Race: Halfling
Class: Rogue
The way he tells it, Perrem is a fun-loving ne'er-do-well who was naturally drawn to the Rogue profession by his love of the ladies and his knack for getting into trouble. In reality, things didn't quite go that way. Perrem started life as an ordinary halfling. He preferred the simple pleasures in life and had absolutely no intention of going off adventuring. His friends, who called him "Tosspot" for an incident Perrem has never bothered to explain, had no greater ambitions and Perrem was happy to go along with them. So he got a boring, comfortable job as a jailor's apprentice. Being a jailor in a quiet little halfling town usually means helping the occasional drunk halfling to a bed for the night and not even bothering to lock the door as he slept it off. Still, young Perrem was quite happy with his job. Then one day a visiting halfling got caught trying to rob the mayor's house. It caused a small stir in the community, and naturally the perpetrator was locked up until some authorities from the world beyond could arrive and ship him off to a proper jail.
Perrem went about his duties normally, occasionally looking nervously at the offending stranger. Then one day the strange halfling started to talk to Perrem. He said that he'd noticed that Perrem had the makings of a good thief, with his natural dexterity and quick fingers. Perrem wasn't really listening, but soon the stranger started to try to teach him the tricks of the trade from within his cell. The young halfling didn't intend on becoming a Rogue, but he was bored and listened anyway. Soon he'd picked up the basics of thievery.
As he listened to the man's stories of the outer world and a chance for adventure, something stirred deep within Perrem. The wanderlust that defines every good Rogue had always been within him, buried under halfling sensibility and a love of the quiet life. Even after the strange halfling had been taken away Perrem found himself daydreaming of a swashbuckling life in the real world, stealing gold baubels and young ladies' hearts just as easily.
When one day a visiting merchant passed through, Perrem was the only one in the town that asked genuine, probing questions about the outside world. The man was so impressed with the young halfling that he offered to take him to a nearby city if he'd help the man set up his shop there. Perrem agreed without even thinking about it, and was soon off.
And so the halfling who was known as "Tosspot" set off for a life of adventure. When he got to the city he was immediately inundated with the sights, sounds, and people. It was all just as he'd imagined it. He took to thievery like a fish to water, and it was only a matter of time before a group of adventurers asked him to help them on their next dungeon crawl.
Or so he says. In reality, his first experience of the city was terrible. The people were just as boring as the halflings back home, the colors were no brighter, the food tasted even worse, and the ladies - well, let's just say that Perrem was about as uninterested in the homely wenches of the city as they were in him.
Thievery also came hard to him. He had expected the people in the city to be careless with their money, making stealing as easy on his skills as on his conscience. In the real world, though, the people all looked after their meager wallets with fearful, hawkish glances. They all watched the little halfling warily, knowing full well the stereotype that all halflings were thieves. His first few attempts came up with either nothing or a few coins that barely paid for his lodging and food. As he got more and more frustrated and his stomach got emptier and emptier he decided to go for some bigger game. Things didn't work out quite as planned, and he found himself on the other side of jail bars this time. Except this jail was dingy and dark, full of dirty humans with tattoos and eying the little halfling in ways he didn't want to think about.
The first night he got more and more nervous as his cellmates showed no intention of going to sleep and eyed him unpleasantly from the dark corners of the room. Finally he could take it no longer and whipped off his belt, took off the buckle and started to frantically try to pick the lock. The other inmates rose as one and advanced on him, seeing his desperation as a sign of weakness. None were more surprised than Perrem when the lock clicked open and he tumbled out. He hurriedly struggled up and slammed the door in the faces of the other inmates.
As he snuck out of the jail past the sleeping guards, Perrem "Tosspot" Frinn had a revelation. All that time as a jailor's apprentice had made him quite handy with doors and locks. As he found a place to stay for the night, his mind was buzzing with ideas. So far he'd been failing as a pickpocket, but surely people were a lot less careful with things within their homes. All he had to do was get through the locks on peoples' doors, get around any alarms or defences, tease open the lock on the strongbox...
Time went by and Perrem became more and more daring. His life soon began to resemble his daydreams of the past as his world became brighter and more like he'd imagined it. It didn't take him long to realize that skills with locks also extended to getting into young ladies' bedchambers without their fathers finding out. It was this confident, carefree young halfling who was found by a group of adventurers looking for a Rogue. Despite his past experiences, Perrem now looked every inch the rascally Rogue he'd been imagining himself as. Even though his early experiences convinced him that he was anything but invincible, his skills as a Rogue soon became relied on by his party members. As to his other skills and the female party members, well, Perrem tells that story best.
Despite his skills in breaking the law, Perrem never refers to himself as a thief and never admits to any crime. He calls himself "alternatively legal" and insists that he's a "monetary redistributor." Similarly, he often "invites himself" into the homes of rich people to "permanently borrows" from them and "enjoys the hospitality" of any young lady at home.
Perrem is more than willing to join up with any group of adventurers who seem interesting and look like they'll be able to pay well. They're not required to actually offer a large sum of money; he'll generously assume that they will pay him according to how well he does. When trying to recruit him it helps to have some interesting personalities in the potential party, and some attractive young ladies have never failed to get his pledges of loyalty as soon as the offer was made.
Origins: Perrem Frinn was my main character in Neverwinter Nights when I was playing the original campaign. He was at the time just a stereotypical fun-loving halfling--exactly as he pretends to be in this version. Part of the stereotype came from Tomi Undergallows, one of the hirelings in NWN. The nickname and start of the bio came from a Dungeons and Dragons game we played a few times back in Holland with some buddies. Some of the character development came from a halfling I played with on one of Danny's NWN servers... but that didn't go so well. Somehow Perrem's better with the ladies when I'm the one in charge of both parties ^__~.