Alivia (Liv) Guile

Name: Alivia Guile (aka Liv)

Race: Human

Class: Ninja

Gender: Female

Height: 5' 9"

Weight: 150lbs

Hair Color: Red

Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

Deity/Religion: none.

Backstory
Alivia (Liv) Guile was the daughter of a once wealthy house, her father, Dazen Guile, being a former general in service of the king. Her family though lost face with the nobility and the king when her father refused an arranged marriage between Liv and Andross, a much older son of house Jadwin, disgracing both the Jadwin family and the King who orchestrated the marriage. Dazen wouldn’t be moved, at the age of 4 Liv would not be promised to some nobleman’s 16 year old brat who couldn’t even hold onto a sword, much less swing it. It was a disgrace that neither king nor noble council would accept.

The Guile family was striped of lands and titles, cast off with only what they had on their backs. None of them dared to publicly disobey the king, so they went into hiding. Dazen and his family were taken in by the Mayor of a little backwater village named Garrison. The Mayor didn’t really have anything to gain from the arrangement other than another few strong sets of hands and the great amusement of watching what she assumed to be a family of stuck up former nobles slowly die because none of them knew how to do an honest day’s work. But that was enough, she also had orders from the king to keep information going to the capital, to insure that the family was not planning rebellion.

Adjustment was difficult, but the Guile family being militarily strict worked to their favor. Liv’s brother Gavin was the only one to complain, and he only complained once. Her father didn’t yell, didn’t scream, he just calmly took off his belt and asked to see Gavin’s hands. One good militaristic strike later and they both knew that they were to behave. The family worked hard and within 10 years they had regained some status, at least in the local area. Everything was going well until one late summer night.

“Raze the house! Kill anyone who gets out!” Liv heard from outside her window.

“But sir,” another man said “there’s young children in there, barely old enough to know why they’re diein, there’s gota be a better w-” followed by a moan and a small singing sound of a blade being wiped clean.

“Anyone else for treason? The king says they die, they die. There ain’t nothin for it, ain’t none of us paid to think too loud.”

And the fires started being lit, one torch at first, then another was touched to that, then four, then 8. Pretty soon the entire view outside Liv’s window was dotted with beautiful fiery sparks. She had to tell her father, he would know what to do.

She ran to her father’s room, not bothering to knock she burst past the door, “Father! there’s men outside with fire and they want to burn us to death!”

“You just had a bad dream honey, now go back to sleep.” he grunted and rolled over. It was late in August and he had spent from before dawn until after dusk helping to get the early harvest in.

“No, seriously. If you don’t believe me at least come to my room and look.” How was her father being this dense, he had trained her to react to threat and taught her to only come crying if there was really a wolf, this seemed to be applicable.

“Okay, but there better be a good reason you’re dragging me out of bed this ungodly early, otherwise I’m getting my belt out.” he warned as he got out of bed.

he slowly trudged down the hall to Liv’s room and opened the door just in time to see a flaming torch bounce off her bedroom window and down into the dry brush below. “Shit.”

“Liv, wake your brother. Once you’ve done that, you two meet me down stairs. You have 2 minutes.”

“Yes sir.” Military precision, just as we’d always trained for these situations.

Liv ran to her brother’s room. Liv ran to Gavin’s bed and started shaking him “Gavin get up! Men are outside trying to burn the house, Father says be down stairs in 1 minute!”

Just like that, he rolled out of bed, over his chest at the end of his bed and planted, rifling through it quickly. “Ahah! There they are!” he exclaimed, pulling out a finely crafted pair of short swords.

“Where did- When did- How- never mind, we need to go!” Liv fumbled over her words, father had always been very strict about weapons in the house, they were allowed to have them, but he demanded that if they did, they were to keep them in the ‘armory’, okay it was the closet off of the kitchen, but damn if it wasn’t a lot more fun to say ‘I need to grab two daggers from the armory’ than ‘I need to grab two daggers from the kitchen closet’, the effect just wasn’t the same.

The siblings ran down the stairs faster than either of them probably thought possible, both jumping over the banister and heading toward the kitchen where they could hear the clang of steel on steel. Gods! Had they already broken into the house without us knowing? Gavin pulled the first short sword out, handing it to Liv, he pulled the second out of it’s sheath.

Liv kicked the door to the kitchen open (it had been slightly open, so not much effort but for some reason wouldn’t open all the way) and they entered quickly. Father was digging through the ‘armory’ and had just found what he was looking for and standing up as we entered.

Liv didn’t know who was more shocked, their father seeing them already armed or the siblings seeing four dead men on the floor, three missing various appendages. Liv turned around and quickly realized why the door wouldn’t open all the way, she’d kicked the heavy wood door open directly into a man’s head, now looking all the worse for her effort. His nose and right eye socket gashed deeply, blood and something else spilling out onto the wood. She nearly retched, and if her father hadn’t been present she probably would have.

“Good girl, that one was still breathing before you came in, well done.” her father smiled at her. SMILED at her for killing that man. Oh Gods she’d killed a man!? she wanted to scream. It was an accident, she hadn't meant to, that it wasn’t her fault, but she couldn’t. not right now. She didn’t think her father would have been pleased if she started screaming anything right now.

Sighing, her father looked me square in the eyes, “You can scream or cry if you have to later Liv, there’s more bloody work to do tonight.” he always said bloody like other people said damn or other swear words, but this time she couldn’t help but think that it was meant as a descriptor for the work, not his displeasure at having to do it.

He lead them to the cellar, a place where unless father or her brother was with her, she wouldn’t normally go. It’s not that she was scared, it was just creepy. No one likes creepy. They walked quickly to a wall at the back where their father had kept his collection of books, “Help me Gavin.” he said and took one side of the large shelf.

Together they tried to pick it up, push it left, push it right. but it wasn’t budging. “Damn it why do I always have a fascination with all these bloody books! Screw it! They’re going to burn anyway.” he said and grabbed the back of the shelf and taking his lead Gavin did the same.

Liv moved out of the way just in time for the giant shelf to come crashing down less than a hand’s distance away from my feet. She scowled at Gavin and my father. They both looked back at her with a small sorry grimace, “Well you did get out of the way in time,” Gavin said.

Boys! For the love of every God she knew, why had mother died and left her with these two! A twinge of pain sliced through her stomach at the thought of mother, but it passed quickly, it always did these days.

The shelf had apparently covered a tunnel, not a large one, maybe 3 feet across and made of dirt, but it was a tunnel! That meant it lead out, hopefully beyond the people trying to kill them. Father went first, not in cowardice or ignorance of chivalry, but because if someone had to come out first and find unwelcome company, better it be him than one of his children.

They crawled for what seemed like hours. For a while Liv could see a small illumination behind them, hoping that the burning heat from that end of the hole wouldn’t collapse the tunnel, or worse travel into the tunnel and bake them all alive. It did get hot for a while, but Liv guess they were a safe distance away from the tunnel entrance and it only got to the moderately uncomfortable stage.

Finally they reached the exit. The tunnel opened up into the cellar of the old mill on the other side of town. How long father had been working on that tunnel and how he didn’t accidentally run into someone else’s cellar Liv supposed she probably would never know, but there they were, that was all that mattered at the time. “A lesson to you both,” Dazen’s words shocked the siblings, just now realizing they’d been completely silent for hours. “Always have a viable escape route. You never know when some crazy bastards are going to come to your house and try to set it on fire.”

Dazen lead them up out of the cellar and out into the night. The mill being nearly half a mile away from the Guile’s estate. Orange and red smoke was the only clear indicator of where the manse was, and Dazen, without saying a word, started walking in the other direction. “Too easy.” he finally said dismissively.

A whistle blew and three hearts skipped a beat simultaneously. “Sergeant! They’re over here! They’re at the mill!”

“Shit." An arrow flew and hit the man shouting in the throat. Liv traced the trajectory back to where her father was standing. “I knew this was too easy.” Dazen said as he reloaded his hidden bolt. “Time to run.”

They ran in the opposite direction of the estate, further into the darkness. But they could hear the beating of hooves all around them. If they could make it to the docks near the river they could steal a skiff and hopefully make it. “I have a friend named Hu Gibbet three towns down river, he’s not a virtuous man, but he’s used to dealing with people who don’t want to be found, if we can get to him we might have a chance.”

They so nearly made it. The docks were in sight when Liv heard the first whistling sound fly by her ear. Then another. Three more. Oh shit they’re shooting at us. “Heads down. Don’t look back.” Liv's father said softly.

Then it happened. The sick thump of an arrow catching flesh. Gavin grunted and fell. “Gavin!” Liv exclaimed and started running back towards him.

Her father caught her by the bicep before she even made it three steps, spun her around and looked her straight in the eyes. “He took that arrow in the heart, there’s nothing we can do for him, now but to keep running. So move!”

Liv focused on the distance while the arrows whizzed by. Fifty paces, forty, twenty five, ten. Almost there now. Five paces left and another sick thud sounded right behind Liv. No. She couldn’t turn and look.

Her father pushed her into the boat, untied it and pushed it out into the current. Was he going to jump? In the torch light of the oncoming army she saw that probably wasn’t happening. Her father had taken an arrow in the back. How was he still standing? He waved goodbye to her, eyes saying more than words could. He paused momentarily, turned around and drew his sword, walking slowly toward the oncoming horde.

Liv rowed down stream as best she could. She’d never rowed before. Thankfully the current covered most of her shortcomings. She practiced and over the next six or so hours (she guessed at this because the sun was now coming up) she had gotten pretty decent at directing the boat to where she wanted it to go.

Towns passed by with the time. The first town was small, not much more than a dock and a few scattered homes, this counts as a town right? Damn Liv was getting thirsty, was this water safe to drink? The second was slightly larger, probably 20 or so homes and businesses. Feeling very parched now and also hungry. The Third she saw from miles away, it was huge! This was not a town, it was a city! And she had to find one man. This was going to be impossible.

The docks were approaching quickly. Too quickly. “Oh shit.” Okay Liv, you can do this. Just time it right and jump onto the dock without crashing the boat into it. Close enough but not too close. five paces, three paces, two, one GO!

She jumped off the boat and landed squarely on the dock. The dockhand who was kneeling down next to her looked up surprised, looked down into the now empty water below the dock and then finally down stream. “well, that’s one way to avoid the docking tax... you know what, I didn’t see this.” and he started walking away toward the far end of the dock.

“Wait! I need to find a man, can you help me?” she said before she really thought about it.

He looked her up and down, lingering for two or three seconds over her body before looking at her eyes “Well if you’re not too picky, I can probably give you a hand.”

Eww. What the hell. Why in the nine hells had her father wanted to come here? “No, I’m sorry, I’m looking for a specific man. Do you know where I can find Hu Gibbet?” I said trying to not sound revolted.

At the mention of the name the young man suddenly looked like he’d pissed himself in front of the queen. His face went ashen and he looked around as thought he’d been caught shoplifting. “We don’t say that name out loud around here. It's too dangerous, he's ki-” He was cut off, literally. His head suddenly split with a fine line of red slanted from the top left of his skull, down to his right jaw. He toppled and the ‘top’ fell off exposing everything underneath.

She didn’t have much time to consider the fresh corpse though because behind him there was a man clad in grey and black, standing with a black sword in hand, looking at her angrily. He nonchalantly kicked the pieces into the river and spoke plainly. “Not many people dare to so much as utter my name around here anymore, I don’t know where you came from or why you’re here, but you’ve got about 45 seconds to explain before the guards show up. so roughly 40 seconds to live if you don't start talkin.”

She tried to avoid his eyes, but they drew her in, she looked down at the bloody dock “My Father is Dazen Guile, he died getting me here, my whole family is dead. He said Hu Gi- that man could help me stay alive.” Please don’t kill me.

The man looked her up and down and motioned for her to follow. He took off like a shot, Stopping so she could catch up when he was just about to disappear out of sight. She took off after him. A few blocks down she saw him turn toward an alley, trying to lose her? She picked up the pace.

Running into the alley she was surprised to see it was completely empty. Liv looked around confused and winded until she saw a shadow materialize behind her and before she could turn to defend herself she was hit in the back of the head. The last words she heard before falling unconscious “I bloody hope you are who you say you are, or you probably won’t be waking up again.”

Some time later she woke with a splitting headache, “what the hell had happened? how did he get behind me? where am I?”

“Should I answer the questions in the order you SHOULD have thought them? Or in the order you asked them?” He said from a chair on the other side of the small shack they were apparently in.

“Take your pick, at this point I’m a little too addled to care.” what was this man?

“Well, the first thing your father should have taught you to do when waking up is assess your situation. So first thoughts should be of your ability to fight, second your situation, third your surroundings. this should all be as simple as ‘do my limbs work? yes or no. am I in imminent danger? yes or no. where am I? hopefully you know this or you’re probably in danger.” He was pinching the bridge of his nose as if it was so easy it was giving him a headache to come down to her level.

“Excuse me for being unable to think clearly after you hit me in the back of the head Jackass!” That right Liv, good idea, lets piss off the man you’ve already seen appear out of this air twice, once while hacking a young man’s head in half. good plan.

“Guiles.” he almost spat “You definitely have your father’s stubborn streak. You should thank whatever God you worship that you have your mother’s eyes or he would probably have taken you out and shot you many moons ago.”

“Look, my family is dead, my home is gone, from what I’ve heard the king’s men were trying to wipe out my family and I’m the only one left. My father killed men. I saw him do it. Gods I killed a man. I don’t-” Liv started crying quietly. She was afraid, not of Hu, if anything she was glad to have Hu there, he was strong, he didn’t fear anyone. Liv just wanted to not be afraid anymore. She wanted to be like Hu.

The assassin sighed and came over to where Liv was sitting. He patted her on the back “Now now, we’ll get you strong again. I havn’t apprenticed anyone in years. It’s not a good life Liv, but it’s all I can give, and Gods know I owe your father that much. My contacts fear me, but if they know you’re with me and I apprentice you to them, they may use you to try to get to me. You don’t get to be the best Wetboy in the city without a few people wanting a piece of you. If it means a life for you Liv, I need to know, can you kill again? More often than you’d like, hell, more often than I’d like.”

“I’ll be like you? You’ll teach me how to move as fast and be able to go invisible and be as strong as you? But I’ll have to kill people? Will they deserve it?” She almost just said yes without considering it, but this sounded too good to be true.

He looked her straight in the eyes, the way her father had when he had something serious to tell her “I’m not going to Liv, that’s a sticky question. If someone believes that a lie is true and fights for it, does that make him wrong? If someone wants to kill a man because he feels he’s been wronged by someone that man represents, what side ‘deserves it’?

“Liv, we take contracts and make corpses. We take life. But life isn’t something precious. When we take life we don’t take anything of value. We take contracts and our deaders die. That’s what separates Wetboys from assassins. Assassins can miss. Assassins have targets. When we take a contract, the rest of our deader’s life is just a formality. It’s simple as that.” and with that he shrugged, like it was nothing. Liv realized her mouth was open in awe and closed it quickly, hoping he hadn’t noticed.

“I’ll do it. But under one condition. Eventually I get to kill the bastard who had my family murdered.”

“Done. But only after you’re trained and ready.”

Elation mixed with the anger in Liv’s mind, not only was Hu Gibbet giving her the chance she needed to grow strong, he was also giving her the chance she desired to extract every drop of the king’s blood from his disgraced body. “When do we start?”

“We already have.” Hu said with a smile, and continued tutoring her on the mental checklists she must go through every day in order to just stay alive.

The next six years were a blur, constant training, tutoring, poison creation and application, more training, sparring, always sparring. Even training in court etiquette. (He explained that sometimes in order to get close enough to a deader to either poison him or shank him, you had to be a gracious guest, otherwise you stick out.) She’d killed dozens, maybe hundreds, and after the first or second, she didn’t care. She was a weapon, and a sharp one. If someone couldn't or wouldn't pay enough for her master's sword, sometimes they bought hers. It took years of course, but she learned the arts and tallents of the craft. She was as good as possible under his training. She was done.

“Alright Liv, we’ve covered everything we can, trained with every poison I have, you’re as trained as I can train you. You're officially a Journeyman in our arts. that means you’re officially free to proceed with your ‘original goal’ if you still so choose.”

That moment, when he told her she could proceed with her ‘original goal’ it jogged the memory that she’d dismissed more than 3 years earlier. Her father’s murderer. The king. But her father’s life was worthless. Nothing to her at this point but synapse structures and carbon. She tried to be angry. She tried to hate that king, even though she had taken contracts from him for the past 3 years or more. She tried and She failed. And the worst part, she knew it and by the grin on Hu’s face he knew. She couldn’t care. Money didn’t matter to her, except to keep herself in supplies, life didn’t matter to her, except to take it where it was called of her. It was just business to her now, and business was good. Almost fun.

Without a word she was off. She wandered, searching for what she could find value in, some form of peace and a new life. And she kept wandering. Eventually she found a band of misfit travelers who were adventuring, none of them very impressive, but she figured she didn't look very impressive either. They were useful, and she could be useful to them in defense and raiding. It would work. She could be content here for now. If only for the peace of it she could be content. She was at least free.