Zag Surf

My character, "Zagato of the Haz Knights", was a fairly recent addition to a party in which most everyone else had known each other for some time.
Zagato billed himself as a "mage-knight", of an order trained to deal with threats of a "nonmilitary nature". In order to deal with, for example, dragons, the Haz Knights spend a large part of their training studying arcane magic. The party sometimes witnessed Zagato casting Haste and Fly before combat.

Zagato told the party he had been "unjustly exiled" from a kingdom "far from here". ("Yeah," mumbled another player, "aren't we all.") But the party made no effort to investigate further.

Zagato's appearance was unusual, though perhaps not too eccentric compared with the rest of the party. Perhaps his most visible feature was his huge, massive shoulderpads. (There's a good sample image at
http://www.angelfire.com/scifi/miryokuteki/images/millefeuille/24.jpg.)
From the shoulderpads hung long, flowing robes. Zagato wore an ornate helmet and had long, flowing silvery hair.

Zagato was quite tall (6'7"), though not so tall as to be Large size. He wielded a fullblade, about eighteen inches longer than a greatsword; with this weapon he had ten-foot reach. Attacks from this weapon often dealt
20-30 damage. He only made one attack per action, though - unusual at eighth level.

Zagato was the subject of some odd conversations with NPCs, who often asked what "one of his kind" was doing with the party, and why he got along with the Lawful Good cleric. When this happened Zagato would frown and end the conversation quickly.

The party quickly noticed that Zagato had great strength: when flying, he was able to carry slower party members with no trouble. (At one point, when speed seemed important, he offered to carry all the rest of the party.) His defense was also impressive: after casting Shield, Haste, and Mage Armor, his armor class rose to about 38. He was skilled at
acrobatics: he could dodge Fireballs and boiling-rain effects unharmed, and could tumble to avoid enemy attacks. He also had some sort of
intrinsic resistance to fire - something which perplexed the party more than it should have, since it could have been an Endure Elements spell (though it was not).

Zagato did seem to require a lot of rest, though, and he often asked that the party stop and rest rather than continue that day.

The wolflord ranger observed many times (and at great length) that Zagato smelled funny, though she could not place the exact odor. At one point he needed to ride her wolf, so he cast Prestidigitation and was able to remove the smell for a bit. The wolf did not seem to have trouble
carrying him, which was odd in itself since (according to him) he weighed
"a lot".

Zagato was fairly secretive about his spellcasting; before spellcasting he would try to find some pretext to avoid characters that might recognize his spells. Some characters noted that his Invisibility spell was not dispelled when he attacked. The one time Zagato used a Magic Missile spell it produced only three missiles.

Immediately before the party's final defeat, the enemy cleric was seen to cast a Greater Dispelling targetting Zagato. This made him much weaker and he immediately retreated from combat, staggering under the weight of his equipment. After reading a few scrolls, though, he was able to return to action.