The Book Of Fire/Broker
THE FATEFUL BROKER OF THE USURIOUS COIN
ORIGIN: As a Solar, the Broker was the director of the largest bank in Creation, the Bank of the Deliberative. As such, he was one of the best wheelers and dealers the Deliberative had, with friends in every direction, and many debts owed him from every class of being in Creation. Some remarked that the Dragon-Blooded and Sidereals who killed him seemed to do so with a little extra viciousness than the others...
After taking up the Neverborn on their offer, he has been tireless in establishing the tendrils of his bureaucracy throughout the Underworld. The other Deathlords are no fools, and won't let themselves be placed in a position where he can wage bureaucratic warfare upon him, but many suspect he has wiled his reach into their organizations nonetheless.
APPEARANCE: Unlike his fellow Deathlords, he foregoes the grand guignol approach, and simply appears as an earnest young merchant scholar, wrapped in the wealthiest of fabrics, perpetually smiling behind his bone-rimmed spectacles. His age is somewhat inconstant, and he varies randomly between appearing as an earnest young man and a wide-eyed, innocent seeming child. Only sometimes does the gaunt, leering skull beneath his skin show through...
PANOPLY: He carries a collection of Soulsteel coins, minted from the ghosts of those who have displeased him and whose faces are frozen on them in horrible agony, and can often be seen flipping these coins through his fingers. They number in the hundreds, and he can instantly summon them to surround him.
These floating coins follow his every mental command, and can shape themselves into armor of any design or weight, weapons of any size or shape, thick walls to shield him, bridges for him to walk across, etc. In passive defense mode, they simply swarm about them, effortlessly deflecting most attacks. They have the usual effect of attuned Soulsteel.
COMBAT TACTICS: Although he possesses the same aptitudes and capabilities as the other Deathlords, he actually detests combat. He prefers using Presence Charms to defuse attackers, and to dodge any who are willful enough to continue attacking and powerful enough to do so through the coins. He has a Dodge charm that gives him the benefit of for a scene at the cost of 3 motes, without it counting as a Charm use.
Rather than be pressed into battle, however, he will normally simply leave by vanishing. No known force has to date been able to compel him to stand and fight, and he cheerfully accepts the other Deathlords' label of "coward" for not pointlessly wasting his valuable time. Time is money, after all...
DOMAIN: He possesses sizable real estate in the Underworld, and, by pulling some strings, can easily acquire more than any other single Deathlord possesses. Many Underworld kingdoms are in-debt to him through his leasing out of various mercenary companies and sorcerous aid (all provided through fronts, of course). Through devious deals, he owns the combined Grave Goods of many formerly powerful Underworld figures; many of which he's happy to lease back to them at "reasonable" rates...
His Citadel, mockingly called the "First Underworld Bank" by his fellows, is a seemingly pleasant place, bright, clean, tastefully (if blandly) decorated, and running like clockwork. An endless legion of ghosts (mostly civil servants who committed suicide) labor around the clock to collect and calculate his assets. Deep underground is a massive Jade vault, full of all the Memoriam and Grave Goods he has swindled from various Underworld residents...
SERVANTS: This Deathlord runs his Circles of Deathknights as a business, complete with regular work reviews, YTD (Year To Death) figures, and performance quotas. Beneath this civilized facade, his Deathknights are quite terrified of him, as he rarely punishes them, but simply executes those who fail more than a couple of times by calmly throwing their MoCP into the Void, right in front of their Circlemates. You have to cut your losses on some investments, as he says...So far, he has killed more Abyssals than any other Deathlord.
GOALS: His ultimate stated goal is to expand his mercantile empire throughout the lands of the living; then, once they are dependent on his goods and services, he can manipulate market forces to drive prices into unaffordability for most of Creation. The sheer amount of poverty and despair should render entire populations, from Merchant Princes to housewives, more amenable to the Neverborn's message of Universal Suicide...
His timetable has been substantially accelerated now that the Guild has appeared. How wonderful of mortals to do half his work for him! If the Guild had not come about, then he would have had to invent something like it. He's also quite fond of the Denzik Entrepreneurs. He has Deathknight agents at work to subvert both enterprises to his purposes...
WEAKNESSES: He possesses one major exploitable flaw--a near obsession with gambling. He always plays for very high stakes, does not cheat and, so far, honors his word if he loses (which is rare); he has ceased at least one apparently important project because a champion of life bested him in a game of chance.
Some of the more suspicious Deathlords suspect that his true motivation for accepting unlife as a Deathlord was to eventually maneuver himself into a position where he could play the Incarnae themselves at the Games of Divinity, with nothing less than the destruction of Creation itself as the stakes. To this suggestion, he merely continues to smile...
