Kaius’ description on that ‘poorly describe your OCs’ post is actually amazing lol
I’d love to hear a little more about them if you feel up to talking about them!
Haha absolutely.
So Kaius is a tiefling gunslinger who worked as a hired gun/hit man/bounty hunter/what-have-you, pretty much did anything if it paid, up until he met his future wife, a samsaran named Esmalda. She worked as an entertainer playing piano at a club in a city called Goldengate. Kaius took up a job as a bouncer for the club and got close to her. They hit it off, and after dating for some time they got married, and later had a daughter—Kee. These were the some of the happiest times in Kaius’ life.
Then as Kee got older, she began to grow ill. Doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her, and her condition was getting worse—slowly, but steadily. Kaius and Esmalda disagreed on how to get together the money to pay for her medical bills. Kaius wanted to go back into his old business, but Esmalda was afraid that was too dangerous and would bring his enemies to their doorstep. Esmalda wanted to do some…“private entertainment” as a side gig…but Kaius wasn’t comfortable with that idea. Their relationship became rocky and eventually they split up. Kaius went back to his old gig as a hired gun, going by the name “Hawke” (short for Hawkeye) to try to keep his life with Esmalda and Kee separate from his work life. He became a habitual liar, not trusting anyone with any piece of honest truth about his life incase it might lead back to his family.
This led into our actual game, in which Kaius met a rag-tag group of weirdos—a fire genie sorcerer, an aasimar cleric, a rakshasa worshipping tiger beastkin antipaladin, and an orc wizard. He followed his modus operandi and lied constantly about everything involving himself. Which was hilarious when he played two truths and a lie with them and he rolled a nat 1 to deceive them in believing his 3 lies.
Anyways his deception didn’t last long because their first stop on their journey ended up being—where else—Goldengate. They ended up needing to pull off a heist of an artifact in a museum belonging to a man who it turned out Esmalda was currently dating for money. Kaius managed to talk his ex into looking the other way at their antics, used a clever mix of magic and items to become invisible and silence his gun to slip inside and steal the artifact while the party was fighting the security system, and got it out to their getaway vehicle.
As they were escaping their cleric, Gabrielle, explained that the artifact, a golden bowl, had the power to turn water stored in it into a medicine that could cure any disease after an hour. Kaius told them he needed that bowl, he needed to take it to the hospital, *now*. Without asking for an explanation, Gabby let Kaius take the bowl, despite it being a sacred artifact of her religion. Kaius jumped off a *moving bus* with a bowl *full of magic water* to get it to his sick daughter at the hospital. And he succeeded, he got the medicine to her, and it worked.
He returned the bowl to Gabby later, and thanked her for trusting him. In return for her trust, he told her the full truth about everything, about who he was and why he was there and what the medicine had been for and who Esmalda was to him. He asked her not to share it with the others. He still didn’t want more people to know than necessary, to keep his family safe. Gabby understood, and agreed.
After that Kaius continued traveling with the party because he felt like he owed them, and he helped them to gather the rest of Gabby’s artifacts. Without a desperate need for money driving him anymore, he could relax, and he ended up actually being a bit of a playful prankster when he could get away with it.
Later, it turned out Kaius made a big mistake trusting Gabby, when she turned out to be the leader and messiah figure of a cult that wanted to usurp the pantheon and replace them with their god Menia. When Gabby turned on the party she tried to have Kaius turn with her, believing he would take her side given that he viewed her in a sort of fatherly way. He really did hesitate, especially because she was the reason he’d managed to save his daughter. The only reason he didn’t end up turning traitor with her is because she ended up making a thoughtless comment about what Menia would do to those with ‘impure’ blood like Kee, who was half tiefling and half samsaran. Knowing his child wouldn’t be safe in Gabrielle’s world, he turned his gun on her instead.
From then on, Kaius has had a policy not to trust anyone who isn’t family. The closest person to him outside of Esmalda and Kee is the orc wizard, Eleanor, and that’s more a case of respect for her than trust. Volstat the beastkin and Hiyi the genie turned on him and Eleanor after the final battle because both Eleanor and Kaius believed Gabby had the potential to be redeemed after learning how she’d been manipulated by the cult and Menia, while Volstat and Hiyi just wanted revenge. Kaius and Eleanor have taken up a sort of foster parent role with Gabby, working on helping her to unlearn the things the cult taught her.
Once Kaius retired again and the fighting cults and gods and all that BS was over, he and Esmalda got remarried, and without the stress of dealing with medical bills or fear for their daughter’s life, things have gone well. Kaius runs a bar where Esmalda plays piano, and his guns are hung up where he doesn’t need them…so long as no customers get too rowdy.