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Kaethos283 notes · 3 chapters

Xeros

7 min read

The perfect specimen of a Tiefling Bard — kicked out of the boy band that carried his namesake, Year Xeros. His mindless self-indulgence, dark skin, and golden tattoos are the makings of true emo inspiration.

Player Character — Echoes of ITYS (Dave)

A black-skinned, gold-tattooed tiefling bard and the exiled frontman of the boy band Year Xeros (“the X is silent — everyone says Year Zeros”). Emo, charismatic, perpetually broke, and almost always holding a drink that’s about to ruin his day. The violin is his — and so, unknowingly, is a god-killing singularity worn as trousers.

PlayerRaceClassSubclassPrimary StatStatus
DaveTieflingBardCollege of LoreCharisma (STR −1)Active

Overview

Xeros is a faded pop star chasing a second act. Once the wildly successful founding frontman of Year Xeros, he aged out of the boy-band machine (“when you move into the 30-year-old boy, people just stop noticing”) and now plays for himself — a brooding, black-skinned tiefling in cargo pants, streaming to a password-protected channel nobody watches. He leads with charisma and a violin, cheats with Distort Value and Disguise Self, and self-medicates with Zen’s “Seven Deadly Sips” — most notoriously the Envious Pinot (8 hours of truesight, then 8 years of blindness).

Story

Backstory

  • Parentage mystery: his mother is a tiefling, but his father is an Aasimar — and all his siblings came out blonde aasimar-tiefling mixes, leaving Xeros the odd, black-skinned “black swan.” He’s searching for the truth (“the truth is out there”).
  • Year Xeros: the boy band he founded and was exiled from. The wound is permanent. (See Gypsy Jenkins, his self-appointed groupie, and his money she allegedly spent.)
  • An Aasimar he once knew: flashbacks in Ch 1.7 tie him to “an Aasimar-like lady” — the real reason he was magnetically drawn to Fauna Kneeler. (Open lore hook.)

Chapter 1 Arc

  • The cargo-pants curse: Ch 1.1 — illusion makes his cargo pants look like skinny jeans (truesight reveals the truth); the morning TBD’s tour-date laser show scares him into wetting his cargo pants — a running gag that pays off in Ch 1.3.
  • “Sorax”: disguises himself as a white “negative-image angel” to pass on El Cinede.
  • The arena: “Are you not entertained?” — impales the big guy on a thrown immovable rod in Ch 1.2.
  • The finale: spots Fauna Kneeler’s demonic umbilical cord via truesight and severs it, exposing Damanos (Ch 1.7).

Chapter 2 Arc

Frontman of the party’s band (Empire → Rose’s Empire) through the Magus dream-loop; wins the wristband race (Ch 2.1), and in the finale reads Chronomancy off TBD’s book to destroy the Dreamweaver with its own rebounded spell (Ch 2.9).

Appearances

  • 240530-ch1.1 (⏱ 00:31:10) — Dave’s PC; a gold-tattooed tiefling bard and former boy-band frontman. Casts Distort Value to cheat at the Locke dice game and later buffs Foulclaw with Bardic Inspiration and Heroism.
  • 240626-ch1.2 (⏱ 00:17:28) — Tiefling bard PC (Dave). Plays a magic violin; casts Disguise Self (becomes pale ‘Sorex’), Charm Person, Scrying and bardic inspiration; throws daggers and an immovable-rod ‘bow’; secretly bets and wins 1000 gold on the brawl.
  • 240709-ch1.3 (⏱ 00:09:44) — Dave’s PC; a disguised angel/tiefling sorcerer (wild magic) with illusion-disguised extradimensional cargo pants. Drinks the Envious Pinot for truesight, casts suggestion/charm person/bardic inspiration, plays fiddle, hallucinates wings, and ends the night blind after throwing the grung into the void.
  • 240807-ch1.4 (⏱ 00:05:05) — PC (Dave); goliath/aasimar-disguised; temporarily blinded this session, plays a blind beggar with cup and bow-cane, wanders alleys collecting alms, repeatedly walks into walls. Shrinks to 86%.
  • 250816-ch3.5 (⏱ 02:45:07) — Dave’s player-character, a tiefling spellcaster with horns and a blue flame who has just fervently converted to the religion of Idios. Casts illusions/shatter, wields a moon-touched blade, and sees himself as a radiant angel though others don’t.
  • 250911-ch3.6 (⏱ 02:43:59) — Dave’s PC, a tiefling sorcerer/bard musician with magical tattoos (Ghost Step, divination) who has recently ‘converted’ to idios. In the Hall of Hidden Things he is forced to battle personifications of his sins (Pride, Lust, Deceit), the latter taking the form of his manipulative mother and abusive father.
  • 251009-ch3.7 (⏱ 02:48:20) — Dave’s player-character, a charismatic sorcerer/holy-man of Selune and former rockstar; relies on charm, suggestion, disguise self and a +10 deception. Spent the session streaking and casting illusions while sneaking across campus.
  • 251023-ch3.8 (⏱ 02:23:42) — Dave’s PC, a charismatic seducer/bard-type with a scrying crystal ball and moon-touched rapier. This session he re-enters the Hall of Hidden Things and defeats his personified sins (Pride, Lust, Deceit).
  • 251204-ch3.10 (⏱ 20:40:17) — Dave’s player-character, a glowing winged celestial bard who casts Shatter, Bardic Inspiration and Lesser Restoration, is immune to fire, plays a nameless violin, and aspires to become a Shard of Salune.
  • 260227-ch4.1 (⏱ 00:09:30) — Existing PC (Dave). Black tiefling musician with gold tattoos and white fire, ex-boy-band frontman now converting to the faith of Idios; drank Fun Powder and spent hours magically transformed into a female angel this session.
  • 260320-ch4.2 (⏱ 19:49:11) — Dave’s PC, a black tiefling bard now multiclassing into cleric (level 5). Acts as ‘Captain Grabby,’ loots everything into bag-of-holding ‘pants,’ casts healing spells, scrying orbs, and minor illusion; can go incorporeal through walls.
  • 260403-ch4.3 (⏱ 19:27:29) — Dave’s PC, a cleric/bard of ITYS. Used his ghost step tattoo to phase into each of the five trees and cast Lesser Restoration to heal the dryad-like beings inside, then charmed Tobias into a conversion errand.
  • 260409-ch4.4 (⏱ 20:35:17) — Dave’s tiefling PC. Repeatedly splits the party to swim off alone, cleanses in the dragon’s hot spring, and reads Astaroth’s braille journal with a scrying/oracle-die combo.
  • 260501-ch4.5 (⏱ 20:06:08) — Dave’s black tiefling multiclass cleric/bard PC who converted to the faith of ITYS. Wins the trial-of-touch duel and receives the Glove of Pale Scale.
  • 260515-ch4.6 (⏱ 20:23:11) — Dave’s tiefling bard who recently multiclassed/converted to cleric of Selune. Used his ghost step tattoo to go incorporeal, stabilized and healed Marie, and schemed over the love-tapped nectar.
  • 260610-ch4.8 (⏱ 19:52:32) — Dave’s PC (played in angel/cleric form this session); newly converted cleric of Selune, became spiritually connected to Perdona as a ‘godly vessel,’ and was killed at session’s end by his brother Eustus.
  • 250228-ch2.6.2 (⏱ 00:08:56) — PC (Dave), a tiefling who serves as the party’s manipulator/face; he disguises himself as LaDonna to disperse the autograph line, robs Talon blind, and chugs Purge during the shark-bear fight.

Unsorted (from previous version)

Sections the migration would not guess at. Move them into the standard sections above as you review.

The Cargo Pants — A God’s Prison

The biggest secret of the campaign is sitting on Xeros’s legs. His cargo pants are The Bag — Gog’s flesh-bag harvester, “destroyed” in The Forgotten Hour by fusing it with a second bag of holding, which transmuted it into a four-dimensional torus containing a tamed black hole of harvested human essence (an infinite, time-frozen well of magical energy that bypasses equivalent exchange). After Father ITYS locked it in The Pit, the Lycoris twins Zen and Auin found it ~122 years later and sewed it into a pair of cargo pants.

It quietly explains everything strange about him:

  • the cargo-pants illusion/curse and the “all I’ve got left is pants” refrain,
  • his pockets being literal bags of holding (Ch 2.2),
  • his uncanny reality-warping luck, and very possibly the false memories, the “wings,” and the “I’m not who I think I am” identity crisis — a soul-reservoir singularity is a heavy thing to wear.

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