Pathfinder: Saga of Fate/Romulus Malarc

"I've gotten into a lot of bar fights in my time, and there's one particular brawl I remember where the fellow said 'You're gonna try and take me? You look like you would go down in one hit.'  I simply looked up at him, smiled, and replied 'Who said anything about getting hit, mate?'" ~ Romulus Malarc, 4741 AR

Romulus is a half-demon magus who wields a bastard sword in one hand and magic in the other. His fighting style focuses on avoiding hits as much as possible and dealing great amounts of damage in return.

Backstory
Romulus, along with his twin brother Remus, is the illegitimate spawn of a beautiful human commoner named Aspexia Malarc and a balor lord named Shargamoth Voldruk. Romulus was born in a small farmtown in Galt fourteen years before a widespread revolution would transform Galt into a purely anarchic state. When Romulus and his brother were born, their mother was not highly revered with some members of the community. On a regular basis, she would be called things like she-witch and demonic whore. These people even went so far as to make threats to burn Aspexia and her children at the stake. Fortunately, the town's mayor took pity on Aspexia and provided around-the-clock protection to her and her family.

While growing up, Romulus would often get into brawls with his more belligerent brother. For most of these brawls, Remus would win with his advantage in strength and toughness. After being fed up with being defeated by his brother, Romulus began to train himself in areas in which Remus was lacking: agility and cunning. Using these newly found skills, Romulus finally managed to topple his juggernaut of a brother.

A few years after the revolution began, and when Romulus was in his late teens, the revolt finally reached his remote home town. When this happened, the mayor was eliminated and in turn, Romulus and his family's protection. Romulus watched in horror as his mother was burned at the stake. As the revolutionaries were about to kill Romulus, he was saved by an old elven magus named Jharak. Romulus was unaware of Remus's fate.

Jharak brought Romulus to a remote area of western Galt, untouched by the revolution. He saw potential in Romulus, and offered to train him. Romulus accepted, and Jharak trained him to become a special type of Magus that completemented his incredible reflexes known as a kensai. Romulus honed his reflexes to dodge attacks at lightning speed, as well as the ability to combine sword and spell in swift and deadly strikes.

Romulus finished his training faster than expected, which was quite convenient considering Jharak died of old age shortly after his training was completed. With no family and no master, Romulus became a wanderer of the Inner Sea.

Along his travels, Romulus became quite the scoundrel. He committed petty crimes and had one-night stands with many women (some of them married). As time went on, he continued to hone his skills he had learned from Jharak, but the discipline he was taught slowly faded away.

Romulus was eventually recruited to the Iron Cog, a gang spread across the Inner Sea lead by the mysterious Petronicus Thrune. His first mssion was to serve as a bodyguard for Petronicus as he traveled to the Five Kings Mountains to make a deal with the rebels there in which he would provide them with weapons in exchange for gold from their reformed government.

The government in the Five Kings Mountains found out about this deal, however, and started to chase out the Iron Cog members. One of Petronicus's right-hand men who was on the mission with him told Romulus to stay behind and "cover the boss's escape" when in actuality he had found out about Romulus's heritage and had left him to die.

Romulus was outcast once again, until he found a group of six adventurers who were being attacked by Five Kings soldiers. Romulus joined in the fight, and once the battle was over, he introduced himself to the group. When they found out he wasn't on of the High King's spies, they told him that they were going to the capital to defeat the High King and liberate the FIve King's Mountains. Romulus, figuring that the rebels bringing down the Five Kings government without Petronicus's help would be the perfect insult to the Iron Cog, decided to join the group. The fact that he was in love with one of the members, Iolana, also helped.

Personality
Romulus is very cocky, and also suave, manipulative, and clever. He is a free spirit, going wherever his heart desires. He is also a playboy, and has slept with over a dozen different women on his travels. All of his personality traits, other than his cleverness, are meant to cover up the fact that he feels depressed and lonely, and secretly desires a lasting relationship, but is afraid he's not capable of the commitment. He still feels traumatized about witnessing his mother's death and the image of her being burned at the stake haunts him every day.

Appearance
Despite being directly descended from a demon, Romulus's demonic traits are very minimal. The only features he has that resemble a demon are black scales that run across his torso, arms and legs and very short black horns that go mostly unnoticed under his shaggy, unkempt black hair. His eyes are an icy shade of blue. For clothing, Romulus wears an aerodynamic black cloak with a hood that obscures the top half of his face and sleeves rolled up to the elbow. Under the cloak, Romulus wears a normal shirt and an equipment belt that contains a sheath for his bastard sword, a strap for his spellbook, and compartments for various other magic items. Lastly, he wears black, tight fitting pants and leather boots.

Starting Ability Scores

 *  Strength:  18
 *  Dexterity:  24
 *  Constitution:  11
 *  Defense:  3
 *  Magic:  18
 *  Willpower:  3

Melee Attack: Bastard Sword

 * Romulus swings this large blade with his right hand.

Alternate Attack: Shocking Grasp

 * Romulus delivers this electric spell with his left hand to an enemy in melee range.

Standard Ability: Arcane Shield

 * A shield made of arcane energy appears on Romulus's arm for 3 seconds. While this ability is active, Romulus's Magic score acts as both his Defense and Willpower score.

Advanced Ability: Spellstrike

 * Romulus channels his Shocking Grasp spell through his blade, and wields his electrified bastard sword two-handed. For the 5-second duration of this ability, Romulus's melee and alternate attacks are one in the same and deal the physical and magical damage from both attacks simultaneously.

Super Ability: Fast as Lightning

 * Romulus concentrates all of his power to grant himself lightning-quick reflexes. His attack speed, movement speed, and dodge chance are all doubled for an amount of time affected by his Magic score.

Passive 1: Titan Slayer

 * Romulus's years of fighting his big brother have made him more skilled at taking down foes larger than himself. Romulus gains a +10% dodge chance and +5% critical hit rate against foes that are larger than he is.

Passive 2: Opportune Strike

 * Every time Romulus passively dodges an attack against an enemy, his critical hit rate against that enemy goes up by 1%, or 3% with an active dodge. The critical hit rate bonus granted by this ability maxes out at 20% for a single enemy.