Nicolai Fortescu's page

Nicolai Fortescu grew up in the slums of Old Korvosa, where he lived with his mother Tatiana (a fortune teller), his father Bogdan (a minstrel in the local taverns) and his sister Katarina. Life was good for the young boy as he did all the things that young boys do. One of the things that Nicolai loved to do was to sit in on the readings that his mother used to do. He would sit quietly in the corner of their tenement room as his mother would bring out her harrow deck and lay the cards out on the table. He listened intently as she described for her clients the portents that the cards signified and what they meant for that person's future. After each reading the client would pay his mother and leave happy, hearing exactly what they wanted to hear in the reading.
Whenever his mother wasn't home Nicolai would often take the harrow deck and lay out the cards to do readings for his friends.

One day one of Nicolai's friends fell to his death while running the Shingles through Bridgetown. A frightened Nicolai told his mother that night that he had used her cards to do a reading for his dead friend and that he had foreseen that accident but couldn't tell his friend that and now that boy was dead. Shaken, Nicolai's mother put the young boy to bed that night with reassurances that it wasn't his fault and there was nothing he could have done to prevent the accident either. That night his parents discussed what to do and decided that whatever it took they would get Nicolai into the Acadamae to learn how to control his Gift.

Time passed and Nicolai began doing readings of his own to help the family make ends meet. As word of his eerily accurate readings began to spread, he soon had more and more clients, some of them wealthy merchants or minor nobility wanting to know their futures. Soon the family had the necessary money to send young Nicolai to study at the Acadamae. Nicolai's stint at the prestigious school didn't last long as he found the rigid environment of the school too stifling, and he dropped out before his first year was completed. Although he didn't make it past his first year Nicolai had learned enough of the basics of magic that he continued to teach himself and soon had honed his craft.

Shortly after his mother's death of fever, with his father staying out in the taverns after his singing gigs drinking most of his take home pay, his sister began running the streets with one of the local street gangs until one night she never came home. Nicolai soon found himself at the Pantheon of the Many praying to Desna for guidance when he heard the most beautiful sound he had ever heard. Turning his head, he saw an angel singing to the goddess' statue in her shrine. The "angel" was a young initiate of Desna named Natalia who smiled shyly at Nicolai when she noticed him looking at her. The two began seeing each other and soon became lovers. They moved into a one room apartment in Midland together. After almost a year passed Nicolai proposed and Natalia accepted. Giving his betrothed his mother's ring Nicolai and Natalia soon settled into wedded bliss, until one night.

One afternoon, Natalia left their apartment to do some shopping in the market while Nicolai entertained a few clients. As darkness began to fall Nicolai began to grow concerned that his wife had not returned yet from shopping. Determined to find his pregnant wife Nicolai grabbed his cloak and headed toward the door only to stop short as someone knocked. With his inner dread growing he opened the door only to be met by two men in the livery of the city guard. His fear confirmed, Nicolai shouted out against fate as the two men asked him to come with them. Dumbstruck Nicolai followed them to any alley not too far from his home. There he found his beloved Natalia face down in the gutter. She had been knifed in the back and left to die. Her purse and its meager belongings as well as her wedding ring were missing.

Devastated, Nicolai sank into a deep depression and soon his morose readings began chasing his clients away. Destitute, Nicolai began wandering the warrens of Bridgetown hoping someone would take his life as they had taken Natalia's. It wasn’t the solace of death that Nicolai found on the streets but the comfort of dreams. He began taking the drug Shiver and in his dreams he, Natalia, and their child lived a happy and loving life. Nicolai became so desperate for his dream life that he kept taking more and more Shiver to stay asleep. Soon the line between the waking world and his dreaming was erased and Nicolai was addicted beyond hope. It became so bad that an officer of the watch, one of the one’s who had informed him of his wife’s death, named Sergeant Grau Soldado found him near death in one of the city’s gutters.

Grau took pity on the man and took him to his sister-in-law Tayce’s house in Trail’s End where the family nursed him back to health. It took several weeks for Nicolai’s body to cleanse itself of the drug. It was during this time that Nicolai began talking with the residents of Trail’s End and soon discovered that one of the sources of Shiver on the streets was a small-time crime lord named Gaedren Lamm. Taking his information to the local guard he was rebuffed and told that the guard had more pressing concerns, such as keeping the city stable during this time of the King’s illness.

Nicolai took it upon himself to track down this Gaedren Lamm and began using his inner sight and his Harrow deck to try and divine his whereabouts, to no avail. It was during one of these readings that Nicolai discovered a strange Harrow card, one with a backing different from his, shuffled into his deck. Turning it over his eyes went wide with shock…

Level 0:
Acid Splash
Arcane Mark
Dancing Lights
Detect Magic
Detect Poison
Flare
Ghost Sound
Grasp
Light
Mage Hand
Mending
Message
Open/Close
Prestidigitation
Ray of Frost
Read Magic
Resistance

Level 1:
Color Spray
Enlarge Person
Grease
Heightened Awareness
Mage Armor
Magic Missile
Shield