Toma

Toma grew up on the streets of Trinitopolis, surviving cold, hunger and poverty any way he could. He never knew his parents, the only gifts he received from them were the rags they left him in, and a note with his name on it. The other orphans of various races were larger and stronger than him, so he had to stay away from them as much as the town guards, earning him the nickname "Shifty", a name he starts calling himself every time he finds himself overwhelmed, even to this day.

One spring morning, not long after his 8th winter, a miracle happened that would change Toma's life forever. In the middle of the street where he used to loiter, he discovered a leather bound tome, with symbols Toma had never seen before. No one else seemed to notice as the young goblin picked up the grimoire and took it with him, fascinated almost charmed by the etchings on it. From then began a long, obsessive series of sleepless nights and days of hunger, as Toma tried to make sense of what was written inside the tome. Foreign as the words were, there was a certain logic to it, something Toma could understand intuitively. Eventually after a moon had waxed and waned, Toma had managed to scribble down his interpretation of the first page of the tome, and could manifest a spectral hand out of thin air, although he was still too clumsy in using it properly.

Eventually, his acumen for magic grew as he used it to commit petty crimes, run odd jobs and overall earn and save a considerable sum. A sum he soon spent on acquiring similar tomes, studying new languages and formulae, until he had left his old life behind. At some point he realized him finding the tome, written in flawless Draconic, that fateful day was not mere coincidence, and decided to find out who or what was responsible for his turn of Fate.

When the New World was discovered, Toma's curiosity made him hop on the first ship he could in search of the unknown, a part of him hoping to find his one-sided correspondent on the other side of the Portal, where they would be colleagues in unravelling the mysteries of the world.