Ignition
04-27-08, 01:52 AM
It’s only personal.
-F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Lets Keep it Easy
Given name: The most common guess is Andrew Bayes, but no one can be completely sure.
Common name: Tom Carraway
Common aliases: Nathan Grey, Daniel Davies, Sean Jackson, Vinnie Vegas, Jimmy Gatz, Carjack Capone
Age: 32
Hair Color: Slightly Greying Black
Eye Color: Dark Brown
Skin Color: Tanned
Height: 5’10”
Weight: 169 lbs
Location: The green light on the dock
Birthplace: Nisalath, Istraloth
Hand preference: Strong Left
Quick impressions
Outward appearance: Tom is a somewhat striking looking man, attractive without being good looking. He has perfect posture and carries himself with a cool confidence. In general he dresses elegantly. His hair is close cropped and he is generally clean shaven. Among his facial features, the most striking is his prominent jawline that sticks out defiantly, almost as if it is challenging Tom’s enemies to punch him.
Outward personality: Tom seems quite gregarious and smooth. Women are often drawn to him, men either look up to him or despise him. On first impressions, he would strike someone who defies authority for its own sake, whose moral compass is not motivated by issues of right and wrong as much as an orientation towards mischief, and this is an impression that Tom likes to encourage.
Detailed personality: Tom is a very jaded person. He cares about right and wrong, but he has a considerably high tolerance for injustices. He considers his word his bond, and because of that, does not speak on matters of substance often. In general, Tom looks down on conflict as a wasted exercise.
Clothing: Tom’s preferred attire is a pair of loose fitting britches, boots that extend almost to the knees and a long flowing brown tunic. In some cases, Tom will hide armor under his tunic, but only when necessary. His left hand is always gloved.
Accent: Tom’s Tradespeak is spoken as if he has taken all effort to remove any remnants of his natural accent from his voice. He does not speak any other languages.
The Path that Brought us where we are
Basic Childhood: Tom Carraway was born to relatively unremarkable parents in Nisalath. By the standards of the rest of Althanas, they may have been considered simple folk but they were relatively well to do by Istraloth standards. Tom’s father fished and was relatively successful, so successful that Tom’s mother’s only duty was raising her son. Throughout Tom’s childhood the relationship with his parents was without much incident, Tom was well cared for and did not suffer for attention.
The one remarkable aspect of Tom’s childhood was his education. Though his parents had never left the island of Istraloth, they had a neighbor, an elder dark elf by the name of Legit Enabrin. Enabrin’s rationale for being in Nisalath were never made clear, though it was suspected that he had been a rising soldier in the Kyorl until he fell out of favor with important Grafs. Either out of loneliness or ennui, Enabrin became a teacher of sorts for Tom. Every day from the age of six, Tom would go to Enabrin’s house and listen to lectures about politics, mathematics, art and literature. Every night after Tom had eaten dinner and finished his chores, he would play a game of chess with Enabrin. When he was six, Enabrin used to let Tom win. By age eight, Enabrin no longer gave Tom that advantage. By age eleven, Tom started winning again.
At the age of twelve, as is custom in Istraloth, Tom embarked on his first rafting expedition in order to prove he was a man to the community. It was a successful expedition, but neither noteworthy nor memorable. After the expedition Tom was informed that he would have to fish like his father, and would no longer have time for Enabrin. That was the only time in his life when Tom cried, and he only cried a single tear.
Teen years: Tom kept meeting with Enabrim, though it was at night and after he was sore after long days of fishing. Tom made a few fast friends his age with whom he spent his days fishing, and the group of them all swore that by the time they reached twenty, they would leave Istraloth for good. There was little to do in the Reed Mat Cities. The only real occupations were gardening and fishing, and there was little career advancement in either. All of Tom’s friends swore that by the time they were twenty, they would leave Istraloth forever. Tom, looked forward to the day, he meticulously kept his savings, listened to the stories of tradesmen and adventurers, but kept his intentions secret from his parents. With the exception of Enabrim and his friends, no one knew of Tom’s intentions.
As the years went on, Tom became increasingly careless as a fisherman. He nearly got his father killed in a rafting accident, and his tolerance for the banality of his existence grew with every passing day. His surreptitious meetings with Enabrim were his only source of solace. Tom grew more and more eager to leave, but his friends, one by one, seemed to grow less and less interested in leaving. They began to get married, one by one, until Tom was the only one who was still unmarried.
It was somewhat of a matter of shame that Tom was not married. While marriage generally happened later in life for Istraloth’s males, it was a matter of status that Tom should marry before he turned twenty. His parents had tried to match him with quite a few girls over the years, but he kept refusing. However, his mother had grown more and more insistent, until Tom finally relented. He swore to himself, however, that the night after their wedding, he would leave with his wife.
Two months before his wedding and only an hour after the date was set, Tom first met Daisy, the girl he was supposed to marry. She was a week short of her sixteenth birthday, and blushed and dug her toe in the dirt when she spoke to Tom. Tom liked her, he didn’t know why, but the longer he spoke to her, the more bearable his life seemed. Daisy was the first person that Tom could talk to about the things that mattered to him, though she changed the subject every time Tom brought up wanting to leave the island.
A day before their wedding, Daisy and Tom went for a walk. By this point, Tom was madly in love with Daisy. He loved the way that her blonde ringlets framed her yearning blue eyes and how her porcelain colored skin made her face seem as delicate as a child’s doll. For the first and last time in his life, Tom declared his love. Daisy immediately broke into tears. She told Tom that it wasn’t his fault, but that she didn’t love him, that she never could have. From the time of their betrothal, she had loved another boy, a cripple by the name of Sean. Later that night, Tom gathered his things and left the island.
The only person Tom said farewell to was Enabrim. It was by choice. He had always liked the dark elf. Enabrim seemed to have anticipated Tom’s leaving, he had a package of supplies prepared for the young Istralothian upon arrival. Most of the package was food, but there was a small dagger with an engraving in dark elven. It quickly became Tom’s favorite possession.
Alerar: Unsure of where else to go, Tom found his way to Alerar, told that factory work was a far cry from fishing. It was, but it was equally undignified. Within five weeks, Tom had quit and joined a local band of rogues. They began a series of petty crimes, but they were all amateurs and were caught quickly. Fortunately for Tom, he had avoided capture, but having little faith in the rest of his comrades, he disappeared as soon as he could into dwarven area of Kachuk up near the Salvar border.
In Kachuk, Tom found himself. He worked in the mines sporadically when he ran out of money, but mostly, he ran a tailor’s shop. Surprisingly, Tom found it considerably less dull, if for no other reason than the intoxicating politics going on around him. Kachuk was a dicey place. The dwarves, long unable to have much by way of political control, were also losing economic control. Talks of unions and strikes were rife through the air. Tom was not involved in the disputes, but he craved to be.
By the time he was twenty five, Tom was recruited in a band of ruffians to stop the strike by assassinating a few strike leaders. Tom didn’t know why they had chosen him, other than that he lived in Kachuk and had no loyalty to anyone but the dwarves. Breaking up the strike was simple enough once the strike leaders were killed, and Tom’s involvement in the assassinations was nonessential. His greatest involvement was inviting one of the dwarves over to his shop. Even that made him a little uncomfortable.
Corone: Though Tom did not distinguish himself as a fighter in Kachuk, a man by the name of John Fagin had developed a liking to him. Fagin was a Lieutenant in an illegal Corone organization called the Trax Syndicate in Southwest Radasanth. Tom was recruited into the Syndicate by Fagin and joined because he didn’t know what else to do with himself. Initially, Tom’s entire work for the organization was to run a bar that sold Trax’ bootleg liquor, but he eventually branched out into collecting protection fees. However, even though Tom’s new job required a bit of violence, he made it a point never to hit women or the elderly and rarely collected fees from them.
Eventually Tom’s ethics led to him falling out of favor with Fagin. The protection fees he collected always seemed to be a bit lacking. He was given one last shot at making good, he was told to murder the daughter of a local businessman organizing against the Syndicate. Tom took the job, reluctantly, with every intention of fulfilling it. However, when he reached the shopkeeper’s house, he couldn’t do it. The girl’s name was Daisy. Two days later, Bolivar cut off the thumb on his left hand as punishment for his failure.
Seeking revenge, Tom joined the Omakrav Trust, the only organization in Radasanth capable of standing up to the Trax Syndicate that he knew of. He joined The Rocky Blackwell gang, and in his first action as a member of the group, was part of a strike force that shook down the Trax Syndicate. A few weeks later, Tom was cornered in an alleyway by Fagin and two of his men. Somehow, more by luck than skill, Tom was able to fight his way out of the situation, killing Fagin in the process. Tom didn’t say anything for the next few hours, awestruck by his performance. He wasn’t sure whether he was proud or disappointed with himself. He swore that within a month, he would return to Istraloth, that life in Radasanth was of little use to him.
However, there was to be no leaving the Rocky Blackwell gang. Afraid they would hunt him down if he tried to leave, much like Fagin had done with his thumb, Tom did the only thing he could think of. He went to the house of the local magistrate, knocked on the door and promptly punched the government official in the face. He was locked up for the next three years and stripped of all his possessions. Tom didn’t mind much, except for the fact he had lost the dagger Enabrim had given him.
Since his crime was minor, but his ties to the criminal element of Radasanth were strong, there were rumors started about Tom while he was in jail. It was most likely these rumors that lead to his early release, but only because he agreed to go to Salvar on a mission that was very unclear, only that he would meet a member of the Rangers in a tavern in Knife’s Edge. Fortunately, the Coronian government was more than willing to equip him with the things that they said would be necessary for his journey.
Getting By
Education: Tom has a surprising amount of knowledge about government, economics, mathematics and culture. He tries to keep people from finding out about his knowledge.
Street smarts: What you learn in a book cannot teach you how to be like Carjack.
Tailoring and Fishing: Tom is adequate in both these areas, enough so that should he be so inclined, he could pursue either line of work professionally.
Marksmanship: Tom is an average marksman with a crossbow or a gun, but is unable to use a bow because of his thumb.
Swordsmanship: Tom is a poor swordsman, considering he lacks a thumb on his dominant hand.
Athleticism: Tom is a very fast athlete, capable of running a 40 yard dash in 4.30 seconds.
What Wasn’t Left Behind
All of Tom’s possessions were provided to him by the Coronian government upon being released from jail. They amounted to a nice set of clothes, a few toiletries, a steel rapier and an oak small hand crossbow. He also has a prosthetic thumb that is attached to a glove. It doesn’t help with his grip, but helps with appearances.
-F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Lets Keep it Easy
Given name: The most common guess is Andrew Bayes, but no one can be completely sure.
Common name: Tom Carraway
Common aliases: Nathan Grey, Daniel Davies, Sean Jackson, Vinnie Vegas, Jimmy Gatz, Carjack Capone
Age: 32
Hair Color: Slightly Greying Black
Eye Color: Dark Brown
Skin Color: Tanned
Height: 5’10”
Weight: 169 lbs
Location: The green light on the dock
Birthplace: Nisalath, Istraloth
Hand preference: Strong Left
Quick impressions
Outward appearance: Tom is a somewhat striking looking man, attractive without being good looking. He has perfect posture and carries himself with a cool confidence. In general he dresses elegantly. His hair is close cropped and he is generally clean shaven. Among his facial features, the most striking is his prominent jawline that sticks out defiantly, almost as if it is challenging Tom’s enemies to punch him.
Outward personality: Tom seems quite gregarious and smooth. Women are often drawn to him, men either look up to him or despise him. On first impressions, he would strike someone who defies authority for its own sake, whose moral compass is not motivated by issues of right and wrong as much as an orientation towards mischief, and this is an impression that Tom likes to encourage.
Detailed personality: Tom is a very jaded person. He cares about right and wrong, but he has a considerably high tolerance for injustices. He considers his word his bond, and because of that, does not speak on matters of substance often. In general, Tom looks down on conflict as a wasted exercise.
Clothing: Tom’s preferred attire is a pair of loose fitting britches, boots that extend almost to the knees and a long flowing brown tunic. In some cases, Tom will hide armor under his tunic, but only when necessary. His left hand is always gloved.
Accent: Tom’s Tradespeak is spoken as if he has taken all effort to remove any remnants of his natural accent from his voice. He does not speak any other languages.
The Path that Brought us where we are
Basic Childhood: Tom Carraway was born to relatively unremarkable parents in Nisalath. By the standards of the rest of Althanas, they may have been considered simple folk but they were relatively well to do by Istraloth standards. Tom’s father fished and was relatively successful, so successful that Tom’s mother’s only duty was raising her son. Throughout Tom’s childhood the relationship with his parents was without much incident, Tom was well cared for and did not suffer for attention.
The one remarkable aspect of Tom’s childhood was his education. Though his parents had never left the island of Istraloth, they had a neighbor, an elder dark elf by the name of Legit Enabrin. Enabrin’s rationale for being in Nisalath were never made clear, though it was suspected that he had been a rising soldier in the Kyorl until he fell out of favor with important Grafs. Either out of loneliness or ennui, Enabrin became a teacher of sorts for Tom. Every day from the age of six, Tom would go to Enabrin’s house and listen to lectures about politics, mathematics, art and literature. Every night after Tom had eaten dinner and finished his chores, he would play a game of chess with Enabrin. When he was six, Enabrin used to let Tom win. By age eight, Enabrin no longer gave Tom that advantage. By age eleven, Tom started winning again.
At the age of twelve, as is custom in Istraloth, Tom embarked on his first rafting expedition in order to prove he was a man to the community. It was a successful expedition, but neither noteworthy nor memorable. After the expedition Tom was informed that he would have to fish like his father, and would no longer have time for Enabrin. That was the only time in his life when Tom cried, and he only cried a single tear.
Teen years: Tom kept meeting with Enabrim, though it was at night and after he was sore after long days of fishing. Tom made a few fast friends his age with whom he spent his days fishing, and the group of them all swore that by the time they reached twenty, they would leave Istraloth for good. There was little to do in the Reed Mat Cities. The only real occupations were gardening and fishing, and there was little career advancement in either. All of Tom’s friends swore that by the time they were twenty, they would leave Istraloth forever. Tom, looked forward to the day, he meticulously kept his savings, listened to the stories of tradesmen and adventurers, but kept his intentions secret from his parents. With the exception of Enabrim and his friends, no one knew of Tom’s intentions.
As the years went on, Tom became increasingly careless as a fisherman. He nearly got his father killed in a rafting accident, and his tolerance for the banality of his existence grew with every passing day. His surreptitious meetings with Enabrim were his only source of solace. Tom grew more and more eager to leave, but his friends, one by one, seemed to grow less and less interested in leaving. They began to get married, one by one, until Tom was the only one who was still unmarried.
It was somewhat of a matter of shame that Tom was not married. While marriage generally happened later in life for Istraloth’s males, it was a matter of status that Tom should marry before he turned twenty. His parents had tried to match him with quite a few girls over the years, but he kept refusing. However, his mother had grown more and more insistent, until Tom finally relented. He swore to himself, however, that the night after their wedding, he would leave with his wife.
Two months before his wedding and only an hour after the date was set, Tom first met Daisy, the girl he was supposed to marry. She was a week short of her sixteenth birthday, and blushed and dug her toe in the dirt when she spoke to Tom. Tom liked her, he didn’t know why, but the longer he spoke to her, the more bearable his life seemed. Daisy was the first person that Tom could talk to about the things that mattered to him, though she changed the subject every time Tom brought up wanting to leave the island.
A day before their wedding, Daisy and Tom went for a walk. By this point, Tom was madly in love with Daisy. He loved the way that her blonde ringlets framed her yearning blue eyes and how her porcelain colored skin made her face seem as delicate as a child’s doll. For the first and last time in his life, Tom declared his love. Daisy immediately broke into tears. She told Tom that it wasn’t his fault, but that she didn’t love him, that she never could have. From the time of their betrothal, she had loved another boy, a cripple by the name of Sean. Later that night, Tom gathered his things and left the island.
The only person Tom said farewell to was Enabrim. It was by choice. He had always liked the dark elf. Enabrim seemed to have anticipated Tom’s leaving, he had a package of supplies prepared for the young Istralothian upon arrival. Most of the package was food, but there was a small dagger with an engraving in dark elven. It quickly became Tom’s favorite possession.
Alerar: Unsure of where else to go, Tom found his way to Alerar, told that factory work was a far cry from fishing. It was, but it was equally undignified. Within five weeks, Tom had quit and joined a local band of rogues. They began a series of petty crimes, but they were all amateurs and were caught quickly. Fortunately for Tom, he had avoided capture, but having little faith in the rest of his comrades, he disappeared as soon as he could into dwarven area of Kachuk up near the Salvar border.
In Kachuk, Tom found himself. He worked in the mines sporadically when he ran out of money, but mostly, he ran a tailor’s shop. Surprisingly, Tom found it considerably less dull, if for no other reason than the intoxicating politics going on around him. Kachuk was a dicey place. The dwarves, long unable to have much by way of political control, were also losing economic control. Talks of unions and strikes were rife through the air. Tom was not involved in the disputes, but he craved to be.
By the time he was twenty five, Tom was recruited in a band of ruffians to stop the strike by assassinating a few strike leaders. Tom didn’t know why they had chosen him, other than that he lived in Kachuk and had no loyalty to anyone but the dwarves. Breaking up the strike was simple enough once the strike leaders were killed, and Tom’s involvement in the assassinations was nonessential. His greatest involvement was inviting one of the dwarves over to his shop. Even that made him a little uncomfortable.
Corone: Though Tom did not distinguish himself as a fighter in Kachuk, a man by the name of John Fagin had developed a liking to him. Fagin was a Lieutenant in an illegal Corone organization called the Trax Syndicate in Southwest Radasanth. Tom was recruited into the Syndicate by Fagin and joined because he didn’t know what else to do with himself. Initially, Tom’s entire work for the organization was to run a bar that sold Trax’ bootleg liquor, but he eventually branched out into collecting protection fees. However, even though Tom’s new job required a bit of violence, he made it a point never to hit women or the elderly and rarely collected fees from them.
Eventually Tom’s ethics led to him falling out of favor with Fagin. The protection fees he collected always seemed to be a bit lacking. He was given one last shot at making good, he was told to murder the daughter of a local businessman organizing against the Syndicate. Tom took the job, reluctantly, with every intention of fulfilling it. However, when he reached the shopkeeper’s house, he couldn’t do it. The girl’s name was Daisy. Two days later, Bolivar cut off the thumb on his left hand as punishment for his failure.
Seeking revenge, Tom joined the Omakrav Trust, the only organization in Radasanth capable of standing up to the Trax Syndicate that he knew of. He joined The Rocky Blackwell gang, and in his first action as a member of the group, was part of a strike force that shook down the Trax Syndicate. A few weeks later, Tom was cornered in an alleyway by Fagin and two of his men. Somehow, more by luck than skill, Tom was able to fight his way out of the situation, killing Fagin in the process. Tom didn’t say anything for the next few hours, awestruck by his performance. He wasn’t sure whether he was proud or disappointed with himself. He swore that within a month, he would return to Istraloth, that life in Radasanth was of little use to him.
However, there was to be no leaving the Rocky Blackwell gang. Afraid they would hunt him down if he tried to leave, much like Fagin had done with his thumb, Tom did the only thing he could think of. He went to the house of the local magistrate, knocked on the door and promptly punched the government official in the face. He was locked up for the next three years and stripped of all his possessions. Tom didn’t mind much, except for the fact he had lost the dagger Enabrim had given him.
Since his crime was minor, but his ties to the criminal element of Radasanth were strong, there were rumors started about Tom while he was in jail. It was most likely these rumors that lead to his early release, but only because he agreed to go to Salvar on a mission that was very unclear, only that he would meet a member of the Rangers in a tavern in Knife’s Edge. Fortunately, the Coronian government was more than willing to equip him with the things that they said would be necessary for his journey.
Getting By
Education: Tom has a surprising amount of knowledge about government, economics, mathematics and culture. He tries to keep people from finding out about his knowledge.
Street smarts: What you learn in a book cannot teach you how to be like Carjack.
Tailoring and Fishing: Tom is adequate in both these areas, enough so that should he be so inclined, he could pursue either line of work professionally.
Marksmanship: Tom is an average marksman with a crossbow or a gun, but is unable to use a bow because of his thumb.
Swordsmanship: Tom is a poor swordsman, considering he lacks a thumb on his dominant hand.
Athleticism: Tom is a very fast athlete, capable of running a 40 yard dash in 4.30 seconds.
What Wasn’t Left Behind
All of Tom’s possessions were provided to him by the Coronian government upon being released from jail. They amounted to a nice set of clothes, a few toiletries, a steel rapier and an oak small hand crossbow. He also has a prosthetic thumb that is attached to a glove. It doesn’t help with his grip, but helps with appearances.