----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Name: Miles
Race: Human
Background: Impiltur (Add the higher of your Wisdom score or your Constitution score to your starting hit points.)
Class: Avenger of Tempus (Censure of Pursuit)
Abilities: Str 10, Con 12, Dex 16, Int 12, Wis 18, Cha 08
Skills trained: Religion, Athletics, Acrobatics, Stealth, Endurance
Hp: 32, AC 16, Fort 13, Ref 15, Will 16
Feats: Righteous Rage of Tempus, Weapon Proficiency (Fullblade)
Description: Miles is a very young human, barely a man. He is 5.57 tall and weighs 136 pounds. He has brown hair that he usually keeps so short that it barely covers his scalp. His eyes are also brown and constantly dart around, never focusing anything or anyone for more than a few seconds. He prefers to dress in dark red clothes, which are usually torn and dirty, and often wears a mask of the same color which covers his lower face. Other than the clothes on his body and his backpack filled with meager possessions the only notable equipment he carries is a large sharp sword strapped to his back and an amulet depicting something akin to the holy symbol of Tempus but with a bloody dagger instead of a flaming sword.
Personality: Miles seems strangely detached from the daily live around him, almost as if he’s not used to spend time around other people. Often he doesn’t seem to understand nor care for the everyday business of a normal community and often accidently rubs somebody up the wrong way. He speaks only rarely to other people and only if absolutely necessary and his quirk of being unable to focus on his interlocutor doesn’t help improve his inapt skill at conversation either. Sometimes it seems as if Miles listens to some voice that only he can hear and from time to time he even answers aloud – even if currently in conversation with someone else. Strangely the only times he seems to be at complete peace is during battle. Once steel is drawn Miles is suddenly overcome by frightenly calm and focus. He often quickly kisses his strange amulet and charges a selected foe to cut him down without mercy. A onetime comrade in arms once said that he heard Miles silently whisper “Your will shall be done” to his amulet.
Motivation: No one really knows what drives Miles onward and he is completely silent on that matter. All that is known is that Miles travels the all over Faerun and somehow always arrives on the scene when trouble is afoot. Miles doesn’t care at all about worldly rewards and why he takes some jobs and declines others seems completely random. If Miles isn’t interested in a certain mission no amount of gold will convince him otherwise. Some speculate that he merely goes to where the voice in his head sends him to and executes what the voice tells him to do. Miles adamantly resists talking about matters of faith when he meets clergy, but accepts their blessing and healing during battle. His behavior toward the clergy of Tempus is even stranger, as he seems to be drawn to them and yet appears to fear them at the same time. If he is part of a larger group that has to make a decision, he usually sides with whatever the tempurans decide. The only persons with whom Miles has been known to speak in private and for longer times are invokers of Tempus. Another one-time comrade of Miles once spied upon such an exchange from afar. While he couldn’t hear what passed between Miles and the invoker, he describes the invoker’s face going through surprise, shock, and rage during Miles’ confession. At the end the invoker just seemed troubled and confused while Miles knelt in front of him and he gave him the blessings of the Foehammer.
True background [OOC-knowledge]: Miles was born in the slums of Lyrabar and abandoned by his mother at one of the sleazy orphanages. After spending the first 4 years of his live in the dirty orphanage Miles was sold by the headmaster to some shady stranger who was obviously interested in buying young children from orphanages for reasons the corrupt headmaster didn’t care about at all. Miles was brought to a secret monastery run by a heretic sect of tempurans where young children were trained to become weapons for Tempus. Unfortunately for Miles this involved brutally breaking his spirit to rebuild him from the ground [Think about what the Spartan boys had to go through in 300, only even more brutal). This “education” was continued until the pupils perished or reached adulthood, whatever came first. At this time they were locked up for days without food and only a glass of water every second day until they either had an epiphany during which Tempus appeared to them to take their vow and invest them with divine power or simply died of starvation. The tempurans always knew whenever someone had completed his training, wordlessly opened the cell, gave him a meager meal, and provided him with a set of clothes, a mask and a weapon before blindfolding him and abandoning him somewhere away from the monastery to fend for Tempus and himself. As a result Miles is paranoid and shy and he trusts no-one but the voice of Tempus in his head [Think about River from Firefly mixed with Sillas from the DaVinci Code). He wasn’t being teached any more than the bare minimum about society and that he should support the official church of Tempus but avoid that any tempuran discovers his true nature.
I have two question about it though,
1) What's with the mask? It seems oddly uniformy for this secret sect of warriors with no possessions. I can't see any reason for them to wear it (other than it looks cool if you're into anime), and they don't really have identities to hide.
2) Where'd you get the preview for the avenger?
It's a neat character.
Thanks
1) What's with the mask? It seems oddly uniformy for this secret sect of warriors with no possessions. I can't see any reason for them to wear it (other than it looks cool if you're into anime), and they don't really have identities to hide.
The mask is supposed to just be a piece of red cloth he wraps around his lower head (just like cowboys sometimes do). I added it for two reasons:
a) I wanted a little more heresy and since true tempurans never cover their faces in battle (Faiths&Avatars) I thought that would a good solution.
b) Actually the miniature I want to use for him wears such a piece of cloth over his face
2) Where'd you get the preview for the avenger?
Here and here
You could very easily replace tempus and tempurians with a different non-good god and it would flow the same.
The great thing about avengers is that I could even replace him by a good god and still have the unaligned avenger as they're allowed to be non-good while serving good deities (because the kind of work they have to do for their deity often makes them disillusioned and detached).
Put in some more ties to the Tempus Doctrines.
The thing about avengers is that most are heretics not accepted by the traditional churches of the deities they serve. They're the dirty secret deities don't even tell their other followers about. Avengers are often not only forbidden by the true churches, they're sometimes even hunted down as heretics.
Yet I do plan on building in some echo of Tempus' tenets, just twisted from how the traditional faithfull fight. E.g. I plan on never striking during a surprise round, while stealth and trickery is acceptable to catch the target in a good position, he will give him a chance to defend himself (although if he also loses initiative Miles will strike without hestitation, while he might not take advantage of a surprise round like a common assassin, if the target if too slow during normal initiative he's just an unworthy combatant)
Do you have any ideas how one could follow the basic tenets of Tempus while twisting their intend?
I was also thinking of changing Tempus into Kelemvor and make him a weapon created to exterminate undead. But a stealthy assassin of undeads doesn't sound heretic enough compared to Kelemvor's dogma (although one of the lastest dragon articles seem to include some necromancy powers for avengers, maybe his heresy against Kelemvor could be using these powers to fight the undead with their own weapons).
PS: I disagree with the thread being moved here, IMHO the character developement forum was more appropriate.
I just think "because I can" is somwhat of a weak motivation.
He's intended for RPGA play and with the current structure of the living campain it's just a stringing together of "adventures of the week" playing all over the realms. So it's always hard to come up with a reason why the character is at the eastern coast of Faerun today, at the western coast next adventure and then suddenly at the great glacier, ....
Thanks
The mask is supposed to just be a piece of red cloth he wraps around his lower head (just like cowboys sometimes do). I added it for two reasons:
a) I wanted a little more heresy and since true tempurans never cover their faces in battle (Faiths&Avatars) I thought that would a good solution.
It's the priests and clerics that are not supposed to wear full helms that cover their faces because Tempus wears one. Faiths & Pantheons doesn't really say anything about masks or scarves, though they can be safely ruled out since they still cover the face, but the book says nothing of those who aren't Battlelords (clerics).
All in all, though, seems like an interesting character. Tempus is one of my favorite deities. Just thought I'd make that little correction.