Character Spotlight: Dark Streak

Spoiler alert for Chapter 625 - Ashes and Dust.

Originally debuting as a supporting character in chapter 4 of David Silver's Tarnished Silver and Clouded Diamonds, Dark Streak's background was never fully presented to us in that story. When we first meet her, she's been informed that her husband is dead - news that she has little reaction to, despite the magnitude of what's happened - and we subsequently see her abandon her home with a similar lack of concern. The juxtaposition between the upheaval that's struck her life and her indifference toward it made for a compelling presentation, one that was crying out for a more in-depth study of who she was and what had made her that way.

Unfortunately, we didn't get to see more of her, as Dark Streak unceremoniously exited the story in chapter 20. Even then, she'd been absent for several chapters prior to that, returning just long enough to formally part ways with the main characters, leaving a gaping hole where her backstory should have been. It was, simply put, a missed opportunity.

But since Tarnished Silver and Clouded Diamonds takes place in the same continuity as Lateral Movement, there's no reason that characters from the former story can't turn up in the latter. As such, it was perhaps no surprise when Dark Streak reappeared, this time with a much sharper edge to her, as she's become a professional assassin. Now on a collision course with Lex Legis, the two would eventually meet in Las Pegasus, engaging in a battle which only one would walk away from...

Overview

Born in the Griffon Empire on Everglow, there was never a time in Dark Streak's life that wasn't hard. The only child of destitute parents, her father was often away for long stretches working as a caravan guard. When he lost his life on one of his voyages, there was little her heartbroken mother could do except move to the nearest city to try and find work. For a few years, she and her daughter barely scraped by, until she fell ill and died, leaving Dark Streak to fend for herself at the tender age of six.

While the griffons of that world celebrate individual autonomy and personal achievement, the bar which an individual has to clear in order to earn their neighbor's respect differs depending on what kind of griffon you are. While those with predator aspects to them (i.e. griffons whose avian and feline halves are those of predatory creatures) are presumed to be respectable and contributing members of the Empire, prey-aspected griffons are seen as having to prove themselves, oftentimes regardless of whatever they've accomplished. For Dark Streak, whose aspects were a raven and a black housecat, the odds were stacked against her from the beginning, and she quickly learned to rely on no one except herself.

Once she was old enough, Dark Streak tried adventuring, but several close calls quickly showed her why adventuring on her own was akin to gambling with her life. Discouraged, she settled down in a small town far from where she'd grown up, taking up a modest trade as a hunter. It was there that she met her future husband, Bright Feather. A colorful griffon with a sunny disposition, he seemed drawn to Dark Streak's dour attitude, and no matter how often she snubbed him he continued pursuing her. To her surprise, she soon found herself enjoying his company, and after a courtship that lasted over a year, the pair were wed.

The first few years she spent with her husband were the happiest of Dark Streak's life. However, it wasn't to last. Tragedy struck, and it marked the end of Bright Feather and Dark Streak's relationship. Refusing to talk about what had happened to anyone, the two continued to live together, and on paper remained married, but things were never the same between them. When Bright Feather died a few years later, losing his life while investigating a haunted cabin, Dark Streak could barely bring herself to care.

Abandoning the village where they'd resided together, she traveled to the city of Cuachan, and through a series of mishaps fell in with the local assassins' guild. Unexpectedly, she turned out to be highly gifted at her new profession; the skills she'd learned on the mean streets as a child, combined with her hunting prowess – along with her sense of compassion toward others having long since died – served her well in taking lives for money. All too soon, she was a rising star in the ranks of the city's contract killers, something which brought all the problems one would expect when seasoned murderers experienced professional jealousy.

Despite going to extreme lengths to up her game (including forcing a local alchemist to perform a radical procedure where he operated on her brain in order to imbue her with magical aptitude; while the procedure worked, she killed him anyway, stealing his book of alchemical recipes and studying it closely), Dark Streak quickly found herself losing ground. Fortunately, that was when she ran into Twilight Sparkle, the alicorn princess having come to Cuachan to rescue her protégé, Starlight Glimmer, who had been accidentally transported to Everglow and captured by slavers. Dark Streak agreed to help her rescue her friend, in exchange for not only a fee, but passage to Equestria, having been told by the princess how idyllic that world was. Surely there'd be no need to worry about powerful enemies there...

The griffon in front of you has "trouble" written all over her. A combination of raven and housecat, you can see her muscles tensing up as she looks at you, her eyes hidden behind her tinted goggles. Nor are those the only dark-colored item on her person; everything about her is a study in black. The feathers of her wings, the fur on her tail, the bodysuit that covers most of the rest of her, the padded armor that rests on top of it, her belt; all black. Only her beak and her talons are a different color, being a wan yellow. Even the bandoliers crisscrossing her chest are black, along with the hilts of the numerous daggers they hold. "And you are?" she demands in a flat voice.

Character Sheet

Dark Streak CR 14
XP 38,400
NE Medium fey (griffon)
Unchained rogue (knife master) 5/assassin 7
Init +8; Senses low-light vision; Perception +16 (+21 to notice invisible creatures)

DEFENSE

AC 28, touch 26, flat-footed 18 (+4 armor, +6 Dex, +4 dodge, +2 natural armor, +2 deflection)
hp 90 (12d8+36)
Fort +9 (+12 vs. poison), Ref +17, Will +7
Defensive Abilities blade sense, evasion, improved uncanny dodge, uncanny dodge; Resist fire 5

OFFENSE

Speed 30 ft., fly 40 ft. (perfect)
Melee +2 keen daggers +14/+14/+9 (1d4+8/17-20) or 2 claws +14 (1d3)
Ranged dagger +14/+9 (1d4+6/19-20)
Special Atks death attack, debilitating injury, quiet death, sneak attack +7d8, sneak stab, true death
Spells Known (CL 7^th; concentration +11)

4^th (1/day) – freedom of movement, modify memory
3^rd (3/day) – false life, misdirection, nondetection
2^nd (3/day) – cat’s grace, invisibility, darkness, undetectable alignment
1^st (3/day) – detect poison, ghost sound, obscuring mist, true strike
0 (4/day) – bleed, daze, know direction, open/close, touch of fatigue

STATISTICS

Str 10, Dex 22, Con 16, Int 18, Wis 13, Cha 8
Base Atk +8; CMB +14; CMD 30 (34 vs. trip)
Feats Agile Maneuvers, Combat Expertise, Combat Reflexes, Combat Stamina, Improved Feint, Quick Draw, Stand Still, Two-Weapon Fighting, Weapon Finesse^B
Skills Acrobatics +21, Appraise +11, Bluff +8, Craft (alchemy) +16, Craft (traps) +15, Diplomacy +5, Disable Device +17, Escape Artist +12, Fly +21, Heal +4, Intimidate +8, Knowledge (dungeoneering) +9, Knowledge (local) +9, Perception +16 (+21 to notice invisible creatures), Sense Motive +7, Sleight of Hand +15 (+22 to conceal a weapon; +24 to conceal a light blade), Spellcraft +5, Stealth +23, Survival +4, Swim +6, Use Magic Device +8
Traits Child of the Streets, Reactionary
Languages Auran, Common, Elvish, Gnomish, Sylvan
SQ finesse training, hidden blade, hidden weapons, poison use, rogue talents, rogue’s edge (Perception)
Gear 2 +2 keen daggers, 4 daggers, +3 asbestos padded armor, belt of physical might +2 (Dex, Con), ring of protection +2, amulet of natural armor +2, cloak of protection +3, 4 bags of holding (type I), goggles of night, hat of disguise, wand of cure light wounds (12 charges remaining), potion of gaseous form, shinobi shozoku, spyglass, portable alchemist’s lab, quieting needles, 2 bandoliers, earplugs.

SPECIAL ABILITIES

Blade Sense (Ex) Dark Streak gains a +1 dodge bonus to AC versus attacks made against her with light blades.

Death Attack (Ex) If Dark Streak studies her victim for 3 rounds and then makes a sneak attack with a melee weapon that successfully deals damage, the sneak attack has the additional effect of possibly either paralyzing or killing the target (Dark Streak’s choice). Studying the victim is a standard action. The death attack fails if the target detects Dark Streak or recognizes her as an enemy (although the attack might still be a sneak attack if the target is denied his Dexterity bonus to his Armor Class or is flanked). If the victim of such a death attack fails a Fortitude save (DC 21) against the kill effect, he dies. If the saving throw fails against the paralysis effect, the victim is rendered helpless and unable to act for 1d6+7 rounds. If the victim's saving throw succeeds, the attack is just a normal sneak attack. Once Dark Streak has completed the 3 rounds of study, she must make the death attack within the next 3 rounds.

If a death attack is attempted and fails (the victim makes her save) or if Dark Streak does not launch the attack within 3 rounds of completing the study, 3 new rounds of study are required before she can attempt another death attack.

Debilitating Injury (Ex) Whenever Dark Streak deals sneak attack damage to a foe, she can also debilitate the target of her attack, causing them to take a penalty for 1 round. She can choose to apply any one of the following penalties when the damage is dealt.

Bewildered: The target becomes bewildered, taking a –2 penalty to AC. The target takes an additional –2 penalty to AC against all attacks made by Dark Streak.

Disoriented: The target takes a –2 penalty on attack rolls. In addition, the target takes an additional –2 penalty on all attack rolls they make against Dark Streak.

Hampered: All of the target's speeds are reduced by half (to a minimum of 5 feet). In addition, the target cannot take a 5-foot step.

These penalties do not stack with themselves, but additional attacks that deal sneak attack damage extend the duration by 1 round. A creature cannot suffer from more than one penalty from this ability at a time. If a new penalty is applied, the old penalty immediately ends. Any form of healing applied to a target suffering from one of these penalties also removes the penalty.

Finesse Training (Ex) Dark Streak has Weapon Finesse as a bonus feat. In addition, she adds her Dexterity modifier instead of her Strength modifier to the damage roll when making attacks with daggers. If any effect would prevent her from adding her Strength modifier to the damage roll, she does not add her Dexterity modifier.

Hidden Blade Dark Streak adds +2 on Sleight of Hand checks made to conceal a light blade.

Hidden Weapons (Ex) Dark Streak is a master at hiding weapons on her body. She adds +7 to all Sleight of Hand skill checks made to prevent others from noticing them. This stacks with the bonus from Hidden Blade.

Improved Uncanny Dodge (Ex) Dark Streak cannot be flanked. This defense denies a character with sneak attack the ability to sneak attack Dark Streak by flanking her, unless the attacker has a total of sixteen levels or more in classes that grant sneak attack.

Racial Traits Dark Streak is a scavenger-aspect griffon; this replaces the standard griffon racial ability score modifiers with +2 Dex, +2 Int, -2 Cha (already factored into the listing above). She has two claw attacks (dealing 1d3 points of damage) instead of a bite attack. She may treat fog, mist, or clouds as being solid.

Rogue Talents Dark Streak has selected Combat Trick for both of her rogue talents, taking the Combat Expertise and Improved Feint feats.

Poison Use Dark Streak is trained in the use of poison and cannot accidentally poison herself when applying poison to a blade.

Quiet Death (Ex) Whenever Dark Streak kills a creature using her death attack during a surprise round, she can also make a Stealth check, opposed by Perception checks of those in the vicinity, to prevent them from identifying her as the assailant. If successful, those nearby might not even notice that the target is dead for a few moments, allowing Dark Streak to avoid detection.

Rogue’s Edge (Ex) Dark Streak has the skill unlock for Perception, at 10 ranks and below.

Save Bonus Against Poison Dark Streak gains a +3 saving throw bonus against poisons.

Sneak Stab (Ex) Dark Streak focuses her ability to deal sneak attack damage with daggers and similar weapons to such a degree that she can deal more sneak attack damage with those weapons at the expense of sneak attacks with other weapons. When she makes a sneak attack with a dagger, kerambit, kukri, punching daggers, starknife, or swordbreaker dagger, she uses d8s to roll sneak attack damage instead of d6s. For sneak attacks with all other weapons, she uses d4s instead of d6s.

True Death (Su) Anyone slain by Dark Streak’s death attack is difficult to bring back from the dead. Spellcasters attempting to bring a creature back from the dead using raise dead or similar magic must make a caster level check with a DC equal to 22 or the spell fails and the material component is wasted. Casting remove curse the round before attempting to bring the creature back from the dead negates this chance. The DC of the remove curse is 17.

Uncanny Dodge (Ex) Dark Streak can react to danger before her senses would normally allow her to do so. She cannot be caught flat-footed, nor does she lose her Dexterity bonus to AC if the attacker is invisible. She still loses her Dexterity bonus to AC if immobilized. Dark Streak can still lose her Dexterity bonus to AC if an opponent successfully uses the feint action against her.

Exceptional Aspects

Being from Everglow, Dark Streak is built as a Pathfinder character. However, she has several atypical qualities.

The first is that Dark Streak is built as a PC. Her ability scores were purchased with a 25-point buy, she has PC-level wealth (108,000 gp as a 12th-level character), and she has two traits (i.e. Child of the Streets and Reactionary, both listed in her stat block). All of these are collectively worth a +1 adjustment to her Challenge Rating.

More notably, Dark Streak utilizes the "quick NPC conversions" rule from page 191 of Eclipse: The Codex Persona. This represents some unorthodox training on her part, pressing the limits of what she'd normally be capable of. This gives her 6 Character Points per level, for a total of 72 in her case. Since these come with no innate Hit Dice or free skill points equal to her Intelligence bonus the way an actual level would, these character points are worth a +1 CR adjustment for each 32 of them (for a +2 modifier in total). Her CPs are spent on the following:

• 14 Paladin/Ranger magic progression levels (Eclipse, pg. 11-12). These are treated as arcane magic, keyed to Intelligence, with the studies and components limitations (due to the latter limitation, her armor causes Dark Streak to have a 5% chance of spell failure when casting a spell with a somatic component; this happens infrequently enough that she's not concerned by it). Her spell list is treated as being the 3.5 assassin spell list (which normally doesn't have 0-level spells; in Dark Streak's case, the 0-level spells on her spell list are treated as being her 0-level spells known plus dancing lights and lullaby; 28 CP).
• 7 caster levels (Eclipse, p. 10), specialized for one-half cost/only for the paladin/ranger magic progression (21 CP).
• Buy off the corruption on her fly speed, changing her maneuverability rating from poor to perfect (as per the "Celerity" ability on page 27 of Eclipse, it costs 24 CP to fly with perfect maneuverability. Reducing that to poor maneuverability corrupts the power, reducing the price to 16 CP, i.e. two-thirds the normal cost. This pays that back; 8 CP).
• Defender (Eclipse, p. 51), dodge bonus, specialized for double effect/only in light armor or no armor, and carrying no more than a light load (6 CP).
• Equipage (Eclipse, p. 31), 10 gp per level per week, specialized and corrupted for one-third cost/only for alchemical items, must make a successful Craft (alchemy) check against each item's creation DC (6 CP).
• Workhorse (Eclipse, p. 48), specialized for one-half cost/only in light armor or no armor, corrupted for increased effect/lift and stagger limit is reduced to +50% of maximum load instead of +100%, and push/drag limit is double maximum load rather than five-fold; 3 CP).

That last bullet point adjusts her carrying capacity as follows:

Light load: 99 lbs. or less
Medium load: 100 lbs. to 198 lbs.
Heavy load: 199 lbs. to 300 lbs.
Lift and stagger: 301 lbs. to 450 lbs.
Push or drag: up to 600 lbs.

Alchemical Armory

Dark Streak uses a large variety of alchemical items, including poisons, most of which she creates herself. Her Equipage ability (see above) allows her to craft up to 120 gp worth of alchemical items per week for free. Items created in this way require a successful Craft (alchemy) check, and are priced at their full market value. She may also manually craft alchemical items using the standard crafting rules (i.e. she must pay one-third of the item's market cost, and spend the requisite time creating them).

Her complement of alchemical creations is exceptionally diverse, including both standard alchemical items and those from various third-party sources such as the Tome of Alchemy. She'll use the "alternate item types" rules from the latter volume (p. 7) as appropriate when crafting (e.g. if she needs to make a liquid item in the form of a powder). However, she doesn't know true alchemical magic, nor can she create genuine magic items.

Alchemical items that Dark Streak will make use of when preparing for a fight include the following: 2 vials of deathblade poison, 2 vials of deathblade antivenom, 2 vials of oil of taggit, 2 vials of oil of taggit antivenom, 4 vials of fire ward gel, 4 instances of bottled lightning, 2 tanglefoot bags, meditation tea, synthetic mumia, allnight, 18 sticks of phasic disruption incense (Tome of Alchemy, p. 40), 1 vial of “waking nightmare” (hallucination powder, ToA p. 48; only works against fey and magical beasts, though humanoids and monstrous humanoids are vulnerable to it but receive a +4 bonus to their save against it), 1 vial of waking nightmare antivenom.

Tactical Considerations

Being meticulous in her work as a contract killer, Dark Streak will always attempt to use her Diplomacy skill to gather information about a target prior to engaging them. She'll then attempt to stalk them at range, liberally availing herself of her hat of disguise, spyglass, invisibility spell, and her high Stealth bonus to remain unnoticed as she observes their habits and routines, looking for weaknesses that she can exploit. If possible, she'll arrange to kidnap close friends and acquaintances that she can interrogate, using misdirection and nondetection to keep them hidden, Intimidate to make them talk, and then her modify memory spell to wipe the encounter from their minds.

When going into combat, she'll always cast false life on herself, as well as consume any alchemical items that she's prepared beforehand. She prefers to use a combination of invisibility and true strike in conjunction with her death attack to finish targets in one fell swoop. If that fails, she's still extremely deadly in a fight, coating her blades with poison and making full use of her debilitating injury ability if she scores a critical hit. She makes full use of her Combat Stamina feat, but never goes below 1 stamina point if she can help it. If she's had the chance to scout the location beforehand, and has access to it, she'll have made sure to use her Craft (traps) skill to set up ambushes ahead of time.

When she goes in for the kill, Dark Streak prefers to get in close, but if forced to fight at range she'll throw mundane daggers (poisoned) or alchemical items designed to limit a target's movement, and then move in. If those fail, she'll typically withdraw; while she takes her job seriously, she's not willing to throw her life away to fulfill a contract.

In the event that she successfully kills her target by a method other than her death attack (in which case her true death ability won't be activated), she'll attempt to use her quieting needles on the victim to prevent them from being resurrected. If not given sufficient time, she'll try to mutilate the body enough (typically by beheading) that a basic raise dead won't be able to bring them back.

Further Development

Dark Streak is an extremely dangerous foe, one who tries to tailor her tactics to her target as much as possible before confronting them. To that end, her further development is likely to involve increasing her crafting abilities; alchemical items have a broad range of applications, but they're not match for genuine magic items in terms of sheer power. She'll also want to increase her defensive abilities somewhat to make up for her relatively low hit points and modest Fortitude and Will saving throws.

The greatest weakness Dark Streak has, however, is that she always operates alone. Lacking even allies of convenience (such as summoned monsters) to call upon, she has no backup if a situation deteriorates beyond what she can handle. Her only options in such cases are to either flee, or somehow trick her foe(s) and make her escape. If those strategies don't work, she has little recourse but to go down fighting. Having seen what happens to assassins who get caught during her time on Everglow, she'd rather die in battle than be captured. Given her ruthless disposition, there's a good chance that it's only a matter of time until she meets her end this way.

Though the question of who exactly would be able to take her down remains an open one.