Niar Vauringr

[Angmor]

Name: Niar Vauringr
Age: 17
Race Human
Occupation: Imperial covert surveilance operative and mindbreaker.

Appearance:
Having never been able to be called tall, standing just above five and a half feet, Niar’s general build is thin and lanky, long of limb and quick of movement. While not particularly strong, he would say he is strong enough. He relies more on personal agility, which is manifested mostly in running, rolling and jumping. He has been trained extensively by his father in the skill of losing a pursuer over in every environment, who in turn learned from various thieves and underworld figures for whom running away is considered an art form. After doing most of his athletic work either indoors or at night, his complexion is rather pale, providing a contrast with his close-cut dark hair, and punctuated by his pale blue eyes. While his face is sharp-featured and delicate, he is not good-looking enough to attract a second glance in any crowded street. Helping most in his anonymity is the fact that his eyes are often clouded and unfocused, looking more contemplative than observant, making him look like a dozy lout with his head in the clouds.

In clothing, Niar wears what will help him blend with his surroundings, his profession revolving around staying in the background unnoticed or unobserved. He prefers loose-cut breeches and tunics of dark gray or brown, usually with a small shoulderbag or satchel to carry his equipment. The only constant in his outfit is a small, straight dagger and a tooled brown leather belt.
The belt is an elegantly simple affair, a brown band of leather, tooled with an uncomplicated pattern of vine and snake motif. There is an integral sheath for the dagger molded into the band, positioned so that the blade would rest sideways at the small of Niar’s back.
The blade of this dagger is five inches long, made of simple gray steel, tapering icicle-like to an unforgiving point. Beneath simple curved metal crosstrees, the hilt of the weapon is another four inches long, wrapped in brown leather tooled with a matching pattern as the belt. The only adornment is a small chunk of clear crystal set into the pommel, cut into a subtle teardrop shape. While the weapon itself is practical, Niar has very little proficiency with it. He never possessed a skill for hand-to-hand combat, despite all of his father’s training, and really only carries the blade to make himself feel a bit more like a fighter.
Both of these were given to him by his father, and are very dear to him. They are the only personal possessions the Empire has allowed to keep after his capture, and that grudgingly.

Personality:
All his life, Niar has been quiet and shy to a fault, a lad of few conversations and even fewer words. His temperment is such that being the center of any attention whatsoever is enough to set him trembling, a trait that has only grown with the dangerous and life-threatening situations the Empire has put him in since his capture. He always strives to stay unobtrusively in the background, listening and observing and learning. He possesses a keen memory for seemingly minute details, further enhanced by training and exercise, making him well suited to his role of oberver. While he is a compasionate and attentive listener, his solitary nature has led him to make very few friends in his lifetime, and now his imperial captors do lot allow him any.
Possessing an almost dibilitating fear of failure, Niar is a very slow and calculating personality, always thinking before he acts. He is never one to get excited or angry, he is not one to let his emotions cloud his judgement, except for in one very notable area.
While his conscience is constantly rebelling against what the Empire is having him do, he feels that he has no choice. He loves his sister too much try escaping from his form of slavery, leaving him with a constant feeling of suffocating frustration. However, his love for his sister instills in an otherwise timid boy an iron determination to live. If he dies, the Empire has no further reason to keep his siter alive. That thought has driven him through several tight situations, and pleases his imperial captors with his efficiency.

History:
Niar was born to a nobleman in the imperial capitol Uru-Baen. His father, Valis Vauringr, was a minor noble, in charge of governing a small sector of the huge city. Niar was the first of two children, the second being his twin sister Niana. The closest of childhood companions, the pair was just about inseparable. The local neighborhood children knew that where on went, the other was surely soon to follow. Niar however has no memory of his mother, knowing only that she died giving birth to him and his sister. Valis prefered not to talk about it, and the servants of the Lorne household likely said very little, except in whispers that always died away behind smiling faces whenever he came near.
Despite the death of his wife, Valis was a cheerful man, always concerned with the affairs of his district. He always tried to treat his people fairly and justly, sometimes even helping a few keep their homes by paying the king’s heavy tax out of his own pocket. And even more importantly, he loved his children. Not content to allow them to be raised by the servants like most noble offspring, and spent as much time as he could spare with them. He liked to tell stories of his days as a spellcaster in the king’s army, and taught them the choicest profanities to win any war of insults among their peers, much to the servants’ chagrin. However, whenever Niar asked his father why the army would need to raid a duke’s house, or stalk an urgal foraging party, Valis would only fall silent.
And then there were the absences.

There were times where Valis would disappear for days on end, never less than three and never more than ten. On his return, he would only ever say he was ‘out on business.’ Niar thought little of it for most of his life, but at nine years old, he became curious enough to start quietly investigating.
Over the next year, Niar began to piece together a pattern in his father’s absences. Whenever he would be gone for longer than four days, there would be news of a major underground raid on a weapons storehouse, or the sabotage of imperial siege engines. And the longer he would be gone, the further away the attack would be, and the more jubilant his mood on his return, the more serious the attack would be. After three more months of gathering his courage, Niar finally confronted his father with the evidence, half expecting some suspicious admonishment to stop imagining things, or a swift beating for his observances.

While he had been greatly surprised, Valis was not angry in the slightest. Pausing only put aside what he was doing, he at last confessed to his son that he was the chief spellcaster for a large cell of the Varden underground. He was in charge of providing information on their targets of sabotage, and accompanying the raiders with his magical talents. While he had planned on telling his children eventually, Valis was impressed with his son for his deductions. Shortly afterwards, Niar began training along with his father in the arts of stealth and evasion.
While he had no talent for outright combat, Niar found that he was a natural runner, and even better at observing. Very soon, he was accompanying his father on his scouting tours, helping to plan the raids. Out of the comfortable environment of his neighborhood in Uru-Baen, Niar was able to see the cruelty and neglect of the Empire on its citizens, and at last understood his father’s motivating hate. Eventually, Valis realized that his son could go more places without suspicion than he could. After all, in the right clothes, no one gave a second glance at a thirteen-year-old lad. And, he at last grudgingly admitted to himself that his son was a better scout and lookout than he was himself.

After this, Niar officially became a unit in the underground, going alone on many fact-finding missions. As a result of his unobtrusiveness and eye for details, he was able to provide the raiders with all the information they needed for fast and blindingly accurate strikes, eventually earning Niar the nickname “Targeter.” Over the next two years, Niar scouted the terrain for over forty successful raids, earning him the respect of the underground and the pride of his father.
Of course, it also earned the earnest scrutiny of the Empire.
Niar well remembers the day everything went wrong. Something on his op had not felt right, and he told the underground so. Their leader, a man named Torrin, had usually listened to Niar’s hunches in the past, but was skeptical this time. Grown confident with the rush of successes, Torrin went ahead with the raid anyway, with Valis reluctantly following. From his lookout position on the rooftop opposite the target, Niar could only watch helplessly as six squads of soldiers poured in from nowhere, taking the Varden raiders by surprise. The last thing he remembered was the sound of a heavy bootfall behind him, and something hard striking him over the back of the head.

As he had expected, he awoke in an imperial cell.
His father had told him when he first started with the underground just what, in detail, what the Empire did when they caught Varden sympathizers, and while he was more frightened than he had ever been, he was resolved that he would die honorably. That is, until a man came into his cell three days later, with both a threat and a proposition.
Completely unknown to Niar, this man had been the one who was put in charge of finding a capturing his underground group. While he had been impressed with the group itself for its effectivness, he was even more impressed with Niar. He had already had several "talks" with other captured members, and therefore knew all about the boy's involvement. And so, the man gave Niar a choice; He could work for the Empire and use his skills for their ends, or he and his sister would die.
The man gave him one more day to think about it, then left without another word.

All that night, Niar agonized over the decision for hours on end. He was perfectly willing to give up his life for the cause, he had seen too much of the Empire's policies to even think about going back on that. For himself, the choice was easy, but not for his little sister...
In the end, the love for his remaining family won out. The next day, he agreed to serve the Empire to the best of his abilities, in exchange for Niana's life.
As he found out shortly afterwards, he was not the first to make such a kind of pledge. There was a whole rank of people who had been caught by the Empire doing something they shouldn't, but whose skills were valuable enough to take hostage. Being completely expendable to the government that held them, these men and women were given some of the hardest and most dangerous work that could be found, driven only by the knowledge that if they died, or tried to escape, there would be no need for the Empire to keep their loved ones alive either.

Niar was no exception, and over the next two years did some of the hardest things he could imagine. He continued to do what he had before, but this time against various underground networks and seditious groups, often being forced to throw all caution to the winds in order to complete his mission. He is only allowed to meet with Niana once every three months, and can only speak with her under intense supervision so that she cannot tell him where she is being held, or what they are having her do. She says that she is being treated well, but is constantly reminded of her place.

Niar continues to fight in the secret part of the war between the Varden and the Empire, feeling as if he belongs somehow to both. But he is determined to save the life of his sister, no matter which side wins.

Other:
While his father discovered early on in his informal training that he possessed no magical gift, Niar is one of the few nowadays that has been trained to communicate and probe with his mind. Making up for his lack of magical strength, he has become adept at forcing his way through mental defences. He finds the process morally objectionable, and prefers to use it as a last resort when stealth and evasion fail. However, since his capture, he has been forced to use it more and more, until he has become adept enough to sometimes even control the acctions of a victims body through their thoughts, but never for long periods of time.

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