Ameiko Kaijitsu
Ameiko is a beautiful but somewhat irreverent woman of Tian descent who runs Sandpoint’s Rusty Dragon tavern and happens to be a member of one of Sandpoint’s founding families. Her parents and older siblings have met unfortunate ends over the past several years, leaving the young woman as the sole remaining Kaijitsu in town. Ameiko may be among the town’s nobility, but she’s never really cared for the aristocracy—she’s always had an urge to explore, and loves hearing stories of adventures and daring deeds. While
she has a lot of friends and admirers in town, Ameiko has never accepted anyone as anything more than a friend, diplomatically avoiding personal questions and proposals of romance, much to the frustration of several eager suitors in Sandpoint. She’s a talented singer and samisen player, and if she wanted, Ameiko could probably lead a comfortable life in Sandpoint, but she’s growing increasingly bored and impatient with having a “safe life” in a “safe town.” If the chance to go on a grand adventure presents itself, she’d sell
the Rusty Dragon in a heartbeat to seek her fortune.
History
Ameiko was born in 4689 ar to Lonjiku and Atsuii Kaijitsu. Although she’s not Atsuii’s or Lonjiku’s first child, she was the first legitimate child from that marriage. Ameiko had a lonely childhood. Her father strictly controlled who she could keep as friends, and filled her days with lessons in music, diplomacy, magic, and academic subjects. He kept a close eye on her, but Ameiko still managed to sneak into town to play with friends, explore old buildings, and visit her half-elven half-brother Tsuto at Sandpoint’s Turandarok Academy every chance she could.
When she was 13, Ameiko tried to reconcile the bad blood between her brother and father, but the attempt
backfired. Tsuto struck her in a fit of rage, and Ameiko was so betrayed and distraught by this that she ran away from home to Magnimar for several months. When she learned of her mother’s death in a fall from the cliffs near her house, though, Ameiko returned home to Sandpoint. She found life at home more unpleasant than ever, but when another family argument broke out at her mother’s funeral and Tsuto left town, Ameiko resigned herself to staying in Sandpoint to care for her father.
Ameiko left home for the second time at age 16 after life in the house alone with her father and the help grew too depressing to bear. She joined an adventuring group, and became particularly good friends with the group’s priest of Shelyn, a handsome young Varisian man named Alder Vhiski. But in 4706, the group was captured by a degenerate family of backwoods cannibals living in an old mine in
the southern Fogscar Mountains. The group was within a hair’s breadth of being eaten, abused, and worse by the degenerates, but Alder led a heroic attempt to escape. The resulting f light from the mine was
nightmarish, as members of the group were picked off one by one by the pursuing cannibals, who
were led by a spry druid who favored snakes as his pets. As the group neared the exit, only Ameiko, Alder, and Alder’s brother Sandru remained alive, but as they prepared to scramble into a rickety rowboat that would take them to safety, Ameiko was attacked by the druid’s animal companion, a viper of prodigious size. Bitten twice, Ameiko would have died had Alder not pulled her to safety, and in so doing Alder was himself bitten. Already weakened from the fight, the snake’s venom killed him. The last Ameiko saw of Alder, he was being torn apart by the degenerates. With Sandru’s help, the two survivors eventually made it back to Sandpoint, but they never spoke of what they had endured in that old mine. Some months later, Ameiko got a tattoo of a snake on her left arm and shoulder as a sort of memorial to Alder, then cashed in most of her earnings from her adventures and purchased an old tavern in downtown Sandpoint called the Rusty Dragon. Since then, she’s run the Rusty Dragon as a place for adventurers to gather and relax.
Sandru Vhiski
Only a few years from middle age, Sandru Vhiski is a charming man, handsome and irreverent in precisely the ways that could have made him a highly successful Sczarni con artist, even before one takes into account in the fact that his older brother, Jubrayl, is Sandpoint’s local Sczarni leader. Sandru doesn’t live in Sandpoint, although he considers himself one of the town’s citizens nevertheless. He’s only in town a few days out of every month, for his caravan is one of the region’s busier examples. Traveling with his adopted
mother Koya Mvashti and a pair of Varisian brothers named Bevelek and Vankor Dalmuvian, Sandru makes the trip from Riddleport to Magnimar to Korvosa several times a year. While he makes enough money on these journeys from trade, money isn’t Sandru’s primary motivation—he loves the road, and he loves the tradition. It doesn’t take much to get Sandru talking about Varisian history, dance traditions, scarves, fortune-telling, horses and wagons, landmarks and legends. In the off-seasons, when weather makes travel too dangerous or too uncomfortable, Sandru prefers to stay in Magnimar, where he helps other Varisians
with his carpentry skills and flirts with the political scene in that town. He’s not yet had the conviction to fully become a representative of his people in Magnimar, though, since he knows the call of the road will pull him from any local responsibilities as soon as the rains clear each spring.
History
The Vhiski family has been involved with the Sczarni for as many generations as anyone cares to look back upon. Not every Vhiski throws in with the gang, but enough do that when one comes along who has no interest in the Sczarni life, it’s difficult for him to prove his disinterest in crime to outsiders. Sandru’s early childhood schools were back alleys and waterfront taverns, and training in the art of the con, dirty fighting, sabotage, and picking locks replaced lessons in numbers, arts, and literature. From an early age, though, Sandru’s sense of fairness and compassion hampered his advancement in the ranks of the Sczarni, and the mockery and derision his hesitance earned him only strengthened his convictions. When a violent storm struck the Varisian coast in 4687ar, Sandru’s parents were among those slain by the floods and winds that tore the Lost Coast apart. Sandru and his brothers Alder and Jubrayl emerged from that catastrophic
event as orphans. Yet while tragic, this event was ironically just the thing to save Sandru from a life of crime. While Jubrayl was old enough at that point to strike out on his own (and thus fell in completely with the family’s criminal traditions), Sandru was still a young child of 7 and his younger brother Alder barely 2. His care fell to Koya Mvashti, a family friend and practically an aunt to the young Sandru. Under her guidance and support, Sandru managed to avoid falling in with the Sczarni, and when he grew of age, he sought employment as a caravan guard.
For several years, Sandru avoided Sandpoint, but after he lost his job, he joined up with a group of adventurers eager to explore western Varisia. As fate would have it, Ameiko Kaijitsu was also in the group. Sandru and Ameiko hit it off at once and became close friends. Indeed, Sandru was quite taken with the lovely young woman, but their age difference (he was 26, while she was only 17) and Sandru’s sense of honor kept him from pursuing a romantic relationship with her. Instead, he watched enviously (yet graciously) as Ameiko and his younger brother Alder began to fall in love.
The trio’s brief adventuring career was quite successful, but as recounted in Ameiko’s history, ended in tragedy. For many years after Alder rescued Ameiko and lost his life to the cannibals, Sandru couldn’t stand to be around the young Tian—she reminded him of lost opportunities and lost family. So while Ameiko invested her adventuring spoils in Sandpoint, Sandru invested his in the road, throwing himself into a much
more honorable Varisian occupation, that of caravan owner. For the next several years, Sandru’s life was the road.
He’s since mostly recovered from the bad times, and now visits Sandpoint and Ameiko often. He thinks of her now as a younger sister, and often worries that her capricious and often rebellious nature will someday force her to choose between the life she wants and the life she’s inherited as one of Sandpoint’s nobles.
Shalelu Andosana
Although Shalelu Andosana is something of a mystery in Sandpoint, she’s certainly one of the town’s most admired defenders. Like Sandru Vhiski, she doesn’t actually live in town, but she sometimes spends the night at the Rusty Dragon free of charge, thanks to her friendship with Ameiko Kaijitsu. Everyone in town knows that Shalelu is something of a loner and prefers to spend her time wandering and exploring the wilderness around Sandpoint. She periodically vanishes from the region for weeks or even months at a time to visit friends elsewhere in Varisia, but she never fails to return to Sandpoint. No one quite understands why she keeps coming back. When asked why, she merely says, “Someone’s got to keep an eye on you all.” Her reports of goblin activity have helped save folk from ambushes or warned the militia of possible attacks on the town or its farmlands numerous times. Yet in recent days, Sheriff Hemlock has taken a more active role in watching over the surrounding land. His militia is better trained than ever before, and Shalelu’s aid in keeping an eye on the hinterlands is growing less and less necessary. She actually seems relatively pleased with this, as if she’s proud that Sandpoint is finally starting to look after itself. She’s even hinted that she’s thinking of taking a long journey away from town sometime in the future, but when pressed for details, she just shrugs and changes the topic.
History
Shalelu is still relatively young at 130 years of age, but she
can remember when the Lost Coast was truly lost, when
only goblin lairs and Thassilonian ruins could be found
along its length. Yet for much of her life, Shalelu’s visits
to southern Varisia were not nearly as common. Born and
raised in the small village of Crying Leaf, Shalelu is an
only child whose father was slain not long after she was
born by a particularly brutal bugbear assassin, exposing
Shalelu to far more goblinoid cruelty than most elves her
age dream of in their worst nightmares.
59
NPC Gallery
It took Shalelu’s mother Seanthia nearly a hundred
years to find a new love, and when she did, she chose a
human mercenary, scandalizing much of Crying Leaf. As
shocking as the choice may have been, Shalelu saw how
happy this man Jakardos made her mother, and she loved
him as a father for that kindness. But when her mother
died in a fight a green dragon a few years later, Jakardos
left without saying goodbye, shattering Shalelu’s opinion
of him. The loss of her mother and stepfather sent Shalelu
into a terrible depression, and she left Crying Leaf to seek
out a new home.
Shalelu came to Sandpoint, where she found a burgeoning
human village that was growing rapidly into a town, but
that was plagued by goblins. Shalelu took Sandpoint under
her wing, and for many years she protected it from goblins,
bugbears, ghouls, and worse. Recently, Shalelu sought
out Jakardos at his new home in central Varisia, and her
reconciliation with her aging stepfather finally helped
her come to terms with the violent attack that killed her
mother. And when Shalelu returned to Crying Leaf to aid
in dealing with the drow problem in the nearby Mierani
Forest, she was able to help kill the same green dragon
responsible for her mother’s death.
Shalelu is now in one of the happiest times of her life,
and has been seized with a restless wanderlust. In
recent years, Shalelu has built a strong
friendship with Ameiko Kaijitsu as well,
and sees her as a younger sister. Shalelu
knows that Ameiko is haunted by tragedies, and in
some ways sees a ref lection of her own sad history
in Ameiko. Shalelu hopes to find some way soon of
helping her friend overcome her melancholia—perhaps
a nice long trip will fit the bill.
Koya Mvashti
Until she passed away from natural causes just a few
months ago, Madame Niska Mvashti was the oldest
person in Sandpoint. No one quite knows exactly how
old the Varisian seer actually was when she died (she
was already old when Sandpoint was founded over 40
years ago)—but the fact that her only daughter Koya is
herself an old woman is a telling fact. Koya has spent a
fair amount of her life traveling Varisia with a number
of caravans, serving as a healer when she was younger
and more recently as a fortune-teller. For the past several
years, she’s in the company of her adopted son Sandru
Vhiski as they travel on a regular caravan route between
Riddleport, Magnimar, and Korvosa two or three times
a year. Their caravan spends most of its time relatively
close to Sandpoint, though, and that has suited Koya fine,
since it gave her more time to care for her aged mother.
Now that old Niska has finally died, though, Koya’s
mourning has transitioned into a sort of morose
melancholy. A life-long worshiper of Desna, she’s come to
realize that while she’s traveled extensively throughout
the Varisian lowlands, she’s never been beyond the
region’s borders. Tales of other Desnan explorers have
long delighted Koya’s sense of wonder—even her own
mother reputedly took part in several extensive caravans
that traveled as far as the Lands of the Linnorm Kings and
even down to Qadira. Koya’s having something of a latelife
crisis as a result—a growing sense of disappointment
that she’s never made a long caravan trek. With her
mother dead, Koya has little reason to stay in Varisia, and
she’s been pressuring Sandru to take a long journey soon:
“The sooner the better, ’cause I won’t be around for long!”
Koya’s in remarkably good shape, physically, for a woman
well over 60 years in age—obviously, longevity runs in
her family—but with each year that passes, the chance
of her getting to experience a truly epic journey like the
ones in her favorite stories grows narrower.
History
since she was a child and first saw a map of the world in an
old history book she came across while sneaking through
her mother’s impressive collection of notes, trophies, and
keepsakes from her extensive travels. Although Koya has
since come to learn that the old map was rather inaccurate,
she’s never lost the sense of wonder she gained from the
simple notion that the world she’d thought she’d known
was so much larger than she’d ever imagined. Likewise,
a childhood trip to Korvosa impressed upon her how
different the world can be as you travel from plains to
forests to swamps to mountains to large urban centers.
The idea that one could make journeys 10 or even
100 times as long as the caravan route running
from Sandpoint to Korvosa has long been a point
of fascination and wonder for Koya.
But Koya never went on that long journey.
She always assumed there would be the chance
for an adventure in the near future, but the
present always seemed to have a knack for
getting in the way. Responsibilities to her
family caravan, her several tempestuous love
affairs as a young woman, the task of caring
for unfortunate children who had no mother
of their own (most notably Sandru Vhiski,
and perhaps one of the PCs if the character
selected the correct Campaign Trait from
the Jade Regent Player’s Guide), and most
recently caring for her elderly, but not
quite completely infirm, mother all
worked to keep her at home. Just
as one phase of her life seemed
ready to close, the next began, and
before she knew it, the unwelcome
kiss of old age had crept into her
aching bones and wrinkled face.
With her mother now dead, Koya
is eager to seize what she thinks
might be her last chance for that
great, world-spanning journey.
Lately she’s been traveling with
her adopted son Sandru in his
caravan, serving as a fortuneteller,
and she hopes that her
frequent attempts to convince
him to make a long journey
will bear fruit soon. Koya
longs to travel beyond the
borders of Varisia, whether
south to Cheliax and beyond or
north to the Lands of the Linnorm
Kings and the Crown of the World.
Koya would love to visit another continent as well, if the
opportunity presented itself, so she could leave her own
“found-mark” in distant lands.
No comments:
Post a Comment