Today’s snippet, titled “No Rest for the Wicked, Part One”, is a piece I wrote about an NPC in my Pathfinder Campaign (sort of the “King Maker” adventure path). The intention behind this was to illustrate events occurring in the world, but away from the PCs. They’re supposed to be writing their own pieces about actual in-game events. We shall see if any materialize.
Be forewarned, there are mature themes and naughty language below.
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As he leaned back in his chair, stroking his bare belly, with his fingers tracing the intricate black ink designs, it was apparent that Dovan was scheming again. Topper Red was not the brightest paint on the palette, but he had learned a few things since joining up with the Stag Lord’s gang and rarely was Dovan more dangerous than when he looked just so utterly innocuous. As much as could a tattooed murderer, at any rate. Reluctantly, Topper Red shook his cup of marked bones and sent a quick prayer to Caden Cailen or any other trickster God who might be watching and willing to keep him from losing a small fortune tonight.
“Ha! Double-aughts, boy-o. You owe me another thirty silver!”
Topper Red sank down in his chair, dropping his forehead to the table.
“Pay up, you whinging little gash!” Dovan’s fetid breath washed over him, punctuated with droplets of hot spittle. “Lost fair and clear, ya did!”
Nodding, though he did not lift his head, Topper Red pushed his last three gold pieces across the split log table. “Aye. Bleeding Hells, I really did, didn’t I?”
Dovan’s glee at committing what amounted to highway robbery was immense. “You’re absolute shite at this game, Top. Why don’t you go play dollies with Auchs – its a game a mite closer to your skill.”
Topper Red scowled at the very idea. Auchs was child-like in the head, but he had the body of a big beast and a black soul. The scenarios he liked to act out with his bone-corn cob-raffia twine dolls was disturbing – many were punctuated with simulated sexual abuses and most of them ended with a splat of his favorite red pepper sauce in lieu of actual blood.
“Any one gonna lend this little bitch a few silver to keep him in the game?”
Wincing, Topper Red wanted to shake his head and gesticulate wildly, shooing off any one who even thought about tossing him a few coins. Fortune was on his side – for once – and no one offered a groat.
There was a long pause. Dovan’s gaze shifted from face-to-face around the table. Without looking up, Topper Red could tell that the others were all avoiding eye contact with the Stag Lord’s former righthand man.
Across the table, Ayles Megesen slurped from his tin cup, long and loud and slow; there was a quiet, disconcerting hatred in his gaze that gave most every one chills. Dirty Jeb, Ayles’ filthy little brother, lifted one meaty thigh from his rickety chair and let loose a mighty, noxious, fart. Sighing, Cragger Kench, took the opportunity to scooch his log away from the table and draught himself another tankard of that piss-pour ale they’d found a few weeks back.
Some supposedly wealthy wizardly-type had crossed a trio of the Stag Lord’s minions in his fancy-pants wagon with a queer purple-maned mule. There were a bunch of trinkets, a few magical doo-dads, two kegs of weak ale, and a bunch of missing tidbits for which the Stag Lord had made Vin pay for, dearly. The first keg of ale had given everyone in the tower – except the big bossman, who preferred his own stash of liquor, wine, mead, and grog, and Akiros, who never imbibed – brownleg for days. Fat Norry and Cragger were the only two who had any taste for it; iron stomachs and granite heads.
“Guess you’re out, Top. Go get me a bite of pastry from storage, if this fat bastard ain’t already taken ‘em all.”
“I ain’t,” Fat Norry said, rolling his eyes as he lifted a greasy rabbit leg to his mouth. “They wasn’t very good no how. All crumby an’ salty.”
Beaky was grumbling in his pen across the room. He probably hadn’t been fed in a day or more, but Topper was not going to be the one to approach the big boss for permission to toss some of their precious meat stores to the beast. He wasn’t going to be the one to approach the Stag Lord for anything, ever, if he had his own way about it.
Topper Red shoved away from the table and headed toward the main storage room. From the second floor, he could hear quiet sobs. He winced, praying that the Stag Lord was already stone dead drunk tonight because if that poor girl’s cries woke him – it would get ugly. Ayles had had a bit of fun with her; after Jex, Cragger and Norry had taken a turn with her. Unfortunately for her, Ayles wasn’t much for rape. His proclivity for torture was well-known amongst the Stag Lord’s crew; Topper Red himself had emptied his belly a handful of times after accidentally stumbling upon Ayles “exploring” the anatomies their fallen enemies while they still lived. And screamed. And bled.
Dear fucking Gods, did they bleed.
“Outta the way, kid.”
“Huh?” Topper Red hardly had time to press his back up against the wall, stepping out of the path just in time to avoid a blow from a big armored shoulder. “Where are you going, Jenner?”
“None of your business, kid. On an errand.”
The big Varisian mercenary did not miss a beat, his heavy boots crunching noisily as he departed. Topper Red did not like Jenner very much, but then, when he stopped to consider it, he didn’t really like any of his comrades-at-arms. Ayles was a sick, twisted sadist. His brother, Jeb, was a foul-mouthed, dirty-fighting, never-bathing son of a whore; mean as he was ugly. Cragger, a talented cutpurse from Mivon, had at least been interesting to talk to – before the Stag Lord caught him with a bottle of wine he hadn’t been given permission to drink and beat his brain half-in. Now he could barely speak some days and even on the good ones, mostly all he did was bitch about his headaches. Norry was dull as a book, unless you fancied listening to him go on and on in ecstatic, drool-inducing detail about the fancy food he had seen and helped make in the Lord’s kitchens back home in Isam. And Jex the Snitch had earned his name too often, creeping around like a spider to whisper in the Stag Lord’s ear. Inevitably, his words – true or false – got someone in trouble.
Worse than that lot were Auchs and Dovan, two of the Stag Lord’s closest lieutenants; Dovan and Auchs.
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Note: Image is “Elk skull and antlers” by Zulfikar from SXC.hu