[sblock=Shard the Shardarian]
Name: Shard
Race: Human
Class/Level: Psion (Shaper) 6
Gender: Female
Exp
Desc
Pale skinned, crowned with a shock of long, unruly white hair and with faded blue eyes, Shard is an unusual looking specimen. Waifishly thin, young and pretty in her own strange way, she is clad only in a simple thin white dress, now stained and soiled with grass, dust and grime. In the center of her forehead, there is a fragment of clear crystal about the size of a man's thumbnail. Examination bears witness that this isn't some awful injury, but that the crystal is fused with flesh and bone as if it had somehow grown from her body.
Strength (STR) 8
Dexterity (DEX) 12
Constitution (CON) 12
Intelligence (INT) 19
Wisdom (WIS) 14
Charisma (CHA) 10
Alignment: Chaotic Good
AC: 11 (+1 dex)
Hit Points: 34
Movement: 30 ground
Init: +1
Base Attack Bonus: +3
Melee Attack: +2
Ranged Attack: +4
Fort: +5
Reflex: +3
Will: +7
Race Abilities
Bonus Feat
Bonus Skills
Class Abilities:
Discipline: Metacreativity
Proficiency: club, dagger, heavy crossbow, light crossbow, quarterstaff, and shortspear
Psionics
Bonus Feats
Skills: 63
Autohypnosis CC (Wis) +8 (4 ccranks + 2 Wis +2 synergy)
Bluff (Cha) +9 (9 ranks + 0 Cha)
Concentration (Con) +10 (9 ranks + 1 Con)
Craft (Sculpture) (Int) +13 (9 ranks + 4 int)
Knowledge (Psionics) (Int) +9 (5 ranks + 4 int)
Psicraft (Int) +15 (9 ranks + 4 int + 2 synergy)
Sense Motive CC (Wis) +6 (4 ccranks +2 Wis)
Use Psionic Device (Cha) +6 (6 ranks + 0 Cha)
Feats
1 Psionic Body
1 Psicrystal Affinity
1b Boost Construct (+1 special ability from available table)
3 Psionic Meditation (regain focus with move action)
5b Expanded Knowledge: Clairvoyant Sense
6 Up the Walls
Languages - Common, Thayan, Azgundi, Halfling, Djihon
Psionics (DC 14+lvl, caster level 6)
Power Points: 47
Level One
Astral Construct (lvl 1 1pp, lvl 2 3pp, lvl 3 5pp)
Minor Creation
Entangling Ectoplasm
Inertial Armor (+4 for 1pp, +6 for 5pp)
Empathy
Level Two
Clairvoyant Sense (From feat)
Swarm of Crystals
Cloud Mind
Detect Hostile Intent
Energy Adaptation (Specified)
Level Three
Body Adjustment
Greater Concealing Amorpha
Ectoplasmic Cocoon
Touchsight
Money -
Weapons -
Armour -
None
Gear -
None
Magic -
None
[sblock=Background]Once upon a time...
There was a town beholden to Thay near the border. Mostly subsistence farmers and men of crafts, it had to barter its own people to its wizard overlords for protection. Though there was a keep on a nearby hill where they grazed their sheep, it had been empty for generations and no one even knew it's name now. Crumbling and in disrepair, it nevertheless gave the villagers a sense that they were heirs to something noble, and they took from it the name of their town: Shepherds Keep.
In a far off land...
This small community decided that no protection at all was better than sending their children off to slavery. Though the issue was contentious, and they knew there would be consequences, the stubborn people of Shepherd's Keep had been pushed as far as they would go. Rallied by a brave (though some said foolish) man, they prepared for Thay's response.
There lived a brave, idealistic man...
Under their charismatic leader, the villagers turned their town into a trap, then worked feverishly on restoring the keep on the hill. They kept some people in the village, and worked on the keep from the inside though. When wizard familiars scouted Shepherd's Keep, and scrying eyes appeared in the sky, they saw only minimal preparations. In Thay, cruel voices laughed and issued commands. A small task force was assembled to punish the small town.
They arrived at Shepherd's Keep to an empty village. Yet as they explored they encountered triplines that fired crossbows from empty houses. Covered pits full of tarry water their horses couldn't get out of. Buckets of lamp oil sealed with wax with a bit of alchemist's fire at the top...they burst into terrible clinging flames when the wax seal broke (which was usually when the bucket fell onto soldiers as they burst into a house). The survivors put the remaining town to the torch, but they couldn't find the PEOPLE. That is, until the scout sent to the keep didn't come back.
When what was left of the punishment detail went to the keep to investigate, they were met with arrow fire and hurled spears from the battlements! The keep's doors had been restored and fortified, and its stone walls, while crumbling, were more than enough to keep them at bay. They retreated and waited for reinforcements, knowing that the wizards were watching.
...and his daughter.
As the farmers and shepherds celebrated their 'victory' in the keep, doom gathered on the horizon. What had been thought by the wizards as mere recalcitrance...inevitable and forgivable with punishment...had become full blown armed revolt, however pathetic. In their dark hearts, the wizards of Thay feared this the most. Rebellion could spread like a fire in wild grass if left unchecked. Even the faintest hint of success could inflame the passions of the oppressed. There would be no quarter now, no mercy. An example would be made.
Thay returned to Shepherd's Keep with an army that had a full wizard's contingent. The shields of phalanx batted aside hunting arrows and javelins. No courage was enough when the ground shook, and the very stones of the keep seemed to come alive to strike at the men manning the walls. Lightning roared down from the sky, and fire bloomed across the battlements. The second battle of Shepherd's Keep was not a battle at all.
In the moments before the final attack, the women and children of Shepard's Keep were brought to a cramped, dark escape tunnel in the cellar. It would come out in the woods some distance from the hill. The chances were slim, even so. When the wizards found the tunnel, they would send hounds and worse to track them...but it was all they had left.
The leader of what had become an insurrection took his daughter aside. A quiet, intelligent girl, he had done everything he could to foster her mind. Everything except one. As he explained what to do, and told her not to protest, he had another conversation with the voice in his head...the voice that had been there ever since he'd been in the Thayan guard, and had mercifully let a strange 'sorceror who was not a sorceror' escape his pursuers. Soon he would be dead, he explained to its presence in his mind, and of no further use to it. Go to her, he begged it silently. Give her your strength, so she can guide them to safety. Please.
The girl, his daughter, was crying and pleading for him to come too when she stopped, and her eyes widened. Father and daughter alike were gripped with a terrible pain, as the One Mind tried to do something it hadn't tried before...moving a fragment from one to another, rather than just making a new one. The experiment was a...qualified success. On some levels.
Numbed by pain both physical, mental and emotional, his daughter retreated behind a veil of delusion. This was a dream. A nightmare, perhaps, but a dream. It was the only explanation for this madness. The only refuge from despair. She played by its rules though, and when her father told her to run, she ran...
The escape tunnel was pitch black and caked with fungus and little squirming things that lived in it. Mothers frantically shushed the terror of their young ones, and they forged on. The ground shook behind them, as the keep was attacked and broken.
It was in the forest that they first heard the baying of hounds. The shellshocked daughter of the one who had led them told them all to flee...that she would stop the pursuers. The first hound burst through the brush and charged her, jaws slavering with bloodlust...only to strike an invisible barrier around her. Then, as it gathered itself to bite her, it was impaled from behind by a silvery sharp bladed arm. A dreamlike creature called by the girl who now thought of herself only as Shard...the name she'd had before was locked away with the other memories of when she was 'awake.' She stepped in the dog's blood and ran off in another direction, reasoning that the hounds would chase that scent above all others... She ran to lead them away from...something important. Something she'd promised to protect. Somehow. She ran.
And in her own way, in this dark and smelly cell, she is running still.[/sblock]
Psicrystal:
Alastor
Diminutive Construct
Hit Dice: 6 (17)
Initiative: +2
Speed: 30 ft. (6 squares), climb 20 ft.
Armor Class: 18 (+4 size, +2 Dex, +2 natural), touch 16, flatfooted 16
Base Attack/Grapple: +3/-14
Attack: -
Full Attack: -
Space/Reach: 1 ft./0 ft.
Special Attacks: -
Special Qualities: Construct traits, hardness 8, psicrystal granted abilities (improved evasion, personality, self-propulsion,share powers, sighted, telepathic link, Hero Personality, deliver touch, telepathic speech)
Saves: +2 fot, +4 ref, +5 will
Abilities: Str 1, Dex 15, Con -, Int 8, Wis 10, Cha 10
Skills: Climb +14*, Listen +6, Move Silently +6, Search +3, Spot +6, Plus Shard's ranks
Feats: Alertness [/sblock]
