The Right Kind of People
Part 1: The Urchin
"...and did you get all of that?""Yes, I did. For the thirtieth goddamn time.""Just... go over it one more time. If we fuck this up we'll-""I know. Lead ingots. Ropes. Screaming. Death.""Which is exactly why we can't afford to make any mistakes! If the watchmen catch us, we hang. If the target finds out about it, we hang. If we don't take enough, the boss'll gut us and throw our corpses in the bay!""For crying out loud, I know all this already!""Humor me. Go. Over. The. Plan.""Fine. We start out front, two hours past falselight, yeah?""Continue..."*20 Years Earlier*The old man squints his eyebrows at the board in front of him. Ruminating, squeezing his chin with one hand, he sends the other out over the board. He picks up a copper figure in the shape of a dog, and replaces it with an iron horse.
"Tell me about the kid," he mumbles to the man across the board. Significantly younger, this man scowls and replaces the iron horse with another copper dog before responding.
"Quite a bit like the others I sold you. Only this time I can let you have them at a bargain price." The old man sighs.
"Assuming that the shriveled black pustule you call a heart isn't suddenly overflowing with generosity, why might that be?" He pushes an iron dog forward a few inches.
"Because if I can't sell them to you, I'm going to have to kill them. And I'm going to have to do it tonight."The old man suddenly looks up, a gleam of interest flickering across his eyes.
"Oh my. I certainly have to learn more, don't I?"*Seven Years Earlier Still*Screams. The putrid smell of rot. A beg for a glass of water. Fear, and desperation, and terror, all so thick in the air you can practically taste it. A face lurches out, hitting the ground in front of the hole you've curled yourself up in. It gurgles, its eyes widen, and it stops moving.
You don't move for what feels like an eternity. A crow hops over to the corpse, and pecks its eye out, the juices and jelly seeping out onto the pavement. The crow caws, and soon flies away.
After a while, you hear a grunting noise and the corpse is dragged away.
...
Days pass, then weeks. You manage to survive, but only just barely. Miraculously, you have found a small stockpile of food in an old merchant's house which no one else has scraped clean of food. Even more extraordinarily, none of the other survivors have found you and stolen your stockpile. And perhaps the most amazing of all, against all odds you have avoided catching the plague razing the neighborhood.
Lady luck is a strange mistress indeed. She has extended her generosity out to you, a guttersnipe, a plague orphan, a street urchin. Over the rich and the powerful and the mighty, you have survived.
Who are you?
Choose your name, gender and overall appearance. You can also add details, such as birthmarks, type of voice and eyes, etc.
You will rapidly grow up to be a teenager (via timeskip), so keep that in mind. Physical characteristics you possess now will be carried on later in life.
The Right Kind of People is a low-fantasy SG, influenced by the First Law and Gentleman Bastards novels. Inside, you will find swashbuckling rogues, gentleman thieves, and some down-to-earth grittiness. If that sounds like your cup of tea, hop on in!
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Topic: The Right Kind of People [SG] (Read 939 times)