Edgin Darvis

Edgin Darvis was a human bard from Targos in Icewind Dale and a former member of the Harpers who became a thief in the late 15 century DR. He was a fellow adventurer of Holga Kilgore, Simon Aumar, Doric, and Xenk Yendar.

Description
Considered handsome, he had keen blue eyes and dark hair. Two years in prison left Edgin with long and unkempt hair and a scruffy beard.

He typically wore a dark gray leather jacket done up with buckles over a loose dark-blue shirt, with brown breeches, and boots, with a belt and pouch. He kept his lute slung over back.

Personality
Edgin was charismatic and confident with a rakish manner, but beneath it he was a natural leader. He could be creative, charming, and inspiring, and enjoyed the thrill of a heist. Despite his life of crime, he maintained his former moral code and would steal only from those he thought deserved to be embarrassed and to be relieved of their excess riches. He would also try to make good on his past failures, as a thief and as a father. He thought he was smart. However, he had little patience and less interest in listening to others' advice, wisdom, or history lessons, yet would insist others hear his.

Possessions
He played a lute. He had a habit of using it to wallop or trip people in a fight, so the instrument was specially reinforced for, or maybe because of, such incidents, and also much patched.

He wore leather armor and wielded a shortsword.

Abilities
With a knack for improvisation and strategizing, Edgin claimed to be skilled in making plans, and in making fresh plans if the old plans failed. Instead of depending on magical or combat ability, he preferred to use his charisma and try to talk his way out of any trouble. He could also inspire his companions with a few well-chosen words. He had skills in persuasion, deception, and sleight of hand.

A talented performer, he sang and played the lute as well as told tales. However, Holga was did not appreciate his music.

He was capable of casting several spells, namely friends and message at will, disguise self and charm person thrice a day, and suggestion once a day. With his magical words, he could taunt and disorient three opponents up to way. He could also inspire and encourage an ally who was failing at a task, possibly helping them succeed at it.

In battle, he struck with a thunderous impact.

Relationships
He was married to Zia, with whom he had a daughter, Kira. Zia would try to cheer Edgin up, such as by throwing vegetables at him in a playful moment. He loved Kira above all else and all he did was to protect and provide her, but it hurt him to be separated from her.

He was a long-time companion of Holga Kilgore. While people might mistake them for a married couple, they were amused and offended by the idea&mdash;Edgin amused and Holga offended. In fact, they said they were more like brother and sister, and seemed to have developed the same care for one another and the same sibling rivalry with good-natured teasing.

Home
Edgin, Zia, and Kira, and later Holga, lived together in their small cottage outside of Targos.

Early Years
Edgin's father once took him to see the last High Sun Games in Neverwinter before they were banned. He would recall seeing one contestant make it to the last round, before he was half-eaten by a remorhaz.

Harper
He was once a member of the Harpers, having taken the oath in the late 1480s DR whilst Zia was pregnant with Kira. The ceremony took place beside a waterfall in the woods. Supporting his choice and knowing the risks, Zia herself placed the Harper pin on his chest.

In his four years or so with the Harpers, Edgin adopted a cover as a minstrel or as a beggar so that he might on spy on targets. Once, whilst posing as a beggar, he used his lute to trip up a bandit. On one mission, he and two fellow Harpers captured a Red Wizard of Thay in his treasure-stuffed lair. Overall, he defended Faerûn from "creatures, crooks, and cretins" as he put it. But given his family's modest living standards, Edgin came to chafe at his Harper code, even though Zia hardly cared. During his tenure as a Harper, not long before the birth of his daughter, Edgin faced a whailing banshee, whose voice the Harper later compared to his uncontrollably crying newborn. While undercover, Edgin sailed the Midnight Fire vessel across the Sword Coast, during that time he survived an encounter with a sea hag. Another Harper business brought Edgin to the town of Daggerford where he worked a fellow Harper named Thelvyn Kip. Edgin and Kip fought shoulder-to-shoulder on at least two separate occasions.

Then, one night, Red Wizard enemies he'd made came to his cottage seeking revenge. But Edgin was out, so they attacked Zia, but not before she hid young Kira under the cottage floor. When Edgin came home, he found Zia laying dying. Edgin blamed the Harpers, abandoned his oath, and burned his book of Harper rules—oddly, a sapphire dragonfly emerged from the flames—and quit. He would be a hero no more.

Thief
Suddenly a single father and penniless, Edgin struggled to take care of young Kira for the following few months. Then, down on his luck, Edgin had a chance meeting with the exiled Elk tribe barbarian Holga, shortly after Kira's birth. The meeting took place at the Trip and Shuffle tavern in Targos after Edgin suffered from many sleepless nights and unending cries of the newborn. Desperate for some food and comfort, Edgin used his dwindling emergency funds for a bowl of stew, a tankard of ale, and milk for the daughter. Calm and relaxed, Edgin slipped into sleep with the cooing baby next to him. When the ex-Harper woke up, Holga was there, holding Kira. Still groggy and confused from passing out, Edgin lashed out at the stranger who was taking his child, but Holga stopped the attack with one hand before it could begin. Edgin quickly realized that the barbarian woman and his newborn were enamored with each other. Holga noticed the father dozing off and kept an eye on the newborn, keeping her safe. After dinner, Holga walked the young father home and hesitated to leave. Edgin realized that she had nowhere to go and offered Holga a room to stay for a few days. Holga never left and Kira never cried again. The duo became fast friends, even like adopted siblings, though she later alleged she just needed someplace to sleep out of the cold and had felt sorry for Kira. Without coin, skills, or other prospects, the pair turned to crime, at first just to provide for Kira. When both tried to rob the same pawn shop in Targos—the shop's owner was an agent of the Zhentarim, and the goods ill-gotten—this led Edgin and Holga into a life of adventuring and theft. At one point, they made a smash-and-grab robbery of a jewelry store, simply breaking the window with a rock and making off with the jewels. Holga gifted one piece, a jeweled pendant, to Kira, who promptly disappeared! Fearing the worst, Edgin and Holga panicked and looked everywhere until the four-year-old reappeared with what they realized what was a pendant of invisibility.

Eventually, when she was old enough to understand what they did, Kira insisted on joining them. After that, they took the girl with them on their robberies, having Kira sneak about unseen inside manor houses to steal valuables and pass them out to Edgin while Holga took the heavier stuff. In one incident, Edgin and Holga robbed the house of the unscrupulous Lord and Lady Bantakent, while the invisible Kira played up a fake ghost haunting to distract the owners, even waving their dog Miffles through the air.

Later, in the 1490s DR, Holga and Edgin formed a team with the confidence trickster Forge Fitzwilliam after a chance meeting at the Trip and Shuffle in Targos. With Holga's encouragement, Edgin attempted to sing for the audience after nine years of not being able to due to trauma. The bard consumed too much liquid courage, leading to his performance becoming a public failure. This was when Forge pranced in, seeing an easy mark. The thieves played Three-Dragon Ante, but Edgin was better at noticing cheating while drunk, and Forge quickly recognized a fellow hustler. The competition between two cheats was cut short by a raiding party of gnolls who started a fight but got away with the thieves' gold. Edgin, Holga, and Forge pursued the raiders, trying to retrieve stolen coin. The group ended up saving a Targossan child, taken by the gnolls – Sief Talvick, Edgin's neighbor's kid. This rescue made the trio heroes in the eyes of the locals.

Soon after, Forge waltzed into Ed's life once again, urging them to set their sights on higher targets and greater riches. Forge found two villagers whose drinking buddy went missing, along with several other people. The villagers were offering a heft donation for the rescue, and Forge thought the job to be easy money. Forge convinced Edgin to travel to the "haunted" island just off the Sword Coast. There, Edgin, Holga, and Forge found a single survivor – the sorcerer Simon who was hired by the villages but went missing. Young half-elf convinced the thieves to rescue him in exchange for intel that would lead them to a greater mark – the estate of the wealthy and eccentric dragonborn wizard Torlinn Shrake. Subsequently, a green hag named Drueena was revealed to be responsible for the disappearances. With the sorcerer's help, the group ended the creature's life but received no reward. Following Simon's lead, the band later infiltrated the estate of the wealthy and eccentric Torlinn Shrake during a party with the intent to rob the place. They were also caught in a town threatened by the Bandit King on one Feast of the Moon. Nevertheless, throughout the schemes and heists, Edgin retained something of his old Harper sensibilities and saw to it that they never hurt anyone and only stole from those who wouldn't suffer for the loss.

Finally, one night whilst they were celebrating a score at the Trip and Shuffle tavern in Targos, a mysterious hooded figure calling herself "Lady Sofina" met the team. She wanted to hire them to help her steal the treasures of Korinn's Keep, a Harper storehouse that only a Harper could enter—Edgin. He refused, however, still having some standards. But Forge promised they would find there a Tablet of Reawakening, a magical relic capable of resurrecting one deceased soul. Against his better judgement but with hopes of restoring Zia to life, Edgin relented and acquiesced to Sofina's scheme. However, this time he reasoned it was too dangerous to bring Kira and so left her with a friend in Targos, promising it would be their last robbery, but he didn't tell her of the Tablet for fear of getting her hopes up only to dash them later if he failed.

Donning his old Harper uniform, cloak, and Harper pin, Edgin led the team to Korinn's Keep and gained admittance by using his pin. While the thieves helped themselves to the treasures of the vault, and Sofina claimed a strange red horn, Edgin went for the Tablet of Reawakening. But the poor thief triggered an alarm, summoning Harper guards, whom Sofina struck with chain lightning, to Edgin's dismay. She then cast time stop, trapping the guards, Holga, and Edgin while she, Forge, and Simon made their escape. Edgin's last act was to throw the Tablet to Forge and beg him to take care of Kira. He promised he would. Afterward, once the spell expired, Edgin and Holga were left at the scene of the crime and captured by the Harpers.

Convict
Convicted of crimes of skullduggery and grand larceny by the justice of the Lords’ Alliance, Edgin and Holga were incarcerated in the Revel's End prison in the Frozenfar, atop a cliff beside the Sea of Moving Ice. At first, he would try to tell himself it was a misunderstanding and they wouldn't be there long. They spent their days doing hard labor, such as cutting ice from a frozen river in a chain-gang. Edgin passed by the time by singing and learning to knit; after two years, he'd started a pair of woolen gloves, but gave up on the fingers and decided to make mittens instead. He relied on Holga to protect him from other prisoners.

In the late 1490s DR, they received a new cellmate, the murderous hobgoblin Gorg. While Edgin played at being polite, Gorg only sleazed onto Holga, until she beat him up and knocked him out cold. Later that day whilst out cutting ice, Edgin was discussing his plans for the Council when a prisoner fell through the ice, threatening to pull the whole chain-gang into the river after him. The guard Tobias broke the chain with his longsword, sacrificing the prisoner to save the others, but ordered them all back to work.

The following day, after two years of imprisonment, Edgin and Holga were brought before the Absolution Council—Voss Anderton, Kriv Norixius, and Jil Torbo—to be considered for a pardon. Edgin hoped for Chancellor Jarnathan to be there, apparently believing the aarakocra would be more inclined to free them, but he was delayed by a snowstorm. Compelled to give his statement anyway, Edgin told his life story since joining the Harpers, but rambling, delaying, and stalling often to wait for Jarnathan. Finally, the Council made their decision just as Jarnathan arrived—and Edgin enacted his 'plan', with him and Holga fighting off the guards, grabbing the poor aarakocra, and jumping through the window, forcing him to fly them to ice below, never knowing they'd already been pardoned.

Still a Thief
They fled on foot across the ice to Targos, stole two horses, and returned to their old cottage. They found it boarded-up and abandoned, but Edgin at least managed to retrieve his lute. Wondering where Kira and Forge were, they went to the Trip and Shuffle tavern, where they made travel plans and learned from a flyer that Forge was somehow now Lord of Neverwinter and had revived the High Sun Games. They decided to go there and ask him where Kira was.

At Castle Never though, they had a less-than-warm reception. Lord Forge kept them waiting and Kira was now eleven years old and estranged from her father. Moreover, Forge was still working with the wizard Sofina, who also had an influence on the girl. With years of dear 'Uncle Forge' lying and turning her against Edgin, Kira thought he'd just abandoned her to seek more riches and didn't believe him when he gave his real reason, to resurrect her mother, and she fled in tears. Finally, Forge revealed a wanted poster with a bounty for Edgin and Holga and when they tried to fight him, Sofina cast a spell to trap them in the floor. Forge ordered his guard Blackwood to take them back to Revel's End, but Sofina told Blackwood to kill them in secret, and he led them into a shadowy back alley to execute them. Fortunately, Holga escaped and defeated the guards. Afterward, Edgin resolved that they had to infiltrate Castle Never and rescue Kira, and that for this they would need to assemble a team. And to pay them, they would need to rob the castle vaults, and they could retrieve the Tablet of Reawakening while they were at it.

Their first stop was Triboar, to find the sorcerer and petty thief Simon. They found him in the Triboar playhouse, magically pickpocketing patrons, and helped him escape the angry mob that was his audience when he was caught out.

Afterward, Simon suggested they recruit Doric for her wild shape ability to help infiltrate the castle. Simon led them into Neverwinter Wood, where they found Neverwintan soldiers about to execute a wood elf. As Lord of Neverwinter, Forge had painted the wood elves of Neverwinter Wood as enemies and traitors and dispatched loggers who cut ever deeper into the woods, though Doric, a druid of the Emerald Enclave was leading the fightback. After witnessing her wild shape into an owlbear and rescue one elf from execution by Forge's men, Edgin, Holga, and Simon followed her to their village and Edgin recruited her to their cause. Later, Doric's spying within Castle Never revealed Sofina was a Red Wizard and that the vault was protected with a powerful Mordenkainen's arcane seal. To break in, Edgin proposed that they find the long-lost Helmet of Disjunction that could break all magic. Holga's people, the Elk tribe, had once battled the Cult of the Dragon and the black dragon Rakor for control of the helmet at the Battle of the Evermoors a century ago.

After a stopover in Longsaddle so Holga could catch up with her ex-husband Marlamin, they headed to the Evermoors cemetery to dig up the corpses of fallen Elk tribe warriors, so Simon could use his deathly token and speak with the dead. After several attempts, they finally learned from the body of Ven Salafin that a Thayan named Xenk Yendar had retrieved the Helmet of Disjunction. Edgin was disgusted, thinking all Thayans were killers and corrupted by the Red Wizards' evil.

Fortunately, they could find the heroic paladin Xenk just nearby, in Mornbryn's Shield, though Edgin remained distrustful. In a Harper sanctuary beneath Caldreth's Pickles, Nuts, and Foods, Xenk told them of the evil of the Red Wizards and Szass Tam's takeover of Thay and the turning of its populace to undeath, but Edgin was not interested in details. For his assistance in finding the Helmet of Disjunction, Xenk required that the thieves share any stolen riches with the Neverwintan people, which to Edgin very reluctantly agreed, swearing it on a Harper book.

Xenk led the party to the Kryptgarden Forest, where an entrance to the Underdark lay. On the way, he asked about Edgin's past, why he had left the Harpers and Zia's death, whilst warning that Zia may not be willing to be resurrected. He also tried to improve Edgin's views of Thayans by sharing his own tragic past.

After venturing down into the Underdark, the party passed intellect devourers and arrived at the ruins of Dolblunde, wherein Xenk had hidden the Helmet of Disjunction long ago. Negotiating the trapped collapsing bridges (by triggering and collapsing them) and with Simon using a Hither-Thither Staff Holga had got from Marlamin, they easily reached and retrieved the helm. But that was when a band of undead Thayan assassins led by Dralas showed up, having been sent by Sofina to find and kill the thieves. They fought valiantly—or Xenk and the others did; Edgin helped, by bopping one with his lute—but the undead did not stay dead for long. Then they were all interrupted by the inexplicable appearance of the red dragon Themberchaud, far from his home. He took care of the undead assassins, by simply eating them, and Xenk saved Edgin from the dragon's maw, perhaps earning his respect. In the end, though, Edgin actually made a plan that worked, organizing his team and getting Themberchaud to breathe fire and create an explosion that would open a water channel and free them.

Some time later, with the Helmet of Disjunction in their possession, they emerged in the Sea of Swords and swam to shore. There, Xenk said his farewells and departed, preferring to let Edgin and others rise to the occasion themselves rather than keep carrying them himself. Edgin declared them victorious and a fine team of thieves, and ready to go on and rob Castle Never.

Background
Edgin is played by actor Chris Pine. He was confirmed to be a bard via a promotional video played at the San Diego Comic-Con 2022's Tavern Experience. In his 30s to late 40s, Edgin was said to be "down on his luck and not the classic hero, but still lovable" and "Edgin is comedic, but with demons." This character was described as similar to Peter Quill/Starlord of Guardians of the Galaxy. Writer-director John Francis Daley described Edgin: "He is a storyteller and incredibly charismatic and a planner. That's his greatest strength, I would say: being able to put together a plan, and when that plan fails, being able to put together another one. He's not so much a fighter. He lets his compadre, his sister in arms, do a lot of the grunt work and the fighting." Chris Pine said, "My character, he's the ultimate party planner."

Appearances

 * Film & Television
 * Honor Among Thieves
 * Novels
 * The Road to Neverwinter • The Junior Novelization • The Quest Begins • Heroes Unite!
 * Comics
 * The Feast of the Moon