lumosdefortuno
2011-04-22, 10:02 AM
Hey everybody, so I was wondering if I could get some help with this. Path finder looks really awesome, so and everyone who's playing anything 3.5 related is playing Path finder out where I live, and I really don't know very much about it. :smallredface: If it helps any with the creating, (cause I know classes in path finder like sorcerer are crazy customized based on power source and stuff) I'm used to DMs who allow for really awesome starting magic items in exchange for super incredibly detailed and cool back stories so I've been working on one for this character.
My name is Pjofr, I may not look it but I am a strange and unusual magical being. My fraternal twin brother, Géoglere is a sorcerer and a spellscale, while I am not, but whether from by bloodline or from the exchange of our blood within the uterus, I was born a spell thief. Our mother was a sorceress but she died in child birth. Neither our father or stepmother were magical at all, and though we had a beautiful little home nestled on a forest covered mountain cliff above a bustling magical metropolis which my mother had bequeathed to my brother and I, they were both in tremendous amounts of debt. They gambled, they drank, they mismanaged their money, they were both too ignorant to be able to do the simplest of arithmetic and were completely illiterate. I learned much later in life that our mother had never intended to bring my father or his wife into her or our lives. For some reason it is believed by the lowest of the common folk that a person who has sex with a sorcerer is a sure thing to win at games of chance. My father had been a member of the thieves guild for many years (though a very low ranked one) and he knew a sorcerer when he saw one. His wife was working as the bar maid in the local tavern, so when my mother had planned to stay in the inn upstairs, my stepmother slipped a sedative into her wine before she went to bed and palmed the extra key to my father so he could let himself into my mother's room when they could be sure she was passed out.
When my mother awoke in the morning, she knew what had happened to her but the bar maid and her husband had escaped into the night. She was troubled at first when she discovered she was pregnant, and the cleric who was her spiritual adviser offered to terminate the pregnancy for her, but after much deliberation she decided to keep the new life growing within her womb and give it all the love she had to offer. My mother had always exclusively preferred the love of the fairer sex, and after this experience she knew she'd never be able to allow another man to touch her in that way ever again. If she wanted children, she'd likely not have another chance at it.
Her lover was a paladin of Sune and as part of her religious vows was unable to wed until she had finished her quest which was given to her at the time of her anointing when she was consecrated as a paladin. In an effort to wed as soon as possible, Brennan, my mother's lover, set off to fulfill her quest within days of learning of my mother's condition.
My mother Koren had always been a very small in stature and petite of frame woman, enough so that she was often asked if there might have been some gnome blood far back in her ancestry, to which she would only laugh and say with mischievous grin "Could be". My father Leo's father on the other hand I know for certain is a half-orc. I thank the gods everyday that even though I took my father's height, I took my mother's looks. I know this because my mother had been quite famous in her short life for the good deeds she had done and I had grown up staring at the paintings and statues of her around the city. There is one painting that hung in the bedroom my brother and I shared, that if I aligned my face just right, my reflection in the glass completely disappeared into the features of the painting behind it. But to get back to the point, my very tiny for a normal human mother was pregnant for the very first time with two inordinately large boys.
By the beginning of the second trimester the poor woman barely waddle fast enough to keep up with her impertinent familiar Sarvis. I've always had mixed feelings about that cat. While he'd gone out of his way to look after my brother and I growing up as much as he could without my mother's magic to rely on, even though he was affectionate to me at times and tried to comfort me whenever I was truly down I always felt that he liked my brother more as he was always more affectionate with him. Knowing what I know now I realize he probably knew from the beginning what I was and was likely worried about the possible consequences if I were to accidentally steal his power without my mother around to restore him. I'm getting off track again.
Anyway my mother who was no longer able to climb the shelves and counters in her kitchen as she had before to reach things high up, and with her cleric advising against any heavy lifting, she hired some temporary help around the house. Not long after this she was very grateful she did as she started to become weaker and weaker by the day. Near the very end of her pregnancy she was completely bedridden.
Growing up my stepmother had always told me that this had been my fault, that my powers had literally drained all the life force from my mother's body. I had cried myself to sleep many nights praying that my mother forgave me for my indiscretion, as my brother would stroke my back telling me it wasn't my fault, that I couldn't help it even if I had done it, which he insisted couldn't be true as he was a live and well to attest to. It wasn't till I was much older that I overheard what had really happened.
Pegsy the woman my mother hired to help her around the house was my stepmother's sister. She almost immediately began secretly poisoning my mother with something that had been obtained from an assassin's guild that was sure to kill her and leave my brother and I unscathed. In her weakened state it had been easy to fool Koren into signing a document bequeathing all her worldly possessions to us and our custody to our next of kin, under her assumption that Brennan would arrive back home soon and they would be married making Brennan our next of kin. After all no one ever expects anything to happen to them, and she certainly never imagined that the woman taking care of her was really keep tabs on her and manipulating her all under the discretion of my father.
On the night of our birth the snow was almost two feet deep, and the cleric had a very difficult trek up the mountain to our home. Pegsy had made sure we were delivered safely to ensure her brother-in-law's stake to claim Koren's wealth, then she sat back and watched as our mother bled out there on the floor. My mother was drawing her lasts gasps, begging to hold us just once before she died, Pegsy laughing in her face, calling her a spoiled whore. When the cleric walked in the door she saw my mother gasping for breath, blood on the floor between her legs, and her lungs choking on more of it from a mysteriously unknown source. In the time it took to make those few steps to cross the room, Koren was dead. Koren's body wasn't even cold when my father entered the house holding notarized document Pegsy had fooled Koren into signing, claiming it now entitled him to everything and immediately ordered the cleric to leave.
When Brennan returned from her quest to find her dear love departed and buried without a single word she was flabbergasted and bereaved. When she heard our father had not only returned, but had moved into Koren's home and made claim to all her possessions, Brennan was furious. She took my father to court to dispute his claim. The judge, who I now know to belong to the thieves' guild, decided as no formal charges had ever been arraigned against my father (through the sheer technicality that he was unlocatable) the conception of my brother and I was deemed consensual, and because Brennan and Koren were not officially betrothed or married because of Brennan's orders and Koren had had "consensual relations" with my father Brennan and Koren's relationship was deemed a passing phase and Brennan was made irrelevant to the issue of our custody. Because my father and Koren's relationship was deemed consensual, regardless of his marriage, his claim over us was decided more valid then that of my mother's relatives. Leo and his wife Persilla got everything. In a gesture of "kindness", so Brennan could be responsible for the bill, they gave Koren's body to her so that she could bury her as she saw fit. I'm told my brother and I attended, with our "parents" who sat in the back, while we were carried throughout the ceremony so we could join in sending our mother off to the other world in the manner of her faith as a worshiper of Sune. I'm sure my brother's sunset colored scales were beautiful against the lush rosy shades of the funeral garb. It must have been beautiful. Whenever I visit my mother's grave I still always find fresh wreaths of fragrant Heart's Blood Waterlilies.
Life wasn't so horribly with Leo and Persilla in the beginning. When we were little they always made sure we were fed and changed. Pegsy lived in the home as a nanny. Its sometimes hard for me to assimilate the contradicting pictures in my mind of my aunt Pegsy between the kind and loving woman I knew as a small child when my parents were still wealthy, and the woman I would know her to become. Life was happy so long as there was money around, but wealth on scale of that of an adventurer is unfathomable to common folk like Leo and Persilla. While there were certainly enough people that were purported "friends" of my father who took advantage of them, there were actually people who had cared deeply for my mother and wanted to see my brother and I well taken care of that honestly tried to help them learn to manage the money. The biggest problem was that Leo was too arrogant to ever admit to it when he didn't understand something, and because he was so slow on the uptake he never learned anything. Persilla wasn't any better. Only Pegsy was humble enough to ever learned anything and years later when all of my mother's fortune was long gone, it was wealthy aunt Pegsy who we would call on when my brother and I would wander into town half starved, unwashed and clothed in tattered rags. How ironic that my aunt became wealthy simply saving and wisely investing the sizable salary my parents gave her, and they would become destitute.
While there were some bad investments, some unexpected mishaps and what at the time seemed to my brother and I more their fair share of misfortune, really when it all comes down to it Leo and Persilla drank, smoked, snorted, injected and gambled the money away. When it was all gone they soon returned to the Thieves' Guild and their old ways, only this time they had us to push into it as well. Géoglere and I were a team the two of us. I never saw the scales or the claws, he never believed the lies our parents told about me. I protected him physically, and he tended to me emotionally. I was strong, but he was brave. There wasn't anything we wouldn't do for each other, two hearts beating to the same rhythm. We were out of sync to the rest of our world but we were a sanctuary unto one another.
By the age of six and a half I could pick most any lock in town and by eight my father had Géoglere and I running with a gang of thieves around our own age breaking into other people's houses and pick pocketing nobles. Anytime anyone picked on my brother or threatened him I was sure to knock out more than one of their teeth and his tongue was sharper than the wit of any of those braggarts we were forced to run with. By ten I was going along with my father on big jobs. I had a natural grace that defied that of any cat burglar, I always seemed to have an intuitive understanding of where any trap or alarms were, and I just seemed to have a natural luck with getting things to work for me that my father couldn't. The better I got, the bigger the jobs. All my father saw was gold in his eyes, he never saw that his greed would be our family's undoing.
One night when I was not quite twelve, my father's greed caught up with him when he picked a gig, that at the time, was too big for even my talents. My father had managed to keep up appearances until this time, make it look like everything was fine and he was a legitimate man of the community. When our city began to develop its first real Spellscale neighborhood, old acquaintances mentioned meeting the man in charge of the undertaking to my father. When the well intentioned old couple talked about costs of the school he was building and the sheer opulence of the man's home, I was sure I could audibly hear my father drool. The man's wealth surpassed anything even my mother ever held. He started making plans that very night.
I couldn't believe the size of the thing. I wasn't really sure what to call it, it didn't look anything like any house I'd ever seen. This "home", if that's what you call didn't even look like any of manors or castles I'd seen around the city, not really. There was a tower here, a turret there, maybe little bits and pieces that looked like something familiar but the whole of it looked like nothing I had ever seen before. The whole of the thing slanted just a bit inwards to its apex, to give the whole thing a forced perspective as if it was looming over you and yet the whole motif made if feel as if it were melting like candle wax and about to fall down right on top of you. It reminded me of something from a scary dream or a beautiful nightmare. The colors of the thing changed, moved, and glowed like the whole structure were a living thing breathing deeply in dreams, its thoughts streaming across its surface. Its height seemed impossibly tall, and I was sure at once that magic must be what kept it from toppling to the ground. I wasn't sure how I'd never seen it before from our home on the cliff but I knew that the top of the thing, where ever it was, could see a clear sky even on the cloudiest of days. After much thought I realized the reason I couldn't see the top of it from my own home, which was not quite as high but could easily see above most normal low hanging clouds, was that it was too far away and the top was too narrow, it would be like trying to see a wood shed from a mile away.
I appraised with approval the beauty of the palace (I had determined that was the best word for it) as I surveyed its defenses. I could see the warm blue light of an alarm spell radiating around the lower floors of the perimeter. The field of the spell though only went up to the tenth floor. Who ever put it up must have assumed since it was across the street from every other building and the next tallest building nearest it was only 8 stories tall that no one could ever get over the wall of the spell. That might have been true with how far the base of building was from the wall of the spell but they really didn't take into account the overhanging turret which stretched over the spell and above the street, fifteen stories above the ground. Favoring opulence over utility certainly has its shortcomings.
Once I pointed out the turret my father managed to secure a line to the bottom of it with a bolt and crossbow and we climbed up with me ahead. Once we were on top of the turret I picked the lock to the door, which seemed more to keep people in than out, and we found ourselves in circular stone stairway dimly lit by flame-less torches. The hallway of the slow sloping stair case stretched far out of sight in either direction, a thick red runner carpet beneath our feet and the walls covered on every inch with paintings, tapestries and odd knick-knacks. There was even a mural painted on the ceiling, which seemed to tell a story which ever way you walked up or down the staircase. I felt a sharp jab in my ribs and my father shot me a look that told me to concentrate on the job and pay attention.
We walked down stairs towards the main foyer, knowing anything in a place like this that was kept behind closed doors would have security guarding it far beyond our combined skills. All I could hear was the gentle patter of our feet in the thick carpeting, as I took in my surroundings trying best I could to concentrate on looking for traps and alarms. The air was thick with the heavy scent of burning perfumed oils and I could feel the art washing over me like rainwater. Though I dried to ignore it, the wet of it sunk to my bones till I ached with beauty of it all. I started to weep and sob very quietly and my father hit me.
"What in the hell are you crying for?! You shut up or I'll make sure you won't be able to ever cry again." he glowered in an exaggerated whisper through his teeth. I was pretty sure he'd never actually do anything to jeopardize his meal ticket, but I knew he'd do anything short of so I tried my best to hold it in. The thing is I didn't want to steal from whoever this was. If I stole from here I'd never be invited back as an actual guest and at that moment I couldn't think of anything so tragic. I was quite sure that there wasn't any one on earth more beautiful or interesting that the person who created this magnificent world and all I wanted to do was to share in it, even if just a little bit for a tiny while.
When we reached the bottom of the stairs I could feel how blood shot my eyes were. "Please daddy, don't do this I don't want to rob this guy. Please lets just go home, we can steal from someone else, I'll even break into the back for you. This isn't just meaningless junk that no one is going to notice if you try to pawn it. Please daddy lets just go home there's nothing here we can steal without getting caught." I hadn't called him daddy since before things had turned bad, with the only exception when I was begging him to stop hitting me or my brother. That was what this felt like now. It felt like I was being asked to destroy something sacred and it was tearing at my heart.
"Are you crazy? Nothing to steal? There's tons of ****. Hell, look at this painting. Rip of the gold frame, tear up the gold leaf its on, pull out the jewels and all anything else of value on it and I bet you could buy three house like ours." I was starting to sob so hard my nose was running and it felt like my eyes were going to bleed.
"No daddy, please, we'll get caught and its wrong, lets just go home." A moment later I was on the ground on all fours trying to decide what just happened. My head was dizzy and felt shaken. My cheek glowed, I could feel the blood rushing to it. I had been standing and now I was on the ground and didn't know how I'd gotten there. I wasn't crying anymore though my eyes were still puffy, and as the congestion of being upset was fading quickly as I was now able to blow out all the loose snot quite suddenly. It was as if a pop of electricity had coursed through me but I didn't remember is. I just felt the after effects of whatever it was, just a strange kind of clear headed shock though from what I had no memory.
"Another word out of you and you'll get another." my father snarled. I look at him extremely confused. Another what I thought to myself.
"I'm sorry to interrupt this little family discussion but I must agree with your son, it really would have been best if you had just gone home." said a voice from nowhere. What I can only guess was a globe of invisibility melted away. Out of nothingness in the middle of the room appeared a parlor room furniture set, several ornate parlor lanterns, a fully grown spellscale man, the chief of the city guard, and half a dozen guards who were all drinking tea and and eating pastries. "You'll have to excuse us but I've had the chief and his men over every night this week waiting for you ever since I implanted a suggestion to the old man and his wife to tell you all about my wonderful home. It seems you've taken my bait." the spellscale said smugly.
I stood up as my father and I stared at each other terrified and confused. The spellscale quite obviously delighted by our expressions continued. "It has come to my attention that you are the father of a young spellscale and that you've been using him to steal for you, forcing him to run around with that young gang of hoodlums." I was feeling very wary at this point my pulse chasing and my throat closing as it was getting hard to breath. "I told the chief about this and that I thought this was no environment for a young boy destined to become a great sorcerer to be living." He paused to gauge our reactions starting up again. "When the chief told me he agreed but there was nothing the courts could do without absolute proof that you yourself were involved sir, I concocted this little plan to make sure there was as such."
"Now hold on just a minute! You don't really think I'm going to let you take my boy away from me now do you?" My father looked around wildly at the men as if this couldn't be real. His face started to flush with anger at the idea anyone could outsmart HIM. "You have no right, I don't care who you think you are but I've got a hell of a lot more pull in this town than you do and I won't allow it!"
"Oh really? You think your guild friends are going to protect you?" the cops snicker and giggle like sadistic school boys watching with sheer glee as the spellscale intimidated my father like school yard bully till soon they were like the terrifying sound of a pack of hyenas in the background. The spellscale, whom I really starting to wish I knew the name of because calling him spellscale did nothing for the pure dread, smiled at my father a toothy grin which made both of us shiver. "That's the problem with relying on friends that can be bought, someone can just out bid you," he grabbed a piece of paper with guild seal on it from a drawer and unfurled it so my father could read it. It was obvious by the look on my father's face that it could have been recipes for strawberry pie for all he knew of it. All he recognized was the guild seal which made it official and his name on the paper. Having seen the trouble it cause my parents I had made absolutely certain I'd learned to read,write and do arithmetic as best I could learn from anyone willing to teach me, going to school when we could afford it and learning from guild members and libraries when I couldn't. I glanced at the notice.
"Its an oath of agreement to non-protect. It says if Mr. Crowsnest... Crowsnest?" I looked up at him inquisitively. Crowsnest was a name for pirates and sailors, few members of their clan that moved inland ever even kept the name it was so infamous. He nodded that it was correct. So his family wasn't all that different than ours and yet he's trying to break us up? "If Mr. Crowsnest pursues legal action against you the guild will not defend you or in any way intercede upon your behalf." My father's knees began to wobble and when it looked like he was going to fall to them, Mr. Crowsnest snapped his fingers and a chair appeared just in time beneath my dad to support his weight and catch him from falling.
"Now Mr. Fallingstar, I'd listen to what this good man had to say if I was you. Twernt nuthin ta get ya here and at the moment what we got on you just from tonight is not only enough to get a warrant to search your home and businesses for any other stolen goods but if Mr. Crowsnest pursued legal action you could easily get twenty years. The painting you were discussing destroying is designated as a national treasure. Destruction to a cultural heritage treasure is life," the chief explained to my father who sat their slack jawed. My father simply nodded sadly.
"Now Mr. Fallingstar, I am in the midst of building a boarding school for young spellscales here in the city, we go year round and your boy Géoglere shall be attending" the bastard spellscale Crowsnest clicked off in the most intimidating manner he could muster.
I suddenly heard what I thought was a women's bloodcurdling scream NO! Only later when I was told did I find out it had been my own voice I had heard. I was numb from head to toe, and I thought I was falling at first and then I realized my feet were moving and I was running out the front door. I opened the gate and before I knew it I had stolen one of the guards' horses and was riding home at full gallop.
When I broke through the door of my house I ran to my room and shook my brother out of bed. "What?" he looked at me startled to be shaken away in the middle of the night.
"We're leaving, now. Just you and me we have to get away from here. Leo made me break him into the house of the spellscale who's building that neighborhood downtown. He's building a school and he wants you. He and the chief of the guard said that if Leo doesn't turn you over to him that they'll throw him in prison for the next twenty years just for starters, and Leo's going to do it. They're going to split us up. GET UP, NOW!" Géoglere who had been in shock till now frozen like a statue soaking up every word I gave him as I started shoving things in a bag sprang up and started getting dressed.
"What are we going to do?"
"Like I said we're leaving. I stole a horse, we'll need to find another one soon but we'll way to change horses till we get to the next town or we come across one. The guy is crazy and he means to keep you like some pet in a zoo."
"Ok well there's still snow on the ground, how do you suggest we keep them from tracking us?" As he finishes getting dressed, Géoglere starts to grab his maps, compass, spy glass, and spell component bag. Ever since things had start to get bad at home the boys had talked about running away together. They would lay on one or the other bed cuddled together telling each other long drawn out tales about where they'd run away to, how they'd get there, and what they'd do to survive once they got there. It had always been just a fantasy before, a way to keep them from thinking about how bad things had gotten and to let them escape in their minds. This time it was for real.
"We travel back the way I came then go up the dried up river bed, all those rocks should hide our tracks," Géoglere nodded and listened as I explained. "The river travels down the mountain on the soft slope away from the city all the way to the ocean then we'll follow the coast till we hit the first port town and sell the horse for passage out of here."
"Now that does sound like a good idea" Géoglere and I looked up terrified to find Crowsnest standing in the doorway, listening to every word we said. "Just to let you know it might have worked if it were anyone but me that you were running from but realize now if I wanted it I could have killed you all anytime I wanted." He got up from the door frame which he was leaning against and quicker than I could have believed grabbed Géoglere by the shoulder and started dragging him out the room. My brother and I instantly grabbed onto one another, locking arms around the chest and legs around the waist as well fell to the ground, crying that we weren't going to be separated. Crowsnest barely seemed to notice the added weight and reached off to pry me off Géoglere. The only thing I could think of to do was to bite him which caught him by surprise. I felt a surge of power rush through me. I pointed the palm of my hand at Crowsnest as if to ward him off and a ray of flame shot forth from it and manage to hit him.
"A Spellthief! I should have known." He let go of my brother and with one delicately manicured claw he stroked my chin. "Ok little boy, you can come too."
---------------------------------------------------
:sigh: ok more to come later but for now I'm exhausted, I actually sat her and wrote this all on the spot.
Geez so yeah I think eventually once I get the whole back story written I'll go back and fix stuff so its showing instead of telling and turn the whole thing into a novel. I'd love to know what you think of my story so far and I'd really love some help converting Spellthief to Pathfinder.
My name is Pjofr, I may not look it but I am a strange and unusual magical being. My fraternal twin brother, Géoglere is a sorcerer and a spellscale, while I am not, but whether from by bloodline or from the exchange of our blood within the uterus, I was born a spell thief. Our mother was a sorceress but she died in child birth. Neither our father or stepmother were magical at all, and though we had a beautiful little home nestled on a forest covered mountain cliff above a bustling magical metropolis which my mother had bequeathed to my brother and I, they were both in tremendous amounts of debt. They gambled, they drank, they mismanaged their money, they were both too ignorant to be able to do the simplest of arithmetic and were completely illiterate. I learned much later in life that our mother had never intended to bring my father or his wife into her or our lives. For some reason it is believed by the lowest of the common folk that a person who has sex with a sorcerer is a sure thing to win at games of chance. My father had been a member of the thieves guild for many years (though a very low ranked one) and he knew a sorcerer when he saw one. His wife was working as the bar maid in the local tavern, so when my mother had planned to stay in the inn upstairs, my stepmother slipped a sedative into her wine before she went to bed and palmed the extra key to my father so he could let himself into my mother's room when they could be sure she was passed out.
When my mother awoke in the morning, she knew what had happened to her but the bar maid and her husband had escaped into the night. She was troubled at first when she discovered she was pregnant, and the cleric who was her spiritual adviser offered to terminate the pregnancy for her, but after much deliberation she decided to keep the new life growing within her womb and give it all the love she had to offer. My mother had always exclusively preferred the love of the fairer sex, and after this experience she knew she'd never be able to allow another man to touch her in that way ever again. If she wanted children, she'd likely not have another chance at it.
Her lover was a paladin of Sune and as part of her religious vows was unable to wed until she had finished her quest which was given to her at the time of her anointing when she was consecrated as a paladin. In an effort to wed as soon as possible, Brennan, my mother's lover, set off to fulfill her quest within days of learning of my mother's condition.
My mother Koren had always been a very small in stature and petite of frame woman, enough so that she was often asked if there might have been some gnome blood far back in her ancestry, to which she would only laugh and say with mischievous grin "Could be". My father Leo's father on the other hand I know for certain is a half-orc. I thank the gods everyday that even though I took my father's height, I took my mother's looks. I know this because my mother had been quite famous in her short life for the good deeds she had done and I had grown up staring at the paintings and statues of her around the city. There is one painting that hung in the bedroom my brother and I shared, that if I aligned my face just right, my reflection in the glass completely disappeared into the features of the painting behind it. But to get back to the point, my very tiny for a normal human mother was pregnant for the very first time with two inordinately large boys.
By the beginning of the second trimester the poor woman barely waddle fast enough to keep up with her impertinent familiar Sarvis. I've always had mixed feelings about that cat. While he'd gone out of his way to look after my brother and I growing up as much as he could without my mother's magic to rely on, even though he was affectionate to me at times and tried to comfort me whenever I was truly down I always felt that he liked my brother more as he was always more affectionate with him. Knowing what I know now I realize he probably knew from the beginning what I was and was likely worried about the possible consequences if I were to accidentally steal his power without my mother around to restore him. I'm getting off track again.
Anyway my mother who was no longer able to climb the shelves and counters in her kitchen as she had before to reach things high up, and with her cleric advising against any heavy lifting, she hired some temporary help around the house. Not long after this she was very grateful she did as she started to become weaker and weaker by the day. Near the very end of her pregnancy she was completely bedridden.
Growing up my stepmother had always told me that this had been my fault, that my powers had literally drained all the life force from my mother's body. I had cried myself to sleep many nights praying that my mother forgave me for my indiscretion, as my brother would stroke my back telling me it wasn't my fault, that I couldn't help it even if I had done it, which he insisted couldn't be true as he was a live and well to attest to. It wasn't till I was much older that I overheard what had really happened.
Pegsy the woman my mother hired to help her around the house was my stepmother's sister. She almost immediately began secretly poisoning my mother with something that had been obtained from an assassin's guild that was sure to kill her and leave my brother and I unscathed. In her weakened state it had been easy to fool Koren into signing a document bequeathing all her worldly possessions to us and our custody to our next of kin, under her assumption that Brennan would arrive back home soon and they would be married making Brennan our next of kin. After all no one ever expects anything to happen to them, and she certainly never imagined that the woman taking care of her was really keep tabs on her and manipulating her all under the discretion of my father.
On the night of our birth the snow was almost two feet deep, and the cleric had a very difficult trek up the mountain to our home. Pegsy had made sure we were delivered safely to ensure her brother-in-law's stake to claim Koren's wealth, then she sat back and watched as our mother bled out there on the floor. My mother was drawing her lasts gasps, begging to hold us just once before she died, Pegsy laughing in her face, calling her a spoiled whore. When the cleric walked in the door she saw my mother gasping for breath, blood on the floor between her legs, and her lungs choking on more of it from a mysteriously unknown source. In the time it took to make those few steps to cross the room, Koren was dead. Koren's body wasn't even cold when my father entered the house holding notarized document Pegsy had fooled Koren into signing, claiming it now entitled him to everything and immediately ordered the cleric to leave.
When Brennan returned from her quest to find her dear love departed and buried without a single word she was flabbergasted and bereaved. When she heard our father had not only returned, but had moved into Koren's home and made claim to all her possessions, Brennan was furious. She took my father to court to dispute his claim. The judge, who I now know to belong to the thieves' guild, decided as no formal charges had ever been arraigned against my father (through the sheer technicality that he was unlocatable) the conception of my brother and I was deemed consensual, and because Brennan and Koren were not officially betrothed or married because of Brennan's orders and Koren had had "consensual relations" with my father Brennan and Koren's relationship was deemed a passing phase and Brennan was made irrelevant to the issue of our custody. Because my father and Koren's relationship was deemed consensual, regardless of his marriage, his claim over us was decided more valid then that of my mother's relatives. Leo and his wife Persilla got everything. In a gesture of "kindness", so Brennan could be responsible for the bill, they gave Koren's body to her so that she could bury her as she saw fit. I'm told my brother and I attended, with our "parents" who sat in the back, while we were carried throughout the ceremony so we could join in sending our mother off to the other world in the manner of her faith as a worshiper of Sune. I'm sure my brother's sunset colored scales were beautiful against the lush rosy shades of the funeral garb. It must have been beautiful. Whenever I visit my mother's grave I still always find fresh wreaths of fragrant Heart's Blood Waterlilies.
Life wasn't so horribly with Leo and Persilla in the beginning. When we were little they always made sure we were fed and changed. Pegsy lived in the home as a nanny. Its sometimes hard for me to assimilate the contradicting pictures in my mind of my aunt Pegsy between the kind and loving woman I knew as a small child when my parents were still wealthy, and the woman I would know her to become. Life was happy so long as there was money around, but wealth on scale of that of an adventurer is unfathomable to common folk like Leo and Persilla. While there were certainly enough people that were purported "friends" of my father who took advantage of them, there were actually people who had cared deeply for my mother and wanted to see my brother and I well taken care of that honestly tried to help them learn to manage the money. The biggest problem was that Leo was too arrogant to ever admit to it when he didn't understand something, and because he was so slow on the uptake he never learned anything. Persilla wasn't any better. Only Pegsy was humble enough to ever learned anything and years later when all of my mother's fortune was long gone, it was wealthy aunt Pegsy who we would call on when my brother and I would wander into town half starved, unwashed and clothed in tattered rags. How ironic that my aunt became wealthy simply saving and wisely investing the sizable salary my parents gave her, and they would become destitute.
While there were some bad investments, some unexpected mishaps and what at the time seemed to my brother and I more their fair share of misfortune, really when it all comes down to it Leo and Persilla drank, smoked, snorted, injected and gambled the money away. When it was all gone they soon returned to the Thieves' Guild and their old ways, only this time they had us to push into it as well. Géoglere and I were a team the two of us. I never saw the scales or the claws, he never believed the lies our parents told about me. I protected him physically, and he tended to me emotionally. I was strong, but he was brave. There wasn't anything we wouldn't do for each other, two hearts beating to the same rhythm. We were out of sync to the rest of our world but we were a sanctuary unto one another.
By the age of six and a half I could pick most any lock in town and by eight my father had Géoglere and I running with a gang of thieves around our own age breaking into other people's houses and pick pocketing nobles. Anytime anyone picked on my brother or threatened him I was sure to knock out more than one of their teeth and his tongue was sharper than the wit of any of those braggarts we were forced to run with. By ten I was going along with my father on big jobs. I had a natural grace that defied that of any cat burglar, I always seemed to have an intuitive understanding of where any trap or alarms were, and I just seemed to have a natural luck with getting things to work for me that my father couldn't. The better I got, the bigger the jobs. All my father saw was gold in his eyes, he never saw that his greed would be our family's undoing.
One night when I was not quite twelve, my father's greed caught up with him when he picked a gig, that at the time, was too big for even my talents. My father had managed to keep up appearances until this time, make it look like everything was fine and he was a legitimate man of the community. When our city began to develop its first real Spellscale neighborhood, old acquaintances mentioned meeting the man in charge of the undertaking to my father. When the well intentioned old couple talked about costs of the school he was building and the sheer opulence of the man's home, I was sure I could audibly hear my father drool. The man's wealth surpassed anything even my mother ever held. He started making plans that very night.
I couldn't believe the size of the thing. I wasn't really sure what to call it, it didn't look anything like any house I'd ever seen. This "home", if that's what you call didn't even look like any of manors or castles I'd seen around the city, not really. There was a tower here, a turret there, maybe little bits and pieces that looked like something familiar but the whole of it looked like nothing I had ever seen before. The whole of the thing slanted just a bit inwards to its apex, to give the whole thing a forced perspective as if it was looming over you and yet the whole motif made if feel as if it were melting like candle wax and about to fall down right on top of you. It reminded me of something from a scary dream or a beautiful nightmare. The colors of the thing changed, moved, and glowed like the whole structure were a living thing breathing deeply in dreams, its thoughts streaming across its surface. Its height seemed impossibly tall, and I was sure at once that magic must be what kept it from toppling to the ground. I wasn't sure how I'd never seen it before from our home on the cliff but I knew that the top of the thing, where ever it was, could see a clear sky even on the cloudiest of days. After much thought I realized the reason I couldn't see the top of it from my own home, which was not quite as high but could easily see above most normal low hanging clouds, was that it was too far away and the top was too narrow, it would be like trying to see a wood shed from a mile away.
I appraised with approval the beauty of the palace (I had determined that was the best word for it) as I surveyed its defenses. I could see the warm blue light of an alarm spell radiating around the lower floors of the perimeter. The field of the spell though only went up to the tenth floor. Who ever put it up must have assumed since it was across the street from every other building and the next tallest building nearest it was only 8 stories tall that no one could ever get over the wall of the spell. That might have been true with how far the base of building was from the wall of the spell but they really didn't take into account the overhanging turret which stretched over the spell and above the street, fifteen stories above the ground. Favoring opulence over utility certainly has its shortcomings.
Once I pointed out the turret my father managed to secure a line to the bottom of it with a bolt and crossbow and we climbed up with me ahead. Once we were on top of the turret I picked the lock to the door, which seemed more to keep people in than out, and we found ourselves in circular stone stairway dimly lit by flame-less torches. The hallway of the slow sloping stair case stretched far out of sight in either direction, a thick red runner carpet beneath our feet and the walls covered on every inch with paintings, tapestries and odd knick-knacks. There was even a mural painted on the ceiling, which seemed to tell a story which ever way you walked up or down the staircase. I felt a sharp jab in my ribs and my father shot me a look that told me to concentrate on the job and pay attention.
We walked down stairs towards the main foyer, knowing anything in a place like this that was kept behind closed doors would have security guarding it far beyond our combined skills. All I could hear was the gentle patter of our feet in the thick carpeting, as I took in my surroundings trying best I could to concentrate on looking for traps and alarms. The air was thick with the heavy scent of burning perfumed oils and I could feel the art washing over me like rainwater. Though I dried to ignore it, the wet of it sunk to my bones till I ached with beauty of it all. I started to weep and sob very quietly and my father hit me.
"What in the hell are you crying for?! You shut up or I'll make sure you won't be able to ever cry again." he glowered in an exaggerated whisper through his teeth. I was pretty sure he'd never actually do anything to jeopardize his meal ticket, but I knew he'd do anything short of so I tried my best to hold it in. The thing is I didn't want to steal from whoever this was. If I stole from here I'd never be invited back as an actual guest and at that moment I couldn't think of anything so tragic. I was quite sure that there wasn't any one on earth more beautiful or interesting that the person who created this magnificent world and all I wanted to do was to share in it, even if just a little bit for a tiny while.
When we reached the bottom of the stairs I could feel how blood shot my eyes were. "Please daddy, don't do this I don't want to rob this guy. Please lets just go home, we can steal from someone else, I'll even break into the back for you. This isn't just meaningless junk that no one is going to notice if you try to pawn it. Please daddy lets just go home there's nothing here we can steal without getting caught." I hadn't called him daddy since before things had turned bad, with the only exception when I was begging him to stop hitting me or my brother. That was what this felt like now. It felt like I was being asked to destroy something sacred and it was tearing at my heart.
"Are you crazy? Nothing to steal? There's tons of ****. Hell, look at this painting. Rip of the gold frame, tear up the gold leaf its on, pull out the jewels and all anything else of value on it and I bet you could buy three house like ours." I was starting to sob so hard my nose was running and it felt like my eyes were going to bleed.
"No daddy, please, we'll get caught and its wrong, lets just go home." A moment later I was on the ground on all fours trying to decide what just happened. My head was dizzy and felt shaken. My cheek glowed, I could feel the blood rushing to it. I had been standing and now I was on the ground and didn't know how I'd gotten there. I wasn't crying anymore though my eyes were still puffy, and as the congestion of being upset was fading quickly as I was now able to blow out all the loose snot quite suddenly. It was as if a pop of electricity had coursed through me but I didn't remember is. I just felt the after effects of whatever it was, just a strange kind of clear headed shock though from what I had no memory.
"Another word out of you and you'll get another." my father snarled. I look at him extremely confused. Another what I thought to myself.
"I'm sorry to interrupt this little family discussion but I must agree with your son, it really would have been best if you had just gone home." said a voice from nowhere. What I can only guess was a globe of invisibility melted away. Out of nothingness in the middle of the room appeared a parlor room furniture set, several ornate parlor lanterns, a fully grown spellscale man, the chief of the city guard, and half a dozen guards who were all drinking tea and and eating pastries. "You'll have to excuse us but I've had the chief and his men over every night this week waiting for you ever since I implanted a suggestion to the old man and his wife to tell you all about my wonderful home. It seems you've taken my bait." the spellscale said smugly.
I stood up as my father and I stared at each other terrified and confused. The spellscale quite obviously delighted by our expressions continued. "It has come to my attention that you are the father of a young spellscale and that you've been using him to steal for you, forcing him to run around with that young gang of hoodlums." I was feeling very wary at this point my pulse chasing and my throat closing as it was getting hard to breath. "I told the chief about this and that I thought this was no environment for a young boy destined to become a great sorcerer to be living." He paused to gauge our reactions starting up again. "When the chief told me he agreed but there was nothing the courts could do without absolute proof that you yourself were involved sir, I concocted this little plan to make sure there was as such."
"Now hold on just a minute! You don't really think I'm going to let you take my boy away from me now do you?" My father looked around wildly at the men as if this couldn't be real. His face started to flush with anger at the idea anyone could outsmart HIM. "You have no right, I don't care who you think you are but I've got a hell of a lot more pull in this town than you do and I won't allow it!"
"Oh really? You think your guild friends are going to protect you?" the cops snicker and giggle like sadistic school boys watching with sheer glee as the spellscale intimidated my father like school yard bully till soon they were like the terrifying sound of a pack of hyenas in the background. The spellscale, whom I really starting to wish I knew the name of because calling him spellscale did nothing for the pure dread, smiled at my father a toothy grin which made both of us shiver. "That's the problem with relying on friends that can be bought, someone can just out bid you," he grabbed a piece of paper with guild seal on it from a drawer and unfurled it so my father could read it. It was obvious by the look on my father's face that it could have been recipes for strawberry pie for all he knew of it. All he recognized was the guild seal which made it official and his name on the paper. Having seen the trouble it cause my parents I had made absolutely certain I'd learned to read,write and do arithmetic as best I could learn from anyone willing to teach me, going to school when we could afford it and learning from guild members and libraries when I couldn't. I glanced at the notice.
"Its an oath of agreement to non-protect. It says if Mr. Crowsnest... Crowsnest?" I looked up at him inquisitively. Crowsnest was a name for pirates and sailors, few members of their clan that moved inland ever even kept the name it was so infamous. He nodded that it was correct. So his family wasn't all that different than ours and yet he's trying to break us up? "If Mr. Crowsnest pursues legal action against you the guild will not defend you or in any way intercede upon your behalf." My father's knees began to wobble and when it looked like he was going to fall to them, Mr. Crowsnest snapped his fingers and a chair appeared just in time beneath my dad to support his weight and catch him from falling.
"Now Mr. Fallingstar, I'd listen to what this good man had to say if I was you. Twernt nuthin ta get ya here and at the moment what we got on you just from tonight is not only enough to get a warrant to search your home and businesses for any other stolen goods but if Mr. Crowsnest pursued legal action you could easily get twenty years. The painting you were discussing destroying is designated as a national treasure. Destruction to a cultural heritage treasure is life," the chief explained to my father who sat their slack jawed. My father simply nodded sadly.
"Now Mr. Fallingstar, I am in the midst of building a boarding school for young spellscales here in the city, we go year round and your boy Géoglere shall be attending" the bastard spellscale Crowsnest clicked off in the most intimidating manner he could muster.
I suddenly heard what I thought was a women's bloodcurdling scream NO! Only later when I was told did I find out it had been my own voice I had heard. I was numb from head to toe, and I thought I was falling at first and then I realized my feet were moving and I was running out the front door. I opened the gate and before I knew it I had stolen one of the guards' horses and was riding home at full gallop.
When I broke through the door of my house I ran to my room and shook my brother out of bed. "What?" he looked at me startled to be shaken away in the middle of the night.
"We're leaving, now. Just you and me we have to get away from here. Leo made me break him into the house of the spellscale who's building that neighborhood downtown. He's building a school and he wants you. He and the chief of the guard said that if Leo doesn't turn you over to him that they'll throw him in prison for the next twenty years just for starters, and Leo's going to do it. They're going to split us up. GET UP, NOW!" Géoglere who had been in shock till now frozen like a statue soaking up every word I gave him as I started shoving things in a bag sprang up and started getting dressed.
"What are we going to do?"
"Like I said we're leaving. I stole a horse, we'll need to find another one soon but we'll way to change horses till we get to the next town or we come across one. The guy is crazy and he means to keep you like some pet in a zoo."
"Ok well there's still snow on the ground, how do you suggest we keep them from tracking us?" As he finishes getting dressed, Géoglere starts to grab his maps, compass, spy glass, and spell component bag. Ever since things had start to get bad at home the boys had talked about running away together. They would lay on one or the other bed cuddled together telling each other long drawn out tales about where they'd run away to, how they'd get there, and what they'd do to survive once they got there. It had always been just a fantasy before, a way to keep them from thinking about how bad things had gotten and to let them escape in their minds. This time it was for real.
"We travel back the way I came then go up the dried up river bed, all those rocks should hide our tracks," Géoglere nodded and listened as I explained. "The river travels down the mountain on the soft slope away from the city all the way to the ocean then we'll follow the coast till we hit the first port town and sell the horse for passage out of here."
"Now that does sound like a good idea" Géoglere and I looked up terrified to find Crowsnest standing in the doorway, listening to every word we said. "Just to let you know it might have worked if it were anyone but me that you were running from but realize now if I wanted it I could have killed you all anytime I wanted." He got up from the door frame which he was leaning against and quicker than I could have believed grabbed Géoglere by the shoulder and started dragging him out the room. My brother and I instantly grabbed onto one another, locking arms around the chest and legs around the waist as well fell to the ground, crying that we weren't going to be separated. Crowsnest barely seemed to notice the added weight and reached off to pry me off Géoglere. The only thing I could think of to do was to bite him which caught him by surprise. I felt a surge of power rush through me. I pointed the palm of my hand at Crowsnest as if to ward him off and a ray of flame shot forth from it and manage to hit him.
"A Spellthief! I should have known." He let go of my brother and with one delicately manicured claw he stroked my chin. "Ok little boy, you can come too."
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:sigh: ok more to come later but for now I'm exhausted, I actually sat her and wrote this all on the spot.
Geez so yeah I think eventually once I get the whole back story written I'll go back and fix stuff so its showing instead of telling and turn the whole thing into a novel. I'd love to know what you think of my story so far and I'd really love some help converting Spellthief to Pathfinder.