Nickname: Shami
Gender: Male
Age: 17
Physical Description: (I know weird hair and eye colors are out, so please ignore them. >_>; )
Hair:
He has long, dark, wild hair which he keeps in a loose ponytail down his back and a thin braid framing the right side of his face. His hair is strung with many tiny golden bells.
Skin/Body:
Due to the fact that he's a poor, starving young man who can hardly get by on his magic tricks and has to steal to eat to live, he's rather thin and has a look of malnourishment to him. However, his slim, athletic build is build for speed, and with the lifestyle he's lived, he's become every quick and agile. His supple body is also very flexible for doing acrobatics used both in performances and to escape pursuers. Shami is rather tall at 6'5" with a beige-gray complexion that gives him somewhat of an ashen appearance. When it comes to food, Shami is a bottomless pit. Due to his very high metabolism and the energy he uses for performing and escaping captors, this gypsy is almost always starving no matter how much he seems to eat.
Clothing:
In contrast to his dull, ashen complexion, however, Shami's brightly-colored clothes mark him as a gypsy and a performer. His clothes usually consist of a brightly-colored magenta top with yellow-gold edges and dangling sleeves the length of his elbows that hang down and drape there. For his bottom, he wears loose, cerulean blue breeches and knee high brown, worn leather boots with laces. Shami wears a single, gold hoop earring in his left ear and sometimes wears a cerulean blue mask trimmed with yellow-gold when performing or simply for disguise at grand parties, fancy balls, and other elegant events. On these occasions and for the same reasons, he may also wear a brown, wide-brimmed hat with a couple of plumed feathers and sometimes is seen with a long, velvet, dark purple cape which he reverses to its neutral, brown side when trying to blend into the forest. The forest is usually where he stays when not lingering around towns or villages in hopes of grabbing a bite to eat or performing to earn a coin or two.
Abilities/Skills:
Shami is left handed, which is why he keeps a secret dagger in his right boot and another at the yellow-gold sash around his waist. However, he has has absolutely no skill with these twin daggers in combat. Instead, he uses them for practical things like cutting meat or picking locks and hardly knows how to take care of them. Along with his dexterity, flexibility, and acrobatic skills, which he can utilize for things such as tree-jumping, he can also use gypsy illusions to evade people who are after him. He has several colored juggling balls he carries with him that can explode into clouds of colored smoke for a fast getaway if he throws them hard enough and needs to leave quickly. Shami lives in the forest on his own and keeps away from others because of his reputation as not only a gypsy thief, but also as a wanted man and the bounty on his head. As a child, he used to watch people dance at balls and parties a great deal, so he can dance fairly well. He also likes to sing songs he picks up from bards, minstrels, and other passing travelers.
Personality: This gypsy thief is kind, compassionate, courteous, and chivalrous. However, he can also be very easily spooked, prideful and judgmental when it comes to others. Some how he seems to have the terrible luck of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Shami is not proud of his need to steal in order to eat, but he has a great deal of pride in his gypsy heritage and will not stand for anyone insulting him or gypsy people. Because of how often he has been discriminated against due to his poverty and low class, he tends to be rather judgmental of seemingly wealthy people, believing them all to be arrogant, cruel, and snobbish.
Shami loves to sing and dance, though, so often he will sneak into parties of the rich and wealthy under the guise and false identity of 'Lord Shami'. With years of observation practice, he has become quite good at acting and fulfilling the role of a lord. His chivalry and good manners only served to help him maintain the image. The food offered at these parties never hurts in drawing him in, either, nor the company. At village celebrations or festivals, though, where no one minds a gypsy wandering around and people are too numerous and busy to pay attention or identify him, he loves to perform. Even if he doesn't earn much for his entertainment services, he loves kids and enjoys seeing them laugh and smiles on their faces.
Despite his claim to perform 'magic tricks', though, Shamáki despises real magic. He denies he even believes in it, but in truth is very superstitious and fearful of it, wishing it didn't exist. He wouldn't trust anyone claiming to do magic and would probably act hostilely toward a Whyst or Aelf were someone proven to be one. The idea that Whysts, Aelfin, and Hounds could even exist frighten him, saying nothing of demons.
History: Shamáki Oro was born a b*****d child to a travelling caravan. He was abandoned by his mother for unknown reasons at a small town they passed through and were never heard of in that part of the land again. All that was found with him were a dark cloak he was bundled in and a pair of twin daggers. The boy learned quickly that life wasn't fair. Some were richer than others, some were more prosperous, and some were simply more fortunate for very little reason at all. It was even rumored that some could perform amazing feats called magic, but if that was true, Shami never saw it. Whoever it was was too selfish to share their abilities with the less lucky, such as himself and other homeless children like his best friend, Varrok.
Varrok was a fairly good pick-pocket and and even better talker. He used his cunning and wit to get out of the toughest situations. He and Shami had become best friends since the time the younger had saved the former from drowning. In exchange for saving him, Varrok taught Shami how to take what he needed from those who had plenty to spare. The younger boy, who was a quick learner, caught on quickly and was soon rivaling Varrok in thieving expertise.
At first, with no one to teach him otherwise, Shami found nothing wrong with this. As time passed and he grew older, however, a greater understanding of right and wrong weighed upon him and his conscience would no longer allow him to steal without a certain degree of guilt. That guilt increased more and more until one day Shami could no longer stand the lifestyle that he and Varrok were living. The older of the boys had, by contrast, become greedy and more clever, gaining steadily in wealth through well-chosen words and deft deceit.
Though Shami tried to convince Varrok that he was turning into one of the same excessively wealthy people they had once robbed from as children, Varrok claimed that he was different because of the intelligence he exhibited in gaining his new valuables. Disgusted by his former friend's growing greed, a young tween Shami left the village he grew up in to travel with a band of gypsies that happened to be passing through.
It was with these gypsies that Shami learned of his own gypsy heritage and they taught him their culture and the ways of their people. He learned how to earn money with the travelling troupe by performing tricks such as acrobatics, juggling, slight-of-hand tricks, and more. His ability to catch on quickly and his already knack for kinesthetic learning allowed him to take to such things easily, encouraged by the smiling faces and joy he could bring to others. When he had learned all they had to teach him, the band of gypsies left him one morning with a small pouch of coins, a last meal, and a note wishing him well, apologizing that they could not keep him any longer as another mouth to feed. At least now, though, he had a few skills he could put to use making his own living.
It turned out that as a lone performer, Shami wasn't as nearly successful as he had been with the others. He didn't want to end up only being more trouble to another group, however, so he remained on his own. Much to his shame and humiliation, Shami found he had to fall back quite a bit to the thievery he learned from Zarrok as a child in order to sustain himself with enough nourishment to live, for the meager amount he earned from his lone performances wasn't enough. Still, by refusing to grow roots and wandering the countryside as a single vagabond, those who held him responsible for his minor crimes never got a chance to catch up to him. He stuck to the woods and slept in tree-tops when necessary.
This worked well enough for a time until Shami came across the first Wanted poster.
Because he often exhibited illusionary magic tricks as a street performer and entertainer, he was whispered to be a Whyst, though he had no idea what this meant. When he finally brought himself to ask a merchant in a marketplace, he was told of humans who could use real magic - witch doctors, shamans, voo doo priests, and the like. To hear of these people reminded Shami of the stories he'd heard as a child and he began to fear the tales were true. For someone who had only their wits and physical abilities to survive, magic was a very unfair advantage, and Shami couldn't help wondering if Varrok had somehow manged to obtain some on his way to power. It just so happened that along with the rumors spreading that Shami was a Whyst, a magic-user, he happened to get into a lot of trouble simply be being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Most would have attributed it to bad luck, but he started to suspect if some sort of magic wasn't behind his rotten circumstances. Because of them, the list of his crimes and reasons for wanted capture kept lengthening, though in reality he hadn't done three-fourths of the things he was accused of.
More wary than ever, the fugitive gypsy became increasingly suspicious of any unusual activity in forests or towns and avoided them as much as possible. His fear of real magic caused him to grow terribly superstitious and due the vulnerability it causes him, he fears it more than capture. If there was ever talk of Whysts, Aelfin, Hounds, or other myths and magic folklore, he was out of that village as fast as he could move. Though he denies believing in the stuff and has yet to see any real proof of it, Shami hopes he never has to encounter real magic - something he could never hope to understand, let alone escape or defeat.
