Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Blackrazorblade 02-06-06, 10:38 AM	This is kinda long, when i started typing it up it got a little out of hand and now i feel like i can't cut anything out. The character is named Del I was born in the port city of Fell-Dagger. By the time I was twelve I had become one of the numerous orphans that lived on the streets. I lived day-to-day trying to find small jobs to make a few silver and stay alive; I had no aim in life. One day I was wondering the slums trying to find a job and noticed an adventurer walking down a fairly empty street. Suddenly three thugs came out of the shadows and tried to jump him. To my surprise I saw the man pull out some kind of chain and commence with fend off his attackers; two more thugs came from the shadows to aid their fellows. Despite the fact I was transfixed by his awe-inspiring display of skill, I noticed a final thug pull out a crossbow and aim it at the adventurer, before he could fire I managed to sneak up behind him and use my dagger to stab him in the back. By this time the adventurer had taken down two of the thugs. I went up and helped him dispatch another while he easily took down the other two. After the fight he congratulated me and I remarked I had never seen anyone fight with a chain before. He laughed and offered to tutor me in the fighting arts saying he was planning on staying in the city for a few months anyway. I learned his name was Jenian and that he had been adventuring for several years, he had learned how to fight with a spiked chain from a half-elf warrior. He spent a few months training me first how to fight both defensively and using feints. Then he moved on to using the chain and using its tripping abilities. He commented that I was a natural learner. Once his time in the city was up, his patron needed him for a job in another city; he left me and gifted me with a silver short sword that had been his first weapon upon becoming an adventurer. This has become my most prized possession. As time went by I used my talents as a warrior to earn money in gladiator fights in local taverns. I found that this was not to my tastes, as all my opponents did nothing but charge me and I was able to trip them and easily take them down with the chain I had bought. I soon turned to using my natural agility to become a housebreaker. I didn’t work for a guild and I was careful to steal relatively little and only from the richer citizens. I did this out of a sense of survival (when only some of the money in the safe goes missing few suspect they were robbed by a thief) and because I didn’t need much money to live as comfortably as I wished. Soon I became dissatisfied with thievery, much as I had with the tavern duels. I had a reputation in the city as a tough fighter who had quite a few tricks up his sleeve and as being nearly impossible to sneak up on. The thieves guild discovered my skills when the top thief of the guild, an elf by the name of Shylissa and I tried to rob the same house at the same time. While she said that she respected me for my talents, she warned me that her guild saw me as a threat, few fighters in the guild wished to face me and it was suspected I was a freelance burglar. She suggested I leave town, perhaps to become an adventurer. I refused and she tried to protect me by offering me a post in the guild, I accepted. My job was at first as housebreaker but the guild was making clean out the house as best I could, before the stealing had been for the thrill and challenge but now it was a job and my enthusiasm dropped. One night I got careless and the guild said that they would be forced to turn me in as I had been recognized. Shylissa stood up for me saying that the guild could cover for me as they did with other thieves. The other leaders disagreed saying that only beginners were given that safety net, only once and only if the victim was not especially wealthy and powerful. Unfortunately my victim was both, so the guild refused to help. This infuriated Shylissa who said she would defend me herself. She told authorities that I had spent that night with her and thus could not have done the crime. She used a magic item to defeat the truth sensing magic and the law released me. From that point on the guild leaders began to resent me more and more, and Shylissa and I grew closer. She revealed that earlier she had stood up for me because the guild had opposed her rise because she was an elf and that was her way of paying them back. Now we began to work together very closely, she and I were a great team, while she was a better thief I was a much better fighter and that came in handy a number of times. As time passed we became lovers. The guild leaders then moved me away from housebreaking and into debt extraction. When I was forced to extract debts from loans from a merchants wife whose husband’s ship had been delayed I gave her an extension. The guild took exception to this, but I pointed out that she paid back the original debt of 500 gold and only the interest of 200 gold remained. The guild leader in charge of enforcing debts and the thugs of the guilds did not agree with me. His long resentment of me boiled over into rage and he attacked me in front of the other three guild leaders, his lieutenants came to his aid but I dispatched them easily with my chain. This angered Kordek the leader of smuggling, forgery and similar activities and Caven, the leader of the assassins. Shylissa, as the leader of the thief branch, said that the guild could not persecute me, as it was self-defense in which I acted and that the other leader had been unreasonably angry. Kordek agreed with her to Caven’s disappointment. Later that night Caven tried to assassinate me, but I was able to catch him by surprise while he was preparing to kill me. The fallout from killing the largely unpopular guild leader was tremendous. Kordek demanded my death and Shylissa refused to turn me over. This caused the guild, now down to two leaders, to schism. The assassins and thieves sided with Shylissa, and my default myself, and the others with Kordek. Due to the intense in-fighting that broke out I decided to leave the city as I was at the center of the conflict. I figured that with me out of the city the conflict would cool down and that the two guilds would co-exist more peacefully. So I decided to leave and become an adventurer as Shylissa had suggested long ago. Before I left Shylissa gave me a ring as a sign of our love and I promise die would return someday when my presence would not tear the guild apart even more. The build i'm planning on is first level rogue, then 2 of fighter, 3 more of rogue, 2 of thief-acrobat and one of street fighter, then taking a mix of levels in each until i have 5 levels in each PrC and taking 5 more rogue levels. My feats will be 1: Able learner; Human bonus: improved init fighter1: combat expertise fighter2: improved feint 3: exotic weapon prof: spiked chain 6: improved trip the other feats i'm planning on taking are quick reconnoiter, quick draw and combat reflexes I'm hoping the DM will let me change my fighter profs so that i don't need to take EWP, in exchange for heavy armor, shileds and some martial weapons. I'm not sure what level we are starting at either. What do people think of the background and how it meshes with level progression?
Morka 02-06-06, 02:34 PM	A very good background. A few details though: 1) I guess a guild leader should be an high level thief, you shouldn't have been able to defeat him and his lieutenants so easily. Perhaps did he fumble and felt on his own dagger, or some other incredible feat of luck. For Caven, it's more believable: he sneaked in your chamber and savagely attacked... your pillow, while you quickly get out off your hidden place and sneak attacked him... 2) Shylissa and you were lovers, but it doesn't sound like this when you leave the town. Perhaps did you realise the thieves and assassins didn't want to follow her if you would stay, so you decided to leave to allow your lover to realise her dream: being the leader of a guild...