<strong>Aldros Thul</strong><br/><strong>LN Human Male Binder 9</strong>(http://plothook.net/RPG/profiler/view.php?id=13498)<br/>(https://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/9/9a/Servant_det01.jpg)<br/><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">Condition Summary</div><div class="spoiler_body">HP: 67/67    AC 15(17), Touch 10(12), Flat-Footed 15(17)<br/>Initiative: +4(+6)<br/>Equipped Weapon: +1 Morningstar (+13/+8, 1d8+4/x2 B/P)<br/>Fort +11, Ref +5(+7), Will +7 (Immune to Fear, Slippery Mind)<br/><strong>Active Vestiges</strong><br/><span class="bbc_u">(No Sign, Good Pact): Balam</span><br/>-Balam's Cunning (0 rounds to recharge)<br/>-Icy Glare (Inactive, 30ft. range, 2d6 Cold, DC20 Will Negates)<br/>-Prescience (+2 to Reflex, Initiative, AC)<br/>-Weapon Finesse<br/><span class="bbc_u">No Sign, Good Pact): Tenebrous</span><br/>-Rebuke Undead (8 uses/day) (0 rounds to recharge)<br/>-Deeper Darkness<br/>-See In Darkness<br/>-Touch of the Void (0 rounds to recharge)<br/>-Vessel of Emptiness (1/day)<br/><del><span class="bbc_u">(No Sign, Good Pact): Geryon</span><br/>-Acidic Gaze (Inactive, 30ft. range, 2d6 Acid, DC20 Will Negates)<br/>-All-Round Vision (Inactive)<br/>-See In Darkness (Inactive)<br/>-Swift Flight (0 rounds to recharge)</del><br/><br/>Current Pact Augmentation (2): <br/>+1 Insight to Attack Rolls<br/>+1 Insight To Attack Rolls<br/></div></div><br/><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">Background</div><div class="spoiler_body">My name is Aldros Thal. I am a binder.<br/>This is the seventh of my journals. If you possess one of the previous six, please hide it away somewhere safe for another to find; this journal contains all written in previous books, and that lesser knowledge might someday spur someone else on their search. If you possess a journal I have not yet written, please return this book to where you found it, and leave it for someone still trailing your footsteps.<br/>Guard this tome well, while it remains in your keeping. My notes on each of the vestiges I have sealed pacts with are contained within, but the knowledge inside may be more dangerous than the rituals. There are many who would seek to kill me, or worse, for I traffic with and cleave to beings that sit beyond life and death. Many priests and clerics find such truths to be unpalatable blasphemy, for nothing can exist that is not within the purview of the gods. Many wizards and would-be rulers seek immortality, and might believe it reachable by means of pact magic. A very rare few, the greatest of fools, are convinced vestigehood itself is a goal worth pursuing. Heroes would bend the powers of the ones beyond to do good. Villains would twist them for evil. The vestiges do not care about these things; they are isolated, alone. They are beyond morality, for morality is a shackle of an existence they have lost. Be you aspiring champion of Light or merciless lord of Darkness, you may set yourself to mastering the arts found within. You may succeed, but never may you make the mistake of believing you are master of the entities who take up residence within your soul. The gods cannot command a vestige beyond what its pacts allow, think not so highly of yourself and judge that you can.<br/><br/>I was not always what I am. Long ago, I was a boy, in distant Thay. My parents were freemen - peasants, but free all the same, living a simple but comfortable existence beneath the notice of the Red Wizards. I was not so lucky - a seed of arcane potential lay within my body, and the minions of the zulkirs detected that seed in one of their periodic searches. Taken from my family, I was entrusted to the harsh care and tutelage of a full Wizard, the conjurer Ivros Odesseiron, and set to work learning how to harness the spark I carried. We both suffered as a result - him in frustration at the seemly inept pupil he had been assigned, and me in pain when he took that frustration out on me for my failures. I was no great intellect; literate, but only just, and even the most basic of arcane formulae flowed through my grasp like grains of sand. Often I retired to my tiny cell hungry, nursing small burns or shocks, and I knew it was only a matter of time before Ivros grew tired of me and threw me out - or worse, sold me as a slave to recoup the investment on my failed apprenticeship. <br/><br/>But one of my duties, when I was not stumbling over basic cantrips, was cleaning. Ivros lived in a tower, one he had taken from a rival Wizard in arcane combat, and the previous owner had been a hoarder. Rooms were packed with trinkets, antiquities, and books; frequently magical, more frequently worthless junk. With effort, I could see arcane auras, and so I spent long days sorting through the storerooms in search of enchanted items Ivros could use or sell, and tomes of arcane lore he would find interesting. It was in one of those rooms that I found it. An ancient libram, centuries old, and unlabeled save for a strange sigil on the cover. It drew me like nothing ever had, and for the first time in my life, I disobeyed my master by hiding the book instead of bringing it for his perusal. My scraps of free time were spent in that storeroom, laboriously translating it line by line from the lost tongue of Nar to Mulhorandi. Slowly, it revealed to me secrets of a lost art of conjuration - rituals capable of contacting otherworldly beings beyond the planes, calling them to me, and taking their power for my own. This was a magic outside even Ivros's understanding, and so I did not share it. I suffered by day, and studied by night, until at last I thought myself ready to conduct a binding. Amon came at my call, and for a share of my place in the world, gave me his gifts for a day. But his power was too much for my flesh, and his sign was unmistakable; upon rising, Ivros would know I had conducted magic without his permission, and it would likely be my life in payment. So I fled, armed only with my tome  and the vestige within me.<br/><br/>I feared pursuit, but none came - like Ivros was simply glad to be rid of my presence and irritating lack of proficiency, and he had never known of the libram that I stole. But I could not be certain this would be true forever, and all the same Thay was no longer safe for me and my new skills. I forged west, through Thesk, and took service on a ship plying the trade routes of the Sea of Fallen Stars - the captain was suspicious, but Naberius's silvered tongue convinced him otherwise, and I pulled my weight as a seaman enough that an occasional quirk of behavior was ignored.<br/><br/>I left the sea in Cormyr, and from there traveled far and wide. Often, the signs of my partners roused ignorant villagers or suspicious guards to violence. Very rarely, someone saw them for what they were, and my fragmented knowledge grew just a bit as two outcasts bonded to outcasts exchanged tidbits of lore before going our separate ways. Where possible, I passed myself off as a sorcerer, finding odd jobs and work to sustain myself in my journeys. Once, I saw notice of a band of explorers planning an expedition to Narfell itself, at the behest of a great druid trying to cleanse cursed ruins of their corruption. That journey taught me much, both in self-sufficiency and when to rely on others, including my introduction to the faith of the elven god Fenmarel Mestarine, patron of outcasts and pariahs, by way of his priestess Hacanthra. A wild elf, she lived up to the name of her race, but saw steel beneath my mask and a kindred spirit of loneliness in a hostile world. Most nights together were spent in pursuits more primal than religion, yet we talked as well, and I saw value in taking a patron dedicated to those no one else would welcome. Whether he welcomes my devotion I have never been sure, but nor have I ever seen a sign of outright rejection.<br/><br/>Our trip to Narfell and its demon-tainted catacombs ended ultimately in failure. Of five, three of us returned - my first love one of the two lost forever. I, though, left those dark lands with a prize, and a mission. From a tome bound in human flesh, I had found the sigils of Geryon, and from a tattered scroll, only a name - Chupoclops. A mighty vestige, predator of the gods themselves in ages lost to time. Its sigil was incomplete, but more complex than any I had ever beheld before, and I shall not rest until I find the portions missing and seal the Harbinger of Forever to my soul.<br/><br/>I write here in Waterdeep, comfortably alone amidst a crowd in a tavern. The City of Splendors is a new place to me, but surely within its walls there will be a clue leading towards a pact I have not acquired, perhaps even the Harbinger itself. Somewhere in the city, I have heard of a safe house for binders, guarded by the Knights of Agares. If anyone knows where pact lore can be found, it will be a Knight of the Sacred Seal - but finding them will be challenge indeed.<br/></div></div><br/><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">Deities</div><div class="spoiler_body">Aldros has, somewhat ironically, chosen the elven god of outcasts Fenmaril Mestarine as his patron. He rarely offers a prayer, or expects the notoriously sullen and grouchy deity to answer such from a human worshipper, but the Lone Wolf's worshippers are the closest he is likely to find to kindred spirits.<br/></div></div><br/><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">Sexual Preferences</div><div class="spoiler_body">Aldros is quite striking in a vaguely unnerving way, and extremely charming when he sets his mind (or Naberius's Silver Tongue) to the task, but for all his attractiveness his romantic liaisons are few and far between. Carrying a pair of utterly alien personalities in his head makes for distracted lovemaking at best, even when a solid pact prevents them from actively influencing his behavior. Free of any vestigial influence, he's most drawn to women whose bodies show they can take care of themselves - healthy and lithe or well-muscled, and preferably of similar size to himself.<br/></div></div>