Changeling BG- Tomas

Tomas, born 1875, never had a family.  Who his parents are is a mystery to everyone.  Whether they died from some disease or simply couldn't afford him, Tomas' earliest memories are of the orphan gang that raised him as best they could from under a bridge.  They taught him to survive on the streets, to prey on those who could afford to lose and take so little that no-one ever caused a fuss.  Leave the newsworthy thefts to the adults, he learned, and the lawful folk ignore you.  It was sheer bad luck that, one day, Tomas picked the pocket of someone who noticed, oh yes. They saw his skills, and they coveted them.  Tomas never made it back to the gang's hideout that day.

Tomas's time in the hedge was marked by change, both typical of a changeling's experience, but also not.  After a few months of being trained by his kidnapper, of being poked and prodded, put through scenarios, shocked with energy when he failed, after weeks of being kept in total darkness, the Fae judged him ready to serve-but this was not to be his fate.  Tomas's keeper was overrun by a wealthy rival of the gentry who had no need of the lad's skills.  It was then that he found himself cast away, used as a decoration, a little pet to liven up his new master's sinister walks along the beach.  Tomas's skills came in handy here-while he had to fend for himself in terms of food, he found it simple enough to nick scraps from other, stronger changelings.  Tomas spent two years like this.  His body twisted and hardened by exposure to the elements, and he found shelter from the sun using debris from other changelings-cast off skins and bits of shell made his clothes, and a cave in the sand was his bedroom, and thus did he live-but this was also not his fate.  For reasons beyond mortal ken, the gentry are fickle and alliances shift and break without warning.  So it was that his second master was set upon, just as his first.  In the chaos, not a single thought was given to a useless decoration like him.  So it happened that the decoration crawled, and ducked, and crawled, and ducked, until he was far away from that place.

Tomas wandered the Hedge for a week before finding his way out-oddly enough, emerging under the very bridge he once called home.  Of course, his gang was long gone-he had been 9 when he was taken, and would have been almost 15 had he not been subject to the time-warping properties of the Wyld.  Emerging from under the bridge, he ran into a policeman named Robert Cards.  Robert Cards, a changeling himself, brought the then 13-year-old boy to the courts, who adopted him into their fold.  Now, Tomas still lives on the streets, but his time with the Fae has given him skills beyond that of the average street urchin.  Carrying on with his old ways, and finding himself better than ever at surviving the mean streets, he thrives and grows, celebrating his freedom and newly-found good fortune.