Siviro Aasharze's page

Male Tiefling Rogue (Unchained, Knife Master) 1
CG Medium Outsider (Native)
Init: +4; Senses: Perception +5; darkvision
------------------------------
DEFENSE
------------------------------
AC: 20, touch 14, flat-footed 16 (+4 armor, +4 Dex, +2 natural)
HP: 9
Fort: +0, Ref: +6, Will: +0
Resist: Fire 5, cold 5, electricity 5
------------------------------
OFFENSE
------------------------------
Speed: 30 ft
Melee: Dagger +4 (1d4 P)
Ranged: Dagger +4 (1d4 P)
------------------------------
STATISTICS (20-pt)
------------------------------
Str: 10, Dex: 18, Con: 10, Int: 16, Wis: 10, Cha: 12
Base Atk: +0; CMB: +0; CMD: 14
Traits: Clever Wordplay, Underling, Urban Sleuth (Professor Mangvhune), Coward
Feats: Armor of the Pit
Skills:
Acrobatics - 1 rank (+8)
Bluff - 1 rank (+7)
Diplomacy - 1 rank (+7)
Disable Device - 1 rank (+11)
Disguise - 1 rank (+5)
Escape Artist - 1 rank (+8)
Intimidate - 1 rank (+5)
Knowledge (Local) - 1 rank (+8)
Perception - 1 rank (+4)
Profession (Driver, Background) - 1 rank (+4)
Sleight of Hand (Background) - 1 rank (+8)
Stealth - 1 rank (+10)
Use Magic Device - 1 rank (+5)
Languages: Common, Infernal, Abyssal, Elven, Halfling, Draconic
------------------------------
SPECIAL ABILITIES
------------------------------
Fiendish Resistance, Darkness 1/day, Skilled, Prehensile Tail, Hidden Blade, Finesse Training, Sneak Stab (1d8/1d4)
------------------------------
GEAR/POSSESSIONS
------------------------------
Money: 6 GP
Chain Shirt
Dagger (7)
Pickpocket's Outfit
Backpack
Bedroll
Belt pouch
Caltrops
Chalk (10)
Flint and steel
Grappling hook
Iron pot
Mess kit
Mirror
Pitons (10)
Rope (50 ft)
Soap
Masterwork Thieves' tools
Torches (10)
Trail rations (5 days)
Waterskin

A young man of twenty-three to twenty-five, thin from undernourishment, with black hair, red skin, and yellow serpent's eyes with nictitating membranes. Despite his malnourished frame, he stands only an inch or two below most, giving him a lanky appearance. The short horns sprouting from his brow, the hooves that serve as his feet, and the whiplike tail trailing behind him make his fiendish nature clear. The inside of his mouth bears three rows of jagged bone plates, which serve him as teeth, as well as a forked tongue often rasped raw from sucking at hard candies. At all times, he carries a journal with him, generally in an inside pocket of a vest or coat, which he constantly takes notes in when he learns interesting facts. When working as a driver, he generally wears the red and black livery of a servant of House Tanessen, though he finds it uncomfortable, frequently tugging at the collar. When he can, he prefers to wear the clothes he purchased in the Redroof District, simple, drab peasant's clothes with a vest full of hidden pockets. No matter his outfit, he almost always wears the boots his father purchased for him, which bear little resemblance to what most people consider "boots," designed as they are for his hooved feet. Both the workmanship and the quality of the materials is poor - amateurishly tanned leather, flimsy, low-grade iron nails, and fraying secondhand laces. At any time, he generally has at least four knives hidden somewhere on his person, and he is deadly with a short blade.

By nature witty and affable, with a kind heart. Though he puts on a tough facade, he is almost constantly afraid of the harrowing situations he faces. He faithfully worships Desna, and prays to her for courage before he enters combat. He has an insatiable sweet tooth - though there was little sugar in Devil's Nursery, where he grew up, as a servant, he has been able to afford a small bag of cheap hard candies as an occasional treat to himself. He quite enjoys reading, and he has an impressive vocabulary, but he often mispronounces more complex words, as he's never heard them used - for instance, he pronounces "valet" as "val-ett." His pay is decent, but he lives fairly frugally, sending most of it back to his family in the Devil's Nursery slums. He feels that he has little to complain about as regards his new life - he has enough to eat, a comfortable cot in the servant's quarters, and enough pay to send home. He enjoys nicknames - his own is "Siv," his sister is "Sav," and Luculla Gens is "Lucy," and he quickly reduces the names of his friends to a syllable or two of identification, as a sign of their familiarity. He is fairly well-read, especially for a slum denizen, and he is accomplished at swearing - he can speak six languages fluently, and he knows the curse words of thirteen more.

Siviro grew up on the streets of Kintargo, the son of Volio Aasharze and his wife Letta. While Volio was a simple innkeeper (The Dragon and Devil Alehouse) and his wife a scribe, the family had its own share of secrets - Volio had contacts in the Andoran Steel Falcons, and Letta had once been enslaved to an official in the Imperial Ministry of Historical Accuracy before escaping. Her initial plan was to flee the country by way of Kintargo, but when she tried to find a place to rest in Volio's tavern, he recognized the danger she was in and hid her in the hidden basement beneath the alehouse - frequently used in his own father's not-so-secret role as a smuggler - until the danger had passed, and the two fell in love and eventually married. The Dragon and Devil was something of a hotbed of what could be called rebellious sentiments - many regulars were affiliated with the Cloven Hoof Society or had Andoren sympathies - though the tavern's customers generally kept quiet about their affiliations, and there was little to connect the Aasharze family with the rebels. In addition to his mother and father, his family included his older brother Valkar, a tall, handsome young man, and his twin sister Savare, a small, quiet girl who has a passion for raising animals. His family's infernal nature relegated them to life in the tiefling-dominated Devil's Nursery slum, but despite the district's destitution, the family rarely went hungry, so while his older brother Valkar was trained in the family business, the younger two Aasharze children took to picking pockets in the wealthier Redroof District proper to help their friends eat. Letta, knowing the value of a strong education, ensured that all three of the children were literate in a wide range of languages, quite uncommon for slum denizens, in the hopes that their education might help them better their places in life. Meanwhile, Volio, who as a relatively wealthy citizen of Devil's Nursery was a minor community leader, taught his children how to speak to others and convince them to arrive at your point of view.

Siviro and Savare eventually joined the Lostlings, a local street gang, becoming cutpurses and thugs for the group. In the process, Siviro frequently spoke with Zada Sirakil, a Varisian woman who worked with the Cloven Hoof Society. Zada showed the young Siviro kindness, even though the first interaction between the two consisted of his attempt to rob her, and the young Siviro grew to question his choice to remain a criminal, beginning to worship Zada's deity, Desna. It was during this crucial time of uncertainty in Siviro's life that tragedy struck the Aasharze family - Siviro's older brother Valkar, an innkeeper in the family business, was brutally murdered by one of the Temple Hill Slasher's twisted admirers. This was a turning point for the living Aasharze children - they decided to leave the dangerous criminal life, with Savare getting a job as a ratcatcher, and Siviro began to collect information about the infamous Temple Hill Slasher and his methods, so as to work against those who wish to do such evil.

After a lengthy process, Siviro signed on as the driver for Kesra Tanessen, a young, rebellious noble scion. He faithfully served Kesra as a driver, but in what little free time he had, he snuck into the Tanessen manor's library, reading books on any topic he could get his hands on. In what historical texts remained, he found more information on the Temple Hill Slasher and his crimes, re-igniting his dream of revenge for his brother - he began to catalogue the scraps of lore surrounding the infamous murderer in a notebook he carries with him at all times. One of his most potent memories from his time as a driver is when he swiped a sugar cube from a tea tray in the kitchen, curious as to what it tasted like. Delighted with the unfamiliar taste of sugar, Siviro sought out a shop selling such confections, eventually finding the Sweet Tooth confectionery in Old Kintargo. He grew to love the hard candies sold at the shop, treasuring them as an occasional treat, and he became friends with the shop's proprietor, the one-eyed Luculla Gens. Kesra Tanessen was always something of a firebrand, constantly getting involved with subversive elements and such, and when she heard about the Aria Park protest, she was determined to attend - Siviro, fearing both for her safety and his own, decided to tag along in the hopes of keeping his employers' daughter out of trouble.

Volio Aasharze - LG tiefling barkeeper. Siviro's father. Contrary to the stereotypical 'fat, jolly innkeeper,' Volio is an austere, straight-laced man who despises vice of all sorts - drink especially, but he doesn't have the money to do anything other than the family business. He waters down his ale by almost half most days, but it's cheap enough that even the impoverished residents of the Devil's Nursery can afford a tankard or two after a long day's work. He's something of a community leader of sorts, serving as a voice of moderation to counter the impulsiveness of some of the younger tieflings in the Nursery. He's picked up the faith of Iomedae from a dockworker friend of his who serves as a contact with the Steel Falcons, but he tolerates the Desnan faith of his wife and children.

Letta Aasharze - CG tiefling innkeeper. Siviro's mother. A former enslaved scribe in the Imperial Ministry of Historical Accuracy, when she was ordered to burn a handful of 'heretical' Desnan religious musings, she squirreled them away instead, reading them and gaining an appreciation for the faith of Desna and the philosophies of freedom it espoused. Fleeing to the city of Kintargo, she managed to find refuge with Volio Aasharze, a local tavernkeeper. She quite enjoys stargazing, making complex star charts as a hobby (and oftentimes selling these charts to navigators or sailors for an extra few silvers) and she's chafed at the Thrunes' curfew.

Savare Aasharze - CN tiefling ratcatcher. Siviro's sister. Where Siviro has always been fairly talkative, Savare rarely speaks more than a dozen words in a day - she loves dogs, and she keeps a pair of staid terriers to help her with her task. She has become uncharacteristically verbose (sometimes up to three dozen words in a day) about the new governor's proclamations - while his bounty on small pests seems generous, more often than not it causes greedy citizens to get injured by the vicious rats that plague Kintargo's cellars, and Savare and the city's handful of other ratcatchers have been run off their feet by the myriad rat attacks throughout the city.

Arkose Malacit - CN tiefling gang leader. The boss of the Lostlings gang that both Siviro and his sister were briefly parts of. The Lostlings were never as destructive as some of the other gangs of the Nursery, taking care only to rob outsiders and doing odd jobs around the slum as often as not, but Arkose's pride in his tiefling heritage eventually twisted into an undying hatred for humanity, causing Siviro and his sister to leave the gang.

If trade is the lifeblood of a city, then the streets are its veins. The phrase was an odd one, to be sure, gleaned from a half-remembered sermon by some stuffy Abadaran preacher in a city long ago, but in her many years as an itinerant healer, Zada Sirakil had found a strange sort of sense to it. The streets were the veins of a city, with all that entailed - at first glance, the expansive boulevards of the luxuriously appointed Greens district seemed to be markers of a glorious city, free of tyranny and strife, but when you left behind the vast administrative organs of the city, you began to see the decay, sprawling out like a vast sore as the city grew bloated, too bloated to care for all its people. Of all the streets of Kintargo, the cramped alleyways of the Devil's Nursery were among the worst - fitting, given the average Kintargan's opinion on the area's inhabitants. Yet unlike the cruel doctrine of the city's Asmodean temples, with their ironbound hierarchies, Zada believed that all were worthy of kindness, even the devil-blooded who made the Nursery their home. Her wanderings had taken her to the city of Kintargo just a few months ago - though Chelish by name, the city was famous (or infamous, depending on one's loyalty to the ruling dynasty) for the lax control the Imperial Heartlands were able to exert over their far-flung holding, and she had believed (rightly or wrongly) that her Desnan faith would not be quite as vehemently hunted down as it would have been elsewhere. Her work with the downtrodden quickly led her to the Cloven Hoof Society, a small but enthusiastic group devoted to helping what was perhaps the most destitute neighborhood that Kintargo had to offer. Her services to the people of the Nursery would have been considered little more than begging in Kintargo's wealthier districts - telling stories, tending wounds, crafting poultices and other remedies for scrapes and bruises - but for Zada Sirakil, the looks of gratitude on the faces of people unused to such help from outsiders was better than any coin the noble families of the Greens had to offer.

A pacer by nature, Zada's feet had always seemed to have a mind of their own as her thoughts wandered, bearing her to and fro on the whims of chance. Only when her idle musings were interrupted by the sound of a knife coming free of its sheath did she realize that her wanderings had led her into a dark alleyway, far from what few roads ran through the Nursery. "Okay, lady, turn around real slow now..." Turning, she saw that a pair of tiefling youths, lean with hunger, had stepped in to block the exit of the alleyway, amateurishly made knives in their clawed hands. The taller of the two, a boy with hooves for feet, stepped forward, brandishing his knife. "Look, lady, we don't want to have to hurt you, so hand over your coin purse!" Behind him, the other youth, a girl with matted hair, nodded mute assent, holding her knife uncertainly in two hands. Others, arguably those better suited to survival, would have seen only the knives in the hands of the youths - no more than teenagers, really - but what Zada saw first and foremost was two people in need, barely even registering the taller one's ultimatum. "Oh, by all the gods, look at you two - you're skin and bones! No, what you two need is a hot meal, if I'm any judge." The young man grinned, raising his knife threateningly. "Yeah, you better believe... um..." He trailed off, caught off-guard by her unexpected response - lowering his weapon, a pair of translucent membranes sheeted over his eyes in a sideways blink as he processed her words. "...Run that by me again, lady?" Zada's shook her head, glancing back and forth between the two young tieflings. "Why, you two are practically starving! Well, I'll certainly put a stop to that!" Looking around the alleyway to get her bearings, the healer smiled. "Just a few streets over is the place where I work - we'll get some food in you in no time. It's this way - follow me!" Setting off down the alleyway, her bewildered would-be muggers in tow, Zada looked between the two youths. "So tell me, what are your names?" The taller tiefling rushed to keep up with the healer, every one of her long strides equaling about one and a half of his own. "Siv the Sh... my name's Siv, lady." He nods to the shorter girl, cantering along at a half-run to keep pace with the other two. "That there's my sister Sav. She don't talk much." Zada smiled at the two siblings. "Well, Siv and Sav, it's very nice to meet you. It seems chance smiled on you today - smiled on me, too, because I got to help you get what you need!"

----

"And do either of you have any experience as a groom?" The impeccably-dressed human peered over his spectacles at the two applicants, one eyebrow twitching upwards as he examined Siviro's ragged vest and poorly-made peasants' clothes with the air of a master painter inspecting goblin graffiti. Before the young man could speak up, the other applicant, a brown-haired human with an Isger accent, interjected. "Of course - I've watched the drivers in my grandfather's caravan for years." His eyes flicked to Siviro as his lip curled into a sneer. "I don't imagine you'd see many horses in Devil's Nursery." Siviro shrunk under the glare, but he returned his attention back to the stablemaster in time to stammer out a passable lie. "I've got some experience. I used to work for a butcher, and I could calm down oxen about to go to the chopping block." The corner of the stablemaster's mouth twitched upwards in a smirk. "Let us see, then." Without another word, he led the two applicants out to the back of the stable, where a simple track had been set up on the manor's green, an elderly horse tethered alongside it. "Whichever of you two can best guide a horse along this track, you'll get the job." The Isgeri man simply smiled, mounting the horse with a practiced air and steering it along the simple track using only his knees. The horse, old and well-trained, slowly plodded along as directed. As the man hopped down from the horse, he shoved the reigns into Siviro's hand with a sneer. "Your turn, 'spawn."

Siviro approached the horse with caution, tentatively reaching out to touch its flank and jerking his hand back as the horse's eyes revolved in panic. The Tanessen stable was the only one he could find that would even hear him out, making at least a pretense of looking past his horns and hooves to his actual qualifications. If he lost the job, he would have nothing left. Irritated, he moved up to the horse again, whispering in its ear as he had seen accomplished grooms do - though his words were a good deal less comforting. "Look, you stupid horse, I need this job. If I don't get it, my family goes hungry. If I don't get it because of you... I know a few tanners in Devil's Nursery who don't ask questions." The horse's eyes revolved again, but before Siviro could mount it, it bolted. The young tiefling looked apologetically back at the stable master, only to glance towards his horse as he saw the sneers on their faces turn to surprise. Behind him, the horse was galloping across the green at full speed, panic in its eyes as it maneuvered, riderless, around the track. After a moment, Siviro turned back to the stunned stablemaster. "...So does this mean I get the job?"

Several years ago, his father was investigated due to his connection to several members of Andoran's Steel Falcons who had been stealing slaves and smuggling them to freedom in Andoran. In truth, Arminio was an associate of the Steel Falcons, and the basement of his alehouse was a safe house for the Steel Falcon agents. Under Chelish torture, one of the Steel Falcon agents mentioned the Dragon and Devil as a safehouse, as part of a long list of sympathizers and collaborators the abolitionists had help from. Noticing the torturer's report while catching rats in a government building, Savare took initiative to protect her father, "accidentally" knocking into a pair of clerks carrying papers and setting the incriminating file in the middle of the wrong pile, documents to be taken to storage. The paper has been gathering dust in the archives for years, but Siviro worries that it could be found, and he wishes to try and find it and destroy it if he can.