DK/TheHundredfoldExecutionerofInnocence

Name:The Hundredfold Executioner of Innocence
Caste:Midnight
Nature:Survivor
Anima:A gallows surrounded by hundreds of tiny ebon crows.
Concept: Master executioner in life and unlife

Attributes:
Strength 3, Dexterity 5, Stamina 3
Charisma 1, Manipulation 5, Appearance 3
Perception 2, Intelligence 3, Wits 2

Abilities:
Athletics 3, Awareness 2, Endurance 3, Linguistics 2 (Low Realm, Old Realm, Riverspeak), Lore 2, Melee 5 (Grimcleaver +2), Occult 3, Performance 2, Presence 5 (Intimidation +2), Resistance 2

Backgrounds: Artifact 3, Liege 3, Necromancy 2, Resources 3, Underworld Manse 2, Whispers 4

Virtues:
Compassion 2, Conviction 4, Temperance 3, Valor 2

Willpower: 7
Health: -0,-1,-1,-1,-1,-2,-2,-2,-2,-2,-2,-4,Incap
Essence: 3
Essence pool: 16/39(28)

Charms:

Athletics
Raiton's Nimble Perch

Endurance
Ghost Armor Prana
Ox-Body x 2

Melee
Elegant Flowing Deflection
Fluttering Moth Defense
Hundred Razor Circle

Furious Blade
Savage Shade Style
Artful Maiming Onslaught

Presence
Elegant Tyrant's Majesty
Soul-Flaying Gaze
Heart-Stopping Mien

Necromancy
Hungry Creeping Shadow
Iron Countermagic

Equipment: Various uniforms, baggage, etc., Grimcleaver (Exquisite Reaper of Blood), Superheavy Armor

Combat:
Base initiative: 7
Soak: 19B/15L/14A (in armor)
Parry: 12
Attacks:
Grimcleaver: Spd 12, Acc 14, Dmg 11L, Def 12, Rate 4

Appearance

The Executioner cuts a tall and lean figure. His straight, dark hair hangs about his face in harsh angles, kept mercilessly short. His face is not unpleasing, with a strong chin and a sharp nose. His eyes are a dark brown shading towards black, his skin a bleached coffee color in his death. His voice is quiet, his mannerisms deliberate and measured.

In combat he typically wears a suit of heavy soulsteel plate draped with a tattered black cloak. Beneath the plate he is most often in a variant of his old executioner's uniform, a fancy jacket and pants affair complete with golden inlay on the shoulders and inseams and high, well-made boots. It amuses his deathlord to see him dress in this way, and so a number of similar uniforms have been provided. Most are covered with bloodstains that never quite seem to come out.

Story

Do you want to hear about my life?

Even calling it that feels wrong, now. Looking back over the years, it seems I was always involved more with death than life. Sometimes by choice, sometimes by circumstance.

I am no longer sure there is a difference.

I never walked the streets of Sijan. I never even knew anyone rich enough to be buried there, born as I was in one of the Hundred Kingdoms, a bastard offshoot of a once great state ruled over by a petty dynasty and their retinue of equally ridiculous nobles. I never trained in the arts of death. I never wanted to know them.

I was never a cruel man. I was kind to my wife and our children, two girls that would be of marrying age now, just winding the bridal wreaths in their hair, courting the young men. I never beat them, rarely ever raised my voice. I provided for us as best we could, though my fields were not great and our harvests were small, meager things. Perhaps, even then, the touch of death was on me. Perhaps the fields shuddered and withered at my touch.

I was never an ambitious man. It was pure chance that made me one of the first over the aging king's walls when the Revolution came and a fit of ridiculous theatricality on the part of one of its merchant leaders that led me to be his executioner. I can still remember the way the king looked. That tyrant who had squeezed and threatened us for years flopped like a beached trout when the burghers hurled him onto the scaffold, great chins wobbling as he pissed himself out of madness or fear or age. At the time, I could think of nothing but my anger, but the cheering of the crowd, that roaring command. As my battered axe crashed down on his exposed neck, the crowd groaned, screamed like a rutting beast, but I felt no pleasure in the act. I felt only as if I had done my job.

I never enjoyed it. This too is important. All too many do, but I never did. I simply got used to the task. The king was the first. Then came other nobles allied with the king and their agents. Then came the first leader of the Republic. Then more and more, people I had never seen or heard of but that were undoubtedly traitors to the state. The crowds loved me, cheered for me, reviled me, spat at me, cheered again, a cycle I could never fathom. Through it all, I felt nothing, only a blank need to complete the job. The graves grew bigger. My uniform sprouted new medals, new tangles of bright thread. On my increasingly rare visits home, I woke screaming in the night. My wife looked at me with eyes full of terror even as she held me close. My children shied away from me. They had no friends; their former playmates whispered about the monster of the court and fled, returning only to hurl stones.

I never meant to do it. I didn't know. I swear by the false gods of Creation and by the nameless dead things that command me now, I never would have done it if I had known. I was not a cruel man. I- I had no choice but to numb myself. To stop seeing who they put in front of me, to shut my ears to the screams and the pleas for mercy and the curses.

It was just a routine day. Treason afoot in the Republic, a village arrested. Screams. The repeated rise and fall of the axe. Hot blood splattering my face, a burning ache in my arms. A blank gaze that saw nothing, on and on and on through the hot harvest afternoon.

Did they do it to test me? Purely by accident? I do not know.

Did she scream my name? Did the children wail for their father? I do not know. Perhaps that is best. I had seen everything and I had seen nothing. Lost in my killing trance, I did the deed as easily as a child plucking the petals from a flower.

I swear to you, I did not know what I did, and therein lies my damnation.

That fact was worse than stumbling into the smoking remains of our village, than finding what was left of them stinking in a mass grave a mile from the keep. It had been days since I had killed them, and their eyes were stark, accusing. My faith in the Republic cracked, shattered. At that moment, for the first time, I allowed myself to see everything. I screamed, and part of me wonders if I have ever stopped.

The Sixteenth Session of the Republic Parliament was in session when I shattered the door to splinters, and in my eyes they saw all they needed to know. I was a man grown so good at his job that he could kill his family without batting an eye. What hope had they?

Eventually I collapsed under a pile of corpses, my axe splintering beneath me, my life ebbing out of a hundred seeping wounds, secure in my knowledge that I had single-handedly brought down the government in the most direct way possible. I could not atone for my actions, but at least I could have my revenge.

That's when I heard the voices.

I had once tried to make life. I planted my seed in earth and woman alike, and both failed - my crops burned to ash, my children rotting in the ground. Everything I touched died with an efficiency that was almost artistic. My country was in shambles, hundreds of its people dead by my hand, and yet I remained, a blade hardened in the forge, a perfect tool for killing.

I had to take the offer. After realizing what I was capable of, there was no other choice. What else could I have been put on this world to do? What alternative could there be, for a man like me? I had to accept my role or go mad, and my mind was and is too strong. If my sanity could survive the death of my family, it could survive anything. I could survive anything.

The darkness flowed around me, touched me. I heard whispers in the dark, low and intimate and undoubtedly mad. They taught me such things, tore the caul from my eyes... the Darkness embraced me like my wife once had, let me slip into its arms. It was cold. So cold, but it lived even in its death.

Whoever took charge after my rampage wasn't sentimental; we were thrown, killers and executioner, into one large hole, covered hurriedly with dirt, and left to rot. By the time I clawed my way out of the mass grave, I was already his, reborn from a reeking womb under the hot night sky.

You wonder why I tell you these things. Why now, of all times? I tell you because I want you to understand. Because I feel like I owe you something for fighting so fiercely, and because you'll tell no one.

I'll make it fast, I promise. I am not a cruel man. I was never a cruel man.

I don't enjoy this. I don't hold anything against you.

I am not a cruel man.

I'm only doing my job.

Comments

Note that this isn't quite a starting build... about 30-40 XP were pumped into this guy... unfortunately I just can't remember where. -DK