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| | __NOTOC__ | | __NOTOC__ |
| | =Kish, the Mad= | | =Kish, the Mad= |
| − | ==''"The advantage of the knife is never having to reload"''==
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| − | ----
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| | [[File:Gnoll0001.png|310px|right]] | | [[File:Gnoll0001.png|310px|right]] |
| − | '''AKA:''' ''Windchime''<br> | + | '''AKA:''' ''Knightsbane''<br> |
| − | '''Heritage:''' Gnoll [F]<br> | + | '''Heritage:''' Gnoll <br> |
| | '''Class:''' Deadwalker <br> | | '''Class:''' Deadwalker <br> |
| | '''Calling:''' Heartsong<br> | | '''Calling:''' Heartsong<br> |
| | '''Active Beats:'''<br> | | '''Active Beats:'''<br> |
| − | (Minor) ''See something from your dreams in the real world.''<br> | + | (Minor) ''Perform a seemingly unconnected action for your masters that has grim consequences.''<br> |
| − | (Minor) ''Let your curiosity lead you into danger.''<br> | + | (Minor) ''Claim you’re doing something on behalf of your masters when in fact it’s for your own ends.''<br> |
| | '''Appearance:''' <br> | | '''Appearance:''' <br> |
| − | Windchime is rather lithe and lean for a gnoll, even a female gnoll. She has a mottled dust and brown hide, common to her people, but is known to paint glyphs and wards on herself with colored earths.
| + | Bas was an Aelfir by birth, though it is all but impossible to see that now. He has been transformed by the Heart into something else. Or perhaps into what he truly was all along. |
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| − | Uncommon to her people are her amber eyes, where her fellows' are usually green.
| + | His skin is a mottled bruise of midnight blue and dark purple, littered with boils that weep black tar. His eyes are as dark as the abyss itself and seem to suck in light and hope in equal measure. His ears... well, he he hacked the points off years ago. They were too painful a reminder of his old life, so now they are no larger than a human ear, though mangled at the top. His teeth are steel replacements, practically fangs. They were a first 'gift' from his captors, and a reminder that he was little more than an animal to them. |
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| − | Windchime is not in the habit of wearing clothing or adornment beyond the belts, pouches, and pack she needs to carry her gear with her into the Heart.
| + | The Cleaver dresses light, wearing cast-off scraps of dark clothing and armor. He is dangerous but knows that unspeakable dangers prowl the lower reaches of the Heart. Speed and stealth are his greatest tools. |
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| − | She is always grinning and constantly barking the signature laugh of her kind.
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| − | ----
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| − | ----
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| − | ==Resistances & Stress==
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| | {| class="wikitable floatleft" | | {| class="wikitable floatleft" |
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| | | '''Blood''' | | | '''Blood''' |
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| − | | +1 | + | | |
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| | |- | | |- |
| | | '''Echo''' | | | '''Echo''' |
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| − | | +2 | + | | |
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| | |} | | |} |
| | ===Resources=== | | ===Resources=== |
| − | Bag of interesting teeth D6 Desolate<br>
| + | Fresh, Still twitching Heart D6 Wild<br> |
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| | ===Equipment=== | | ===Equipment=== |
| − | Bootleg Ambrosia: Mend Mind D6, Potent, Expensive <br>
| + | Hunting Knife: Kill D6<br> |
| − | Ritual Blade: Kill d6<br>
| + | Heavy Draw Bow: Kill D8, Ranged, Tiring<br> |
| | + | Wife's Death Mask<br> |
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| − | ==Skills, Domains, & Abilities== | + | ==Skills, Domains and Abilities== |
| | {| class="wikitable floatright" | | {| class="wikitable floatright" |
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| | | Evade | | | Evade |
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| − | | '''Religion''' | + | | Religion |
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| − | | Hunt | + | | '''Hunt''' |
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| | | Technology | | | Technology |
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| − | | '''Kill''' | + | | Kill |
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| | | Warren | | | Warren |
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| − | | Sneak | + | | '''Sneak''' |
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| | |} | | |} |
| | ===CORE=== | | ===CORE=== |
| − | '''In the Blood:''' You move through the Heart as if blessed. +1 Echo Protection. Once per situation, when you take stress to any resistance other than Echo, allocate it to Echo. | + | '''Collateral:''' You have a knack for getting behind someone else when things kick-off. Once per session, allocate stress to the nearest friendly target (PC or NPC) instead of marking it yourself. |
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| − | '''Death Follows Close:''' You never knew anyone could love you as much as your own death. You are followed around by a manifestation of your death that is invisible and intangible to everyone but you – although when you are on the verge of dying, or in places that resonate heavily with death and sorrow, it might be visible to others. The exact appearance of it is up to you. The first time each session you suffer Major Blood, Mind or Fortune fallout, your death manifests to protect you and inflicts D8 stress on whatever caused the fallout.
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| | + | '''Heartsblood:''' You have a bone-deep connection to the Heart Itself; the closer you get, the more powerful you become. Your minimum protection value for all resistances is equal to the tier of the Heart you are currently on. This value doesn’t add to other sources of protection, but your base protection can’t be lower than your current tier unless you specifically lose access to it due to fallout. |
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| − | '''Enter the Grey:''' You know the trick of stepping sideways into the Grey: the space between the worlds of the living and the worlds of the dead. Roll Delve+Religion to enact this ritual. It takes around ten minutes of preparation, e.g. donning ritual garb, inhaling sacred smoke, communing with your death and so on. On a success, the smoke clears, and you (and anyone you bring with you) are in the Grey. Within the Grey, the world is a shadowy echo of its living counterpart. Some souls linger here, awaiting their eternal reward, but for the most part it is grim, empty and monochrome. (For more information on travelling and surviving the Grey, see p. 169.) Exiting the Grey is a simple enough task for a Deadwalker and those they ferry across; it’s a Delve+Religion roll for anyone else. | + | '''Red Feast:''' Your crucible guts pluck memories from the meat. When you eat a resource, you gain any domains associated with that resource until the end of the situation. If you already have access to the domain, gain an appropriate knack. There’s no limit to what you can eat, but tough or noxious materials might require an Endure+Cursed check to avoid causing yourself harm. Consuming resources requires your attention and leaves you exposed, so doing it successfully in stressful situations (such as combat) could require a '''Sneak''' or '''Evade''' roll. |
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| | ===MAJOR=== | | ===MAJOR=== |
| − | '''Sudden Death''' Your soul is so poorly attached to your bodythat you can dive headlong into the Grey without warning. ENTER THE GREY no longer takes ten minutes to cast – it is instantaneous. Bringing others along with you when you cast it in this manner makes the action Risky. | + | '''Monstrous Appetite''' When you use THE RED FEAST to consume a resource that has a domain you can access, remove stress from Blood or Echo |
| | + | equal to the amount rolled on the dice instead. |
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| | ===MINOR=== | | ===MINOR=== |
| − | '''Last Rites:''' You know enough about death rituals to be sworn in as a priest in three major faiths. Gain the Religion domain. When you touch the brow of a recently dead person, you can ask their spirit a single question before it fades away. | + | '''Darkling Eyes:''' Your jet-black eyes allow you to see in pitch blackness as though it were full daylight. |
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| | + | '''Pitch Skin:''' The secretions from your skin are flammable and adhesive, acting as a sort of volatile glue you can exude at will. |
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| − | '''Tattered Soul:''' Your eternal spirit has been warped and torn by your experiences, leaving you with an affinity with the not-quite-real. Gain the Cursed domain and +1 Echo protection | + | '''Desperate Measures:''' You can consume the flesh of something or someone that you have recently killed and gain a skill associated with them for the remainder of the situation. |
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| − | '''Grim Reaper:''' Your death has long whispered to you about the proper methods of execution; on occasion, it helps directly. Gain the Kill skill. Your death’s attentions now function as the following weapon: (D8, Ranged, One-Shot).
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| − | '''Survivor:''' Gain +1 Protection in the Blood, Echo, Fortune or Supplies resistance. You can take this advance more than once.
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| | ==Background, Bonds, and Notes== | | ==Background, Bonds, and Notes== |
| − | Her tribal name is Kish [the Mad], but in the lands below, she introduces herself as Windchime.
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| − | * Windchime fled the spire after her murder. What she misses most about the world above is the sensation of the wind in her face and running through the rough tall grass of the savanah.
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| − |
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| − | *Waking and sleeping the '''Heart''' is always with her.
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| − | **The blood raven is the most common guise in which the Heart visits her dreams, but there are also the scarabs. Flesh eating scarabs that taste like copper and dust.
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| − | **Windchime knows where the Heart is strongest. She has but to look for the black veins. The more there are, the thicker and longer they grow, the stronger the Heart is in that place.
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| − | **Her connection with the Heart changed her eyes from green to amber.
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| − | **Windchime recently witnessed another Deadwalker die the final death. His blood was a malevolent black stain on the earth. Bas was with her when it happened. He smiled.
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| − | *The Death that Follows: Windchime is accompanied everywhere by a spectre of Death. It appears to her as a roughly manshaped, mansized creature of grey stone with a face like a jackal and hands like massive curved swords. She has never successfully pronounced the name he gave her for himself and has settled on calling him Flint. He seems amenable to that.
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| − | *The Grove [Landmark]: The Grove is a shalow cavern festooned with stalagtites and stalagmites nearly as old as the world itself, calling to mind the trunks of great trees. The grove is dark to the eyes of the living, but to any who have died the stones glow with warm light. It is a place of rest to her kind, but treacherous to living souls who take refuge there, for the stone of that place swallows the living as they sleep.
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| − | *The Commune of the Red Hand [Haven]: A small community of Gnolls, the Commune banshed Kish and gave her the sobriquet 'the Mad' for attempting to eat a clergyman of the Commune.
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| − | We just had to cross a damned bridge. Trouble was, the bridge was literally damned. We poured the holy essence at the start of the bridge, and started across. That is when things went south. North? Dead shit started crawling up out of the stone and trying to drag us down.
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| − | *I don't know which of my companions got the holy essence to the far side and settled things. I was in the grey the whole time trying to drag the crusty bastards back to their own realm.
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| − | *Barley Fetch the Candlemaker. Lovely woman. Keeps her own bees, brews her own mead. She talks in the most soothing tones, and the way her copper hair catches the light . . . but no one sees past those vicious scars on her face. Shame.
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| − | *Threshgrass, judgy Incarnadine gnoll bastard. "Gnolls are of the tribe of Life!" he rants. "No gnoll should stand proud among the Dead!" he spits. His name was meant to decorate ritual blades.
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| − | *Kish originally died in the Spire, an envoy for her people, tasked only with carrying word back and forth from the city to the savanah. But she was waylaid by a person she never saw who attacked her from behind. So swift and sure was the attack that she hadn't even time to think much less cry out.
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| − | :The last thing to go through her mind as she died was a handspan of fine Aelvish steel.
| + | *His masters are Bas's own House. At least his former one. Bask-Under-Radiant-Sky once mercilessly ruled his extended family as the head of his House. He brought them to new heights of power by using them like pawns on a chessboard. They eventually rebelled and staged a coup. Bask-Under-Radiant-Sky's own guards turned against him and he was brought low. After what seemed like months of torture, Bas finally broke in order to save the life of his wife and child. |
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| − | :In her passing, she caught glimpses of several heavans, the forest being the paradise she most longed for, but it was the Grey that fought hardest to keep her. And in the end, perhaps it won, though she came back to the world and not a heaven, the Grey still let her come and go freely.
| + | *Bas was to be their tool, and they would use Bas as he used them. He has a subjugation sliver implanted in his neck. He feels pain when he is being summoned, and the pain increases the longer he ignores it. Once the faithful 'pet' returns to his masters, they give him a new task and send him on his way. The one time he ignored the summons, tried to forget his old life altogether, his masters killed his wife and gave him her head as a gift. He's complied... grudgingly... ever since. |
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| − | :She doesn't allow herself to linger on the why of things.
| + | • Choose another player character. They have |
| | + | history with your masters too. What’s their |
| | + | relationship? |
