Appearance

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Personal history

I know I must've had parents at some point, but from as early as I can remember (maybe 4 or 5 years old), I lived on the streets of Pride's Call, surviving off of handouts and whatever I could find; I would sleep in alleyways, struggling to find places to stay warm when the colder seasons came. I knew I wouldn't survive at the rate I was going, and near a breaking point was where I met Andrew. He saw me one night when he ran into an alley to hide from some guards chasing him, and almost tripped over me wrapped in shreds of cloth, shivering in the cold trying to sleep. He introduced himself and helped me gather up what little I had, and led me down to an unfamiliar part of town. I followed him into an abandoned building, then down a long tunnel that was hidden in the basement until we came to his hideout in part of the underground catacombs and was introduced to his group, 4 other orphans and street kids who had either run away from home or been kicked out by families that couldn't afford another mouth to feed. Andrew was a human male, around 17 years old when we first met, and he acted as a sort of parental guardian to all of them; he would enforce the street code that had kept their little family alive in the underbelly of the city.
 
During that period of my life, a typical day had us all working to bring back to our hideout our own share of food or coin. We would do any variety of things: from simple begging, to tag-team theft jobs from stores, and even small contracts from criminal organizations in the city. Even that was not out of the ordinary though, Pride's Call had been on the decline for a while and the only people who were really thriving besides the silk families were usually doing so through illegitimate means. There were a few close calls with the law, and some of the jobs were fairly dangerous, but for the first time I had a group of friends and a sense of purpose.
 
When I was around 14, one of my friends from our group (Jonas, human, rival) told me he had overheard a conversation while delivering for a job to one of the crime groups about a potential lead on stealing a few silk worms off one of the families' properties. He and I both tended to favor high risk/high reward jobs, and began scoping out this property as much as we could to see if it was something we could pull off. If we could steal even one of those worms and find a buyer, we could be set for life. We kept it a secret from Andrew though, assuming he would try and stop us. Eventually we picked a night and sneaked into the estate, using our grappling hooks to climb over the outer wall during a moment we knew the guards would be changing shifts. Making our way around the house to the structures in the back that hid the worms, we made it without issue. A loud alarm began ringing however, before we even got to the door of the first building. Some kind of magical tripwire must've been laid around the whole perimeter. We panicked and sprinted back to the wall we had come from as we heard shouts and guards start giving chase. Jonas and I exchanged brief looks of horror as we realized the wall we had come over still had our grappling hooks on the other side. I gave him a brief nod and shoved him up onto my shoulders, boosting him over just before the guards rounded a corner and aimed their crossbows at me. (fateful moment)
 
I was led by the captain of the guard into the house, and left with two other guards as the captain went to go get the lord of the house. After a few minutes, he returned and told me that I was extremely lucky. The lord dismissed me because of my young age and told the guard to simply turn me over to the Crownsguard of the town to answer for my trespassing. But that I was lucky to get to keep my life. I was brought before the town guards, a few of which recognized me, and thrown into a cell in the city prison. I spent an unknown amount of time there, maybe a few weeks. Eventually, I was let out of my cell by Jonas accompanied by an elven man, who had apparently helped to negotiate my release.
 
Jonas introduced me to the man once we were out, naming him as Master Jhaeros Naekalyn (male, elf, acolyte) ( (JAY-rhos nay-KAY-lynn). They both revealed themselves as members of a secret organization called the Lunar Brotherhood, a hidden group that worships Sehanine the Moon Weaver. I started splitting my time between getting to know the Lunar Brotherhood and this "Moon Weaver," while also trying to do jobs for my family. Jonas helped integrate me fully into the brotherhood, and explained the purpose of the group along with the need for secrecy and the types of work that they did. Master Jhaeros also made a lot of his time available to me, claiming that Sehanine herself had had a hand in my life and the various paths I had taken.
 
Master Jhaeros was not the only leader of the group, as he was formally known as "Jhaeros of Silver," one of five members of a council of "Silver Elders," whom he explained make the major decisions for the Lunar Brotherhood. All members of the council had been with the brotherhood for a half century or more. The master was... not what I would've pictured as an elder of an undercover organization of a forbidden deity. He was almost impossible to read, yet open and forthright in conversation. Whimsical even at times, yet as likely to paralyze you with your pressure points as he was to make you tea and ask to read your palms. We spent much time together, and he taught me everything he knew about the Moon Weaver, and how he had traveled all the way from Lyrengorn in Tal'Dorei to escape his criminal past and start a new life in Wildemount.
 
Master Jhaeros in particular was the Silver Elder responsible for the martial training of the "Shadows," the basic rank of members who ran tasks in the field and served as the hands and feet of the Moon Weaver. With Jonas already having begun previously, the master rapidly pushed me through the training to get me caught up with the rest of the group. Luckily a lot of my existing skill set from my earlier life carried over into the stealth aspects of training, but there was still a lot to learn, and I ended up studying there for several years until I was around 22 years old.
 
Graduating to becoming a Shadow was difficult and pushed me to my limits many times, but thankfully Jonas was there beside me and was approved as a Shadow before me. Once I actually got to go out in the field for the brotherhood, the types of missions the elders would give us were... very foreign to me at first. Sehanine was a benevolent goddess who valued love and freedom, but she also enjoyed trickery and illusion. One assignment had us protecting someone from an assassination, while another had us help a couple that was forbidden by their families to be married to elope out of the city. It definitely took some getting used to compared to my life before.
 
There was one particularly exciting mission that Jonas relayed from the elders to me: to go to a newly uncovered ruin under the city and supposedly find some kind of relic of Sehanine. I made my way under the city through some old tunnels branching off the catacombs, going deeper underground than I had ever been before. Eventually I broke through a partially blocked passage and it opened into a large natural cavern, sloping down to a crumbling pile of small stone structures on the cave floor below. All of a sudden, rocks came loose in the ceiling behind me and collapsed, blocking my exit. After everything seemed to have settled, I searched around looking for some kind of alternate exit or branching tunnel.
 
As I was checking the perimeter, a man probably in his mid-40's, dressed in a dirty green cloak and tattered leather pants, approached me from within the ruins. I was shocked to see someone else down here, but he offered no explanation and gestured for me to sit down and chat. I decided to rest for a while before continuing my search, and we spent a few hours talking about ourselves, our families, the ruins and the Moon Weaver, anything to get our minds off the situation at hand. He seemed confused by some of the names of things I mentioned, but didn't ask any further questions. He reached into his belt and pulled out a bundle, unrolling it to reveal maybe the most unsettling bag I'd ever seen. He explained that this bag of holding had been his good luck charm through every job and his prized possession, having stolen it himself from the vault of a particularly shady politician from a city with a name that I myself didn't recognize. He went on to say, with reluctance, that it seemed his luck had run out and that maybe he had used up all the bag's luck for himself, before passing it over to me. As I reached out and touched the strange leather, I felt a strange sense of how deep we were currently underground, along with a gentle pull towards a part of the wall I hadn't explored yet. As I turned back to him to ask about the sensation, he was nowhere in sight.
 
I went to call out for him and realized I hadn't actually even gotten his name. After cleaning up our camp and my things, I opened the bag and turned it upside down to make sure nothing else was inside, then placed my things inside and rolled it up and put it in my belt, making my way towards the direction the bag had shown me. Passing the last wall of the ruins, I felt a chill over my shoulder. As I turned and looked, a mummified corpse that I hadn't noticed before was sagging on the ground against the building. And it was wearing the exact same outfit the man had been wearing (mysterious secret). Without looking back, I sprinted away following the direction of the bag toward a gap in the wall, which eventually led back to a tunnel leading into the catacombs again. I didn't let myself stop running until I could see the sky again. I went back empty-handed to the brotherhood, unable to complete the mission I'd been given but thankful to be alive; and I refused to offer any information about the experience I'd had down there.
 
There were no other missions like that one for a while, and so I completed all the tasks given to me for another two years or so. But I began to feel a pull to move onward, and for the first time even a sense of wanderlust. I thought back to Master Jhaeros' stories about his adventures and travel earlier in his life and wondered if that was what I was looking for. I approached the subject with him one day, and to to my surprise he seemed to anticipate that very thing. He explained to me the unspoken tradition within the brotherhood of traveling on a sort of self-discovery mission, that every Shadow eventually would be pushed to leave on this quest before being allowed to return. He tossed me a coin purse, a small allowance from the brotherhood's treasury, saying the council would help fund my sending off but that it would be up to me to acquire the resources I needed on the road.
 
Within a week I had packed everything I owned into my bag, said goodbye to my family at the brotherhood and my street family of orphans, and set out on the road out of Pride's Call to wander into my destiny.

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