JACQUESE! A rake, but kindly natured. Always lamenting the loss of “His Ship”.

WEARS an unkempt, mossy beard and fungal seaman’s coat, but thinks his hat is too plain for a captain. He covets any fine feather.

WEILDS a springlock pistol and rusted cutlass. Keeps a quaint treasure map folded in his jacket.

DANCES around the truth at all times, hemming and hawing between pulls of a noxious pipe in an accent as thick as bird-fog. He’s allergic to straightforwardness, but charming nonetheless. He kisses the hands of everyone he meets, and always has a winding, over-long sea story at the ready--each ludicrous and often contradictory, but never entirely false.

He sulks when they’re interrupted for any reason.

WALKS bandy legged and ever on a serpentine gait, each day heading out along the shoreline to poke disdainfully at the fresh flotsam. Hoping to scrounge supplies for an escape.

CURSED… He stole golden dream-silk from a vengeful Nightbotch. Now she pilots him around as he sleeps, making him appear subtly guilty of recent crimes and sowing mistrust in everyone around him. He does not recall these nocturnal schemes.

RAHVD. August. Imperial. An absolute prick. Bedecked in torn and sweat-stained regalia that he refuses to take off. “You’d just make a mess of it, see? Only Fekla may do my laundry.” No one knows who Fekla is.

HIDES a razored épée in his walking stick, a flask of fine brandy in his bootleg, and a shard of shrapnel in the ruined empathy center of his brain.

HIS SPEECH is pinched and rodential. Parsimonious with grace. Charitable with derision. All delivered in the too-polite cadence of the lifelong moneyed. Little titters and chortles tie his words together like the rumble of a distant thunderstorm sitting under every conversation. Each smile feels like a threat.

A CERTAIN AIR? Greenish pale skin, a gaunt frame. A vocal disdain for the gods. Clearly dislikes looking into the Black Glass Mirror. Tries to stay out of what little sunlight there is. Despite this, not a vampire. He DOES enjoy drinking blood, though.

DELIGHTED to have new subjects to rule, the others have long since dispensed with even the pretense of paying respect. It doesn’t make him any more likable. So he showers back-handed praise upon newcomers, treating them with disdainful courtesy up until they show less than the full measure of gracious respect due a monarch. Then they become unworthy of his notice (except for the obsessive homicidal plotting).

HUNTED. Rahvd was the newly-crowned despot of the middling coastal kingdom Rus Volgrad. His father’s passing had not been mourned overmuch. One day, having heard whispers of an uprising from the peasantry, he summoned his hedge-wizard. They devised a clever ploy by which he might subdue the populace by commanding the sea to let him walk upon Her. This, of course, did not sit well with the sea. The next morning, when the people had gathered at the shoreline, the mage’s spell failed, and the foul little king was swallowed whole by the salt.

In his absence, the kingdom threw off the shackles of tyranny and built a prosperous, happy community. The only semblance of cruelty left among them was born of a travelling sibyl who told them (for the price of ten copper shavings) that their much maligned ruler was not yet dead.

From that day to this, every second son and daughter of Volgaria has been sent into the service of the Hunters. From the hour of their birth to the hour of their death they scour every corner of the earth with singular purpose: to effect the demise of the Tyrant Rahvd. They are coming for him.

The first NPC profiles for Glimmer’s Rim. I find that it’s always fun and useful to develop a handful of characters really well when I’m building an environment as fully as I am here.

TL

ART

Capitan Jacquese by Robert Allen Burns

Rahvd by Robert Allen Burns

WRITTEN TO THE TUNE OF

Jeff Rosenstock—No Dream

Gnod—JUST SAY NO TO THE PSYCHO RIGHT-WING CAPITALIST FASCIST INDUSTRIAL DEATH MACHINE