Jacel Varti

[Jacel Varti]

Player Name: Valyr

Name: Jacel Varti

Age: 98

Race: Elf

Height: 5’10”

Weight: 240 lbs

Physical Description: An overweight, tanned elf, Jacel wears a contented, toothy grin which just barely avoids being smug. He seems to be prematurely balding in the front, with the rest of his straight, brown-blonde hair pulled back into a very short ponytail. He usually wears a wealthy looking black garb with numerous trinkets adorning its surface, but has been seen wearing all manner of faux finery. Closer inspection will reveal most of the trinkets are cheap knockoffs of whatever they are supposed to be.

He walks with a slight limp due to an old injury on his leg, and is very physically nonthreatening. His voice can have a hard edge when he needs it to, but usually conveys a friendly, boisterous, harmless tone.

Possessions:

-A significant amount of Bishani. Jacel has enough that he could feasibly fund several projects at once. Convincing the greedy bastard to do it might be more of a challenge, but if he thinks you’ve got potential to return the profits he’ll go for it.

-Owns a dog fighting ring, “The Bitch’s Bite,” which serves as a haven for all manner of customers. Many do not side with the law, despite the place’s frequent guardsman visitors.

-Owns an enormous dog named Bitch, and a number of puppies she has given birth to.

-A knife up his sleeve and a gauntlet for defense, should the dogs get loose.

Powers or Strengths:

Wealth- As mentioned above, Jacel has a good nose for Bishani. Though he isn’t the wealthiest man in Marn, for his social class he owns quite a bit. He gathers much of this through his dog fighting ring, where it is customary to leave a tip if you win. There also seems to be a second sort of tip, which common patrons will helpfully remind newcomers to leave whenever they conduct unsavory business in the establishment’s back rooms.

Information- Quite a bit of the city’s more subtle events manage to find their way to his ears. He’s a reliable source of information, should the need arise. He makes it a well known and fairly strict policy that he doesn’t lie when dealing officially, which means involving money.

Friendly Persona- Though a ruthless man when not speaking to your face, Jacel can project himself as one of the friendliest, most helpful people you’ve ever met. He’s extremely good at fooling people into thinking he’s just some jolly fat guy, despite the establishment he runs. A big part of this stems from the fact that he straddles the line between self interest and kindness expertly, often going far out of his way to help those under his control.

This is a big part of the reason he’s still around. The city guard has used his information from time to time, since Jacel is more the willing to cooperate to catch serial killers and those criminals outside his protection. It’s even rumored there is a battlemage who stops by from time to time, though if it is true he or she does so very discreetly.

Access to Hired Help- He’s got a bodyguard, though word is he’s looking for a new one. Jacel also knows which channels to contact if he wants something violent done.

Bitch- His favorite dog, Bitch, is one mean bitch. She even seems to adjust to her master’s moods— while he’s turning up the charm, she’s innocently snoring in the corner. Bitch has also been trained to sniff out shifters, which is how Jacel keeps the ring clean.

Bitch is massive. She stands a good shoulder taller than most other dogs, and not even Jacel has any idea what breed she actually is. Due to her unusual intelligence and longevity, one of his many theories is that she has ancestry in the form of a werewolf which bred with a regular canine. He keeps this particular theory to himself because of his strict anti-shifter policies. Whatever she is, she’s no normal dog: as it stands, she’s twenty two years old and in her prime. Her predecessor lived until thirty.

Experienced Liar- He’s fairly good at catching lies and telling them. You don’t last long as an information broker without this skillset.

Asexual- Attempting to seduce him will fail miserably, as Jacel is far more interested in coin than he is in the opposite sex. It would be feasibly possible to do so with intense magic, but the magic would need to be enough to completely overwrite a sexual preference. Of course, it isn’t terribly likely anyone is going to try it on this pudgy elf, but it still exists as a strength should the need arise.

Weaknesses:

Noncombatant- Jacel keeps a knife up his sleeve and wears a gauntlet on his left arm in case the dogs get loose, but against humans he doesn’t actually know how to fight very well. Any street fighting skills he had he has long ago forgotten, to say nothing of his sub-par physical condition.

Leg Injury- A while ago, before he had the sense to wear the gauntlet, one of the dogs got loose and mangled his leg up pretty badly. In addition to his less than stellar physical condition, running will severely pain this leg.

This event is what prompted him to wear the gauntlet and keep the knife up his sleeve.

Greed- The easiest way to fool Jacel is to convince him you can make him a profit or give him more power. Granted, it would still require some charisma, but it remains the best way.

Soft Spot- Perhaps because they remind him of himself, Jacel has a soft spot in his heart for smart-mouthed young thieves and thugs with big egos and bigger dreams. He’s much more likely to go easy on such people, granting them opportunities around his businesses not readily available to everyone else.

Crude- A part of his friendly persona is a crude sense of humor and coarse language. This is a habit he hasn’t been able to break and it has kept him from moving upwards in society— the nobility who would otherwise work with him think of him as a simpleton. The few who look past this tend to attempt to manipulate his ambition, getting lower prices when buying information and higher when selling. This and his envy have led to a slight resentment of the aristocracy he only shares with his closest confidants.

Petty- Though he’ll deny it, Jacel has a bad habit of holding grudges over even trivial wrongs. This occasionally overrules his business sense, causing him to make blunders others would not; Jacel may choose to pursue an old hate rather than reach mutually beneficial terms. Sometimes calling this behavior to his attention snaps him out of it, but he usually resents being told he was wrong and his grudge only deepens. He usually holds these grudges against people who threaten his long term goals, establishment, or pride; he shakes off threats to his person pretty easily.

His hate reflects his elven years; it took him decades before he was able to look at his parents objectively and realize they did him no disservice.

History:

Two elves came to Marn a few decades after the settlement was founded. These were Jacel’s parents, simple, hardworking craftsmen with hearts full of genuine love. They each had their own flaws, but on the whole Jacel now remembers them both as heroic people and among the few who managed to slip under his radar and leave the city without his knowledge.

The pair gained citizenship during the year of 205 PW when they saved a noble from a fire which consumed a sizable portion of the city. As a reward for their service, he patronized them and gave them their status.

Jacel was born shortly afterwards, 98 years ago, just before Marn’s economic collapse. He enjoyed a very easy early life as a citizen. A privileged, spoiled, only child, even in his childhood he dominated his social circles with a combination of cunning and charisma. The world was his, and his parents did little to help matters with their doting.

All good things must come to an end, however, and for Jacel the collapse forever crippled the Varti family. Though they were able to coast on the modest wealth they had gained for quite some time, it wasn’t long before they had to sell their house to the settler aristocracy and move to a lower class section of town. So it went, down and down, until the family was living in the slums.

Seeing his family’s decay did not do healthy things for the mental state of the young elf. Angry at loosing privileges, status, and comfort, he blamed his family, calling them lazy, stupid, and all manner of insults. Seeking any excuse to escape the source of his perceived wrongs, he soon took to the streets, spending hours away from home in less than upstanding company.

Finding other misfortunate, dejected youth proved to be no challenge, and it wasn’t long before Jacel was running with a gang. Jacel was a healthy young man then, full of bluster and spirit. His wit and charm immediately glued him to his new acquaintances, and they ran about the streets causing petty trouble. The guard had more important things to do than take care of a small band of troublemakers, so they were usually left alone.

Naturally, Jacel had to go and ruin that. Talking the leaders into bigger and bigger heists, it wasn’t long before they were full criminals, wanted by the guard. Jacel operated as the man behind the throne, letting the leaders take the credit while he took the material gains. When they inevitably were caught, Jacel, who stayed far away from action, slipped away with all the profits.

Occasionally, Jacel would notice talent in the groups he infiltrated. His first pick was a choice fighter named Harroway, who came to serve as Jacel’s bodyguard. Though he would later be found with his neck slit, at the time Harroway was one of the biggest men in the streets. It was Harroway who introduced Jacel to the establishment he would one day run, “The Bitch’s Bite,” thanks to his love of gambling on the fighting dogs. Though Harroway wasn’t terribly bright, he did know quite a bit about the dogs and would educate Jacel on the matters of the ring whenever the two spoke casually. It wasn’t long before Jacel also had an interest in the ring, gambling money on the dogs whenever he could. Jacel's actions did not escape the notice of the current proprietor, even then.

Harroway was not the only talent Jacel discovered. He met others, employing a wide range of coercion and charm to get them to join. When his organization grew to a modest size, the proprietor, a human named Gatan, finally took to the field. He approached Jacel with a suspicious, bizarre offer: a chance to win the ring, all on a bet.

It was an impossible task. Jacel had no dog, and so was offered Bitch, then barely more than a puppy. The opposing dog was Bitch’s mother, old but with years of experience and still fit. Many would have simply refused, not bothering with the time and effort required to do so. Jacel thought differently, choosing instead to think through events. He arrived at an unorthodox conclusion: by Jacel’s estimation, no one who lived as long as Gatan had done so by wasting time. Therefore, he must have had a reason for offering Jacel the chance at all.

The elf used his small band to investigate. He learned that Gatan had been keeping tabs on his activities. He learned that Gatan had no obvious successor among his own people, primarily personalities which obeyed orders rather than gave them. He learned that the Gatan could have done much more to conceal the information he was receiving. Jacel arrived at the conclusion Gatan was testing him.

A few bribes were all it took to poison the elder dog.

When the fateful day came only a handful of people were present; Gatan, Jacel, and Harroway were among them. It fueled Jacel’s confidence: it was going to be obvious that something was wrong with Gatan’s dog, and the lack of an audience meant few would see her end. The elder dog limped out onto the ring, where the inevitable occurred as Bitch tore her mother’s throat out.

Jacel braced himself as Gatan took a painfully drawn out walk around the ring. If the elf had been wrong, both he and Harroway’s lives were forfeit.

Gatan only clapped him on the back and smiled. As it turned out, he loved to see a cheater.

Gatan soon died of old age, though not before tutoring Jacel on all the subtleties he would need to know in his new position, particularly in regards to the legacy Gatan had given him. He alerted the elf to old rivals of his who would attempt to take advantage of the change in leadership, old allies who would do as they were told, and old allies who couldn’t be trusted at all. Jacel had a good head for intrigue and deception, and Gatan died believing he had made the right choice— unorthodox as the whole business had been.

For the next decade and a half Jacel continued to increase the power of his operations, primarily selling and trading information with various other criminal outfits with a few small side business in the drug trade. And of course, his favorite ring still brought in a profit. Today he maintains ties to much of the city’s crime, providing them with information on their rivals and the rest of the city’s subtle life.

“What do you need to know? Damn near everything. You need to know the moves, the motions, and have seen it all before your enemies do if you want to survive. And I know you’ve got enemies, who doesn’t? I can help you get there. All you have to do is cough up the bishani and feed me some news, and you can be on your way a little wiser than when you strutted your ass in here.”

[Niabi]

Approved.