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Archives of Nethys

Archives of Nethys

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Mago Kai

For the entirety of his life, Mago Kai has served the dead. Born to a living family in the ghost-ruled city of Sze, his childhood was one of fear and obedience. Yet he endured and worked his way up the city's bureaucracy, dodging the corrupt machinations of its spectral courtiers. He learned to understand ghosts, how to exploit their mental loops and static fixations for his own gain. Though he despised those he worked for, he could easily hide it behind his equal contempt for their rivals. When everyone around him was either lackey or enemy, he could shrug off, even relish, their downfall with relative ease. It wasn't an happy life, but Mago Kai did thrive.

Eventually, Kai's success caught the attention of Chou Mingxia, Sze's undead ruler. Incompetent in life and doubly so in death, Mingxia was obsessed with the idea of clear-cutting the forests of Shenmen and sending the lumber back to Lung Wa, pulling in a fortune from the empire's capital. Kai knew well enough the fabled empire was no more, but lumber was lumber, silver was silver, and a few forged documents could see the goods sold to neighboring nations for a tidy profit. With the ghosts of Sze unable to personally check his operations, it was also easy enough to skim a little off the top here and there.

For Mago Kai, what started as merely a desire for survival has grown into ambition for power. But lately, even his ambition has started to give way to something else: hope—hope that one day he'll have the resources to purge Sze of the dead. He does his best to squash this feeling, telling himself that sort of sentimentality is what gets people killed, but his previous successes have made such stray thoughts hard to ignore. He thinks he's good enough to do it, and that alone makes it inevitable that he'll try.

To this end, Kai has amassed a small cadre of mercenaries, priests, and exorcists to his cause. Silver from his lumber harvests proved sufficient to bribe any local jorogumo who took umbrage, and some of them are now even on friendly terms with the lumber lord and his tiny army. His current setbacks have been frustrating, but Kai learned long ago how to roll with the punches. He'll figure something out. He always does.

Recall Knowledge - Humanoid (Society): DC 38
Unspecific Lore: DC 36
Specific Lore: DC 33

Elite | Normal | Weak
Proficiency without Level

Mago KaiCreature 11

Legacy Content

Unique N Medium Human Humanoid 
Source Pathfinder #198: No Breath to Cry pg. 91
Perception +6
Languages Common
Skills Athletics +11, Crafting +5, Deception +8, Ghost Lore +7, Intimidation +10, Society +5, Sze Lore +7
Str +5, Dex +2, Con +4, Int +1, Wis +0, Cha +4
Items +1 resilient lamellar breastplate, hatchets (5), buzzsaw axe, Karahai fortress key, temple bell ringer
AC 18; Fort +13, Ref +7, Will +10
HP 220
Attack of Opportunity [reaction]
Speed 20 feet
Melee [one-action] buzzsaw axe +13 [+8/+3] (sweep), Damage 2d8+11 slashing plus 2d6 mentalMelee [one-action] headbutt +11 [+7/+3] (agile, nonlethal, press), Damage 2d4+11 bludgeoning plus 2d6 mentalRanged [one-action] hatchet +8 [+4/+0] (agile, sweep, thrown 10 feet), Damage 1d6+11 slashingGhost Killer Mago Kai had intricate magical tattoos inscribed on his back and chest to interact more easily with his ghostly masters. Weapons and unarmed attacks wielded by Mago Kai function as ghost touch weapons, and he inflicts an additional 2d6 mental damage with melee Strikes against incorporeal creatures or transmigrated PCs.