Nosha Rivver

**Nosha Rivver "Half-Dead"** (NOSH-ah)

## History

Born on 9 Alturiak, 1466 DR, in Hensdiek, fishing village north of Luskan. Nosha’s mother - a young Illuskan native named Fisl Rivver - had been one of only a handful of survivors to escape the sack of Raldafn, a community ten miles east on the river Mirar. Fisl did whatever she could to survive after her entire family was put to the sword, and Luskan gave her scant coins to rub together for her odd jobs.

A marriage to a merchant fell through almost immediately once Nosha was born, in light of his ruddy red skin and orcish features. Fisl had the option of drowning her son and returning to the merchant, but she chose instead to keep Nosha and take her chances. The merchant still fancied her, and she made a living serving his household and tending to his needs.

Nosha didn’t grow up in the shadow of that house, however, and was constantly in the streets of Luskan trying to find somewhere to fit in and contribute to his family. He proved to be full of potential in the eyes of the wrong sorts of people, and began a life of unscrupulous criminality. His mother had fought hard to keep him from those jobs, to defy his bloodline and the assumptions others foisted upon him, and one night she let loose with her opinions in a drunken rage.

Fisl swore to the gods that if he continued on his path she wouldn’t bury him among his ancestors in Hensdiek, that she’d cast him out and never speak to him again. Nosha begged and pleaded with his mother and the two of them came to a conclusion that he must go to where the work is more honorable. She scraped together all the money she could and he traveled south to Neverwinter to find a trade among craftsmen or to serve in their military.

Nosha arrived in Neverwinter and found the city was very different from how it had been described in his youth. Half the city was still destroyed and destitute, and the nobility here clamored against each other and against near-constant outside influence. Somehow the honorable city had become a breeding ground for the same sorts of disreputable people Fisl had sent her son away to avoid.

Still, Nosha tried to join the militia, and they turned him away - not because he lacked the skills - but because he wouldn’t be respected by the people and his countenance would fail to make them feel safe. He tried to join the private armies of some of the nobility, but met the same rejection. Finally after one such disavowal, representatives of an up-and-coming thieves’ guild - “The Brothers” - offered him a low-level enforcement position. Figuring that what Fisl didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her, he accepted the post.

Iswic Yarden, a half-elven agent of the Lords’ Alliance, had been watching Nosha’s search ever since he tried out for the city watch. Approaching him quietly on the same night he was offered a hand by the Brothers, Iswic and Nosha split a bottle of wine and discussed why he had come. The spy told Nosha that if he worked for the Lords’ Alliance to keep tabs on the Brothers, and reported to Iswic if they ever did anything to destroy the nobility, that he’d have a noble write letters to Fisl and tell her that her son was an upstanding, loyal citizen, and even attach some money along with it.

And so Nosha became a spy, although he was encouraged not to put himself in any danger to intercept information - to play the “long game”, as Iswic called it. Nosha became a dependable, skilled hand for the Brothers as they sought to build in the ruins of old Neverwinter. Since the honor issue had been sorted in his mind, he offered to learn even more of his own potential skills, wanting to expand them beyond just enforcement and protection. He knew that there were some in the guild who had great talents for sudden, decisive combat, and he figured that these assassins would know what the guild was really up to.

Before he could begin that training (or even be considered for it), the Brothers guildhouse, warehouse and barracks were consumed in an act of arson that killed most of the members and gutted their savings. Nosha was pulled from the flames by Bwyrrus Tyne, an impish, rogue urchin-turned-wizard who had been a part of the guild for about as long as he had. The fire melted much of his left side where the skin was exposed - face, hand and hip, and since that day Bwyrrus had taken to calling him “Half-dead.”

Bwyrrus attempted to continue acting on behalf of the guild, and before Nosha could return to Iswic and report the death of the Brothers he realized that there was still an opportunity to continue working for the Lords’ Alliance. Bwyrrus’ noble contact - Lord Bors Batroc - was exactly the sort of unscrupulous, ambitious individual who might warrant continued observation. Nosha found a way to leave word with Iswic that despite the end of the Brothers guild, he still had a job to do.