Styrian Kindler

Defense

Offense

Statistics

Description

Male human bard 4

Played by F. Wesley Schneider

Raised among the reedmace and reflections of ruins common along the Ardis reach of the Vhatsuntide River, Styrian lived a childhood of hauntings. Born the son of Allishan Kindler, the eldest heiress of a line of once-wealthy and once-esteemed royal scholars, and Blake Thorenly, a solicitor in the shared employ of several declining families in Ustalav’s former capital, Styrian Thorenly came to know and loathe the stately desperation of his family and home city from an early age.

The first 11 years of his life he spent surreptitiously exploring a wonderland of moldy tomes, shrouded antiques, and dust motes at August House, his family’s home. With the staff long departed, the manor stood largely empty, doors locked and windows shuttered—though not so well that a tenacious youth couldn’t weasel his way in at every opportunity. From his parent’s cramped home converted from the estate’s summer house, Styrian spent most of his days alone, as his father spent weeks away in the nearby city—hardly a 2 hour trek by carriage—and his mother was victimized by chronic illness. What extra silvers the family ever came by typically went to pay for Allishan’s endless march of physicians, who offered such varied and contradictory diagnoses as acute disappointment, persistent lassitude, past-life rejection, and indolent constitution, along with the tonics, liniments, and quack remedies associated with each. At a young age Styrian learned not to comment on his mother’s seemingly miraculous ability to drag herself out of even the deepest fugue whenever he went digging in the vegetable garden or made an attempt to squeeze through the estate’s broken cellar window, her exasperated shouts and insistences momentarily curing her weak coughs and glazed squinting. Any remark on the matter promptly dropped her into a severe relapse and significant depression, which the youth could do little to repair. When his father did visit the dour house, shadowed by the manor’s faded opulence, his return proved instantly detectable, and in the tiny home away from the presumption and procedure of the city, the short man ruled like a tyrant. What love Styrian’s parents might once have shared passed before he could remember it, likely with his mother’s girlish good looks and his father’s cowardly realization that the Kindler family was just as destitute as nearly every other old-blood family in Ardis.

Fortunately, a strangely skewed beam of light shone on young Styrian in the form of his mother’s sister Ailson, or Aunt A. His parents made a point of not discussing Aunt Ailson’s business, beyond distastefully remarking that she was an author of immoralities and unbelievable romances. She also traveled frequently and for long periods, and innocent queries about her next visit often incited Styrian’s father to snidely remark that he’d likely never see her again. Without fail, though, early some random morn Aunt A would appear at the house, riding like a man, her hair streaked with one more stripe of gray as if tallying her travels, and bringing some exotic new knickknack for her nephew to treasure. The duration of her visits varied. Should she catch her brotherin-law at home, she stayed for tea with the family and to delightedly take part in a duel of cruel civility and half-insults, for which Blake proved endlessly outmatched but ever willing, before departing. Finding her sister and nephew home alone, as she most often did, especially in later years, she would stay at some length and possibly even overnight, regaling them with tales of the fantastic places she’d visited and sights she’d seen. In the dark, though, when the aging sisters thought the boy asleep, they would often whisper of darker things, regrets and tragedies his mother refused to let go.

On the rarest but most magical occasions, when both his parents were away visiting this doctor or that herbalist and Ailson came upon her brave nephew minded by some doubtful member of his father’s staff, she would dismiss the would-be guardian and spend a day or more at August House. Truly delighting in the boy’s company, Ailson would produce a long metal key, boldly stride up to the manor door, and throw it open with a boom that echoed throughout the entire building. Then she would show him the best treasures still hidden in the house, the most curious books left in the library, and new ways to sneak in without being seen. Afterward she told him stories his mother would have thought him far too young to hear and even let him practice with her razortipped rapier. When finally she departed— always just minutes before his parents’ return and with a kiss-sealed note left for his mother—the fantastic stories and new revelations lingered on in Styrian’s memory and imagination.

In 4688, having accrued some nameless debt in his business, Styrian’s father sold August House and the family took larger but far draftier apartment rooms in gray Ardis. In the city Styrian grew wiry and cagey, brutally learning to avoid the offers of strangers and the gambols of city urchins in ways that left him bruised and shaken. With his father now capable of returning home nightly, he learned how to disappear in silence and

At the start of his fifteenth year, Styrian’s father conscripted him as a page and messenger for his practice. Although he hated the bleak, three-man office, he delighted in roaming the city, visiting grim estates like ruined castles, and occasionally even running errands to the former royal library. During this time he also began receiving letters from his Aunt Ailson. Although she explained that she wouldn’t be able to visit him at “his father’s home”—only implying it was forbidden—she promised to write from wherever her life took her and encouraged him to do the same, offering detailed instructions as to how she might be reached. With a line to the world beyond faded Ardis, Styrian’s curiosity transformed into a ravenous thing, and hungry for more tales and stories, it unleashed itself upon the bookshops, libraries, and whatever private collections his job and burgeoning charm could grant him even a moment’s access to.

On his twentieth birthday, Styrian received two invitations: One came from his father, in name still a solicitor but in truth a miserly old man in the business of simultaneously guarding and stealing the coppers of old women. It appointed Styrian the status of junior member in his father’s practice—in truth more a proclamation than a request.

The other came from his aunt Ailson, now living in Caliphas, Ustalav’s true capital, who invited him to rent a room there in a building she’d come to own and take up true schooling at the University of Caliphas. His choice proved laughably obvious.

For the past 10 years Styrian has lived in foggy Caliphas, taking classes on a wide variety of fascinating topics and supplementing his ample education with tales from his aunt’s past, finally revealed to him, as a professional adventurer and former member of the Pathfinder Society. After many seasons of keeping his aunt’s museum of a home and reading her collection of tomes of often-grim journals, Styrian has recently ventured forth on his own. His research into and fascination with the folktales of Varisia have led him to the Lost Coast in an eager attempt to chronicle the truth of the legendary Sandpoint Devil.

Boon: After spending a day studying with Styrian, a PC gains a +2 bonus on Knowledge checks made to answer questions about a monster. If the monster is the Sandpoint Devil, this bonus increases to +5.

Source: NPC Guide, p. 61