My submission for U- backstory

Among the many species and races of the world, one of the most ingenious are the Lawyers. Lawyers are very logical and can naturally think around any corner and wriggle through any loophole that can be found. Not all Lawyers are attorneys, though they are the best practitioners of law. Some however, use their minds for darker ventures.

There is a large crime group in the land of Tiborae that is run and populated entirely by these Lawyers. Entire families are members of this group which calls itself the Syndicate.  They have smugglers, assassins, mercenaries, thieves, arsonists, vagrants, vandals, slavers, kidnappers, prostitutes, con artists… the list goes on.

There is one family at the bottom of the chain of command, a family of smugglers who have enough to eat but little more. The father is rarely home; it is his duty to lead the caravans of stolen or illegal goods around or through security checkpoints. At times, he supplies the bribes to the corrupt guards or policemen. When he sees his family, a wife and young daughter, they take the goods and pass them to the merchants that the Syndicate employs. They need not worry about paying the merchants or taking their cut of the profits; that is the job of another. After a day or two of rest with his family, the father ventures out again to meet another caravan. In return for their service, this family receives a weekly stipend to cover their food expenses. It is not much, but it is their lot in life, and they are content.

The daughter grows up, as children of any race do, and soon learns that there are others in their society who have more than she or her family. She is no longer content to be a passive smuggler. It is difficult to break out of one’s position in this organization, but this girl trains hard and soon after adolescence sets in, becomes a grunt in the assassin’s faction. Her mother worries, as mothers do, but both parents are proud that their daughter is not only earning her own income, but also moving up the ranks. Though the family is higher up within its own faction than the daughter is in hers, assassins are in general higher up on the proverbial food chain than smugglers.  Over the years, she moves up in the ranks quite quickly and by the time she is twenty, she becomes the head of the assassins’ faction of the Syndicate, becoming the youngest faction leader in the entire history of the Syndicate. She is a very hands-on leader and takes many assignments for herself; she is never able to leave behind the thrill of being in the field.

She has no outstanding magics, other than the silver tongue of her race which is less magic than skill, but she is good at dealing death. She carries on her no less than thirteen poison-coated blades (she makes the poison herself) at any time, hidden expertly in and beneath the folds of her skirt and jacket. She also wears a large hat to hide the small nub-like horns on her head which are a sure sign of her race, along with her crimson eyes. She has long brown hair which she likes to wear braided and wrapped in a bun that, when loose, cascades down her back like a chocolate waterfall. She is very proud of her appearance because it earns her attention from men and because no one outside the Syndicate would expect such a “sweet looking lass” of being one of the most deadly assassins in the area.

It does not last long, however. A mere three years after her promotion to faction leader, the head of the Syndicate takes ill, presumably from poison, and dies. Poison being one of this woman’s specialties, she is immediately suspected. Being a Lawyer, she attempts to talk her way out of the charges and her punishment, but because her accusers and colleagues are also Lawyers, all of them older and more experienced than she, all she is able to achieve is to keep her family from being ousted from the Syndicate along with her. She packs up her basic belongings and leaves the area. Once she finds a new home, she joins a local assassins’ guild, once again as a bottom-level grunt, in hopes to work her way up the ranks again. However, things do not go as planned.

In her new guild, she proves her mettle by challenging and defeating a man who is very much her senior. Her prize is a contract that would have gone to the assassin she defeated: the assassination of a midlevel member of the World Government. She hides in the rafters in the suite at the inn in which he will be staying, her poison dagger at the ready. As he is putting his clothes in the wardrobe, she moves slowly into position. Slowly but, it seems, not carefully; her foot slips and she falls from the ceiling to the floor in much less time than it took to get up. She hits the hard wood floor with a resounding kathunk and her target turns at the sound. His bodyguards swarm into the room like ants over a dead fly. Before she realizes what has happened, she has been arrested and is being brought to a government prison building. After many days locked in the dark, escape-proof chamber with little water and less food, she is removed from her cell and brought to a room in which several men, including the government official she had tried to kill, wait. They offered her a choice: she could be hanged for treason or use her abilities to aid the government. Should she choose the second, she would keep her life but lose her freedom. She thinks it an exaggeration, so she chooses to become a Masque and keep her life. She does not realize that keeping her life is not a certainty, nor that hanging would be a more merciful death.