Claudia Morrigan
Alignment: Chaotic neutral
Age: 23-24 (Not entirely sure of her actual age)
Background:
Where Claudia was born is unimportant to her, it is more than likely that she came into the world on a cheap, rickety bed in a low rate tavern or even worse in a back alley of a Specularum street.
Claudia spent most of her childhood on the streets of Specularum. Her mother, Elissa, moved between Taverns taking various menial jobs and on occasion other more unsavoury practices to earn coin when need be. However no matter where they went, they never settled for long. Claudia was always struck by how different her mother seemed to other women, she was small, slight and well-spoken, a poor combination for the life of a tavern wench. Other people unfortunately seemed to notice this as well and they were robbed or swindled numerous times during their travels.
Elissa Vorloi, as Claudia can remember her, was a good mother for all her lack of physical strength. Despite their sporadic lifestyle, Elissa made sure to that she taught Claudia to read and write at a young age.
As she grew older Claudia began to notice that the other families in the slum district had numerous relatives, whereas she only had her mother. Confused by this, she asked her mother where the rest of her family was. Elissa told her that her grandparents were dead; she refused point blank to speak of Claudia’s father. Elissa made Claudia swear never to speak of the subject again.
So they lived as best as could for few more years. Claudia was received more education on and off from charitable institutions. Most of her practical skills however she learnt from the other street urchins. By the time she was 10 years old, Claudia had grown into lint, wiry girl who could climb almost anything. She learnt to fight from scraps with kids who thought her they could take advantage of her naturally delicate features and skinny frame. She learnt in short, to fight dirty and to use traps and tricks rather than end up with her face in the dirt. It wasn’t a bad life, as life in the slums went. Claudia had a hot meal some nights and even occasionally a bed.
However all things must come to an end. Claudia’s childhood ended abruptly when a fever swept through the slums. Elissa’s delicate health was already weak and the fever took her life in less than twelve hours. Claudia thought that her mother was repeating a name in a feverish whisper during her final moments, but she couldn’t recognize it.
The owner of the Tavern in which they were lodging was ruthless; Elissa’s body was barely cold before her daughter was out on the street. Claudia was left alone outside the tavern, clutching the scant bag of possessions that had been her mother’s worldly goods. The bag contained a locket and several letters in written in a high flung language a child could not comprehend.
Over the next few years Claudia lived as well as she could on her wits. She fell in with a gang of other orphaned children and together they began to commit petty acts of crime to survive. Claudia began to learn in earnest the skills of a thief. At first it was out of bare necessity, then she began to challenge herself and found she excelled. She grew from a thin, scrawny child into a tall, wiry woman with hidden strength which she could use to her advantage. Although not pretty, she was well-spoken and with her mother’s delicate features could readily deceive more upper class members of society.
As her schemes became more and more elaborate and gave higher returns, she began to attract attention. One night she was approached by a robed man who offered her, what seemed her at the time, a very large sum of money to perform a robbery. Claudia, despite her misgivings accepted and performed the job, retrieving the item that the man had described. She performed several more jobs for the man, until he offered a deal. He revealed he was a member of a secret thieving society, ‘The veiled society’ and that they had been observing her for some time. She was offered membership on the condition that she was to repay the society a set fee for entry. Claudia tired of scrapping by on the streets accepted. She was then initiated into the society and officially branded with the mark of the veil.
Claudia quickly adjusted to her new life as a lower member of the veiled society. At first things seemed idyllic, she had a hot meal every night and a warm bed. Then she began to notice that all her income was being steadily garnished by the society, in reality she had no more to her name than when she had lived on the streets. She also noticed that the society’s vendetta against the major trading families was always teetering on the edge of violence. However another more personal revelation was to finally turn her feelings towards the society into hate…
At twenty, Claudia decided it was time to look over her mother’s possessions, which she had jealously guarded for the last ten years. The locket was easily pried open and revealed a formally dressed man and woman and the family coat of arms for the house of Vorloi. Claudia’s confusion intensified as she realized that the man and woman looked very like her mother. The letters were even more shocking, they revealed that her mother Elissa had been the youngest daughter of the house of Vorloi, however she had been cast out of the family after she become pregnant out of wedlock. One of the letters was a brutal missive from Claudia’s grandfather telling Elissa in no uncertain terms that if she did not give up the child, she would be disowned her family and receive no help or quarter from them. Some of the other letters, written in faded ink, were love letters from a man named Darius Morrigan to her mother. The last letter however was addressed to Elissa’s father from Darius. The letter revealed the entire affair, including the knowledge that Darius was a member of the veiled society; the wording suggested Darius had deliberately seduced Elissa to cause embarrassment to the Vorloi family.
Claudia realized that she was a member of the very society that had destroyed her mother’s life.
Armed with this new knowledge, Claudia's chief goal changed from making coin to plotting her revenge.
Unfortunately however a junior thief such as herself lacked both the influence and the skill to infiltrate the societies upper ranks by conventional means. Therefore Claudia made the dangerous decision to try to break into one of the societies secret vaults to access their membership records. She hoped to find knowledge of her father's position and whereabouts within the society.
Not surprisingly she was caught red-handed inside the vault and thrown before the leaders of the veiled society to be judged. Although she had committed a grievous error, due to her youth and talent, she was not executed and was instead fined a ridiculous amount of coin as punishment. Instead of being a lower level thief with garnished wages, Claudia essentially became an indebted slave. Claudia was left with the option of paying off her debt through coin or the more unconventional means of completing perilous missions for the society.
Still smarting from her defeat, Claudia set off into the wider world to try to find a way of redeeming herself to the veiled society.
Claudia's thieving guild... Destroyed M4 1021 AC
The Curse of the lost maiden (dramatic and overblown but I feel that Claudia has never had much subtlety)
Level 5 Thief: Vorloi double Agent
Ezekiel (25-26). Ezekiel was recognized by Claudia immediately when they rendezvoused in the newly carved out sewer lair. They had been inducted into the veiled society at around the same time. She remembered him as a cocky, brash young man. Handsome in a devilish sort of way and very well aware of it himself. Ezekiel had tried to 'charm' Claudia upon meeting her and had ended up flipped over onto his arse in five seconds flat. Of that they hadn't spoken much, originally recruited from two rival street gangs, they had a lot to dislike about each other. Claudia in her early teens had thwarted a large heist by Red Caps (Ezekiel's gang) and lost them alot of gold and pride. They'd steered clear of each other for the next few years, Ezekiel attempting sarcastic charm at every opportunity, much to Claudia's chagrin. By the time she left to clear her debt with the society, Ezekiel was moving up in the ranks, be was successful with a girl on each arm and a comfortable amount of gold in the bank. However the Ezekiel who crept out of the shadows to meet Claudia was a different sort of man to the one she had known. It takes alot to shock or disturb Claudia, but the scarred visage of the formerly handsome young man took her aback. His face looked as if a particularly unskilled butcher, posing as a surgeon had taken a knife to it. Long red scars ran in a network across his face, his nose was twisted out of alignment. Ezekiel could never again be called handsome...
Ezekiel revealed through halted speech that he had attempted to undercut the society in a deal, to garnish a little of the profits, only 1-2%. The society had found out and had publically 'punished' him, taking his own dagger to Ezekiel's face.
Soon afterwards he was offered to cut a deal with the Vorloi. He had jumped at the chance for revenge...
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