Tavir Nethuani's page

Tradebay City is a wonderful place where you can buy anything your heart desires, if you have the gold to afford it. Growing up an orphan in the city Tavir most certainly did not have the gold to afford a comfortable life with access to the various goods and services the shipping industry attracted. Tavir might not have survived life on the streets were it not for Uncle Horval, a halfling man who watched over a number of street urchins in the city. The man obviously wasn't uncle to any of the kids but the older kids called him that and by the time Tavir was old enough to really think about it he no longer questioned it. Horval was not a gentle man, he was manipulative, demanding and blunt. But he taught all the kids under his wing that sometimes you had to be tough if you wanted to survive. He showed them how to fend for themselves. Horval was a master of disguise. He would often go out with the children, appearing to be a small human child, and showed them how to pick marks likely to beg for coins from. And how to slit the pockets of a mark that wasn't paying enough attention while the beggar distracted them. He told them that gold makes the world go round and that while the rich at times guard it jealously, they were also more likely to spend frivolously to amuse themselves. So he taught them how to be amusing.

Tavir was scrawny as a child, partly due to his elven side, partly just due to the fact that food wasn't exactly plentiful. He wasn't good at the hard labor side of things. Acting like a street tough and the like just didn't come as naturally to him. But he was clever and would soak up anything Horval felt like teaching him. So he learned to be entertaining, he found a mostly hollow wooden branch and turned it into a crude flute. He would play for passing nobles or tell stories he made up on the spot. Tavir was a fantastic liar and beggar. So while he wasn't always strong enough to make a run for it after a purse was stolen he could often sob convincingly enough to get let off the hook if they were caught. But people took less and less pity as he grew older. After all, who cares about a starving teenager, its hard enough to pity a small child with his ribs sticking out. After one particularly bad beating by the city watch when he got caught being distraction for another thief he decided he needed to go about things differently. He had been saving up some of his money for a while, just so that he could afford to not get out and beg for a couple days. After thinking about it for a bit he finally took a chance and spent all of it on a fine tunic like the young pages, messenger boys and various apprentices around town wore. Then he began to plan out his story.

The next day he entered a merchants shop, his eyes red as though he had only recently been crying. He explained that he had been robbed on the way over, and the money stolen from him that was suppose to buy some bread from the bakery to take with him. Starting to cry again now he explained that he would likely lose his apprenticeship over it. The bruises were still fresh on him, although they were from the guards the day before, the woman running the shop took pity on him. She handed him a loaf of bread and even a few coppers as his "change" and told him to be more careful next time. As soon as he was out the door he broke into a grin. Over the next few years he refined his stories and worked around the city so that his face wouldn't be recognized too much. He made more disguised and telling tall tales to people than he ever had as a simple thief. And something about it just felt so right. Perhaps his fey heritage calling out to him, but he seemed to be buoyed by the trickery and deception. People laughed just a bit harder at his jokes than they should and his words cut deeper, affected people more profoundly than was normal. Although at the time he didn't know it, that was the start of his magic awakening within him. He would unconsciously hone that skill for quite some time before realizing exactly what it was he was doing.

That confidence ultimately cost him though. He grew exceptionally confidant when he was eighteen and managed to infiltrate a party among several high class merchants while disguised as lesser nobility. He was able to steal a number of valuables but was ultimately caught by the head of the guards. He fled from the mansion but the next five days were spent in hiding and the commotion showed no signs of dying down. He eventually had to escape Tradebay City by bribing his way onto a foreign boat headed towards Rydwyrna. He would eventually discover that the party he had stumbled onto had been thrown by one of the more powerful merchant guilds in the city and he had stolen the personal belongings of one of the most influential dwarven merchant clans. Including, though he didn't realize it when he shoved it into a bag, a gilded cage housing a small white mouse. When he discovered this he tried to set the mouse free but he just seemed to stare up at him, wink and then crawl up his pant leg then into his pocket. Having never had a pet before, Tavir decided he might as well keep the creature since it seemed to like him and he felt bad about the idea of just tossing it off the ship.

Rydwyrna is a massive city and it has taken Tavir several years to get a good feel for it. He has set himself up as a traveling storyteller, spreading completely fabricated tales for the listening ears of adventurers and commoners alike in taverns and ale houses all over the city. On the side he has kept up his skills at various acts of skulduggery but he has been much less daring and arrogant after being run out of town. He has even managed to grow a bit of a goatee that helps his face look slightly less elven and angular so that on the extreme off chance someone from Tradebay City were to see him they wouldn't associate him with the man who stole from the merchant guilds all those years ago. But perhaps the biggest benefit to living in the big city of Rydwyrna is the fact that he managed to find someone who could tell him a bit more about his magic. The bardic enchantments he unconsciously weaved with his stories were able to be shaped to more specific and potent purposes with his training. He was able to pick up enough of these tips to work out a lot of the basics on his own, always with an ear open for a new story or tale from adventurers. After all, it was always nice to trade fake information for something real and useful. But he has reached a bit of an impass. There is only so much you can learn from tavern and bar gossip. As a storyteller he lives a bit more comfortably than he ever did on the streets. Yet he has seen how the nobility and wealthy merchant class lives and he longs for that easy life as well. Tavir wants more and is eager to do whatever it takes to find it.