Handle: CelticSoldier

OoC Acount: CelticSoldier

 

 

Name: Jim

Type: Half-Skaa

Age: 13

Gender: Male

Origin: Luthadel

Occupation: Informant & Thief

Relationship: Single (Though if you listen to him)

 

Appearance: About 5ft 2in, weighing around 35kg. Dirty blonde hair and bright blue eyes.

 

A cheeky youth who long ago learned that people seem to be far more sympathetic to a charming child, Jim always scrubs up best he can, despite living on the streets. Compared to other street children he looks almost...healthy, as if he actually eats at some point. His hair is usually ragged and messy, and you can barely see the blonde beneath the ash, but his smile gleams and his eyes sparkle, and sometimes it seems he can get anyone to do anything.

He wears an ash-stained and tattered blue blazer, that looks like it may once have been won by a noble child. It's starting to get to small for him, as he hits his growth spurt, but he insists on wearing it until he can find a larger one. He also wears tattered grey trousers and impeccably polished black shoes. No one knows how he keeps them so shiny.

 

Power: Misting - Soother

Status: Unsnapped

 

Special Skills: Persuasion, Free running

 

Strengths: Being small as well as lithe and quick makes him surprisingly fast and dexterous. He is also skilled with using his silver tongue and baby-faced look to get him what he wants, usually a few extra coins from passing nobles, or sometimes just convincing them to not get their guards to beat him to death.

 

Weaknesses: Despite everything, he's still a child, and susceptible to threats and manipulation. If he has someone to back him up, he might be alright, but on his own...His reputation as an informant rests in his ability to run away from people who threaten him.

 

This has also caused him to develop a nervous disposition. If there's even the slightest hint that the person he's talking to might attack him, or questioned directly about the slightest lie, he'll bolt.

 

Personality: For a thirteen year old, Jim is charming and quick witted, despite his preference for crass humour. He has an easy stance and a winning smile, though someone perceptive may notice that there are times when he overplays his childish appeal just a little too much, since it's starting to go. However, Jim is slowly adapting, and finding new ways to charm a few more coins.

 

Once you get to know Jim, you find that he's not actually a very manipulative guy, but warm hearted and caring. You know, in a 'spent my whole life one meal away from starvation' kind of way. He chiefly doesn't fit in with any gangs because they, as he see's it, don't play fair, and call him naïve but he's sticking to his morals. 

 

History: Jim doesn't know much about his parents. He assumes they're dead, like most other people's, but they might not be. He doesn't really care either way. Some people he's known recall their parents with fondness, others boast of how they threw off their shackles and ran from home, so it seems like the safest bet is to continue as he has.

 

The one thing that has always fascinated him, however, were the mist born. Flying through the night like silent spectres, he would stay up past the mists just to watch them soar, despite the collateral fear. It wasn't long before he got it in his head to follow them. Often being used to stake out buildings to be robbed, he knew how to climb to the roof. He then spent the next year or so falling off them, in an attempt to follow his heroes from building to building, and he was incredibly lucky never to have broken anything. Until one day he did.

 

He was about ten, eleven, age was never really something to worry about. He'd been following this one mist born for about ten minutes, so he must have been new. It was a thing that they seemed to get the newest ones to do, to train, out run the kid using alomancy. Jim thought he was getting quite good, leaping from building to building, perhaps not quite so  gracefully, and he couldn't exactly cross the street, but it was still pretty damn good. It was deep winter, and he stepped on what he assumed was a frozen puddle, then fell three stories to the cold, hard ground. The snow and ash cushioned his fall somewhat, but both his legs were broken, and he was trapped in an old, abandoned warehouse, with no food and freezing temperatures. He should have died.

 

Jessie saved him. She found him, cold and alone, in that warehouse, though she never said what she was doing there. She was a skilled craftswoman, a carpenter, though her mother had taught her medicine. She took him home, bandaged his legs, fed him, kept him safe. There was never any reason, or at least, she never gave any. When his les eventually healed, Jim looked for any way he could to pay her back. He joined his most dangerous job yet, and gave her everything he got from it. She smiled, and closed his fist around what he offered her. "Stealing is wrong." was all she said, before going back to work. He learned that a lot of things were wrong during his time there, killing was wrong, even if he had something you wanted. Cheating was wrong, even just harming someone was wrong. It was a strange way to look at things, but it made such sense.

 

It wasn't very long ago when it happened. They got their most important commission yet, from a Venture, no less, a commission for the finest duelling cane they could make. They would be given all the materials, all they had to do was craft. Jessie put her soul into that cane, carving it with the most beautiful flowing patterns into a luscious ebony, inlaid with gleaming ivory accents and polished to a sheen. The tip was lovingly crafted into a delicate rams head, horns curling majestically behind it's stern expression, it was the singular greatest piece she had ever crafted.

 

Jim was out when the Venture came to collect his commission, 'earning his way' (Jessie didn't like begging), and hadn't returned until just before the mists. Despite the coming darkness, no lights were switched on in the shop. Or the house above. Jim slowly peaked his head round the door, the little bell tinkling as he entered. He almost didn't see Jessie. She was lying on the floor, her clothes covered in blood, arms and legs sticking out at awkward angles. Her breath came in strangles gasps. He ran to her, kneeling over her, he had no idea what to do, he didn't know anything about 'medicine' or 'healing'. She'd offered to teach him but he'd...he'd never learned. If he'd just....learned. But he hadn't. So he cried. He cried and he cried, until just as the sun went down, Jessie gave him one last smile. Before her light flickered out to.

 

Turns out, the cane hadn't been good enough. The Lord had grown enraged, and ordered his guards to beat the girl to death. They hadn't hesitated. Some said he'd even watched while they did it, some said he'd smiled, listening to Jessica's screams. He'd kept the cane. There was no evidence, of course. No one saw anything, the girl must have been attacked by robbers in the night. Such a shame.

 

To this day, Jim tries to live according to Jessie's ideals, in memory of her. Maybe he bends the rules here and there, and he'll bend them even more if he ever finds the man with the Ram's head cane. Just a little.