“Why did I leave the ship to become a thief? Well, I never thought much about it before. I had been sailing on the river for several years, and was getting tired of it. Upriver, downriver, upriver, down… there’s only so much of that anyone can stand.
I’d been thinking of going ashore, looking for some other way to spend my life. I remember being in some little town well down the river, waiting at a merchant stall to buy a brooch. It was a delicate little piece of emerald set in silver (so they claimed, at least), with stars and moons etched in the metalwork. I was sweet on a girl in the next town, and planning to get it for her.
Anyway, the merchant was down at the far end of the stall chatting with an old beggar woman – ‘I know, oh, I know. No, that’s not right, no. Oh, I know’ and so on. I started wondering if she’d ever finish jabbering away. Well, at some point, I thought, what if I just picked it up and walked away. It was that simple. I thought, I looked around, I thought again, smiled, and did it.
My knees were like jelly. I walked about two stalls away before I started to relax, then someone yelled ‘hey, you!’ I froze, and turned. A dirty fellow came running up holding a coin purse. ‘You dropped this,’ he said. ‘Thanks,’ I replied, taking it. He disappeared in the crowd, and I returned to my ship. We pulled out that night, and I realized I’d found a new calling.
Before we reached the next town, I looked through the purse he’d given me. There was a single electrum piece, and the name of an inn in Waynesburg written on a little note. ‘Buy a rum with this,’ it said. When we got to Waynesburg, I found the inn, bought a tankard of rum, paid with the electrum piece, and found a seat. Within minutes, a dapper fellow joined me, and we talked.
He was in the Thieves’ Guild, and asked me to help him with a job. If it went well, he’d find a place for me in the guild. I accepted. Later that evening, another fellow came to find me and we went to work. The job was absurdly simple, and we were soon done with it. We took the item to an alley away from the waterfront to meet a fence. While waiting, I was sapped.
I awoke in the morning with a nasty headache, a set of thieves’ tools in my belt, and a purse with 2 electrum pieces in it. I went to my ship’s berth, and found it gone. I asked, and was told they’d left at dawn. Some time later, I asked my contact about the ship, and they told me they’d squared things with the captain. I never thought about it again.
Eventually, I discovered they had told them I’d been killed in a drunken brawl, paid him 5 gp for their loss of crew, and urged the ship to leave town. They left town.”
