Excerpts from Thranish Intelligence files, sensitive information redacted
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Detailing the background of * ********, hereafter referred to by his operational code name Scathe.
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—From an interview with * **********, an intelligence recruiter within ***********
This is all hearsay, based off what I could dig out of a long series of ‘conversations’.. more like interrogations.. he always got skittish when I asked him about himself. We met about sixteen years ago in Daskaran. He was a filthy little street rat when I first saw him.. orphaned probably.. the usual cliche.
I watched him steal the coinpurse of a drunken mercenary and get caught. The man started beating him mercilessly until the child got a hold of the man’s dagger and managed to spill the man’s entrails. The little rat slipped away into the darkness with the dead mans money. I started trailing and observing Scathe over the course of a few weeks. He met enough of our criteria so I decided to initiate contact and try to recruit him.
Scathe was born in the Gallows slums of Daskaran. His parents were of no significant importance, small time criminals who may have been victims of an organized crime purge when the Shroud cartel seized power. This background seemed the most probable. There were other stories too.. less believable but impressively constructed considering he wasn’t even into his teens when he told them to me. Regardless.. he was intelligent, charismatic, adaptable, morally flexible and most definitely paranoid. Adequate enough qualities that we drafted him into the ******** cell of ***********. It fronted as a criminal organization but served to maintain our interests within the outlaw underworld.
Him being just a child, we started with simple jobs: tailing, message drops, observation. He picked it up fast, became a hell of a little asset. A good mix of curiosity and paranoia, just hard to keep him on a leash if he got off on one of his own little ‘tangents’.
As he grew we bounced him around the western continent, didn’t want him to stay in one place long enough to get a reputation. He wasn’t our best operative but he was effective and his grand conspiracy theories were always entertaining as hell. Even more so considering he was unknowingly a part of one of the ‘shadow organizations’ he was convinced actually ran the world.
Eventually he was utilized in the war effort.. infiltrating criminal organizations with ties to enemy governments. Never did it out of any loyalty to the country, don’t think he had much love for Thrane at all to tell you the truth.. but it was easy enough to lead him into it by planting delicious little tidbits of information then turning him loose to see what he’d dig up.
Then he met up with that lot.. the cleric and the warforged.. the others.. they interfered with his clarity and his sense of focus. He became harder to control so we cut him loose. There was talk of retiring him but he may still be of some use in the future.
