“I breathe shadow, caress with fingers of razor-sharp steel, and weep tears of poison. Mine is the name of your sudden, messy death.”

Overview Masters of subtlety and subterfuge, an Assassin’s ability to walk in the shadows allows them to bypass obstacles and launch devastating surprise attacks. A rare few victims survive the initial assault, only to succumb to virulent poisons.

Strengths

Assassins are trained to meld with the shadows, bypassing defenses and launching potent surprise attacks with their poisoned blades.

Weaknesses

Assassins must choose their targets carefully, or wind up in desperate straits if they forfeit the element of surprise or attack a foe who can shrug off the venom from their blades.

Background

The dwarf Veseslav grew up in the shadows of Hammerknell knowing one truth: the queen had killed his mother, and one day she would die for it. Veseslav’s father was King of Hammerknell, his mother one of the queen’s comely handmaidens. The jealous queen had the young woman murdered, but not before the child could be spirited away.

Veseslav was taken in by his mother’s brother, Bogdan, who made his living cutting short the lives of others. As Bogdan’s apprentice, Veseslav’s daggers became faster, his movements less detectable, his poisons deadlier than his uncle’s. The young dwarf developed a particularly nasty poison all his own, and named it Ursula, after the queen.

All was joy at the grand feast to celebrate King Monimnier’s sixtieth birthday. Very suddenly, the queen’s face went pale, and she toppled over into her soup, convulsing, foaming at the mouth. Finally, she lay still, poison the clear cause.

But as the king’s elite guard hurried him to the royal chambers, one dwarf dropped like a stone. A figure materialized from the shadows, pulling his blade from the victim’s back. The warriors rushed in, but the assassin dodged their attacks, dealing cuts that bled profusely, and festered and boiled from terrible venom. Moving with the ruthless precision of a hawk after prey, he finished them with strikes to their vitals. Soon, the guards all were dispatched, leaving only the killer and the king.

“I see myself in your face,” said Monimnier. “That isn’t possible.”

“And yet here I am,” Vaseslav growled. By the time the party was found, the king lay dead among his guards.

Veseslav was never seen again by mortal eyes, his only legacy a series of flawless assassinations involving a poison that all Telara now calls Queen Ursula.