Naerai

Personality

Lake many harrow elves, Naerai feels the darkness within him, but has spent most of his life as a loner, often living in the forest, battling confusion and temptation. The forest was often his only companion and source of comfort, his growing connection to the earth keeping him grounded and keeping him from straying toward evil intentions. He came to the city to learn more sorcery in the hope of getting a better handle on himself. He may join an adventuring team simply to reaffirm to himself that he can remain in control of any evil temptations.

Appearance

Naerai's yellowish skin is less scarred than many of his race. He has red eyes and black hair.

Affiliations

Spending most of his life alone, Naerai's closest connection is to his animal companion, a poisonous viper named ???. This animal is both his familar and companion animal.

Out of necessity, Naerai is a guildsman in the Delver's Guild, giving him access to guild information, library, maproom and waystations. He also gains a 10% discount at Ebbert's Outfitters.

Religiously speaking, Naerai feels the strongest connection to Myliesha, Mistress of the Wind’s Path. This elementally based elven goddess, popular with displaced elves living among humans, offers an ideal to strive for when fighting his darker urges.

Associations

• Karetsan leads one of the only communities of harrow elves in Ptolus, a small collection of buildings in North Market called the Zar'at, in which nearly all of the city's harrow elves dwell. She is wise, but quick to anger. As a strong wizard, she taught Naerai what he knows about arcane magic, and often tries to convince Naerai to come live in Zar'at.
• Ketir Levihaos is a harrow elf guard in Iridithil's Home, an elves-only retreat/resort/temple in Emerald Hill. This place contains the only shrine to Myliesha in the city, so Naerai just wandered in one day. While Naerai was not particularly welcomed, Ketir saw to it that he wasn't thrown out either, once he determined what Naerai was up to.
• Myraeth Tuneweaver, a male shoal elf runs Myraeth's Oddities Delver Square, the place to buy and sell second hand magic items in Ptolus (although not weapons and armor, nor any newly created items). He is extremely popular with adventurers and knows most of them by name. His inventory changes constantly.

Rumors

• The monastic Brotherhood of Redemption offers a bounty of gold for any living evil creatures handed over to them, who they claim to "redeem" into useful members of society. Rumor is that their process uses alchemy, magical light, music and other procedures to turn them good against their will. They do not take humans, elves and the like, but that has not stopped some from trying. Naerai knows of two incidents where overzealous citizens captured an "evil" harrow elf from Zar'at and turned them over to the Brotherhood. In both cases, the Brotherhood immediately released them.
• Naerai has met most of the harrow elves in Ptolus, but continues to hear rumors of one he hasn't met. Tuea Silvewing is said to be a paladin in an organization that no one has really heard of called the Knights of th Golden Cross. They are supposed to be some sort of force to good for its own sake, and are supposedly based somewhere in Oldtown.
• Though some claim the Dreaming Apothecary is a myth, Naerai fairly sure it is a real organization. It is said to completely monopolize all aspects of the the market for newly created magic items in Ptolus, except for potions and scrolls. Naerai was once told that Myraeth Tuneweaver is allowed to operate through a deal with the Dreaming Apothecary, which is why he refuses to sell or create new magic items.
• The area surrounding Ptolus was once a vast wilderness guarded by a group of powerful druids called the Circle of Green. Over a thousand years ago, Ghul the Half God poisoned their reputation to isolate them, then slaughtered them all and took over the region. While intact, though, the Circle of Green was served by the Viridian Lords a group of nature warriors who can bond living plants into their skin. While the Circle is no more, the Viridian Lords still exist, largely responsible for keeping the roads around the city safe. The Lords seem to Naerai to have an status in Ptolus disproportionate to their only occasional presence within the city itself.
• Naerai has not been back to Zar'at in a while, but has heard that the community has disavowed Karee, one of Karestan's now closest friends, and considers her a betrayer and hated foe.

Future Advancement

Some possibilities for future advancement. This is not an exhaustive list.

The obvious choices for Oreni's next level are to continue in either warrior or sorcerer. These would provide:

• Druid 3: +1 BAB, +1 Reflex save, Trackless Step, animal companion benefits (+2 HD, +2 AC, +1 Str, +1 Dex, bonus trick, Evasion), cast two 2nd level spells per day, +1d8 hp, +7 skill points.
• Sorcerer 3: +1 Fort save, +1 Will save, familiar benefits (+1 AC, +1 Int, can delivers your touch spells), +1d4 hp, +5 skill points, learn additional 1st level arcane spell, cast one additional 1st level.

There aren't many prestige classes that take advantage of the druid/sorcerer combination, though many build on the druid's wild shape ability. Some possibilities:

• The Mystic Theurge mixes arcane and divine magic together. This class requires the ability to cast both 2nd level arcane and 2nd level divine spells, so Naerai doesn't yet qualify. Each level of Mystic Theurge would increase his caster level in sorcerer and druid at the same time. The drawback is that other abilities (such as the druid's Wyld Shape ability) are not increased and attack, save and hit point progression is slower.
• The Geomancer embraces the magic of nature, slowly adding mutations to the character.
• The Warshaper extends a druid's wyld shape ability with esoteric combat shapeshifting tricks.

All characters gain a feat every three levels. Since hist next level will make his total character level (CL) 6, he gets a new feat of her choice. His next such feat will come at CL 9. Some of the feats you have the prerequisites for are (there are, of course, others):

• Naerai has the Track feat, which allows him to use Search skill to follow trails. In retrospect, this may not fit into Naerai's character concept. It also might be less useful in a campaign based in a city. Les will allow Naerai to swap another feat for Track if desired.
• Retroactively applying the "alternate class features" from Complete Mage, Les would allow Naerai to swap his Animal Companion and Wild Empathy abilities for the Elemental Companion ability. This replaces his familar/animal companion with a small elemental (air, earth, fire or water). This would require some minor skill changes as well.
• Retroactively applying the "alternate class features" from Complete Mage, Les would allow Naerai to swap one of his highest level sorcerer spells for the Stalwart Sorcerer ability, if desired. This gives him two additional hit points per level of sorcerer. When you gain a new sorcerer level, you gain two more hit points, and sacrifice one of you highest level spells, but get back a previous spell you sacrificed. For example, at 5th level, you reduce your 2nd-level spells known from two to one but you gain the previously unavailable 1st-level spell (increasing your 1st-level spells known from three to four).
• Reach Spell: Cast spells that require touch attacks as rays from up to 30 ft. away.
• Insightful: Use detect magic, detect secret doors, and read magic as spelllike abilities 1/day.
• Weapon Focus (raw spell): Gain +1 to attack rolls with spells that shoot rays.
• Somatic Weaponry (requires five ranks of Concentration): Use in-hand weapons to trace the somatic requirements of spells, instead of needing the fingers of a free hand.
• Eschew Materials: Cast spells without relying on material components less than 1gp in value.
• Scribe Scroll: Make your own magical scrolls.
• Point Blank Shot: Adds +1 to attack and damage for ranged attacks at less than 30 ft. Also acts a as gateway feat to a large number of other ranged attack feats.
• Precise Shot (requires Point Blank Shot): Eliminates the -4 penalty for firing into melee.
• Rapid Shot (requires Point Blank Shot): Gain an extra ranged attack per round when making a full attack. The attack is at your highest base attack bonus, but each attack you make in that round (the extra one and the normal ones) takes a -2 penalty. This feat does not provide any additional reload ability.
• Rapid Reload: Reload a light crossbow with a free action, or a heavy crossbow with a move action. You still need both hands free to do this and reloading still provokes an attack of opportunity.

In order to qualify for Mystic Theurge, Naerai also needs six ranks each in Knowledge (arcana) and Knowledge (nature).

Naerai has a pretty high chance for arcane spell failure (35%), though Les forgot to make him roll it most of the time. This comes from the armor he wears. Bear in mind that this only affects your sorcerer spells, not your druid spells. Naerai can use light or medium armor and shields as long as none of it is metal. He was originally set up with armor to give him the best AC he could get through mundane means: masterwork hide armor (+3 AC, +20% arcane failure), heavy darkwood shield (+2 AC, +15% arcane failure). You could reduce your arcane chance by getting lighter/magical armor. Some possibilites:

• Downgrade to leather armor (+2 AC, +10% arcane failure), or even padded armor (+1 AC, +5% arcane failure). As you are in a major city, it should be possible to find such armor with minor enchantments on it, some of it even relatively cheap. For example, +1 leather runs about 1,200gp, +2 about 4,200gp.
• Downgrade to a darkwood buckler (+1 AC, +5% arcance failure). Bucklers are also built to keep your off hand free for wands, spells, etc.
• In place of (or in addition to) armor, get some magical non-armor protection. Minor rings of protection can be found for sale in the city: +1 2,000gp, +2 8,000gp, +3 18,000gp. Bracers of armor (+1 1,000gp, +2 4,000gp, +3 9,000gp), amulets of natural armor (same as ring) or other items may also be found.
• A typical mechanism for reducing the arcane impact of armor is to use mithral armor. This isn't an option available to you, though, because druids can't use metal armor.
• As an alternative, you can use wooden armor. This doesn't sound great, but there is a spell called ironwood that makes wood as hard as steel. This would allow you to wear heavier armor. (Unfortunately, this would also mean higher arcane spell failure.) So, you could make (or hire a craftsman to make), say, a breastplate out of wood, then buy a scroll containing ironwood to enchant it. The scroll is a 6th level druid spell and, while not expensive (around 1,500gp), may be hard to find. The result would be a wooden breastplate, with all the properties of a metal one (+5 AC, +25 arcane failure). If you took a the Heavy Armor Proficiency feat, you could wear even heavy armors made this way, such as ironwood full plate (+8 AC, +35% arcane failure).
• You should also be on the lookout for "wild" armor, which allows you to keep its AC bonus when you take your druids wild shape (which you can't do yet). This armor is rare and expensive, however (+1 wild leather, if you could find it, would run you over 16,000gp).

Data

• Character sheet