Ezra

Ezra is the Crew’s musician. A once-renowned bard from Mons Mirror who made his career through aggrandizement and plagiarism. In a single selfless act, he erased the better part of his career from history, and asked to travel with the Corsairs in hopes of finding inspiration for a song he can truly call his own.
Growing up among a Xahir tribe called the Travelers subjected Ezra to powerful songs that could alter the fabric of time and reality, which he shamelessly stole. He has promised not to use them after a prior incident with near catastrophic results, but isn't above tweaking time a little bit to help out his friends.
While trying to be better, a career full of grifts and shortcuts often leads Ezra to oversell his abilities. Although, he often uses those talents to talk up the party and boost there charisma when they remain in one city for a long time. It also provided him with a knack for copying songs that his comrades learn or that he hears on their travels.

Skills Perform 1d12
Chorus Meter: 10
Chorus Bonus (+2/success)
Interruption Modifier: +4
Dodge 1d8

Traits and Edges Pace 6”
Toughness 4

Rim Legs: +2 to skill tests in naught gravity

Serial Plagiarist: Knows all songs known by the party.

Opening Act: Grants +1 to Charisma after spending night in port, and additional +1 for each week spent there.

Songs: The Orbiter's Wife, Bolero of Haste, Saga of Baird the Bold.

Early Life

Ezra grew up on the Rim as part of a nomadic Xahir tribe. He trained to be a member of an order called the Travelers, bards imparted with mystical knowledge that allows them to manipulate time and reality through music. The Travelers were entrusted with the sacred duty of healing rifts in time using their powers.
The idea of a regimented life in service to the Travelers appealed little to Ezra, so he left his tribe to strike out on his own. Venturing to the Homyn cultural hub of Mons Mirror, he gained admission to the Academy's College of Songs.
There, he met a fellow musician named Lorian. Ezra put minimal effort into his compositions, instead relying on improvisation and showmanship to squeak by. Lorian, however, was an ardent devotee of musical academia, almost to the point of ignoring the art form's aesthetic qualities.

A Life-Changing Performance

n spite of, or perhaps because of, their differences, Ezra and Lorian became fast friends. They both aspired to play in the tavern that sat beside the College of Songs called the Orphean. The tavern’s main stage, called Hyde’s Stage, was famous throughout the system as being a crucible of magical song-craft. Aspiring musicians would spend years auditioning to obtain their silver pipes, which gave them permission to use the stage to compose powerful new songs. The only rule that governed these performances was that the same song could never be played on Hyde’s stage twice.
Eventually, Lorian and Ezra took their shot on the same night. Hyde's stage saw a number of performances both mesmerizing and strange, including that of a fellow student named Murphy, who performed using a choir of cats. Lorian performed a composition that he had spent years preparing.
Ezra, who by this point had dropped out of the College of Songs, planned to do what he always did and wing it. Intimidated by his friend and rivals performance, chose to plagiarize a song he had learned among the Travelers growing up. The song contained ancient and powerful magic, that stopped the very flow of time itself. While his performance was mere mimicry, to an audience far removed from the Rim and unfamiliar with the Traveler's secret rites, Ezra seeemed a prodigious and unprecedented talent.
Lorian was furious that Ezra had bested him so effortlessly, although deep down he could not deny the beauty of the performance. It didn't help that Ezra's performance charmed his way into the bed of the witch Calliope, a proprieter of a section of town catering to daemons and warlocks called Little Mephisto, whom both Ezra and Lorian had been courting. Lorian descended deeper into his studies, trying to craft music that would best Ezra with near flagellating dedication.
Ezra, while never earning the respect of the hierarchical composers of the College of Songs, became a local celebrity. He wound up becoming the proprieter of the Orphean, establishing himself as a fixture among Mons Mirror's music community while putting in little work.

Recruitment

The Party came in contact with Ezra when an Anduran prince who happened to be passing by the Orphean on the night of his fateful performance hired an information broker to try to track down the song. Ezra's charm and weasly cunning proved ineffective against the Corsairs' interrogation, and he eventually copped to plagiarizing his song from the Xahir.
Unbeknowns to Ezra, Lorian had been helping the Corsairs recreate the composition. He unconvincingly claimed to have moved past personal jealousies and wanted the song for its potential contribution to academic musical theory. He suffered a crisis of confidence upon realizing the elegance of Ezra’s composition, and admitted that Ezra, despite putting minimal effort into his musical training, was the better musician.
To cheer Lorian up, Simon revealed to Lorian that the song wasn’t written by Ezra, but that he had plagiarized it from the Xahir people. Lorian was considerably angered by this but continued to work until he cracked the composition. In an ecstatic moment of equal parts joy and jealousy, Lorian explained that the song did much more than he had originally thought, and that Ezra was foolish to waste such a powerful composition on simply trying to impress the music fans of Mons Mirror. With a few tweaks, Lorian realized that the song could do much more than stop time, but it could rewrite it. Before the Corsairs could intervene, Lorian began to play and they found the world around them begin to disappear.
Lorian used the Traveler's Song to rewrite history and create a society where music was predominant. Those without musical gifts were relegated to the Dumb Quarter, and Lorian reigned supreme as the High Composer. Ezra in this timeline was a discord musician, a rebellious bard who played music and instruments that were not sanctioned by High Composer Lorian.
He managed to rescue the Party from the Dumb Quarter after Lorian's guards captured them. A Traveler from Ezra's tribe named Claraintercepted them at that point. She explained that Lorian's artificial history was coming apart at the seams, and he had to host a massive symphony to retain his artificial world. If Ezra could play the composition at the symphony, he could rewrite time so that history went back to its natural state.
Together, Ezra and the Party teamed up with alternate versions of the Nomad's crew, who in this timeline were all musicians to thwart Lorian. They were also joined by Princess Halle and Murphy, who used their respective sub-par and bizarre musical talents to interrupt Lorian's symphony.
When the discord musicians managed to finish their song, Ezra took control of the timeline. The Xahir traveler told him to set things right, without making additional changes, to which Ezra agreed with a wink. He told the Corsairs that they would be able to pick up the song they were looking for in the Orphean, and that he had found a way they could finish their job without putting the timeline in further jeopardy.
The Corsairs followed Ezra’s directions and returned to the Orphean, only to find that its proprietor was not Ezra, but Lorian. They questioned him about the events leading up to the symphony, but this Lorian had no recollection of them. Apparently, in this new timeline, he had earned his silver pipes several years ago in Ezra’s place, and Ezra had never played the traveler’s song on Hyde’s Stage.
The Corsairs returned to the Nomad where they found Ezra on the docks waiting for them. He said that he had decided to give his music career another go and try to find fame on his own without taking shortcuts. He asked to go with the Corsairs on his journey to find inspiration for a career-making song that he could call his own.

Adventures Aboard the Nomad

Ezra gets along well with those on the Nomad, and often draws on their adventures as a source of inspiration. He hopes to expand his artistic repetoires to write a novel about the Party's adventures. While not much good in a fight, and generally a coward, the Party sometimes manages to convince Ezra to accompany them to shore or take the deck during a battle and boost their combat prowess with a song or two.
He often plays the spheres' most famous shanty, The Orbiter's Wife. When the situation calls for it, he also plays a modified version of the Traveler's Song called the Bolero of Haste, which allows the Party to take extra actions in combat.
The party's travels across the spheres have also boosted Ezra's repetoire and exposure. On Jotun, Ezra visited a Skald Circle where he learned the Saga of Baird the Bold, a song that can boost the luck and combat abilities of a single combatant in battle. On Sera, Ezra came up with a political smear campaign song against Sir Reglas's electoral opponent called "Everyone Hates Flavian." It doesn't have any special powers, but it sure is catchy.