At start:
[size=150]Elias Tarsites, a glass blower [/size]
Characteristics: Int +1, Per +1, Pre -2, Com 0, Str +1, Sta +1, Dex +4, Qik 0
Size: 0
Age: 34 (34)
Height: 5'9"
Weight: 147 lbs
Gender: Male
Decrepitude: 0
Warping Score: 0 (0)
Virtues and Flaws: Great Dexterity, Puissant Glassworking, Cautious with Glassworking, Humble, Disfigured (smallpox scars), Fragile Constitution (Healing: -3)
Abilities: Area Lore: Thessaloniki 4 (craftsmen), Artes Liberales 2 (arithmetic), Awareness 3 (alertness), Bargain 6 (glassware), Charm 2 (customers), Concentration 2 (glassworking), Etiquette 2 (town folk), French 3 (bargaining), Folk Ken 2 (customers), Glassworking 6+2 (colored glass) [Category: Laboratories], Lingua Franca 4 (bargaining), Ride 1 (getting on and off the horse), Romaic Greek 5 (good vocabulary), Veneto 3 (bargaining)
Background
Elias was apprenticed to a glassmaker at an early age and proved to have a real talent for the craft. He finished his apprenticeship and went to work for his former master, eventually getting married and setting up his own shop by the age of 28. Soon thereafter his wife had their first child, a lovely daughter. Life was looking up for Elias.
But fate would soon intervene. Not long after his daughter was born, Elias caught the smallpox during a small outbreak of the disease in Thessaloniki. The authorities were swift to respond, which kept the outbreak isolated. But that meant little to Elias, who nearly died of the disease. The only thing that kept him going was his wife, who subjected herself and their child to quarantine in order to tend to her husband.
Elias survived, though with terrible scars and a weakened constitution, but then another tragedy befell him. His wife and baby caught the disease as well. And he knew only too well that while he had survived the two of them might not.
Freed of the quarantine by the fact that he had survived the disease, Elias spent every waking moment he was not tending his family seeking for someone who could help. He spoke to doctors who were happy to take his money. But none of their remedies seemed to help. He found charlatans whose so-called cures he didn't really believe in, but whom he turned to anyway out of desperation. He prayed, though he knew that prayer alone coudn't help.
FInally he heard a rumor, really the barest hint of a rumor. Someone said that he knew of someone at a local school who had caught the smallpox, but recovered quickly and almost miraculously. Elias went to the chool and refused to leave until he spoke to someone who could help.
At the school Elias was finally introduced to one of the covenant's magi who took pity on the man. The magus followed Elias home and cast a pair of rituals that cured the sick mother and child. Elias was admonished to tell no one, but to simply act as if his wife and child had survived the worst of the disease. The magus then made a casual remark about how this was hopefully the most expensive healing that the family would ever require. For though the magus charged Elias nothing for the healing, it had involved a not insignificant amount of vis.
Elias rejoiced in the cure and promised he would abide by the magus' wishes. He begged the man accept some money for his healing, but his offer was refused. The magus returned to the covenant happy to have performed a good deed and expecting no reward.
A week later, however, Elias returned to the school and again met with the magus. The magus had surely saved the lives of Elias' family, and the glassworker insisted that he was due a reward. Again the magus accepted no money, but had an alternate proposal. Elias had mentioned that he was a glassworker, so the magus said he could repay the generosity of the healing by doing some glasswork for the "school." Elias happily accepted the offer, delivering some truly excellent pieces of work. The magi were pleased with his work, which lead to more orders until the covenant offered him a position working exclusively for them. Elias, who had come to know the magi and their ways over the past few years, accepted and joined the covenant for good.
