THOMAS
BACKSTORY
Thomas was born to Dyna and Mathias Obelyn a full twelve years after their second child, and, at first, he was a welcome addition to their family. The reason for the gap between the second and third child would unfortunately put an end to this just a year later.
His father, Mathias, fuelled by the many grand legends permeating Baldur's Gate, had long harboured aspirations of becoming a renowned and heroic wizard. Capable of some low-level spells even before starting his work, the man had nonetheless held off on attempting to fulfill his dream in order to marry the love of his life, Dyna, and have children with her. After his first son Jonathan and only daughter Anne were born, and with their family stable and capable of funding it, Mathias finally got the chance to go and throw himself into his studies.
Experiencing decent success at first, Mathias unfortunately hit a wall with his magical study that he simply could not get past. He did not give up, and threw himself into trying to overcome the barrier with all he had, but as the years went by it quickly became clear that despite being a perfectly capable domestic wizard he would be unlikely to reach the particular dreamlike heights he desired. Eventually unable to continue funding his schooling and with his family now rather neglected, much poorer and his wife pleading with him to spend more time with them, Mathias had to finally acknowledge that at least for now his dream was beyond him. Though bitter, he found work and started returning to his marital bed way more often. Tom was the eventual result... but Tom also turned out to be a storm sorcerer.
At just over a year old and in a manner oft-typical of those born with the storm in their blood, Thomas Obelyn started to make light breezes blow.
Illogical though it was to place such blame on a baby's head, Mathias's bitterness metaphorically exploded at the revelation of his son's innate magical nature; it was almost like he saw it as a personal insult, like Tom had been born just to taunt him. From that day onwards any affection he'd once held for his child seemingly vanished. Thomas would grow up around a father that snapped and berated him at every turn and a mother who at first didn't do a thing about it, acting like nothing was wrong, but later merely asking her child to 'understand his father's pain.' She began trying to teach Thomas to suppress his power so as not to antagonise Mathias (something that would have long-lasting unfortunate consequence).
The one saving grace for the confused little boy was his older sister, Anne, usually know as Annie. Annie had loved her baby brother from the moment he'd been born and greatly enjoyed getting to take care of him. This was fortunate for Thomas because, with their parents becoming poor guardians for their son, she threw herself into being a source of love and stability for him despite her own young age. Age thirteen, she started taking the year-old around with her on her hip, as a mother might, and continued to do this for the following five years. When she started going to work Thomas would usually come with, her elderly boss Elias showing some gentle sympathy to her situation and agreeing to let the boy stay with him in the back rooms while she worked the tavern serving drinks.
Her motherly affection was especially important because the fourth and final sibling, Jeremiah, who was born just a bit over a year after Tom, would prove to be Mathias's favourite child. It wasn't at all subtle, and further salt on the wound for Thomas, but so long as he had Annie he was at least able to find some joy in his young life. Over time Annie would tell Tom fairytales and, eventually, share dreams about a better life for the two of them; of escape, of a little house of their own far from Mathias, of finding someone to help him with Tommy's magic. They could be a little family all by themselves.
It was not to be, because Annie had a fierce temper, Annie really loved her little brother, and, aged eighteen, these factors came together in one furious and upsetting day in which she was thrown out of the family home. Confronting her father with an extra degree of fierceness, she was forced out of the place and told not to come back until she 'learned some respect.' Thomas was too young still to understand exactly what was happening but found that his one source of stability, the only person who showed truly unconditional love to him, had just gone. Already confused and struggling with 'suppressing' his magic as taught, things came to a head, and this was when his temper-driven magical outbursts first started to get noticeable. Triggered by anger and fear and worsened by trying to keep a storm in a box, the outbursts fed into his father's dislike of him and made things between them much worse, leading to insults as extreme as Tom being called a 'curse from the Gods.' Life overall at home worsened swiftly, and despite his super young age Tom started escaping to the streets.
This was how he first fell into a child gang.
It was easy for him to do so. Even with his shaky control, just the common ability to summon magical hands alone was always going to grab attention. First to zero in on him was a street kid named Myrri, a dwarven girl a year or so older than Tom who basically made herself his friend after watching him make sparks and bravely (but foolishly) snap at some older lads bothering him. It was something of a stroke of luck, in its way; she brought him into the fold of the child gang she was a part of and the leader liked what his magic might mean for them, which perhaps helped shield him from the wider dangers of his urban wandering. Tom was too young in the early days to understand much beyond the fact that these were playmates who actually wanted him around, though. For a month or so he would spend most days with his gang yet return to his parents at night, but once Thomas's parents got wind of where he'd been going a particularly nasty shouting match went down and Mathias threatened his son rather horribly with consequences should he meet with his gang ever again.
For a young, upset boy frightened of his father there was only course of action that made sense: running away. He did so with an act of rebellion against the wizard, stealing from his small collection of magical items a crystal that thereafter would serve as a focus for Tom's sorceries... or 'tricks,' as he preferred to call them, an attempt to distance himself from the true nature of his being that would not fully go away as he grew.
From that day onwards, until somewhere around the age of fifteen, Thomas would live with his gang on a permanent basis. This would both shape his magic in a particular way and encourage new skills in the boy; a mage hand is indeed particularly useful for pickpocketing, and over the years Tom got really good at using it to lockpick and raid containers that might otherwise have been out of his reach. Becoming rogue and sorcerer both, though always on edge when someone talked about him being a 'sorcerer,' the boy would manage to survive to become a teenager in no small part thanks to Myrri. Myrri would save Tom's life directly at least once (an incident that is the source of his large cheek scars) and got him out of multiple problems that might otherwise have seen him in a bad way, and for Tom, provided an echo of the care given by the sister he still dearly missed even as the years passed by.
While Myrri would encourage him to practice his 'tricks' in a calm manner and try to help Thomas come to terms with his nature, however, one thing never stopped being true: his parent's mistreatment of their child had set the seeds of a bad temper in Thomas, one that could and did frequently trigger magical outbursts. This caused numerous problems; as a sorcerer raised to suppress his nature and given no knowing guidance, what else could one expect? There was one person out there, however, who might be able to help further. After visiting a tavern solo for the first time at fifteen and getting provoked, a pissed off Tom, sparking with his power, was on the cusp of starting something unpleasant when a familiar voice from a long while ago reached his ears: his sister had found him, through sheer chance, after many years of trying to locate the brother she had never stopped loving.
Shellshocked and surprised Annie was still interested in caring for him, Thomas's temper was dulled as his sister essentially dragged him out, gave him a long lecture like it hadn't been years since they'd seen one another, and then hugged him so tight that the lost time became very obvious to them both. Anne had married a half-elven woman named Genevieve and settled into a little home in their time apart and it was back there that Tom was taken, whereupon both Annie and Gene threw themselves into doing everything they could to both help Tom learn how to handle the tricky parts of his magical nature and also ensure he felt wanted and loved like a son by them both. His time in the gang was over, though Thomas remained very close to Myrri in particular and kept in contact with multiple other friends.
The boy would, of course, soon become a man. Living now in a relatively stable environment, and with the unconditional support of his unofficial mothers, Tom would begin to get a better handle on his magic. It would not be perfect, enough anger still summoning breezes and enough provocation bringing about sparks in his skin, but it was better despite his remaining discomforts. He would find work as a bodyguard and sometimes jobs trying to find missing people (a common demand, becoming more and more common as he got older with the rise in such matters). Thomas's romantic longing would also make itself very well known, and most notably involved an ill-fated relationship with a man named Silvester that lasted for three years and ended unpleasantly due to cheating on Silvester's part, leaving a wound on Tom's heart that, with this happening barely months before the events of Baldur's Gate 3, had yet to heal by the time he was taken by the nautiloid.
That particular event happened on an ordinary night, while Thomas had been striding towards home through the dark streets after a job. Plucked out of nowhere, vanishing without a trace, his sister and in-law would believe him dead. His actual fate, with mindflayer parasite in his skull, may have made them wish it were so. But there would yet be a chance for him to save himself, and many others, through the story that would soon unfold.