Jonas Tench
Jonas Tench is a quarter-Elf rogue, one of the longstanding companions of Dîmeril Laeghartha, husband of the priestess Lusara Elmare, and father of their children, including the young rogue Velisra Nightleaf. Now well into his forties, Jonas has survived the sort of adventuring career that tends to leave men either dead, wealthy, cautious, or some combination of all three. He has travelled beside Dîmeril since long before Merilrond became an established holding and remains one of the relatively small number of people who remember her simply as the wandering Half-Elven ranger she was before titles, Fey politics and troublesome neighbours began accumulating around her. Jonas has never regarded himself as Dîmeril's servant or retainer. He is her companion and friend, and that distinction matters to him.
Appearance
Jonas is a lean, fit man in his mid-to-late forties. His distant Elven ancestry remains visible in the finer lines of his features, although he looks considerably more Human than Elven and has little patience for anyone attempting to make something mysterious of his heritage. Age has begun to show. There are lines around his eyes, some weathering to his face and the unmistakable appearance of a man who has spent a considerable portion of his life sleeping outdoors, keeping watch at inconvenient hours and occasionally being chased by people carrying weapons. He generally wears dark, practical clothing suitable for travelling quietly rather than the flamboyant attire sometimes associated with professional thieves. Good boots, a well-made cloak, soft leather protection and numerous carefully positioned pockets are far more important to Jonas than looking impressive. He prefers not to advertise what he does. Indeed, Jonas considers a rogue who can be identified as a rogue from across a crowded tavern to have made an elementary professional error.
Quarter-Elven Heritage
Jonas is one-quarter Elf, the result of Elven ancestry several generations removed from his immediate family. He considers himself essentially Human. His ancestry has nevertheless left subtle traces. His senses are unusually keen, his features slightly finer than those of most Humans and he has retained something of the natural grace associated with his Elven forebears. Jonas himself considers these facts considerably less interesting than other people sometimes do. When asked whether his Elven blood explains his ability to move quietly, he has been known to reply that practice explains his ability to move quietly.
The Rogue
Where Dîmeril is most comfortable in wilderness and woodland, Jonas is particularly valuable wherever civilisation has provided obstacles.
Locks.
Traps.
Hidden doors.
Crowded streets.
Suspicious merchants.
Guarded buildings.
And people who are lying.
Jonas instinctively notices the second door, the loose floorboard, the window somebody forgot to secure and the fellow in the corner who has spent the last ten minutes pretending not to listen.
He became the company's practical rogue: scout, infiltrator, lock-picker, trap finder and occasional procurer of objects whose former owners might dispute his interpretation of the word procured.
Jonas is not, however, a romantic thief.
He has little interest in stealing merely for the pleasure of stealing and even less interest in the elaborate theatrics sometimes associated with the profession. A successful burglary is one in which nobody knew he was there. A successful infiltration is one in which nobody had to be killed. A successful adventure is one from which everybody comes home.
He regards surviving an adventure as considerably more impressive than dying dramatically during one.
Personality
Jonas is practical, observant and cautious without being cowardly. His humour is dry and frequently understated. He has a particular talent for delivering unwelcome observations at precisely the moment everyone else has become enthusiastic about a terrible idea. Jonas does not dislike danger. He dislikes unnecessary danger. There is an important distinction. Years of travelling beside adventurers have also given him considerable experience of recognising the precise moment when sensible advice is no longer going to prevent his companions from doing something foolish. At that point Jonas generally stops arguing and begins preparing for the consequences. He checks his equipment. He finds another exit. He makes certain somebody has rope. And then he goes with them.
Dîmeril Laeghartha
Jonas knew Dîmeril long before Merilrond, the Hall of Roses became the centre of a small woodland domain.
Their friendship was forged through years of travelling and adventuring together, and consequently Jonas is largely immune to the mystique that gradually accumulated around the Ranger Lord.
He remembers the woman underneath it.
As the woodland folk increasingly began looking towards Dîmeril as their protector and eventual ruler, Jonas watched the process with considerable amusement.
Dîmeril repeatedly insisted that she had no intention of becoming anyone's lord.
Jonas believed her.
He also recognised rather earlier than she did that this was becoming irrelevant.
His loyalty to Dîmeril has never been based upon rank. Like several of her oldest companions, Jonas does not consider himself one of her followers.
He is her friend.
Consequently, Jonas is perfectly comfortable telling Dîmeril that one of her ideas is idiotic.
He is also usually sensible enough to begin preparing for it immediately afterwards.
Lusara Elmare
Jonas eventually fell in love with Lusara Elmare, the priestess who travelled amongst Dîmeril's companions.
Their relationship initially surprised some of those around them.
The cautious rogue and the devoted priestess appeared, superficially at least, an unlikely match.
In practice their differences proved complementary.
Jonas possessed a practical understanding of the less respectable corners of the world, while Lusara provided a certainty and moral clarity that he sometimes lacked. Neither attempted to transform the other into something they were not.
Friendship became affection.
Affection eventually became marriage.
They had children together and established a family amongst the wider community surrounding Dîmeril and Merilrond.
Marriage did not end Jonas's adventuring career.
Fatherhood changed it.
For much of his younger life, Jonas had evaluated danger according to whether he believed he could survive it.
Once he had children, the question became rather different.
Was the risk worth potentially not coming home?
He continued travelling when circumstances required it and remained entirely capable of accompanying his old companions into danger, but the reckless confidence of youth gradually disappeared.
There was now somewhere—and someone—to return to.
Fatherhood
Jonas proved to be a devoted father, although perhaps not an entirely conventional one.
His children grew up around adventurers, Fey creatures, woodland folk and the increasingly peculiar household of Merilrond. They consequently learned relatively early that their father's profession involved considerably more than the polite description of scout sometimes used in company.
Jonas taught them practical skills.
How to recognise when someone was following them.
How to identify the safest exit from a room.
How to tell whether a door had recently been opened.
How to spot a badly concealed weapon.
How to fall without hurting themselves.
And, somewhat to Lusara's concern, how locks worked.
One of their children paid particularly close attention.
Velisra Nightleaf
Jonas's daughter Velisra inherited both his talent and his interest in the rogue's profession.
She could have followed the religious path of her mother.
She chose her father's instead.
Jonas was not initially delighted.
This was not hypocrisy.
Jonas knew exactly what the life of a rogue could involve: imprisonment, violence, dangerous people, dangerous places and the uncomfortable possibility that one day a locked door might conceal something considerably worse than treasure.
When Velisra made it clear that she intended to pursue the profession regardless of his opinion, Jonas reportedly told her:
“That's exactly the problem.”
Eventually pragmatism prevailed.
Jonas decided that if his daughter was determined to become a rogue, then she was going to become a properly trained rogue.
He became a demanding teacher.
Velisra became an excellent student.
Teaching Velisra
Jonas taught his daughter much of what years of adventuring had taught him.
Moving quietly was not about being naturally graceful; it was about understanding surfaces and knowing where to place one's feet.
Opening locks was not about possessing clever tools; it was about patience.
Finding traps required understanding why somebody had placed the trap there in the first place.
Infiltration began before entering the building.
And the first thing one should identify upon entering somewhere dangerous was not the objective.
It was the way out.
Jonas also impressed upon Velisra one of his central professional beliefs:
Violence is frequently evidence that something has already gone wrong.
A dead guard attracts attention. An unconscious guard eventually wakes up. A guard who never realised you were there causes no problem whatsoever.
Velisra absorbed these lessons extremely well.
Perhaps too well for Jonas's comfort.
The Nightleaf Name
Upon establishing herself as a rogue in her own right, Velisra ceased using Tench as her professional surname.
She became Velisra Nightleaf.
The change followed an old tradition amongst certain rogues whereby a young professional adopts a road-name or shadow-name rather than operating beneath the family name.
The tradition serves several purposes.
It protects the rogue's relatives from becoming automatically associated with their activities. It separates family obligations from professional ones. Most importantly, it allows a young rogue to establish a reputation that belongs entirely to them.
Velisra's choice pleased Jonas considerably more than he admitted.
She was not attempting to trade upon her father's reputation.
Whatever the name Nightleaf eventually came to mean, she intended to earn it herself.
Father and Daughter
Jonas and Velisra remain close, although their relationship now contains an element of professional rivalry.
Velisra is cooler and more controlled than her father. Jonas possesses a dry humour and can be surprisingly personable when circumstances allow it; Velisra tends towards a composed professionalism that makes her difficult to read.
She also inherited the more obvious signs of their family's Elven ancestry. Her pointed ears and fine features are considerably more pronounced than Jonas's own, despite the Elven blood being more distant in her generation.
Their similarities become clearer when they are working.
Both observe before acting.
Both dislike unnecessary violence.
Both instinctively locate exits.
And both possess the irritating habit of noticing things other people hoped had gone unnoticed.
Velisra occasionally demonstrates some newly mastered technique and waits for her father's assessment.
Jonas generally considers it for a moment before saying:
“Adequate.”
He then waits until she has left before telling everyone else how extraordinarily good she has become.
Jonas at Merilrond
As the years passed, Jonas became one of the familiar older figures of Merilrond.
He never acquired the exotic reputation of some of Dîmeril's Fey companions and never sought one.
That suited him perfectly.
He knows the Hall, its passages and its inhabitants intimately. He knows which doors stick in damp weather, where valuables should actually be kept, which windows provide easy access from outside and precisely how many supposedly secret entrances to Merilrond are no longer remotely secret.
Younger inhabitants occasionally seek him out for advice.
Jonas generally gives it.
Whether they appreciate the answer is another matter.
He is particularly useful when Dîmeril's increasingly complicated dealings with Fey nobility require someone to examine a problem without becoming distracted by titles, ancient customs or elaborate displays of supernatural grandeur.
Jonas has spent too much of his life dealing with confidence tricksters to be particularly impressed by somebody merely because they possess a crown.
An Old Companion
Jonas is no longer the young rogue who first set out alongside Dîmeril.
His face has weathered.
His reflexes are perhaps fractionally slower.
He has a wife, grown children and considerably more to lose than he possessed in his youth.
He is also vastly more experienced.
Jonas knows when to move and when to remain still. He knows when somebody is bluffing. He knows which fights can be avoided and which must be finished quickly.
Most importantly, he has survived long enough to understand that cleverness is not demonstrated by taking risks.
It is demonstrated by knowing which risks are worth taking.
To younger adventurers, Jonas Tench is an experienced rogue and one of the old companions of the Ranger Lord of Merilrond.
To Velisra Nightleaf, he is the man who taught her the trade.
To Lusara Elmare, he is her husband.
And to Dîmeril, despite all the years, titles and adventures that have passed between them, Jonas remains essentially what he always was:
the dependable fellow quietly checking the back door while everyone else is looking at the monster.
