Abragos Amaiakos, Mountebank

Abragos ran his luck to its thinnest edge in Khromarium and escaped just as the baleful gaze of the Entowered was ponderously swinging his way. The Ixian survived a running series of cons, heists, and power grabs across land and sea with nothing but his wits, his charm, and his Chaos Monk muscle, Fell Contos -- and the occasional well-placed falcata blade. He was run out of Gal City after stealing enough ink to craft several scrolls, and he and Fell spent desperate days in the ghoul-infested area around Gold Hill before their luck finally turned. Abragos managed to captivate the leader of a clan of wild berserkers. These he led to a swampy area past Dunwich, knowing that the violet lotuses would be blooming. He used the seed pods to addict and pacify his berserkers while he decided where best to use them.

Sample dialogue:
--My control over these beasts is imperfect, friend. I suggest you leave your gear on the ground and then just leave.
--Fell! Stop kicking things and listen!
--I would like to solve this problem by making it yours.

Abragos Amaiakos
Mountebank
Ixian
Lvl. 5
AL: CE
Age: 21
Languages: Common, Ixian, Keltic, Thieves Cant
6'1", 170#
Black hair (shaved), black eyes. Intense, mesmerizing gaze, winning smile.

S 9
D 15
C 11
I 16
W 9
Ch 14

Spells (* = memorized. 1st-3; 2nd-2; 3rd-1): Hypnotism*, Mirror Image*, Scare; Captivate*, Invisibility*; Illusory Wall of Fire*.

HP 26
AC 4 (leather +1, small shield)
SV 14 (Avoidance +2, Sorcery +2, DEX +1)

--Spellbook
--Scrolls: Scare, Invisibility, Invisibility
--The Shield Hand: Small shield crafted of interlocking severed human hands, still bloody at the wrists. At the first melee attack with a weapon that would hit the bearer, a hand animates, grabs the weapon, and yanks it away. Extraordinary feat of STR to maintain grip.
--Death Soldier's Muster: These razor-sharp falcatas have bone hilts, and the blades bear deep fullers that never are completely free of dried blood. They are +1 weapons, but (my players, don't look)

when wielded by death soldiers (necromantic warlocks), their full powers are released. They perform as +2 weapons and add 3 to the death soldier’s DEX for purposes of determining who strikes first on his side or in situations of tied initiative. Any creature killed by the muster rises as a zombie in one turn and will serve the death soldier for the remainder of the session or one day, whichever is shorter.

I think there's probably room to stick this guy in an adventure:

"Abaris was a Hyperborean priest of Apollo, known as the god of healing. The Hyperboreans were people in Greek legend who lived “beyond the north wind.” Since Boreas, the god of the north wind, lived in Thrace, the Hyperborean reference identifies Abaris as a man who comes from a region north of Thrace, from the Central Asian highlands. The stories surrounding Abaris, including his travel on the wind via a golden arrow, suggest that he was a shaman from Mongolia who journeyed around Greece healing people and chasing away epidemics. His nickname was Aethrobates (Airwalker)."
--The Gnostic New Age (Columbia University Press, forthcoming)

Ghul wrote:

This one is new to me. Can you tell me more about the forthcoming book? A lot of my Hyperborea info comes from Herodotus: The Histories. 
 

Jeff, I'm not sure *this* book has broad application to AS&SH, but some of its sources certainly do. The Hyperborean Airwalker, apparently, was a teacher of Pyhtagoras (to whom he gave his arrow!), Aristeas, Epedocles, Parmenides, and Epimenides. So for primary sources, there's that. Also, Carl Ruck, "Classical World Shamanism (Ancient Greece and Rome)," in Shamanism: An Encyclopedia of World Beliefs, Practices, and Cultures, vol. 1, ed. Walter and Neumann (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO); Walter Burkett, Lore and Science in Ancient Pythogreanism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972); Gary Edson, Shamanism: A Cross-Cultural Study of Beliefs and Practices (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2009); Michael Winkelman, Shamans, Priests, and Witches: A Cross-Cultural Study of Magico-Religious Practioners, Anthropological Research Papers 44 (Tempe: Arizona State University). So, interlibrary loan!

Also, I have recently realized that keeping The Golden Bough on hand is really useful. It's maybe not worth it to read it cover to cover, but even just browsing the index and flipping to interesting parts has helped my game.

And I just read Plutarch on Sparta. Those guys were nuts. Definitely room for a Spartan enclave in Hyperborea. 

And now we know where Handy gets his crazy shaman ideas...

Handy Haversack wrote:

OK, maybe it has *some* application:

"Initiates would be forced to participate in physical exercise far more strenuous than they might normally engage in, such as carrying a struggling piglet twenty-seven miles to the sea until the initiate is absolutely exhausted. They might be deprived of sleep, given special drink, stripped and reclothed, masked with animal faces, drugged or otherwise intoxicated, held in isolation, branded, or castrated."

Um, happy Apollonalia?
 

Guess we know where frat hazing originated now.