The Story of Lipsy Daffodil.
Lipsy grew up in Hildebarne, one of the six larger towns of the Nebrth Bay region. The six towns and handful of villages around the large bay, are loosely ruled by The Trade Lord and Nebrth Council in the capital of Prosperous. The towns of the bay, are each ruled by trade princes, who each send a trusted emissary to be part of the aforementioned council.
The Prosper Coast, for which the capital gets its name, is a southern coastal region, including most notably the bay, and some of the finest shipbuilders, merchants, and artisans that the world has ever known. It is also known to be a region full of intrigue, politics, and thick social webs full of grudges, deals, broken arrangements, pacts, and sinister plots. The cities and towns are heavily populated, and corruption runs rampant amongst the business owners who have found purchase as rulers here. On The Prosper Coast, a coin is worth more than a promise, a business worth more than a family, and a dagger in the right hands worth more than any amount of gems and finery. The sand, the buildings, the clothing, is all fine, delicate, and well-made, as are the pacts, plots, and schemes hatched by those with an eye towards power.
Lipsy, is a Halfling. The smallest of the common folk, and often the most overlooked in other regions of the world. Here however, their nimble fingers and deft hands are seen as assets, both for craftsmen, and statesmen alike. Lipsy was exactly the kind of child who everyone watched grow up and wondered if she would come to hold tools, or weapons.
Her father was a jeweler, and her mother ran the store while her father worked. They lived above their shop, in a small two-bedroom home. Lipsy was taught to read and write, especially numbers, since as their only child her father wanted her to learn the family trade. Lipsy was patient in learning, to a point, and would become frustrated that there was nothing…organic, about the jewelry. Nothing alive about it, and she could not understand why her father bothered with such lifeless work.
She would run along the beach with her young friends. She learned to fish, cast nets, make hooks and other small parts. She had always been adept with her hands. She was grateful that she could learn quicker than her friends, and that she could create the best, small things. Her favorite part however, was butchering the fish.
She had found an old filleting knife while she and her friends investigated and stole from equipment and barrels left unattended near the docks. She didn’t see anything wrong with using something that someone else wasn’t using. She thought she might return it someday…maybe.
Sometimes, they would catch a fish, build a small fire down the beach, and pretend they were adventurers resting after a long journey, about to enjoy a meal. Lipsy grabbed the fish without asking, and began sawing it’s head off. Her friends watched as she mangled and carved the fish to shreds, some of them unnerved by the indiscretion with which she was hacking away at it, others couldn’t stomach the blood.
She got much better at it, after watching some fishmongers on the docks slice and trim bits for their customers. What she lacked in strength and stature, she made up for with her quick wit, and razor sharp intelligence.
She was entering the human equivalent of her teenage years when her father asked her to spend more time in the shop working with him. She reluctantly agreed, and began learning gem cutting and jewelry making. Her father had an assortment of small, sharp tools used in his work, and Lipsy was more interested in slicing gems than assembling pieces. She longed for a blade that could slice a fish, as cleanly as her father’s blades sliced the precious stones.
In a few years, she her friends had fallen out a bit. She was spending less time fishing and pretending to adventure, and more time in her father’s shop. At night, she would walk the streets looking for something to do, and while a couple friends stuck with her, they shared in her disregard for authority, or rules that didn’t make sense to them. She wanted to be able to defend herself at night, especially if she was going to the capital with her father to bring their wares to the larger markets.
Her crew hatched a plot to steal weapons from the guardpost in town. The Trade Lord of Prosperous had decided that only his guards will be responsible for keeping the towns of the bay safe, and so the towns each constructed a guardpost for the Trade Lords men. There would be guards there of course, but Lipsy being small and unremarkable believed she would have no trouble.
Her friends knocked on the door to distract whoever they could by pretending to be homeless children looking for food scraps. Meanwhile, Lipsy climbed a stack of crates on the side of the building to reach a window. She climbed in, snuck her way to a storeroom, and started picking up whatever daggers and shortswords she could carry. Once back at her window, she needed to drop the weapons out first in order to get herself through. With a bit of clatter, she tossed the blades into the street below, and climbed out carefully herself.
When she dropped the last foot from one of the crates, she looked over to her pile of weapons, and upwards at the human guard standing in the alley, arms crossed, looking at her. Without a moment of hesitation, she grabbed one of the daggers, and plunged it into the mans chest repeatedly. He tried to cry out as he fell, and she began stabbing his throat and chest over and over.
When she rose, the guard was covered in puncture wounds, bleeding profusely, and with his last moments brought his hands to his throat in an effort to stop the bleeding. He was unsuccessful. Lipsy made the owl call to signal for her friends who came around the side of the building. They were surprised, but not dissuaded, and took up their stolen weapons, and fled back to their homes.
Lipsy carried her dagger around everywhere she went. She wanted something special for it, something that would mark it as hers. One day, while working with her father, she cut a small piece of teardrop shaped aquamarine. Her father had intended it for a necklace, the bulk of which he was carefully smithing out of silver. Lipsy went out that night to the beach, found a piece of blue sea glass, and attempted to cut it as the aquamarine was cut. When she finished, she left the sea glass, and took the aquamarine herself, using a bit of molten metal to affix the gem to the side of the pommel of her dagger.
The next day, her father furiously asked her what the cheap imitation was. Lipsy claimed to have no idea, and her father demanded to search her belongings. After finding nothing in her sparse room, he ordered her to turn out her pockets, and despite her best attempts to hide the dagger, she could not this time. Her father pulled the blade from it’s small leather sheath, to find the gem sealed on, and dried blood still on the blade.
Appalled, her father banished her from their home, telling her, “If you wish to behave as a thief and scoundrel, then you can live as a thief and scoundrel!”
She left home at the equivalent of 16 years old, with the clothes on her back, her jeweled dagger, and a crooked smile on her lips. She was free. Free of everything. She traveled along the bay to the capital, and quickly fell in with a small-time crime organization. She stayed and worked jobs with them for a few years, and started to build a reputation for herself. She was still learning however, and did not discover that this time, she was being sent to fail.
Her mission took her to the home of a wealthy merchant, in an effort to get ahold of his shipping records and find out who had the money to pay this already rich man. She entered the residence, and thanks to a lack of reconnaissance, was unprepared for the mercenaries defending the home. After murdering one, she was captured, and brought before the merchant.
Instead of being beaten, tortured, or even killed as she might have expected. The merchant applauded her for even making it inside, and asked if she would rather work for him than whatever measly outfit planned her attempted heist. Being the prudent person she is, she agreed. She stayed in and around the home for the greater part of a year, stalking the neighborhood, and using trusted connections to a few of those she had worked with before, to help the merchant stay ahead and aware of any theft or murder attempts. She was learning the trade, slowly but surely.
The merchant asked her one day, if she could be interested in an opportunity. The merchant wanted to purchase another trade company, but the owners were reluctant to sell, claiming that the offer too low, the time not right, their clients not wanting to deal with a new owner. The merchant was fed up with the delays, and asked Lipsy to encourage the current owners, and offered her a small portion of the new business. The merchant promised to make her a wealthy woman, but she had learned what promises meant to these people.
Growing tired and bored with the merchants gold-grabbing ways and the stagnation of the neighborhood, she came up with her own plan. She persuaded her fellow mercenaries that the merchant wasn’t paying them nearly enough for his life and livelihood, and they decided to take what they had earned. That night, they gathered at the vault which Lipsy had been learning the combination to. She broke in, they stole as much gold as they could carry, and left.
Lipsy went to the owners of the other company, and warned them of the merchants intentions. Thankful but confused, the owners asked why she would tell them something like this. Lipsy held a sack of gold in one hand, her dagger in the other, and told them that it wasn’t anyone’s life she cared for but her own, and that the merchant had paid for her kindness, and it was time for them to as well. Exploited, they gave her another large bag of gold, and she bid them farewell.
Lipsy bought new clothes, a pony, some saddlebags, some equipment, tools, food and water, and set off from Prosperous, to the north, seeking freedom from the insane squabbles of the merchant “lords and princes” of The Prosper Coast.
On the road, she encountered a band of performers who she camped with for a night. One of them, a Halfling male, played a lute and sang so beautifully that Lipsy was entranced. At the end of his song, he offered her a daffodil flower. It was the first flower Lipsy had ever seen, and she was stunned by its simple beauty, it reminded her of her dagger. Simple, and beautiful. She spent the night with the Halfling performer, and in the morning asked where they were headed despite already knowing the answer. When he said they were going to Prosperous to perform in the city and make their fortune, she told him that the place ruins people, and begged him to travel with her, to the north.
She was not able to sway the handsome and simple performer from his dream, and believing wholeheartedly in the power to chose one’s own destiny, kissed him a final time, and bid him farewell.
Later on, she would introduce herself as Lipsy Daffodil. Her real last name is Sandheel (her father’s shop is Sandheel Shinies), but she has not used it since she left. She would be asked about her unusual last name, and would snap and reply that there was no story, and that she liked daffodil flowers and if someone had a problem with that then she would speak to them. No one ever did.
Lipsy “Sandheel” Daffodil is a 34 year old female Halfling Rogue, likely with the Thief, or Assassin Roguish Archetype.
She is Neutral Evil, and values her personal safety and success over everything else. Having been kicked out at a young age, and growing up surrounded by business politics and lots of gold, she has little taste or patience for politics, matters of state, or even group planning at times. She is incredibly smart, thinks plans out in her head completely before proposing them to others, and more often than not prefers her plan over others.
She also cares little for gold. Being fairly wealthy her entire life, she has always been able to obtain the gold and goods she needs, and knows that hoarding gold means asking for trouble. Being of small stature, and having an eye for smaller more intricate things, she is not drawn to large valuables, but rather smaller, more concealable, and easier to carry treasures.
She wields a single dagger, although she often carries up to three at a time on various locations on her body. Along her spine, she has a leather strap to act as a sheath, as well as in both boots, both thighs, both hips, and on both upper arms. She does not keep daggers in them all, but has the option to store a dagger nearly anywhere on herself.
Additionally, she witnessed a man performing knife swallowing during her evening with the traveling performers. She has attempted to observe and learn this trick, and has since learned to do so.
As a full action, Lipsy may swallow a dagger. She looks up, opens her mouth, and carefully inserts her dagger straight down. When finished, she can look forward, and close her mouth. While Lipsy has a dagger concealed this way, she cannot speak, although can still sign using Thieves’ Cant, and communicate in non-verbal ways. She may only have one dagger swallowed at a time. Lipsy has disadvantage on DEX saves while she has a dagger swallowed. A dagger concealed this way cannot be detected by Perception or Investigation checks, unless she is specifically asked to open her mouth. If Lipsy is forcibly moved, as a result of a spell, shove, fall, etc. she must make a DEX save (with disadvantage) DC=20-Dex Mod-Proficiency. If she fails, she chokes on the dagger, and must cough it up. She suffers damage equal to double that which the dagger normally deals, creates noisy coughing, and the dagger ends up on the ground in front of her. If she chokes on the dagger, she is not able to attempt to swallow it again for seven long rests. While she has a dagger swallowed, she may use a bonus action to look up, open her mouth, and draw the dagger forth.
Lipsy Daffodil is a little standoffish, somewhat cold and curt, and doesn’t trust people easily. She doesn’t tolerate anyone making fun of her, and is proud to demonstrate her skills for anyone who doubts them. She is adept at picking locks and pockets, traveling unseen, and telling people the hard truths they need to hear.
She thinks very carefully, and is mostly logical, only resorting to anger and frustration when her skills are bested, or when she faces new and challenging trials. She is usually calm and collected, but escalates quickly when she does get angry. Lipsy also gets bored fairly quickly, and prefers to be acting on her plans rather than letting plan after plan grow in her mind. She doesn’t prefer to stay in a city or town very long, as she likes that people don’t know her or pay her too much attention. When bored, she may simply pick a pocket, or set a distraction to steal something she likes the look of. Sometimes, she simply avoids towns and wanders along the roads.
She likes hearing of other people’s travels, and learning more about the world at large. While she doesn’t often trust other travelers, she has been known to stay an evening with a group that she finds some degree of camaraderie with. She longingly hopes to one day meet that Halfling performer again, and desperately wishes that the city of Prosperous didn’t murder his spirit…or him.
She avoids The Prosper Coast, and has not been back since she left. She detests the convoluted relationships that they call politics, and finds the gold hoarding merchant lords and princes to be fools. She misses her father and mother, but not enough to go home, since she feels she will only upset them further,and perhaps that they wouldn’t want to see her anyway. She plans to return before their deaths, to somehow make amends.
She is a capable fighter, and wields her dagger with confidence. She is not one to shy away from a fight, but is smart enough to know which fights to join and which to run from. In combat, she is very aware of her positioning, and knows where to stand and where to strike to inflict the most damage. She forms friendships very slowly, and doesn’t value friends as much as the contract of gold. Unless those friends are better for her chances of self-preservation.
She would make allies if only to let them fall in battle as she makes her escape. Her own life and freedom is more valuable to her than anything.
Speaking of freedom, she would rather die than be kept as a prisoner or slave. She knows about duty, and did her best to help her father when he wanted her there, but she was forced to leave, not forced to stay. She refuses to be forced to stay, or be held anywhere she doesn’t want to be. She believes very strongly in an individuals right and ability to chose their own destiny. She respects death, and believes that death is the one sure way to earn or gift freedom. She does not kill indiscriminately, or lightly, and while she can be sinister and fair to those that deserve it, she is not typically sadistic.
She also has a strong sense of fairness, associated with her reverence of death, which is often twisted by her own motivations. Similar to when she demanded gold from the trading company owners in exchange for her kindness of telling them about the merchants plot, she will not often act unless there is a reward or reason that benefits her for doing so. If she does act, she likely requests a payment or reward, and makes good on her threats when she is treated, as what she believes, is unfairly.
Lipsy Daffodil loves daffodil flowers, and most flowers actually. Growing up along a sandy beach, in crowded towns and cities, she didn’t get to see very much green. Now she is out on her own. She takes the jobs she can get and often gets what she prefers thanks to her skill set. She gets the gold she needs to sustain herself, and takes every chance she gets to smell the flowers and enjoy her freedom, and her life.