Name:  Yared the Lesser
Race:  Human
Alignment:  Lawful Neutral
Classes:  Cleric 3
Experience:  3000

===  Ability Scores  ===

STR: 12
DEX: 10
CON: 9
INT: 10
WIS: 14
CHA: 10

===  Combat Statistics  ===

Hit Points:  16
Armor Class:  7 *cries*
THAC0: 20
Weapon Proficiencies : Morning star, heavy war hammer, and staff

===  Saving Throws  ===

[14] - Rod, Staff, Wand
[16] - Breath Weapons
[10] - Death, Paralysis, Poison
[13] - Petrifaction, Polymorph
[15] - Spells

Memorized Spells:  

First Level: Command, Cure Light Wounds (x2) and Light
Second Level: Resist Fire

===  Hirelings and Animals  ===
Melat the Groom (paid 2 gp for the month)
Eyab the Cook  (paid 2 gp for the month)
Hirdan the Servant (paid 5 for the month)
All are equipped with leather armor, a sling and a dozen bullets.
One mule
One pony
One ox
Total cost of hiring, buying and equipping them: 73 gp 5 sp

===  Equipment  ===

Equipment carried by animals:
One barrel with 30 pints of lamp oil (carried by donkey).
Barrel filled with to the brim with water (carried by the ox).
20 days standard rations (carried by the pony).

Total cost of stuff carried by animals: 47

Personal equipment:
Studded Leather Armor
Morning Star
Holy symbol, wooden
Pint of honey
Pint of firewater
Staff (am paying 6 sp for it to have it be nice-looking and carved)
Sistrum (am paying 1 gp for it)
Flint and steel
Remaining money: 2 gp

===  Encumbrance  ===

47 pounds, can move 90 ft/round

===  Height & Weight  ===

Normal; 5'6" tall; 212-lbs.
Age:  22-yrs.

===  Money  ===
Starting Gold:  150
Current Gold:  2


===  Appearance  ===

A tubby black man with a cherubic face, Yared the Lesser is usually seen in a spotlessly clean but plain black cassock with his hair covered by a tight-fitting hood. However, while performing religious ceremonies he removed his cassock and displays his that has been eyed a brilliant sun-yellow and trimmed neatly into a solar halo.

Yared's holy symbol is an eyeless lion head surrounded by a solar halo.

===  Deity  ===

Yared the Lesser serves the King in Splendor, a lion-headed solar deity whose priests claim will one day slay Night forever so that the world is bathed in eternal summer:

The Lion in Splendor went down through the gates of darkness and the arteries of the earth. He saw the black water of the Sunless Sea, rise up, bubbling and boiling. But he commanded the Woman’s hound to lap at the water and the Lion walked on with dry feet and the hound laps still, his bitch crying in darkness for its mate. But as the Lion passed the hound’s teeth tore away his mane.

The Lion in Splendor went down through the gates of fire and their burning glow. Enter it and you die, see it and you burn. But he seized the Woman’s dragon and cast her contorted to the ground and she gnawed at the rock of the underworld and the Lion walked on with head unbowed and the dragon gnaws still and breathes flames no more. But as the Lion passed the dragon’s claws tore away his hide.

The Lion in Splendor went down through the gates of smoke and heard the chants and calls of witchcraft. Who taught the frightening ugliness of these lies? But he called the Woman’s iron bull and its snorts cast away the mists and vapors and the Lion walked on free of sorcery and the iron bull snorts still and treads upon the wicked. But as the Lion passed the bull’s horns pieced his eyes.

Then the Lion in Splendor was without mane, hide or eyes and all that was left of him was a blind man lost in the place of darkness and consuming fire. The terrible Woman locked his hands with manacles and placed every temptation before him but he was a king still, the King in Splendor, and denied them all. And, as morning came, he tore his chains and took up the slaver’s whip and the Woman tore clumps of hair from her head as he ascended into the sky, the Lion in Splendor once more.

Darkness cannot be measured by light. The consuming fires do not light the house of gloom and the waters of the Sunless Sea have no sparkle. In darkness creatures grow and form and harbor malice in their minds. The children of darkness are nothing, but the children of light stay. The house of evil is nothing and its consuming fires die. Its sorceries die and end and have no place in the eternity of light. They come to nothing. The generations of light will stay forever. The words of light will rise and illuminate the world in everlasting light.

Yared's deity is influenced by the Gnostic concept of the Demiurge, Mandaeism, Sufism, Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity, ancient Egyptian/Babylonian religion, and Azor Ahai from A Song of Ice and Fire mostly by throwing bits at the wall and seeing what sticks. Priests of the King in Splendor are famous for schisms and factional disputes and their temples are lighthouses, even the ones located far from the sea.

In statues (especially on the top of said lighthouses) the King is depicted either as: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d2/Lion-faced_deity.jpg/150px-Lion-faced_deity.jpg or as a well-muscled human male with a blind lion's head with broken manacles in one hand and a slaver's whip in the other.

Hope it isn't an imposition on your worldbuilding for me to invent my own deity, I'd be perfectly fine (would prefer it actually) if my deity is completely foreign to these parts.

If not, I'll have Yared sign onto one of you pantheon.

===  Background  ===

Not so long ago a heresy began spreading through the Golden Realm, as they so often do. Some priests decided that the traditional rubies should be removed from statues of the King in Splendor as providing eyes to the blind god was a mockery and because do you know how much rubies cost?

One of the leaders of this heresy was a priest named Yared who stirred up the common folk and brought the cataphracts of the inquisition down on their heads. Yared's nephew, an overfed youth known as Yared the Lesser, was one of the few who made it out of the country alive.

Since then Yared the Lesser has been wandering these lands spreading the blinding light of the sun to all those who live in darkness and telling all to make sure that no rubies are ever placed in the eyes of statues as that was the great cause that his noble uncle died for.

Paying for food really blew a hole in my finances but being able to carry a barrel of lamp oil around is important. Having that and Resist Fire should be fun. Poor man's fireball...

Only being able to afford so little armor is painful, but I like having the animals and hirelings.

I wanted to buy a tent but no money. However I do have an ox and a cook so I can have a bbq whenever I want, which I think is well worth it.

I'm assuming that my little band are all survivors from the heretics that fled my homeland with my uncle before the inquisitors caught up to us. Our homeland is sort of Medieval Ethiopia with a bit of Byzantium and legends of Prester John thrown in so we'd look roughly similar to modern Ethiopians (except my character being strangely short and fat).

Hee, hee. I like your little entourage!

Just waiting for The Butcher to post his character now. Once we've got that, i'll get an IC thread going and we can get you destitutes going!

Kazmak, male half-orc, 3rd-level Bounty Hunter (modified Assassin)

Alignment: Really, really torn between Chaotic Neutral and True Neutral.

AC: 5 (studded leather + Dex bonus)

HP: 13 (Invisible Castle roll)

Str 14, Dex 16, Con 10, Int 13, Wis 10, Cha 6.

Gear: Studded leather armor, daggers (2), longsword, light crossbow, belt quiver with 24 bolts, backpack, bedroll, waterskin, 7 days of standard rations, 2 sets of manacles, 100' of hemp rope, thieves' tools, cloak, gloves, heavy boots, flint & steel, hooded lantern and 3 pints of oil.

Money: 18gp and 5sp (from 170gp starting funds; IC roll)

Special abilities: Backstab (+4 to hit and x2 damage from behind), capture or incapacitate foe (on a surprise attack; base 65%, -5% for every two levels/HD of the target), disguise, tracking (90% in the wilderness, 65% in cities or dungeons), thief abilities (CW 80%, FT 25%, HN 10%, HiS 20%, MS 20%, OL 30%, PP 35%, RL 1%)

Kazmak was raised amongst a particularly unsavory clan of slavers and kidnappers, which was eventually slaughtered in a gang war the rocked his home city's underworld.

As one of the few, if not the sole survivor, he put his people-taking skills to a slightly more wholesome use by moving from frontier town to frontier town collecting bounties on everything from petty criminals to dangerous monsters.

He usually follows contracts to the letter, and all else being equal, prefers to deliver his marks alive; he'll kill if he has to, but he views assassination with distaste.

When not disguised, he's a short, squat half-orc with a proeminent jaw, slightly jutting canines and a broken nose. He keeps his hair very short and bears a small scar over his left eye. He's not the most sociable member of a notoriously unsociable trade, but he's easygoing enough when among trusted comrades (a rarity these days) and a bit too fond of his ale.

He was tracking down a mark in Pratt's Landing when he mistakenly broke into the house of a priest of Poseidon (who knows which faction) and hastily threw his lot in with the current outfit to leave town ASAP.

Are we good?

Miron's starving!  Let's get a job so he can eat.  Yared's ox is looking mighty tasty right now to him.  BBQ sounds.. umm ymmy! LOL

We'll get started tomorrow!

Still need to know if 1st lvl saves are different for clerics.

Also need an accounting of my purchased equipment. I have 2e equip list, is that good enough?

(Yet, considering I am so not frontline material that I'll likely stay in camp, this may not be so pressing.)

The saves for a Cleric are the same from 1-3 levels.

Thanks again, Drohem! If you can, take a look at my p. 4 Character Sheet so far to see if it is copacetic.

Anyway, I do so look forward to the Tlan lectures. Maybe I can get some baby clothes commissions and multitask while there. I wonder how entrenched Iowain is by now among the elderly community?

(Ooh! And I have to talk to Lombold at The Furnace Inn. It's rare for me to work in raw silk yarns.)

Yeah, looks good.  You have a zero weight adjustment for your STR score.  Studded leather reduces him to a 9 MV.

It's up to OHT, but I'm pretty certain that AC caps at 10 and doesn't go above it.

Well, if AC caps at 10 and DEX penalty -3 would undo everything from studded leather (AC 7), there'd be no point in wearing it or anything lighter. I will need OHT's ruling on that, otherwise I can save some more money for yarn.

Tlan lectures my hairy half-orc haunches! Is there a bounty on those gnolls?

Quote from: Drohem;717684Yeah, looks good.  You have a zero weight adjustment for your STR score.  Studded leather reduces him to a 9 MV.

It's up to OHT, but I'm pretty certain that AC caps at 10 and doesn't go above it.

Yup.

So, there you are, staring bleary eyed at notices nailed to the pillar in the central square of Cadsandria.

The notices are -

"Wagon lost and three dead as Demonettes attack near Muster. Cadsandrian Merchant's League boycott town."

"Ganessa Gnolls sighted near Errand's Row leads to Jasper shortage."

"History of Tlan in six lectures, starting tonight at the Library of Time."

"Duke's Regent in Craghall looking for bride for the young Duke."

"New caves found in Craghall mines. Foreman lost and equipment sabotaged. Miners strike."

"The Ghostwind strikes Ladenhollow as solstice approaches."

"Silk available for reasonable prices. See Lombold at The Furnace Inn."

Having been in town for a while, you know that news posted here is most often out of date - brought by merchant caravans from towns that are many days travel away.

Still, looks like there are several interesting things to investigate.

The crier has an abode adjoining the square and he can normally be relied on to flesh out these notices quite nicely...

[once you've decided on what to investigate i'll start a new IC thread to get it going - complete with funky name]

Yared's purse gapes like an empty mouth with only a few gold spots to relieve its dark gloom. If he didn`t get his hands on more soon he'd have nothing but an ox to eat.

"My friends, we have certainly had our fill of the giggling menace back home," Yared's servants nod glumly, gnolls were well known in the Golden Realm. "And as for the rest, I`d far rather investigate the contents of a lady`s skirts than those of a cave. I say we have a word with this Regent."