarves, bards, or, best of all, dwarven bards of the Ninth Battalion. The only ‘boons’ one could gain from Stealer of Songs is knowledge of how to craft her special venom, Lockjaw, or her special techniques for the use of a dose of alchemical grease to slick an area so that anyone attempting to squeeze through it gets a +5 alchemical bonus to checks, but reduced in duration by 10 minutes for each person who uses that passage (-80 minutes duration for her and her seven little men, giving her less than an hour and a half to get in, do some damage, and get back out before the grease has lost enough effectiveness that she’d need to use another pot to return herself and her full retinue).

Her ‘little men’ also use alchemical throwables that are based off of tanglefoot bags, but are only large enough to befoul a single item, usually a torch or lantern (extinguishing it in the process), but sometimes thrown at weapons in hand (with a CMB roll) to ‘slime’ them and cause the user to suffer a -4 circumstance penalty to use that weapon until the gunk is removed (which takes a full round action and a Str check at DC 15). A clever alchemist who has survived one of her raids could spend a day or so and make a Craft (alchemy) check to replicate this use of the tanglefoot properties (uses a 2 lb. lump of the substance and costs 25 gp).

The Old Cults Awakener feat is gloriously old school, and the obvious Patron for the Old Cults would be a classic character (in)famous for her use of surgical procedures on her captives...
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‘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).

If there's a 'false Markessa' who is actually the real Markessa, then insane-troll-logic demands that there be a 'Markessa' who is instead 'false.' I always obey the demands of insane-troll-logic, because insane trolls have rotten tempers...
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The woman who answers to Markessa was born with another name, but after being captured and surgically modified to both look like and believe that she was Markessa, she has lost track of who she used to be. Markessa used her as a dupe for a time, but she was rescued by adventurers who recognized that the woman they had just defeated was not the real ‘Fake Markessa,’ and took the raving madwoman to a temple where her damaged mind was healed of the delusion that she was the ‘Fake Markessa.’ Having only a hole in her mind where her true memories lie, and a shuddering foreboding that she might not want to know the sort of person she was in that other life, the young woman has kept the name (and beautiful appearance) of Markessa for herself, and turned to the service of Shelyn (whose clergy restored her mind, at least partially). After the name of a patron saint of the local chapel of Shelyn that she serves, said to be a brass dragon, she has taken his name, 'Ambrauxage' as her last name.

She recognizes that she was a rogue, in another life, and still takes advantages of those skills from time to time, but now serves as an Adept of Shelyn (and also offers services to larger local congregations devoted to Desna and Pharasma, as she's not tied to a single patron the way a Cleric would be), seeking out those abandoned and outcast freaks that Markessa has twisted and attempting to rescue them from the clutches of the Old Cult, or, regretfully, ending their lives if they are unable to be restrained and brought to the temple. Where the False Markessa seeks to make the world uglier, the priestess who also calls herself Markessa seeks to restore the beauty that the False Markessa has damaged with her surgeries and chemical baths.

Boons Markessa d'Ambrauxage will offer healing services to those who help her to capture (or, if necessary, kill) the twisted wrecks that serve the Old Cult, and her temple, while not large, has the ear of a prelate of sufficient spellcasting potency to cast spells such as restoration, to deal with more lasting conditions.

Ahh the slavers series used for inspiration, I assume. Awesome!

Ahh the slavers series used for inspiration, I assume. Awesome!

Yup. Markessa was probably my number one favorite classic D&D enemy, even if Johnny-come-lately's like Lord Soth (aka Dark Helmet) and Strahd von Chocula get all the press and fancy schmancy domains in Ravenloft.

Markessa rocked. She was creepy. She was evil. She had body doubles, so you could never be sure if you'd really killed her, or another hapless pawn. She was the villain you loved to hate! (And was better fleshed out as a potential recurring villain than any of the actual Slave Lords...)

A Rival / threat to the Mendevian Crusade would probably be a demon, a fiend-worshipping human(oid), a tiefling, a fallen ex-paladin, etc. Or, it could just be the result of someone messing with mother nature, with a dash of demon in the mix...

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Bleakfang is the result of a classic ‘a wizard did it’ situation. Apparently, neither worgs nor dire wolves were vicious enough for whatever crazed arcanist kept crossbreeding the two species, until he had a pack of intelligent and horse-sized 'dire worgs.' He, unsurprisingly, died at the fangs of his creations, and the coming of the Worldwound only made matters many times worse, as the few survivors of the ensuing carnage became tainted with abyssal corruption, and gained fiendish qualities. Bleakfang is the first pup to have survived the pack’s attempts to mate, after gaining their tainted condition, and he jealously slays any pup that displays the same qualities as himself (most notably, the wings), so that the remainder of his nine-member strong pack are ‘only’ fiendish dire worgs, and not, like himself, a magically potent half-fiend. (Even if the entire pack he travels with are eradicated in an encounter, and he has to flee using his black-feathered wings, there are always a few lower-ranking females squirreled away tending to pups, and he’ll be able to replace his losses within a few seasons.)

Unnaturally cunning, even for a fiend-tainted worg, Bleakfang has avoided the larger demons of the Worldwound, and struck out to the south to seize and dominate human prisoners, who are forced to raise livestock for the pleasure of their lupine overlords. Any attempting to flee the wolf-haunted hills discover that no skill they possess can evade the tracking skills of the pack, and they are dragged back to the community alive, to be devoured there as an object lesson as to what happens to those who attempt to flee the ‘mutually beneficent situation’ that Bleakfang has arranged. He plays at being the great protector of these fearful prisoners,...

Yay for more fun with worgs. Hopefully this character will end up in a published adventure someday.

Yay for more fun with worgs. Hopefully this character will end up in a published adventure someday.

Thanks! I have a weakness for templating the hell out of wolves for low to mid-level encounters (or just using half-dragon or half-fiendish wolves and describing them as something else, like medium sized dragonspawn or fiend-corrupted hyenas or something).

I am fond of the idea of a pack of vicious fiendish worgs who keep terrified humans in a backwater village under their thrall, knowing that attempting to flee will just get eated...

Ah, Pathfinder Society, from hell's heart I stab at thee. Who better to be a Venture Captain than a former Darklight Sister?
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Constanczia Marcellus was born to a well-to-do family in Westcrown, and had been groomed to be a dancer by her parents, who were patrons of the arts (and already had promised anything worth inheriting to her older siblings). Having little desire to be a trophy wife, she snuck off with some adventurous friends and joined the Darklight Sisterhood, changing her name to Constanczia Darklight, when he parents disowned her for running off on disreputable ‘adventures.’ For a time, the government encouraged this potential state-sponsored rival to the Pathfinder Society, and she and her ‘sisters’ where in Osirion, hoping to take advantage of that nations imminent announcement that they were about to open the ancient ruins of their nation’s past to foreign ‘exploration.’ Her sisters, more suited to political machinations, managed to catch the Pathfinder expedition flat-footed by paying their native bearers to guide them astray, buying them a solid day’s advantage in exploring the ruin that both the Sisterhood and the Society had targeted for first dibs, and it was in securing that advantage that Constanczia learned the depth of her companions unpreparedness for the dangers that came with such explorations.

A day later, the Pathfinder expedition arrived, and of the five Sisters and four native guides they had retained, three Sisters and a single guide still lived. The survivors were trapped, some unconscious, at the bottom of a pit, only having survived a crushing stone trap by the failure of the ancient mechanism, which had jammed and remain hovering over their heads, preventing them from escaping, and occasionally shifting and groaning ominously.

The Halfling venture captain whom her team had sent wandering off into the unknown squirmed down beneath the great stone block and, suspended by ropes held by his companions, caused the trap to reset and the stone to lift high enough that the Sisters could be pulled free. Constanczia secured the ropes to the unconscious body of her ‘team leader,’ and watched as the Pathfinders they had mocked and misled pulled her to safety, followed by her remaining conscious Sister, and then the native guide, before allowing herself to be pulled free as well. Hours later, as her Sister was roused by the healing magics of the Pathfinder’s clerical support, the Pathfinder venture captain suggested that they combine resources, as his own team had lost some of their guides to a sandstorm, and her friend and Sister laughed bitterly.

Shamed by this behavior, Constanczia quit with her Sisters, and let them huddle at the front of the ruin, while she explored it’s depths with the Pathfinders who had saved their lives. She learned many useful things in this first trial by fire, things that a bunch of arrogant young nobles with too much money and too little experience outside of the intrigues of court would have been woefully unprepared to face, and when they finished, she warned the venture captain that her Sisters were as likely to betray them on the return trip as not, finding the sting of this betrayal to be less than she would have thought.

Months later, she was accepted into the Pathfinder Society, and changed her name again, to Constanczia Pathfinder, resolving that this was the last time she would abandon a name, or a family.

No longer a pampered child, she has strengthened her body with ascetic training, becoming far more than a dancer with a gift for picking pockets, but a lean no-nonsense woman who can run like the wind, avoid blows as if wearing a steel breastplate and strike with the force of a warhammer.

Constanczia prefers missions based out of Absalom, uncomfortable with the relationships between her native Cheliax and the Society, and wryly amused at how quickly the Darklight Sisterhood has fallen from favor, with more and more Chelish Pathfinders working under her auspices, all-too often willing to engage in the sort of disreputable behavior that she remembers well from her own youth. She is the most likely to be assigned ‘troublesome’ Chelish recruits, as she presents a friendly face to them, and yet can keep and eagle’s eye on them for the moment when they might allow nationalistic pride to motivate them to keep some find from Pathfinder records.

Earning her favor is as simple as performing her assignments with a minimum of what she calls ‘foolishness,’ and she checks up on those work for her, to ensure that they not only complete their assigned tasks, but also do not foster a poor impression with local communities. A mission from Constanczia might not merely request the exploration of a site of interest, but also to interview the locals as to the disposition of previous Pathfinder expeditions in the area.

Boons Constanczia practices a technique she calls ‘ghost running’ (similar to parkour or ‘free running’), with which she gains a +1 bonus to her Armor Class when she takes a double move or Run action, and is willing to teach this technique to a monk ally who has earned her favor.

Non-monks will find that she offers the usual assistance a Pathfinder of note can lend, such as reduced rates for ship transport to distant lands, the aid and support of Lodge personnel in such locales, etc.

A rival for the Pathfinders, not merely a competitor, but someone who is making very concrete plans against them...
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A refined individual of sophisticated tastes and well-read on a diverse range of topics, Kaelum has worked for the Aspis Consortium for only a year, but he’s had some impressive success. Or, more to the point, those whose operations he’s opposed have suffered some impressive losses…

A born saboteur, he is undertaking his boldest venture, very carefully spreading rumors that an undiscovered level of a previous explored ruin in the Mwangi Expanse has been found, and that those who discovered it returned laden down with riches, only to disappear mysteriously, claimed by the ‘curse of the scorpion-queen.’ Already the Pathfinder Society is gearing up to explore this ‘new’ ruin, unaware that the men who plundered it were agents of the Aspis Consortium, hired for a single job, and then ruthlessly killed, so attract treasure-seekers to the ruin, which has been thoroughly filled with deadly traps and a surprise ambush by Consortium recruits, eager to make their name with Pathfinder blood and the plunder of the plunderers. The plan is to allow the Pathfinders to bring them a well-equipped party of explorers, that they can capture not just for riches, but to interrogate for information as to other Pathfinder expeditions operating in the Expanse.

Boons Agents of the Consortium who work with him, and do not talk about the things they see working for him, may receive his favor (the sudden betrayal is reserved for mere hirelings, not actual agents of the Consortium, in most cases…), and learn of *actual* unexplored ruins, or those that have been, in the view of the Consortium, insufficiently plundered (as a proper job includes toting out the statuary and carefully documenting the placement of tiles on a mosaic before taking it apart to reassemble later, on the wall of a wealthy patron).

Kaelum keeps very well informed of local goings-on in Bloodcove, and can also provide useful information, from how to smuggle goods, to how to avoid being robbed, to where something that has been taken would be most likely to be fenced.

He can also gain access to a surprising array of scrolls, potions and other minor magical items, which stems from his secretive alliance with a powerful sorceress, who holds higher rank in the Consortium and regard him and his gang as her cohort and followers.

When I first started this project, I had an idea or two, and grabbed a sheet of paper and tried to come up with an idea for a patron, and perhaps a rival, for each faction. Half of them remained blank. The Prophets of the Kalistrade, on the other hand, changed classes three times, and her origin story just kept growing out of control. I think she wrote herself into being through sheer force of will...
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Caterine Cerdante fled Galt by a frantically-cast teleport spell from a scroll, clutching a basket holding her newborn twin infant sons and her life’s savings. In the distance, the howling mob had finally burst through the rain of fire her husband had laid down with his necklace of missiles, and he was dragged down as she faded from view, wishing she could take back the spell as the mob surged forward…

It has been almost a decade and a half since that night of fire and loss, when she survived a difficult birth to bring two lives into the world, but lost a husband and a home in the process, and she is not recognizable from the weeping soon-to-be widow of that night, severe in appearance and immaculate in her fine prophet’s robes. Caterine used the funds her husband had prepared for their arrival in Druma to set herself up, a widow raising two children and running a business that started out selling scrolls, potions and alchemical supplies she crafted herself, but has expended as she has recruited a team of experts and adepts to handle the alchemical supplies and basic scroll work, while she saves the more significant commissions for herself, such as wands and miscellaneous items. By necessity, in the cut-throat mercantile land of Druma, she has become a shrewd and pragmatic businesswoman, and prefers to sell expendable / consumable items, to get the repeat business, instead of focusing on items that she can only sell once.

Her sons are in their early teens now, and she has re-married, out of convenience, not love (she feels that her heart burned away that day in Galt), to a sensible and handsome Druman male at least 10 years her junior who handles her day-to-day business interests with cool professionalism and doesn’t seem terribly put out by being bound to a loveless marriage. In truth, her husband Lenstra, recognizes that he has married well above his station, and that he is far more successful as her trophy husband than he would have been on his own, so he bends his efforts to keeping her satisfied with his performance, as husband and, perhaps more importantly in her eyes, as business partner. His relationship with her sons, not terribly much younger than himself, remains cordial, in public, and non-existent in private, as they ignore him completely. Stanis and Radu recognize that their mother has social expectations to fulfill and consider this unwanted step-father to be a means to an end, nothing more.

Caterine had all-but forgotten her flight from Galt, save for the occasional nightmare, when the assassin came, hired by the vengeance-obsessed daughter of one of the many members of the howling mob that fell to her husband’s last-ditch arcane defense. The silent man from Daggermark passed like a ghost into the lands of the Kalistocracy, and would have had more success at his task had fourteen year old Stanis not pushed his mother aside and taken the poisoned blade meant for her heart into his own. The assassin fell to a combination of her own arcane retribution, the outraged, if inexpert, attacks of her husband and other son, and the retinue of martial artist bodyguards from a Prophet who seeking to make a business arrangement with her at the time of the attack. (Until that time, she had always regarded the Druman practice of travelling with a quartet of these bodyguards to be excessive, and had skimped on the practice. No more.) She paid an extravagant sum to have her son raised from the dead, although the formerly roguishly sly-tongued Stanis has grown darker and more reserved since his experience, and Caterine is troubled by the change in his character, having once fretted that he would never make a suitably stoic Prophet of the Kalistocracy, but now wishing he would smile that infuriatingly inappropriate smile again, always challenging the decorum of a situation.

Caterine’s primary goals are the safety of her sons and the success of her business. Anyone who can help her in either of those goals, which, at the moment, include such less-than-savory schemes as arranging a counter-assassination upon the Galtan woman who sent the Daggermark guilder after her, and arranging for her goods to arrive safely, and at the least cost possible, to destinations where they are to be sold, even if that might involve skipping some unnecessary and ‘unjust’ (to her eyes) taxes and tariffs.

Boons Whatever one might think of her business ethics, Caterine is a brilliant arcane crafter, and has pioneered several techniques that would earn her great respect among more magically inclined Factions, such as the Arcanamirium, or even in far-away Nex, such as how to craft an efficient quiver or handy haversack using a precise and delicate combination of dimension door, shrink item and rope trick in place of the higher level secret chest spell, which remains beyond her ability. Of course, that would require her to share those techniques, which seems unlikely…

Those who earn her favor may gain access to reduced rate potions and scrolls and even wands of low-level spells, as well as a few elixers or similar single-use wondrous items, or even the one lasting wondrous item she sells, being an invention of her Galtan husband that she refuses to abandon, and makes at least annually, in remembrance of him (although she’s quick to get rid of them, once the crafting is finished), the Floating Attendent*. She has also learned, through years of having to use scrolls of cure light wounds to ‘fake’ being a divine spellcaster to produce wands of that spell (which she finds are very good sellers), a few tricks that she is willing to share, that will grant an arcane spellcaster a +1 to Use Magic Device checks to read, trigger or activate a scroll or wand of cure light wounds.

Finally, only the most favored of her allies, and never another member of the Kalistocracy (who would be… displeased, if they thought she used such techniques to gain advantage in business negotiations), she share a dose of the alchemical formula she calls her ‘secret.**’

Stats for the Floating Attendent magic item and her alchemical preparation Caterine's Secret are in the profile, with the rest of the crunchy stuff.

The backstory for the Rival to the Prophets of the Kalistrade also got out of hand. Gosh, there just aren't any good Avatars for dwarves who've dipped their hair and beard in gold, are there? :)

I remind myself, time and again, to check the available avatars for an inspiring character appearance before writing up what the NPC looks like, but I never seem actually follow through on that...
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Vaultmaster Eidersson has no clan, but his human associates at the temple of Abadar are unaware of his disgraceful exit from dwarven society, nor that his professed last name of Gjallhundr is something he made up, a play on words from how he concealed his shorn locks with strands of golden hair hanging from a gold-plated skullcap. Years later, his hair has grown middling length again, and he wears it in two long locks that have been dipped in molten gold (bespelled first to survive the intense heat…) and appear to be two golden ‘horns’ that fit snug against his scalp and trail back along his skull around his ears to end near his shoulders. His beard is similarly forked and gilded, also faintly resembling the horns of a ram, descending from his cheeks and curling gently outwards, retaining just barely enough flexibility, due to the softness of the pure metal, that he can force them into more convenient position with effort.

He serves the Vault well, maintaining an elaborate system of traps and defensive devices (and, occasionally, spells), to protect the monies secured within the various church banks that make use of his services. While he maintains both skill and spells to locate the presence of security measures that may have gone awry, or been the product of a Vaultsman who has passed on unexpectedly, and taken the proper safe procedures to the grave with him, he does not open traps himself. Indeed, if anyone brings up his well-known shorn appearance of his acolyte years, he will begrudgingly confess that his hair was burned off dabbling with a trap beyond his skills to disarm (a bald-faced lie, so to speak, but a plausible one). Instead, he leaves such matters to his ‘gilded men,’ a euphemism he uses for those who have sworn to defend the Vault not merely in this life, but beyond it. These skeletons normally macabre appearance is somewhat mitigated, or perhaps made even more macabre, by a soft brushing of gold leaf upon their bones (thinly layered over a coating of gold paint), making them appear to be skeletons composed of pure gold. Clad in immaculate white robes, with polished masks, hoods pulled up and sleeves clinched to completely obscure their appearance, they can be mistaken for unspeaking acolytes, to the distant viewer. Even then, Eidersson has learned which temples are accommodating of such an entourage, and which are, as he thinks of them, backwards and closed-minded, and keeps a journal of where to leave the entourage when entering an area where their presence would cause him unreasonable difficulty with the locals. (Even in the most high-minded communities, he has found that there always seems to be some down-on-his-luck and morally flexible farmer willing to take some coin to store a half-dozen inert figures in his root cellar for a week, although he has found more creative solutions, such as ordering his minions to walk to the bottom of a lake and await his return, which seemed terribly clever until he realized that he would need to prepare a water breathing spell to get them back...)

Eidersson loathes the Kalistocracy, having attempted in his youth to engage in a little enlightened self-interest by making a deal with a Prophet to fabulously enrich the pair of them at the expense of his dwarven family, intending to punish parents and siblings he utterly despised and set himself up in the Kalistocracy with a nice starting stake, well ahead of the game, and no longer chained to dwarvish tradition, which he found utterly stifling. (His impending arranged marriage to a woman he found utterly uninteresting certainly didn’t help matters.) The Kalistocrat he had made his devil’s deal with turned out to be one of those insufferably proper sorts, who promptly reported the back-door dealings to his father, and hence his being shaved and tossed out the door with the clothes on his back, and hence his powerful dislike of the Kalistocracy, who, obviously, are to blame for everything that went wrong in his life, and for why he doesn’t have a nice villa on Lake Encartha and a dozen servants yet.

He has a copy of the Prophecies of the Kalistrade, which he still admires, and resents, alternately (the book has required magical repair, more than once, due to the intensity of this love-hate relationship), and he sometimes practices the dietary restrictions of the Kalistrade, and sometimes egregiously violates it, such that he has a bit of a paunch from these binges of devouring all of the proscribed food he can. He is less concerned with the sexual prohibitions, as his own interests in such matters are long repressed, and would likely have been proscribed in any event.

His greatest joy is to locate a Prophet working outside of Druma, and arrange for them to be ‘discovered’ engaging in proscribed behavior, the more shockingly unacceptable, the better. He has spent good coin on cooks who could mask one type of food as another, or prostitutes willing to lie about their age, racial makeup or other qualities, and to seduce would-be Prophets into acts quite clearly against the teachings of the book. In an ideal situation, he would be able to cause such improprieties to be observed by another member of the Kalistocracy, although he has only successfully engineered a single such perfect event so far. Few of his superiors in the Church of Abadar know of his little side-project, and while his immediate superior is one of them, it has been quietly agreed upon that the Kalistocracy’s continued success is not in the best interests of the banking monopolies enjoyed by the Vault, and so, perhaps his little games should be allowed to play out, for now, although the church is prepared to deny everything and throw him to the wolves if he is caught…

Boons Those who assist Eidersson in his day job of securing, transporting or even testing the defenses of Abadarite funds can earn his favor. Those who assist him in his ‘hobby’ of arranging scandal and disgrace for Prophets even more so. He is a stingy fellow, however, and would prefer to reward those who assist him with services, such as clerical spells, instead of in material goods.

He does know a special technique, a strange confluence of miserliness and divine power, that causes the corrosive properties of his Domain power of acid dart to not affect gold. He can teach this technique to another priest with the same ability, or even to a conjuration specialist wizard, with the arcane equivalent of this ability.

*Aqua Regia – Eidersson has learned the Abadarite technique to craft a dilution of alchemical acid that is similarly unable to corrode gold, which the Church uses to test the purity of coins. He is willing to give vials of this solution to allies, although the Church would take a dim view upon him revealing the recipe...

A contact point / resource for the Red Mantis Assassins, who serves as 'M', 'Q' and the random hot femme fatale that runs around with Bond during the average movie, rolled into one. She's not an assassin, and her sawtooth sabre sits on a wall back in Ilzmagorti.
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Fatima’s tale begins half a world away, in the Empire of Greater Kel, to the east of Qadira. There, she was the daughter of a merchant, with airs to status, but insufficient compared to her higher ranked peers, who mocked her hooked nose and eye for the trappings of status beyond her own, calling her ‘bint-Nasr,’ or Daughter of the Vulture, for her habit of hovering around things that they regarded of lesser worth. When her father was assigned to travel to the ‘rustic province’ of Qadira, she regarded this as an opportunity to live as an exotic princess among the rude colonials, only to have these hopes dashed as well, as her new peers proved no easier to impress. Indeed, her airs were so tiresome that several of the locals decided to teach her a lesson in humility, and trick her into an inopportune encounter with a Katapeshi slaver, allowing her to believe that she had been sold into slavery.

The joke went further than intended when the slaver was forced to leave early, wayward teen in tow, and given the bridges he had already burned, he left her locked up with the other slaves and sold her when he arrived at port, thinking that he may never be able to show his face in that port again (for reasons having nothing to do with Fatima’s unintentional kidnapping), but laughing that the noble brats had unintentionally paid *him* to take one of their peers away to sell into slavery.

Fatima was soon sold to an Osirioni merchant, a gift to his father, as it was fashionable at the time to take Qadiri as house slaves (the higher station, the better) as a gesture of infamy towards the former occupiers of their reclaimed country. Trained at temple, intended in her youth to be a priestess of Abadar, she concealed her skills and swallowed her pride and instead learned the subtle arts of the perfumed dancing girl, only to discover that her owner liked song better than dance (his eyesight having failed more than his hearing), and grew strangely fond of the old man, who treated her with socially awkward familiarity, as if child, not slave. Fatima was less fond of his obnoxious son, and when she discovered that the old man’s poor health came not from the ravages of age, but from small doses of poison that his ambitious son had been slipping into his drink, the same drink that she served him (for he intended to frame the Qadiri slave girl for his father’s death, if the poisoning was discovered), she slipped into a cold rage. Six days she plotted and prepared, before seducing and slaying the son, using his own poisoned wine to weaken him (in a stronger dose than those he had arranged for his father), and then strangling him in his bed as he lay helpless to oppose even her slight strength.

She knew the old man would never believe that his son had been poisoning him, and would go to any lengths in his grief to avenge this murder, so she also had prepared an escape for herself, fleeing into the cities underworld, where she met among the ruffians and murderers, the man who would put her on another boat, to another life entirely, as a Red Mantis Assassin…

In truth, since turning her faith to that of the mantis god Achaekek, she has killed few, less perhaps than she killed getting out of Osirion. Her job is not to hold the sawtoothed sabre that she trained with in the hidden jungle camps, but to provide a safe haven and vital information and support to assassins travelling to an area to fulfill a contract. Corentyn is now her home, and she serves as a dancer, singer and minor seller of spellcasting services in her public guise, while allowing ‘relatives’ from afar to remain in her humble apartment while she fills them with the information they will need to target foes throughout Cheliax and, her area of expertise, Rahadoum, which is an area of great interest to the Red Mantis Sect, as they feel it is an important part of their holy mission to tear down this blasphemous ‘Kingdom of Man’ that has turned its back on the gods.

Fatima will favor those who assist her cover identity, as Aisha Sandor, a singer of songs and dabbler in the arcane (Varisian in heritage, and she changes even that from time to time, having posed as a henna-decorated Osirioni apothecary in a previous city), who may seem over her head (particularly if any local has reason to suspect that she is a Red Mantis operative!), and those who can bring her up to date information on various personages of interest scattered throughout Cheliax and Rahadoum, such as Asmodeans who are too disrespectfully dismantling or denying the churches of other gods (particularly Aroden, as she has a personal fondness for the dead god), or pretty much any secular Rahadoumi of note who might make a good example (or training exercise for a new Assassin).

Boons To those who know only her cover identity, Fatima will offer only limited spellcasting services, disguising any clerical spells as bardic trickery, perhaps pretending to read off of a scroll that she has ‘tricked’ into working for her. She has an assortment of local information that she will offer, but nothing that will put unsuspecting allies in the way of ongoing Red Mantis operations.

A fellow Red Mantis will receive the full benefit of her own personal magical resources, and she can also provide them with access to secure smuggling of both items and personnel to and from several local ports, and even to Ilzmagorti itself (as well as Assassin-specific items, such as the trademark red leather armor or sawtooth sabres used by the cult). She can also provide some single use items popular with the cult, such as tokens of red jade that when thrown down transform into a summon swarm composed of tiny red mantises*, or into a single crimson giant praying mantis** for a short time.

*Red Mantis Swarm – treat as a Bat Swarm, but with the Vermin type instead of the Animal type.

**Giant Red Mantis – treat as a Giant Scorpion but change Speed to 20 ft, fly 40 ft. (clumsy), increase Dexterity by 4 (and Initiative, Armor Class, Reflex save, CMD and Stealth score by 2), replace sting with a bite attack (1d8+6) that hits automatically if the target is grappled, and replace the constrict property with the wounding property (1d6 of bleed damage each round after a successful bite).