Ali

Sorry, tonight's offer is "Your money AND your life."

Name: Alara Natolli Therese Beyroux
Age:
Concept: Concept
Lifepaths:

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Notes: Fate:?, Persona:?, Deeds:?

Background

The first time Alara Natolli Therese Beyroux was sentenced to death was at the ripe age of four and a half. Her father, Tobias Beyroux, was accused of treason by the Ruells, a family with whom Tobias had been feuding over international trading rights. This accusation, and the following sentence of death, was extended to Tobias's immediate family, including his wife, Therese Beyroux, his three sons, Marcus, Antony, and Fredrick, and Alara, his youngest and only daughter. The Beyroux males were taken to Xartalca and summarily executed. The night before she and her daughter were scheduled to be taken to the prison, Therese sent a letter to her family, the rich and powerful Remillards, advisors to the kings of Kardia. Only Therese and the Remillards know what the letter said, but upon receiving it, they bestirred themselves to protest Therese's innocence for the first time since the accusation was made. King Alphonse III pardoned Therese and Alara, but exiled them the Beyroux properties and appropriated their wealth. The Remillards also made it abundantly clear that they had done all they would for Therese: they closed the doors to their many estates to the widow and her child.

For the next six years, Alara and her mother lived like vagabonds. Exiled from their holdings, but not from Kardia itself, they lived in Kardia City, migrating from one residence to another, each smaller and shabbier than the next. With only a small inheritance from Therese's maternal grandmother to live on, they had to adapt to a life of genteel poverty, especially once Therese's health began to fail. Alara, left more and more to her own devices, began making friends with various children on the street, learning such skills as thieving, lying, and cheating. At first, the trio of guardsmen that had remained with Therese out of loyalty tried to curb Alara's streetside adventures. After she became adept at evading them and sneaking out to play with her friends, they decided to at least teach her how to defend herself. Starting with knife and bola throwing, and eventually moving up to fencing with rapiers and fighting with javelins as she grew older, they taught her how to move with a deadly speed and grace. At the request of her failing mother, they also added lessons of motion magic once Ali turned ten. However, a few months after Ali (the nickname given to her by her friends) began learning magic, her mother died.

Many things changed after her mother's death. She had grown up ignorant of the fact that she had more family than just her mother, so she was extremely surprised to see a black coach pull up to her doorstep the day after her mother had died. In it was a junior member of the Remillards. Ignoring her completely, he spoke to her guardsmen, telling them that Therese would be buried with her family, but that the Remillards did not recognize Alara as a true daughter of the lineage. After sending servants to retrieve the body, he bowed and left, leaving the guardsmen to explain to Ali just what he had meant. Nor did the familial surprises end there. A few days after her mother's body had been taken, the current landlord evicted Ali, keeping what few material possessions she had left as back payment of rent. While Ali just assumed she would join the Rat's Nest which was the gang her urchin friends belonged to, her guards were busy making other plans to bring her to the home of her father's relatives who were duty-bound to take their poor relation in.

For various reasons, Ali rarely stayed with a relation for long. Her first stay was with her aunt and uncle, Sammael and Audrine. Sammael was Tobias's younger brother, and a prosperous merchant in his own right. He didn't relish the thought of having his treason-tainted niece living with his family, and she didn't appreciate living with them either. Ali rebelled at the rules of conduct imposed on her, and the constant nagging about how young ladies were supposed to act, and what was considered proper conduct. Her cousins were also quick to realize Ali's lesser status in the household, and loved to torment their younger cousin. After the third time Ali ran away and had to be tracked down, Sammael and Audrine decided it was time to send her somewhere else. The next five households were basically variations on the first--Ali was always rebellious and struggled to escape the middle-class mentality of her family. Finally, at fourteen, she was sent to the home of Mikah and Dennyl. Dennyl was her lecherous third cousin, and Mikah was his bitter and suspicious wife. From the moment she stepped in their door, Dennyl had plans for her, most of them thwarted by the combined vigilence of his wife and Ali's guards. Disaster struck when Araliss, one of the guards, caught Dennyl pressing Ali for a kiss that involved more tongue than any proper cousinly kiss ought. In the time it took for him to barrell down the hall, Ali had already driven a sharp knee into Dannyl's groin, but Araliss didn't let that stop him from administering a proper physical chastisement. Afterwards, Mikah "suggested" Ali leave, so as to no longer provide a temptation for her husband, and Araliss was carted off to jail for assault. Having no further relations to go to, Ali was finally able to return to Kardia City and join her friends in the Rat's Nest.

Their welcome wasn't quite as warm as Ali could have hoped. They regarded her wuth suspicion and contempt, thinking that her years of living with her family had replaced all of the skills they had taught her in her youth. Fortunately, the leader of the Rat's Nest, Jarrod, was a thief with both foresight and imagination. He saw that Ali's nice clothes and proper manners would win them access to new spheres of society they were too poor and unkempt to access now. After brushing up on her thiefing skills (and honing her magic to help with the larceny as well), Ali finally joined the Rat's Nest as a full-fledged member of the game. Over the next four years, Ali's skills increased and her star rose within the gang. After Jarrod decided to retire out to the country with his ill-gotten gains and a merchant's charming daughter, it seemed natural that Ali would take his place. She lead for three years, and under her leadership, the Rat's Nest became one of the foremost thieving gangs in all of Kardia City, especially after they performed a daring rescue of Araliss right our of one of the city prisons. With her three incredibly loyal guards at her back, no one dared to force Ali from her position.

That all changed the day Ali was arrested. The Rat's Nest had been acquiring objects in one of Lord Perryton Remillard's townhouses, and Ali got caught making sure all of her "children" escaped safely. She never admitted who she was, and the powerful Lord Remillard got her thrown into Xartalca for the gall of attempting to steal from his home.

Goals

-find Trio -find out secrets Therese alluded to in the infamous letter (found a copy amongst her possessions after Therese's death.) -discover the Red Right Hand's true identity--was he truly Frederick? -be acknowledged as a scion of the Remillards -destroy the Remillards, root and branch -become Master Thief of Kardia; reform The Rat's Nest.

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