You served your apprenticeship among merchants and traders. You’ve traveled dusty miles and haggled under distant skies.

Why are you living a life of adventure? Are you working off your debt to the company store? Are you escorting a caravan through dangerous wilds?

Are you raising capital to start your own business, or trying to restore the fortunes of a ruined trading family? Or are you a smuggler, following secret trade routes unknown to the authorities?

You are aware of your counterpart, of course. But more than that, you loathe them. You have started your adventures, at least in part, in order to find this person, remove them in some fashion, and take their place.

Have you located your counterpart yet? Why do you seek to replace them? Are they repugnant and you would right their wrongs? Do you seek to balance the universe? Or do they simply have the life that you were meant to have? What if you do eventually find them—and realize you have no wish to fulfill what was once your burning ambition?

After a long period of captivity, you returned to the surface and were welcomed with open arms, despite your scars and aged appearance. You’ve resumed the life you left behind, re-establishing old connections. The only problem is, it’s not your life to which you’ve returned—you are an imposter.

Whose identity did you adopt? Did you do so with their blessing, or did you leave them for dead? Might they return one day? If so, whose story will be believed?

You haven’t met your match at dice or cards. A career of high stakes and daring escapades has taught you when to play close to the chest and when to risk it all—but you haven’t yet learned when to walk away.

Are you a brilliant student of the game, a charming master of the bluff and counterbluff, or a cheater with fast hands? What turned you to a life of adventure: a string of bad luck, or an insatiable thirst for risk?

You served – and may still serve – an organization trying to influence events--either a public entity, a criminal organization, or a secret society that the public only knows through rumors and whispers.

You’re a performer who knows how to dazzle a crowd, an artist but also a professional: you never forget to pass the hat after a show.

Are you a lute-strumming singer? An actor? A poet or author? A tumbler or juggler? Are you a rising talent, or a star with an established following?

Perhaps you broke an oath or angered a god, or your parents promised their child’s soul to a fiend. Whatever caused it, you are cursed. The power that laid this upon you has not necessarily made itself known, but its effects are felt regardless. It has shaped your life and interactions with others, made you wary and careful. A tiny slip, a failed moment of etiquette, a dirty glance—any may trigger the curse.

How did you become cursed? Are there those who sympathize with your plight? What transgressions might trigger the curse’s worst effects? What does the curse do?

People call you a con artist, but you’re really an entertainer. You make people happy—the separation of fools and villains from their money is purely a pleasant side effect. 

What is your most common con? Selling fake magic items? Speaking to ghosts? Posing as a long-lost relative? Or do you let dishonest people think they’re cheating you?