Walter Prinkanza

Age: 18
Class: 3rd level Paladin
Alignment: Lawful Good
Description: Tall, blond, painfully handsome and clean-cut, wearing the livery of the Suzereigna's personal guard.
Secondary Skills: firearms, military lore, theology
Weapon: Longsword 1d8, rifle 2d10 (armor piercing), bayonet 1d4+1

Note: A paladin's detect evil is defined as supernatural evil. An imp will show up, but an evil Wazir will not, unless he's also a closet demonologist.

The Pigheaded Paladin rule: Paladins have a +2 to disbelieve illusions. However, if you try to disbelieve something that is actually there, and you roll a 19 or 20, you succeed in deluding yourself into not believing it exists. Have fun.

Keys: Access to the Gnostic Temple's inner sanctums

STR: 18-57

INT: 10

WIS: 16

CON: 15

DEX: 16

CHA: 18

COM: 23

Hit Points: 30

Wealth: 20 silver, savings. Suspended pay.

You were excellent in your training after your monastic discipline and quickly made the grade, being posted to the Suzereigna's personal honor guard due to your noble blood (despite how you got it). Of course, being disowned by your noble (and now dead) father, you were penniless, excepting what little pay you were given to provide for your uniform. Your fellow guardsmen give you a wide berth, partially because you're a bastard, but mostly because you don't have any money to go out and party on your day off, plus you're also a teetotaling religious fanatic, so no fun anyway.

And so you were left alone in your uniform, with no one to talk to. There haven't been any wars, or even any trouble to speak of, and your job was almost painfully boring. You prayed to the divine Sophia for something to test your mettle, to prove your worth in the eyes of the Suzereigna, to be able to do something other than stand around and look pretty. Yet nothing happened, apart from falling asleep at your post and getting a reprimand and a flogging from the captain of your regiment, who called you a lazy bastard. Which you were, though you didn't know how you fell asleep, and it wasn't really your fault that your parents had no morals.

The next day you were brought in to see the Suzereigna. She pointed to the jewel in her scepter and told you it was made of paste. You were shocked. She then said it hadn't been made of paste the day before. You were even more shocked as you figured out what had happened, and realized that a penniless guardsman and a missing jewel made a very suspicious combination.

You had a choice, she said. Either you recovered the jewel and were then decorated with appropriate honors, or, in the event of the Star of Prizendorff not coming to light, you would be tried for theft, treason, or at very least dereliction of duty, and your head would decorate the front gate of the palace. If the gem is recovered, but not by you, then you will merely be tried, imprisoned, flogged and exiled, depending on what strikes her fancy at the moment.

You are not being placed on the official search team, since there isn't one (mum's the word on this) or even on the unofficial official search team. You don't warrant that. Instead, the Suzereigna has assigned you to shepherd an assorted crew of ne'er-do-wells, including her own hulking grandnephew, out on whatever investigation you see fit. And what a crew they make: a seamstress who's also a member of the infamous Grimwald clan, a nervous young lordling, the aforementioned hulking grandnephew, the babbling gardener's boy, a street waif, the bloodthirsty daughter of Valkynberg's foremost weaponsmith, and a recently widowed contessa who should be tending to her infant son. All of whom have doubtless either incurred the Suzereigna's wrath, or desperately wish to curry favor.

Mitzi Grimwald also seems so sweet and frightened that you can't imagine what she might have done to upset the Suzereigna, unless she maybe broke something. But even then, you know what it is to make a simple mistake. You should probably comfort her and protect her. After all, what can a poor seamstress do against thieves, or worse yet, necromancers? She shouldn't have come, but if it's the only noble thing you ever do, you should protect such a sweet young girl. Or are the rumors true, and are all the Grimwald's demon-conjuring witches? But you know all too well that a person can't help the circumstance of his birth. Pray to the divine Sophia for guidance. Maybe she can sort it out.

Further Investigation...

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