#pharasmin

[pandoras-proxy]

Shade and Calista reunited as Olethros post-campaign. 

Olethros are described as having moth wings, so Calista has luna moth wings while Shade has afflicted dagger moth wings. Thank you @iingezo for some helpful advice on this one!

[minthy-fresh]

Hello

Mansi! Vice and Uprising for Laira?

Hello!! Oh my gosh everyone's coming out of the WOODWORK it makes me incredibly happy :D

Vice :: What bad habits do they have? Is there something they would be ashamed of?

Laira genuinely tries to rid herself of any vices that she can given her current status of trying to be an Aeon, doubly so as she is an inquisitor. However, even she has her moments of letting her guard down and she is very fond of drinking wine to relax. Despite this innocent thing, Laira is super ashamed of it given that wine tend to be associated with Urgathoa as well as her previous temple practicing the Pharasmin Penitence, and she keeps it a major secret because she doesn't need ammunition for those cans of worms. Arueshalae manages to find out one night and Laira completely panics about it, but ultimately she promises to keep it a secret from the others.

Upcoming :: How much do they think of the future? Do they make long-term plans?

Ohohohoho this one's a good one. You would think with her serving the Lady of Graves that she would definitely think about the future a lot. Truthfully? She refuses to let herself think in that sort of mindset because she frankly has no idea how long she's got. With the wound in her chest, leading the Fifth Crusade, becoming an entity that she doesn't understand but that she's well suited for, she is constantly micromanaging her future in short intervals of time. What's the immediate next step? That's what she'll focus on. Anything else is too complicated right now.

[monstersdownthepath]

Herald of Pharasma: Steward of the Skein

CR "15"

Neutral Medium Outsider

Inner Sea Gods, pg. 302

It had to happen. Originally, the Arcanotheign had the Finale spot on the Misfits and Monitors Month roster because of how busted her kit looked on first glance... But then I took a closer look at the Steward here, and knew that there was no contest. Even in her original iteration in Carrion Crown: Trial of the Beast the Steward pushed the boundaries of what was allowable by a CR 15 creature, and her final version in Inner Sea Gods is no different. In fact, she's actually slightly stronger than her first draft despite losing several chunks of her kit because they consolidated a lot of her kit into her spell-likes... and then added even more.

Her CR is in quotation marks because she's actually got 19 hit dice and a matching caster level for all her spell-likes, the highest of any other Herald in both respects (with one exception), who have anywhere from 15 to 18 Hit Dice and/or caster level, both of which almost never match, leading to a power disparity between their raw stats and how strong their spell-likes are. The sheer number of options she has available, combined with being statistically anywhere from +1 to +3 stronger in noteworthy stats than every other Herald, should probably put her at CR 16 or 17. A party of 10th level adventurers can't even scratch her, and a party of 12 to 13th level adventurers would struggle to harm her with anything requiring saving throws.

Fitting for what amounts to the mouthpiece of the President Of The Universe, Pharasma, the Lady of Graves. The first of the gods and the most powerful of all of them by an enormous margin, she would of course settle for nothing less than the greatest of the Heralds... though the Steward's normal jobs are more or less exactly what her name suggests, taking care of day-to-day tasks in the Courts of Purgatory and the Boneyard besides, like a combination of heavily-armored butler and mailman. This being a fantasy world, though, her jobs are suitably fantastic; she's not delivering mundane letters to the judges in the Courts, but proclamations directly from her goddess, and she's not sweeping dust from hallways, but daemons from doorsteps. When she's not doing busywork in the Boneyard, she finds herself drifting through the Material Plane at the behest of her goddess, returning the undead to dust, escorting spirits to the Boneyard, and delivering prophecies to people in whom Pharasma sees greatness.

The majority of her appearances in the universe are fleeting, momentary things where she appears in her ghostly, incorporeal form, looking down upon a newborn child and delivering a cryptic prophecy to all in attendance, sometimes going as far as to bless the child with one of her spells or whatever Pharasman Prophecy Package(TM) was sent down with her before fading away. When she's "off-duty," (read: waiting for a prophecy to become relevant and twiddling her thumbs in the meantime) the Steward often goes into deep introspection for years or decades at a time, finding a place in the universe to sit down and meditate for a while, often inadvertently causing people to flock to her unmoving form and treat it as an object of reverence or a holy site to Pharasma. There is at least one story of a Pharasmin priest who found her meditating and built a temple around her, which I feel like would be a surprise when she finally woke back up.

The Steward rarely raises a hand against anything but the undead and ones who'd create them, preferring to disable or flee rather than fight, but there are rare occasions when the Steward arrives to proclaim that someone must die, and very rare occasions when that 'someone' happens to be in the player's party. Now, shall we see how hard it is to fight (the Herald of) fate...?

We'll be starting, as we frequently do, with the defenses. The Steward's apparently metallic body can only be reliably damaged with adamantine weapons, as anything else is intercepted by her DR 10, and while we're talking about tens, she's got a meager 10 Fire and Cold Resistance but immunity to Electricity. She's got 26 SR like most Heralds, but her saving throws are actually above almost all of them thanks to her Aura of Fate (which we'll get into in detail in a bit), her saving throws towering at +15/+20/+22, all of which are above average for a creature of her CR, and while many Heralds are vulnerable to specific cheese tactics, the Steward is at least immune to disease, poison, ANY form of mental control, and all death effects. She's even got Death Ward at will to either use on herself or gift to others!

Death Ward and her immunities to poison, disease, mental control and, uniquely, being possessed all render her impervious to most tricks from Undead creatures, but she's got more than just those tricks when dispatching anything from zombies to archliches. She's got Major Image at will to weave distractions for mindless hordes to uselessly attack, the power to hold Undead of any strength in place with her unyielding gaze attack (DC 25 Will save negates + gives 24 hour immunity) for 2d6 entire rounds, and the ability to cast Undeath to Death 3/day to wipe out 19d4 Hit Dice worth of Undead in a single dismissive gesture. Her aforementioned Aura of Fate also works as a permanent Consecrate spell, making Undead inside more vulnerable to channeled energy and also making them very slightly weaker.

I'm not exactly sure how, precisely, the Consecrate works in this case; it gives a base +3 to the DC of channeled energy and a -1 penalty to the attack rolls, damage rolls, and saves of Undead, but if its area contains an altar, shrine, or "other permanent fixture dedicated to your deity." I'm not exactly sure if the Divine Herald of a deity counts as a 'permanent fixture,' but I think it should! It makes killing undead so much easier for her, and makes it harder for them to hurt her back!

Her gaze doesn't just hold undead, it also dazes the living for 2d4 rounds if they fail their save. Since the daze breaks if she hits them, she'll often fly right past anyone who's reduced to staring in reverence to focus on whoever is still standing, coup de gracing select targets if she must. Her primary offense is a pair of armored slam attacks, each one doing 2d10+7 damage and exposing the victim to her gaze even if they've averted their eyes, forcing the issue if they saw their allies fall to it and tried to avoid it themselves. While her slams are usually able to deal with most threats, she's also got Chain Lightning 3/day and... well, a few other spells.

Unlike the last guy we saw in full plate that enjoyed slam attacks, the Steward relies more on her spells than her physical power to dispatch her enemies as swiftly as possible. In addition to Undeath to Death, she's got Heal 3/day to obliterate either 150 or 75 HP from a single Undead target, or restore that much HP to a living being (including herself, natch) while peeling a bunch of unpleasant status ailments off. If she encounters someone who's time is not yet over, she also has Breath of Life 3/day to either restore a chunk of health to them, or restore them to life outright. Between three Heals and three Breaths of Life she's already got somewhere in the neighborhood of four healthbars, which I imagine will swiftly demoralize any party trying to wear her out, but this isn't anywhere close to all the tricks she's got up her sleeve to demoralize a party; this gals 3/day list is loaded.

Wall of Force 3/day, for one, to trap her foes behind invincible barriers, hedge enemies into easy Chain Lightning positions, and defend innocent civilians. Globe of Invulnerability to protect herself from any lower-level spells her enemies might be throwing out, and Greater Dispel Magic for anything beefier or anything they try to buff themselves up with. Hold Monster to shut down anything that might fail the DC 21 Will save for what may as well be the entire battle, and Greater Invisibility to avoid whatever avoided paralysis.

Whoof, Greater Invisibility alone on a monster with such an array of spells is painful enough; using it to let her get sneaky slams in almost feels like a waste when she could instead go full invisible and then use her tremendous 150ft fly speed to get into a more advantageous position and heal up, then an eye in the sky to let her properly check where to place her Walls of Force... or whatever else she feels like doing, because she's got 3/day access to pretty much any spell she thinks might be useful.

Yeah, remember how I was rubbing my hands together as I envisioned everything the Arcanotheign could do with ONE free casting of Limited Wish a day? The Steward has three, on top of EVERYTHING ELSE she can do, allowing her to adapt her entire strategy on the fly depending on what she's facing. Too many dangerous melee guys around? Dominate one. Enemy caster giving her grief? Slap them with Flesh to Stone. Really want to give someone an annoying quest? Zap a Geas onto them as a standard action. It wasn't this one's time, but they're already beyond Breath of Life saving them? Bring them right back with a snap.

And with every Save-or-Suck she replicates to harass a necromancer or an annoying band of adventurers, she's got one last trick available: She wouldn't be a good servant of the Goddess of Fate if she didn't have some control over it. So, 3/day as an immediate action, she can force any creature she can see--including herself--to reroll any roll and take the new result. Good for negating enemy critical hits, great for negating high saves or giving her another chance against a Save-or-Suck she's vulnerable to. It's only 3/day, but so is 75% of her kit! She's got a grand total of thirty level 5+ spells to throw out round after round, and that's only if she's decided a problem can't be handled with her fists or her gaze attack which, need I remind you, can lock any living or undead creature out of a fight anywhere from 2 to 8 rounds?

Her robust spell list and sturdy nature sits her firmly at the top of the Neutral Heralds, if not most of the existing Heralds. Normally when the Steward of the Skein appears among mortals, it's to bless the birth of an important, blessed person, or to destroy someone tampering with the sanctity of the Cycle of Souls. If you meet her out and about and there isn't a newborn or necromancer in sight, you'd better hope you don't need to roll initiative.

You can read more about her here.

[honourablejester]

Starfinder Character Concept: A Luminous Skeletal Priest

Okay. So. Reading the Ports of Call setting book presented me with the fabulous concept of the Last Call, a colony ship turned mobile funerary barge:

“Space is a minefield of fatal disasters, and the undead can arise from those who die gruesomely or without last rites. Knowing this, a Pharasmin sect called the Cemeterians repurposed a colony ship as their flying temple and set out to provide funerary services across the galaxy. Having now operated for over 50 years, the starship is known as Last Call is easily recognized by its sign reading “Let the End be an Ending” painted above its docking bay. The ship periodically jumps across the galaxy, serving as a trading post, morgue, and neutral ground for all but the unrepentant undead.”

This is enchanting to me. Combined with all the space undead you get in Starfinder, like my beloved Marooned Ones. Just the idea of a ship that is going out to find the wrecks, the dead stations, the lost colonies, in order to grant the dead their last rites and to lay the unquiet dead to rest. Or to just provide services for ships or stations that don’t have their own priests. I so want a character who at least spent time on her as part of their background.

And then, while I was thinking about deathly space priests and their funeral ship, I remembered a Starfinder race that I have loved since I first read about them: the Shatori. I noticed them because of the image firstly, Shatori are 7ft tall translucent immortals with glowing bones. They have a glowing skeleton that shines through their semi-transparent flesh. It’s amazing.

They accidentally set off an invasion of their world by daemons of Abaddon while looking for alternate power sources way back when, and created a spell to keep some of them alive in stasis until the invasion was over, but messed it up and wound up hibernating for centuries in a pocket dimension next to the Boneyard, the deathly energies of which gradually converted the sleeping Shatori into living but sterile immortals. They can’t give birth, can’t create more Shatori, so the survivors in that stasis dimension are the only Shatori’s that are ever going to exist anymore, and each death among them is an irrevocable loss. So they are, as a people, incredibly conscious of death, and seek to preserve their knowledge against their loss. As well as live full lives, in honour of all the Shatori that will never get to live.

Which. Combined with the Last Call.

Now. Shatori do not generally have truck with religion. They’re essentially immortal space Vulcans, they believe in impartiality and rational self-interest. And Pharasma, in particular, is complicated for them, on account of her Boneyard being the thing that … well, did the thing.

But they believe that each death is an irrevocable loss. They believe in preserving the knowledge and actions of those who have died. They believe in ensuring that those who are lost are not forgotten. So maybe one of them might be willing to crew a ship and find the lost dead and ensure that their names, their deeds, their knowledge, and the nature of their deaths, is recorded and not lost to time and the vast emptiness of space.

Also. Imagery-wise. A 7ft tall luminescent death priest, aboard a flying funeral ship. I’m just saying.

I do think I want an investigative sort of Cemetarian here. Not just last rites. They’re Shatori, they want to know the hows and whys and what-is-lefts. Recovery and preservation of knowledge, so that those who have died did not die wholly in vain. In which case, they might actually be in favour of the survival of intelligent undead, as it preserves the person and the knowledge, which might have maybe driven a little bit of a wedge between them and more zealous Cemetarians (and Pharasmins in general). So they might have been politely asked to leave the Last Call at some point. But they’re interested in continuing the calling regardless. In finding the dead of space, and laying them properly to rest, and recording the nature and circumstances of their deaths, and retrieving as much of who they were and what they knew as possible.

A mystic, almost certainly. Not a direct devotee of Pharasma, though they masked that well for a long time, more a simple chronicler of the dead. I think the Akashic connection? Knowledge, the preservation of knowledge. I like that Shatori already get detect magic, grave words, and stabilise as spell-like abilities. They lean towards deathly investigation from a standing start. We’ll likely build their spell repertoire to match that.

For background … I don’t think I’d go priest. I suspect they may not still be a member of Pharasma’s flock, on account of not actually being that religious or opposed to undeath on a philosophical level. I think I’m going to go with Void Nomad instead. Touched by the isolation and death of the vast cold reaches of space. We’re going to be a philosophical sort of Shatori on an evolving journey of discovery regarding death, that thing which is the horror and inevitable end of our entire species. By studying and honouring and embracing those who have perished to the void, we are slowly learning to accept our own inevitable end.

So. A quiet, contemplative lady, a shining skeletal Shatori on a journey of discovery, death and acceptance.

For a name … I deeply love the names of the planets in the Shatori’s home system of Disaj: Perdane, the world they lost to Abaddon, Perdure, the world on which they enacted their desperate and doomed attempt to escape death, and Prevail, a world relatively unscathed by past mistakes. There’s a theme there that I like. So. She’s going to have renamed herself out in the void, to remind herself of home and to keep the knowledge alive.

Durance Vail. An ex-Cemetarian of the Last Call. A Shatori void nomad akashic mystic. Heh.

(Or, put another way, and still to my giddy delight, a 7ft glowing skeleton lady who would like to go exploring spooky shipwrecks and speak with dead people for broadly altruistic purposes).

(Also, yes, space undead and nautical horror will never not be themes for me. I like spooky ships).

[camelliagwerm]

PLEASE tell us more about your lesbian OCs!! (If you're willing to share)

of course I am! This took a lil while because I am for the most part terrible at talking about ocs without like a direct prompt or question these days.

Leonelle (Pathfinder: Kingmaker) — an infernal bloodline sorcerer, exiled from Cheliax for embarrassing her father - but she saw the exile as freedom from a repressive, restrictive society and no longer has to live in constant anxiety of displeasing her father or being a general disappointment or feeling like she isn't good enough. Has a weird psychosexual relationship with Nyrissa for the majority of the game while having a brief fling with Octavia, being in a secret relationship with Kanerah and a mostly one-sided emotional affair with Jaethal (Jaethal later canonically becomes her mistress but that's a whole other can of worms.) In short, a lot of mess going on in her personal life as she's finally getting the opportunity to develop as a person and explore her sexuality more.

Luminița (Pathfinder: Rise of the Runelords (2e)) — my moon may changeling cleric. She was raised in Lepidstadt by her two adoptive fathers - a Pharasmin boneyard keeper and a Toragdan carpenter/coffinmaker - and the church of Pharasma sponsored her education in exchange for becoming a priest. She left her fathers after finding out the truth about her heritage, not wanting them to get caught in the middle should Mother come Calling, and is currently resting in the town of Sandpoint before travelling on to the city of Magnimar.

Veszeth (BG3) — poor, poor Veszeth. They really got the shittiest luck of the draw. Punished into existence as the result of a human blackguard's horny crimes 100 or so years ago. Made to be a cleric of Bhaal so they'd truly owe everything to their quasi-divine father, and only realising what a mistake they'd made in act 3 until it was too late. Absolutely atrocious relationship track record given the Urge and then romanced a Justiciar Shadowheart. Either doomed to ever be Bhaal's stallion or was killed the night of Withers' party. I'm considering doing a rerun of act 3 to go down that other route and see how I feel about that, but given I always intended Veszeth's story to be a tragedy, I'm not fully sold on it.

[dreadfutures]

my pathfinder group (playing since 2019!) is almost done with Stolen Fate and I think we decided we'll play Season of Ghosts next. Which is exciting! But I am starting to run out of character/class ideas.

Sorcerer/Oracle/Mystic Theurge (1e) - Undead Bloodline, Pharasmin | Crypt of the Everflame

Glaive Magus (1e), Duskwalker, Pharasmin | Tyrant's Grasp

Oracle/Paladin (1e), Ragathielite | Serpent's Skull

Investigator/Sorcerer (2e) | Skulls & Shackles

Swashbuckler (2e) - Caydenite | Reign of Winter remaster

Cleric (2e) - Lantern King | Fists of the Ruby Phoenix

Rogue (2e) | Night of the Grey Death

Thaumaturge/Marshall Dedication (2e) - Shelynite | Extinction Curse

Ranger (2e) - Half elf, Shyka | Stolen Fate

I'm not sure that the remastered Oracle or Sorcerer are really my thing, I didn't really jive with Investigator, and Kineticist and Magus seem like just a LOT to keep track of, and I do not like alchemist personally, and I'm playing with a Psychic team mate and I don't like that class much. Which leaves the remastered barbarian, bard, paladin, druid, fighter, gunslinger, kineticist, monk, summoner, witch or wizard. Buuuuuut I don't super want to keep track of spell slots......... hm.

[lankira]

you, lanki

tell me about your ocs

I HAVE SO MANY. And they're from D&D and other RPGs, so here goes... (Note: some of the other characters that come up are played by some of my mutuals, who I'll let self-identify only if they want to. So, expect to see reference to numbered mutuals. Also, ongoing games are marked with a + at the beginning of the paragraph.)

From Star Wars (the Fantasy Flight RPG), we have T'lara Kest, a stronk purple twi'lek who fled Ryloth to avoid being sold. She took various jobs, from working security at clubs and bars to full-on mercenary work until she wound up with the crew she adventured with (she may have also done some, uh, "adult modeling" to help make ends meet before meeting the crew). During their adventures, she lost her legs to cybernetically enhanced nexu, joined the Rebellion, saved her special agent boyfriend from a zombie-infested Imperial ship he'd infiltrated, and survived a lightsaber to the gut. She also had a hella crush on one of our party members (Kidan, played by Mutual 1), but the leg loss led her to actually get together with her will-they-won't-they guy of something like 5 years. ALSO, she discovered at one point that she has a connection to the Force thanks to accidentally opening a Sith Holocron with fuckin' Darth Nihilus' consciousness in it.

+From Call of Cthulhu, we have Lori Jones, former TV personality turned occultist (and also straight-up cultist). She started off as somewhere between Jean Gray, John Constantine, and a daytime TV host. She then (accidentally) married Hastur, joined an occult investigative group, helped thwart some of Nyarlathotep's plans (some of which included her best friend of many years and the best friend's family), killed someone with a mind control spell, got sent back in time from 1991 to 1921 with the rest of the party, converted from Catholic to Jewish in order to marry another party member (Aldous, played by Mutual 2), and is currently heading up part of Hastur's cult in London while going through more investigative stuff and helping the party figure out how to get back to the 1990s. Oh, and she's plotting an assassination of a member of MI5.

From Pathfinder, I have two major OCs, with a third who is considering the leap to D&D.

Morana is a human Inquisitor of Pharasma whose teacher/father figure was possessed by the BBEG. She was going through A Lot, including adopting a 16 year old werewolf girl who became her squire. You know, I actually forget a lot of the plot of that game, but absolutely loved playing Morana because her personality was fun and Mutual 1 and I had a shitton of AUs to talk about her in. Because there's something to be said about a Pharasmin having a Thing for a dhampir. (I have reused Morana and her squire as NPCs because I love them so much.)

Jacinth Haf aka Jace is a half-elf and former sex worker who was raised in a brothel, then became a cleric of Sarenrae. Because it's a popular module that I don't want to spoil for anyone, I'll just say that, plot wise, she ran through Rise of the Runelords with a rather interesting party, including another of Mutual 2's characters. Jace is a firm believer that everyone is created equal and that equity is needed in order to give everyone the chance to succeed. While the party made some choices she didn't agree with, personal choice and free will are important to her, so she didn't physically fight them on any issues even when they released a pair of demons into the world rather than sending them back to the circle of Hell they belonged in.

Slaine Caellach is an elf ranger who, together with their black panther Straif, was on the run from their homeland to avoid being sentenced to death. Why would they be sentenced to death? They killed a human noble who'd trespassed into their territory and killed some animals Slaine was protecting. Then they escaped prison, avoiding being turned over to the human authorities who planned to kill them. Slaine also made the mistake of making deals with an eldritch being and wound up with something like Hermaeus Mora as a passenger in their brainpan. Until a TPK happened.

Aaaaaand now for the list of D&D OCs...

+Most recently played is Mara Lantos, who's a member of Team Ponderance (obligatory plug for our official artist, @thedovahcat, who did some great art of Mara and the rest of Team Ponderance and is an absolute delight to work with!). The Ponderance crew is currently working on thwarting what appear to be world domination plans being enacted by someone who should be long dead. Before adventuring, Mara was a member of a traveling performance group, The Wandering Oddities, who took her in when her family home was destroyed, killing her parents and (she believed) her elder brother. Within the Oddities, Mara was adopted by Pa, a Drow male follower of Eilistraee, and Da, a male wood elf, both of whom are skilled tumblers. With her birth family (heavily based on the Belmonts...), she had trained to be a monster hunter from a young age. So, she's the first fully multi-classed character on this list as a Bard/Fighter. The rest of Team Ponderance includes characters from Mutuals 1, 2, and 3! (Added note: 10/10 highly recommend Bard College of Lore paired with almost any Fighter subclass. Especially Battle Master or Echo Knight.)

While she was only played briefly, Razira Fein is one of my favorite characters to date. She is a female drow who came to the surface after losing her girlfriend, who'd been trying to leave the Underdark to join a conclave dedicated to Eilistraee. After joining the conclave and feeling her training with them was near-complete, Razira traveled as an entertainer. She still used some of her prior (read: drow raider) skills to take security jobs guarding merchant wagons and the like until she (and the rest of the party) were informed that they were destined to save the world. The thing that was most enjoyable about Razira was that she was a character who was entering the last phase of her arc as the game was starting. There wasn't much character growth she would have seen, but there was a lot of character growth in the party that she could have aided in. Hers, she felt, was a story of redemption and finding peace, and she believed others could do the same. She felt guilt when Nym, a male half-drow party member played by Mutual 3, left after she refused to let him start a fight with the Evil Army (not their real name) in a town square. She blamed herself, but also had felt that her action was the best choice rather than letting him get killed. Also, she was a Fighter (Echo Knight) with the Entertainer background, which made for a lot of fun for RP.

OK, OK, I'm gonna lump two D&D characters together here back-to-back because they're all followers of the Raven Queen. As a note, my DMs and I have tended to play the Raven Queen as a hybrid of her 4e and 5e versions.

Oswin Blair was a Paladin of the Raven Queen who formed an entire knightly order, the Order of the Raven's Crest at the end of her adventuring life. She had at one time led a group of soldiers to their doom, all of whom were raised as undead, their names emblazoned into her skin until she laid them each to rest. When she died, two names remained. She'd had to make a choice at the end of the adventure: let the BBEG go, or fight him nearly alone, which would have killed her and the child she had just discovered she was pregnant with. Her husband, Dane, was a healer and leader among a Druid Circle, so he split his time between her home and his enclave. In her time adventuring, Oswin and friends got up to some crazy shenanigans, though her biggest mistake was making a deal with a fae that inadvertently led to a few hundred years' worth of dead followers of the Raven Queen being resurrected. Oops.

+Mithvari Dresia is the character on this list with the most titles and the most to learn. A shadar-kai of only about 150 years, she was raised in a clerical school run by her father, Zunas, who is the younger of two sons the Raven Queen had before she ascended. He was harsh with her and still holds her to exacting standards she's unsure she will ever meet. She's only been on the Prime Material Plane for the last three years, with most of that time spent either being coddled by a temple that knew of her origins OR wandering as much as possible and discovering, essentially, a love of sex, drugs, and Rock & Roll (or Bardcore, I guess?). While she was being coddled by that temple, though, she did meet a paladin of Pelor , Randall, who she had a brief relationship with. Here we are two and a half years later, and Mithvari and Randall have been reunited by circumstance. She refuses to commit to a serious relationship unless he asks for one because she's spent so much of her life being told what she wants, she doesn't know what she actually wants. And also because she wouldn't mind the excuse to sleep around some more. She's basically one of those overly sheltered kids with really strict parents who lets a little too loose their freshman year of college.

[darinscraps]

oc_tober 3: Occupation.

As a pharasmin inquisitor, her duties are mainly related to spirits and the undead. Performing exorcisms and aiding herself with her lantern to provide them a temporal home while they find their way to the boneyard is her bread and butter.

[gutterspeak]

👾!!!

hi cassy!! thank you for the ask!!! :3

here's one from iolanthe's playlist since I feel like I don't talk about her enough!

Jazz - Pretty Balanced

Weepy babies Crying children Tired mamas Tired grandmas Working hard Drying out The teardrops

the entirety of this song is just this refrain, but it's also about the vibe. it took me a bit to actually pick one out to share because so many of the songs I put on my playlists are really only there for vibes alone LOL

in her iterations where she meets luthais later in their lives (and is usually the one to survive him) she becomes a midwife!!! and while she never has the opportunity to in pathfinder before she dies, she was still a dedicated pharasmin and had the hopes of becoming one someday

I suppose I associate this track a lot with her though because although she very much loves the work, she loses her way after luthais dies. it takes everything out of her. all her gentleness, all her joy. she doesn't quite lose her shit to the degree luthais does when the tables are turned and she's the one who got fridged instead, but when I play her in 5e I do play her as an oath of vengeance paladin if that says anything, haha

so the haunting, solemn sound of the instrumentals combined with the cyclical lyrics really speaks to her I feel - especially considering that, at the time luthais dies, their son is still only a few months old 😭 she's constantly exhausted and in grief, just going through the motions...

tl;dr she's a hot single milf in your area. but at what cost

[crimsontroupe]

Hello I am awake now. Now I can write the thoughts in my little head. Under read more due to probably length since I have no idea. And also for heavy content. (please read the tags on this post)

There's a lot of things that I could write about yesterday's session (and. on friday. Why did we play for 13/14 hours between two days again? insane people) and while I am bad at making such things apparent during session, writing down makes it clearer to me. These are all very discombobulated stream-of-consciousness thoughts so if it doesn't make sense. Bear with me here.

I am thinking about the incredibly hard choice between betting on a spell that might not work, and something that involves ending a life to take on a much harder gamble of resurrection. And how normally - and with a Pharasmin cleric by their side - this would be a no-brainer. Something so easy to choose, something they all know.

Something so hard to do when the circumstance is a kid who had unspeakable things happen to him and was still struggling with the consequences of his actions - actions that he knew he took, but that people did not blame him for it. 'You have gone through something terrible, because people did something horrible to you. You are not guilty of this, you did not choose this fate. You are so very young, and you have so many things to see still'.

There is something to say here about one of his anathemas as one of the Eldest: harming children is the easiest way to get on his bad side. Even if you are his friend, he will firmly oppose you. And again, there were many thoughts running across his head in a few seconds: that he did not want to be removed from the room (he had to see to make sure all would be right), that he could not be left unattended (what would stop him from acting out of impulse and ruining things/his own intrusive thoughts of stopping people doing harm to children no matter the cost/knowing it'd almost be better if he was tied down if he did not want to leave) but ultimately deciding to stay and observe. To stay and hold this kid's hand and calm him down and tell him all will be right. Ignoring how - internally - it took all of his willpower to simply not do anything about it.

Adonia, who is capable of great kindness but unspeakable violence. Violence that runs contrary to everything he stands for and looks like/talks about. Violence that he only applies in very specific cases: when people cross the threshold of what he deems as 'evil' and 'unacceptable'. Meddling with people's free will, with their minds. How that easily makes him turn on you. Adonia very often prefers to hit vital points so his enemies do not suffer even in death. That it will be painless and swift, nobody deserves to suffer even in death. So you really have to wonder what it means when that elegance - that restraint - is gone. When he fully embraces the violence he himself says most of the time that he abhors.

Adonia is a man who clearly judges you based on your virtues and your actions, and the extent of how nice or merciful he is depends exactly on that. What does it mean when he decides to - instead of piercing his enemy's chest and ending it right then and there - ignore his own wellbeing, strategy that he values above all and go clear for your head. And while knowing you are dead, still waste time making sure to hit you again. Once more, ignoring something he values very clearly.

Strategy to him is incredibly vital, and while he might suggest a reckless plan here or there... Adonia is a man that really applies calculated risks to almost all that he does. Something to be said when that all drops and you have a clear reminder that there is a huge part of his brain that has ceased to behave in any way that is resembling human! That there is something either wrong or amiss with him, the clear warning that while he is very composed and serene he is very willing to commit either unspeakable acts of violence or put you through a horrifying death if he thinks you deserve it!

(Not to say there were not other factors in play: he was disrespected as a fey and that already puts you in a hostile position towards him, the very clear threat to a person he loves and the necessity to protect the people he considers family are also present in his decision-making and affected a lot of his decisions. 'I can go down because Arlas will not let me die'/'I have to keep at this no matter how terrible it might seem because if we do not stop this it will only get worse'/'I am the only person that can do effective damage that would make this end sooner'/'I cannot stop and close my own wounds because that would buy time for the enemy to do something we are not prepared against'. These were all there and valid! He has seen his friends throw their highest spells and attacks and have that not do much so he knows it ultimately boils down to a kill-it-before-it-kills-you situation)

Something also to be said about his aversion to having the blood of people he considers 'evil' on him/his clothes. It doubled as 'there is a kid here and I cannot be seen drenched in blood because I voluntarily decided to decapitate another man', but truly is because he was disgusted. Not at his actions, but to be sullied with what he sees as 'irredeemable'. People who manipulate others, beings who take free will away from others. Individuals that see no worth in life - in nature - and decide to trample over such essential values. 'Harming children', 'perform mind controlling magic', 'destroy nature' would all be (and are) parts of his anathema as an Eldest/Archfey.

Adonia himself is all of these things - a person who, if he viewed his actions without his named attached to it, would think of himself evil - and a 'clear but unintentional' parallel to. well. (points) if you know you know. Adonia, who hates mental effects but would do it if he needed to (and often does it). Adonia who sees no problem in necessary sacrifice - although he might struggle about it - and gambling with things above his own power because he is not going to avoid taking risks to get what he wants. Adonia, who is a hypocrite. Adonia, the personification of 'do as I say but never as I do'. Adonia, who deep down is selfish and struggles with it. (me repeating what I said to lux on discord) What is the difference between a conqueror and a savior? Are they both not working towards a goal that would benefit them first and foremost?

[thronelessking]

senses and other specific headcanons. (Arlas and Mirabelle/Norg edition)

what does your muse smell like ?

Arlas very specifically smells like the seventeen hundred lilac bushes he's growing around his church graveyard. Despite being purple he is not lavender scented. He may otherwise smell like 'extremely old Pharasmin church' which is a combination of heavy incenses used in both worship, and to chase away the smell of death.

Depending on your Mirabelle of Choice you get different smells, the Reaper of Reputation smells like a very expensive perfumes; often a blend of vanilla and smoke. Scent version of inoffensive to your senses and attractive. Father Skinsaw does not smell like much of anything on a normal day but if you called him to talk specifically and it wasn't to kill someone, he'd be in the same vein as the Reaper but with added cardamom in it. Grey Master at most just smells what can be defined as. Clean. He doesn't want you to be able to perceive him in any ways, so he's just. Am Clean.

You can unfortunately smell Blackfingers because he smells like the sort of clean that one becomes after scrubbing horribly dangerous chemicals off. He smells like you're about to have a very horribly, agonizingly, bad time.

what do your muse’s hands feel like ?

Arlas has furry goat hands that are rough and calloused from being a grave and groundskeeper and a carpenter, and a bunch of jobs all in one because he's the Only Dude In His Church and he Does Not Have Money To Hire Other People To Help Him. They are very nice to hold though.

The Reaper's hands are very soft and delicate and a little pointy because he loves having claws. They seem like they've never done anything more than just. Touch people, fabrics, porcelain cups, and fine silverware and maybe shuffle the occasional sheet of paper. Skinsaw's hands are horribly rough and marred from his work and the occasional scuffle with someone who he toyed with and decided to fight back.

You would think Grey Master would be the same but he's a burglar with experience and wears gloves so his hands are softer than Skinsaw's but still look and feel like he does a lot of work with them. Blackfinger's hands are by far the worst, they feel like they will never recover from the things he's stuck them in, exposed them to, and had them chewed up by. They feel Fucking Awful and need the worlds most powerful lotions.

what does your muse usually eat in a day ?

Arlas eats a very healthy diet of fruits and vegetables that he can purchase from passing merchants, meat is extremely expensive, and what he can grow. Due to his trip to Barovia, he has developed a taste for shrimp.

Mirabelle eats lavishly. The idol of greed does not accept anything less than the finest and thus makes for the worlds most expensive date. Thankfully, gods do not really need to eat.

does your muse have a good singing voice ?

Arlas is learning to sing and play music but he's. Serviceable. Don't ask him about it, he'll feel bad talking on the matter.

Absolutely no Norg has a singing voice, his investments in the performing arts is recruiting Bards to his faith and having them infiltrate places to do work in his name. The closest you can get is the Reaper being flirtatious with his speech but that's the closest you can get to melodic.

does your muse have any bad habits or nervous ticks ?

Arlas plays with his holy symbol when he's nervous and chews his lips.

Mirabelle, when alive, used to click his prosthetics when he was Having Feelings. But then he smothered all his emotions, became some sort of either modern legend or demigod, and ascended to proper godhood and is now noticeably lacking in the nervous department of emotions.

what does your muse usually look like/wear ?

Arlas is a little fancy cleric boy as a mortal, he looks like a funny ghost bride as a lesser Avatar of Pharasma post campaign. His clothes are always well kept, he is not.

All four Mirabelle's have drastically different appearances because he's not about to show you his true face. The Reaper often dresses as a trendsetter Taldan noble, often with bright colors that are hard to manufacture to flaunt his limitless stolen wealth. He keeps his hair long and also brightly dyed to continue making that rich impression, currently his hair is pink. Skinsaw dresses more moderately with darker and muted colors, he has long black hair that's been braided. Your quintessential goth gf.

Blackfingers dresses like a librarian, brown hair done up in a bun with a ribbon and always a too night blouse and dark skirt. He will not poison you or do unethical experimentation. Trust him. Grey Master just looks like a blonde guy. Don't worry about him. He has not just walked past you and taken your wallet, he did not just open the door to a house he doesn't live in. He'll dress up if you call on him in person though.

is your muse affectionate ? How so ?

Arlas is affectionate but the very specific brand of 'i will throw my entire life away for you' and 'i'm going to keep a close eye over you with the express intention of making sure i can help you survive and thrive'

The Mirabelle conglomerate is affectionate. You don't want them to be affectionate. Attracting the affectionate attentions of any of the four immediately puts you in a precarious situation because all of them are the same guy that are just split into four distinct individuals; they all share the core greedy desires and need to monopolize and use people.

While they all have different ranges of showing affection, the Reaper is the most capable of Being Normal about it and displaying things is a mostly normal nonthreatening fashion, its the Grey Master that's second normal who often showers his favored in wealth. Skinsaw's affections tend to stray deeply into violence, but he rarely if ever afflicts it on the object of affection but will permit it to be done to himself bc divinity can only be killed by other divinity/outsiders.

Blackfingers is the decidedly worst of them all because him showing you that he likes you is the fact he is letting you continue to live and breathe without agony. He also tends to be the one who flips the most easily from loving someone to deciding it would be perfectly acceptable to horribly poison them.

what position does your muse sleep in ?

Arlas sleeps on his back because he's got horns that make sleeping on the sides Very Difficult. Tiefling problems.

Mirabelle, no matter which one you get, both hogs the entire bed, but also manages to make himself very small and tightly curl up. Shout out to Grey Master who flops on a bed and has to be manually moved by another person to make room for themselves in the bed though. Sorry Cornelius.

could you hear your muse in the hallway from another room ?

Arlas clip clops everywhere. He naturally is not stealthy.

And if you hear any Mirabelle then it means he wants you to know he's there. Most of the time the answer is a very definitive: No.

tagged by: @crimsontroupe (kiss)

[gefdreamsofthesea]

Today's Pathfinder session:

The train is being robbed!

The party immediately uses this as an excuse to attack the golem guards

The robber is helping them now.

Kaisarion WRECKS the last golem.

They enter the next train car, there is a note. One comprehend language spell later and they read the whole thing.

They head to Geb.

Florin is approached by a skeleton. The Blood Lords want to talk to him. Also he is invited to his house (er, his dad's house, but it's his now)

They decide to check out the house. They meet the majordomo: Zisa (Zeesa), who is a vampire. There will be a feast, and there are boys or girls or oozes for....indulgence.

Florin is going full Stepford Husband. Please for the love of gods behave yourselves.

Pocket realizes that Lucian had sex.

They head to a temple of Urgathoa to meet the stabby orc lady who murdered them. It turns out Pharasmin priests did genocide against an orc clan so the sole survivor murdered the priests as revenge. She thought Anlis would help her kill the gods but she actually wants to become the only god (also she used mind control magic). She gives the party some helpful items to take out Anlis' lieutenants.

Pocket gives Macia (orc lady) a friendship bracelet. She's invited back to Florin's house. (Florin: Stop inviting people to my house.)

Next steps:

Florin meets with the Blood Lords.

Kaisarion does cleric stuff.

Lucian tries to track down more remnants of his past self.

Feast?

[minthy-fresh]

glance and canvas for laira!

glance: At first glance, what stands out most about your OC's appearance? What's their distinguishing feature?

So her skin throughout her body is more of a lavender kind of hue in general, but the color of her face is more light blue in the center that blends into her skin, almost as if there is constantly a blue light being shone on her face. This was there even before the Aeon part happened and Sosiel often remarks that the Aeon's power matches suspiciously well with her color, which she has no idea how to respond to that. Aside from that, she has long black hair that ends at her butt. When it gets too difficult to manage in combat (aka when she needs to put in some serious effort to overcome), she ties it back into a loose ponytail. I like to think of it as reversing the whole "taking off the power limiters".

canvas: Does your OC have any scars, piercings, tattoos, or other markings? Do they display or cover them up at all?

tw: physical abuse under the cut

She has a couple of very, very old marks on her back as a result of her backstory. The Pharasmin Pentinence is already a bit extreme in regards to the Pharasma faith, and the Chapel of Guilts where she was essentially raised her own life were quite severe even for that sect. One of the ways that particular temple believed they would get closer to salvation at Pharasma's hands is through flagellation to wound the soul enough, and they would often flagellate their fellow clergymen and inquisitors as a way of a "baseline" of suffering, and some of the most extreme even practiced self-flagellation. Laira never went to the self-flagellation side of things, but she would not fight back against the regular kind inflicted onto her due to her own personal reasons. She never flagellated others despite others asking her, which led her clergy to view her as cold and unforgiving. Words that she still carries within her to this very day as an Aeon enacting judgements.

She covers the scars up, not out of shame about how others would see it since she knows that those who truly care for her would not care. Rather, it's more covering it up for herself so that when she's ready to address that, she can make herself see it to show how far she's grown to herself. The only person she would even consider letting see is Regill.

[squishyputty]

Started playing the Pathfinder Kingmaker game recently. I decided to make my character a Pharasmin Deliverer. And then of course, I met Jaethal. Who is undead, and tells you as much. My immediate thought was "I think we're about to have a problem." I was actually glad when she went with the other party. This way, it may be easier to kill her.

[cosmosoracle]

What country would you love to visit in the Inner Sea Region and why? Follow up: What's one place you never want to set foot into and why?

"Oh my, that's a big area and I wouldn't know exactly where to start from thinking on a big scale..."

"I can already say I'm afraid of the place we're about to go to next - the lake Prophyria where the Vault of Tears stands, which is a Pharasmin monastery. It washes the borders of west Numeria, south of Sarkosis Scar, east of Ustalav. We don't know what we're going to find there, but we could very well find more clues about the cult or even the Pharasmin Cardinal who cursed Hoyt and turned him into a goblin. Afraid doesn't even start to cut it, honestly. After all I've been through lately, I am... way too scared of dying now. Of failing everyone..."

She sighs, melancholic. "On the other hand, I would love to visit Echo's homeland, the Moonpool Causeways near the lake Kalas. If we can solve his troubles, I'd love to go visit with him someday... but even just the thought sounds like such a distant dream. Way too peaceful and serene for the standards," she adds with a giggle, and wipes her left eye before a tear could fall.

[camelliagwerm]

👻 and Valerius! :D

👻 for a scene when they were scared | a scene from their childhood prompts

He is barely five years old when the Pharasmin Inquisition comes to the manor of House Dragavei for the first time; Mamă cool and composed as she sets aside her embroidery, welcoming them with a polite smile. It doesn't touch her eyes, like it does when she smiles for him, for Tată.

"Esteemed Inquisitors," she begins, "to what do I owe the pleasure?"

There's a lot of words he doesn't understand, can't hear properly. Mamă hid him behind the secret servant's door, a curtain drawn across it. Everything is muffled, but he presses his ear against the door. Associations with the Pallid Princess. Past loyalties. Family history. They ask where Tată is. About him too. What about your bastard child?

He doesn't know what that is, but Mamă sounds upset, angry. Not the sort of angry when he bites someone, where she's still smiling, stroking his hair, but the sort where she talks about Străbunică, who's kept alive by Mamă's magic in the family crypt, or the church up in Lepidstadt instead. Are these men from the church in Lepidstadt? Mamă and Tată talk about how much they hate it up there, how it's not safe for them.

"I will not tolerate Valerius being called a bastard. This undead taint is this our family's price for our past mistakes, Inquisitors. I know the Lady of the Graves despises all things undead, but do not bring my son into this conversation again."

Vali trembles when he hears his name. His palms are sweaty, his throat feels tight. His tummy aches, like when he's had too many sweets. Vali slumps down on the floor, wrapping his arms around his knees, rests his head on them. He squeezes his eyes shut, not wanting to hear anymore...

He isn't sure how long he's been hidden behind the servant's door, but when he opens his eyes, Mamă's sweet-smelling perfume and her arms are wrapped around him. Her long fingers stroke through his hair. "I'm sorry, my little love," she coos softly, and he nuzzles into her. "They're gone."