Argyle Lovelle

## General

Argyle Lovelle is the father of Coriander Lovelle, the spouse of Padma Lovelle, and a resident of the South ward, in Waterdeep. He makes his living as an educator (despite the resistance he meets often thanks to "Their" efforts against the planes-accurate content he teaches), and as a street magic performer and mystic under the alias of "Ptereo", for which he has earned a pleasant recognition in the South Ward as his wife's assistant. However, he and Padma moonlight as ardent devotees of the Mithral Break - a network of conspiracy theorists established across the coast. Argyle has made it his mission to uncover the hidden truths "They" don't want the public to know, but with each day he seems to meet more resistance than the day before.

Still, Argyle is stubborn to the core - and with every obstacle and misdirection placed before him his focus becomes ever more assured on what he knows to be true. With his indomitable curiosity, his unusual knowledge of the planes, and his ever-growing aversion to authority, Argyle is certain to reach whatever truth it is he seeks.

## Description

Argyle is an imposing figure: thickset-built, with hard features hidden beneath an impressive mustache-beard combo and a thinning mane of wild, bluish-black hair. His eyes are a brilliant, electric-green, and his tanned skin speaks to the active lifestyle he once led. The bulk he has held onto is hidden beneath layers of wool cardigans and dress shirts, the years have greyed the edges of his hair and added a slight paunch to his build, and these days Argyle is known to rely more heavily on his ever-strengthening series of eyeglasses. Though Coriander inherited most of his looks from Padma, he gained his eyes and wild hair from Argyle.

Often heard long before he is seen, Argyle's voice booms far and wide with a deep, gravelly timbre.

## Biography

### Backstory

Argyle Lovelle was born in 448 H.F., in Marta, where for years he led a comfortable (if unremarkable) life within the city's walls. That is, until he began studying planar sciences at Dagult Academy. There, he began to see strange inconsistencies across historical accounts of the planes: there was reportedly no life in the other planes, but there were rare and dubious accounts of those who had ventured to these dimensions sometimes returned with battle scars and didn't live long enough to speak on where they got them. But as he began to dig deeper and share his "troubling misinformation" with his peers, Argyle was soon threatened with expulsion. Instead, he quietly completed his education at Dagult and immediately made his way to Candlekeep - a trove of ancient knowledge and a surefire means to answer his questions.

It was in Candlekeep, in 470 H.F., as he was searching for the Great Library, that Argyle would meet a street performer outside the building he sought: Padma Raung. The two became fast friends and confidants during Argyle's increasingly common visits to the Great Library, bonding over their shared appreciation of history and the oddities they found in ancient and modern records. It wasn't long before the two became romantically involved, and in short order the two were wed in 472 H.F.

Together the pair departed Candlekeep on a hunch. They believed that a great many of their answers to these historical inconsistencies could be gleaned somewhere in the city of Waterdeep, and so the pair made haste to their new destination. When they arrived in the city and found it a bustling (but otherwise unremarkable) locale on its surface, the Lovelles were undeterred. They began to set up shop, proverbially speaking, and established a small information network (which would come to be called the "Mithral Break" between its members) within Waterdeep to surveil the "big players" who controlled much of the city's workings.

This surveillance was not without its risks, however. The Lovelles came under gang attention, and in short order they were intimidated into a "protection racket" by the Dearth, lest they (and their newborn son, Coriander) find themselves in dire straits. And Argyle found that his daylighting work as a planar professor became more difficult with each lesson he taught; he had met pushback before he found himself in Waterdeep or Candlekeep, but he began now to be thrust out of nearly every teaching position he took these days.

And so the Lovelles would make their living for the next two decades: struggling to make ends meet in this city but with a resolve to know the "truth" that had never been stronger. Something was actively pushing this family from what they sought in Waterdeep, and by 497 H.F. the Lovelles believed they had finally put a face to it: Watchguard Management & Solutions.