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By all accounts, Hiram Kelly came from good stock and a family that loved him well. For a commoner, his father was an apothecary held in high regard and his mother was an actress who never made it past the local entertainment. Local, of course, was somewhere halfway between Graypeak and Fen de Lire in a booming settlement called Graveway. His parents adored him, his mother in particular. He was her darling child and she was the reason he fell in love with books at such an early age, always encouraged to read any he could get his hands on. Orla Kelly could also be stern in the name of her only son as well, it wasn't an entirely spoiled childhood. She was ever on her son about his manners, believing that wherever etiquette started to unravel so too did the rest of society. When she passed, it was a great blow to the Kelly family and while it broke her husband, it pushed her son deeper into his devotion to books in order to cope with so many good memories now stained with the pain of loss. For a time, Hiram earned a living for himself as a wandering scholar with a talented hand for the quill and an inability to stay put. He was known as a restless soul amongst the villages and cities of the Crownlands through which he passed often and without ever staying for long. His polished mannerisms found many doors open for him but he only longed for the one that he could close on the ache that lived somewhere deep down in his soul. Everyone knows a stiff drink goes best with a good book and eventually Hiram learned that too. Drinking was a fine bandage for a while but when it started to unravel he found other medicines to soothe his old wounds. Expensive medicines too rich for a wandering scholar's blood. Where there is intoxication it usually isn't hard to find games of chance to get in on and in gambling Hiram at least found a way to double or triple his silver when he needed something stronger than a wash of whisky or elsewise. Not only that, he was good at it. In time it became hard to justify putting words to parchment to make a living when he could do it so much better with some dice or some cards. Eventually Hiram Kelly disappeared and it was easy enough for those familiar with him to think that he had finally found himself in the kind of tough spot that his gentleman's demeanor couldn't get him out of. Like bad news though he always turns up again and though he'd been gone for well over a year he showed up back in the Crownlands thirstier than ever to keep on in his hard-drinking and heavy-gambling ways, now nursing a mysterious wasting illness that left him an absolute puzzle to some of the finest physicians in those territories along with the kind of irreverence that often trails the walking dead when every step could be their last. Not to mention the unusual inkwork of an Abandoned nature that he now sported on one hand. Some might say it was that discourteous canny that delighted Glenys Ashford when the pair crossed paths at a little inn and tavern on Ashford lands. Others might say it was her keen mind for medicine that kept her at his side after she patched him up from a particularly bad bet with the wrong men and learned more of his mysteries. The truth is likely somewhere in the middle but only Glenys could tell you for sure.

Hiram Kelly doesn't quite reach six feet tall but he's close enough that he'll tell you he does. Despite that kind of height his whip-lean build works against him in the ways of striking an intimidating presence - or at least most of his presence in whichever ways it is being wielded is found in the force of his personality. He has the sun-loved skin of a man that has done a lot of travelling and the sort of dark eyes that have seen plenty of trouble in his time, with the kind of calloused hands that can't be just from his days of slinging ink or flipping cards. He isn't just well-groomed for a commoner, maintaining his appearance seems to be his watchword. Whether sober or deep into his cups he's inclined to smile usually and he does it well and calmly sometimes even when the situation should call for panic. Especially when something absolutely awful is leaving his mouth.

Slick, sickly and well-read, Hiram Kelly knows his way around a good book as well as he knows his way around a bad situation. He's clever when he wants to be and he's stubborn when he needs to be with a sense of humour that waxes or wanes as darkly as the company he's currently keeping. There is an undeniable irreverence to the man when he's deep into his drink or embracing his other addictions, one so deeply-seated it often runs counter to the perfect manners he was raised with and that he sometimes employs to smooth over a situation that looks to be getting out of hand. Despite his many faults, Kelly keeps a strong sense of friendship and a keen - if sometimes misunderstood - moral code even while his wasting illness leads him down an evermore reckless and headstrong path.