Verek “Heartless” of the Spit

In Grimgate, the spit is the home of the city’s dregs. The urchins, beggars, prostitutes and petty criminals of Grimgate all find themselves here, in the streets washed with sea-salt and poverty. It was here that Verek was raised, whose childhood as a Nosmeni in Baldur is similar to many others. Abandoned as a small child and left alone on the streets, Verek cannot even remember his parents. One of the many overburdened local orphanages took him in with great reluctance, yet by fortune’s favour his stay there was brief; much to the surprise and dismay of its staff. For only a day after Verek’s arrival there, he would be adopted by a lone Sudd Tohsti monk who had recently moved to the city. It was this same monk who had turned the boy into the orphanage, and could not bare to know what he would be subjected to until he was old enough to leave.

Within the company of his new adoptive father, Verek was taught to live life as a devout follower of the Tharameni, raised from his young age without attachment. Though he still knew much suffering in his life at the hands of his peers, it seldom brought him anguish or sorrow, for his faith in the divine severed his binding ties to mortal suffering. As he grew older, and became well-versed in the martial arts taught by his father, Verek began to use them against his tormentors. For with maturity, his infernal ancestry began to manifest more into his temperament, and the calm child became a raging, powerful adolescent, breaking the bones of his tormentors on several occasions, until they no longer tried to hassle him. Though not all forgot him, and when they grew older and fell in with darker crowds, they enacted their own petty vengeance against Verek. Whilst he was out of his home one night, a group stormed the house, driving their knives into Verek’s father a hundred times and setting the tiny abode ablaze.

It did not take long for grief to manifest is unbridled anger, and with a strong hunch as to whom the culprits were, Verek set about his course of vengeance. Though that course ended with a dagger plunging into his chest, missing his heart by a hair’s breadth.

Whether it was by the grace of the divine or his own stubborn vigour, her survived the ordeal, collapsing on the steps of a Chapel of Cedhelieth, where healers dragged his near-lifeless body inside. Over the course of several weeks he healed, and with his strength regained, returned like a spectre of vengeance for his foes, though approached them now like a lone wolf, biding his time to strike. One by one he picked them off, until eventually the last survivor grew privy to Verek’s scheme. Learning of his place within temporary housing at a Cedhelieth chapel, the lowlife informed the clergy there of Verek’s deeds as a killer, promptly having him forced onto the streets. They deemed him to be “Heartless” and spared from Namneri’s embrace as a demonspawn, one only driven by vengeance rather than the true tenets of the Tharameni. Disillusioned with the church and ready to die in his final pursuit of vengeance, Verek was halted by the firm but gentle hand of an Elven woman, Priscilia. She offered to him another way to end his vendetta against the Underkeepers, a way that was less likely to send him to an early grave than kicking in their front door. She offered him a place in the Nova-Rossa, an organised foreign syndicate that held their own vendetta with the Underkeepers. They had noted Verek’s own ability to systematically take down their men, and survive an ordeal that should have ended in death before. Feeling as though refusal was not an option to this woman, Verek accepted. For six months now he has sat and waited for the chance to strike, and soon he is told, the chance will come.