Horatio D'Asquith

Submitted by: Kalshiar
Last Update: 11/23/2006 7:15:45 AM
DM Name:
Game Thread: None

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Horatio was born from a night of passion between Lord D'Asquith and a famous thief in the human capital, Danel, after the death of his first wife. He spent his youth on the streets and in whatever safe houses his mother took on after pulling jobs around the city, learning the trade of his mother since his father wouldn't acknowledge him as his own. However, that all changed when Horatio was fourteen. Lord D'Asquith married a younger second wife by the name of Elspeth D'Allecon, who plotted the death of Lord D'Asquith's only legitamate son Quentin in order to ensure that the inheritance would pass to her and her family.

After Quentin's death in an apparent 'hunting accident' Lord D'Asquith was desperate to ensure that his estates would pass to someone at least partially related by blood, and the only option left to him besides some distant cousins was Horatio. He was plucked from the streets and given the finest education in the arts of being a nobleman, the more academic pursuits however, passed him by entirely as he prefered to continue honing his skills as a thief, often venturing out with his mother, Helena, on her various night-time adventures. Besides these trips with his mother Horatio's life in the upper circles of Danel society was never particularly enjoyable. The other's his own age never let him forget his roots and birth and despite all his charm did their best to shun him. There were those in particular that seemed to hate Horatio, a young Lordling called Tarquin Summerisle and his cronies, Arnold and Alginon D'Allencon (yes they are related to Elspeth, younger brothers.) This may have had something to do with the fact that Horatio and Constance D'Illtree were something of an item, truth be told this was and still is the only manogamous relationship that Horatio has ever been in.

Although Horatio was resident at his father's estate, Elspeth would not countance a changing of Lord D'Asquith's will, and to further her aims began to poison the old man, nothing deadly, just something to make him appear to be extremely ill, requiring the constant attention of her personal apocathery. It was about this time, Horatio is 17 now, that Elspeth convinced the sick and oftentimes delerious Lord D'Asquith that Horatio would benefit from some time in the armed services, since they had agreed that he would not be able to inherit the estate, setting him up with a career in the army would be the best thing for him.

So Horatio joined the Royal Guards, effectively removing him from court society and cutting him off from Constance. He lasted a grand total of 6 months in the military, before certain items of value belonging to other members of his unit and a deck of marked cards were discovered in his kit. Fleeing the anger of his fellow soldiers Horatio deserted, pausing long enough to steel a horse, a musket and provisions for his flight, he has fled the city and goes to seek his fortune, or a tavern where he can fund his drinking through cheating at cards/picking pockets, whichever he finds first.

As a character Horatio is essentially about having fun, drinking, wenching, stealing whatever takes his fancy, a common method of paying his bar tab is to simply pick the pocket of whoever's standing next to him. His first reaction to most dangerous situations is simply "Flee!" but if someone he knows and cares about is in danger he swallows that first impulse and wades right in, often attempting to look as dashing and heroic as possible whenever he does so, doubly so if there's a pretty girl involved somewhere in all of this.

Hmmmm examples should help to show what he's like more than anything else:

1. We're in the High Elf kingdom of our DM's world, they've cut themselves off completely from the rest of the world, prefering their idylic islands of eternal summer to the strife and war that seems to infest the mainland. Horatio arrived in the High Elf kingdoms, the first human to ever set foot upon it, tied up, naked and covered in vampire bites, some recent, some begining to scar.
This was after his disastorous attempt to pull an elven vampire... you get the idea of how his mind works. He'd been tied up as the vampire had commanded him to attack the rest of the party when they came to remove them, and was then thrown through the portal. Anyway while there he and another party member staged a mock fight, trashing half of the palace and beating into unconciousness anyone who tried to interfere in order to gain the freedom of the palace, which they did by attracting the fancy of the current ruler of this particular queendom. We also ran a book on the fight and swindled a buch of elves for as much as possible. After that came the incredible conga plan! We had to steal a particular painting so that an NPC magic user who was with us at the time could create a portal to get some more sensible High Elves to come and make the rest actually do something useful for a change. While our resident thief went to procure said painting, Horatio formed the now infamous 'Conga' plan, to ensure that the crime would be covered up. This basically involved getting as many High Elves as drunk as possible, forming a conga, congaing the long way to the bottom of the tower, kicking in the door of the gallery, then encouraging the elves to destroy the priceless and ancient artwork, so that noone would ever notice the theft, and in the din of the magical alarms, wouldn't notice the first alarm going off. As a result of this drinking is no forbidden in the High Elf kingdoms, and so is the Conga.

One more since its my personal favourite,

We had to get past a cave full of frost giants, I think there were about 12 in all, and having recently killed a white dragon we had managed to find a potion of embiggining. This effect also applies to anything the character who is being enlarged is holding. So we gave our most giant seeming character a nail bomb, enlarged him and the bomb, and then cast a magic mouth spell on the fuse, which would start singing a song praising the might, bravery, attractiveness and anything else we could think of, of the frost giant's leader. We then presented said giant nail bomb as a gift to the Frost Giant chieftan, telling him that it was a magic singing box, that would tell great tales of the holder if fire was applied to the top of it, then we ran like hell. Scratch one Frost Giant Tribe.

So there we have it, I hope you all love Horatio as much as I do after all this.

Fighter/Thief (bear in mind that this is under the 2nd ed rules)
AC: 0 (Silenced Mithril Armour)

Stats

Str   12
Con 10
Agi  16
Dex  16 (Stat added by our DM, Agi to dodge, Dex for manual things, catching, quickstrike rolls etc.)
Int     9
Wis   8
Com 16
Cha   16

Weapons

Duel wielding rapiers, 6 pistols (one of them double barreled) a rifle and a musket (DM added these weapons, the world's going through a kind of industrialisation) Blade Boots (Modified again)

Other feats (Mostly added by the DM since 2nd ed doesnt provide for that)

Quickstrike (Does what it says on the tin, if you declare a quickstrike, make a manual dexterity check, if you pass, get bonus attacks with the chance for surprise modifiers/backstab depending on the situation)
Dodge Blow (drops AC by one, remember in this game low is good)
Parry
Dirty Pull (home grown proficiency, this allows Horatio to make an attack using his boots, counts as a surprise so backstab applies here, pressing a hidden catch in the toe of his boot causes a dagger to pop out of the front of boot, this means that he gets an extra attack with the boot, god I hope that makes sense)
Acrobatics (Just means I can do more ridiculous things when I think of them, for example jumping from branch to branch to climb up or down a tree)