Rose Whithelm

Rose Whithelm was a Trebai thief who worked with The Moon Siblings, a criminal organization. Over time, she became a top member of the syndicate, and ran one of the largest safehouses in the syndicate.

Early Life

Whithelm was born in 8043, in the last years of the Twenty-Year War, in the city of Redoran She, as well as her mother, father, and older brother, were refugees whose hometown had been destroyed in the war. Her family was impoverished as a result of the city's overcrowding, and relied on her to beg for food. In time, Whithelm realized that stealing was much more effective than begging, and became a skilled thief. She kept this practice a secret from her parents.   Things began to look up for the family when the Trebai Ascendancy offered free land in the Western Commons to all the city's refugees. Shortly after Whithelm's ninth birthday, the family set out for the farming village of Podvech.   Disaster struck when the family was ambushed by a group of highwaymen. Despite Whithelm's pleas to the contrary, her father tried to fight the bandits and was struck down. After the bandits took what little they had, Whithelm and her family tried desparately to save her father, but to no avail. Whithelm watched as he bled out on the country road, a sight she would never forget.   The family pressed on to Podvech, and eventually made it. Whithelm's mother fell into alcoholism as a result of the loss, and Whithelm's brother insisted that the family move on and focus on building a new life, trying to suppress his grief. Whithelm herself could not stop thinking about the highwaymen, and became bent on revenge. Though she tried to fit in and interact with other villagers, she could never quite adjust or make connections with them. At the age of fifteen, she ran away from home to try and find the people that had killed her father.

Joining the Moon Siblings

Once she was well and truly on her own, Whithelm realized she had few leads on the whereabouts of her fathers' killers. She knew only that the first name of the man who had actually killed him was Cormac, as well as what he looked like. She journeyed to the location of the murder, and, after asking locals, discovered that bandit groups like the one she had experience with popped up and disappeared all the time. The person who told her this, who bore a crescent-shaped tattoo, went on to discuss how the individuals who had killed her father had probably dispersed by now. Frustrated, Whithelm decided to steal the person's coin purse on her way out of the town. To her surprise, she was caught. However, the person told Whithelm that they were impressed by her stealth skills, and offered her membership in the Moon Siblings. Whithelm accepted, thinking that involvement in the organization could lead her to Cormac, and that she could quit afterwards. A few days before turning sixteen, Whithelm was formally inaugurated into the Moon Siblings, after a number of initiation rituals. She received a tattoo of a crescent moon, the mark of the syndicate, on her wrist. She was assigned to the Siblings' safehouse at the Trebai trading town of Watsenrof.  

Ventures with Organized Crime

Over the next decade, Whithelm distinguished herself as one of the most skilled thieves in the area, and the entire syndicate. The first heist that Whithelm planned herself was in 8061, against forces loyal to Matthias Malshek, a Trebai lord notorious for charging ludicrous tolls and engaging in what was essentially legalized banditry. Malshek's soldiers had just stripped clean a farming village within Malshek's territory, and were transporting the loot back to him. En route to Malshek, Whithelm and a number of other Moon Siblings ambushed the group and siezed the loot. During the robbery, one of the soldiers tried to fight back, and Whithelm jumped him and slit his throat. At first, Whithelm was disgusted by herself, realizing how similar her actions were to those of the man that had killed her father. However, this disgust quickly faded, and Whithlem realized she took a strange sense of pleasure in the murder.   Over the next two decades, Whithelm continued to perform successful heists, and continued to realize her enjoyment of murder. In 8078, she teamed up with a Daphnea woman named Phan, an assassin with a mysterious background. Together, they planned a heist on the Brewery of Ehrentraud, which was suspected to be poisoning the local population by cutting corners in production. During the long process of preparing for the job, which would be difficult due to the brewery's high level of security and involvement with a local gang, Whithelm and Phan fell for each other and sustained a romantic relationship.