JAYDEN (AKA FLEA)
Random character musings by Fox Lee - http://foxlee.arts-eclectic.com

Basically, he's an Abilen Aasimar Adherent. To explain that - the Abilen is a race in our homebrew world, a humanoid feline (yeah, I know, everybody has one - but at least ours aren't just a cheap excuse to have naked catwomen running around ;p); Aasimar has been revised to be a template; and the Adherent is a "Holy Warrior" class akin to the Paladin, which is based around the character's ideals rather than the Lawful Good ideal (it works on domains - so, instead of Good and Law, you can have, say, Strength and Family, or Glory and Sun, or Trickery and Magic).

Or, in the case of my (as yet unnamed) character, Lust and Healing. He's a young boy who grew up in servitude to some sort of unpleasant fellow who hasn't been fully developed yet - and,while the boy didn't exactly /enjoy/ being a slave, he was sharp enough to know that he had little change of escape... that, and he has always had an odd sort of optimism - not faith in anything or anyone in particular, but just a sort of steadfast belief that no matter how bad things got, someday they would turn out for the best. So while he didn't have the best of lives, he wasn't really miserable for it - and he did try to make the best of the situation by employing his beauty and natural charisma (which he had always been somewhat proud of, and comforted himself with when he felt he had nothing else) to keep himself in favour with his master and his superiors. He even came to fall in a shy, unspoken kind of love with one of his fellow slaves - I'm not sure what race she was yet (yah, I made a straight character for once! :p), but I want it to be some kind of monster-ish race - something that would not conventionally be found attractive (at least not in a roantic way). Perhaps a Maug or something.

Anyway, the boy's master had the courage (read: stupidity) to acquire a Githyanki as one of his slaves. This brought a rather abrupt end to him, when the Githyanki's sister came knocking - he was killed, his manor burned down, all that jazz. In his attempt to escape (or her, I guess, as we haven't decided yet), he sent one of his servants - a Nimblewright - to face his attackers, basically telling it to kill anything that got in its way. Jayden had the misfortune to do exactly that, and - not being the most adept combatant in the world - lost an arm to each rapier before being left for dead in the fire.

The Gith warrior did happen to rescue him before he could die - in fact, she proceeded to pull both arms off of the /Nimblewright/, then took the lot home to her husband, an adamant craftsman (and another PC). The net result being that the boy woke up with horrible scarring over one side of his face (his eye beyond repair), a collection of scars and burns that completely ruined his coat, and an Arm of Nyr (DotF) attached in place of one that he had lost. At this point, he found himself somewhat torn between gratitude - the woman had risked her life to save him, after all, and the man had devoted a great deal of time and effort (and XP) to replacing his arm - and the absolute horror that was his mangled body. This was the first point where he had found his faith flagging, feeling like he had lost everything - even the shallow physical beauty that had become his "security blanket". Realising the boy was somewhat distressed, the Githyanki man gave him a choice as to whether or not he wanted to have the other arm replaced, and a night to think about it.

He spent the night in sort of a dazed stupor, not really able to wrap his mind around the choice he was being presented with, and probably would have still been staring at his metal fingers by morning if one of the low-tier Gods (Serein, a Nature-oriented Godling of Winter) hadn't felt sorry for him. Appearing to him in the night, to offer some words of comfort, Serein tried to ease the boy's heavy heart by leaving him a gift - a ring crafted by Serein's brother, which would allow the young Abilen to conceal his appearance until he was able to cope with his fate.

This was both a good and a bad thing. On one hand, it made the boy able to bear what had happened and consent to having his second arm replaced; on the other, however, he clung to the ring as a way to deny his disfigurement, activating the illusion immediately. He was so desperate to do so, in fact, that he began to emebellish his appearance - little things, like changing his patchy fur to pure white, his somewhat scruffy sand-coloured hair to a silky, rather exotic wintery blue (inspired by Serein himself, quite likely). Basically, he went way too far in his attempt to conceal the damage, beginning to lose sight of the simple beauty he had been proud of - trying to capture a false perfection that everyone would admire, so that he would never have to admit what had happened.

This was the point where he came into the game - kind of depressed, very much in denial - but still believing, still caring about others and now knowing that he had the power to help them. As it turned out, he fell in love with an Erinyes (lawful succubi type monsters) named Eesha, who had somewhat "fallen" from his devil heritage, and after a great deal of hipocrisy and bickering was able to reveal his true appearance. His scarring was healed, but his arms remained.

Oh, and as a final note, his fighting style - when he /does/ fight - is based around a combination of Spiked Chain, Improved Trip, and Combat Reflexes. So yeah, if the dice roll right, he can play keepaway like a madman.