Out of Character:
Travis Leone was a scoundrel, even as a youth, despite being the son of a rural aristocrat in Scara Brae. It was baffling to think of how ineffective his learning was, and how wasted his cultured upbring had been. He was always hanging around with urchins and low-life scum, but nothing that his father had done was particularly effective. No punishment, no sanction, no curfew, nor any other form of discipline had done anything to deter the ruffian behavior that his son had exhibited. One night, a city guard had brought Travis to his doorstep, having caught him red-handed trying to pickpocket someone while in Thurman Osgood's General Store.
But in the end, it was sort of ironic as to how Travis was actually innocent of the crime that had him exiled from home. His little brother, Choran, had followed in his footsteps, much to the dismay of their father. However, he was very delicately walking the line, hoping to keep their father happy, as well as impress his sibling. He was treading tendencies between an aristocrat's child, and a scamp's apprentice.
It was no secret that the Leone and Vitarelli families had a longstanding history of rivalry. A few generations back, they had been wedded together by their two heirs - Ballori Leone and Caspar Vitarelli. But that romance ended in divorce, only a year after their union. It had been very stressful on everybody, and instead of uniting the two families, it had instead drove the wedge further between them, resulting in the hostilities that were still strong and present today. And it was due to this antagonism that Choran Leone had been dared to aggravate.
One of the most treasured items of the Leone family - a locket, dating several generations back, had been lost to the Vitarellis during the divorce of Ballori and Caspar. Since then, they had held the item, though it was on occasion brought up during sour discussions about the Vitarellis. It was after overhearing such a conversation that Travis decided to test his younger brother, who had been eagerly seeking his brother's approval, alongside membership in his brother's little local gang.
When the locket went missing, it was only a matter of time before it was found. And, of course, it was. Travis, however, did nothing to sway the allegations that he was the one who had stolen it, and when it was discovered on his person, he accepted the responsibility and punishment. To him, it was a way out of the family and the life that was constricting him. He didn't want wealth or influence - nothing compared to the excitement that he craved, day in and day out, and to him, it was equivalent to being in Hell, to be stuck in a suit, living the pompous, lazy life that had been laid out for him. So, he took the fall for Choran's crime and was cast out.
He hopped over a few baronies and made his way towards the city of Scara Brae, where he fell in with a few different crowds until deciding on who he really wanted to be a part of. Looking around, he found the graffiti of someone he only had come to know as "Math," from the signature tags on whatever messages the vandal had left around the city. It was impressive to him, how much emotion that guy could evoke with a few thought-out sentences in well-placed locations, and how he could do it with only a bit of paint.
Not to mention the fact that the Scara Scourge that he belonged to had a long-standing history of being the most notorious criminal group in Scara Brae for years. To him, it was a dream and an ultimate goal to be a member of one of the top classes of criminal in the city. It was a disappointment, though, to find that they had been waning in power over the last couple of months, especially with the arrival of the foreign group calling themselves the Blackhood Syndicate. Their standards had fallen since then, and it was perhaps lucky for Travis that they had. With their desperate need for fresh recruits, it may have been the only reason that he was allowed to join them, and even meet, face to face, his idol.
Math was known as Vandal to the group that he belonged to. People rarely knew eachother's names in the Scourge - only insofar as much as one had to. Names were a sign of trust, and often only used out of necessity. And so, Math was only a signature for the people of Scara Brae to know. But Vandal was a lot unlike Travis had imagined him. He was a young man... probably not much older than Travis himself, and a bit shorter. He seemed kind of meek, scrawny, and very reserved. He'd imagined a wild, brash, and unpredictable sort of guy to be behind the graffiti that he'd often admired while walking down the back alleys of the city.
Regardless, Travis had found his home among the Scara Scourge... only to have it crushed when Chapter, the lead of their group, betrayed them to the Blackhood Syndicate. Most of them escaped, but they had lost both Matches and Vandal. They ended up regrouping later and retreated to the town of Elvaline. It was an immense surprise, however, when a few months later, they raided a caravan belonging to the Syndicate, and discovered Vandal, bound and chained, and being escorted back to Scara Brae.
They freed him, and he told them that he'd been experimented on by a necromancer, and that he had been forced into becoming an assassin for Count Vernanon Merix. He had grown very cold and distant to everyone, keeping to himself much of the time. But he was very clear and concise in his plan as he slowly started to find himself in a position of leadership among them. They trusted in him and the plan that he had - a plan to fight back against both the corrupt forces of law that had been constricting their growth, as well as their foreigner rivals who had destroyed what little respect people had for the criminal underworld.
So it was only a matter of time that he was unanimously selected as their new Chapter. And it became apparent how correct that decision was to Travis, when his first order was to share their names with eachother. It was at that moment, that fateful night, that he knew that Mathias was every bit the young man that he wanted to emulate.
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