Cymbis Stormlight

“Oh, you asked me who I am, did you? Well, my friend, I’ll tell you straight away, if you have not the time to listen to my answer, you’ve made a mistake asking a halfling such as myself that question in the first place. Especially one that likes to talk as much as I seem to. So, sit down if you have a moment, and buy us a round if you would. It’ll make the experience so much more enjoyable for all parties.

“My name is Cymbis Stormlight, and I hail from a hamlet known as Daywich, just off the mighty roarin’ waters of my one true love: The Ambergreen Coast. She’s a feisty one, my darling is, but if you know how to ride her, she’ll treat you well. Now… Where’s that drink you promised me? Don’t you know it’s bad form to promise a man such a thing and have him wait so long to get a touch of a warm belly?

“Anyway, you know my name, and where I laid my head as a babe, but you have yet to hear who Cymbis Stormlight truly is. And if my reputation does not precede me, it just means I have been doing my job just fine so far. But to tell you who I am now, you have to know how to came to be! You see, I wasn’t always a man of the waves. Truly, most of my childhood, I spent my days looking up to my dear mother, the best baker in all of Daywich. Every day I would have the privilege of waking up to the new day’s pastries, pies, breads, or cakes before she would haul them out in a basket to the market, to sell to the fair people in my village. Every day a biscuit or small pastry would vanish mysteriously before she left, and somehow seemed to find it’s way into my pockets. Of course, some days, I would follow her to the market on the far side of the hills, where she would set up shop, and sell her baked goods to the people of Daywich, and any travelers who happened by.

“But the afternoons on those days were my favorite times. When she would gather the coin she had earned, give me an amount she deemed reasonable, and ask me to go buy some things she needed from the market. I always seemed to get the best deals on things. My mother said I had the gift of a silver tongue. What she went to the grave never knowing, is that she was only half right; My talents never did stop at the gifts of a good chat, I also have the gift of swift and nimble fingers. “A natural born thief!” My good friend Barric would say to me...