Daer'ys Keown: Street rat grown into a scoundrel, swashbuckler without honor, uncouth opportunist with a heart, and brigand with a hidden spiritual core.

He was born as just another futureless waste of humanity on the streets. He never knew his father, and he barely remembers being around his mother before she ditched him with some “friends” and was never seen again. After that he was passed from temporary home to temporary home, never forming any attachments long enough to imprint upon the people who happened to be keeping him alive at the time. In fact, it wasn't until years after he could talk that he even discovered what the word “family” meant.

There was nothing apparently remarkable about him. He wasn't particularly athletic, nor clever, nor lucky. He was one of the quiet ones who always kept to himself. Even as a toddler he was more background clutter than anything else. He never had any formal schooling, and it'd be generous to say that he had a smattering of informal schooling.

One thing that every child learns is how to get their needs met. They're selfish little creatures if they feel like they need to be in order to survive and be happy, and as a boy Daer'ys certainly wasn't getting love handed to him for free.

He figured out that the best way to stay out of trouble was to make sure people forget him until he has something they want. If he had leverage, the he could bargain for something that he wanted. But what could a young boy with no prospects and no talents offer anyone? After all, his primary skillset consisted of staying in the background and forgettable.

After watching the way the backstreet politics worked, he realized that he could be the eyes and ears of other people. He could be an innocuous spy, or a paid snitch, or a set of small hands for even smaller errands.

Bouncing around from street gang to street gang seemed to be the safest (but not the simplest) way to keep from antagonizing any particular one while developing an extensive network of contacts. Daer'ys knew that he couldn't really, truly, count on anyone but himself (and only sometimes for that one), so instead he focused on trying to be valuable for everyone to keep alive. He tried to be everyone's third-best friend, and for the most part did a decent job of it.

Like most street-dwellers he started fantasizing about that “one big score” which would set him up for life. He imagined that he'd have enough money to permanently live the inn-hopping lifestyle, never putting down roots anywhere and never being beholden to anyone.

At one point he attempted to pick the pocket of a richly-adorned priest in a marketplace, and was caught red-handed. The clergyman seemed to actually have anticipated the attempt, and attempted to engage the youngster in conversation after reclaiming his coinpurse; yet Daer'ys had already fled before very many words were exchanged.

In his early twenties, Daer'ys seemed to have located that mythical “big score” when a foreign merchant left his window open on one hot summer night. The fat businessman had fallen asleep from too much wine and rich food, and from a nearby rooftop Daer'ys waited until the merchant was snoring. Hopping across the building-tops as easily as most people cross the street, the fledgling thief slipped in, grabbed a good deal of valuables laying about, and got away scot free with tens of thousands of goldpieces worth of jewelry.

He had never landed loot of that scale before, so his attempts to fence it through his normal channels didn't pan out. The town guard got wind of someone trying to move the stolen goods and Daer'ys was forced to stash his booty in the collection bin at a nearby small church to the Red Knight. He thought he had stashed it temporarily, but when he evaded pursuit and returned later his ill-gotten gains had vanished.

The modest temple's head priest approached the rookie rogue, and recognized him as the pickpocket he had foiled years ago in the market. He thanked Daer'ys openly for the extremely generous donation, and offered to put the young man up for a few nights in exchange. Daer'ys scoffed and said that with that amount of wealth, he should have bought a permanent room at the temple. The cleric considered for a moment, and agreed to those terms with sincerity.

Thus was Daer'ys slowly and reluctantly indoctrinated into the Brotherhood of the Crimson Fist, an extremely small monestary devoted to the teachings of the Red Knight. They gave him a purpose other than thievery; they gave him skills and self-worth.

Still, he was never much of a “joiner,” and the freedom of the street lifestyle was permanently impressed upon his psyche. He trained hard at the monestary, if anything to be able to take care of himself in the back alleys. He appreciated what the Red Knight taught, but he never bought into the idea that it was possible to live a sedentary lifestyle while following the tenets of a battle goddess.

Streetwise, and now full of both self-worth and survival skills, Daer'ys risked leaving the anonymity of the cloister and ventured back out into the world. This time, he figured, he'd be able to find an even bigger score. He'd be able to handle any guards who came his way, rather than having to run from them. He'd be rich after all, and he'd even be okay giving the temple a cut, despite still feeling like they owed him from his original ill-gotten stash.

Then he heard about the Pool of Radiance, and how Phlan was a city literally dying to get some adventurers to come in and help them out. At worst, he'd have gotten out of town for a while.

Daer'ys wants to have enough money to never have to work an honest day in his life. He wants to prove his battle prowess is superior to someone trained in military academies as well as someone who learned via the school of hard knocks. He figures that'll show those stuffy monks that their ways aren't as effective as they think and it's important to be unpredictable as well as skilled. Perhaps moreso. He also wants to show the street ruffians and backstabbers that their way is insufficient too. As such, a point of pride with him is when he can take down a classically-trained fighter, monk, or rogue.

He's also really looking to stay out of jail for robbing that merchant, as there's a bounty on his head in Cormyr at this point.