Rayne

Rayne, a.k.a. Iris Skye is a tiefling bard who has fled the Menkhazi Principality when she was 21 years old, to try her luck on her own. Her dearest musical instrument is the flute, and she derives great pleasure from using it to spellbind her audience, be it with her music or with the help of magic.

Early years
Iris was born as the daughter of Meiji Al-Sharaf, a powerful sheikh of the Marwan Sultanate in A.I. 466. Al-Sharaf has been governor of Esdia, a border city for more than a decade at the time of Iris' birth.

To the utmost dismay of Meiji Al-Sharaf, his fourth child and first daughter, Iris was born a tiefling, an entirely unprecedented occurrence in both his and the mother's (his second wife's) family. Al-Sharaf couldn't bear the shame of having fathered a tiefling, and he immediately got rid of the child: by sending her to a Skye family who couldn't have a child of their own.

Life on the date farm
Iris heard all these details many years later, from the couple who raised her. They couldn't tell whether her mother knew anything of her fate, she might have known where she has been spending her childhood and decided never to visit, or she might have been lied to by Meiji and had believed she had died soon after birth.

Nevertheless, Iris had a peaceful childhood. Her new parents were a nice enough couple, and they loved her as much as anyone can love a tiefling. She spent most of her time wandering the farm and out into the desert, enjoying the sounds of nature and what she later realized was attuning to the magic of them.

The Marwan Musical Festivities
Rarely, but Iris was taken into the city of Esdia, usually around the Marwan Musical Festivities that the Al-Sharaf family organized every second spring. Musicians, story-tellers, and famous bards came all the way from Azure to the Golden Bay, to perform, and guests came from all of the Marwan Sultanate. In the year A.I. 478, even the sultan himself has graced the festivities with his presence.

Iris, a mere 8-year old the first time she was taken, was captivated by the stories, and especially by a regular performer, Orianna Mist, who also happened to be a tiefling. Spending time in the city Iris began to learn what she was sheltered from on the Skyes' farm: that most tieflings were regarded as the lowest of the low; and she noticed that Orianna's profession brought her acceptance, if not respect.

Next year, after saving coppers here and there while running errands for the Skyes', Iris bought her first flute.

Life as a con artist
Iris has spent her teenage years perfecting her flute-play and practicing her "plays" on unsuspecting travelers: getting a few gold pieces here and there by pretending to be an orphan, to have a deathly ill mother, or other such harmless lies. Her charms and developing magic ensured that her plays usually succeeded.

In A.I. 482, when she came of age at 16 years old, she has used the money she has collected this way to buy passage on a ship leaving for the Menkhazi Principality. She bid goodbye to her foster parents and spent the next several months traveling to Fairrock. There, she joined a caravan heading to Rumtown.

The Grey Lilies
Arriving to Rumtown, without friends or acquaintances, Iris had to rely on her blossoming magical talents and charms to get by. Initially, she pretended to be a noblewoman from the Marwan Sultanate (not a complete lie), using her little money to buy appropriate clothes and accessories for the role, and got by by convincing naive merchants and sons of merchants to buy her jewellery, furs, food and accommodations. This worked so well, and the news of her wealth spread so wide that one night she was accosted by a gang of thieves in an alley.

Iris being Iris, she managed to turn the situation around, and soon enough she and the thieves were sharing drinks in one of the lesser respected taverns of Rumtown. The gang was comprised of three women, a half-elf and two humans, and a male drow; and they introduced themselves as the Grey Lilies. Iris, in turn, shared her chosen pseudonym with them: Rayne. During the next years she slowly but steadily transformed the Grey Lilies from the semi-competent small-time thieves they were to a group of charmers, liars, and con artists. After some experimentation, they eventually shifted their targets from inattentive and drunk merchants and commoners, to bigger fish.

The Don Salvara game
The first couple of plays worked well, and the Grey Lilies started to accumulate a sizeable wealth after they have successfully misled three different noble families to trust them to give them access to their credit lines at the Dwarven Bank of Rumtown.

Until, of course, in A.I. 487, they made the mistake of working on an unknown wealthy traveler, who just came into town. The traveler, Carlos Salvo, seemed like the perfect target when they have met him: he seemed to have no connections in Rumtown, planned to stay for only a few weeks, and was extraordinarily wealthy. They figured he must be a high-ranking member of some far-away land, far enough of course that robbing him of a thousand or so gold pieces would be of no consequence to anyone.

The Grey Lilies got to work, and soon enough, their efforts were rewarded by Mr. Salvo handing them a sizeable pouch of gold coins, to take care of a confidential business for him. Only when the Lilies have already spent half of the money, and of course have done none of the services they promised Carlos Salvo, did they realize that the pouch had a familiar family crest on it. It was the crest of the Salvara family, the most influential noble family of Rumtown, and the de facto crime lords of the city. At this point it didn't take them long to put together all the pieces: of course they were aware that the Salvara family had the heir, Carlos as it were, study in Nordterra for the last several years, and of course those years were enough for the city of Rumtown to completely forget the existence of Carlos Salvara. And of course, the Grey Lilies had the misfortune to rob Don Carlos Salvara a few weeks after he got back into town to reconnect with his family and take over the business.

Rayne and her companions decided to leave town immediately. In order to throw anyone off of their trail -- a party of two humans, a half-elf, a drow and a tiefling could hardly travel inconspicuously -- they split up and everyone went their own way.

Travel to the Rivellan Union and meeting The Outsiders
Rayne traveled on foot, then purchased a pony, and fled North. She figured that going towards the Dwarven Dominion and crossing front lines is a good way to lose anyone who might be following her. Consequently, she has spent most of her share from the fated Don Salvara game to hire local guides, bribe low-level officers to let her pass, and eventually to buy passage into the underpasses of the Dwarven Dominion, through which she made her way to Gol Dorahl.

By the time she arrived to the Rivellan Union, and to Acornfield, most of her money was gone, and she only had her trusted pony, a couple of costumes, and the coin pouch of Don Salvara left from her time as a con artist. Soon enough, she met the rest of The Outsiders, and she started a new phase of her life.