Kaylit

Kaylit (pronounced /ˈkeɪlᵻt/) is a notorious smuggler who runs contraband all over the world of Dadauar, though her center of operations is in southern Burcady. In the eight years she's been in full-time operation, she has already developed a reputation as one of the best people to get in touch with if you need some illegal good brought in, or you need to have something sent somewhere it's not supposed to go.

Many of Kaylit's clients are members of the resistance, hiring her to smuggle in contraband weapons, talismans, and other materials useful in the fight against the dreamlords. However, she also frequently takes on jobs from others who aren't interested in actively trying to overthrow the onirarchies, but are still wayward enough to be willing to defy the onirarchs' laws in order to get their hands on illicit drugs, dreamseeds, and other goods the onirarchs have forbidden. Kaylit has even worked on multiple occasions for onirarchs themselves—there's enough conflict between onirarchies that it's not unusual for officials or magnates in one onirarchy to want to move materials into, out of, or through another onirarchy without the latter's knowledge, and when they do Kaylit is a useful agent to turn to. There are those who believe, in fact, that this is precisely why Kaylit hasn't yet been imprisoned or otherwise stopped by the onirarchies—perhaps it's not that they couldn't catch her, but because she's potentially useful enough to them that they don't want to.

Description

Kaylit is small-statured and unassuming in appearance and demeanor, with mouse-brown hair she usually keeps untidily cut just above shoulder length. Her round face looks a little squashed in, except for her somewhat pointed nose. Her voice is squeaky and rarely raised above a near-whisper. Of course, she doesn't have to be physically impressive or particularly charismatic to do her job, and in fact her very unremarkability may make it easier for her to avoid attention.

Kaylit's dress is typically no more ostentatious than her appearance. She usually wears simple blouses of drab browns and grays, though her clothing generally has many hidden pockets, all the better disguised by its lumpiness and shapelessness. Her apparently simple boots likewise have hidden compartments—in some pairs in the heel, in others in the sole. Kaylit's only notable ornament is a ring set with a jet black stone, but this she wears at least as much for its magical abilities as for its exornatory function: the ring is in fact a telesm that boosts her abilities in stealth and deception. It is further empowered to make its enchantment difficult to detect, so that those looking for telesmata on her person are likely to pass it by.

Activities and methods

Having been a professional smuggler for eight years, Kaylit has honed her methods over time. She mostly travels by sea, and has learned what parts of the shore of each nonlandlocked onirarchy are generally safest to approach, and from which directions. She also knows the currents and weather patterns intimately and can use them to her advantage. Where she must dock openly at a port—because of time limitations or because there is no other suitable berthage—she learns the schedules and routines of any local jerquers and other relevant officials, which can be avoided, which can be tricked, and which can be bribed. Of course, not all her jobs take her to locations conveniently on the seaside, but she's adept at making her way across the land when she has to, moving by night and putting on various disguises that help her avoid drawing the attention of the onirarchs and their agents. Aside from her ring, she avoids making too much use of magic, knowing that the onirarchs can detect it.

Kaylit doesn't usually work alone. She is always accompanied by her bodyguard, the ogre Georthe, who takes care of tasks for which more physical strength may be useful—not excluding combat, if that becomes necessary. When she has to get into or out of a particularly difficult place, she's not above working with other participes criminis as well. She takes pains to keep the identities and activities of her clients a secret, unless they choose to reveal the information themselves.

As to what goods she traffics in, Kaylit isn't picky. Her relative celerity makes her particularly suited to delivery of perishable goods, and as such she's often called upon to smuggle contraband from fruits and vegetables that are for whatever reason interdicted in a given nation to expensive drugs and other unstable chemicals. She prefers not to traffic in telesmata or enchanted objects, since they require extra measures to shield them from the eyes of the onirarchs, but she'll do it if the price is right. She's even smuggled people—moving spies and rebels into or out of the oniarchies without the dreamlords' knowledge, for example—but for this she charges exorbitant prices. Still, her reputation is high enough that some have been willing to pay them; most recently she was hired to spirit off two contumacious children of Ninoç Šarel, a powerful onirarch of Alfenane, to asylum in Kasie.

Kaylit has no permanent base of operations; she usually stays in a boat that she moves frequently, but she even abandons her boat from time to time and acquires a new one to avoid its becoming recognizable. Despite her going through a different boat every five months or so on average, she gives all her boats the same name, the Possibility Shield. (This is, apparently, some private inside joke she refuses to share.)

History

Kaylit did not start to go by that name until she was nineteen years old; her birth name was Osna Keriia, though there are few who know that. Born and raised in the province of Isqur in Carqan, she was one of six children, all, with their parents and extended family, assigned by the state to work as aquafarmers tending an oyster farm in the Restless Sea. Bored with aquaculture, she had heard of the Blue Canal and the maritime traffic that passed through it and wanted to see it for herself, and at sixteen left home to do so. Her travel from Isqur to the canal was her first major defiance of the onirarchs, since of course she was shirking her job to do so, and also the first time she found herself having to live by her wits, as she scavenged and haggled her way across the country, staying with strangers when she could and sleeping on the streets—careful to hide herself from patrolling batirines—when she could not.

On reaching the canal, the girl who would become Kaylit was fascinated with the commerce she saw going on there, and decided she would rather work here at the canal than at her family's assigned farm. Here again she faced an obstacle in the rigid social structure of the onirarchy; as in most onirarchies, Carqani have assigned roles they are expected to fill, and it's not encouraged for a citizen to just move across the country and get a new job. She managed to spin a good enough tale to convince the local officials that she was supposed to be there, at least temporarily, and started work as a shipping clerk... not the most glamorous of jobs, but one that she enjoyed more than oyster farming, and one that kept her close to the canal and interacting with people from all over the rewel.

But while her story had at least won her temporary acceptance, people began to ask questions, and she knew she would need further documentation and evidence if she didn't want her ruse to be uncovered. Cautious inquiries eventually led her to an underground contact, Rokan Mahar, who agreed to arrange the necessary paperwork for her... if she would help him out by some tampering with certain shipping manifests. Kaylit found that she enjoyed this work more than her regular job, and even after she completed her task and fulfilled her debt she went back to Mahar to see if he had other work for her. Surprised, he gave her a few other simple jobs to test her capabilities and reliability, and when she proved herself he put her in touch with some of his colleagues who could also use someone of her resourcefulness. As Kaylit worked her way up through the underworld, she quickly found that this illegal work was not only more enjoyable than her regular job, but more lucrative too. It was when she devoted herself full-time to criminal pursuits that she took on the name Kaylit, apparently after a childhood nickname of obscure origin. In time, she saved up enough to buy her own boat and put to practice what she'd learned as a shipping clerk and in her various criminal forays to make a living as an independent smuggler.

In reference to her Carqani roots and to the legendary beauty of the Carqani people, Kaylit still often calls herself the "ugliest Carqani"—and is not offended when others do the same. It's an exaggeration, of course; while Kaylit may not be particularly attractive by most conventional standards, she's not especially hideous either. Still, she certainly doesn't fit the popular stereotype of Carqani loveliness—though of course it is a stereotype rather than a reality, and she's far from alone in not living up to it.

Personality

Ultimately, despite her meek demeanor, Kaylit has always been something of a thrill-seeker. Certainly she makes more money as a smuggler and has more freedom than she ever would have as an oyster farmer or a shipping clerk, but the main reason she settled on a life as a smuggler is because of the excitement. While she seldom raises her voice or shows any obvious outward signs of enthusiasm, when the stakes are high and the threats are imminent she's loving every minute of it. If there's a job that she's reluctant to take for the pay she's offered, persuading her that it's something different from anything she's done before and that it will be a rousing adventure may be the best way to convince her. Unfortunately for more cautious acquaintances, she likes to experience vicarious thrills too, and often urges her companions and coworkers to take risks they may not otherwise be comfortable with.

Another advantage of the smuggling life, from Kaylit's point of view, is that it brings her into contact with people from all over the world. Though she might not put it in those terms, Kaylit has an interest in sociology and anthropology, and likes meeting people of different cultures and learning about different lands. This is reflected in the fact that the most valuable things she owns are archæological relics; she doesn't go in much for jewelry or ostentation, and most of her furnishings and accouterments are mismatched and utilitarian, but she has collected some valuable antiques that she finds fascinating as windows into ancient peoples.

Unlike many criminals, Kaylit doesn't aspire to great riches or power; she is happy doing what she does, and is content to keep doing it. She has developed a taste for some exotic foods and other luxuries—Gaoish truffles being a particular favorite—but she makes enough to satisfy her wants, and sees no strong need for more. She does hope to one day establish something of a smuggling empire, and have other people working for her, but the reasons for this goal are less financial than they are social; she simply would like to have more people that she gets to know well and interact with regularly. Kaylit has never been good at making friends, and the fact that there are so few people she's close to is perhaps her biggest regret about her current situation.

Relationships

Kaylit still keeps in touch with and occasionally works with or for some of her old Carqani contacts—although not Mahar, who disappeared five years ago and whose fate she doesn't know—but she has also forged similar connections in other locations, especially in Ivinii, Muligatin, and K'eng. But while she has many connections, clients, and colleagues she works with occasionally, her only more or less constant companion is her bodyguard Georthe, an enormous ogre who has broken free of the onirarchs' control. Contrary to occasional rumors, however, Kaylit and Georthe are not and have never been lovers—in fact, Kaylit has never had nor expressed interest in any sort of romantic relationship.

Kaylit has not forgotten her family, and has tried to provide for them or get them into better positions, but for the most part they want nothing to do with her illicit pursuits, and while they haven't turned her in to the onirarchs, most haven't accepted her offer of introduction into the Carqani underworld. The exceptions are her brother Jhad, who now works with some of Kaylit's old contacts by the canal; and her aunt Urada, whom she transported to Ivinii where she now studies magic at the Pearl College.

Perhaps Kaylit's most fraught relationship is with Robin, the self-styled "Queen of the Black Market". Because Robin often needs to acquire items from distant parts of Dadauar, and because Kaylit has the reputation as the best person to transport such items, Robin has often hired Kaylit's services, but always reluctantly, seeing the smuggler as something of a rival. Accordingly, at other times, when Kaylit is working for one of Robin's competitors or when her activities otherwise seem to potentially threaten Robin's plans, Robin has paid operatives to sabotage Kaylit's work—though rarely successfully. Kaylit, for her part, has no such animosity toward Robin, and would actually like to make a friend and ally out of the black marketeer, but so far she has not succeeding in winning her over.