About Signifier Malleus MartanHELLKNIGHT PATRON: Signifer Malleus Martan
When Aroden died, Malleus’ father watched Cheliax fall into disarray, with opportunism and unrest at every turn. His own father had been a priest of Aroden, and died, seemingly bereft of spirit, within the years of civil chaos that followed, and he swore that his own son would not inherit such barbarism. The rise of House Thrune was hardly the ideal solution, but the return of order was a necessary respite. If ruthlessness would serve the ends of law, then let justice follow on its heels, he thought, and he raised his own son with an unflinching devotion to recapturing the justice that was always at the heart of Imperial Cheliax. Malleus is all too aware that he is associated with diabolists and those who would turn the law to their own ends with clever sophistry and faustian bargains and deceptive contractual shenanigans, but he was raised to respect the old laws, which could be as cold and unforgiving as any devils heart, but were also unbending before cunning wordplay or the ‘rights’ of those who consider themselves above the law. He has spent thirty years as a Hellknight, and is singularly unpopular not only with those the Hellknights pursue, but with the men and women in his own command who might have entertained the notion that their rank made them above the law. His superiors alternately find his devotion to the law to be both refreshing and unsettling, depending on their own ethical purity, and have shuffled him around quite a bit, such that he and the men assigned to work with him, can be found in almost any corner of Cheliax. In some cases, these transfers have been all that has saved him from some rough ‘frontier justice’ at the hands of the families and friends of those he has brought to justice, and while he is hardly the most clever man, he is well aware that his gifts are equally respected and loathed. Malleus has grown up surrounded by clever-speaking scoundrels, who feel that their erudition and their flowery pretensions somehow make them immune to the brutal simplicity of law and truth, fact and judgment. He has, many times, proven them wrong, and while some have paid the appropriate bribes and curried the appropriate favors to escape punishment, he closes his eyes and counts to ten, consoling himself that he has done his job, bringing them to justice. The failures of the courts are not his responsibility, and so long as he captures the lawbreakers, he refuses to grow bitter or frustrated at the sometimes flagrant abuses of the system once ‘privileged’ sorts leave his custody. As a result of these pernicious sorts, he has an instinctive mistrust of those he considers ‘too smart’ or who use clever language or make elaborate plays on words, as he has come to see ‘too smart’ people as natural lawbreakers, thinking that their cleverness somehow places them above the common law. A servant of the law, first and foremost, loyal to a Chelaxian ideal that is a hundred years gone, Malleus may find use for non-Hellknights, to follow directives to investigate individuals that the Armigers under his command might quail to challenge (or even run and warn, their own loyalties being uncertain), and he is not above hiring shifty sorts to gather information, and then arrest everyone at the end of the day. If in the middle of an important investigation, he may find it necessary to hire temporary replacements for Armigers that have fallen in battle, or to escort ‘small fish’ to a nearby Hellknight gaol while he continues an investigation, or even to deliver wounded allies to a safe location, while he continues the fight, ill-advisedly, alone. Boons Those who aid him in his sometimes quixotic missions of justice will find that Malleus has many connections within the Hellknights, and that he is certainly not the only member of his Order with an abiding hatred of corruption and those who would ‘game the system.’ He will never assist an ally in defying the law, but he is the best ally one could ever have if falsely accused, as he will pursue any inconsistency in the prosecution’s case with the tenacity of a bulldog, and, for all his lack of legalistic sophistication, is uncannily good at separating truth from falsehood and uncovering duplicity. His mark is known in many places where he has travelled on assignment, and his reputation inspires fear in lawbreakers who may have previously thought themselves untouchable. Someone bearing a writ of inquiry penned in his hand and sealed with his Order’s waxen sigil gains a +2 circumstance bonus to an Intimidate checks to coerce the cooperation of certain GM-specified individuals (and a -4 penalty to Diplomacy checks on those same individuals, at the time, and, quite likely, for the rest of their lives…). |
