Hali Brookes - Water Elemi Rogue

Hali was born native to Belfrie, her mother being a water Elemi and her father being a half-elf. She often found herself moving between the cities of Volosvio and Velandria, owing to her father’s work as a mason. It wasn’t until Hali was a young woman that she learned in truth her father was not a mason, but a smuggler for the Rossa Cartel. When she learned she was heartbroken; infuriated at her father, she took a stash of gold and left, planning to sail to her ancestral homeland of Abunor, far from the reaches of her father and the criminal syndicate he worked for. But she found no love nor reprieve in Abunor, being outed as a foreigner with a child’s understanding of her mother tongue of Magyar. Her Elemi kin rejected her, though for years she would remain there, adopting their fashion, facial markings and jewellery in an attempt to integrate within the culture, but to no avail. She returned home after three years, defeated and dejected. It was then, in the shadow of her disappointment, that she found herself drawn into her father's world. She learned the art of smuggling, the thrill of the illicit, and the dangers of the underworld. Her father's tavern, a facade for their smuggling operations, became her realm, and she became its queen. But fate, cruel and unyielding, struck again. The Dusty Dirks, a ruthless small-time gang trying to gain its footing against the Cartel in Velandria, slew her father in a territorial dispute. Though Hali was distraught, she decided to continue laying low, protecting her mother and working at the tavern left to them by her father. There she grew close to her staff, and for a time it seemed the life of crime would be behind her, yet all that glitters is not gold in the gilded city. The tavern, too, fell prey to the Dusty Dirks' expanding terror. With nothing left to lose, Hali set her sights on Tradver, fueled by whispers of the Dirks' ties to the city’s duke. Vengeance became her sole purpose, her guiding star. She would avenge her father, her friends, her shattered life. Hali's journey, once a quest for belonging, had morphed into a path of revenge, and she would walk it to its end, whatever the cost.