Olybrius Radenos

Human Male Thief/Magic User 8/3 N

STR:17 DEX:17 CON:16 INT:15 WIS:9 CHA:10

HP:43

Languages:Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Bulgarian, Romani

PP:20% O/L:70% F/RT:75% MS:45%

HiS:40% DN:30% CW:70% RL:65%

Olybrius was born into a family of professional adventurers who had managed to buy their way into the Byzantine aristocracy with a combination of treasure, erudition and library patronage. His mother (who had worked as a body double for a general’s wife) provided the muscle, his father (trained in the arcane arts by *his* father) handled the logistics, and his sister (six years his elder), was responsible for location scouting and reconnaissance. From relatively humble beginnings they had turned looting the kurgans of Bulgaria into a family business, and it was against this backdrop that Olybrius came of age. Tomb raiding was a fun family activity, and he was always allowed to tag along so long as he agreed to stay out from underfoot.

The trouble arose when his father sat him down and started laying down the painstaking instruction required to grasp the usage of magic. It wasn’t that Olybrius wasn’t smart enough – he was – but he simply wasn’t studious. He was strong and healthy, and he longed for the days of exploration his sister undertook, when instead he was cooped up with dusty tomes listening to his father drone on about esoteric principles of thaumaturgy.

As he entered his teenage years, he grew more rebellious, outright refusing to complete his lessons and occasionally going so far as to run away from home. As the son of a magic user with divination capabilities, this was not as efficacious as it might otherwise have been, and he would soon end up warded in his room to think about what he had done. In the end, although his father had an impressive arsenal of charm spells and enchantments, he could not force his son to become a wizard. Eventually the old man threw up his hands in disgust (bemoaning his lack of a domination spell) and let Olybrius do as he pleased.

Straight away, he was running with gypsies and getting himself into all manner of scrapes, but he was happy and quickly outstripped his sister’s ability as the family scout. This led to a great deal of ire on her part, but secretly she was relieved. The family had been adventuring so long that they had exhausted most of the tombs in populous well-traveled areas, and they were slowly edging their way into older, darker, more dangerous areas of Bulgaria. The parents, neither of whom had any love for religion, prided themselves on adventuring with no cleric; it was hardly necessary for a three or four room burial mound. Now, as they were forced into the hinterlands, it seemed more and more foolhardy, but since it was what they had always done, they continued to do so.

Olybrius’ father never forgave him for abandoning magic, and the two continued to butt heads. Arguments over tactics and spell choices escalating into screaming matches, and finally once when he went to run with the gypsies, his father didn’t bother to magic him back.

For several years, Olybrius enjoyed the life of a rogue, but inevitably he grew homesick and eventually fell out of favor with his companions.

He returned to find his family humbled, the monies spent on a number of unsuccessful ventures, and was welcomed with open arms. All was forgiven. Reunified, they planned to raid an old tomb in Macedon, just like old times.

But the forests of Thrace had for some reason grown far deadlier during their absence, and they never even made it to the dungeon. As the party made its way across the Arkutino swamp, a ghost lit from a subterranean crypt and swooped down upon them. They drove it off, but the damage had been done: they were preternaturally aged; his parents into their dotage and his sister to the very brink of death. He himself had lost twenty years off his life. It took most of their remaining magic to reach the safety of civilization again.

With practically no financial resources remaining, Olybrius gathered the last of his family’s wealth and sought out the Oracle at Didyma, asking her for a way to return his family to the way it used to be. She answered: “seek the reverse of the opposite of the blind, where the eagle passed over but did not land. There a clutch of eggs now hatch, hawk and cock and owl and raven; the last, not a murder of crows, but a parliament of rooks. They shall be your Aves Maria.”

He followed her words to the banks of the Propontis across from Constantinople, recalling the Delphic Oracles’ advice to Byzas that his city be founded opposite the land of the blind, and there he saw, waving proudly above the city, the four birds of Chrysopolis’ seal.

Olybrius threw himself at Eorl’s mercy, and the elf listened with sympathy. In return for a pledge of his loyalty, Eorl promised to do what he could to help him restore his family, and granted them room and board inside the city.

Still, Olybrius joined Eorl’s Thief Takers only reluctantly; the answer to his problems undoubtedly rested in the bowels of some long-forgotten dungeon... not in the confines of Chrysopolis. As he joined his fellows in ensuring the security of the city, he was circumspect. How much longer did his parents have before old age took them? Or his sister, her breathing now labored through old crones’ lips, her hair grey and white and thin... how long did she have?