Baldur's Gate : The Sword Coast Chronicles : NWN2 Persistent World

Origin: Thay
Age: 40s or 50s
Sex: Female
Deity: Jergal
Alignment: Lawful Neutral
Height: 6'3"
Eyes: Brown
Hair: Black
General Health: Athletic
Profession: Wandering ascetic
Habits/Hobbies: Studying death
Languages: Common, Thayan
Weapon of Choice: Unarmed

Appearance
Ghātikā is a tall pale woman. She dresses in rags, and might be mistaken for a beggar.

Personality Profile
Ghātikā is usually silent, but whenever she speaks with people she is polite and calm. She always enjoys teaching moments, but the lessons she seeks to impart are sometimes controversial.

Background
Thay

• • "The Mulan people are tall and slim, sometimes to the point of being gaunt. Their skin is sallow, and they usually remove what little body hair they have by means magical or mundane...
    "Almost all nobles in Thay are of Mulan descent, although not all Mulan are nobles. At worst, lowborn Mulan are free farmers or artisans, although many seek power that does not depend on their family’s wealth, becoming bureaucrats, soldiers, or priests..."
    • -Unapproachable East, page 158-159

• • "The Red Wizards are the ruling class of this magocracy. It’s illegal for any Red Wizard to take on an apprentice of other than Mulan blood. Some still do, however, and it’s usually an open secret. At any given time, most Red Wizards claim up to a dozen apprentices... whom they keep at one another’s throats to advance their own schemes. Apprentices exist to serve as the master’s agents, minions, and thralls. What magical training they gain in the process is determined solely by their own ambition and initiative."
    • -Unapproachable East, page 160

• Ghātikā was a lowborn Mulan whose son was taken by a Red Wizard to be an apprentice. Her son did not survive his apprenticeship. His corpse was reanimated to serve as a skeleton mage. Eventually, Ghātikā learned about her son's fate. Grief-stricken, she left her home and family to join a priesthood. Her searching lead her to the Crypt of Imminent Death in Bezantur.

The Cult of Jergal

• • "Dogma: Each being has an eternal resting place that is chosen for him or her at the moment of creation. Life is a process of seeking that place and eternal rest. Existence is but a brief aberration in an eternity of death. Power, success, and joy are as transitory as weakness, failure, and misery. Only death is absolute, and then only at its appointed hour. Seek to bring order to the chaos of life, for in death there is finality and a fixedness of state. Be ready for death for it is at hand and uncompromising. Life should be prolonged only when it serves the greater cause of the death of the world...
    Jergal's cult has undergone a small renaissance in Thay where death is a daily fact of life. The Crypt of Imminent Death in Bezantur, Thay, is a small onion-domed structure of gold-veined black marble...
    "The Companions of the Pallid Mask were a group of Jergali priests who specialized in combating or commanding the undead. They eliminated undead creatures whose existence was not sanctioned by the church or who had proven to be troublesome..."
    • -Powers and Pantheons, page 33

• Finding solace in the teachings of Jergal, Ghātikā devoted herself to the church. Her fellow Jergalites seemed cold, emotionless, and matter-of-fact about death. Taking them as her example, Ghātikā tried to repress her grief by telling herself that "Existence is but a brief aberration in an eternity of death."
  
  In her time at Jergal's church, Ghātikā came across records about the Companions of the Pallid Mask. She was intrigued by this sect's stance against the undead. Citing the Companions of the Pallid Mask, Ghātikā tried to encourage the Jergalite church to oppose the necromantic practices of the Red Wizards. However, the church was uninterested in such political activism. When Ghātikā persisted in her rabble-rousing attempts, the church encouraged her to leave. Disappointed, Ghātikā left the Crypt of Imminent Death. She eventually found the Order of the Long Death.

The Order of the Long Death

• • "The Long Death order worships the principle of death without caring much which deity currently owns the portfolio. They are more than willing to share death and its antecedent, pain, with others.... This order is quite strong in Thay, though not with the sanction or cooperation of the Red Wizards."
    • -Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, page 25

• Having encountered the Order of the Long Death, one of the only organizations in Thay strong enough to resist Red Wizard influence, Ghātikā decided to ordain as a monk of the Long Death. She found the Long Death's philosophy to be perfectly in line with her understanding of Jergal's teachings. More importantly, Ghātikā found comfort in the Long Death's teaching that death is a gift, a final freedom from suffering. She embraced this belief wholeheartedly.
  
  Ghātikā trained diligently in the Long Death's ways for many years. As part of this training she abandoned many things, even her ill-will against the Red Wizards. She eventually became one of the Order's most devout and advanced monks.

Itinerant Monk, Expanded Understanding

• Ghatika traveled Faerun for many years, carrying out many death experiments on unwilling subjects and attempting to teach Long Death philosophy to those who might understand. In the year 1340, she met a monk who ended up rejecting her lessons. In 1353, she encountered the monk again and was confronted with a simple truth: in a world with spirits and afterlife, death is not the ultimate end. Ghatika was forced to reconsider Jergal's teaching that "in death there is finality" and reexamine the Long Death's singular focus on the principle of death.

Osiris

• • "As Judge of the Dead, Osiris oversees the transition from a person's time on earth to the afterlife, a state not all that unlike life...
    The Judge of the Dead loathes sentient, evil undead...
    However, when confronted by those who violate the principles of maat (justice, honor, order, and righteousness), particularly by despoiling the resting places of the dead, his anger is terrible and his wrath unstoppable..."
    • -Powers and Pantheons, page 120-121

• Over the next few years, Ghatika's travels took her back east, where she reconnected with her Mulan ancestors' Mulhorandi faith. In Osiris's teachings she found a more complete philosophy of death, one that does not ignore the reality of the afterlife. Ghatika does not consider Osiris's teachings to be completely at odds with those of Jergal or the Long Death, though. After all, Jergal teaches that each being has an eternal resting place, and Osiris commands his clergy to honor the places in which the dead rest. Both Jergal and Osiris have disdain for certain undead. And the Long Death doesn't care much who the god of death is, implicitly accepting Osiris as one such god. And Jergal, the Long Death, and Osiris all believe that death is nothing to fear.
  
  Nonetheless, Ghatika came to see the teachings of Jergal and the Long Death as narrow and limited. In particular, she considers the Long Death's practices and activities as "somewhat misguided."
  
  She deepened her understanding of Osiris's province while meditating in the wilderness. When asked, "Do you swear to honor the dead and the places in which they rest? Do you swear to adhere to the principles of maat and the Code of Justice while serving the Lord of the Dead?" Ghatika, thinking of her dead son, could only answer, "Yes."

Goals

• Teach others about death
• Understand death more completely
• From her time with the Long Death, Ghatika still wonders about "the perfect death." She still believes that a better understanding of death can help the world, though she no longer forces her experiments upon others.

Possible Plot-Hook Ideas

• Ghātikā's obsession with death originally began as a coping mechanism to deal with her son's gruesome demise.
• She now sees herself as a patient teacher educating unwilling students.

Miscellaneous Facts

• Ghātikā is a highly-trained monk whose martial arts skills are supplemented by her study of cadavers.
• Ghātikā truly sees each kill as a gift to her victims, though she no longer forces this gift quite so readily.