Cabel

"'Why don't you just take your little Mind Flayers and go... and do the.. and go-vthe MIIIND CRUSH'"Cabel was a halfling ranger from the halfling villages of Lastlock, and a bounty hunter from the northern part of the continent. He was one of the founding members of the Heroes of Lastlock, and after a run in with a Ulitharid, he developed near unrivaled psionic powers. After sacrificing himself to save the life of Arnold Aberdeen during the Shining Convalescence, he became the immortal master of the shining children and a guardian of halflings across the universe.

Background
Cabel was born in the halfling villages of Lastlock. During the first part of his life, he quickly established himself as an exceptional hunter, though his methods were very inhumane and his outlook showed little regard for the lives of the people around him. Despite this, he brought in more food than any other ranger, and his village swelled in size.

Before he reached the middle of his life, he left and traveled to the north, becoming a somewhat nomadic bounty hunter, tracking down people and monsters that needed to be dealt with. One day on a sweep of the area near his mountains, he found a strange blue metal box that he couldn't damage with anything he had, and he traveled to Tyrador to see if anyone there could identify the box. While there, he encountered an aeon, shortly after meeting Ash, Bilabad, and Niok, and decided to travel with them to try and determine the creature's origin. After learning about Legends of the Tane, the group left Tyrador and went south to look for an intact copy. Stopping in Preservation, they met Veracion, who Cabel initially distrusted.

On arriving in Chesney, the group encountered the Sky Prophet, and retrieved a copy of Legends of the Tane, after which point Cabel, Ash, and Bilabad split from the other two to deliver the Orb of Creation they had retrieved in Preservation to Bilabad's father in Cruor. After this, they rode J.J. Jingleheimer's airship back towards Tyrador, but while flying over the Shade Spawning, were attacked by the first Cephaloship summoned by the activation of the Finality Sequence. In the ensuing combat, both ships went down, and Cabel went with Ash and Bilabad to try to purge the Cephaloship. While there, Cabel fell into the clutches of the ulitharid controlling the ship, who planted a tadpole in his ear, attempting to ceremorphosize him. The process was rendered incomplete, and though Cabel avoided a full transformation into a mind flayer, he did manifest quickly growing psionic powers.

On the way to the Isle of Shining Glass to drop off the Orb of Destruction, the group stopped at Cabel's birth village and found the entire place to be dead, and filled with halfling mohrgs. The journal left by Cabel's father revealed that when Cabel left, the village didn't have enough or competent enough hunters to feed their current population, so in an attempt to survive, they all adapted Cabel's methods and lifestyle, and began to raid other villages, killing wantonly to keep their village alive. These vicious murders meant that they started rising from the dead as mohrgs. With this knowledge in hand, Cabel began to care very deeply about the well-being of the halfling people.

Along with the others, Cabel fought the Thasfyr, and was incapacitated. After being rescued by Keras, he then traveled to the north with the other Heroes of Lastlock, to investigate the source of the oni and ice golems. On the way west, the group stopped at Cabel's home on a mountaintop in the north. When the group met Calax and was imprisoned in an enclosure with the Tarrasque, Cabel got a hold of Badabil after Veracion passed him through the barrier separating the Tarrasque from Calax. Cabel then used the power of the Annulus to start an astral caravan, allowing him to escape the enclosure and arrive on Calax's side, where he shattered the Heart of the Mountain with sonic energy. When Calax escaped with the child, Cabel helped to defend Cruor against him and was eventually instrumental in his first defeat at the hands of the Heroes.

After Bilabad's seeming death at the hands of Jackson, Cabel became more cynical and abrasive towards his teammates. The group traveled back to Chesney, where Cabel helped to distract the guards of the High Priest of Vecna while the High Priest of Fharlagn was questioned by the party. After the High Priest of Vecna's defeat, Cabel supported the motion to make the High Priest of Fharlagn the new Sky Prophet. The group then went south to deal with the second Cephaloship, and while in the caverns of the Mind Flayers, Cabel discovered that, being the spawn of the Ulitharid that he had helped to kill before, he was instrumental in the Mind Flayer's plan to resurrect the Eldest Brain. They offered him control over a subconscious mind virus that they had already spread among many humans, and he agreed to help them take down the rest of his party. After they escaped their cells with the help of a captive magician, Cabel went with his new Mind Flayer friends to the entrance of the caverns to cut off the party. While there, he had a change of heart and double crossed the mind flayers, incapacitating their leader and imprisoning his soul within the Thinaun Dagger.

Cabel then went with the rest of the group on a boat ride to the Isle of Shining Glass. While on the ride, the party encountered an aboleth, who warned them against bringing anything they found on the island off of it. Cabel took this advice to heart, and after the party defeated the Sard (during which fight Cabel nearly perished) he immediately distrusted Clarisse and advised against his inclusion in the party. However, he was happy to be reunited with Bilabad.

After the Thasfyr's resurgence in Tyrador, when the party discovered Keras's regicide, Cabel saved Keras from death at the hands of his party, transporting away with Niok in tow. He then mind crushed Niok after the former tried to stop Cabel from assisting Keras's escape. He eventually managed to convince the party to leave Keras in charge of Tyrador, with the provision that he be restricted in his actions to prevent treason. Cabel helped to write the Mark of Justice for Keras, in which he intentionally left several loopholes in the hopes that Keras would be able to free himself.

At some point, Cabel began plotting to impersonate the visage of Pelor for the purposes of manipulating Tophlin Notbeifong. This soon proved to be too late, after she almost left the party dead at the hands of Burntmeat's skeleton. Cabel used his powers to help bring the axe Balmung back to the city of Cruor, and then helped the group to track down J.J. Jingleheimer to wield it.

When the party learned of the abduction of hundreds of halflings by Calax and the Shining Children, Cabel helped the party to hurry there to save them. When he saw Arnold Aberdeen about to be forced into the Shining Convalescence, he swapped places with him, and then assaulted Calax with a dozen arrows which he had psionically enlarged to the size of ballista bolts. Though he injured the Worm that Walks grievously, he was soon forced into the Shining Convalescence, destroying it in the process and saving all the halflings behind him. At this point, he, along with the other halflings caught inside the event, were, as gas, forced into a stable time loop in which they spent hundreds of thousands of years, just thinking, honing their latent psionic talent. Being already a psion, he emerged from the time loop more powerful than the rest of the shining children, and quickly asserted leadership over them. He was blasted out of the stable time loop inside the Maze of Secrets, where he left all his worldly possessions. As master of the shining children, he became a guardian of halflings across the universe.

At the Battle of Sigil, when Calax attempted to use J.J. Jingleheimer's Time Machine to assert control over the universe, he found that Cabel had preemptively rigged a trap for just such an occasion into the machine when the shining children helped to rebuild it. Cabel then halted time, and offered to use the machine to send the Heroes of Lastlock back in time to kill Calax, after curing Niok of the Voice of the Gods and advising Tophlin to return her power to the dying Pelor.

The last time the rest of the Heroes saw him, he sent several important items back in time with the machine to help the Heroes earlier in their adventure, such as the Sky Orb and the logging cart.

Abilities
Before his partial Ceremorphosis, Cabel was a very capable ranger with a penchant for violence. Afterwards, he displayed quickly growing psionic powers, specifically capable powers of transportation, and powerful blasts of energy. He also was a frequent user of biofeedback, stealing the energy of his foes to bolster himself. His most favored power was Mind Crush, in which he rendered someone else unconscious instantaneously.

Cabel was also a very competent schemer and had many plans in the works to conquer Lastlock for the halflings. After the Shining Convalescence, his already strong psionic powers became near godlike, in addition to allowing him to appear all throughout the timeline.

Quotes
Niok: "It's a terrible plague. The hump comes with all kinds of other symptoms."

Cabel [hump]: "BLOOD"

Niok: "Like a talking hump."

Cabel [hump]: "FROM YOUR ASSHOLE"

-

Cabel: "I'm rolling initiative."

Relations With Other Characters
Bilabad Flapjack Jingleheimer: Bilabad was one of Cabel's only real friends. Though the Heroes of Lastlock ostensibly started with the pair fighting, they quickly became friends. Though Cabel had very little regard for Bilabad's intelligence, he and Bilabad had great ambitions together of raising the global status of the gnomes and the halflings, and when Bilabad seized control of Cruor, he named Cabel Hand of the King.

Clarisse LeMont: Cabel, heeding the words of an Aboleth on the route there, believed that saving Clarisse's life would be ultimately dangerous, and thus he distrusted Clarisse for the remaining part of his life, and in fact, was openly verbally abusive towards the truenamer. The feeling seemed to be mutual, as Clarisse was completely unfazed by Cabel's loss.

Arnold Aberdeen: Arnold and Cabel met when the Heroes of Lastlock went searching for where Badabil grew up. Cabel seemed inspired by the story of Badabil's youth, and with the cautionary tale of his own village fresh in his mind, devoted some time to making sure Arnold's village had everything they needed to thrive. When Arnold was captured by Calax for use in the Shining Convalescence, Cabel swapped places with him in line to save his life, being converted into a shining child as a result.

Trivia

 * Cabel was inspired by the base picture of the ranger from the Core Rulebook!