Merry Child's page

The Merry Child is short and slender; the result of a nervous childhood. She deeply enjoys food and drink, but she keeps herself lean so she will remain flexible and fast. Her skin is relatively pale because she spent her early years hiding in the shadows of a great city, forbidden from its sunlit plazas and roadways. Her hair is brown, curly and bouncy, her eyes are grey. Her face is pretty enough, but her smile is often cynical and the look in her half-closed eyes is more sly than kindly.

There is a cruel custom: 'If you don't want something, just throw it off the bridge. The rats will eat it.'
The Merry Child was unwanted. This she knows, because her earliest memory is of waking up on the shore of the river that ran through the city, her body broken, her mind awhirl in confusion and pain. If Canter hadn't found her, she would have died there. But Canter did find her. A beggar and a thief, he often came to the riverside, down in the bridge's shadow, to see whether he could use anything that he could use. He found the Merry Child, just barely clinging to life, and he took her home to the Warrens and managed to patch her up.
"What is your name?" was the first thing he asked her, once her fever had broken and she was capable of speaking again.
"I don't remember," was all she could reply.
Canter grinned, saying: "Then I'll name you. Such a pretty little thing, with a face fit for smiles, curls and ribbons... From now on, your name is Merry. Remember it."
She did.

The Warrens were not a good place for a child. They were not a good place for anyone, really. The Warrens were the wretched lower districts, where the city's have-naughts were banished to. Beggars, thieves, con artists... murderers. Canter wasn't the worst of the locals, but neither was he the best. A tiefling with a club foot, he got the girl healing and food, but he demanded services in return. Once she was healed, the Merry Child -- as the other denizens started to call her -- proved to have a pretty face and a pleasant voice. She would go to the edge of the Warrens to sing and dance for passersby. If they were stupid enough to stop, Canter and his friends would sneak up behind them and steal their money.

It was less than ideal, growing up in the Warrens. The Merry Child had food, she had a roof over her head and Canter at least protected her against advances from more monstrous denizens than himself, but it was still a dark and frightful place. Growing up there, learning the ways of life from such people as dwelled there... It was little wonder that she grew up suspicious and cynical. When the Purge came, soldiers and city guards stomping into the Warrens with fire and swords, it did not surprise the Merry Child. She knew the world was a wretched and dangerous place, she knew it was out to hurt her and that it would, if she wasn't quick of wits and quick on her feet. She was one of those Warren-dwellers who managed to escape, rather than be hacked down for being "an affront to the city's glory".

Canter was also a survivor. He took charge, just as he had been taking charge for as long as the Merry Child could remember. "Sandpoint," he said. "A rough-and-ready frontier town", he said. "A good place to blend in and steal the bumpkins blind", he said. So they walked, wearing out their threadbare shoes even more than life in the city had done. The city... the city whose name the Merry Child could not remember, later. She could not remember because she took a sling-stone to the head and went down. When she woke up, there was still blood running from the wound, and Canter was dead, his body staked out on the earth, his head separated from his body, and a wooden stake hammered through his heart. The killers had left a message: "Repent, fiend-follower!" Whoever had ambushed them and killed Canter, leaving a twelve year old child to fend for herself out in the Varisian wilderness, they had most likely been humans, because Goblins did not read and write.

The Goblins came later. They found the Merry Child, limping across the grassy plain, her mind still sluggish from the untreated wound, her body weak with hunger. Another sling-stone to her head, and she did not have enough fight in her to even care when the Goblins started to tie her up, cackling merrily about what they would do to her. She did not care... but someone else did. Suddenly, there was the voice, singing for battle. There was the woman, swinging steel. Goblins screaming, blood spilling, and then the Merry Child found herself lying in a stranger's arms. Beautiful eyes, gazing into hers. She fell unconscious, thinking for a moment that Pharasma had come for her.

But she woke up again, alive, in the Rusty Dragon Inn, with Ameiko watching over her. The first thing the Merry Child said to her rescuer was: "What do you want from me?"
The innkeeper smiled, replying: "To help. What is your name?"

Merry Child -- as she is called now -- is a conflicted person. She was raised to be a confidence trickster and a thief, she fully expects the world to turn on her at every chance it gets. And yet Ameiko has shown her such kindness. The older woman -- as Merry sometimes teasingly calls her -- has helped Merry to hone her artistic abilities and unlock the Bard's arcane heritage. She has given her a job at the Rusty Dragon as well, giving her an opportunity to earn her keep and a place to sleep. Safety; stability; and all in the light. Although she would never willingly admit it, she feels deeply grateful to her rescuer, and she is starting to doubt the conclusions she drew about the world during her stay in the Warrens.
Merry hides her inner turmoil, projecting the image of a playful trickster and a budding artist. She has said several times that she would like to see more of the world, that she is willing to leave Sandpoint behind -- and yet she has not left. Yet.

It has been six years since the Merry Child woke up on the bank of the city's river, and she still has no idea who her parents might be, or even whether any of her relatives still live. They do -- some of them do, at least, and it is a good thing for the Merry Child that they have not found her. Yet.
Somewhere in the city, there is a small manour-house. In that manour-house dwells a family of well-to-do people. They are not quite aristocracy, but they are known to aristocracy -- or rather, to the aristocracy's more subtle retainers. To be blunt, the family specializes in special services. They provide poisons, narcotics and other contraband. If they are paid well enough, they provide knives, inserted into specific individuals. Of such things, politics are made.
Of course the family does not have a monopoly on such 'services', and there have been skirmishes in the shadows. Of course, such skirmishes are not profitable, and so the family that dwells in the manour-house made an arrangement with one of their strongest competitors. A marriage arrangement, where each family would volunteer one scion to be wed to the other, joining the houses into a cohesive unit.
To celebrate and bind the union, each house would also provide a child to be sacrificed to the infernal hierarchies, formalizing the unit. The girl who would become the Merry Child was one of those selected to be sacrificed. If not for her mother and a few other relatives who drew the line at sacrificing their own to devils, she would have ended her life on an unholy altar. Her mother tried to spirit her away from the manour-house, with those few relatives to support her, to get her right out of the city. The rest of the family caught them up on the bridge; there was bloodshed; the Merry Child's mother went over the bridge, still clutching her child in her arms. The fact that her mother held her all the way down is probably the only reason why Merry Child is alive today.

The family in the manour-house has managed to forge their union with their rivals despite all the fuss, but their infernal backers have been... bothersome. A specific life was promised to them, and they have not received it as sacrifice -- nor has it been snuffed out. The family is keeping an eye out for its missing daughter, and they have a great many contacts.