My Saturday night Skype D&D 4E game (which doesn’t have a name) finished up a major plot arc tonight, and will be taking a break for awhile. Instead, we’re starting a new campaign, with a new DM. This will be a city campaign, which has been fun to plan for – I’ve never played in a city campaign, so allowing a character to really plug into one specific location is pretty fun. I’m going to be playing a Tiefling Warlock (Infernal Pact), since the class seems like something I’d have fun with, and tonight we spent a little time fleshing out character ideas and putting some meat on the bones of our new characters. I’m having a lot of fun putting this character together. I still need to come up with a few more contacts for her, but this is what I have so far:
(Tiefling, by Sarah Stone)
Anvari Zarthus
Warlock About Town
5’10″, 190 lbs
Skin – deep bronze
Eyes – dark brown
Hair – black, shoulder length, straight
Build – robust
Assistant at The Academy, Member of House Shavra.
Residence: House Shavra
Most frequently found in: The South Side, especially at posh wine bars that are entirely out of her pay grade, and anywhere else in the city she thinks she’ll get good food.
Anvari is convinced that the best thing is to truly enjoy life itself, sensuously and vivaciously. She has a great love of fine food and drink, sumptuous clothing, fine art and theater, and generally of living the good life. Her small room at House Shavra is filled with high quality items – she’s clearly more interested in furnishing the room than in paying for a larger one. She knows the best places in the city to get great food – whether it’s exclusive dining or just really good fish and chips. It’s not the expense of expensive items that draws her, more the luxury of enjoying them. She is largely unpretentious, and unafraid to eat cheap noodles for a few weeks to be able to afford a “Fine Dining Experience” like those of the Crested Falcon.
She believes all beings should be free from burdens and enslavements, that they could enjoy life as richly as she does, and she has several proteges at The Academy who think similarly.
Contacts:
Grays Moordan (Human, 58) – Grays is a retired guard and the city’s premier food critic. He writes a column for the local newspaper every Tuesday and Friday, sharing restaurant tips, food secrets, and the best places to get the best drinks in town. Anvari is a devoted follower, purchasing a newspaper each time his column appears and clipping the ones she finds most interesting. She keeps a notebook of clippings and notes of places to eat and drink, regularly making notes and her own “reviews” afterward, and sometimes writing letters to the editor in response to Sgt. Moordan’s columns.
Werangrath Barrelcoat (Dwarf, 245) – The patriarch of the oldest art and rare goods dealership in the South Side, Beetle and Barrel, Ltd. A curmudgeonly, ill tempered, and generally unpleasant Dwarf, Werangrath is well respected among his peers, and keeps a close eye to the pulse of art and other rare goods on sale in Korvosa. His age and stature in the city grant him a certain amount of personal leeway (which benefits his irritable personality), but when it comes to art and other artifacts, there is no one with a finer eye in the city. Beetle and Barrel, Ltd has held a series of short classes on the basics of the art trade and the rare goods market, which Anvari eagerly attended. While she is not on a first name basis with Werangrath (and few are), she trusts his opinion on fine goods, and trusts his dealers to make good recommendations about purchases for her apartment. She has a personal wishlist at the dealership, where she purchases many of the fine items that decorate her room at House Shavra.
Naomi Rose Drysdale (Half-elf, 26) – A former student at The Academy, Investigator Drysdale is an up and coming member of the Korvosan Guard, doing exclusively scrying and espionage research into slavery and trafficking rings, both of which are highly illegal in Korvosa. Horrified by the stories told by a schoolmate who had been involved in a trafficking ring, the young woman is devoted to her work, finding it a personal mission to free those who are enslaved and living in oppressive situations (even if they are dubiously legal). She is also an outspoken force against indentured servitude – a practice which comes in and out of fashion among the Korvosan elite. Anvari was the TA in one of her classes on magic while she was at the Academy, and the two have kept in close contact over the intervening years. Though they share opposite tastes and styles, their friendship is based on a mutual desire to rid the world of the evils of enslavement of any kind.