Valerio

Valerio is the current Sentinel of the Treasury in Braavos.

Biography
Son of a woman of ill repute and a Bravo of even worse standing, a preening man whose arrogance and biting wit far outstripped his courage and skill with a blade he ran from more fights than he ended and spent more nights wounded in the arms of pitying courtesans than he did toasting his victories.

However while his father may have lacked in grace with the Bravos blade he was friends with men who did not, feared Bravos who stalked the wharfs at night looking for tests of their skill and in the day found Valerio’s father’s wit amusing and his generosity with his partner’s hard earned coin most agreeable.

It was for one of these men that Valerio was named and who as a young boy he would learn the water dance from, eagre to seek a way to protect himself from the insults of his fellow children and a means to wipe away the shame his father carried with him everywhere he walked. Once he had learned the mechanics it appeared that he may only be a little better than his father but Valerio took to the streets where it soon became apparent that he was gifted natural duelist, fights over causes petty and great soon earned the youth a small reputation about the Ragman’s Harbour.

Not just as a bravo however, Valerio felt that a Bravo required expensive clothes and his mother had little money to lend him after his father had spent all hers. So the youth took to thieving, relying on his reflexes and agility that the water dancing had taught him to avoid the pursuits of a small army of hired guards from various offended merchants.

As the years passed Valerio’s funds, fashion and reputation grew, both amongst the Bravos and the thieves and fences of Braavos.

Soon his ambitions and need for money could not be satisfied by petty theft and he found it was more profitable to steal a diamond but instead to tell a thief where he might steal a diamond or tell said diamond’s owner who might be after his property and how they might steal it. After a few years Valerio had a small but reliable ring of informants amongst the poor and darker elements of Braavos.

His life took a turn however when one night he found himself near the Moon Pool and a fellow bravo loudly declared that a passing lady of the Antaryon family could make a good living as a courtesan. In the name of the offended women Valerio duelled the man and ended the fight in a spectacular fashion, thrusting his bravos’ blade through a hole in his opponents ornate hilt and into his eye.

This act caught the attention of Bellenora Antaryon, who invited him as her companion and bodyguard to a feast, seemingly for her own entertainment where he would duel a further two men for her honour (not to the death much to the joy of the host and the disappointment of some of the guests)

And thus began what observers would discern to be a relationship that appeared to be halfway between transactional and loving. Bellenora Antaryon dragged him from a gutter Bravo to a man who attended dinners of state, garbed in the most expensive and recent fashions of the city and allowed him to believe he held his own small modicum of power, largely because she found his stumbling ambition amusing. In return Valerio officially handled at first her security and later that of the Vaults of the Iron Bank, fights for her honour when pushed at dinners and feasts and for her profit when asked, arranging and participating in more than a few back alley stabbings to further Bellenara and her family’s interests.

But past all that there did seem to be genuine warmth between the two, private dinners and the occasional disappearance from public life for days on end for a secluded getaway on a private barge were common in the early days of their time together, though their frequency has begun to fade as tensions rise in the city.

Timeline
276AC - Valerio is born

286AC - Valerio begins his training with his namesake to become a water dancer

293AC - Valerio develops a reputation in the Ragman’s Harbour as a Bravo, begins thieving.

298AC - Valerio stops thieving and takes up trading in information, developing a series of contacts and informants in the poorer districts of Braavos

302AC - Kills a man by the Moon Pool for Bellenora Antaryon

303AC - Officially becomes the head of the Sentinel of the Treasury

Family Tree
Tormo - Father, Former Bravo - 51

Talea - Mother, Former prostitute - 50