'''Name:''' Caiaphas Spindle
'''Age:''' 45
'''Race:''' wick
'''Place of Origin:''' Surwood Isle, Anaxas
'''Occupation:''' “blacksmith”

!!!Backstory

Cai was one of many children, with the fortune of being born somewhere near the top. Three sisters before him, three brothers trailing after him. He was born with gleam in his eyes and a knife in his palm, a swindler by birthright. A Black Hand.

He was brought up to be swift of hand and sly of tongue, but kept in relative peace while he was very small. Whatever unsavory danger his tribe got up to was kept shielded by his daoa’s skirts. But once Cai was old enough to run fast and keep his mouth shut, he was taken into the family business. Mostly harmless robberies of drifter kints and lonely country houses when he was a child, graduating into rather harmful highway robberies when he reached adolescence and got wise with the short sword and simple magic.

But more potent illegal happenings had been brewing within the Spindle family long before this firebrand youth was even born. Two generations before Cai, his grandfather had taken up the exquisitely rare art of gun-smithing. By what arcane workings of Vita led his grandfather to learn the craft, Caiaphas still does not know. The story was steeped in winding mysticism, and Cai never bothered to sift fact from fiction. But no matter what dark pathway the knowledge took, it was lovingly bestowed upon Cai and his few brothers and cousins deemed worthy. They made a blood pact with their fathers to keep the teaching a viciously guarded secret.

“Any brunno who has the salt t’chen is already chen. Ye chen?,” his grandfather had purred. Cai has never forgotten that.

He was the most devoted to the craft of all his family apprentices, and soon was excused from any heist more dangerous than stealing candy from a child. Caiaphas had a rare talent. The family couldn’t afford to lose him to a stray blade over a stolen kenser.

While all the spokes his age were chasing lovers and spitting out babies, Caiaphas was twined up in the smoky study of gun powder, caliber, and metal. Long afternoons spent peppering targets with bullets and blowing the heads off sackcloth dummies. Night after night spent dismembering a flintlock and fitting its endless little pieces back in place, like some sort of deathly puzzle. He didn’t have the time nor the inclination to go looking for a tumble in the woods.

All the secrecy and favoritism didn’t make him popular among his peers. The wild child had become a driven recluse, obsessed with weaponry and chemicals. The only time he would let himself relax was during the Wick Festival. There was much laziness and fishing to be had. During the month of Bethas, and many Bethas passings after that, he became acquainted with a young tsat from Vienda, Jeremiah Rhonstadt. Caiaphas liked him because he didn’t talk much and knew nothing about what the Spindle family really was. Over many summers, from Cai’s seventeenth festival to his twenty-fourth, the pair awkwardly courted over many long hours of fishing. On one of these many excursions, Jeremiah speared a catfish the size of a bander in the face. Cai thought that was the ideal time to propose.

They were married some chill Bethas night on the banks of the Arova, half out of genuine love and half so that Cai’s daoa would stop trying to marry him off to his third cousins.

Jeremiah was grudgingly taken into the fami and was subjugated to many pricked fingers and solemn oaths of secrecy that Cai was certain scared the ticks out of him. After a year or so of traveling with the Black Hand, they strayed to Vienda to visit Jer’s parents. The tsat’s mother was bereft to have her son so far away, and begged them to stay in the city for awhile.

Don’t be so nervous, Jer had said. It’ll only be a few months.

They’ll have been living in Vienda for twenty years this coming Achtus. It’s been a peaceful if stifling existence. But in the past months, the Viendan riots and the crippling of the writless butcher have been like a sore on the roof of Cai’s mouth – a problem that would just heal over if he stopped tonguing it. But he can’t.

The fires at his forge run at all hours of the night these days. Caiaphas is getting restless again.


!!!Personality

Spitfire isn’t the right word, but it’s the first that comes to mind. Spending the past twenty years cohabiting with someone so quiet as Jeremiah has taught him to be quick with words and wit. He talks a lot, as if trying to make up for his husbands lack of talking. He’s slow to anger, though a rough cloud of annoyance fogs everything he says and does. He’s not a cruel man, not at all – he’s just a tired and stressed one, with painfully little patience.

He’s quite the terror to get into a disagreement with, be it over haggling price or political debate. He’s passionate to a fault and stubborn as a stripped screw. There’s a noticeable anxiousness to his movements. Constant pacing, soft mutterings to himself, always having to keep his hands occupied in work. Rest allows him time to think, which is not a good past time when your thoughts are becoming more illegal and dangerous by the day.

Cai speaks in more tek than he should, seeing it as a desperate way to keep his heritage alive. In regards to his husband, he is surprisingly noble and protective.


!!!Physical Description

Caiaphas still looks every inch a spoke plucked fresh from Surwood, if you trussed him up as a joke in a set of sensible trousers and suspenders. His skin is warmly tanned, the faded color of a coffee stain. Thick dark hair hacked off just below his ears, oily and messy as a raven’s feathered back. Thick, square brows hover close over warm brown eyes, tilted like almonds beneath an epicanthic fold. A hawkish nose sits rudely at the center of his face. His jaw his hard boned and sharp, covered in a thistle down of wiry hair. A pair of rather impressive sideburns flank his face. His shoulders are broad, his arms long and heavy with muscle, giving him a somewhat apish appearance when he slouches.

His face is lit up with glints of metal. Black flake-glass rings skewer both his eyebrows. Yet another skewers his septum, and a quarry of iron hoops and studs bristle in his ears. Ink is buried in his skin, too. A great brown catfish swims down his right shoulder, and a thin band flanked by dots circles his left bicep. The most important of these markings is the black silhouette of his grandfather’s hand tattooed over his heart.

!!!Inventory

Shop:
*The Kettle Black – a smithy in The Dives, owned and operated by Cai and Jer Spindle.

Stuff:
*whittled oaken fish, kept at his bedside.
*heavily notarized Viendan writ.
*needles and ink, for impromptu tattooing.

Weapons:
*a motley of swords and knives, mounted for “display” around the shop.
*an obsidian glass knife.
*three flintlock pistols – one of his grandfather’s, two of his own crafting, all kept hidden away in the crawlspace attic of the shop.

!!!Skills

*weapon forging
*gun smithing
*close quarters combat
*cooking very nice curry

!!!Goals

For the past twenty years, Caiaphas has wanted nothing but peace and prosperity, tucked away in his sliver of the city (and maybe for Jer’s parents to finally kick the bucket so he can rejoin his family and tribe).

But he is not content with a peaceful life any longer, not with all the wickedness being thrown on his people in the past months. Cai wants nothing more than to take up his grandfather’s gunsmithing craft again and bring his skills to the aid of the elusive Resistance.

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