OOC: NPC gallery

[Dallen Andair]

Name: Sedona
Occupation: Gewehr infiltrator and messenger
Description: A somewhat striking woman in her late thirties, with black hair, dark skin and brown eyes. She's athletically springy and of average height. Almost always in basic day to day wear for whatever city she's in at the time, only changing into "work clothes" when she's on mission. Rarely, if ever, visibly armed. Sedona is in the business of infiltration and information gathering. When a mission is planned for a Gewehr merc, likely the information he or she gets came from Sedona or someone like her. She's a stupendous actress and could only be called a master at remaining unseen while on the move. Her job is to get in, gather all the intel she can, and get out and deliver the intelligence to her superiors so the more "active" mission isn't going in blind. Wet work is not her profile, though shes just as capable as any other Gewher in a fight if she must. No Gewehr with a brain in his head thinks her job isn't important, as they well know it's likely they'd be dead without it. Combat, assassination and other assorted "active" missions are not in her purview. In fact, shes often said that if she has to draw a weapon, she screwed up somewhere. Needless to say, it was been a very long time since she's drawn her pistol in anger.

She also serves as a messenger and go-between to Gewehr operatives and cells in the field, bringing updated orders and other information to those that need it. Sedona knows most, if not all, of the Gewehr safehouses in whichever city she's in, has the ear of much of the chain of command, and is a general goldmine of information. Were she not proven to be completely loyal, and so capable in her field, she'd likely have been killed years ago on the grounds of knowing so much. She also serves as the "drop point" for fellow members of "the Organization" to leave messages for the organization, warnings, updates on missions, and word of prospective recruits.

Sedona's cover varies from place to place. From wandering merchant to displaced wealthy widow and from woman of the night to farmhand, Sedona is a woman of a thousand faces.

Personality wise, Sedona is actually a rather nice woman to be around. She's always polite (unless she's letting her hair down with a friend or two) is very diplomatic and is actually rather playful. She's wholly devoted to the organization, and takes a great deal of pride in her work. Cheery and friendly. Of course, many other qualities, perks and traits are simply part of whatever role she's in.

[Graybeard]

There have been several recent references to important NPC/secondary-PC Faye as "the old woman," and while "old" is in the eye of the beholder (she's probably older than most readers of Errant Story, but younger than I am...), I don't think it's entirely accurate to describe her as "old." It strikes me, however, that I've never explained just what she actually does look like, so to remedy that:

Name: Faye Sorensen

Age: 48

Occupation: Accountant for Kugelheim Shipping and Transport, Inc., when back in Kugelheim; also member of the Gewehr brass, and Layla's mother

Appearance: Faye is of studiedly nondescript appearance, looking more or less her age but no more. She is of average height and, for her age, average weight or slightly less, with brown/hazel eyes and brown hair with just a hint of gray in it, commonly worn in a typically middle-aged hairdo. She prefers to dress well, but never flamboyantly. She's the kind of person who passes unnoticed in a crowd, which is just the way she likes it. Her personal habits are similarly unassuming; she does enjoy the occasional cigar, but almost never appears in public with one, to the considerable relief of her daughter.

History: Faye is at least a third-generation member of the Gewehr, the daughter of a former Wraith and a woman of Kugelheim who didn't do many Gewehr missions herself (the Gewehr wasn't yet ready to accept women as full Wraiths when she was young), but was well aware of what was going on, and worked in the same kind of front operation as Faye herself does. (Unusually for those with life stories like hers, both of her parents died of natural causes a few years back.) As with her daughter, her intelligence and Wraith-like skills were noticed very early in her life, and the Gewehr had learned, in the thirty years since Faye's mother was young, that having some female operatives could be useful. She was accordingly recruited as a member as soon as it was feasible, rising all the way to Wraith, and eventually even to the senior brain trust of the guild. Along the way, she met and, very discreetly, fell in love with the somewhat older "Mr. Gabriel," another rising Gewehr star and eventual really big shot -- he's one of the few characters to have appeared in both Errant Story and (as a brief cameo) Errant Road. Their plans to marry, however, were interrupted first by Faye's unexpected pregnancy (with Layla), and then by their mutual realization that having a child left altogether too many opportunities for blackmail and extortion against someone as far up in the Gewehr hierarchy as Gabriel already was. They accordingly made a sober, hard-headed decision to break off the relationship (although they remain on good terms to this day), leaving Faye to raise her daughter as a single mother and construct an elaborate fiction about a husband who died before Layla was born. Gabriel was fully complicit in this scheming, and even arranged the death of an ... inconvenient ... person who, it was implied but never stated, had been Faye's spouse. The fiction has withstood the test of time, and the only people left who know the identity of Layla's father are Gabriel and Faye themselves; even Layla doesn't know the truth, although she wonders sometimes. This little dodge allowed Faye to continue rising through the Gewehr ranks while she "worked" as a single mother at one or another of the Gewehr's front organizations, in which role she still finds herself today.

Abilities: Faye has, or at least had when she was younger (she's a bit out of practice now), all of the usual skills of a Gewehr Wraith -- crack shot, lethal in hand-to-hand combat, ability to run and climb and hide, and so on. She is particularly adept with poisons (do not cast aspersions on this woman's cooking...), although she rarely has occasion to use them any more. Unlike her daughter, she has no known magical abilities, developed or latent.

[Jack Rothwell]

Currently a character in an origin story for Jade in the fanfic section viewtopic.php?f=34&t=1237 (That doesn't mean we won't see him in Errant Road though). This'll be reposted and expanded in the main character thread if Leo comes into the main story of errant road.

Name: Leo Landau

Age: 26 (in the origin story)

Occupation: Thief for the Silver Hands

Appearance: Stands at an average 5"10, dashingly handsome (and boy does he know it), he has sharp, well proportioned features which are framed by a shoulder length mass of silky black hair. Sometimes goes in for the 'zorro' type moustache. He wears typical merc clothing on a day to day basis, usually investing in darker shades of colour. A thin, wiry build.

(Nutshell) History: Somewhat of a foppish upbringing in the richer districts Port Lorrel. Leo hated 'high society' with a passion. People who knew him put this down to his incredibly destructive relationship with his father, a wealthy, permanently disatisfied man who seemed bound and determined to drink himself to death before the age of fifty. Leo's juvenille acts of rebellion quickly turned criminal soon after he got out of his teens, after that it was only a matter of time before he found himself arrested. Following his release he had a confrontation with his father, and in the ensuing argument was disowned and thrown out the house for good. Despite the initial hardship of adaption Leo eventually found himself achieving success, particulary as a conman. He fell in with Rufus Lamenter's group of thieves 4 years previously and has never looked back since.

Personality: Charming and extremely deceptive. His main fuction within his group is that of a distraction artist and conman and as a result has a personality catered towards that purpose. However, there is a rarely seen, serious side lurking under his slightly foppish demeanour, along with a fair amount of arrogance.

Abilities: Besides his knack for fast-talking, Leo is also a skilled pickpocket and possessed of a talent for acrobatics and climbing. He's a decent swordfighter and a competant shot but generally saves violence for when he runs out of options.

[Jack Rothwell]

And another one...

Name: Rufus Lamenter

Age: 55 (in the origin story)

Occupation: Leader of The Silver Hands (thieves group), Former Military Captain

Appearance: Just short of 6 feet tall. Rufus has a grizzled face full of hard lines and a furrowed brow including an ugly scar which runs in a straight line from his forehead to his cheek, crowned by silvery hair typically pulled back into a short ponytail, he's usually unshaven. He usually wears a full set of plated armour supported by his strong build. He wears an eyepatch over the socket where his left eye used to be.

(Nutshell) History: A military man for most of his life. Rufus displayed a natural (some would say bred-in) ability for all the practical aspects of soldiering. Rufus ascended the ranks of the Saus' army rapidly with displays of his talents on the battlefield and his inherant knack for strategic thinking. His successful career ultimately came crashing to an end by the ever-shifting seats in electoral commitee's viewing the man's sometimes overly vicious tactics as detrimental to the armies reputation. Rufus was pinkslipped and took out his frustraition by gathering as many loyal men to him as he could and marching them straight out the city. The destruction of his relationship with the city was complete in the skirmishes that followed. Rufus was eventually forced to flee the area, and has been holed up, gathering new allies and looking for a way to regain his former status ever since.

Personality:Rough around the edges at times but gifted with a talent for diplomacy. Rufus is everything you'd expect a battled-hardened veteran to be, calm, serious and tactically minded. He heads towards his goals with unflinching determination and pushes the ones under his command to rise to his expectations. A tough, old bastard.

Abilities: Rufus is a gifted speaker, and adept at leading soldiers and constructing a strategy. His long service in the military and countless skirmishes have taught him virtually every fighter's trick in the book. While slower than he used to be, Rufus is still a deadly opponent whether at close quarters or in a pitched gun battle.

[Jack Rothwell]

And another one...

Name: Eve Jerosa

Age: 20 (yup, in the origin story)

Occupation: Thief for the Silver Hands

Appearance: 5"6, delicate (one might say feminine) features with dark brown hair cropped to a short length and typically slicked back or messily spiked. Wears typical merc clothing (cloth shirt, pants, etc) complete with a criss-cross holster on her back to hold the shortswords she uses.

(Nutshell) History: To say Eve came from a bad home would be an understatement. Her trails and tribulations in the run-down district she grew up in gave her all the motivation she needed to run away from home, poverty and domestic abuse at 14 years old. She scrapped by through the next few years, existing through begging and acts of petty theft. Life seemed bleak until she met Rufus Lamenter, who was in the town on a mission at the time, the ex-captain saw potential in the girl and took her under his wing. For the last four years Eve has been honing her craft under the watchful eye of her 'captain'. her goals having long ago become the same as his.

Personality: Bordering on, sometimes plunging fully in to violence at times due to the rotten upbringing she's had. Eve takes particular pleasure in doling out punishment to people she believes deserve it. However her loyalty to the Silver Hands, particulary to Rufus, is without question. Eve often gives the impression of being a few cards short of a full deck, exhibiting signs of manic depression when left to her own devices. Not a girl to be trusted outside of the organisation.

Abilites Eve is equipt with all the abilities a professional thief would be proud of. She is adept at sneaking around unseen, cllimbing difficult surfaces and picking locks (although Leo is her superior when it comes to picking pockets). In combat, Eve ultilises a dual weilding, offensively based style of sword fighting that she adapted off Rufus' teachings and as a result is a fierce, fierce melee fighter. She's also a solid shot with her rifle but only uses it if the situation really calls for it.

[Jack Rothwell]

And last but not least...

Name: Bernard Garland

Age: 38 (origin story)

Occupation: Thief for the Silver Hands/ Rufus' right hand man

Appearance: Stands tall at 6"4 and with a heavy build to match, has plenty of muscle, and a fair coat of meat and gravy on top. Wide amiable face covered on the bottom half by a thick brown beard to even out his short, regimental haircut on top.

History Enlisted in the Saus army at 17 years old following an unremarkable youth. Bernard met Rufus (who was a sergeant at the time) a year later and began his military education in earnest. He learned quickly from the charistmatic commander as a result found himself trailing in the wake of the man's promotions. Bernard went onto to serve as Rufus' sergeant for 12 years following his promotion to captain and, as a result, developed a bond with the older man that became brotherly. Following his Captain's explusion from the military bernard gathered a squad of men still on the side of justice (as he saw it) and went into exile with him. In the following years he helped Rufus set-up The Silver Hands and nowadays spends his time scouting out potential new talent and gathering information for the benefit of the group.

Personality: Despite his long years in the military and the horrors he must've seen, Bernard remains a laid-back individual who exhibits likeable qualities to those who know him. He is, however, just as serious and cold-minded as Rufus when he turns his mind to the job. A patient man, who shows little hesitation for getting his hands dirty.

Abilites: Bernard's big size lends him a tremedous amount of strength in melee combat, he typically augments this with a spiked mace which he swings with the enthusiasm of a baseball batsman. He also displays a gift for observation work (and the disguise work that comes with it) which is his primary function within the silver hands. His shooting skills are also pretty polished.

[Hours]

A few of Gault's mooks that may get relevant if the action moves to Rinkaiel...

Name: Meha Ahdjin
Occupation: Ensigerum Novice/First Mate of Gault's Freighter.
Description: One of many orphans that were taken in by the Ensigerum and trained from a young age to serve the order, Meha is a woman of indeterminate age, appearing somewhat older than she really is, with short curly black hair, brown eyes, dark skin and the personality of a meatgrinder. She is the third novice that has been trained by William Gault and while still learning a skillset beyond that of incredibly advanced murder theory and practice she is a competant but unremarkable commander and is capable of thinking on her feet when it comes to anything assigned to her, but has a distinct lack of initiative when it comes to thinking of what to do when left to her own devices and as such is considered by many of the crew to be little more than Gault's trusted attack dog.

Name: Wallace Briggswaith.
Occupation: Boatswain of Gault's Freighter.
Description: Vaguely resembling what you could expect a lamprey to look like should it assume a human form, Wallace looks... Slimy. Tall but not remarkably so, with a wiry physique, dirty green eyes and greasy black hair. The man in charge of deck operations of Gault's freighter, he ensures that all things are being kept in order, that regular maintenance and supplies are in order, and that the crew is kept in line with regular punishment. If anything needs doing about the ship whether it be a new paint job and a false name on the bow to slip it into an unfriendly port, or even minor remodelling or major engine overhauls he can be counted upon to know exactly what needs to be done to get it done fast and under budget. Although not a fighting man, he is known to be able to cleave flesh from bone with a single lash of a bullwhip, and he is generally the go-to man for information extraction from captives.

[Hours]

Some Seishi...

Name: Seishi Torou.
Occupation: Freelance Assassin/Discharged battlemage.
Description: Seishi is almost exactly what a Tsuirakuan would think someone looks like when they 'go native' obviously once rather pale and thin, he sports a working tan and has somewhat more muscles than the average tsuirakuan mage, his hair is long, dirty and black, his eyes are brown with dark rings beneath them and he never seems to shave although he seems to lack the ability to grow proper facial hair leaving him with a weedy moustache and chin scruff. Although favouring more Tsuirakuan clothing he's found himself having to settle with longer coats and long loose tunics in most parts of Farrel, and due to his general sense of superiority as a more enlightened man he has horded a small arsenal of magical doodads and whatsits that he can use to obliterate his enemies, a bunch of wands and his old yuuki staff amongst them all kept in a sealed dimensional pocket somewhere about his person.

Seishi started his career in a less than prestigious magic academy in the shadows of the floating city of Tsuiraku, winding up enlisting in the Tsuiraku military and enduring a tour of guard duty in the middle of farrellian crapholes before being discharged for suspected charges of corruption and the aid of smuggling via warpgates. Since then he's managed to find himself earning a much more impressive nest egg by selling out his ability to blow things up with his mind to people who can't, working freelance and switching between various guilds and employers, before finally finding gainful employment with a more 'civilised' Tsuirakuan syndicate.

[Graybeard]

As promised, some Kitaura stuff to play off of ...

Name: Kentauro Kitaura

Occupation: Captain in the Tsuirakuan Department of Homeland Security, Public Safety Division, and apparently, also the Tsuirakuan Army

Description: Captain Kitaura (nobody, but nobody, uses his first name, although it appears on his business cards) is a studiedly nondescript-looking Tsuirakuan -- which, like everything else about the man, is exactly the way he wants it. He appears to be about 40 years old, although under careful inspection he shows some of the telltale signs of rejuvenation treatments -- one of his only two known vices, vanities, or even signs of humanity whatever. He is of average height and physique, and exceptionally fit, which however he often disguises through loose-fitting or other bland clothing, unless his duties require him to be in his (rather gaudy) military uniform. His close-cropped hair is brown, and he usually wears a precisely trimmed beard, although he has been seen without it. His only striking physical feature is a pair of eyes that look like they belong on an anaconda, and not infrequently, are set in a reptilian facial expression to match. He has rarely been seen to smile (and provokes startled expressions on doing so from anyone nearby who knows him, particularly on the incredibly rare occasion when the smile is spontaneous rather than calculated), and when he chooses to appear menacing instead (which happens more often), his subordinates have been known to lose bladder control.

Kitaura has a way of cropping up in places where Tsuiraku is having security problems of a sort best handled confidentially, and then disappearing once the problem is resolved, often with someone else also having mysteriously disappeared or met an unfortunate end. It is generally thought that on these occasions, he leaves the "wet work" to his underlings. However, it has been made clear on numerous occasions that he is an arch-mage-level spellcaster, fully capable of extreme magical violence if the situation requires it. He is utterly humorless, completely devoted to his work, has no known religion (although his office suite includes a shrine to what is believed to be an ancestor of his who died in the Mage/Priest Wars), and most of the time, goes well out of his way to avoid obvious human failings. He is also impeccably polite and well mannered, almost never raising his voice (although when he does, his subordinates have been known to lose bowel control), and speaks in the formal mode of upper-class Tsuirakushiti, with precisely enunciated sentences and an aversion to slang, just as one might expect of a summa cum laude graduate of Sashi Mu, as indeed he is.

He has no known family, and therein can be detected just the barest hint of his second vice. He's gay, as Sister Rose and Argus discovered through judicious application of Rose's skill at magical empathy, and one of the few times he has been seen smiling with anything approaching normal human affection was when he gated into Saus and was met at the gate by an effeminate-looking young man in Tsuirakuan uniform. What happened in the aftermath of this reception is not recorded, but there are reasons to believe he has been supplied with similar -- escorts in some of his other assignments. Whether he is attracted to MOTSS his own age is also unknown, and his proclivities, such as they are, have never been known to lead to any openings for exploitation ... yet.

[Jack Rothwell]

K k, toying with an idea of making a catgirl character (mainly for comedy relief purposes) since I haven't seen one yet in the pass-along story. Problem is, I'll be damned if I can think of a way to get her into the story. But then again, I've never been one for letting convention stop me. So here's a template I based on the info given in the New Playable races thread ( viewtopic.php?f=32&t=731 ) any suggestions are welcome. TBH, she might be scrapped before she even see's the light of day.

I also seriously think the term cat-people needs to renaming, Kobolds maybe?


Name: Tamina McDuff

Age: 13 (about 26 in human years)

Appearance: Yellow eyes, petite features on her face (quite pretty, if cat-girls float your boat) and bedecked by patches of black and white fur on a typically lean, mostly humanoid body. Her extremities are more noticiably animalistic, featuring claws and stubby digits which are the norm on cat-people along with the ears and tail. Dresses in clothing made of animal hides.

Occupation: Hunter/Healer

Background: Being one of the few members in her tribe on the Southern continent to have latent magical ability meant Tamina's path was mapped out pretty clearly for her early on. Her childhood was the typical rough and tumble unbringing of the tribes mixed in with a basic magic education curtosy of the McDuff tribes head healer. Things might've stayed uneventful for the kobold until her capture by Eisenfault-associated sailors working for the slave and vices trade. The 'cat girl' found herself stuffed into a cage and transported to Port Lorrel prior to her arrival in the Errant Road story.

Personality: Under normal circumstances she's cheery, vapid, borderline ADD (if the term can be applied to cat-people), far from mean in her intentions but sometimes unmindful of peoples feelings. Tamina can exhibit a serious side but generally that's rare occurance.

Abilities: Far from an archmage, but certainly a competant healer, Tamina has the agility and hunting abilities typical of her kind. She has difficulty weilding weapons due to the shape of her digits but is not incapable of doing so, longbows usually being the most suitable choice.