Lethen Reedshadow – Wood Elf Arcane Trickster

Name: Lethen Reedshadow
Race: Wood Elf
Role/Class: Rogue Level 8 (Arcane Trickster)
Appearance: Lethen Reedshadow looks like he belongs half in shadow and half on a rooftop rail. Tall and lithe, even for a wood elf, he moves with loose, unhurried grace—until it matters, and then he’s a blur. His skin is a warm, bark-brown tone with faint leaf-shaped freckles across his nose and cheeks. Long, straight dark hair is pulled into a half-tied tail, with thin braids braided close behind his ears to keep it from snagging on branches or wires. His eyes are a sharp, amber-green, constantly flicking between exits, vantage points, and unattended gear.

He wears a fitted, dark forest-green gambeson under a light, studded leather jerkin, both cut for mobility rather than bulk. A hooded cloak in mottled greens and browns hangs from his shoulders, edges stitched with thread that glitters faintly when it catches the light—subtle illusion sigils woven into the seams. Soft, high boots make almost no sound even on creaking planks. At his belt hang a rapier with a matte-finished hilt, a compact hand crossbow or shortbow slung across his back, and multiple small pouches heavy with thieves’ tools, wire, ball bearings, and folded vellum diagrams of other people’s inventions. Rings engraved with tiny arcane runes glimmer on his fingers when he gestures.

Backstory

Lethen was born in a quiet stretch of forest far from any workshop—one of many wood elf youths expected to grow into scouts, wardens, or lorekeepers. He was good enough at all three, but brilliant at none, and quickly got bored with “patient observation” and “respectful distance from mortal settlements.” What caught his interest, instead, were the stories carried by travelers passing through: of gnomes coaxing sparks and wards from metal, of outposts stringing together ballistae and arcane cannons under the canopy, of devices that turned the forest itself into both shield and weapon.

One “educational excursion” later, Lethen found himself in a certain forest outpost where rock gnomes and other tinkerers tested new defenses, gadgets, and tools. He was supposed to watch from the treeline and report back. Instead, he slipped inside the camp, climbed along rafters to get a closer look at their prototypes, and nearly got himself caught when an unstable device misfired. He escaped with singed hair, a stolen schematic, and a new obsession.

Over time, he became a quiet fixture in the gray spaces around the outpost: never officially employed, never fully banished. He learned which scrap heaps held discarded prototype cores, which workshops had lax locks after a long night of testing, and which engineers were too busy arguing to notice a component go missing. At first he stole out of curiosity, hoarding broken devices to tinker with in a hidden tree-hollow. Then he realized there was a market for these curiosities—buyers willing to pay for “salvaged tech” no official quartermaster would sign off on.

Now, Lethen is a nimble smuggler and information broker, slipping between canopy paths and forgotten maintenance tunnels. He specializes in moving discarded, “failed,” or quietly dangerous prototypes out of the outpost and into the hands of clients who don’t ask many questions: thrill-seeking adventurers, unscrupulous merchants, rival settlements, and the occasional collector of “forest-born arcana.” He tells himself he only sells what would have been melted down or buried anyway. He also tells himself he never deals in designs that could truly destabilize the Woods.

Both of those statements used to be true. Lately, with demand rising and more volatile inventions appearing in the scrap piles, Lethen isn’t so sure. But coin spends, curiosity gnaws, and the line between “harmless salvage” and “weaponized theft” is starting to blur beneath his boots.