PC Showcase

[Llyarden]

This thread is for people to post a basic outline of their character, the sort of thing that everyone (or at least everyone who kept up with the news in Altea) would know about them, for easy reference. It should not contain any mechanical details; at best a description of the character's fighting style, if it's particularly notable.

Please only post once in this thread, we can use the OOC thread for hashing out PC connections if desired.

Edited September 3, 2023 by Llyarden (see edit history)

[BBK]

Vance Sprengstoff

Vance Sprengstoff is a somewhat infamous alchemist within Altea. While he has a fantastic reputation as a local alchemical consultant, brewer of healing potions, creator of alchemical products that are made to order, and even as a healer who frequently offers his services for emergencies and to those who cannot normally afford such services, people tend to avoid him unless they don't have other, safer-seeming options.

The problem with his reputation stems from his penchant to make things...explode. Somehow, that even includes healing. Throwing an alchemical bomb at someone that turns into a glowing pool of entangling tentacles to keep the patient in place while the healing effects do their job is not a method that most people associate with healing, and people do not appreciate it more often than not. The fact that he has so many different ways to make things explode after throwing a bottle of some concoction is actually a huge issue for most people. When they see him throw a vial in their direction, people have no way of knowing if they are about to be healed, blown up, turned into a mindless undead slave, or something else entirely. The fact that he is known to also trap the area around himself with these same volatile hazards has done nothing to help with his bad reputation.

However, when something needs to be blown up, no one is shy about pointing the 'Crazy Alchemist' towards such a problem. Oh, there is a family of frog-like demons terrorizing a hunter's camp? And no one cares if the frog-like demons explode, get set on fire, get turned into skeletal minions, or otherwise cease to exist in a spectacular way? You could always just mention it to Vance Sprengstoff. Just also mention that they might contain parts with untapped alchemy potential, and they're unclaimed by anyone else and free to harvest for anyone... and the problem will very quickly 'go up in smoke'. Need someone to clear out a nest of nasty giant spiders that has a bounty? Frame it as a 'research grant' to harvest their venom and test the poison, and soon there won't be a spider problem anymore.

Absentminded, and very obviously more concerned with his experiments than nearly anything else, Vance comes off as aloof, even if quite affable. While he seems like he genuinely enjoys helping anyone who comes to him with a problem to solve...the way he tends to solve those problems, and his unhealthy obsession with his work tend to put people off, even if they haven't already heard of his reputation beforehand. So while he is considered a master of his craft, he has no known 'social circle', and tends to move around to various parts of the city often as customer retention inevitably falls.

 

Edited September 3, 2023 by BBK (see edit history)

[GralphidBlackstrip]

To most people, Velras is a strange quirky guy who lives in one of the poorer districts of Altea and owns a blacksmithy called "Sparks and Flames" which he also lives in. He is most notable for his surprising skill, his "pay what you can" pricing scheme, and frequently talking with the rats and pigeons that come by his smithy.

To those more in the know, Velras is a fey creature, rumored to have existed since before the founding of Altea. Like most fey creatures, he spent his endless days dancing and singing, playing tricks on the humans and enjoying nature. As the city expanded, most fey relocated or died, unable to thrive in a large city filled with humans and magic. Velras however adapted, and thrived. He worked as a blacksmith, blending genuine skill coming from untold years of experience, with his own nature magic, reoriented to focus on metal and fire.

While Velras works primarily as a blacksmith, producing horseshoes, nails, tools, weapons and more, Velras is a compassionate soul, and will consider any favor asked of him that is within his skills to accomplish. While he won't simply obey any order, the more informed in the city know that a polite request for an interesting challenge is often all that is needed to get the surprisingly powerful fey to drop other matters and provide assistance in whatever issue comes up.

Velras loves songs and music. He loves dancing and flirting, and appreciates wordplay and riddles. He laughs frequently and easily, and his most common emotion is happiness. He is slow to anger, but when he does get angry, his rage is burning hot and fierce, and it takes as much effort calm him down as it did to get him angry in the first place.

He speaks enigmatically, often speaking in poems or mystical utterances over straightforward speech.

Velras has two forms, his "human" form and his fey form. In human form, he appears to be a young human man, somewhere in his late 20s. He usually wears a heavy apron, gloves and rough leather trousers when working at the smithy, and simple, comfortable clothes when not. He has a surprisingly slight build for a blacksmith, with blonde hair, pale and leathery skin. He is clean-shaven and somewhat innocent looking, although his eyes show centuries of age to those who know how to see it.

In fey form, he is a small-sized, gnomish creature, with a bushy white beard, and brownish skin. When angered or in a fight, his skin seems to glow red, and his weapon burns with fire. He moves with amazing speed, leaping from place to place in a frenzy of motion.

[VennDygrem]

Zella Dradivax

Though there are some among the general population who know of the Dradivax family, their fame and subsequent infamy is most well-known among the nobles of Altea. There are few, if any, who know where they first struck their fortune, but for the past 300 or so years, they have fit in neatly among the elites of the city. However, about 18 years ago, their long history of good luck seems to have run out, and the family lost their wealth and status, largely tearing itself apart. In-fighting among different branches of the family left most either dead or scattered to the winds, seeking to rebuild away from their supposedly cursed homeland. One figure, however, seems to have escaped the bulk of misfortune, and that is the youngest living scion of the family, Zella Dradivax.

As a young girl, Zella lived up to the old saying that "children should be seen and not heard" and then some, as she also was rarely even seen. At some point, the rumor was spread that she had been shipped away to some boarding school outside the city; Why a prominent noble family would choose to eschew the prestigious academies of Altea, none could puzzle out. However, the result is that the next time Zella was seen was well after her family came to ruin.

She must have had some money squirreled away, because she seemed to have weathered the storm rather well. Although no longer nearly as wealthy as her family had been, she lives quite comfortably, and has been spotted frequently among upper circles of society. Strangely, she has a common habit of disappearing early from social events. She is young, yet no longer merely a girl, and although she possesses the fine, delicate features, platinum blonde hair, and attractive looks common to her family, she has not settled down like most noble women her age.

There is another circle of society which operates largely behind shadows which knows Zella for a variety of mysterious skills. Spies, thieves, and others in-the-know are aware that her life as a young noblewoman is a shadowplay, a farce meant to obscure her work in espionage. Most don't even know this much, as they never learn her true identity. They meet a human woman with brown hair, or an elven man with a dark complexion, or any number of aliases Zella has constructed for dealing with different contacts. Only her handlers truly know her identity, and even they only know most of her story. What they have been able to figure out is that despite her human lineage, Zella is actually a tiefling, and though her physical features are very similar in her natural form, she makes extensive use of illusions to hide her scars, color-devoid skin and hair, pointed ears, fiendish eyes featuring black sclera and silver-white irises, a long, prehensile tail, and thick horns which curl back over her head. Further hiding her identity, while in her natural form she often wears an eyepatch over her left eye, despite the fact that she can see perfectly from both eyes.

While not hiding her identity, those who are paying close attention can see Zella's shadow occasionally moving independently of her, or portraying a silhouette featuring different accoutrements to what Zella is actually wearing. In her natural form, her voice loses the playful, somewhat bored affect, instead ringing hollow as though reverberating through a tunnel. Whatever the effect truly is, it is clearly unnatural.

 

[Boss Muro]

Khefu Neith

Khefu Neith is a tall, muscular man with dark skin and silver hair. At a glance he appears to be human, but his divine heritage becomes more apparent on closer inspection: his hair isn't just grey from age, but a shimmering metallic hue. His eyes are likewise a pale silver rarely seen in normal humans, and glow slightly when he is excited and upset. As an inspector, Neith isn't required to wear a uniform on duty, but he generally dresses in a way as to make his position apparent: his loose robes bear the color and style of a guardsman's tabard, and he wears the symbol of the watch prominently around his neck, right beside an amulet bearing the golden bow of Erastil. His clothes and gear are finely made and largely enchanted, but slightly less ostentatious than most magical artifacts of similar power and value.

For the most part generally carries himself with the cynical air of a world-weary curmudgeon. After over two centuries in the city watch, he reckons there's not much he hasn't seen. Brutal murder scenes, powerful people threatening his job, a gang trying to cut his throat in a back alley; none of these provoke much of a response beyond a raised eyebrow and maybe a wry remark before the inspector gets down to business.

Despite Neith's long career, varied accomplishments and magical gifts, he has never risen above the rank of inspector. As it turns out, the same qualities that make him an excellent investigator essentially disqualify him from a command position. He's simply too honest, too stubborn, and too openly disdainful of the favor-trading and maneuvering of the Altean elite. If anything, he does the exact opposite of playing politics, going out of his way to investigate the rich and powerful of the city and expose their misdeeds to the world. As a result, he's been busted down to patrol duty repeatedly over his career, and even fired a few times. Fortunately for him, most city officials are humans, and usually not young humans. Blessed by extreme longevity by his divine heritage and magical gifts, Neith is able to simply outwait his political enemies, "retiring" to study at a distant monastery or serve as sheriff to some frontier town for a decade or two, then quietly returning to duty once his political enemies have retired or died.

In the modern day, Inspector Neith is something of a legend among those who have dealings with the watch, and not always in a good way. It's common wisdom among the watch that getting too close to one of his cases is career suicide, and as a result he often finds himself working alone. Royal Inspector Gelt, for his part, sees Khefu as far too useful to sideline, despite the occasional political fallout of the inspector's "loose-cannon" tendencies.

Khefu has been married three times in his life, with his most recent marriage ending 40 years ago when his human wife died of old age. None of his immediate family or children survive, though he has a wide crop of grandkids, great-grandkids, great-great-grandkids, etc, most of which he still keeps in touch with and many of whom have followed their ancestor into the City Watch. Khefu's aasimar heritage has only expressed itself a few times among this enormous extended family, generally appearing as a silver sheen to the hair and eyes.

Edited September 3, 2023 by Boss Muro (see edit history)

[Laird Ichofox]

Roth Mournbreeze

Often spotted floating above the streets, Roth cuts an eccentric figure, with his two-tone hair and red coat making him stand out both among others and against the backdrop of the sky. He has a good reputation for creating elaborate and dark landscape paintings, and a slightly-less-than-stellar reputation of acting like a brooding edgelord to amuse himself and annoy those he dislikes.

His penchant for edgelord behavior aside, he's known to be a straight talker who calls things as he sees them. Those who've managed to ignore Roth's facade find that he's actually quite affable, and remarkably polite. Between his wandering and desire to find new experiences to paint, tracking him down in the city can be quite difficult. The best bet is to look where there's trouble, as he's either caused it, or is nearby observing it to paint later.