Veskan Halfpath - Trusted Emissary of Emberveil
Emberveil has no roads and stays hidden on purpose. Veskan Halfpath is the one hand it extends into the wider world: a shadar-kai emissary who carries almost nothing, bargains honestly every time, and whose real skill is coming home without being followed.
Introduction
Emberveil does not appear on maps, and it did not get that way by accident. Four hundred people live a few miles inland from the Serrentide Sea, beyond the Emberflow Springs and behind sheltering hills, and every one of them arrived by a path that closed behind them. There are no roads. That is the point. But a settlement of four hundred still needs salt it cannot forage, iron it cannot dig, and lamp oil it cannot press — and somebody has to walk out through the mist, sit down across from a stranger, make a fair bargain, and then come home without leaving so much as a bent stem to follow. Somebody has to be seen. In Emberveil, that somebody is Veskan Halfpath, and the settlement's whole survival rests on how good he is at being forgettable.
Profile
Name: Veskan Halfpath
Race: Shadar-kai
Gender: Male
Alignment: Neutral Good
Role/Class: Trusted Emissary of Emberveil
Challenge Rating: 2
"Ask me anything about what I'm carrying. Ask me nothing about where I've come from, and we'll both enjoy the evening a great deal more."
Appearance: Veskan is a lean shadar-kai of middling height whose grey skin has taken on the exact dull warmth of settled volcanic ash, so that in the wrong light he looks less like a person standing in the mist than a part of it that has not finished moving. His eyes are black corner to corner and unsettlingly patient; his dark hair is cropped short and pushed back, threaded at one temple with a single strand of pale mineral glass. He wears layers of undyed grey — a travelling mantle of no recognisable regional cut, a wrapped ash-cloth mask hanging loose at his throat, boiled leather beneath — and every buckle, clasp and stud on him has been dulled with soot so that nothing catches light. He carries one shoulder case, worn shiny at the strap, and nothing else that would slow him down. At his hip hangs a three-piece wind chime of bone, glass and cooled lava, the kind that sings in every doorway in his settlement; his has been stopped with wax so that it cannot make a sound.
