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Contact: Qiao Esum
Race: Human
Age Category: Adult
Appearance: Mostly human... probably. Older than a youth and younger than middle age, but exact age is hard to pin down. Slender and short from the waist up; was probably short from the waist down, too, before the accident. Clothes are clean and serviceable, but don't speak to any particular amount of wealth.
History: Qiao Esum was a pirate and a good one. Born on the sea, he learned to walk on ships long before he ever set a toe on land. He climbed rigging ropes like a monkey, slept more nights in the crow's nest than he did in the hammocks below deck, and seemed destined for a long and distinguished career under the loving eye of sweet lady Osprem.
When an accident with a wand misfire took both his legs below the knee in an explosion, he was crushed but refused to roll over and die. Deciding that life was taking him in a new direction, he left the sea for land and used his meager savings to purchase a house, a wheeled chair, and a new wand--this one thoroughly vetted and with a rather different spell: a magical "Mount", or in Qiao's case, a magical carthorse who pulls his chair wherever he wishes to go.
On his early retirement from the sea, his fellow pirates--retired and otherwise--were able to connect him with the thieves who run the Nightdocks. Qiao quickly rose to be a trusted and competent fence in their ranks; he had a good eye for value, a keen tongue for bargaining, and was smart enough to never besmirch his name by trying to cheat a good thief of his hard-earned wages. He has eked out a solid living for himself and can honestly say he's happier now on land than he was traveling from storm to storm without a port to call his own.
Though he did not serve with Ka'Ri in his youth, he knew of her through common friends. When the plague forced her and her people to dock, he helped them find homes in the slums and became her way "in" to Brilight's thieving underworld. He acts as her fence, and sometimes brings her news of jobs or openings she might be interested in.
Other Details: Qiao was, at one time, saving up for a restoration spell for his legs, but has come to find that his magical solutions work just fine and he'd just as soon spend the enormous amount of money a restoration spell would cost on other things instead.
Qiao's birth name and assigned gender are lost to the waves, but he has shared with Ka'Ri that his name was chosen by himself and not by his parents because the one they gave him fit rather shabbily. He doesn't speak of this much with others, not because it's a secret (it's not) but because it's so much a part of the past that it rarely seems relevant information to share with people.