Pocket Plane Group
Works In Progress => King Strohm's Tomb => Surayah => Topic started by: Bons on March 31, 2004, 09:37:29 PM
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This mod is the expansion of the character of Surayah el Farrahd, the daughter of the Calimshite merchant, Saerk, that currently appears in BGII just long enough to stutter, shriek "Aiiieeee!" and get killed by Anomen. I've always wanted to know more: who was Surayah before her fatal confrontation with Anomen? What happens to her if she survives, and just how innocent is she?
Surayah's Bio
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After joining the party, Surayah will gradually reveal details of her past and family over banters with the PC and NPCs. She will steadfastly avoid mentioning her family name, that Saerk el Farrahd is her father, and she will only refer to Yusef as 'my oldest brother' until the Delryn/Farrahd fued reaches a crisis point. Facts she will acknowledge openly include:
She was born and raised in Calimport, but Athkatla has become her home base over the past five years. While she expresses some dismay over certain traditions of her homeland, such as slavery, a teensy amount of Calimshite cultural elitism will shine through. After all, she is the only legitimate daughter of a pasha, and her ancestors are traceable back to the Shoon (though only on her mother's side). Everyone knows they brought civilization to Amn!
She also finds the Cowled Wizards' stranglehold on magic in Athkatla absurd. As far as she is concerned, wizadry is a labor-saving device, and anyone clever enough to learn enchantments should be free to wield them at large, so she will support any scheme to tweak or sidestep the Cowled Wizards' authority.
Surayah will be found in the Garden of Lady Firehair, a temple of Sune that will be added as a new area to the worldmap. (Obstensibly, the idea is that the temple is within Athkatla, but appending the worldmap with WeiDU is more compatible-with-other-mods approach than editing the Temple District tileset, and a smaller filesize solution as well.) The beginning of her devotion to the goddess of beauty and love will be tied to her relocation to Athkatla at age fifteen. As Surayah will admit when insulted about her faith, "If the point of my religion was just to have sex all the time like you paladin-types seem to think, I would have stayed in Calimport and dedicated myself to Sharess!"
Surayah will champion true love, encouraging any lovers she sees as earnest to follow their hearts. She will also do her best to treat everyone she meets in a loving, friendly manner, no matter how disgusting, dull or boorish she finds them in principle. She accomplishes this with varied degrees of success. Naturally a very passionate person, she has worked very hard to portray a patient, tolerant, forgiving demeanor even when her instincts cry foul. To her benefit, the Calimshite tradition of maintaining face, a societal tradition of saying one thing, then thinking or doing another, has given her plenty of practice complimenting people she otherwise holds in disgust. To her discredit, being raised a spoiled daughter of a wealthy Calimshite household, she has trained notions of acceptable cruelties, lies and machinations that tempt her constantly to perhaps bend her behavior in a less-than-perfect-Sunite way. Sometimes her true reactions slip imperiously to the surface, her tongue becoming more sharp than sweet.
Surayah will be a bard by class who is endeavoring to become a Heartwarder for the temple of Sune in Athkatla. Her skills as a bard (while not a usual class for a Calimshite) focus on music and dance, deriving from having had access to harem training from the time she could walk. She will offer up a few songs, some for banter purposes, some for new spells.
While naturally intelligent, Surayah is not exceptionally dedicated to using that intelligence in the most challenging of ways. Given the choice between washing her hair and scribing a new spell, she would probably choose to wash her hair. Still, Surayah did have a thorough stable of tutors growing up, including some of the most talented wizards of Calimport's Scribe Sabban, so she is well-educated despite her distractions. Her weapons of choice are scimitars and daggers (specifically her zills, which can be thrown for slashing damage when not being used as finger cymbals in a dance).
Between following Sune and her harem-influenced childhood, Surayah takes grooming very seriously. She carries a velvet pouch with her wherever she goes containing various items, some of which hold no purpose other than helping Surayah present her most alluring self. As a consequence, she often appears vain and shallow, though she is capable of deeper thoughts.
Surayah's stats are as follows:
(Yes, these have changed by +/- 1 in some instances compared to previously posted accounts.)
Age: 19
Alignment: Chaotic Good
Strength: 13
Dexterity: 17
Constitution: 12
Intelligence: 16
Wisdom: 8
Charisma: 17
Natural fire resistance: 5%
Surayah has reason to believe that she has inherited the 'Bloodline of Fire' through her mother, how Calimshites refer to those who have decended from the efreet who ruled over the desert thousands of years past. Highly diluted over a hundred generations, the effects of efreeti blood in a Calimshite varies in manifestation depending on the person. This trait can show itself in a physical manner, such as eyes that glow red or gold, or in an innate magical gift such as skill casting cantrips of fire or air or a natural ability to levitate. (Perhaps this explains her brother Yusef's uncanny ability to teleport away from a fight?)
In Surayah's case, the most glaring evidence of the fire in her blood was that she was born with abnormal feet, her toes naturally curling upward. Her father, or course, paid a wizard to correct them with thaumacosmetic surgery at a young age, as rich fathers in Calimport tend to do whenever their offspring sport an unsightly extra eye, mist instead of an appendage, or simply don't particularly look like their fathers (the most frequent reason).
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Isn't her strength rather high for someone raised to avoid unnecessary physical exertion (harem)? Average strength (9 or 10) would seem more appropriate as she isn't particularly lazy, but incline to take advantage of her position and magic to avoid unnecessary effort. Bringing her wisdom up to average could be seen as reflecting that while she has had an advantaged life, she is well aware of measuring her actions and viewing things with at least a healthy degree of skepticism. It is entirely appropriate considering her belonging to a society where deceptive appearances and backstabbing (both figurative and literal) are commonplace and 'acceptable'.
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You need strength for some of those Sunite rituals ;D.
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That would be constitution and dexterity, not strength. :P She has more than sufficient dexterity and a reasonable constitution.
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You have apparently never looked at the pictures in the Kama Sutra. You need strength.
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I think her strength is fine, but I have to agree that her wisdom might be a tad too low (she would only have higher wisdom than Minsc compared to the other NPCs) :)
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Wait.....
So, is she going to be able to dual-class to a Heartwarder or what? Are we looking at a.... er... um..... total class change for Surayah, or more of a title type thing (so she'd be called a Heartwarder, but not actually be one). It'd be cool either way, but could you please clarify? Please? Thanks ;D.
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Surayah will technically remain a bard for the course of gameplay. I debated about it for a while: whether to make her a bard, or give her the Cleric of Sune kit. I couldn't convince myself she would have the wisdom at the time she meets the PC to merit being a savvy cleric. The important part of her character was that she be a devout Sunite, not necessarily clergy. Surayah will get a couple cleric spells as abilities, but nothing above second level.
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Not wanting to sound needy,
But is a complete re-mapping of Athkatla in the works (doesn't match the pnp, furthermore some mods say they want to return creatures, places and individuals to pnp)
Just asking, thanks in advance.
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I am but one llama in a silly hat. Remapping all of Athkatla is beyond the scope of this mod.
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You have apparently never looked at the pictures in the Kama Sutra. You need strength.
and lots of dexterity too ;)
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And charisma to persuade your partner to get into such a position in the first place... :P
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My analysis
Strength: 13 - She won't be bruising you during sex
Dexterity: 17 - Lots of different bed positions
Constitution: 12 - Can go for a decent amount of time
Intelligence: 16 - Knows that getting into too many weirdo positions during sex could cause some damage to her
Wisdom: 8 - Willl probably get in those positions though because she's foolish
Charisma: 17 - Lots of men want to have sex with her
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Wow...
Been awhile since I seen a forum turning x-rated.
Although there was that masturbation thread in that other forum I goto. Then the "Which sex position is the best" poll.
...
Never mind, carry on.
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This is PG, PG-13 at most.
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Did I say it was x-rated? I said turning x-rated. Perhaps you should pay closer attention to the wording.
I apologize if I sound rude.
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Yeah... so, Surayah is a follower of Sune with funky feet. Discuss.
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Funky feet huh...
http://www.aofas.org/
Why does it exist? I have no idea.
Perhaps the better question is, why did I take the time to find that site? Again, I have no idea.
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there's a cleric of sune kit?
How much stuff have i missed??
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there's a cleric of sune kit?
Not in the standard game, but one of the features of this mod will be to add a Cleric of Sune kit for PCs to play, the chance to take the Sune Temple area I'm adding as a stronghold, and some related quests, one which will involve a new dungeon area.
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Can't wait...to d/l her! She sounds cool (can't think of a better word right about now, talk about un-creative...)
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kewl
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>kewl< is a better word for it, but anyway..."appealing". There. An alternative to "cool".
Don't mind me. I'm going through another one of those 'phases'.
See the ??? ??? ??? underneath this post? ;)
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Do you plan to put up an "Ask Surayah" Topic, like some other mods?
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No to "Ask BLANK" topics, mainly because replying to those questions takes time away from working on mod content that will get me closer to completion. I'd rather write a couple talk blocks than ponder Surayah's favorite flavor of ice cream, and most serious questions would involve giving out more spoilers than I'm inclined to share.
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I bet Surayah likes Pistachio ice cream.
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Awww, nuts!
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Hi, I have tiny little nitpick and figured that this thread would be okay for it. The correct term for a person from Calimshan is Calishite (without an m), it's just been bugging me for a while.
Anyways, Surayah seems interesting, though I have to admit I've never met her in the game before, my good characters always make Anomen a good guy, bad charas don't bother to take him along in the first place.
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Hi, I have tiny little nitpick and figured that this thread would be okay for it. The correct term for a person from Calimshan is Calishite (without an m), it's just been bugging me for a while.
Yes, I addressed this first thing on Surayah's webpage, back in the day. PnP uses "Calishite." The BG2 writers, however, consistently used the term "Calimshite." I use the latter version for continuity with the game.
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Hi, I have tiny little nitpick and figured that this thread would be okay for it. The correct term for a person from Calimshan is Calishite (without an m), it's just been bugging me for a while.
Yes, I addressed this first thing on Surayah's webpage, back in the day. PnP uses "Calishite." The BG2 writers, however, consistently used the term "Calimshite." I use the latter version for continuity with the game.
Okay, I can see that, consistency is good too. Nevermind then, I have to admit I enjoy nitpicking a bit too much.
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there's a cleric of sune kit?
Not in the standard game, but one of the features of this mod will be to add a Cleric of Sune kit for PCs to play, the chance to take the Sune Temple area I'm adding as a stronghold, and some related quests, one which will involve a new dungeon area.
Bons, in case you didn't know, there is a Heartwarder of Sune kit in Divine Remix. Using that kit could save you some time.
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there's a cleric of sune kit?
Not in the standard game, but one of the features of this mod will be to add a Cleric of Sune kit for PCs to play, the chance to take the Sune Temple area I'm adding as a stronghold, and some related quests, one which will involve a new dungeon area.
Bons, in case you didn't know, there is a Heartwarder of Sune kit in Divine Remix. Using that kit could save you some time.
Heh, it's not quite that simple. I'm sure we could come to some agreement on what to do if both are installed, however, the Divine Remix kits are very specific to that mod (because of the entire revamp of the spell system) so just randomly sticking one kit into another mod would be very tricky.
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Yeah, and my intentions for the scope of a Heartwarder Kit don't match Divine Remix. I wanted features that were between the unmodded game's lame excuse for specialized priests and Divine Remix's detailed focus on spheres. Plus, I did 90% of the work I planned for the kit itself back in 2004, so it wouldn't save me much time now beyond testing. :) The more time consuming portion for the Cleric of Sune in Surayah is the Stronghold quests.
Depending on how many kit slots Divine Remix fills, the Heartwarder kit in Surayah may be inherently incompatible with it, like it will be with Ashes of Embers. You can have only so many kits per class at a time. My theory is to make kit-related content a separate component, the Stronghold quests potentially a separate component as well with lots of OR(2) checks, so players could still take advantage of that even if they're playing with the Divine Remix kit, especially if DR is installed after and the Disable Mod Kits component is used. That's the theory. Eventually, I will pick Andyr and CamDawg's brains about compatibility and steal their fame. ;)
Surayah herself, though, will be using Song & Silence's Chorister kit, since this was exactly what I wanted to do with her in the first place and the Gibberlings thoughtfully provided all the work.