Melvin the Abjurer ("the Merciful")
Elf
Lawful Neutral
Homeland: Lalec
age 115
Str 10 dex 16 con 10 int 18 wis 7 cha 13

ac13
languages elven, serenese

Mother Norma (noble hostess, ambassador) -- currently on confidential foreign assignment
Father Jerod (Diviner, court advisor) --  currently in position in Lalec
Brother Jensk (power-hungry, cruel, narcissistic, violent) -- sibling rivalry, source of pacifist code
    -- naval arsonist commander
Brother Ossmus (crippled as a result of a youthful confidence match between Melvin & Jensk gone awry--blind)

The true story: Jensk, young and vicious, was taunting the family cat (Hurby) with bolts of fire, drunk with his own increasing magical powers. Melvin thought it was a truly amusing game and taunted his older brother in turn by countering each bolt as he hurled it. Furious, Jensk hurled a bolt at Melvin instead of the cat. Instinctually, Melvin ducked instead of countering the bolt as he had been doing. It shattered a a row of glassware on the mantle, raining shards onto the youngest brother, Ossmus, permanently blinding the young boy. Jerod had stored magical brews and potions in the area, and try as the family might, no magical cure has yet been discovered for the unfortunate brother.From that point on, Melvin has chosen never to use magic for offensive purposes and seeks to right the wrongs of his past by providing means of defense to the defenseless. 

Profession: Merchant
Craft: Confectionary

Code of conduct:
Will not resort to lethal means
Will not leave prisoners to die
Will advocate for the lives of enemies once subdued
Will not inflict permanent, lasting injury

Familiar: Thrush +3 diplomacy, alertness, speaks elven & serenese

Feats
Create minor wondrous item
Improved Unarmed Strike

Traits
Rich Parents (family loan)
Arcane Focus (Arcane Knockout) (supernatural)
    -- Ranged attack (+dex attack, 1D4+int damage)non-lethal, 2 + Int + 1/2 wiz lvls/day
    -- range 25 + 5 x 1/2 wizard level (close)


Modus Apperandi:
Provide affordable magical services to the public while returning a moderate profit
Amass an impressive inventory

Longshot Pipedream:
Magically reorganize the realms to settle disputes through nonlethal contest. Conflict resolution out to follow a competitive but constructive purpose.
Find a way to cure Ossmus' blindness.

Quirks/Hobbies:
Contests of nonlethal prowess. Such contests must have clearly defined, nonviolent rules to interest Melvin.
Strong desire to outdo brother's accomplishments, though through different means.

Current Ambition:
Make contacts at the festival of peace for the enduring future. Make some coin to restock supplies once contacts have been made.

Serenol and Serenrae

Unlike other regions of Gorum, Seranol benefits froma strong religious unity among the allied cities. The primary religion is the worship of Serenrae, whose portfolio I'd like to addendum with a strong domain of Hospitailty. This functions the same as the Home domain. Worshipers of Serenrae are encouraged to be gracious hosts and to never turn away a traveler seeking shelter.

Fudopoly

Every Ten Years Fudopoly wants to celibrate the centuries of peace with Munstria and city guilds pay for a massive festival. Party enthusiasts have known to travel from all ends of Gorum for this colorful celebration of plenty and peace. Goods from the surrounding region are showcased and and prizes awarded. and often the festival is the birthplace of many great trade agreements.

BONUS

I'm lowering the point cost of positive mental stats by 1, the exception being if its also a casting stat for your preferred class. So for example if you aren't a preferred class intelligence caster, then an intelligence score of 11 costs 0 points, 12 costs 1, ... 14 costs 4 etc... note that taking a score of 9 would NOT yield 2 extra points, just 1 like normal. All of the above applies the same to Wisdom and Charisma.

Player Character are encouraged to have a lively and involved background. Potentially obligations, families, and jobs. All Players at 1st level get 3 free skill points to place in either craft, professions, linguistics, or knowledge skills. Note there are three different Human Languages: Northern, Middle, and Southern. There is no common. These skill points should naturally be incorporated into your characters background. Keep combat experience to a minimum. Its quite possible your character 1st level is merely a means of self-defense (clerics and paladins excluded). It may originally not have been your intention to live the life of an adventurer.

Standard Stat-buy system, 15 points. 1 Hero Point, 2 Traits. Prefered class etc... anything in the srd is acceptable with the exception of race variants, those would definitely need to be ran by me first.

Play will begin in the city of Fudopoly where a massive festival is being held honoring the centuries of peace between North and Middle Gorum. Your character can be a local or a traveler. If theres a city on the map you'd like to come from, take initiative in inventing the cultural customs, and attributes of that city. You can also invent a location and do the same. Gorum is a Large Continent.

Beyond Cities and the Alliances they fall under, there are also major guilds of all manors. Magic and Religious institutions of all kinds. Martial arts is very common among humans and there are many institutions that blend spirituality and fantasy kung-fu. This is especially true because outside of the Dwarven Mountains, Strong Metals for weaponsmithing are fairly scarce, and after the war of Munstrian Hostility, peace has prospered with the Dwarves restricting metal trade with humans. Items that are 30% or more made out of metal have a double base price. This multiplier affects only the base price and is factored ignoring other multipliers.

Outside of magic there are no explosives. Alchemical explosions are strictly a supernatual art, and explosives have not been at all achieved through physical science. Instead of cannons, Naval war vessels use incendiary mages as a means of destroying other ships.

Half-Orc characters may have an addiction to the ashy waters constantly traded along the coast of west Munstria and across the North Jungle. Drinking the ash water takes a standard action and instills a wicked spell casting high. Two first level spells are randomly selected (at my discretion). For three rounds the character can spontaneously cast either of these spells without material components and always as a standard action. The DC for these spells is 1/2 the orcs level + Cha modifier. Following these rounds the character is rather delirious. Suffering -4 Int, Wis, Cha, -2 Dex for 1 hour.

Ashy water is only drunk by Orcs and some Half-Orcs. Other humanoids experimenting with the drug is relatively unheard of and would definitely be an extremely shunned, possibly illegal activity.

The water goes through a refinement process to achieve the necessary potency.

Half-Orc alchemists have a different preferred class bonus where at 4th level, and every 3 levels thereafter, the random spell-list includes spells of one higher level (at 7th level the random spell list contains 3rd and 2nd level spells, and 10th level it contains 4th and 3rd level spells etc...)

Any Half-Orc with a Con of 13 or more may take the feat Ash Tolerance. This cuts the stat penalties to just 3 rounds following the casting, also the penalties to stats are cut in half.

Land Dwarves

Land Dwarves are the descendents of the Chosen Settlers. Dwarves who were selected specifically to settle the lands and learn the human techniques of terra agriculture. With the extreme exposure to sunlight and wild changes in diet, these dwarves mutated quickly over only a handful of generations. Land Dwarves lack the patience and plotting typical of their originators. "true" Dwarves claim the human lands have instilled a kind of madness into them. Land Dwarves infact have an even more violent temperament than your average human. There close ties to their originators keep their society from being too greatly hampered by this internal chaos. Land Dwarves are also much more talkative than their regular counterparts, and get along exceedingly well with other humanoids, provided they don't lose their temper.

Land Dwarves only stat modifier is +2 Con, as their temperament is much closer to human.

Land Dwarves are Fast & Steady, their base speed is 25ft, even in Heavy Armor or Load

Land Dwarves have Low Light Vision, generations in the sun have waned their eyes

Land Dwarves abilities of Defensive Training, Hardy, Stability, Weapon Familiarty and Greed remain the same

Land Dwarves do not have Hatred, and Stone Cutting abilities.

Land Dwarves can Rage as per a Barbarian for 1/rd per day. They can hone on this ability by taking a special feat "Land Rage" adding the Dwarf's Con Modifier to the available rounds per day

Land Dwarves without a negative intelligence modifier gain 1 bonus language due to their amiable nature.

Gnomes

Gnomes keep the least contact with humans. 1500 years ago they had zero contact, and used their magic to keep from sight whenever possible. However at that time an incredibly amiable dwarf named Devlin was travelling the lands. For a time he made a living putting humans in a magic sleep and carrying them under the Gnome Mountains as a means of fast transit. However he found the whole secrecy matter cumbersome and made a heroic effort to introduce the two races for the first time. This was a magical milestone in the history of Gorum and the city of Pred was renamed after him. Trade in the newly renamed city of Devlin exploded and a mass trade route was established under the Gnome Mountains between Devlin and Cherie. The powerful Merchant families of T'Tinna gave their wealth to the gnomes for many magical secrets. In fact Humans traveled from all across Gorum to trade with the gnomes, leading to an age of magical enlightenment.

Gnome Magic is slightly different. They can only cast one two different spells as a spell like ability 1/day. Speak with animals or invisibilty (working only against humans).

Gnomes will trade with humans and some life among them but yes most of them keep to their underground secrets and the trade routes do not grand access to the underground gnomes cities, just the other side of the mountains, the trade city of Cherie

Despite multiple attempts, human nobility has no contact with gnomish rulers, beyond trade the gnomes kings have little interesting in engaging in human affairs, wars, and alliances

Elves, Dwarves and Halflings have more engaged contact with gnomes, but only a few humans have seen the sparkling clockwork cities under the mountains, and only with good reason

900 years ago

900 years ago was roughly the age of great war of Munstrian Hostility. This war shaped the current political map. Scholars state that the city of Munst under the rule of King Peredor quickly united the northern city-states through conquest and alliance. After initial expansion all the major cities north of the Gnome Mountains payed tribute to Munst. Munstria then entered into aggression with the dwarves for their iron mines, and began a massive siege against the then magical capitol of Gorum, T'tinna. T'tinna's powerful mage families held against the siege for many years while political reaction was brewing in the southeast. The major city of Seranol arranged for a secret emergency gathering of leaders on one of the Ense Isles. Initially Seranol's diplomats only gained the support of nearby cities. However the eventual razing of T'tinna concerned many, especially the elves of Lalec who quickly saw to the formation of the Kerrichian Union. Named after the alleged location of the monumental signing of the Edecti Empiri, which established a general/emperor to lead the many warriors of Gorum minor against the Munstrian army. After dedicating the majority of its forces to the bloody front south of T'tinna's ruins, Munstria soon lost much ground against the Dwarves, and facing the impending loss of the precious trade city of Zeema, agreed to end the war. Lines were drawn. The Dwarves kept their newly conquered lands and decided to settle these lands. The human cities of middle gorum found much common ground in the war and formed the nation of Seranol, named after their decided capitol city. The Emporer's Army quickly turned its attention to the uphill battle of peacekeeping in Gorum minor, and has been an institution of relative balance ever since.

Gorum minor is the large landmass southeast of middle gorum. It shares the planets equator with the massive Cradled Jungle and has the richest farmlands and forests. The subcontinent is populated with roughly 35 small nations. There is always some small land-grab wars between several of these minor nations, but the powerful Kerrichian Union unites them to a large enough extent. The extent being to keep Munstria in check. The Cradled Jungle is magically massive. Its always been left alone by humanoids, the exception being orcs. Orcs have settled much of the northwest jungle and have established massive trade routes all across the north jungle, if only so these Orc pioneers could stay in good supply of magical ash. The Cradled jungle has two massive mountains in its southeast called the Dragon Peaks. They are host to all manor of winged lizards. Occasionally these beast fly as far east as the Ense Isles for a meal. The Ense Isles are populated by a seafaring people are dragonslayers and are loyal to their big brother Kerrich. These Islands are ruled by merchant elite, and are somewhat lawless, although the trade winds of the warmer waters afford for expensive security. As such a mercenary can always find work in Ense Isles and Kerrich. The nations of the Kerrichian union elect an emperor who commands the unions army. Since the War of Munstrian Hostility, this army has been solely used to counter any nation within the union seeking to conquer too many of their neighbors, but these nations skirmish for the lush fields and forests all the same. The Massive Island of Jubilee has rolling green hills and fields and jagged cliffs. Jubilee contains Gourms only permanent Halfing settlements. The island is a relatively happy, peaceful place, attributed to its low human population. Halfings typically are nomadic throughout Gorum and only few of them believe the legend that Jubilee is their ancestral home ground.

Welcome to Gourm. This is a magic continent featuring all the major pathfinder classes and races. I've divided humanity into 3 major ethnic groups. Northern Humans are tall blonde and hairy like Norsemen. The middle ethnic group are also of a white complexion but feature more brown and black hair, also are noticeably shorter and thinner than their northern counterparts. Humans from the southeast minor continent have a light brown complexion and dark hair, (occasionally red in freak occurrences). Standard Dwarves hail from the the northeast mountains, and a new breed of dwarves is quickly emerging in the adjacent flatlands. These landdwarves have mutated a great deal after only 4 generations of living outside the deep. They are still short and burly, but have smooth white skin. Their hair is also softer, and in rare cases even thinner (but they still grow it out obsessively). The major barbarian civilizations are Ratmen, Orcs, and Goblins!! Ratmen are the most interesting and the least like their vanilla D&D counterparts. They strictly inhabit the southern tip of Gorum. Both Orcs and Goblins inhabit the wastelands. These are dust desserts where the sand has mixed with magic ash over the ages creating a sickly soil. Goblins have learned to grow strange weeds in this soil, while the Orc Shamans drink the Ashy Ocean's water directly to gain a poisonous hazy high, with spell-casting effects. Gnomes live beneath the incredibly steep, dense, and hostile mountain range separating north and middle Gorum. Gnomes, like normal Dwarves, keep considerable social and political chasms between themselves and "live-fast-and-die-young-humans". Elves hail from another major continent, Farum. Travel between the two is across the Majai ocean. Humans cannot live long enough to justify the trip. The winds of the Majai Ocean are sentient and cruel. The longer your intended journey, the stiller the winds and waters. Intentional trips between the continents takes over 15 years. Despite this Elves have always pilgrimaged to Gorum, in fact the oldest Gorum historians are the first Elves to arrive many thousands of years ago. However most elves also take the journey home after a few hundred years, as is their custom. The rare exceptions started small settlements on the massive island of Jubilee and the small but almost entirely Elven island of Lalec (The island northmost in the huge 'fjorde').