NPCs · Minor · Criminal/Espionage
The Hatchet
Shrouded in rags, this fallen foreign nobleman serves as the lethal right hand of the queen of the beggars.
“One Leg” Petra, ruler of the Market Quarter’s beggars, has several lieutenants, but none so loyal as the misshapen ruin known as “Hatchet”. Even the other beggars keep well clear of Hatchet's black, filthy skin, shunning his diseased touch. His odd, grey eyes squint blindly from beneath the yellowed rags that mask his angular features. Tattered gilt lace adorns the battered and ruined courtier’s attire hanging awkwardly off his warped frame. With curiously delicate gestures, Hatchet carefully dusts the ragged sleeves of his aged velvet coat. A ragged wig, stylish ten years earlier, covers his grimy grey hair, while an antiquated sword of curious foreign make hangs at the sinister beggar's hip, its battered scabbard covered with rust.
Hatchet never sleeps where anyone can see him, quietly sitting outside his lady’s chamber for hours every day while she rests. As he sits, he quietly mumbles to himself, muttering imprecations in some strange foreign dialect. The instant his patroness stirs from her chambers, he is at her right hand, ready to protect his queen with his strange, foreign blade.
When Hatchet is questioned about his mysterious homeland, he lies freely and enthusiastically. Other beggars have gathered a few odd facts, in between his fanciful tales: Apparently, he was a merchant in his homeland, but fled into exile after he murdered a prominent noble in some sort of duel. Miserable in his new land, he lost himself in absinthe and laudanum. He was fading away, falling into pleasant oblivion when Petra found him. Her strong hand pulled him from his despair; he found some purpose to his life again when the domineering woman took him into her service.
In the small hours of the night, Hatchet can be seen lurching awkwardly through the streets of the Market Quarter, carefully enforcing “Dame Petra’s” requirements. Very seldom does he actually draw his rusty weapon; he instead prides himself on finding more ‘imaginative’ punishments for those who would threaten his lady's authority. Area folk still whisper of the gang leader whose doxy was driven to madness by the twisted beggar’s manipulations, eventually slashing her lover’s throat; others speak of the crusading priest who was found, drunk and stinking, in the bed of a diseased slattern. Where most folk see only a disease-riddled foreign nobleman ruined by drink, the poor folk of the district suspect the truth: The creature they call Hatchet is a cold blooded killer, who takes dark pleasure from the misery he wreaks.
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Very well done. 5/5
Nice little bad guy. The Bassage Market starts to untangle its dirty secrets; will you post more about it? With additions it would make a great location, prepared for adventures on the lowest level of society, not world-shattering, but nonethless interesting - to stand against evil is always a challange, whether amongst kings and dragons, or beggars and alley thugs. If you make more of it, consider linking it together (perhaps making the original location post a Codex).
Nicely executed piece; good language and description used, nice plot compliations, and good dramatic touches. Nothing yet to add. Eventual we will have all the colorful important people of the market.
Nice little villian...
Very interesting. I like the touch of the exotic in the foreign man who serves his lady, and the sort of low justice/law that he dispences in a very twisted fashion. I think this character has a good deal of potential.
Hatchet came about after I read an unfortunate submission from some time ago, a cliched 'Drow Assassin'. It made me wonder: What would such a creature actually become in a more realistic setting? Forced to abandon everything he'd known, blinded and scorched by the glare of the sun, surrounded by an alien people that he can barely comprehend... How would he survive?
Thus Hatchet came to be, a creature that wraps his burnt and damaged skin away from the sun's glare, hides what he is, and never lets his guard down. Miserable and unable to find a place in an alien land, he falls to society's lowest rungs. Taken in by a domineering female, he finally finds a resonance with his homeland and a role he can fill.
If Hatchet were actually one of the legendary 'dark elves', how would the folk of the Market Quarter know that? A creature of ancient legend dwelling among them? Who would believe it?
Is Hatchet really a 'Drow'? Who knows? In all likelihood, he's just a foreigner with a disfiguring skin disease...
Drow or not, he is well written and well presented. As for turning cliche bad posts into decent ones, I have done that a time or three so you loose no points from me.
Nice Villian with clever, interesting but not sufficating details that links him to all sorts of possible plot hooks.
Reading through this I didn't put all the pieces together, but "drow" really pulled it all together and made it something special. I would have liked some inkling as to how he managed to 'punish' people as he does, is it connections? Psychological manipulation? Drugs? D. All of the above?
Okay, I wasn't really feeling this until I read the explanation. At first I thought it was a serviceable idea, touch of flavor to throw in, maybe a mid-level villian, but with the added fact of the drow, it has much more potential. If drow exist and are known, and he is found out, what implications will it have? Will the authorities believe he is outcast, or think he is a spy? Will they kill him immediately or imprison him? If drow exist but are not known, what will they make of him if they discover him?