Backstory: Nothing

Left on the doorstep of the Red Larch church as an infant, Nothing's early life was as troubled as a devil-child raised by the devout can be expected.

In truth, it probably wasn't as extreme as she makes it out to be. She was treated like a difficult child, and she was a difficult child at the best of times - wilful, contrary, and her tantrums came bundled with blazing fireplaces and doors slamming themselves. She made the place hell for them.

But they named her Faith. What did they expect?

(They also heavily implied she needed to be a good and pious child to balance out her obvious inborn sins of the father. Again - what did they expect?)

At the age of ten, Nothing ran away from the church, deciding that life on the streets was preferable to the ever-present sense of judgement and implication that she was inevitably hellbound. There, she appointed herself the warden of the town's waifs and strays (as the oldest child, she felt it made sense.)

She threw away the name the church gave her. What little she'd read of tieflings showed they often chose names of their own, virtue names...like Faith, actually, but she'd rather be called nothing than Faith, so Nothing is exactly what she'd be called. Nothing but trouble, good for nothing, who'll amount to nothing if she keeps up the way she's going. Might as well have an honest name that keeps the bar nice and low, right?

Unfortunately, Nuth found that being the protector of the orphans and runaways isn't so easy when you're not even five feet tall and built like a twig. The stealing part was easy. The not getting beaten up by Red Larch's teens who thought themselves real tough for picking on the village oddity? Less easy.

It was after one such altercation that she was offered a way out - no more lying in alleyways tending to her broken ribs and bruises. A presence reached out to Nothing, and laid out a deal: her soul, a trifling thing, in exchange for power that would ensure no-one with sense would dare lay a hand on her and hers again. (And power that would help her feed them, too. Subtler arts.)

She said yes, of course. Her soul was already hellbound, right? What's the worst that could happen?

With the help of her mysterious benefactor whispering into the back of her mind, she learned to unlock people's doors from the other side, to lace her words with magic that would sway people to invite her in and offer a seat at their dinner-table. (Sure, the townsfolk got wise to some of her new tricks, but they'd seen she had magic since childhood, nobody questioned it.) The kids stopped messing with her when she brandished a staff glowing with dark fire and shot a flare of red light into the wall behind their heads.

She and the kids got by, scavenging and stealing, taking charity from those few in the town kind enough to give it. (Red Larch's apothecaress, Moira, took good care of them - a hot dinner every so often in exchange for help around the house was a good deal, and Nuth appreciated it. Moira patched the kids up if they got sick, too. The town jailor, Alf, let them house up in the prison in the winter if it got real cold or if the weather was particularly bad. The whole lot of them were in there so often, so why not give them a key to let themselves in?)

The magistrate got well used to finding Nuth in the courthouse, rolling her eyes as she pled guilty to "nickin' some stuff" time and time again. Try as the townsfolk (and the magistrate) might to coax Nuth into honest work, unless the kids could work with her too, she wasn't having any of it.

And on one sweltering summer's day, she found herself jailed once again. Nickin' stuff. But this time, she'd landed among some curious cellmates indeed...