Name: Aeron Byar
Age: late twenties to early thirties (32)
Gender: Male
Race: Human
Height: 5'10"

Appearance:

Aeron Byar is a man of middling height and middling frame with a lean and athletic build.  His face is sharp and hard with dark, deep set eyes, a narrow straight nose that has been broken and set several times, and a broad jaw leading to a pointed chin.  A peasants diet leaves little in the way of fat on him, leaving the skin pulled tight on his body giving him an almost skeletal appearance.  His skin is fair but well tanned and rugged from a long hard life outside of creature comforts.  His dark hair is flecked with premature grey and is chopped short.  While it is common for working men to sport beards, his chin is kept freshly razored with little more than stubble.  While potentially handsome, Byar has carefully cultivated a rather forgettable appearance.  Despite working for the criminal underground and work gangs, Byar has a rather distinct lack of tattoos and recognizable features that are common among such men.

His clothes during the day are utilitarian, linen trousers with sturdy leather boots, linen shirt, and a canvas or leather jerkin.  Byar takes great pains to mimic the dress of the common folk around him.  If sailing into the eastern ports he will don eastern garb, and vice versa.  Around his shoulders is usually a great hooded cloak of a dark brown/black color.  Thick, warm, mostly waterproofed, and hiding many hidden pockets, it is one of the few prized possessions that Byar owns.  If a job requires a bit more personal protection, Byar owns a suit of tailored light armor consisting of light or limited plate segments over layers of chain and leather.  It has been dyed a dark muted color that easily blends in with dark environments and to break up his silhouette against the horizon.  While not providing the superior protection of full chain or plate, it is less encumbering, providing superior mobility when skulking about.

Clearly visible on his person is a common dagger, as do most common folk for its use as a useful tool in ones daily life.  Beyond this, he appears unarmed.  Assuming that his is, is a dangerous mistake.  His main weapon is a thick bladed shortsword designed for thrusting; an assassin's blade.  While capable of dealing grievous wounds and concealable, it is a clumsy weapon best suited to being plunged in an unsuspecting victims back.  It is also a sort of badge of office, making it necessary to conceal from authorities.  To take a target at range, he uses a crossbow with wickedly barbed bolts that if not removed correctly can cause more damage being removed.

Byar carries himself in two distinct manners stemming from his need to blend into crowds.  Most of the time in public Byar is slouched and obsequious like most every dock worker or peasant going about their daily duties.  Eyes downcast and shuffling his feet you wouldn't even thing that this pathetic little man was a hardened killer.  When not in the public eye, Byar moves with cat-like grace; predatory, as if always ready to pounce.  It is a very rare thing to see the man smile, or to make any genuine show of emotion. Most of the time when he smiles it is decidedly unnerving, and his teeth are uncommonly white.

Personality:

Byar is at first glance a cold and unfeeling individual, a methodical psychotic that is only brought joy through the act of murder.  This is almost entirely untrue; murder does not bring him joy in the slightest.  Byar's personality is defined by his methodical professionalism, and his sheer lack of empathy.  He sees what he does as just another job.  Overt feelings are simply a liability in his line of work.  A husband who comes home to beat his wife to death in a drunken rage has feelings.  Professionals have standards; be polite, be efficient, and have a plan to kill every person you meet.  This means that while he is a hired killer, he has his standards.  Why kill someone if you aren't getting paid?  Never double cross an employer.  Never mock the dead.  And always see a job through.

Being a starving orphan alone on the streets as taught him that you had to help yourself, and that people were just there to take advantage of you.  This antisocial upbringing molded him to the man he is today.  He enjoys solitary activities, meals in front of a fire, playing and listening to music and the like.  He also has a pension for gambling, enjoying able to take advantage of others.  He is a fantastic cheat.  While he does have the capacity for feelings, it would take a great deal of effort to break through to him, but once you did you would have his loyalty for life.

Strengths:

Cutthroat: Byar is a thief and assassin suited to skulking around in the shadows, picking locks, feats of legerdemain, conniving and deception, and most importantly, killing his targets with ruthless efficiency.  Woe be it to someone who thinks he will fight honorably.

Criminal Contacts: Byar is well versed in the criminal underground of any of the places he visits able to get access to jobs, safe houses, fences and the like.  While unsavory, such 'allies' prove very useful to a man of his skills.  Fluent in Thieves Cant. Thieves Cant is a nearly universal coded language that allows other criminals to converse covertly in public.  Thieves' Cant or simply 'The Cant' is a combination of code words and phrases to convey information covertly and identify one thief from another.  While the casual listener might hear a discussion about politics or the weather, they could be discussing jobs, security patrols, or even gossiping on others.  One of the most subtle parts of the Cant is the use of hand gestures.  With simple hand gestures, thieves can convey simple messages without vocalizing.  As the years gone by, 'hand talk' became so ingrained in the language that thieves began using it to express emotion or emphasis to their words when they couldn't outwardly show it.

Streetwise: In an urban environment survival takes on a whole new set of challenges.  Cities and towns operate very similar regardless of location and Byar can find the ins and outs with little fuss and survive quite well.

Neutral:

Don't look in the basement: Byar can be a very unnerving person to be around if one isn't used to him.  While it works well when intimidating informants and targets it also makes it hard to deal with anyone not on the lowest rungs of society.

The Common Tongue: Many sailors pick up bits and pieces of the languages they encounter on their travels.  While he can converse with most languages and get basic points across, more complex expressions are impossible and anyone fluent in the language would think he sounds like a gibbering idiot.

Weakness:

Wanted Criminal: Byar is on one of the lowest rungs of society and all the disadvantages that brings with it.  Byar is a hired killer, and despite being good at his job the authorities would like nothing better than to see him at the end of a short rope.

Vengeful: Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth.  Byar will go to great lengths, even at great personal risk to satisfy any vendetta.

The Forgotten Life: When subjected to certain stimuli Byar experiences vivid flashbacks of his early childhood, of that mysterious time when life was good and right.  Byar has a soft spot for unfortunate children and regularly uses his earnings to assist such individuals.  This weakness could easily be exploited by others.

Notable Equipment:

Tailored armor
Assassin's Blade & other weapons
Crossbow w/ Barbed Bolts
Thieves Kit
Various Poisons
Cloak of no particular color

Likes: Professionalism, Loyalty, Gambling, Pragmatism
Dislikes: People, Wanton Cruelty, The Capricious, The Religious
Habits: Stares, Unconsciously gestures with Thieves Cant

History:

Byar is an orphan, thrown to the streets of some nameless city in his youngest years and left to fend for himself.  Before his inevitable fate as a street urchin Byar remembers warm summer days riding a wagon with many people surrounding him laughing and singing.  These memories are hazy and indistinct and the only thing that has remained with him in his years is his name and the lingering memory of the smell of summer grass tainted with the acrid stench of blood.  This phantom of memory still wakes him from sleep gripping him in a sense of both longing nostalgia and primal terror.

It was a large city, large enough that one could not walk from one end to the other in a single day not including if one got lost or accosted among its twisting roads and dead ends.  To a child it was immense, forests of buildings, seas of people, roads as wide as rivers.  It smelled like urine and sweat and coal smoke and tar.  The best he can figure he must have been five or six at the time and if he were in his right mind he would of avoided the place entirely.  There among the lower wards Byar begged for his food and learned the hard way the skills he would need later in life.  When he first began begging he attempted to try the wealthier section of the city, while a young noble lady pitied him with a single coin a guard escorted him out of the ward.  He beat the young Byar within an inch of his life and took the coin for his troubles.  The lower wards were not much better, if a bit more honest about their hostility.  Filled with beggars, thieves, criminals, and most other imaginable types that one would not like to meet in a dark alley.  How could anyone, let alone an impressionable child become anything but what surrounded him.

When he was older and stronger, Byar began working at the docks attempting to raise himself out of abject poverty.  Sadly even then Byar could not escape the clutches of the criminal element.  Pirates, smugglers, and dock gangs ran the ports.  While Byar was able to taken on as a cabin boy for a ship, he was indoctrinated into the criminal underground as he sailed to and from the distant ports.  Since most people rarely suspect children of anything other than petty thievery he was perfect for running smuggled goods and even executing unwary targets.  A handful of years passed with the pirates and smugglers till he was a young man of around sixteen.  In this time he learned to read and write from ships navigators, speak smatterings of almost every language from the ports he visited, gamble, drink, and learn the dirtiest fighting tricks from around the world.  Inrivers became his port of call, the one fixed point among the voyages when the ships would restock and resupply.  It was the closest he had to a home.

There among the canals and dockside bars you will be able to find the people that can make your troubles disappear... so long as you have coin to spend.