Treachery:Blades2

Jeremiah Longknife, Duke of Blades

Jeremiah Longknife has a short grey beard and cold grey eyes with a gleam of steel in them. His face seems nearly incapable of smiling; decades of harsh weather and grim life have etched themselves into it. His clothing is tough and drab, wholly undecorated, but the wicked knife stuck through his belt makes up for it in beauty. The hilt is neither bejewelled nor gilt, but its blade is perfectly watered and intricately etched, showing scenes of the Angels at war. The way he carries himself, it can take minutes or hours to notice this old iron wolf has only one arm.

Personal Code

Precepts of Heaven:

1. Beauty is the highest principle
2. Justice is a form of beauty
3. Lesser beings should respect their betters

Design

A tall cluster of Achillea beside a withered Aloe plant bearing a healthy flower

Miraculous Abilities

• Aspect 3
  • 6 Permanent Miracle Points
• Domain 4
  • 5 Permanent Miracle Points
• Realm 0
  • 5 Permanent Miracle Points
• Spirit 1
  • 5 Permanent Miracle Points
• 2 Focus MP

Gifts

Impenetrable - no edged weapon can harm the Dominus of Blades against his will (major preservation of Self, automatic invocation, one trick, self only, common, 1CP)

Limits

Disabled

A limit of Aspect ( +1 MP )

Jeremiah Longknife lost his right arm in a long ago fight.

Focus

A general limit (+2 MP; Contains 1 Aspect and 1 Domain)

A bit of Jeremiah Longknife's soul is bound up in Cut-Stone, the beautiful blade that gives him his name.

Restrictions

Knife Ritual

Jeremiah may never sheathe a blade without blooding it; this doesn't necessarily mean more than a prick of his own fingertip, but it can become troublesome around unusually dangerous blades or those the ritual may prompt to ask questions.

Bonds

• His knife Cut-Stone: 4
• His daughter Amarra: 4
• The Thousand Knives: 2
• The grave of his mother Keva: 2
• His, now Amarra's, lieutenant Kelvan: 2
• The grave of his daughter Keva: 2
• Exhibition swordplay: 2
• Decorative, artisanal blades:2

Estate Correspondences

Killing, tense and hostile dealings, violent fallings out, backstabbing treachery

Sample Miracles

Ghost Miracles: Give a blade the appearance of soul-cutting sharpness, make a minor imprecation seem like a death threat

Lesser Divinations: Know whose blood a blade has spilled, know the violent deeds of a mortal, know who a mortal is most likely to resort to violence against

Lesser Preservations: Stop a fight from calming, make a blade very difficult to dull or break, maintain a wavering assassin's resolve

Lesser Creations: Make a hail of flying knives, cause friends to come abruptly to threats or blows, give a coward the heart to kill

Lesser Destructions: Stop fights and cool blood, dull and break blades, remove sharp edges from things

Lesser Changes: Make a blade cut only unliving things, change a bloody battle into an exchange of vicious slanders, turn a brittle iron sword into masterful water-steel

Greater Divinations: Read the future in the pattern of blood on a dagger, see a back-alley murder replayed, watch far away battles

Greater Preservations: Make a blade indestructible, make the rift between friends forever unhealable, make a battle last until the last man standing is dead of exhaustion

Greater Creations: Destroy a city in a rain of steel, make an army turn on itself, make a sword that can cut souls

Greater Destructions: Uninvent the katana, make a scalpel that closes incisions, make a mortal immune to being cut

Personality

The Duke of Blades has done a lot of awful things in his life. He's stolen, killed, betrayed friends and left them to die. He doesn't feel guilt, because all these things needed to be done. He does feel tired. Bone tired, but unable to rest, because all those things still need doing. There's a war on. There's a lot of wars on. There always have been.

Longknife serves Heaven, but not because he's heard its clarion call in his heart. In truth, the gospel of Hell whispers in his heart. He's seen women and children, gut-stabbed and dieing over days; he's seen rapists and murderers at their leasure while innocent men suffered in gaol; he's destroyed priceless art with his own hands to salvage the gold and jewels it was made of. Everything Longknife has ever known is the rule of the strong and the ever-present stench of corruption. In his heart, he feels corruption is the true nature of Creation; Heaven is an aberration that must fade. Yet he does serve the Angels, because to him the only alternative is to give up and die. Corruption may be all, indomitable, but it's a bloody poor excuse for a principle. It's just what happens when you can't keep your head above water anymore.

History

Jeremiah- that was the only name he had, in the beginning- is born of the dregs of Locus Ram-Khvastra. His mother was an honest woman, a worker in a tavern. His father was a worthless lout; not a complete stranger, but nearly useless in the boy's upbringing and support. The result was grinding poverty. The boy got his start on crime early, filching things off carts and the like. His mother found out about this, but could not bring herself to refuse the fruits of her boy's crime; their life was too hard for it.

As a young man, he joined a gang called the Thousand knives. There were, in truth, some forty of these bandits; blades being plentiful things in the realm of Ram-Kvhastra, though, their name was not such a deep misnomer. It was a violent life, a kill-or-be-killed existence, but in a society that wouldn't care for them, the Knives at least looked after each other. All it took was risking death every day, and a chunk of your soul. Jeremiah, it transpired, was good at this; he never let his poor mother learn just how good. She mourned all the same, until the day she died, for she knew by the things he brought her that her son was lost.

He lived a good enough life, for what it was; he exerted his influence on the Knives to prevent their crimes from becoming atrocities; he found a woman he could tolerate well enough and gave two daughters all the love and care his father had never shown him. In time Jeremiah rose in the gang's hierarchy, becoming the lieutenant to their leader Gaivan Two-Edge, and a feared figure throughout the chancel's underworld.

The darkest day of Jeremiah's life came after many years as Gaivan's lieutenant and closest friend. His eldest daughter Keva had grown into womanhood, and Gaivan was paying her court. One night, though, Gaivan visited in a drunken haze, and tried to force the matter; Keva, no stranger to violence herself, drew steel to defend herself. Unfortunately, the aggressor was one of the greatest knife-fighters in the world, even drunk, and Keva was slain. The tragedy played out apace, and by dawn Jeremiah Longknife had lost his arm and killed his oldest friend.

Only of late was Jeremiah ennobled, when his predecessor was lost. He well appreciates the power it gives him, and is glad after a fashion to at least be able to affect the Valde Bellum and the war between the Poles of Creation. He did not, however, greet with unalloyed joy the intrusion of the estate of Blades into his soul. He does not love it with all his heart; as much as blades have given him, they have taken away. But they are necessary, and so he will do the task his Imperator set for him.

Anchors

Amarra Longknife

Amarra is Jeremiah's only surviving offspring, his younger daughter. She is an accomplished cutthroat in her own right, enough so that when the newly EnNobled Duke of Blades decreed that she would succeed him as head of the Thousand Knives, nobody objected even civilly.