Emmaline took a sip of her own wine. Truthfully she wasn't much of a judge but it tasted good to her. The meal and the drink were expensive as she measured such things, but living with Albrecht encouraged a very transitory view of wealth. Spend what you had before it was gambled away. It was better to eat like a queen today rather than depend on porridge for a month.

"Well for the first," she paused considering her words and taking another sip of wine.

"My father was a potter and my mother was a seamstress," she explained.

"They thought they could marry me off into the lower aristocracy, a real coup for them," Emmaline said, her voice a touch bitter. It had been obvious to her parents that their daughter would be a beauty and they had sought to take full advantage of the situation.

"They spent what little they could scrape together to hire coaches for me for speech and etiquette, so I'd be better equipped to find a husband." The training had been tedious in the extreme and her tutors had been severe dour women, mostly former servants of the nobility who for one reason or another had fallen out of favor with their masters. Spending hours being instructed on how to alter the Altdorf street accent into the loftier noble cast had not been something a rambunctious young girl had particularly enjoyed.

"After you learn to act as one thing, it isn't difficult to see the trick of acting as another," Emmaline told Neil smiling slightly at the way her parents lofty ambition had been perverted.

"Of course that all came crashing down when I started showing.... talent," she continued. It had began with headaches and bad dreams, but it hadn't been long before milk started unexpectedly curdling and candle flames would take on odd colors. It had been then, at fourteen years of age, that she committed her first serious crimes, theft for the most part in which she had stolen a nobles golden pendant, lured by what she would later come to recognize as gold lust. Fortunately Altdorf was a cosmopolitan city, long familiar with the Colleges of Magic, and a passing wizard had spotted her potential before the city watch were able to solve a string of jewelry thefts.

"My parents were furious of course no one wants to have a child like that, plus there investment was wasted as no one, much less a wealthy nobleman, is likely to marry a... well someone like me," she concluded. Her tone was blithe but she was unable or unwilling to keep the slight tightening of pain from her voice.

"They were never really that fond of me, other than as an investment, so they tossed me out. I couldn't afford the dues at the College of course, but Albrecht, he is my master, was willing to take me on provided I would work for him," Emmaline snickered. At the time she had been disconsolate at the notion of spending years as the drudge of an old liver spotted wizard. Albrecht did expect her to clean, though his initial insistence that she cook for him had quickly withered in the face of Emmaline's incredible knack for ruining any meal she attempted to prepare.

"He is not a very powerful wizard, but he was a great teacher when it came to running scams," she chuckled. Life with Albrecht had often been unpleasant and frustrating. He was lecherous, lazy and almost completely uninterested in instructing her in magic. Most of what she had learned had been through reading in his tattered library or from other apprentices she met around the college. It had never been boring though, and she had fond memories of the schemes they had hatched and the cons they had pulled.

"As for how many people," she blew out a breath considering. It wasn't an easy question, as lying and scamming had been such a part of her life.

"Probably something like thirty big cons, like the one with the 'mining' we pulled here," she explained, "but plenty of small stuff too, passing fake coins, counterfeit cosmetics and stuff."