Pion

Pion was a gambler and member of the Shadow Thieves in Neverwinter as of the late 15 century DR.
==Personality==
Pion disliked risks that put his life in danger, although he rarely expressed any reservations aloud.
When learning a new game or trying to sharpen his skills, he did not care about winning so long as he could learn more strategies for use in the future.
==Activities==
Pion was a talented gambler and adept at games of all kinds, from cards to dice to chess. None of the other Shadow Thieves were willing to play with him for stakes, and his skills meant that he was often assigned to play in games and venues beneficial to the guild (either as a dealer in the Shadow Thieves' own gambling dens or as a player in their rivals' dens).
==History==
Prior to settling into his role as a gambler, Pion had tried and failed to serve the guild as a cutpurse, smuggler, and street thug. By the late 15 century DR, he was a known and wanted member of the guild.
Six months into the events of the death curse, Pion was contacted by his higher-ups in the Shadow Thieves and instructed to improve his chess skills. He was to infiltrate the mansion of Alfin Biscop, a retired adventurer and chess fanatic who had not been seen since the start of the curse, and rob his vault. This vault, it was assumed, would be guarded by a trap involving chess. Realizing that his life would depend on his chess skills, Pion sought out games wherever he could find them in Neverwinter, from taverns and gambling dens to public squares and alleys to classrooms and libraries. It was during these many games that he grew tired of an oft-told joke about the death curse, which supposed that now chess pieces could never be used again in a new game if they were captured during play.
When the day of the heist arrived, his superiors and the guild's wizards had a disagreement about how to have him infiltrate the mansion. A proposal to polymorph him into a mouse was rejected over concerns about predators in the sewers (and silently, Pion was more concerned that one of the wizards' familiars—a quasit—would simply kill him for fun in that state) and likewise a proposal to cast gaseous form on him and use a device built by a guild artificer to blow him into the building was rejected for being too unpredictable (and again, Pion was more concerned that the artificer had a reputation for building devices that left thieves dead). They ultimately decided to simply use the passwall spell to sneak him in through he back.
Inside, he found the chessboard trap and correctly identified what he believed to be the solution: checkmating the black king. However, the correct solution was to checkmate the white king, and he was injected with a fatal and fast acting poison that would have killed him if not for Biscop's intervention. The old cleric was rotting away from the death curse, and coolly told Pion that while the poison had been slowed, it would inevitably kill him. Thus, Pion's only chance to "survive" was to help end the death curse, at which point he would die and Biscop could revive him. With no other options, Pion agreed to Biscop's terms—to deliver a message to the Harpers about the nature of the death curse—and was invited to spend the rest of his days playing chess with Biscop while waiting for the Harpers to end the curse.
==Appendix==
===Appearances===
===References===
Category:Gamblers
Category:Thieves
Category:Members of the Shadow Thieves
Category:Inhabitants of Neverwinter
Category:Inhabitants of the Sword Coast North
Category:Inhabitants of the Sword Coast
Category:Inhabitants of Northwest Faerûn
Category:Inhabitants of Faerûn
Category:Inhabitants of Toril