Lyyli Kotarikko

Half-elf grifter on the marches • Fighter/Rogue (2nd) • “Light heart, light smile, light step…”

Snapshot

• Role in Anshan: Smiling wildcard at the Bog & Barrel; knows shady paths, culverts, and who’s buying stolen steel.
• Look: Young, travel-worn, thick cloak thrown over one arm, red scarf tight at the throat; flagon always half full. A huge, reckless grin; eyes that don’t match the smile.
• Tell: Never sits with her back to a window; fingers test the weight of mugs, purses, and promises.

Personality

• Core: Ruthless, not reckless. Violence is a tool, used rarely—she hates gallows more than she hates anyone.
• Trust: Scarce. Childhood abuse taught her to survive first, believe later. She has maybe three real friends and guards them fiercely.
• Mask: Reads as breezy and irreverent; emotion stays hidden unless liquor or loyalty leaks it out.

Mannerisms: Always adjusts the scarf; tucks hair behind one ear when lying; drums two fingers (index, ring) on tabletops when she’s casing a room.

Background in a breath

A river-road childhood that went mean—workhouse, worse foster, and a mother whose temper scalded her neck. She ran early, learned quick hands in city markets, and found space to breathe on the marches where the law rides thin and news rides slower. She mugs the guilty and the careless and spends small; old scars keep her from sleeping deep.

What she’s just done (current heat)

“Lucrative night.” Rolled a road thief near the stream bend—took ~50 gp and a maker-stamped spearhead she hasn’t fenced yet. She suspects a steel-to-lizardfolk link and plans to trade the proof for Borderer goodwill if things sour.

Hooks You Can Use

• Proof for Para: The stamped spearhead could nail the steel-smuggling rumor. If the party shows sense, she’ll “lend” it for one night to deliver to Captain Para Roanik.
• Guide with conditions: She’ll walk you to a culvert or reed cutoff—for a favor and a cut of the find.
• Clean job only: If you talk of needless killing, she ghosts you. If you talk of taking pirates’ coin, she listens.
• Red Scarf Pact: Remove a local menace (stirge swarm over the swine pits, cult scratch on a ferry stone), and she’ll pay in information.

Social Web

• Ailred (tavern): Drinks paid in advance. She returns mugs. He returns warnings.
• Captain Para Roanik: Warily respectful; wants to parlay the spearhead into a clean slate.
• Old Aggy: Buys sleep tea. Aggy calls her “sensible trouble.”
• Kornel (swine pits): Mutual disdain; he thinks she’s a thief (he’s right she thinks he’s a sermon with boots (also right).
• Harl: Entertainment, pity, and zero trust.

Secrets (GM)

• Soft spot: Will not rob gatherers, children, or anyone carrying church letters.
• Scar story: The “boiling water” came from her mother; she’ll never say it first.
• Line she won’t cross: No killing for coin. If a fight turns lethal, she disengages or knocks out.
• Long game: Wants one safe room and one honest friend before winter. Might be the party, if they don’t waste it.

Tactics (if steel comes out)

• Opener: Disengage/Cunning Action to position; Sneak Attack with dagger/dirk from cover.
• Stand-up: Broad sword only if cornered; fights to create exits, not corpses.
• Flight: Smoke, stairs, windows, crowd; she’s gone if the odds turn ugly.

At the Inn (drop-in scene)

You catch her midway down the stairs, cloak over one arm, flagon spilling foam, grin bright as a lantern. The red scarf is wrapped tight; her eyes weigh you like a purse.

“What brings you lot to the drain-ditch of the fens?”

Let the party answer.

“I get around. Have friends, you know. Not many merchants out this way—too many teeth in the water. You heading back to civilization, or are you the kind that drags civilization behind you by the hair?”

A beat; she pulls up a chair, backwards.

“Me? Here and there. Been places. Left most of them. Politics—my kind never wins the vote.”
“A little trust goes a long way. The less you use, the further you go.”
“The key’s to be light. Light heart, light smile, light step, light touch, light fingers.”

She tips the flagon at your gear. “If you’re shopping rumors, I’ve got a good one in my pocket. Steel where it shouldn’t be. You want it? Prove you’re not fools, and don’t make me regret liking your faces.”