Shivra's Backstory

Full Name: Shivra Gen'thac

Gender: Female

Age: 16

Height: 5'6"

Hair: White

Skin: Medium Purple

Eyes: Bluish White

Body Build: Slim

Distinguishing Features: Has an enchanted slave collar around her neck & a thieves' guild tattoo on the back of her right hand depicting a dagger balanced by its tip on the surface of a gold coin

Likes: darkness/shadows, money, jewelry, the thieves' guild, Vielia (guild's leader), Cairc (guild's treasurer)

Dislikes: brightness, elves, the slave collar, Irving (guild's 2nd-in-command), being poor, complainers, working with other people

Shivra was born and raised in the Drow city of Nightshore in the Underdark. Her mother Pellanistra, father Gwylyss, and 2 older brothers Sordryn & Morennel all raised her to be stealthy and stay in the shadows so she could be trained as an assassin. However, as she trained and learned how to surprise her targets, she started to like robbing her targets, rather than just killing them. More and more she opted to rob her targets after killing them. Her family and the assassin's guild she was apprenticed to were not very pleased with this, as it violated their code - all assassins were instructed to leave their victims' valuables as a means of making sure the message that the victim was meant to be murdered was properly delivered.

At the age of 14 she became suspicious that the guild would have her killed or sold away for disobedience; her family would be no help, as the Gen'thacs were prominently known as assassins and saw her as an outcast from them. She snuck into the guild's clerical offices and found that there was an order to kill her, because the guild didn't need a money glory assassin. She quickly ran home, got together what supplies she could, and fled to Vulkannen.

Despite the awful quality of life most drow in Vulkannen found in the city's Drow Quarter, Shivra managed to do alright for herself for about 2 months by pickpocketing and burgling. For one of her burglaries, she unwittingly targeted the safehouse of a prominent thieves' guild. She was caught almost as soon as she touched the money. The guild members were impressed that she even managed to get into the safehouse, much less find and access their stash of valuables. They struck up a deal with her, allowing her to have the safehouse and the money within if she worked for them in return. She agreed and started training at the guildhouse, coming to see the guild's members as a sort of surrogate family, particularly the guild's human leader, Vielia and the guild's dwarven "banker", Cairc.

Though she'd initially been recruited with little choice, she liked the life that she had been given, being able to steal for a living and having a place to belong. Yet things became bland and boring after a couple years, so she started to take riskier jobs almost exclusively. She would up the risk further by purposely alerting guards just so she could outwit and escape them. This did not sit well with Vielia's second-in-command, Irving, seeing her careless stunts as being dangerous to the guild. Vielia and most of the rest of the guild didn't mind, however, as long as she got the job done and didn't get caught. In addition to her work, she went back to her old ways of pickpocketing and burgling in her spare time, furthering the risks she took. This ended up being her downfall, as it got her into trouble with more then just her guild - the merchant's guilds which paid the thieves' guilds protection to avoid being stolen from were being victimized by her, and they began sending assassins after her.

One day she pickpocketed a man in the street, thinking that it was just a normal traveler. Unfortunately, the man turned out to be an assassin's guild plant. He caught her attempted theft and chased her through most of the city. She eventually managed to flee into a bar, looking to disappear into a crowd. This, however, wasn't the time she should have entered the bar, as members of the merchant's guild she'd stolen from and the assassin's guild sent after her were present. The man chasing her entered the bar and pointed her out, inciting a fight. Before the fighting could be stopped, 3 members of the assassin's guild and 5 members of the merchant's guild had been badly injured. She could not hide this from her thieves' guild, and was brought before Vielia and the leaders of the guilds she'd offended. As she had since liquidated the assets she'd stolen from the merchants, she was informed that she would have to pay all of it back, in addition to what it had cost to heal those injured in the fight she'd started. She would also wear an enchanted slave collar that would prevent her from further disobeying orders or escaping her penance.

So it was that Shivra was made a slave to the guilds, doing whatever they asked of her and having no course to refuse. It soon came to pass that the guilds decided to put her to use as a mercenary, and sent her to Falconia to seek work. Irving would serve as her handler, operating out of Falconia and sending her to assist with any task that would pay. She hated the idea of having to work with others, but found herself with little choice in her new life...