Narciso Silvertongue's page

Born in the suburbs of Enclave to a popular pair of actors, Narciso Silvertongue (the family's surname, not his choosing) grew up with frequent visits to the city, social events with the creme de la creme of Enclave's art scene, and all the freedom to explore the city that a young man could want. Although his unusual heritage was sometimes remarked upon, his human father's popularity on the stage was such that most people he knew treated him with respect and affection during his childhood years.
That changed when Narciso was twelve. His father, Hector, had had him late in life, and as her husband aged, Narciso's elven mother Shoshanee found it harder and harder to love him in the way that she knew she should. Her dissatisfaction and loneliness--she was close to Hector's age in years, but nowhere near in maturity--eventually led to a fling with an elven civic official, which resulted in Narciso's younger half-sister Elyanna, a full-blooded elf. Though Hector was crushed, and their social life essentially killed as rumors of the affair and the scandal spread, he did the responsible thing and adopted Elyanna into his own family, trying to patch up his relationship with Shoshanee. Unfortunately, Shoshanee died just a year after Elyanna's birth, leaving both Hector and her son without a sense of closure or reconciliation.

It was, then, a disaffected and spiritually adrift Narciso who first fell in with the Flame of Kel Sohn at the age of 18. A friend of his father's--an elderly elf named Kayalin--introduced Narciso to this anarchist group, which holds that the Peace that ended the Great War was an insult to the many lives lost and the senselessness of the event itself, and particularly that lost Kel Sohn deserves "righteous vengeance" for their losses. Narciso was attracted to their philosophy and the romance of their romanticized antebellum worldview, but he joined the group primarily because Kayalin asked him to help them steal an immensely valuable jewel from the temple of the monks who were just beginning their political takeover of Enclave. Although their attempt was unsuccessful, Narciso developed a taste for danger and for the life of secret opposition to the monks, whom he sees as stuffy and hidebound.

Life as an agent of the Flame had its upsides: Narciso thrived on the danger and the risque charm being even rumored to be involved in such events gave him. He also fell in love with a gorgeous red-headed young woman, half-elf like him, named Kieyanna Summersbane, a cat burglar who worked for the Flame. He was delighted when he found his feelings requited, and he and Kieyanna enjoyed an all-too-brief period of passionate romance and danger together.

But then two things happened that changed everything. First Narciso, tired of Kayalin's boasting of his mental and intuitive prowess, decided to casually fail to pass on information that he normally would have. Let the elderly elf work on his own for once and see how far he got, he decided. The result was the monks knocking on Kayalin's door one night, demanding to speak to him about the actions of the Flame, which at that point was well-known to be behind a series of robberies, vandalism of officials' offices, and even one (mercifully and intentionally victimless) arson.

But Kayalin proved more desperate and fanatical than anyone had imagined. When confronted by the monks, he set off a cache of alchemical bombs he had stored in his home, setting his home ablaze and killing himself, two other Flame agents, and the monks who had come calling in the initial explosion. Twelve civilians died in the fire, and suddenly the hunt for the Flame of Kel Sohn was very, very real and very urgent indeed.

The Flame agents dispersed almost immediately, fanning out over the countryside and disappearing. But before they did so, word spread through the organization that it was Narciso, Narciso Silvertongue, who had betrayed their leader. Narciso managed to avoid any Flame agents and escaped the city to meet Kieyanna in the suburbs, at a hotel that had been the location of many a tryst.

In the six months since then, Narciso has been steadily working his way toward Kel Fair, where Kieyanna promised to meet him. He dreams of nothing but her, his need to avoid the agents of the Flame (it was always rumored that there was a Flame branch in every city on the continent), and a simpler, happier time. He's arrived in the city with a bit of gold in his pockets and immediately begun looking for his love...