Distan Baccini's page

Distan's childhood was the stuff of dreams. Born the son of two fully dragonmarked members of House Lyrandar, he was raised in luxury and comfort, with what seemed to be a gilded future ahead of him. He dreamed of the day his own mark would manifest, dreams that were encouraged by his Windwright father; some of Distan's fondest childhood memories were of journeying on his father's airship. His mother, a prominent Raincaller, seemed less than enthusiastic whenever he enthused about his idealized future, but Distan simply assumed that it was because he favored his father's guild over hers. He took her assurances that there was plenty of opportunity in House Lyrandar for him even if he never manifested a dragonmark well salted; after all, with both of his parents bearing a mark, the odds were in his favor.

The truth of the matter dawned on Distan's thirteenth birthday, when the pallid green lines of an aberrant dragonmark appeared on his upper back. His mother's talk of not bearing a mark was wishful thinking on her part; hoping against hope that her oldest son's skin would never bear witness to her own infidelity. Distan's true father was of House Medani, his birth the result of some youthful indiscretions in the earliest years of his mother's marriage. The secret had been long kept, but the truth was now evident for all to see in the tangled lines of Distan's dragonmark, the result of crossbred bloodlines.

Everything changed after that. His family, for one, fell apart. The man he'd always thought of as his father suddenly regarded Distan as a mark of shame; the once warm and supportive treatment he'd received vanished overnight. His father's journeys to other ports became more and more frequent, the time he spent at home became less and less. Eventually, he simply never came home again, a wagonload of porters to pack and transport his belongings showing up on the doorstep at the same time as a gnome bearing divorce paperwork.

His mother, for her part, kept her position in the House, but her oldest son became a social albatross around her neck, one she could barely stand to look upon. It also became clear that any future prospects Distan had within House Lyrandar were no more; even a minor role as a deckhand or in administration was closed to a family member with an impure stain upon his skin. When he was old enough to live on his own, Distan was unceremoniously given a small stipend and told to find his own lodgings.

He did so, modest apartments in the mid-levels of Sharn, but didn't stay there too long. Bored, despondent, with no real training in non-house skills, Distan began squandering what money he had on decadent pleasures. He spent his days and nights in Lower Menthis, sampling the pleasures of theater and red light districts alike. When not in an inn or festhall, he could be found with increasing frequency in dreamlily dens. Ultimately, he became addicted to the opiate, neglecting any maintenance of his life in lieu of the hours he could spend in filthy curtained alcoves, dreaming of the life he could have had. Eventually, he lost his lodgings and was cut off from his family funds, seen as proof of the corruption inherent in the aberrant marked.

To keep his habit funded, Distan wound up finding himself with the one group that saw value in his dragonmark: House Tarkanan. Even there, he was seen as a weak willed addict unfit for anything more than the simplest of thug work; mostly enforcer-oriented, with occasional burglaries and muggings.He was never able to lose the vague sense of guilt that grew from this work, but whenever it grew too intense there was a flask of dreamlily to wash it away. Ultimately, Distan would likely have wound up dead within a few years, if it weren't for some truly poor decision making that somehow improved his lot.

To supplement his income, Distan became an informant for a private inquisitive. For a price, he'd answer questions on House Tarkanan activities that might overlap with his contact's investigations. In time, he'd likely have met the fate of any snitch and gotten his throat slit, but somehow Distan and the inquisitive formed a bond. The investigator saw past Distan's desperate junkie exterior and recognized a bright young man drowning in the filth of lower Sharn. Distan, for his part, found himself interested in the older man's line of work, ultimately helping in some investigations with more than information. In the end, and with a lot of help from his friend, Distan made the difficult choice to dry out, go sober, and reclaim his life. He became an apprentice inquisitive, and eventually a partner, using his contacts both in the upper and criminal classes to give him an excellent information network. In his mind, he's simply doing what he can to keep his wallet full; what he wouldn't admit, even to himself, is that he's still plagued by guilt from his time as a criminal and that his new career is a way of helping those in need.