Neven Hayes¶
Neven Hayes is a young Naher rogue of Brusau and a member of a thieves' guild there, who was lodging at the inn of Harwith on the night the village was swallowed by the Hollow of the devil Hal'Gamesh. Bound with the other guests by the devil's blood pact, he travelled for a time with the company that went out to break it (S138, S161).
Person¶
He is 26 years old, bald, "with a dark brown mustache and brown eyes, with rough tanned skin". He stands 4'11" with an athletic build and has "an oval, slightly innocent face" (S149). He wants "Wealth and Freedom" (S149).
"He is very friendly and a charmer. He is very helpful so long as it doesn't cost him anything, nor is risky. He could care less, but uses flattery and exaggeration to win people over. It generally doesn't take long for people to see through his charade. He will try to befriend anyone who will be his friend. He avoids direct confrontation" (S149). He "cannot/will not pay for help", and if the company did not follow his road he was ready to steal the pact's fetish, "leaving everyone else to die" (S149).
His errand¶
Neven lives in a medium-sized town of Brusau (S149 spells it Brunsau) and belongs to its thieves' guild. On the road he tells a story: "his daughter is very ill and the healer sent him to buy special herbs for her" in a distant city. "His daughter is not actually ill." His guildmaster had sent him to recover payment of a debt from an associate, and he was to meet someone in that city (S149). The debt was to be paid in a Kalari relic, and his plan was to leave his companions at an inn while he met "his underground contacts", collect the relic, and take it back to the guild and on to a buyer; another party, posing as a member of the Brotherhood of the Sun, would try to take it from him once its nature was known (S149). His errand was one of the roads open to the company after Harwith (S138).
With the company¶
Neven was one of "nine 'mercenaries'" bound at Harwith (S161). The Sancturi lord Rakai Karanovic was "strongly against helping Prince Immeron or Neven Hayes" (S150). In Guillon he struck a bargain with the possessed tailor Zaena Greyson to steal the pact totem, Zaena promising him "freedom from the pact" and a journey together to a town of her choosing (S162). He crossed the bridge below the obelisk at Kilmarn with the forward party and, in the fighting there, "ESCAPED FROM NEST" (S162, S163). The rest belongs to the Sancturi Campaign chronicle.
Gap
The sources name neither Neven's town nor the city of his errand, and they do not record what became of him after Kilmarn: he is absent from the company's later watch lists (S165 onward).