<div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">Anba</div><div class="spoiler_body"><hr/>At 2016-05-02 04:01:52, No name yet... (uid: 27539) rolls: 4d6k3 Result: 15 (https://elliquiy.com/forums/dicebot.php?r=88209)<br/>At 2016-05-02 04:02:12, No name yet... (uid: 27539) rolls: 4d6k3 Result: 13 (https://elliquiy.com/forums/dicebot.php?r=88210)<br/>At 2016-05-02 04:02:20, No name yet... (uid: 27539) rolls: 4d6k3 Result: 8 (https://elliquiy.com/forums/dicebot.php?r=88211)<br/>At 2016-05-02 04:02:27, No name yet... (uid: 27539) rolls: 4d6k3 Result: 11 (https://elliquiy.com/forums/dicebot.php?r=88212)<br/>At 2016-05-02 04:02:34, No name yet... (uid: 27539) rolls: 4d6k3 Result: 13 (https://elliquiy.com/forums/dicebot.php?r=88213)<br/>At 2016-05-02 04:02:41, No name yet... (uid: 27539) rolls: 4d6k3 Result: 12 (https://elliquiy.com/forums/dicebot.php?r=88214)<br/><hr/><br/>None are higher than 15, so per "Every hero is remarkably gifted at <em>something</em>," we swap the 8 for a 16, which leaves a final set of 16, 15, 13, 13, 12, 11...Not terrible at all.<br/><br/>STR 11 (0)(Mongooses are hardly big among the big, brawny types. She's not pathetically weak, but she's not going to armwrestle anybody for anything that counts unless she's holding a dagger in their lap under the table)<br/>DEX 16 (+2)(This is definitely what she's best at, which makes sense both for her species and class. Agile, quick, and slippery.)<br/>CON 12 (0)(Again, not the sort who gets into punching contests if she can help it. If she gets into a fair fight, she's already made one mistake...)<br/>INT 15 (+1)("Clever girl." ...which is one reason she gets into so much trouble.)<br/>WIS 13 (+1)(If she <em>really</em> had good judgement, she probably wouldn't be in this line of work, but she can be clever and she can be stubborn.)<br/>CHA 13 (+1)(Not the most inspiring or erudite speaker, nor the looming power in the room, but she's not unpleasant to deal with, either (provided you hand over your purse in short order and with a minimum of fuss).)<br/><br/>Thief (Dmg die capped at 1d8) <br/>+4 bonus to attack rolls and triple damage when they ambush an unsuspecting foe<br/>Fray: 1d6<br/>Attack bonus: +1<br/>Hit Points: 4<br/>Armor Class: 5 (she wears some leather under her linens = 7, and dex bonus subtracts 2)<br/>Equipment: Thieves tools as appropriate to a 2nd-story burglar, dagger, mace (a slung-shot or monkey-fist).<br/><br/>Trait-3 "Second Story Sneak"<br/>Trait-2 "Fleet-Footed"<br/>Trait-1 "Friend to the Drowntrodden of the Sump"<br/><br/>I see her as a cat burglar, an excellent climber with good balance, able to squirm into spaces many folks couldn't, and pretty good at jumping from uncomfortable spots and sticking an acrobatic landing when it matters. She very likely ran away from home at a young age and ended up apprenticed to some other slippery, second-story type because a few years ago she could clamber and squeeze through even smaller gaps than she can now...A distinct advantage in an apprentice small enough to be tossed up onto a balcony. Need to figure out who her mentor is and why she's no longer working with them (perhaps s/he is dead? Jailed? Or simply retired due to injury?).<br/><br/>What makes her a hero in this setting? She's starting to get that little aura of "Robin Hood"-itis. Perhaps it started with an injustice done to a friend which she was able to set right by an act of robbery/retrieval, and this made her aware that she could get away with such things now and again, and it's beginning to become something of a habit...She's not an ascetic, and she's not selfless, but she's started to look out for the others in her neighborhood (which I am envisioning as something of a Maze-like impoverished predator-ghetto sort of place).<br/><br/>I'm picturing a rickety little "shed" that used to be a tiny balcony until the building nextdoor grew another salvaged-materials story and made it a platform between the buildings, and now it has two other more-or-less walls and a roof. Not much room beyond the minimum space to stretch a hammock. Any coin she ends up with gets cached here and there under the eaves of various buildings in spots that are only reachable by climbing (she stores and retrieves things in the early hours so no-one sees her clambering around). Same for any valuables she hasn't managed to fence. She figures that if she keeps lots of little caches then there's less chance of her finding herself with all of them cleaned out. <br/></div></div><br/><br/>Anba muttered quiet unkindnesses under her breath as she leapt from piling to piling under the rickety boardwalk that served as a thoroughfare in this part of the sump. Agile as any squirrel, she clambered up the ancient, worm-eaten logs only to leap to the next in line, losing altitude with each jump, sinking her claws into the rotting wood and having to climb again to have room for the next. It kept her mostly out of the rain, but she had to be wary of mud scraped from the shoes and feet of those few out running down the boards in the slow, heavy pre-dawn drizzle.<br/><br/>The mongoose was in a foul mood. She'd been keeping a small cache of coins aside, wrapped in a twist of cloth and tucked into a crack in one of the rotting posts where she (wrongly) assumed it wouldn't be found, and now, with the coins missing, she mentally wandered back and forth between spiteful hatred of any unknown herbivore who might've made off with them, or tried to console herself with the thought that perhaps it was another predator who was more down on their luck and less capable than she was.<br/><br/>It wasn't that she couldn't filch more...And it wasn't even, she was beginning to realize, that she necessarily needed money for food now. There were a few places where grateful neighbors would happily share what they had in return for what she'd done... But that cut into her pride, and her pride was possibly far easier to injure than anything else about her lanky, wiry form.<br/><br/>It was really just that she'd socked the stolen coins away for some day when she didn't feel like having to bother with earning her keep.<br/><br/>Well, that and a certain amount of self-consciousness at her own recent habit of repossessing "thefts" by certain powerful herbivores and returning most of the largesse thus acquired to the impoverished carnivores of the Sump. She was quite aware that if she'd hung onto it herself, she'd be well off indeed.<br/><br/>Of course, even if she could manage to save such fortunes up and hide them somewhere, she'd be quite unable to spend it. No amount of money bought one equality if it were known that it were stolen, particularly if it were stolen taxes.<br/><br/>If she'd had the forethought to hang onto even a pawful of wretched brass churuks*, she'd at least be able to finagle some hot food from one of the few vendors desperate enough to be out and about early in the rain...And to do so without feeling guilty for taking advantage of her apparent recent "fame."<br/><br/>Anba chewed on one of her own whiskers, agitated. Who ever heard of a generous thief? Or a famous one? Fame was a problem, wasn't it?<br/><br/>Especially, she realized, as she scampered up the side of the tottering brothel that abutted her own residence, and then caught herself just shy of leaping down onto her own rooftop, if fame meant that work followed one home.Scenting another predator, she paused for more than a minute, quiveringly alert for any sort of a trap; finally, she slunk suddenly down and in through one of the coarse flaps of burlap that served to keep the rain and wind out of her tiny home. It was close confines, indeed, with the strange fox, but Anba preferred to fight at close quarters, if she had to...Sometimes it was easier to duck in near to someone who swung at one, rather than to keep away and keep trying to evade whatever blade they held.<br/><br/>Still, she did slip in with the hammock's simple tangle between herself and the intruder. Just in case. Anything that might give her a fraction of a second's edge. She was a mongoose; she lived by fractions of a second.<br/><br/>But inside, Anba pauses...The other young woman is hardly what she expected, and hardly intimidating. Even so the mongoose keeps an ear quirked to listen for any others who might be coming under the soft rain's sizzle, all while curiousity at her unexpected visitor vies with anger at the invasion and confusion at the colorful vixen's apparent naivete.<br/><br/>Confusion gives way to guarded humor at the other young woman's bow. "This is where Anba sleeps," she answers with the faint hint of a smile. "Anba is no<em>kshatriya</em>...no bowing noble warrior...and neither, I think, are you." The mongoose stays half-crouched in the little enclosure, her brass-and-cinnamon fur bristling with angry nervousness and beaded with rain, while she keeps one unshod clawed foot still poised on the window-sill in evident readiness to leave the way she came.<br/><br/>"...Nor have you the look of one born of the Sump. Who then are you, coming to seek Anba?"<br/><br/>The mongoose is almost boyishly lean...Almost. Anything more than a quick glance would note her slightly wider hips and the hinted curves of her chest. Anba's own work-stained clothing helps a bit, the nigh-ubiquitous and unisex shalwar kameez of the poor; loose pajama-pants of linen which taper near her ankles and have been strapped close, and an almost knee-length loose long shirt of similar material which (for ease of climbing) has been knotted up around her slender waist...Revealing a sort of short, split-leather apron tied around her thighs which is made almost entirely of sheaths and pockets for a variety of small, slender knives, shims, small prybars, jemmies and similar tools that can have no legal purpose. A quite long, broad piece of much finer, faintly patterned cloth (is that silk, beneath those stains?) is rolled and wrapped around her torso. Perhaps of most import, however, given Anba's obvious tension, is the weighted monkey's paw dangling from her right hand, and the curved dagger (still sheathed) on which she rests her left.<br/><br/>Her lithe stomach complains again, audible above the rain's endless-seeming hiss. "This proposal would not involve breakfast, would it?"<br/><br/><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">*</div><div class="spoiler_body">'Churuk' ("rotten") was a catchall term for Persian regional monetary tokens that (unlike gold, silver, or even purer copper coins) had a face value which did not reflect their intrinsic metal or weight. They were never issued by a national mint, but were usually the products of cities or even early merchant banks, and as such quickly devalued to the lowest possible imaginable denomination regardless of what was stamped on them (as no one, not even the city treasuries or early banks which issued them, tended to honor the face value for very long). Sorry, I'm a history geek and I think coinage is fascinating...There were drachmas (a Greek coin!) minted by Indo-Greek (!) and Indo-Parthan rulers in what is today northern India for a few hundred years in the wake of Alexander's conquest of Aghanistan, Pakistan, and the northern subcontinent. If we're going for a pseudo-Indo-Aryan motif, Pakistan and Afghanistan (which both are bordered on the west by Iran/Ancient Persia and on the east by modern India) seems like fertile turf for idea-mining...And the area was a crazy trade hub even by Silk Road standards from the first to the 15th centuries, with Russian seqins, Paki jitals, Indian tankas, Indo_Persian mahmudi, rupiya and baisa struck everywhere from Iraq to Bengali, etc. etc. etc...All kinds of coins! So since Anba doesn't get to keep any anyway, I'm just going to throw names around, and any coin whose name translates to "rotten" seemed appropriate for the lowest of the low...Thus her comment about a handful only getting her a meal on a day when most vendors might be happy to have custom! XD</div></div>