Ok, here's what I have so far. I don't have equipment because I'm honestly not sure what the gold for a warlock is. But background is done (ended up being a lot longer than I thought it was going to, but I hope you like it).
[sblock] Rayel Tumai
Female Human Warlock 1
Medium Humanoid
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral (with Good tendencies)
Region:
Deity: Olidamara
Height: 5' 7''
Weight: 130lbs
Hair: Red-purple
Eyes: Bright green
Age: 16
Str: 8 (-1) [0 points]
Dex: 14 (+2) [6 points]
Con: 12 (+1) [4 points]
Int: 14 (+2) [6 points]
Wis: 10 (+0) [2 points]
Cha: 16 (+3) [10 points]
Class and Racial Abilities: Extra feat at 1st level, extra 4 skill points at 1st level, 1 additional skill point at each subsequent level. Eldritch blast 1d6, least invocations. Proficient with light armor and simple weapons (but not shields). Has scent ability (from snake tongue invocation).
Hit Dice: 1d6+1
HP: 7
AC: 17 (+5 armor, +2 Dex)
ACP: -1
Init: +2 (+2 Dex)
Speed: 30ft
Saves:
Fortitude +1 [+0 base, +1 Con] +5 vs poison [from snake tongue invocation]
Reflex +2 [+0 base, +2 Dex]
Will +2 [+2 base, +0 Wis] +3 vs enchantments [from Fey Legacy feat]
BAB: +0
Melee Atk: -1 (1d4-1/19-20/x2/P, dagger)
Ranged Atk: +2 (1d6/x2/60 ft./eldritch blast)
Skills:
Bluff +7 [4 ranks, +3 Cha]
Craft (flower-making) +3 [1 rank, +2 Int]
Disguise +7 [4 ranks, +3 Cha]
Knowledge (arcana) +6 [4 ranks, +2 Int]
Listen +0 [0 ranks, +0 Wis]
Spellcraft +6 [3 ranks, +2 Int]
Spot +0 [0 ranks, +0 Wis]
Use Magic Device 7 [4 ranks, +3 Cha]
Feats:
Fey Heritage (human bonus 1st level) [ComMag pg. 43]
Night Haunt (1st level) [ComArc pg. 81]
Languages: Common, Sylvan, Abyssal
Invocations Known
Save DC +3
Least – Serpent’s Tongue (ComMag)
Spell-like abilities
dancing lights, prestidigitation, unseen servant 1/day each
Equipment
2 daggers – 4gp 2lbs
Backpack - 2gp 2lbs
Disguise kit – 50gp 8lbs
Bedroll - 5sp 5lbs
Belt pouch - 1gp ½ lb
Flint and steel – 1gp
Traveler’s outfit (Free)
Money
gp
~~~~~
Appearance: Because she was infused with the power of a fiendish fey, she bears the scars of his manipulation. Her hair is reddish-purple, the color of a deep bruise, and her eyes are a bright, unnatural, poisonous green. Tall and somewhat slender, her carriage and face are long and thin. She keeps her mouth shut as much as possible, mumbling her words when she does speak, for her tongue is a serpent’s, a further mark of her arcane servitude. She keeps her hair under a kerchief and her eyes downcast, and dresses modestly, in sturdy and practical fabrics in dull colors.
Personality: Rayel is wary of the rich and mighty, and maintains a guarded attitude around them. She is generally friendly, if wary, but lies roll with distressing ease off her tongue. If her loyalty is won, she is fiercely steadfast. She comes from a background of poverty, and has a practical attitude towards crime and violence. She knows she can’t right every wrong in the world, and accepts a certain amount of that as a matter of course.
Background: My name is Rayel Tumai. Three times in my life I faced a crossroads, and each time I took the darker path. I did not know that at the time, but looking back, I can see how my life became so grim. But now I know that at the bottom of the deepest well, one can look up. Perhaps I shall never reach the top of it, but I can always see it, if I choose to.
My powers came to me early, in light and cold, deception and illusion, change and power, by a way I am ashamed to say. I am no mighty wizard, but my powers answer easily and well, if not always the way I expect. I can only hope that they will bring me closer to something good in my life.
Rayel grew up only a few short steps from poverty, a family consisting only of her and her mother. Barely scraping by, selling flowers made from scraps of cloth and wood, her mother Ora had occasionally supplemented her income in a sadly more typical way for women in her position. The result had been Rayel, and her mother had desperately tried to give her a slightly better life than she had enjoyed. Ora’s efforts got them a garret room, for with Rayel’s clever hands being directed by her experienced ones, they could actually do enough of their simple crafts to keep them in old bread.
Rayel dreamed of being able to do more for her mother, to give her some rest, and began to use her own charm to try to attract buyers with deeper pockets. A sweet girl barely blossoming into beauty, she could have been easy prey for any who cared to try. One took advantage of the desperate and innocent child and told her to bring her wares to his fine house; his guests would certainly like to buy.
Stealing out when her mother was asleep, for Rayel intended for the extra money she would get to be a grand surprise, Rayel went to the house of Tregal, a wealthy nobleman, to sell her false flowers. She was very lucky in that Tregal did not desire to despoil her flesh, like some cruel men, but instead desired to despoil her mind.
She walked through the grand and elegant rooms, selling her flowers to the finely dressed noblemen and women that were his guests. She tried to avert her eyes from the various acts of debauchery, but found her spiritual innocence being corrupted as she saw acts of carnality and brutality, abuse of body and spirit. The victims of these decadent nobles were of a type she knew; poor girls and boys from her own streets. And her own horror was simply another pleasure to these corrupt nobles. Terrified and sickened, she fled, but had learned the lesson that power could buy anything.
Rayel never spoke of that experience to her mother, but often found her mind straying to it. From time to time she recognized a boy or girl from the house of Tregal, their eyes empty and faces lined with fear and sorrow. There was no retribution against Tregal, not even from clever thieves or skillful thugs. She might have tried to forget what she had seen, were it not for Pral.
Pral was a fellow craftswoman in the ranks of the poor, only a few years older than Rayel. She made things out of pottery shards, tiny glued pots or tiles, things to decorate the house, to brighten dark and dank quarters. She often acted like a big sister to Rayel, and the two had become friends.
So when she had seen Pral wandering the streets after spending several days missing, with blank eyes and a lined face, Rayel knew that Tregal’s depredations had finally hit home. Terror shook her as she considered the consequences. Pral was able to defend herself against common thugs and trickery, for she was far stronger than she seemed. Tregal had simply taken what he wanted, with no thought of consequences.
Who or what could stop him? Only someone with more money, more authority, or more power. With money one could bribe him to stop, or hire people to stop him. With authority one could order him to stop, or threaten him. But with power, one could do the stopping oneself. Power, the kind that could make water appear out of air, or create light, or wind, the power of magic or the gods, that kind of power could even make noblemen pause.
There had been no magicians at Tregal’s house, Rayel remembered that. From the tales she had heard in taverns and on the streets, sometimes people were born with power, some people could learn it, and some could possibly bargain for it.
Rayel had no hope of learning it; she had no apprentice fees. Surely if she had been born with power, she would have felt it by now. So that left bargaining. That she was familiar with. She was the daughter of a merchant, small businesswoman though her mother was, and had done her share of bargaining for rooms or food from as long as she could remember.
Her mother had worked so very hard to shelter her daughter, but the dark streets of the city harbored many secrets. Rayel might have been innocent of some things, before Tregal had shown her his house, but she knew far more than most girls in this city. There were places where it wasn’t safe to tread, where beings of shadow and power lived. Those who intruded upon them as a dare often ended up dead. But a few had safe passage through their places, for they placated them in some way. Perhaps she could bargain with them as well.
Her mother never knew why Rayel vanished one Midsummer’s Night, only leaving behind a half-literate note that her daughter loved her, but had to do something important. Rayel wasn’t entirely certain herself why she was doing this. It was only that she had terrible nightmares about what she had seen in Tregal’s house, and to see her only close friend and sister fall victim to them was more than she could bear.
She remembered little of the incident afterwards. Only icy terror as she walked into the darkened, dead-end alley, the smooth whisper of a non-human voice, the frigid caress of a too-slick hand, demanding, “Why? Why?” Why shouldn’t it kill her? Rayel offered what she had, her hard work, her loyalty, more if she had to. She knew the circumstances of her birth quite well.
“And in return?”
“Power,” she said. Power to help her friend, her mother, power to stop Tregal.
“It is done,” the being said, its sharp, sharp teeth gleaming in the darkness. It was then Rayel learned that all power has a price.
For many months Rayel spent the time in a daze, caught in a world of shadow. She came to understand what had caught her was a fey creature of darkness and trickery, the Shadow Serpent. Her youthful enthusiasm, tempered with determination and grief, intrigued him. He infused her with a scrap of his power, granting her the ability to call forth power from her hands and even the air, teaching her the words of power in the languages of his ancestors, having her learn his arts of knowledge and deception. In return, Rayel found herself trapped, answering to every whim, her will bound to his. Too late she realized she had bargained in bad faith, and now merely endured what she could as the Shadow Serpent drove her to control her new-won powers.
Almost two years passed in a dream-like state as Rayel struggled against the Shadow Serpent, begging from enough freedom to help her mother, to free Prel, or to stop Tregal.
“Freedom is an illusion, little toy. I chose to take your service in exchange for power. You failed to specify, foolish mortal,” he had told her, with his toothy grin.
But in that statement of her servitude, she found her freedom. Words, she had learned, were power. In calling freedom an illusion, she used the powers she had barely mastered to slip her bonds, placing her own mental illusion over the Shadow Serpent’s bonds. Hissing rage filling her ears, she fell back into the real world, the raw grit and stench of the alley too bright and powerful after the years in swathed and shadowed darkness.
Trying to go back and find what she could of her mother, she soon learned the cruelest lesson yet, that power, not given its full due, can bring nothing but sorrow. Two years she had been gone from the world, and her mother had descended back into the lowest rung of a desperate poor woman, that of a street prostitute. Asking a terrified neighbor, not realizing how her appearance had changed from the touch of the Shadow Serpent’s power, she found where Ora was staying, and went to what she assumed would be a happy reunion.
Rayel barely recognized her mother in the battered and worn-down creature sleeping in the streets. But she was determined to help her, as she had meant to all those years ago.
Ora had looked up in her daughter’s face as she tried to raise her out of the gutter, and screamed in terror. Her once red hair was tinged bizarrely with purple, her green eyes were as bright and luminous as a snake’s, and her tongue was a veritable serpent’s! Screaming and thrusting herself away from this waking nightmare in the shape of her long-lost daughter, Ora fled into the night.
Defeated and horrible disheartened, Rayel went in search of her one remaining friend, Prel.
But for Prel it was too late. She found her, after long and careful searching, eager lies spilling off her tongue with an ease that shocked her. It was the Serpent’s doing of course, the things he had taught her. Disguising her altered appearance with gesture and clothing, she found where poor Prel had been staying.
Her body was mutilated almost beyond recognition, sprawled in a puddle of filthy water in a fetid alley. Her last friend gone, her family lost to her, and burdened with powers she wasn’t sure would answer to her, Rayel gathered up the body of her friend and cried.[/sblock]
