Crooked Characters are detailed NPCs to slip into your adventures however you wish. Free from class and statistics, they can be used in any fantasy gaming system. Each comes with a detailed description and character motivation for you to use in your campaign, perhaps as a mere passer-by, a rumor, a confidante, or maybe as the motivation behind a whole adventure.
Shambles, Shambles, tongue of brambles
Eater of spines, feaster of babies
Swishes his scythe as the streets he rambles
Smiles his smile as he devours your ladies
The Shambles offers a useful scapegoat, horror object, and backstory to your adventure, but he could be much more than that; he could be at its heart, bringing a memorably and horribly wronged NPC from the dark depths of your backstory into the unkind and truthful light.
Jebediah—the man—is still kindly. He prays to his god and if given the chance would still happily help strangers. Yet from afar, he appears a one-dimensional being, a killer whose relentless murdering must be stopped. That those in power hold all the cards, bar one, makes his villainy, at least on the surface, blatant. That Jebediah the man is extremely resourceful and tough, as well as driven by a hunger to avenge, makes him a formidable opponent even as a simple foe, but add a few hard-to-find clues and suddenly this man is more than he seems. The odd act of strange kindness, the death of someone not quite as snowy white as they seem, makes him potentially intriguing. Add the fact that he trusts no one and is hardly likely to unmask himself to strangers asking questions makes him a potentially very difficult encounter.
Using Jebediah in Your Adventures
The trick of the obvious being not quite so obvious as it seems gives you the chance to use the Shambles in your adventures. What might start out as a simple hunt soon develops dark twists; the people who offer handsome rewards for his death do not perform such handsome deeds after all. The Shambles’s killing is not quite so indiscriminate, and perhaps there are those who operate in the belly of your campaign—rogues, rebels, and thinkers—who see more to the Shambles than just a killer. They know those he kills by reputation and deed all too well…
Two Adventure Seeds
The Cabal of Enlightened Venoms have employed a group of assassins to do away with the Shambles once and for all; these silent killers stalk the streets and rooftops looking for their prey. The local thieves’ guild, however, has heard a different story. Their leader—the tough, frightening, but fairly fair Hermastus Crow—has heard the Shambles knows something about the cabal, a group he has begun to wisely fear. They are expanding their operations and seeking to put the guild out of existence. He wants to talk to the man and knows just the people to ask to find him—the PCs…