Erevis Cale

Early life
Plucked from a Westgate orphanage by a Night Mask "culler," Cale was hip-deep in the cutthroat underworld of Westgate's most notorious thieves' guild before his fourteenth birthday. He took well to the guild's training and distinguished himself for having a ready blade and a readier intellect. In addition to assassinations, he was chosen for "letters work"—forgeries, mapping, translations and such. After completing his training, he worked in a Night Mask cell with the likes of Askaxen the Grey and the notorious killer, Jeldis Visiin. He quickly gained expertise at extortion, forgery, and assassination. He also became skilled at self-denial. At his core, he hated his life, but he convinced himself that "he was what he was." Still, he tried to fill the hole in his soul with coin by "skimming" a bit of the take from each Night Mask job. That, of course, was ill-advised.

Looking back, perhaps Cale wanted his treachery to be discovered. In any event, when his embezzling was discovered, he narrowly avoided several Night Mask hit teams and fled by ship for Sembia.

After debarking on Selgaunt's docks with no coin and skills in only one thing, Cale fell in with an up-and-coming power in the city—the Night Knives thieves' guild, which was headed by a mysterious priest of Mask who called himself The Righteous Man. In an effort to blackmail the heads of Selgaunt's leading families, who are known as the Old Chauncel, the Righteous Man placed operatives in many Old Chauncel households. Cale saw to the murder of House Uskevren's former head servant (a deed for which he still feels immense guilt) and took his place. The situation rapidly grew more complicated—Cale came to respect and finally love the Uskevren. This was the family he had never had and the legitimate life he had never known. Instead of implicating the Uskevren by divulging embarrassing information (and there was plenty of that present in House Uskevren), he instead protected them by feeding the Righteous Man a steady stream of innocuous information, all the while assisting Thamalon Uskevren in foiling the plots of rival families. But that game would last only so long.

Appearances

 * The Erevis Cale trilogy
 * The Twilight War trilogy
 * The Sembia series