Koba's page

About Koba

Koba was born Ioseb Besarionis, the son of a drunken abusive cobbler. His mother was a housewife, though she was often forced to work as a seamstress to make ends meet when her alcoholic husband gambled the rent away. The future Koba grew up in the Cheliax/Andoran border regions. As an ethnic Andoran, he was frequently humiliated for his thick accent, although he spoke Chelish with flawless grammar. At sixteen, he received a scholarship to a seminary, where he learned to resent and ultimately hate the diabolic religious order. Though he performed well academically, he was expelled after missing his final exams. (The seminary’s own records indicate he was unable to pay his tuition.) This experience left him with a lifelong mistrust of clerics of all stripes. Shortly after leaving the seminary, Koba joined up with the anti-Chelish underground, largely funded by the Andoran government through back channels, and became a full-time revolutionary.

He became one of the Andorans’ chief operatives in the mountainous Chelish border regions, organizing paramilitaries, inciting strikes, spreading propaganda, and raising money through bank robberies, ransom kidnappings, and extortion. He eventually adopted the name “Koba” from a Robin Hood-like Andoran mythological figure, which he used as an alias and pen name in his published works. One of Koba’s greatest successes was a raid on a Chelish treasury boat. Not a single arrow was fired against the raiders. Koba was captured and imprisoned seven times, but escaped most of these incarcerations.

Please with his services as a “fundraiser” out in the wilds, Koba’s nominal superiors in the Andoran faction have finally called him in from the cold. They believe that with his skills, he will either hasten an Andoran conquest of Absalom, or be killed and cease to be a rival for leadership of the faction. Koba, for his part, has little reason to believe that he will not eventually supplant Captain Maldris and his soft courtiers, but he is a patient man, one who will keep his mouth shut and his true aspirations hidden under the guise of absolute loyalty to the cause. Membership in the Pathfinder society chafes at him, since its strictures prevent him from acting as the cunning highland partisan chief his instincts drive him to be. However, he recognizes that the best way to undermine a system is to act within it, and will patiently do as he is told until the time to unleash his guerilla tactics is ripe.