Ismir is a gallant mage-turned-street-kid, with a penchant for interpretive dance.
As a child, he grew up in Turmish, training as a sorcerer, however after a while that become somewhat boring and so he branched out with a few plans aimed to gain a bit of wealth. Unfortunately, despite his best efforts, these well formed plans tended to end in disaster of one sort or another, and so eventually he was forced to flee in order to prevent worse things happening to him. For a while he lived on the Pirate Isles, however a few similar close-calls from what were definitely solid plans began to be a problem, and he stowed aboard the Lira's Steps in order to get away, and hopefully change his life for the better. Despite an accidental, unrelated, bout of food poisoning that occurred and forced him to reveal his presence, the crew seemed to accept him.
Of late, he has gained a companion Shadow, who can prove quite useful in battle, has spent more time underwater than can be considered healthy, and has been putting his expert plan-forming into use to help the Steps' crew on their tasks. For some reason, these plans are rarely taken up by the crew. His most useful ability is that of being able to travel around without being seen, which is good for scouting...well, just about anything. However, he doesn't shirk from battle, and can often quickly dispatch the enemy, especially with the help of the Shadow.
Most recently, he has been learning new dance steps for a dance called The Lira's Steps. Yeah, something to do with a map that was built into the ship. He's not quite sure what this map thing could be, but everyone seems to think it's important. Something to do with some old captain of the ship or something.