Mozaddha Theriska was born into the soot-stained industrial docks of Nunavut, Cascadia, as the youngest of seven children in a household fractured by his father’s debilitating alcoholism. From a young age, Mozaddha displayed a natural talent for showmanship and minor arcane parlor tricks, which he utilized to swindle well-to-do travelers and support his struggling mother. His life took a desperate turn when he discovered a minute fragment of raw Shardisite while diving for scrap in the harbor sludge. Rather than selling the find, he attempted to parlay the crystal into a grander fortune by marketing a fraudulent “Shard Cure-All Elixir.” He promised desperate investors a miracle tonic for Shard-blight, but when the scam was eventually exposed by a disgruntled accountant, Mozaddha was forced to flee the region, sending his mother and sisters into hiding in Amazonia to escape the lethal reach of his creditors.

To mask his history as a fleeing con artist, Mozaddha crafted an elaborate and frequently inconsistent persona as a seasoned sailor and sky-pirate. He often regales companions with tales of his time in the Cascadian Navy aboard the Ivory Clemency out of Charlottetown in Dixie, claiming he was discharged only after punching a corrupt superior during a card game. His most prized—and highly dubious—claim to “street cred” involves a supposed stint as a key member of Barnaby Harrier’s crew aboard the Wind’s Revenge. While he speaks with practiced authority on the ship’s exploits, including a bizarre encounter involving a “war ostrich” in Petrolina, his details often remain suspiciously vague when pressed. Most who have navigated the criminal underworld suspect Mozaddha merely overheard these stories in a dockside tavern and adopted the “privateer” lifestyle to grant himself a veneer of formidable reputation.

In the year 2101 A.M., with the law closing in on his various Cascadian aliases, Mozaddha secured passage aboard the submersible ESS Albacore bound for the Europan capital of Dresden. Operating under the guise of a rough-and-tumble traveler, he joined a disparate group of voyagers crossing the lightless Sea of Ghosts to escape his past once and for all. Though his primary goal was simple survival and the avoidance of Cascadian bounty hunters, the unfolding revolution in Europa forced him to navigate the thin line between his instinct for the con and his developing loyalty to his fellow travelers. Despite his colorful tall tales, Mozaddha remains a man defined by a sharp dichotomy: a pirate who may have never actually held a cutlass in anger before the voyage, and a swindler who found himself fighting for a genuine cause in the smoke-choked streets of Dresden.