Truly Evenhand's page

Height: 6'3" Weight: 205 lbs
Hair: Black Eyes: Brown

Description:Truly is tall, thin, and disheveled. While he keeps himself clean, he does not particularly care if he gets dirty, so he often bears streaks of mud on cheeks that lie below sweaty hair. His exceptional charm comes not from his looks, though, but from the way he looks at you, or the way he turns his look away.

No one had to tell Truly to stop the violence. These other kids were his friends, orphans like him, but here they were, sober as noonday light, kicking one of the street dogs so hard it had stopped yelping and was just waiting for the suffering to stop. Truly had no chance against the boys. They were older kids. It didn't really occur to Truly that he should cover the stray dog with his body. He just did it.

Although his eyes watered with every punch to his ribs, every kick to his kidneys, he didn't cry out. He whispered in the dog's bloody ear, over and over again, "There, there. You'll be okay."

He pissed blood for a month after. Truly never told those Abadar folks who came around in their gold cloaks and asked about his bruises and cuts. That was between him and the other boys, Truly figured.

He never fit in, even discounting the beatings. Folks in Bridgefront liked to claim they were more civilized than the Old Docks, but folks were nasty just the same. Other kids, even other orphans would stomp neighborhood rats for fun. It was But Truly could hear their squeals of pain, and they sounded to him like the squeals that a human might make. Guards eventually figured out the reason there were so many rats and dogs and cats and birds around the orphanage was that one of the children had been leaving his own food where the animals could find it. Another beating for Truly.

If Truly hadn't been deft with his fingers and nonchalant about helping the others get in and out of places they shouldn't be, he'd never have had any friends. But he took to door work like he'd been born to it, and if he hadn't developed the reputation for being such an oddity, there's no telling which of the unsavory organizations of Korvosa might have swooped him up.

As it was, he took to a far rarer path.

One day, around the time Truly had seen ten summers, an elven druid named Thornspeaker saw Truly feeding a family of cats shortly after Truly had been shooed away from neighbors for the very same activity. The druid spoke to Truly about Gozreh and the circles of druids and urged Truly to come with him to learn how to truly appreciate nature. Truly declined. How could he leave Korvosa? How could he leave his home? Still, Thornspeaker returned through the years and taught Truly what he could, always urging him to leave the city. As the years wound on, Thornspeaker would increasingly find Truly in a tavern somewhere in South Shore. Or Old Korvosa. Or the Shingles. Anywhere a man could dive into his cups, there was a chance of running into the tall, dusky human who talked to everyone.

The final straw was the women.

One day, when Truly had nearly seen twenty summers, Thornspeaker tracked him down. Truly had his arm draped around a half-elf. Last time it had been a human, and the time before that a pair of halflings. With utter contempt, Thornspeaker repudiated Truly, his lip turned up and his blazing eyes locked onto the half-elf girl, who could not stand to meet Thornspeaker's gaze. For Thornspeaker, yearning to stay home was a sufficient explanation to dodge one's calling in the wild. To do so for the pleasures of the flesh was uncouth and beneath his elven graces.

"You have a gift, Truly. This is beneath you," Thornspeaker said.

"Not yet, she's not," Truly replied with a wink.

"How dare you cast off what I have taught you. How dare you burn your finite human days in the name of wastrels."

Truly took a large swig and said, "You came here the samew way I did, however long ago it was. Skin on skin. Eyes locked. Breath heaving. Bodies shuddering. That there is the crucible of all life. You're a smart, old elf. I figured you'd remember something like that."

That was the last Truly saw of Thornspeaker.

The next morning was the last he saw of the half-elf.

It was a few months ago that Truly met Dataena. She was the first tiefling Truly had ever met, although he'd seen them a handful of times in Korvosa through the years. She had walked into the Pantheon of Many, ignoring the stares, and dropped a heavy platinum piece right into the shrine to Cayden Cailean.

"You're staring," she had said. And he had been.

That night went like so many others. She could hold her booze, but she had her hands on him long before either of them weren't seeing straight. All eyes were on them. When he took her upstairs, she brought out the powder. She called it shiver. It didn't take him long to see why. He'd heard about the stuff, but he'd never been with a woman who was using it. That night was seared into his memory. Here she was, part of a demon, her body aflame, her eyes mad with lust for his, her forked tongue dancing all over his body. Truly was reluctant to try shivers himself, but damned if he would turn down a good time! As the drug flooded her brain Dataena murmured into Truly's ear, "I feel like a human. I feel you like a human." To Truly, though, she was exactly what she was, beautiful and wild and fiendish. They watched the sunrise that night. It would never be that good again.

Dataena came around looking for him, sure enough, but she looked worse every time, like the drug was consuming her. Truly tried to ask her where her dealer was, and she recoiled, like he was trying to snatch something away from her. Since Dataena disappeared, the hollow look in her eyes has haunted him. The Korvosan guards refuse to help him-- just another pile of shit from the shit heap in Bridgefront-- but Truly refuses to let this lie. Here was someone else he thought he may well take a beating for. But if Truly's the one who has to stand up to the scum poisoning his city, well, then that's what he'll do.