Awi, raskokabajho of Destiny (Fantasy Friday #9)

(adapted from Superiors 3: Hope and Prophecy)


Awi
The Namer, The Gray Man, Our Shepherd
“The world has its own destiny. Accept it, embrace it, and help things along when possible.”
NG male yaim angel archangel of Destiny

CULT
Holy Symbol: A scroll from which the wings of a laughing dove spring
Temples: Libraries; booksellers; musea; places where events of great destiny occurred; anywhere that calls people to worship, contemplation, or inspiration
Devotees: Archivists, community leaders, debaters, fortune-tellers, researchers, scribes, town criers
Common Classes: Bard, expert, inquisitor, investigator, wizard
Servitor Words: Conception, Glossaries, Wisdom, Epiphanies, Inspiration, Forgiveness, Writers, Gossips, Holy Scriptures, Storytellers, Sages, Divine Mysteries, Divine Truths, Prophets, Secret Languages
Minions: balisse (NG; Bestiary 6), manasupatras of all sorts (LG; Bestiary 5), olethros (N; Bestiary 6), raelis (CG; Bestiary 6)
Obedience: Spend an hour engaged in deep philosophical conversation with at least one other person. Every 20 minutes or so, use some random element such as cards or dice to change the topic, line of argument, or style of reasoning to understand randomness and how it impacts destiny. Gain a +4 sacred bonus on Sense Motive checks to discern the greatest thing a person can achieve and the weaknesses that might seal their fate.

BOONS
1: Remembering the Forgotten (Sp): sow thought 3/day, anonymous interaction 2/day, or akashic communion 1/day
2: Divine Logic (Ex): The devotee can make practically anyone concede practically any argument ~ as long as they believe it themself. In two minutes (20 rounds), with a successful Intelligence roll (DC 10 + the target’s Will save), they will prove to their target by simple logic that a + b = c, therefore they are right and any other possibility must be absurd. Obviously, don’t try proving to a demon prince that good is better than evil. Somehow, it never works.
3: A Friend to All That is Written (Su): A devotee with this boon cannot be kept from recorded knowledge. Whether they want to walk into the private stacks of a scholar-noble’s library or to see an enforcer’s list of secrets, all mundane security measures effectively cease to exist for the devotee. Guards will cheerfully wave them toward the suddenly unlocked door, the door-servant will recognize whatever password they elect to try, and so on.

Awi, the very first soul created, spends most of his days in serene meditation in the Heavenly Library, wherein he gifts his kokabajhon with his knowledge of the universe from its most primal state and a miraculous ability to predict Creation’s future from that knowledge.

Awi is depicted as an elderly man, radiating calm good cheer and spiritual strength, with skin the color of fresh ink, gray hair, and deep blue eyes. In some descriptions, he’s a soft-spoken grandfather in monkish robes, and in others a regal and aging head of state, wearing the dashiki of a philosopher or oracle. Awi is the very definition of a gentleman scholar: his emotions are always in check and if he has nothing nice to say, he says nothing at all. Even when he has something to say, Awi is reserved and prefers to let others reach their own conclusions. To this end, he’ll subtly drop hints, even nudge the person in the right direction, but he’ll never force his opinions on others.

Awi and his angels are the givers of names, the guardians of knowledge. He is not omniscient, but he knows the names of all things, everything that has ever been written down, and ~ as raskokabajho of Destiny ~ all the best and brightest possibilities for the world. Awi teaches that without Destiny (or its hope) and Fate (and the fear of it) there can be no Creation. Without these two things, reality, the “Cosmic All,” even the Almighty would exist in lifeless stasis, frozen in potentiality for all of existence.

Destiny exists in everyone and everything. Each aspect of Creation has its part to play and it is Awi’s duty to ensure that this potential is actualized. Destiny is an all encompassing Word; it is not a thing like Stone, a place like the Spirit World, or an idea like Judgment, but all these and more. More concretely, Awi’s Word concerns itself with guiding Creation and ensuring that Light prevails over the Darkness. Unlike other raskokabajhon who preoccupy themselves with abstract concepts and often overlook the individual actions of mortals, Awi knows these actions are what define Destiny.

Destiny is a fragile and delicate thing that cannot be forced or manipulated. It is a culmination of individual choices, the important word being “choice”. Angels with the best of intentions have turned people from their destinies to their fates by interfering with their free will. Like a tender flower, Destiny needs to blossom on its own. It can be sheltered, eve protected, but it must grow by its own power. Everyone must decide what path to take. The choice is theirs and theirs alone.

However, destiny is more than just letting “what is meant to be” happen. Choices can’t be forced, but they can be educated. Without awareness of all the possibilities, there can be no Destiny. This is why Awi is the Giver of Names, and why his kokabajhon are chroniclers and scholars. It’s not enough to walk the less-traveled path; Awi’s followers must know where both paths lead and why. More important than knowledge and understanding, however, is faith. Without faith, one cannot have the confidence to let events unfold as they should.

Boanerges's character sheet 2/3 (Fantasy Friday #7)

Personality: The Fifty encourage their members to be vain and swaggering, stylish bravos intimidating their opponents by means of their number, their volume, their indomitable confidence, and the panache with which they fight. Boanerges internalized all of that, seeking glory through tricks and acrobatics and flashy flourishes. Little is fully serious to him and everything can invite a joke or a wry chuckle, often tinged with the burning cruelty almost reflexive among the Fifty. That cruel streak shows itself on the scrap of papyrus he keeps on himself at all points, scribbled with the blows he taken and all the times he’s been wronged. That way he never fails to take revenge ~ vengeance is very important to Boanerges. The fire burns those who would attempt to extinguish it. A strange optimism develops from the same urge; there is no circumstance in Boanerges’s belief that can defeat him permanently. With an appropriately fancy and daring revenge, he can come back from any set-back or defeat to find victory in the fulness of time.

But Boanerges is feeling (and acting) increasingly awkward. So much of how he knew to interact with people is falling away as he fights to achieve his Destiny by ensuring that justice grows within the Fifty. He has increasingly less of an idea of how to interact with people, and he is terrified that this will expose him as no longer agreeing with the ways of the Fifty. He’s seen what the horde does to those they consider traitors, and he fears that even those he considered (before) very good friends will commit such atrocities on him. These fears are particularly intense after the beating he took for another of the Fifty recently.

Self-control is, in many ways, alien to Boanerges. If there is a pleasure to be had (or better, taken), then he gives himself over to it with a venereal devotion that might be inspirational if it wasn’t so base. Drugs, sex, combat, gambling, whatever it is, Boanerges loves to do it. However, under influence from the archangel Awi, he is struggling to learn how to turn this passion for the bodily pleasures to more exalted ends, still as strong in intensity but less conducive to his remaining powerless. Oh, yes, Awi has shown him how the leaders of the Fifty have fostered this attitude of indulgence as a way to perpetuate their power and consolidate their control ~ to keep Boanerges and those like him docile. Their names are written in large print on that scrap of papyrus.

Also alien to Boanerges is the way in which he must work towards his goals. While personal glory and shining panache were how he used to measure success, now success come when no one (or only those that need to, anyway) realizes he was ever there. Where violence was once a way of life, peaceful interventions and subtlety are now his bread and butter. Where he once sought the defeat of those he campaigned against, now his goals are to ensure that justice is done and to bring his friends to the realization that there is another way to be. Constraining the thunderous force of Boanerges’s personality into these clandestine activities is a constant struggle with himself, and discernment has a tendency to disappear into discomfort. Thankfully, however, that means planning (something neither he nor any member of the Fifty was ever good at) is replaced by his old friend and true companion, quick wits.



Appearance: Like most ifrit of the Fifty, Boanerges’s extremely dark skin shines with an inhuman polished brass sheen, against which his long, thin fingers stand out in a beautiful matte dark charcoal-grey, a color that extends up to his elbows and is matched by his calves and feet. The pointed shape of ears similarly reflects that of the horns on his brow. The ivory, brass-colored gleam of these horns against the bright red of his hair, worn in the traditional triple-crested amasunzu of the Fifty, draw the eye from his easy, dare-you grin and glinting hazel gaze. One almost never notices the seeming oddity of that gaze, not just in color but in the gentle, unflinching steadiness of it, looking at any individual thing just a beat longer than one would expect.

Built like a whip ~ tall, thin, and powerful ~ Boanerges of the Fifty wears a flapping kaftan over a relatively sparse leather armor, designed as much for breathability and heat moderation as for protection. The kaftan is in the traditional pattern of the Fifty, an akyem pattern of bright red and grey, symbolizing the glory of great deeds performed in the purifying flames of battle. Strapped to his back is a large, eye-shaped shield, its black ostrich feathers swaying above a stylized painted image of a bowl containing blazing flames and a small, lightning-like serpent escaping its confines. Boanerges’s frame drips and clatters with gaudy jewelry fashioned from the claws, horns, hooves, and teeth of a wide variety of beasts. In his hand is a gorgeously-carved whacking stick, held by default in the traditional fashion, its bulb in front of his fist and its pointed shaft alongside his forearm.

The Unseen Heart of the Flame, on the other hand, leaves the shield behind and dons a very different kaftan, much more tailored and fit to his flame so as to reduce its sound and its motion. Its pattern is the emaa da pattern that denotes uniqueness, perfection, exceptional achievement, and creative ingenuity behind several large stars patterned with the nsoromma pattern depicting the hopeful power of the people when they depend not on themselves but upon the divine powers. The green in the nsoromma, however, is instead blue, replacing the growth of crops with the growth of peace and harmony. The short raffia surrounding a mask consisting of an abstractified, circular face separated from the crescent moon a foot above it by a white rectangle painted with a blue x ~ adapted from a more northerly mask representing Destiny ~ tickles the silver dove-winged scroll bouncing on his chest.

The two giveaways that Boanerges and the Unseen Heart of the Flame are the same person are the scarred, rough-worn, coarse leather armbands whose thick leather straps clasp each upper arm and the thin, flexible cotton cord wrapped several times around his waist.

Finishing off Boanerges (Fantasy Friday #5)

Time to choose Boanerges’s two feats. We’ve already chosen one, of course: Celestial Obedience (Awi) at 3rd level. The question is his first-level feat. Feats are often the most time-intensive aspect of D&D3.x/PF character creation, of course. I start by spending some time to see if can find an appropriate feat to counteract Boanerges’s Wisdom deficiency, but after looking through www.d20pfsrd.com and every book I could think of covering magic and religion, all I was able to find was a Rogue Genius Games 3rd-party feat that would allow me to just change his spellcasting attribute. The powergamer in me would want to shift it over to Charisma, but that (once again) seems to diminish the discomfort theme in Boanerges’s character. Intelligence makes more sense considering Awi’s associations with knowledge and books, but is still rather unsatisfying, to be honest. Furthermore, I seem to have grown a little bit more conservative as I age ~ the fact that it’s 3rd-party is, in itself, an argument against using it. Sadly, none of the books I looked through offered anything much terribly exciting even beyond that idea. The most interesting were various ways of improving Boanerges’s ability to make nonlethal attacks and one that improves his ability to redeem evil creatures, which is definitely a frontrunner possibility.

The idea of perhaps giving him Amateur Swashbuckler has been in the back of my mind from the beginning, as that’s how I imagine the army that gave rise to Boanerges, as composed of barbarians with the Amateur Swashbuckler feat, barbarian/swashbucklers, hooded champion rangers, devoted muses (from a variety of base classes), dancing blade fighters, wildstrider swashbucklers, and the like, all pumped up with teamwork and panache feats to make them even more frightening. By itself, however, the feat seems rather ho-hum and, more damning, not adding terribly much to Boanerges that he doesn’t already get from vigilante.

I get bored poring through the list of feats on the SRD, and the teamwork feats don’t provide anything overly attractive. Same story for the Improved Unarmed Strike tree and style feats. The afore-mentioned redeemer feat seems to be the best and most obvious choice, so let’s go with that. Except it’s a trait, not a feat >.< Well, I’ll definitely take that in the next step!

Realizing that I’ve mentioned Awi’s association with knowledge a few times but haven’t built that into Boanerges yet, I start looking for appropriate feats to do so. Searching “Knowledge” in the SRD and restricting it to Feats turns up nothing more interesting than Scholar, which feels kind of blah for Boanerges. But I later find Cosmopolitan, which weirdly feels more exciting as a marker of Awi’s blessing (and, in some ways, more powerful than Scholar, too, as it could be seen as the equivalent of 8 skill ranks at lower levels, as opposed to Scholar’s four). Yeah, let’s take Cosmopolitan, giving Boanerges access to two more languages (one of which, for sure, is Celestial) and two Knowledge skills ~ I’m gonna go with planes and arcana ~ as class skills.

That done (finally), we turn our eyes to character traits. As stated, Redeemer from Champions of Purity is a definite go, leaving only one more trait to be chosen. The other one involves a lot of scrolling through the Traits database on the SRD page. Enough that I started to despair of finding something good, until way down near the end, I come upon a list of traits from the Guide to Pathfinder Society Organized Play (sidenote: that abbreviates to P.S.O.P., which makes me think of the brandy qualification system and its V.S.O.P. Does the Pathfinder Society produce brandy to finance its operations? That could be the seed of a rad adventure/campaign idea). The rather-despicable-to-my-anarchist-mind Sovereign Court has a trait associated with it called Impressive Presence that does pretty much exactly what I want it to do. Much like most all of the ifrits in Boanerges’s horde have access to panache through Amateur Swashbuckler, archetypes, or the swashbuckler class itself, most all of them also have the Impressive Presence trait. It is the basis for their entire tactical understanding.

The last step with Boanerges is to equip him. A third-level character is supposed to get 3000 gp of equipment (that’s wealth equivalent to about $600,000 to $1,500,000 in modern money). It’s usually a good rule of thumb to spend no more than half of one’s wealth on an individual ite, but a prophetic paraphenalia from Faiths & Philosophies seems just a little bit perfect for something Awi might have given him ~ it’s very much in line with Awi’s style, and is 2000 gp (500 more than I should spend on an individual item). I usually despise limited-use magic items, a hatred borne of an over-extended critique of industrialized late capitalism’s disposable, planned-obsolescence, addiction-economy obsession. Ultimate Equipment offers four other possibilities for magic items: belt of tumbling, armbands of the brawler, seer's tea, and war paint of the terrible visage. I know I said I was wary of third-party content, but I also happen to own Nyambe, for the express reason of helping me add more African elements to my world, borrowing from someone who (hopefully) has better knowledge about it than I do.

Neither Nyambe nor Eberron’s Secrets of Xen’drik adds any droolworthy magic items to our list, but Nyambe can help us decide what mundane equipment we want Boanerges to buy, which can determine our budget. Let’s start with a large darkwood shield, which would cost 257 gp ~ a masterwork small would be 153, if we need more room in the budget. Nyambe lists a wooden plate armor; if we make that darkwood, it would cost 450 gp, which might be a bit much (especially with the -2 armor check penalty). So let’s go with masterwork studded leather (which I just learned is actually brigandine ~ the “studs” are rivets holding the plates beneath the leather) for 175 gp. So, armor as a whole costs 432 or 328 gp. For a weapon, we’ll call the whacking stick the official weapons of these swashbuckling ifrit barbarians. A masterwork version would be 303 gp.

We’re left with 2265 gp, or 2369 gp if we want the space. If we leave the prophetic paraphenalia behind, then the magic items I’ve chosen come out to 1950 gp, leaving 315/419 gp. He gets a traveler’s outfit for free, and we buy a woven backpack (2 gp), light blanket (3 sp), bottle calabash (5 sp), 2 wooden boxes (used instead of leather belt pouches; 2 sp), wooden headrest (2 sp), wooden game board (5 gp), 3 doses healing salve (30 gp), 4 doses marsh water (20 gp), iron fishhook (1 sp), iron pot (5 sp), iron sewing needle (5 sp), tent (10 gp), disguise kit (50 gp), and a silver holy symbol of Awi (25 gp). That comes out to . . . 144 gp 3 sp spent. We have at least 170 gp 7 sp left to spend. A light warhorse is 150 gp, but we wouldn’t be able to afford any barding for it. A labor elephant costs the same, and a pack animal is better suited to my visual image of Boanerges, anyway. A Huge pack saddle swallows up 10 gp, and 3 days of feed another 6 gp. We finally buy 8 days of trail rations for Boanerges himself, and are left with 3 gp walking money. Oh, let’s not forget a second traveller’s outfit for the Unseen Heart of the Flame’s costume. That’s a gold piece out of the walking money.