NAPSTAR

• Species: Scottish fold cat
• Description: Cream-coloured coat with light brown marks on his ears, eyebrows and tail, and a star-shaped birthmark on his right shoulder blade. Always smiling when in public
• Sex: ♂
• Age: Unknown but looks no older than 25 years
• Height: 3ft 2in
• Weight: Slightly chubby
• Siblings: None
• Clothing/items: Always wears his favourite cap which he wears tilted covering his right ear, and owns a backpack larger than himself and seemingly bottomless, which he is also  always wearing.
• Sayings: “Grudges are but a stone in the road: annoying and unnecessary.”

Napstar is an original character from a medieval-style anthro setting. He had a particular knack for convincing others that he was pure and innocent enough to trust, although some people could tell that something was off about him. The off-ness they detected was that he is a confidence trickster.

Trust & Confidence

Baby

Napstar was taken into an orphanage as an infant. The circumstances around him losing his parents is unknown. The orphanage staff were loving and caring, and this did Napstar some good, but despite this, he became aware that his mother had gone and that he was among strangers. Helpless and with no option but to trust them, he submitted to their care.

This manifested as him taking a particular interest in feeding time. He fed eagerly, untrusting of the carers looking after him but keenly taking everything that they gave. Food could be scarce; the carers did their best to make sure every orphan – including Napstar – got a feed, but Napstar was unaware of the administrative issue regarding food and developed a negative attitude towards his carers for failing to feed him as much as he wanted.

Freedom & Self-Determination

Toddler

As infanthood gave way to toddlerhood, Napstar remained at the orphanage, and the minor food shortage issue continued to affect the establishment. He developed a habit of greedily keeping anything he could, and food became a perfect symbol of this as it was the only thing he really could keep indefinitely: once food was eaten, it was his forever.

He kept this habit for life. In fact, his life from here on out would be characterised by his search for valuable items that he could keep: he became a habitual hoarder.

As Napstar became more alert and mobile, his relationships with the carers became more complex. He felt a bitterness towards them but he also sensed that it wasn't in his interests to be overt in demonstrating it. Instead he became sneaky, and as a toddler, the most obvious way to do that was by hiding things that he knew the carers needed or wanted: keys, bottles, packages, anything that would be missed.

For Napstar, there was a special kind of pleasure in seeing the carers' confusion as they tried to find things that they had put down in one place, only to find it was no longer there. It felt like he had redressed the power balance.

Ambition

Young childhood

As Napstar grew into a young child he developed a friendship with another youngster, who was slightly older than him, from the orphanage: Astreus. Napstar discovered that it was fairly easy to leave the orphanage, since the carers' backs were often turned, and explore the streets.

He and Astreus became best friends, and fashioned a hide-out, a secret den where they stashed all sorts of treasures. It was a fun secret to them, and Napstar at least got a buzz out of having not only a place away from the orphanage to hide his loot, but a place that was almost exclusively his. It could be hard to get space that was purely and exclusively his in the communal orphanage, after all.

With all of this said, Napstar didn't isolate himself at the orphanage. In fact, he found it easy to be part of the group. He still felt a deep resentment towards the carers, and that extended to the other orphans – and this was exacerbated by the fact that the other children often took or borrowed his things or intruded into his space, but he learned that if he smiled and acted confident then he could often get what he wanted. Often, the other person even enjoyed his presence into the bargain.

Occasionally another child caught him out but the carers, again, were too busy to pay too much attention to this. Often they didn't see how the dispute had started, and given that Napstar's main interpersonal technique was to smile and be confident, the carers often found it hard to see him as being to blame, especially next to the ranting, furious child who Napstar had stolen from.

Overall, Napstar's developing social skills meant that he had friends around him. He made use of the excitement of this and often led groups of children in small adventures.

Over the years Napstar's main ambition became one associated with hoarding: he wanted to hoard rare and interesting items and artefacts.

Productivity

Older childhood

As Napstar and Astreus grew into older children, their hoarding habits became more calculated. They spotted that the best items were often owned by people, and they began to plot how to steal those items. They developed con-artistry skills, as Napstar found that his smiling show of confidence could easily put people at ease.

Napstar enjoyed this stage of his life immensely. So much in fact, that he and Astreus ran away from the orphanage to live independently. He was swift at taking advantage of every opportunity. His skills also became more fine-tuned as he developed more effective ways of scamming people, including figuring out ways to maximise success and to recover from slip-ups. In fact, this skill-development became something of an obsession to him.

Throughout the years he and Astreus became such prolific scammers that they became the local guards' most-wanted. When they finally found that they couldn't show their faces in public without being chased by the village's sentries, they moved to a new one and started scamming there too.

Child to Adult Transition

Adolescence

Napstar was quite isolated during his adolescence, but Napstar wouldn't have said that he felt lonely. He and Astreus were very close at this stage, and they both actively destroyed their relationships with the populations of each new village they went to, so Napstar became heavily invested in the idea that he simply didn't need anyone, except to exploit them.

As far as relationships went, he got most of his need for acknowledgement met by seeing the effect he had on the people he scammed. This is part of the reason why he and Astreus were caught red-handed often enough that they had to keep moving on: for Napstar (and likely Astreus too), seeing the outrage of a mark was a big part of the fun.

Napstar also never dated as an adolescent.

Napstar also didn't see anybody as a role model. Ultimately, everybody he met was either a potential mark, a previous mark, too poor to be worth scamming, or Astreus who was too close to his own age to make a suitable role model.

Closeness in Relationships

Young adulthood

By the time Napstar had developed into an adult he was thoroughly entrenched in his pattern of scamming people. He was a sloppy con-artist as (as stated above) much of the 'reward' was in getting a rise out of his victims. He saw no other value in them; they were resources to be exploited as far as he was concerned.

The nearest he had to a friend was Astreus. However, on one of their many chases, when it seemed likely that they would be caught, Napstar allowed Astreus to be caught and used this as an opportunity to escape.

Astreus survived the encounter but after that, he considered their friendship over.

This proved more of a shock to Napstar than he would ever admit. He made sure to cross paths with Astreus many times after this and used his great confidence and ready smile to try and lure his long-time friend into joining him on a new adventure, but Astreus was too familiar with his tricks and refused every time.

As a result, Napstar started practising alone. He walked the roads between towns and cities looking for knights and heroes, and posed to them as a salesman. He would sell them supplies and provisions, and then 'helpfully' point them in the direction they 'needed to go'. This direction would in fact be towards some potentially lethal danger or other.

He would then watch them until they fell into his trap. If they died then he would retrieve his own items plus the dead victim's own. If they were injured in battle then he would step in and outwit them, steal their goods or take them by force. A few proved themselves strong enough to overcome the trap, and when this happened Napstar would present himself to them again and build their trust, only to back-stab them at a time convenient to him.

Napstar developed his intelligence about who to attack by listening to rumours in taverns and in other parts of villages where people would gather and talk. Later he would do all he could to verify whether the rumours he'd heard were true. He became a master at gathering this information.

Once he had a mark, he would appear to them as a merchant at a time calculated for when a merchant would be most welcome. He managed this reasonably well early on in his career, but later when he had magical items in his stash he would use uncanny means to place himself ahead of any journeying parties in which he was interested.

He continued with this 'career' for many years with great enthusiasm, starting with a relatively low-risk, low-return approach with deserted roads and solitary, easy targets, and gradually working his way up until he was able to court dangers that could overcome trained mercenaries, and use high-level magical artefacts to remain undetected by his marks. Throughout all of this, Napstar strove to culture his personal image of being trustworthy; sometimes he would engineer situations in which the thief appeared to be another person entirely. Deception via a combination of magic and psychology didn't always work, but notably, he survived to keep the tale to himself.

Furthermore, all of this continued to be his main source of social interaction. He didn't seek mutually trusting relationships, as he simply didn't see a use for them. To be trusted until he could run away with the loot was the nearest he desired to trusting relationships.

Passing on Responsibility

Middle age

Napstar hasn't reached this stage of his life yet, but assuming he survives this long, by the time he reaches middle age he will have a large hoard of treasure. He will continue to add to it for as long as he can, and when he eventually finds the life he leads as a highwayman too demanding, he will likely retire and guard his wealth.

Until then, he will never feel like he has enough treasure so will never stop gathering more.

He has never considered having children.

End of Life

Old age

Given Napstar's dedication to trickery, he would cheat death itself if he could.

If he dies by violent means he will present the last person or people he sees with his usual smile and say that it's all been fun, and that dying is such a waste. Internally however, he will be trying to think of a way to survive until his very last moment.

Credits

Napstar is ©  Shion561
Art is ©  Shion561 and used with their kind permission
Wording by The Character Consultancy

Based on theory by:
Erikson, E., (1951) 'Childhood and Society', W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. chapter 7.

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~Hayley, The Character Consultancy