((Sorry, rough day. Long winded exposition dump, coming up.))
"Hm, no longer able to keep curiosity at bay? Very well, I suppose I owe you all an explanation, and I do so loathe being in debt..."
Val glances about the tavern, to make sure they are out of earshot before leaning in and continuing in a quiet voice. "Gods, how to keep this simple... Okay, in Ruby Keep 'Val Fierno' is a legendary name, probably a generation of two from being considered a minor godling or something by the street folk. To hear them tell it, Val Fierno is some ageless shape changer of immense power, able to appear in any form, able to penetrate any defense. No amount of security will protect you, for when the dreaded Val Fierno wants what is yours, he takes it.
"The truth is much more mundane. There are... There were six Val Fiernos. My name is Valgar. Valance, Valdemar, and Valentino, my brothers. Valerie and Valentine, my sisters. Siblings in spirit, if not blood. Well, Valentine and Valentino actually were twins, but you get the idea.
"We were urchins and cut purses living on the streets and in the winding alleys of the Keep, but we were lifted out of our situations by the previous holder of the Val Fierno name, as he had been by his going back unknown generations. In each of us he saw something that distinguished us from the countless other ragamuffins, and it was he who taught us our trade. Refined us. Gave us a purpose in life and a family in which trust could be placed. When he took us in and gave us our names, we all became Val Fierno. And when he passed, we carried on in his name as he had taught us.
"The foundation of any theft is misdirection." In demonstration, he reaches behind Ivor with his right arm, taps him on the opposite shoulder, while producing one of Ivor's daggers with his left hand when Ivor turns away. "I think you dropped this, Ivor. We'd take things further with theatrics. Half the time our targets would simply end up giving us what we wanted under false pretenses. Much of the time, they wouldn't even know they were missing anything. The same skill set that lets me peddle myself as an appraiser makes me quite an accomplished forgery artist for paintings, sculptures, etc.
"We were doing well in those days. Thieves Guild and the City Guard alike doubted our very existence, each accusing the other of either being responsible for our exploits, or fabricating them. We gladly performed our sacred task of easing the burden of those weighed down with an excess of wealth. Not because we were destitute, but for the sport of it. The challenge. The art of the con, the precision of the heist. And we were very, very good at it.
"The downfall of most gangs is that ultimately thieves do not -- cannot -- trust each other. Having transcended that particular weakness, we got complacent. Arrogant, perhaps. We believed our organization impregnable and inscrutable, our protocols foolproof, that we were untouchable. And perhaps we were in the conventional sense, but the reach of the Arm is highly unconventional.
"The agony of it all is that we were warned. We were gods-damned warned, but we didn't believe. And when we at last believed, we thought ourselves more clever than all and paid a dear price. We first heard of the Arm of Vecna from one of our usual informants, by the name of Mott. Vecna was the stuff of legend... No, we were the stuff of legend, this Vecna business was more relegated to the realm of superstition. The idea that an organization in Vecna's service, with this much funding, organization, and influence could operate in the shadows, infiltrating all social strata and institutions in the blink of an eye without calling attention to itself? Laughable on the face of it.
"Or so we thought, until Mott wound up dead on the doorstep of our hideout. A hideout no one but the six of us could possibly know the location of, least of all poor Mott.
"Now the sensible thing to do, the thing that most any other person in that situation would do, would be to pack up shop, skip town, and never look back. But not us. Not just because it would mean an end to the venerable institution of Val Fierno, by killing Mott they had gone and made this personal. So we plotted our grandest scheme yet; we were going to take the Arm for all that they had.
"It was the grandest, most sweeping of targets in the history of Val Fierno, but never had there been an incarnation as capable as we. It was also an unmitigated disaster.
"As impregnable and inscrutable as we had believed ourselves to be, the Arm outclassed us by orders of magnitude. We trotted out every alias we ever had (made up some new ones too), spread vast quantities of our accumulated treasure, all of it to search in vain for some crack in their edifice to slip our way in through. At great cost, we finally uncovered was that there was an agent of the Arm installed as an advisor to the king, which we can assume at this point is the Chancellor. But before we could redirect our efforts to act on this information, the Arm struck.
"Their retaliation was swift, thorough, and merciless. Simultaneously (or near enough not to matter), every safe house and bolt hole we had ever established in the city was set to torch. Our vaults ransacked. Even our previously compromised base of operations, abandoned since our unheeded warning, was reduced to ashes. The city guard was out in the streets in force, and they knew our faces. Knew them when we never set foot outside a safe house without extensive disguise.
"The twins did not survive the holocaust, their sacrifice buying precious time for the rest of us to escape. Those of us that remained were faced with the fact that given the knowledge demonstrated by our adversary, it was highly probable that one of our number had betrayed the lot of us. We divided what meager remains of our belongings we could recover, and went our separate ways.
"Since then, I've made my way to Alydar, and... Well, you know that part. Valerie seems to have made progress in identifying the mole. Valance and Valdemar, I only hope are still out there.
"Well now. I hope that was worth the wait. At least now I don't have to remember to do that damnable stammer, I really didn't think that through..."
((Incidentally, Kaff/Val is actually a swashbuckler if anyone cares.))
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