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Dice Cold Blood (Ex3)- Characters

Sarky

Sarky

Drunken master
Pop your character sheets here.

Character backstory will net you 10 BP for character creation, giving you 25 in total.

If you're looking for something from a 2nd ed book, or a custom artifact, message me and we'll work something out.

If taking martial arts, you can have some Face for free. If you haven't learned a Form charm yet, get 2 dots of Face (You are known in select fighting circles as competent). If you have the form charm, that becomes 3 dots of Face (You are widely known as a talented fighter, and often meet people looking to be your students or challenge you). Extra Face can be earned during the game, according to your character's actions will add or subtract to that over the game.

Feel free to work out ways in which your characters have come to know about some or all the others, whether by reputation or face-to-face meeting and collaboration. Or hell, even opposition (but let's all be able to get along in the end, eh?)

Work away.

OOC thread: https://www.rpnation.com/threads/cold-blood-ex3-ooc-chat.332796/

Interest check thread: https://www.rpnation.com/threads/exalted-3rd-ed-cold-blood-interest-check.327877/

Actual game: https://www.rpnation.com/threads/cold-blood-ex3-game-thread.342379/
 
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Loker Sesthin

Caste: Night
Anima: Writhing serpents of shadow and smoke coil around Loker's body, concealing his features.
Concept: Jovial yet ruthless spymaster

Attributes
Strength: 2 Charisma: 3 Perception: 4
Dexterity: 3 Manipulation: 4 Intelligence: 3
Stamina: 2 Appearance: 2 Wits: 4

Abilities

Caste/Favoured
Awareness: 4 Bureaucracy: 4 Integrity: 3 Investigation: 3 Larceny (Supernal): 4
Linguistics: 3 Melee: 3 Presence: 3 Socialise: 3 Stealth: 3

Non-Favoured
Athletics: 1 Brawl: 2 Dodge: 2 Lore: 2 Occult: 1 Performance: 1 Resistance: 1
Survival: 1

Specialisations: Investigation: Espionage, Bureaucracy: Spy Networks, Melee: Knives, Stealth: City Streets

Merits
Resources: 2 Followers (The Cranes): 2, Influence (Haslanti League Underbelly): 2, Artifact (Widowmaker's Blessing): 3, Language (High Realm): 1, Language (Riverspeak): 1

Limit Trigger: Loker is prevented from obtaining information vital to his goals or suffers a setback due to a lack of information about the challenge he is facing.

Essence: 1 Willpower: 5
XP: 0 available/0 total Solar XP: 0 available/0 total

Intimacies
"Knowledge is Power, Power is Safety" (Principle, Positive, Defining)
The Cranes (Protective Pride) (Tie, Positive, Major)
"If my trust is betrayed, my revenge is overwhelming" (Principle, Negative, Major)
My Bookshop (Tie, positive, Minor)

Charms

Awareness
Sensory Acuity Prana
Surprise Anticipation Method

Bureaucracy
Deft Official's Way
Enigmatic Bureau Understanding

Investigation
Watchman's Infallible Eye
Inquisitor's Unfailing Notice

Larceny
Seasoned Criminal Method
Spurious Presence
Preying on Uncertainty Approach

Linguistics
Whirling Brush Method
Letter-Within-A-Letter Technique
Subtle Speech Method

Melee
Excellent Strike
Dipping Swallow Defense

Stealth
Easily-Overlooked Presence Method

Evocations

Evocations of Widowmaker's Blessing
Prey's Weakness
Hunter's Secret

Combat Statistics

Widowmaker's Blessing (Short Daiklaive)
Acc: +5 Dmg: +10L Def+ 0 OVW 3 Tags: Lethal, Melee, Balanced Withering: 12 Decisive: 7
Light Armour (Buff Jacket): Soak +3, Mobility: 0 Hardness: 0
Soak: 5 (2 unarmoured) Hardness: 0
Evasion: 3
Parry: 4

Health: [-0][-1][-1][-2][-2][-4]
Willpower: [][][][][]
Essence: 13/13 personal 28/28 peripheral (5m peripheral committed to artifact)
_________________________________________________________________________________

History

“No, please, don’t worry yourself. I already know what you’re going to ask me, and the good news is I’m more than happy to help such a... generous friend, in this time of need.”


Throughout the Haslanti League, in certain circles, if you ask the right person, you’ll hear the name Loker Sesthin. The reputation Sesthin has built for himself within those circles is fearsome, voices full of respect and tinged with fear. Loker Sesthin, they say, is a ghost. His eyes and ears are everywhere. His network of spies has riddled through the League like maggots in a rotting apple. He can get you anything. He can get in anywhere. His enemies vanish. His name is a killing word.

Upon actually meeting Loker Sesthin is, all things considered, a bit of a let-down. He has the kind of face you couldn’t pick out of a line-up, dresses like a shopkeeper and constantly wears the sort of open-hearted, trusting smile that you associate with your favourite uncle and which tends to get set upon by bandits and cutpurses in any town larger than a wide spot in the road. With a friendly hand on your shoulder and a kind word, Loker seems to be nothing more than a simple, honest, kind man, who could never have earned the almost monolithic reputation that’s sprung up around him in the last decade.


Truth be told, he hasn’t quite earned that reputation, though he has been making a fair amount of progress getting there.


Loker Sesthin is a name he chose for himself. He does not know the name his parents gave him, as he has no memory of them, and less interest. Abandoned to the freezing Northern streets of a relatively minor Haslanti town at a very young age, the Night Caste’s story is a common one – begging by day, stealing by night. Highly intelligent and naturally charismatic, Lother perfected a routine of innocence and desperation that could soften the heart of the toughest innkeeper or stall merchant – long enough for them to regret it at least, as they were swiftly robbed by the starveling who moments before seemed both too weak to stand and now nowhere to be found. Loker began attracting the right kind of attention, and it wasn’t long before a local gang of thieves recruited him into their ranks.

Though life with the street gang was brutal by any standards, Loker felt like he finally found a family. Furthermore, his natural skills at both open thievery and con artistry soon made him a favourite of the master thief, a fierce and impatient woman called Weeping Crane. An Easterner who never talked about her past (rumours varied from disgraced nobility to bastard un-Exalted child of one of the Great Houses), Weeping Crane saw the boy’s natural intelligence and set to educate him. Loker quickly learned to read and write, and once he could write he learned how to forge. As he grew to adulthood his love of sneak-thievery and pickpocketing waned; while he was an above-average thief and a competent knife-fighter from his days on the street, his true talents ran to other areas. From Weeping Crane he learned the arts of social engineering, scouting officials to bribe, advanced confidence tricks that made his childish games seem primitive at best. As he went on, he began to devise new tactics himself, and slowly learned a simple, but vital truth. One that not even Weeping Crane had seemed to grasp the full importance of, though it was as old as Creation itself:


The most valuable things you can take from someone are their secrets.


By the time the Empress disappeared five years ago, Loker was the second in command to Weeping Crane, now gone to late middle-age and content to leave more and more of the running of the day to day affairs of her little gang to Loker. Loker was successful, ambitious, and arrogant. He was content to leave the more mundane thievery to his underlings, and he devoted himself almost entirely to information brokering, forgery, and espionage. It was very lucrative and times were very good, but Loker made the mistake of all intelligent young men – he neither hid his gifts and successes nor inflated them to make his position seem unassailable. He simply allowed anyone in the criminal underworld of the League to know exactly how good he thought he was relative to them, and this attitude modelled the behaviour the younger and lower-down members of the organisation conducted themselves with. But there were larger, more organised gangs, and those gangs had territory and reputations to maintain, and no interest in a new rival. Though Loker knew some of the other gangs and thieves’ guilds were opposed to his success, he underestimated their threat, and it was almost his undoing.

The largest gang in the Haslanti League were the Ice Serpents. Organised with almost military precision, and with a membership numbering nearly two hundred, they outnumbered Weeping Crane’s minor organisation by about five to one, and they were known to take work Weeping Crane would not allow: kidnappings, assassinations and torture. These hardened killers decided the sudden ascension of a bunch of street urchins and their foreign mistress were not to be tolerated.

By chance, on the fateful night the Serpents made their move Loker himself was in a neighbouring town on business, but the Serpents’ legendary discipline had a crack, and the words of a drunken assassin reached the ears of one of his informants, who passed the information on to him. Loker had compartmentalised his network of informants from the rest of his gang for what he felt to be practical reasons, but this resulted in the warning reaching him late, as the informant had no other point of contact. By the time Loker reached the gang’s hideout it was in flames, the bodies of his adopted family scattered across the courtyard. He found Weeping Crane last, her body flanked by the corpses of two of her assassins, each with one of her knives in their hearts.

As far as anyone can tell you, that’s the last sure fact they know about Loker’s fall and return to prominence. He vanished for six months, taking the small handful of survivors of the massacre away with him. Two months before his reappearance, five Ice Serpents were found in one of their chapterhouses with their throats slit. The next week, another five in a city twenty miles away died when The roof collapsed in a storm, though the building was new. Two weeks later, a full chapterhouse, twenty Ice Serpents, died of poisoned stew.

A week later, another outlying house was raided on an anonymous tip. The Serpents not killed in the raid were executed at dawn. That was another twenty.

Between overt murder, suddenly zealous guard raids, apparent mischance and paranoid infighting, by the time Loker reappared the Ice Serpents were halved in strength, and the remaining members were all holed up in a warren of slum buildings that had served as their main base of operations. It was fortified, guarded constantly, completely impenetrable.

Loker resurfaced in a city fifty miles away from where the last of the Ice Serpents were jumping at shadows, elicting whispers from the local underworld. Everyone assumed he’d run as far as he could go, maybe even crossed the sea to try his luck on the Blessed Isle. But here he was, opening a bookshop of all things (and with what money?) and acting as though he’d simply decided to take a small holiday. One thief who’d known him from their days together in the gutter took him aside and asked him wasn’t he afraid? The Ice Serpents were under siege, he said, and would be paranoid. Maybe eager to strike at perceived threats. Shouldn’t he hide for longer, until it was safe? Loker just smiled, and grasped hands with his friend, and said nothing. The thief left Loker’s bookshop with a sense of creeping dread, as though his friend had changed terribly, become cold and strange, despite his jovial smile and his warm welcome.

The exact events of the night after Loker’s bookshop opened may never be fully known. What is known is that a figure approached the fortress of the Ice Serpents and was greeted as a friend by the watchman. Both men went inside.

One beggar reports being woken by a single, ragged scream, abruptly cut off. He says a bright light, brighter than any lantern and yet soft and strangely-coloured seemed to move from window to window in the tenement for a minute or two, and then seem to move further into the building and vanish. No other witnesses remember this detail, but all agree that there were no obvious sounds of distress from the Serpents’ makeshift fortress.

In the morning, no-one who wore the colours of the Ice Serpent gang was left alive. They had been massacred, mostly in their beds. Only one or two showed any sign of having fought their attacker, otherwise it seems each man and woman in turn died unaware anything was wrong. The word Anathema was whispered for a time, but with the turmoil in the Empire the Hunt had little time and less interest in investigating what was most likely a particularly well-executed piece of turf warfare.

People still looked to Loker Sesthin, though, as he set about rebuilding. As his new organisation, now a pure spy network he called simply the Cranes, began to grow and (so they say) infiltrate its way across the Haslanti League, the denizens of the northern criminal underworld looked to Loker Sesthin. And they wondered, and said nothing. And Loker said nothing about the Ice Serpents either.


He just smiled.


Loker Sesthin is male, and in his early 30s. He is of average height, roughly 5’9”. He has dark blond hair and pale grey eyes, common among northerners. His skin is pale and he is of a chubby build, though not grossly overweight. He seems to move with a quiet grace that his stature would not suggest. He is clean-shaven and moon-faced, his expression friendly and welcoming. He is quick to laugh, and has a reputation for good humour and kindness despite the dark rumours surrounding his return and new success. He prefers working behind the scenes to active thievery or information-gathering, so he is usually found running his bookshop.

Loker is first and foremost a pragmatist. He genuinely prefers mutually beneficial arrangements and tries to be kind and courteous to everyone, but this is in part because upsetting potential assets or clients is bad business. He has a distaste for violence, and has forbidden the Cranes from taking contracts that involve assassination, torture or kidnapping, but this is also a good way to avoid attention. Though violence is distasteful it is sometimes necessary, and Loker prefers to outmaneuver and overwhelm opposition with a shocking display of brutality to deter any other problems, but only as an absolute last resort. This will either be through manipulation of local authorities or rivals of his target to strike, or if necessary he will go forth personally and unleash the full might of the Night Caste upon those he would destroy. He is fiercely protective of his Cranes and will brook no risk to them. He is also still wildly ambitious, though he has learned harsh lessons; in time he aims to have a spy network to rival any Great House, stretching across the North, but he will not risk another family.

The Cranes number approximately 40-50 operatives, all mortals, who are embedded in key points in the local area and Haslanti League. They take on occasional thieving work but are almost all con-men, saboteurs and spies, feeding information back to their master either as part of a commissioned strike or to be kept and sold to the highest bidder when the time comes. They are forbidden to kill except in self-defense, and Loker’s punishments for this are savage, though otherwise he is a kind, fair and careful master. All members of the Cranes have been previously subject to a Read Intentions action in the past and so are all covered for the purposes of Enigmatic Bureau Understanding.

_________________________________________________________________________________
Custom artifact: Widowmaker's Blessing

Artifact: Widowmaker’s Blessing (Artifact 3)

Class: Short Daiklaive

The story of the Night Caste assassin known as The Widowmaker is lost to the ages, for her ruthless efficiency in the early days of the First Age corroded into a hideous, calculating brutality and thirst for blood so strong that her Lunar mate and Solar Circle took it upon themselves to put her down and erase her name from the annals of the Deliberative long before the bloody final days of the Usurpation. Though she is lost, her tomb long-hidden and her name erased, the dreaded instrument with which she earned her own death always seemed to evade capture or destruction, disappearing and resurfacing across Ages and Directions in the hand of those whose skill and intent gave them the ability to put it to use. It has ended empires, silenced prophets, drank the blood of entire noble lines and its history post-Usurpation has included the final deaths of several of the Chosen.

Lost shortly before the fall of the Shogunate, it re-entered history in the hands of the infamous Lunar anathema known as the Nightshade, though where he got it from is unknown. The Nightshade put it to work in vendetta against the Dragon-Blooded of the Immaculate Order in the Riverlands and the northern coasts, but his overconfidence was his undoing. The Blessing was pried from his dying hand by the Immaculate Peleps Garan twenty years ago in Gethamane, though the strange and terrible wounds the Dynast suffered in the duel before the Lunar miscalculated and died would not stop bleeding, and in her turn Garan finally succumbed to her injuries despite the best efforts of the mortal physicians who attended her and her own Exalted nature. The blade was stolen from the corpse and disappeared into the northern criminal underworld, but it has come to possession of a new owner, albeit one less apt to its use than it would like…


The Widowmaker’s Blessing doesn’t look like much at first, appearing to be a long, slender dagger or stiletto about 20 inches long, and with a blade too narrow and fragile-looking to be of practical use in a fight. Closer inspection reveals the blade to be a composite, with the blade being made of black jade but the breathtakingly sharp edges are soulsteel, tapering down to an almost invisible point. Despite its apparent fragility the blade is as robust as any short artefact weapon and can parry the mightiest blows, and can slash or stab with equal ease in the hands of its wielder. The weapon has an eerie, almost hypnotic quality, and the slick black jade seems to absorb any blood that comes in to contact with it. Though said to be cursed by its long-dead maker, it is unquestionably an unparalleled instrument of murder in the dark.


A Solar Exalt who bonds with this terrible weapon can, over time, access the following Evocations, though other darker powers may hide within the blade (if the rumours are true, some are not to the owner’s benefit…):




Prey’s Weakness

Cost: 3m, 1wp Mins: Essence 1

Type: Supplemental, Mute

Keywords: Withering-Only

Duration: Instant

Prerequisites: None

Effect: Like a riptide or smothering smoke, the blade of the killer will not be denied, seeming to slip through even the very smallest chinks or imperfections in the victim’s armour. This Evocation supplements a Withering attack; the attack ignores all soak from armour.


Hunter’s Secret

Cost: 10m, 1 wp Mins: Essence 1

Type: Simple

Keywords: Mute, Perilous

Duration: One Scene

Pre-requisites: None

Effect: The killer is a shadow in darkness; the night will not betray her to her prey. Once per scene the Solar may use this Evocation so long as the Blessing’s naked blade is drawn. This Evocation generates a cone of invisible, quieting essence around the naked blade of the Blessing for the rest of the scene. Within short range (as in the range band) of the blade, there is absolute silence – sound from outside cannot penetrate this dead zone and there is no sound within to travel out. This is a double-edged sword, as the wielder (along with anyone else in the area of effect) automatically fails any Awareness checks to do with the sense of hearing regardless of Awareness charms they may have, as there is simply nothing to hear. Anyone in the aura who is not the wielder can attempt listen checks if enhanced by charms or other magic, otherwise they fail automatically. The dead zone moves with the wielder so long as the naked blade is drawn and in the wielder’s hand. The aura of silence will end immediately if the blade is sheathed, the bearer is disarmed, or as soon as a Decisive attack made with the blade deals at least one point of damage. This Evocation may be reset by using Widowmaker’s Blessing for a decisive attack which kills the target.


The Icicle Melts

Cost: 6m Mins: Essence 2

Type: Supplemental

Keywords: Decisive-Only, Perilous

Duration: Instant

Pre-requisites: Prey’s Weakness

Effect: Sure as the melting snow, the touch of this blade brings slow death. This Evocation supplements a Decisive attack: so long as the attack inflicts at least one level of lethal damage, the victim suffers from bleeding (as per the rules on p.174 of the Core book). Mortals who suffer the effects of this Evocation will continue to bleed unless given supernatural aid (even a Medicine Excellency will suffice), any mundane rolls to stanch their bleeding slow the bleeding to 1lhl per day but cannot stop it completely. Exalted and other supernatural beings who do not normally suffer the effects of bleeding out still fall victim to this charm, however their bleeding can be stanched by even a mundane Intelligence+Medicine roll, difficulty 2.

Widowmaker

Cost – Mins: Essence 3

Type: Permanent

Keywords: Dual

Duration: Permanent

Prerequisites: Hunter’s Secret, The Icicle Melts

Effect: The Widowmaker was feared in the First Age as a murderer of Exalted, and as the darker depths of her weapon’s power reveal themselves it becomes clear how and why. As the bond between the cursed blade and the owner reaches new depths, the dirk gives up new powers of murder to the assassin who will put it to work. This Evocation acts as a permanent enhancement for all prior Evocations gained from Widowmaker’s Blessing. It has the following effects:

· When activating Prey’s Weakness, the Solar may spend an additional two motes to ignore natural soak in addition to armour.

· After resetting Hunter’s Secret by slaying a victim with Widowmaker’s Blessing, further activations of the Evocation in the same scene have a reduced cost of 5m, 0wp.

· The Icicle Melts loses the Perilous tag. Furthermore, the Solar can spend an additional 1wp when using this evocation. This converts the damage dealt from lethal to aggravated. Mortals dealt a wound from an attack supplemented by this evocation collapse into convulsions and die in mere minutes without immediate supernaturally-enhanced medical help. Exalted struck with this weapon bleed at the rate of 1 lethal health level per hour unless they gain supernatural medical aid (something as basic as a Medicine Excellency will suffice) or the Widowmaker chooses to end the effect.
 
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Name: Luc Sejanus (WIP)
Anima: His body limns with the stark violet, gold, and phosphorus of dawn, shining as the Sun's flare in the dark.
Concept: Apollonian ubermensch with an utter contempt for Immaculate doctrine and his own mortality.

Attributes
Strength: oooo Charisma: ooo Perception: oo
Dexterity: ooo Manipulation: ooo Intelligence: ooo
Stamina: oooo Appearance: ooo Wits: ooo

Abilities

Caste/Favored
Brawl: oooo
Awareness: oooo
Resistance: ooooo
Thrown: o
War: oo
Athletics: ooo
Integrity: oo
Occult: ooo
Presence: oooo
Ride: oo

Non-favored
Survival: oo
Lore: oo
Stealth: o

Specialties
Fighting Drunk (Brawl), Grandstanding (Presence), Rampaging Intimidating Passion (Presence),

Merits
Eidetic Memory oo, Direction Sense o, Language (Skytongue) o, Language (Local Northern tongues) o, Resources oo, Artifact (Traveller's Staff, pg. 601) oo

Limit Trigger
Luc is insulted, belittled, or deliberately frustrated by another character.

Essence
1 (13 Personal/33 Personal)

Willpower
7

Intimacies
Finding Belonging (Defining), Violence being Joy (Major), Mother (Hate),

XP
0/0

Solar XP
0/0

Charms
Ox-Body Technique
Ox-Body Technique
Front-Line Warrior's Stamina
Essence-Gathering Temper
Willpower-Enhancing Spirit
Body-Mending Meditation
Durability of Oak Meditation
Harmonious Presence Meditation
Graceful Crane Stance
Monkey Leap Technique
Sensory Acuity Prana
Fists of Iron Technique
Ferocious Jab
Heaven Thunder Hammer
Thunderclap Rush Attack

Combat Statistics

Health
[-0][-1][-1][-1][-2][-2][-2][-2][-4][Incap]
Willpower
[][][][][][][]
Essence
13/13 Personal, 33/33 Peripheral

Bonus Points
4pts - 2 dots Willpower
4pts - 1 Dexterity
3pts - 1 Intelligence
2pts - 2 Resistance
1pts - 1 Awareness
1pt - 1 Brawl
1pt - 1 Occult
1pt - 1 Presence

"Do you not?"

Silver spoons, oppressive mothers, and the suffocating walls of countless academies and glorified creches. You know the kind. Prisons for the spawn of matriarchs and patriarchs focusing on the prime wunderkind instead of the leftovers. Thirteen years under the rigors of cultured disdain and the cane of caring teachers, Luc led a lonely life. Well, Luc isn't his real name, but it's the one he adopted after leaving the Isle and burned Her Glorious Martyr's School of Correction to the ground. An honest mistake, really. He'd charmed his way into Sensei Miho's kimono and things just spiraled out from there. Wax candles, cobra whiskey, you know the drill.

What's to say about a man who accidentally threw it all away? Nothing, idiot. That's what Mother'd say. He caught a boat out of Duc Hue and fled North. This is before the Sun even graced his life with so much as a sneeze in his general direction. Luckily, no one died in the fire, so he's got that going for him. Mother cut him off completely afterward. Some loophole in the byzantine laws of the Thousand Scales and a Lower House ribbing by some jackass relative placed sole restitution of that hallowed academy on his figuratively broken back.

He passed the tributary states and the satrapies with little issue until he hit Inok's Fork. Despite the utter contempt of the Realm following close behind and the loss of the high life, Luc took to the world with a will and an infuriatingly likeable smile. He tended bar, sold his talents as a linguist (and pugilist), and, in one infamous occasion, became the great chief of a vile band of icewalkers.

All of this ended terribly. But why bother worrying!

Somehow, Luc was christened as a newly Exalted Solar of the Dawn Caste a year into his exodus. This has widely been condemned as a horrid idea by the gods and his Circlemates. Striving ever northward to the Hslanti and relative freedom from the reach of the Realm. There is no occasion where Luc will not bring the Sun's Own Brilliance to bear. The world needs to know. Especially, someday, Mother.

Even in endless months of night, there rises a new Sun where Luc walks. He's a tower of a man. An Apollonian with thick, black hair, blue eyes, a snide sense of humor, a dashing laugh, and...wait, I had something for this...
 
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  • Name: Garel Gotira
    Caste: Zenith
    Caste: Wandering Sifu
    Anima: A flock of golden nightingales burst forth from around him.
    Supernal Ability: Lore

    Though they are above such menial things, the Immaculate Dragons cannot help but be associated with material wealth. Craftsmen everywhere hope to emulate the perfect example of Pasiap, when the crops grow strong, Sextes Jylis's hand is seen to be a work, regardless of his actual influence, and when a ship makes it safely across the waves, the captain will give thanks to Daan'ad. Though such devotion is heretical, it is a heresy that many Immaculate monks will tolerate, for it strengthens their influence and that of the Dragons themselves. When the Immaculates are thought of in these terms, the misguided mortals who worship them cannot help but think og Daan'ad as the most capricious. Trade across the Inner Sea can be a source of greater wealth than any craftsmanship or harvest, but it can all fall apart in one stormy night.

    Garel Gotira was born, as they say, with a silver spoon in his mouth. His father was a wealthy Patrician, a merchant captain sailing spices between An-Teng and Harborhead for House Nellens. He had tutors and wet nurses, he had toys and training, he had everything short of the thing that mattered most of all, the blood of the dragons. Then came a day when everything changed. It had started like all the others, the sun rising in the east and bathing the Imperial Mountain in gold, the sound of the sea and the gulls waking him from his sleep, and the soft feeling of silk around him. It was only in the evening, as the sun sank into the sea beyond the Western Isles far away that news reached them that his father hand been taken by the Lintha, his soul, body, and cargo were forfeit and their fortunes ruined.

    Where does a young man turn when his life falls down around him? Why, to the Faith of course, to the Immaculate Philosophy with their rigorous training and promise of enlightenment. It helped, though meditation, lectures, and harsh drills, he began to move on and see that this life could have a meaning beyond what his old life had had. His perspective changed, though, once he was judged old enough to offer training and guidance those new hopefuls who joined the Order. In this did he find his true purpose, though one man's enlightenment is a great thing, how much greater is not the enlightenment of all mankind?

    Exaltation came to him late in life. He was an accomplished man by then, dozens of Immaculates called him 'sifu,' he had even had the privilege of guiding a pair of lost eggs who had chosen the razor rather than the coin to find peace and their place in the world. He was not yet old, though, and rather than grow old in a monastery on the Isle as a minor abbot somewhere, he chose to walk the length and breadth of the North, spreading what wisdom he could and bringing its people close the the Realm that was their only bulwark against Anathema, Raksha, and the very living dead.

    This night that would change his life as radically as the day he learned of his father's death began as his nights began in those days. After a meal of steamed rice, fish and vegetables, he lay his aching old bones down on a simple cot that would have seemed thin and threadbare to a man with twice as much fat on his bones as Gotira. The howling of the winds, the last chirps of the nightingales, and the creaking of the wooden shack the villages let him use while he was there began lulling him asleep. As a young man, he would slumber as soon as his head touched his pillow, but it was many years since that had been the case. The years made themselves known, then many things he had seen and done playing over and over in his mind while his body stubbornly refused to find rest.

    Perhaps this was the reason he woke when the sounds changed, though no one else seemed to notice. Perhaps that was the reason he rose and took up both his sword and his cane rathern than turn over on the other side and hope everything would be better in the morning. Perhaps it was simply that a higher power called him and placed him between the innocent and the dead. For it was they who came, the dead, in their shambling masses, and though he raised his voice well in time, though he set the beacon alight, and though he kicked in his neighbor's door, hardly anyone else came out to protect the village. He was skilled with his sword, perhaps more so than mortals had a right to be, but against the shambling hord before him, he might as well have been a novice still wet behind the ears.

    And yet, he stood tall, threw aside his cane, gripped his sword, and took up the proper position. He drew a line in the dirt before him as if to signify an impenetrable border between the village and the darkness. They came, and he fought. At first with only the strength of a tired, old man, then as life flowed back into him, as a young man at the prime of his life, then as ten men, then at last, the sun burst forth on his forehad, and he fought with the very strength of the Anathema.

    The village was saved, but his soul and name was damned. So he wanders on, offering what wisdom and protection he can throughout the North.

    Appearance
    A tall, middle-aged man with his hair gathered in a single thin braid reaching to the small of his back. He dresses in simple clothes that offer freedom of movement.

 
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