Maurus
STR:12 DEX:14 CON:14 INT:7 WIS:12 CHA:10
HP: 13
Languages: Greek
PP:45% O/L:40% F/RT:5% MS:40%
HiS:35% DN:15% CW:60% RL:0%
Before the mothers of Chrysopolis found a common menace in Eorl, the object of their ire was Maurus, the town troublemaker. His parents were rumored to be drunks, or lepers or bogomils, or perhaps, most appropriately, demons, for he was surely a demonspawn. If a pie disappeared from a windowsill, he nicked it; if a knock at the door gave way to a flaming pile of poo, he lit it; if a young woman parted the curtains to reveal an unexpectedly full moon, it was his bum print left on the window. He was a hellraiser.
In actuality, Maurus had been sold by his parents to a Bithynian tanner in exchange for a large barrel of olive oil. They had plenty of children and no olive oil and so the transaction made sense. What the tanner had in store for him he never found out; as soon as his parents were out of sight, he gave the man the slip and ran free in the wide world.
It didn’t take long before he fell in with a crowd of lovable street urchins based out of Chrysopolis and under the de facto watch of Arctophilus, who tried to keep the city’s homeless youths out of trouble. It wasn’t a bad life until the civil war and resultant blockade, when he saw far too many of his urchin pals succumb to starvation and disease. He cared nothing of politics, but took the siege extremely personally, and when the forces of Michael Bourtzes climbed the ramparts during the Battle of Chrysopolis, Maurus snatched up a sword to fight them. Though he eventually fell wounded, the victory of the loyalists was his victory as well.
In the strange days after the failed assault he could sense the city changing in a way he couldn’t quite put his finger on. He put a moratorium on his pranks until the city had a chance to mourn its dead, but when he resumed them in earnest... he kept getting caught! Either by the priggish lieutenant governor with the pointy ears who moved in and out of the shadows with far greater ease than he, or the governor’s rosy-cheeked girlfriend who could render him immobile with a mere crook of her finger, or any one of a number of doughty adventurer-types who seemed to now call his town their home.
None of them was ever particularly harsh with him either (except for a burly Saracen, who gave him the beating of his life); he would win a trip to the dungeons for a day or two and then be released with a warning. The mothers in town he was accustomed to scandalizing didn’t even appear to care any more, but seemed preoccupied with the new gubernatorial administration. Sick of being ignored, he left the city and bummed around Asia Minor a bit, but after only a few months, found himself feeling strangely homesick.
He returned to find the city thriving, with a whole host of strange, interesting creatures now residing within it. He had not been back for a day before Arctophilus spotted him and Eorl asked him to join the Thief Takers. He did so, and with a sublime sense of wonder, that the home he had adopted had now adopted him as well.
