Matin Crowtongue's page

Matin was born in the town of Asleifar, in the Thanelands of the Linnorn Kingdoms, the son of a pair of whalers. When he was very young, his parents ship was capsized by a whale and they both drowned, leaving Matin alone and uncared for. For a time, Matin was able to make due in the town, but he never really fit in with the other children, and he soon found that he was far more skilled at the art of subterfuge than typical Ulfen talents. Though he certainly wasn’t a weakling, he was usually outclassed in physical strength by the other boys--so he found that he had to make use of cheating, stealing, and lying to get ahead. This worked out fine, for a time, but soon he found himself ostracized, and the people who had taken him as caretakers turned their back on him.

So Matin ran off to cosmopolitan Kalsgard, hoping he could find his fortune there. He lived on his own on the street as a beggar and a pickpocket, doing what he had to survive. But still, he found Kalsgard much more welcoming than Asleifar had ever been. In Asleifar he had heard tales a plenty of life on the ocean, and the occasional story of raiding one of the nations to the south--and sometimes he had looked out to the sea and dreamed of what lied beyond the ninth wave. But in Kalsgard folks from many nations lived, not just whalers and raiders--there were even people from across the Crown of the World, Tian who told stories of foxes who walked like men, of spirits who took the shapes of ogres, of nature gods who walked among the forest. He yearned to one day leave the Land of the Linnorn Kings and travel to these strange lands--but for the time being, he had to focus on surviving.

And survive he did, finding his place in a gang in Kalsgard, where he increasingly turned to burglary as a source of income. He thrived, acting as the planner for the gang--scouting locations, figuring out the number of guards, that sort of thing--and occasionally participating in the robberies himself. For awhile, times were good; Matin and his companions were able to live the best lives a group of vagabond children could. But this did not last.

Increasingly, Matin’s gang found itself falling on hard times--its members were arrested, leads dried up, fences refused to deal in their goods. As the dire possibility of arrest, poverty, or gainful employment loomed, Matin decided on a solution to his woes: magic. Simply being sneaky was not enough--to really succeed, he would need every possible edge available--and what better edge than magic? Of course, Matin did not know any magic--but he did know of a wizard who occasionally frequented the same inn as he did. Matin tricked the wizard into thinking that he was being courted by another wizard, and one night when the wizard went to meet his imagined paramour, Matin absconded with his spellbook.

Matin thought it would be easy as stealing the wizard’s spellbook and reading the words within; Matin, it turned out, was very wrong. He was completely unable to decipher the formulas within the spellbook or even read the language they were written in. He ended up having to purchase a series of books to help him crack the code--but it was of no use.

Night after night studying the spellbook did not go to waste, however--it turned out Matin did have a knack for a kind of magic, just not the wizardly arts. One day, while being chased by guards over what Matin had tried to assure them was just mistaken identity, Matin jumped into an alley to try and escape him. The guards followed close behind him--but when they turned the corner, they stopped in their tracks--Matin was nowhere to be seen. Unwittingly, he had managed to make himself disappear just long enough for them to turn their pursuit elsewhere.

Despite his newfound magic, Matin was not able to save his fellow criminals--but he was able to save himself, and that was honestly all he had really cared about in the first place. Matin found he was able to get along perfectly well on his own, becoming a sort of cat burglar--with magic assisting him, he found he was able to target much bigger and better hauls than he ever had before.

Unfortunately, being on one’s own has its disadvantages. Matin broke into a store that was under the protection of the Rimerunners, and one of their number found his hideout and attacked him. Matin was grievously injured, and had the Rimerunners coming after him--he needed to find healing, and a way out of the city. He had heard that there was a caravan in town, and decided to seek shelter among their number--and if he could get passage across the Crown of the World into Tian Xia, all the better.

Matin is fairly slight for an Ulfen man--though he much prefers the term lithe, as he is by no means a weakling. His hair is black, and usually unkempt--he has neither the time nor the attention span to keep it properly combed, and in all honesty he likes the rather roguish look it gives him. His skin has a proper amount of Ulfen ruddiness, and his eyes are blue gray--like his father’s, he thinks, but he can’t really remember either of his parents’ faces. Matin tends to cover his face anyways--don’t want people getting a good look at you, after all--and wears fairly nondescript clothing--though it’s always loose enough not to impede his movement.

Matin has a hard time taking things seriously. Life is a joke, no matter what way you look at it--the question is, are you making the joke or is it being played on you? Matin is determined to be the one making the joke, no matter what. He has very little regard for law and order--rules are just something the powerful use to force their will on others, nothing more and nothing less. Matin doesn’t go out of the way to break the law, necessarily; he just doesn’t actively care about following it.

Matin doesn’t take from others at random; he only stole from people who had too much to begin with or from people who lord their power over others--he would never steal from someone who had helped him or from someone he considered a friend.

Matin’s heart is filled with wanderlust; he longs to leave the Land of the Linnorn Kings for stranger shores. Though Kalsgard is exotic enough to have satiated this for a time, he has been in the city for nearly ten years, and knows it is time to move on.