Merridan Smallcoat

Merridan’s childhood was a carnival of shifting faces and whispered rumors. Orphaned by a closure of the traveling puppeteers’ guild, he learned quickly to survive by listening: to accents, to the tilting of a chair, to the tells that betray a person’s true intent. He wandered from market to market with a paper smile and a pocket full of borrowed stories. It was in a pawn shop’s back room that he first realized the power of shaping a lie into a purchase; a well-timed anecdote could turn a rough cobbler into a patron and a shy merchant into a confidant. It wasn’t long before Merridan began cultivating a network of marks whose pride or greed would be their own downfall, and he learned to pivot when a con began to unravel. He found Pippin as a hatchling in an alley behind a magician’s tent, a creature with nimble paws and a fearless curiosity that mirrored his own. The raccoon became more than a partner; he became a co-conspirator, capable of sniffing out an opportunity or creating a diversion with a well-timed squeak. The two formed a routine—Merridan wove a tale, Pippin fanned the flames with a sleight of hand, and the mark walked away convinced of having witnessed something miraculous. For Merridan, each con is a stage, and each audience member a potential ally or a future mark to be maneuvered with the right mix of charm and misdirection. He learned early that even the grandest illusion thrives on a shred of truth—someone must believe the lie for it to work, and by the time the truth catches up, Merridan has already vanished into the next chapter of his story. He holds a strict, if flexible, personal code: never hurt the truly innocent, never burn a bridge he might need again, and never reveal the full extent of his talents to someone who would misuse them. He treats the world as a theater, each person a player, each opportunity a script waiting to be rewritten. The dream of a single, faultless performance fuels his nights: a grand con so flawless that it cements his name in whispers across the realms, and perhaps, a life where he and Pippin can retire to a quiet corner of the world, laughing at the long, winding road that brought them there. Until then, Merridan continues to read rooms with a magician’s patience, to tell stories with a thief’s precision, and to let his tiny raccoon assistant do what no one else can: remind him that even the best trick can hinge on a tiny, hopeful spark of truth.