Decrepit Dakkanaut
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Fenryn looked above. The darkness expelled stabbing sheets of precipitation. The cobblestones were slick with frigid rain, chilled by the approaching winter months. Sluiced between the pavements was the mud of thousands of travelers that plodded through Fein Derrgan’s main thoroughfare. Hundreds were on the same street as Fenryn, pushing against one another to remove them from the sudden downpour of late autumn rain.
Fenryn looked around him. The people were wet and panicked. They were afraid of the chilling sickness that could cling to their lungs for weeks if they didn’t get inside. Many around him were peasants and street hawkers. Their browns and greens reminded Fenryn of the foliage that would return to the trees outside the city next year. Against the dull colors was the occasional garishly colored messenger as they tried to dart between the masses on their errands. Fenryn even saw a trio of crimson red tabards for the city watch, their pole arms raised to the heavens as they pushed against the mob of people, hopelessly attempting to ford the human tidal wave in hopes of getting to their guard station.
The observing man was unconcerned, oblivious to the press around him. People passed around his small island of space, conscious to avoid the unusual little man who stood amongst them. Clad in black leather, belts and buckles tight around his lithe form to reduce noise, he wore various pouches about him. A slender dagger of curved steel was noticeable at his waist belt. It distracted others from the six other daggers that were concealed inconspicuously about his person. He also carried about him the tools of his trade; trip wires, lock picking needles and trap springing gadgets.
The thief however was not being ostracized for his gear; Fein Derrgan knew hundreds more like him who plied the underworld, killed for coin, and stole for survival. Fenryn was feared for his features, his face was horribly scarred. A great gash ran from the top of his seared head, snaked passed where an ear should of been, wrapped around his left cheek, and ended in a scar that touched his mouth. The right side of his face bore pock marks from drops of acid. Both eyes were pupil less, giving his steel grey irises forlorn depth. He had a two jagged cartilage openings in absence of a nose.
He bore the deformities in silent pariahood. The superstitious said he was marked with a curse. Professional thieves commented that his afflictions were from severe torture. City guards bore their gaze upon him in open hostility. Wise men and healers often approached him in hopes of offering salvation, easement, or cures for his condition. Fenryn met each and everyone with his unsettling stare, never backing down, never answering their fears, threats, or help.
His silence, his glare were not his choice. His left hand twitched ever so slightly towards his belt pouch. Within, he felt the thrumming of a magical brooch within. It buzzed in his ears, and a headache began to form. Fenryn knew the feeling would grow stronger the longer he ignored it.
The silent man began to stalk forward, defiant against the bitter weather pelting him, ignorant of the masses that parted before him. The little charm on his person began to abate its magical compulsion for him to act, now tugging him in the direction he needed to go.
From around a corner building a hundred paces away, shouts of fire began to emanate. The few within the mob with good hearts turned to react, but could not break through the indifferent crowd shuffling on about them. The lone guards who were on street duty tried to push their way through, but were making no headway against the rain and the people.
Fenryn noted the inept efforts to help and ducked through the last few members of the mob into an alleyway. A few prying eyes followed him, but none would bodily remove themselves from the relative safety of the streets to follow the man as he descended into the narrow passage between buildings. The thief, who recalled faintly his earlier days as a street urchin who once frequented these abysmal corners of civilization forgotten by humanity, scanned his surroundings briefly; the slick ground covered in mud and refuse, the pungent aroma of decay that wafted from the piles of litter, and the lack of any witnesses.
Fenryn took out the brooch and sourly stared at it. It was almost the size of his fist. Its metallic surface was clean and faintly radiant. Rounded, it had an etched surface in the image of a butterfly, wings spread in flight. As Fenryn kept it out, the surface stayed dry, as if the rain coming down did not suffer to touch it. He still felt the direction it wanted him to go, vaguely in the direction of the fire.
Closing his eyes, the reluctant thief focused his thoughts upon the brooch. Grant me the ability to do what you command of me he implored it. As a final afterthought, he added and grant me protection from the eyes that may see me.
He felt nothing, but as he opened his eyes, he saw the brooch pulse a golden radiance. The radiance leaped from the item and raced up his arm. He did not throw the magical object away, but he accepted the glow as it surrounded him, embraced him. As it finally shrouded entirely around him, his body shimmered and grew translucent for a brief moment. Then, the magical glow winked out and the shimmering ended.
Fenryn knew that he was now protected from fire, had the ability to leap great distances, and could not be seen by normal means. He could still be heard and his presence could be sensed by those acute enough to see the environment move around him. These things came to him as if they were known all his life.
Fenryn stared back at the brooch. Unconsciously, he touched his ravaged head tenderly with his other hand.
A flood of memories came to him; days of his roguish youth after being orphaned, the scrabbling to survive amidst the filth, fighting with older, stronger men for scraps of food. The first day he killed, the blood dripping from a rusted knife as he killed for meager scraps. Escerio finds him. Seeing something others did not see in the street urchin, the master thief takes Fenryn under his wing; he learns the subtle arts, goes on missions with Escerio, stealing from those who had riches to spare. The small fortune they amass made Fenryn envious. He left Escerio dead with a dagger plunged in his back while he slept.
Then the murders for hire began. Slowly, Fenryn learned how to kill, to take a life without others noticing until it was long too late. The fat merchants and underworld lords lucratively paid him, their avaricious grins spewing their commands to kill. The apothecaries who were tipped with extra gold gave the thief turned assassin all the ingredients to kill with poison. The right greased palms allowed his to evade suspicion. Fenryn slowly rotating the blade before a hearth fire, seeing in its reflection all the blood and souls he consumed on his path in life.
The women he bedded and the alcohol he drank buried the emotional scars under temporary physical pleasure. Haunted by his victims and spurred on by greed, Fenryn began taking exceedingly more dangerous missions. Leaders and officials in high positions became his targets. The high magistrate of the city proved to be too much for the capable man. Hunted, he was turned away by his former employers, sometimes ratted out for mere coppers by street corner beggars. Hunted by the law, ratted out by the underworld, and money nearly drained, Fenryn went back to his second profession in thievery one last time to recover some measure of wealth and escape the city.
That was when he targeted the brooch; the sacred relic of the Temple of Faeyla, a goddess of light and good once worn by the temple’s original founder. The temple’s latest renovation meant that most of the relics were being stored in safe houses across Fein Derrgan to deter inquisitive thieves. Fenryn scoured his last contacts for the location of the most sacred relic of the church, and discovered that it hid amongst a commoner family of dedicated worshippers, entrusted with it as tribute to their loyalty and for the unusual hiding place the church choose.
Amongst the pooling blood of the patriarch of the household, Fenryn found clutched to his breast the object he sought. Spiriting out into the night, the assassin and thief felt his life and fortune would then turn for the better.
The next several days blurred for Fenryn as the brooch would not leave the killer’s possession. Every time he sold it, it would appear back within his pouch. After disposing of it in the trash, throwing it in a well, and sending it on a ship across the sea, it would appear right in his hand the next morning as he awoke. Each day brought ever increasing mental pain as the brooch began inflicting upon Fenryn its mental compulsions. Fenryn tried to resist, but exhausted from his efforts to be rid of the thing and fight against the mental intrusions, he finally relented and felt for what the device wanted him to do.
Simply, it wanted him to act benevolently. At first, it was small social niceties and random acts of kindness that guided the thief and prevented the pain from incapacitating him. With each success however, Fenryn would test the brooch’s leash upon him by trying to act out his old intentions of thievery or murder. Each one ended with him in spasms on the ground, unable to carry out any wrong act.
Finally, when the minute good deeds were not enough, the brooch began forcing him to act less like a gentleman and more like a hero; killing monsters that lurked in the sewers, fighting brigands that harassed merchant traffic to the city, and enduring physical punishments on behalf of innocents in trouble. A once vain Fenryn began to become horribly scarred for his efforts. The brooch rewarded him with minor tricks of magic that helped Fenryn from time to time. More importantly, it kept the pain from occurring again.
Above all, which Fenryn clung to now more than ever, was the reputation the brooch allowed him to keep. Despite his acts of kindness, the magical item seemed to understand Fenryn’s need to remain the notorious brigand. Even with the disfigurements, the underworld still knew him for his reputation, and to an extent the authority knew him to be a man of no small stature within the city’s shadowy side. Fenryn kept the brooch and his new munificence separate from what others saw him as. To do so otherwise would invite back punishment for his past crimes.
Fenryn blinked as a piercing cry for help echoed through the splattering rain and the narrow alleyway. Brought back to reality, Fenryn realigned himself towards the tug of the brooch and the obligation to help those caught in the fire. With legs enhanced by magic for greater bounding, he leaped up, grabbed at the rain-slicked holdings of the buildings above, and leaped towards the throaty shouts for help.
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