DESCRIPTION:

Canliss is of medium build. He has brown hair, brown eyes and fair skin. He dresses in very expensive, subdued clothing. His clothing is worth more than Rhavin's armor. When you meet him your eyes are immediately drawn to his hands. Dr. Mordenheim grew him a new body without bothering to ask and gave him 6 fingers on each hand instead of the normal 5. This has had a negative impact on his career as an entertainer.

PERSONALITY:

Secretive, generous, and cheerful. Canliss is a very happy go lucky person. He is very brave and never hesitates to throw himself headlong into danger, usually by leaving everyone else and attacking his opponents from behind.

Canliss is usually the only person in the party that has any money at all. Everyone else tends to spend what little treasure Canliss allows them to find quickly, leaving him to pay for everything from fines for high treason and legal fees resulting from trials, to spellcasting dues to the Affiliates Amagigo.

BACKGROUND:

Canliss is an orphan. He was born in the port city of Istur in the Barony of Suress a little over 20 years ago. He was found as an abandoned toddler by the head of the beggar's guild who quickly took him under his wing and trained him and used him to coax more money out of the suckers who traveled through town. When he grew a bit older, Raeffello, a member of The Organization traded a very unpromising young thief to the beggar's guild for him after noticing his natural quickness. He was trained and he started to work for the guild.

Colm, an old hedge wizard, noticed the youngster practicing sleight-of-hand magic tricks in the slums of Istur to entertain the younger children who were hanging around. He offered to teach him the real thing.

Canliss jumped at the opportunity to learn the real thing and proved to be an apt pupil. His studies were held up a little bit by the need to participate in activities of The Organization. After all, he didn't dare let Raeffello or any of the guildmasters know that he was no longer planning on being a thief for the rest of his life. He attained a remarkable amount of skill as a thief before his magical excursions came to Raeffello's attention. Needless to say he was NOT happy about this turn of events.

Raeffello would have beat him to within an inch of his life, except for the fact that he was now a practicing mage, and he proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was much more valuable to the guild as a mage than as a thief. He knew how to detect magic by then and he looked at a necklace that had just been appraised at 100 gold and said, "That's magical." This started him upon a new career within the guild. He became one of the guild's mages, which he is to this day. Over the years he has gotten much better at his magical skills.

Before his recent adventures, a current "typical" day started at 6 in the evening when he woke up. He lives in a neighborhood tavern near the docks. He would go downstairs and eat his breakfast. He then performed simple "magical" tricks until midnight, augmented on occasion by cantrips, to pay for his lodging and supper. He then went to the Raeffello's headquarters and earned his keep with The Organization. His duties included casting invisibility on thieves (and other spells to augment their thieving abilities), detecting for magic on anything that they brought back in, trying to Identify any magical items that the guild obtains, and help with the entertainment at some of the local taverns owned by The Organization. In return for this work the guild pays him and pays for any magical research that he does within reason. The first spell that the guild paid for him to research was the spell Identify, for obvious reasons. Canliss routinely gives most of what he gets paid by the Organization to the street urchins who prowl the slums. He was once one himself and he helps them out however he can. That is why he performs in exchange for room and board. He doesn't keep enough money to pay for his room otherwise.

The hedge wizard who trained him died when he was 16, and left him everything he had. He sold Colm's hovel with all of its contents, except for the spellbook, (with nothing higher than second level spell in it) for 10 gold and considered himself lucky to have swindled the buyer out of that much money.

Canliss is unable to learn the following spells: Scare, Tongues, Suggestion, Feign Death.