The Marquis

Lore & Background

Before the curse turned the bayou into a crucible of flesh and fire, the Marquis held a seat among the old provincial nobility. His estate sat on high ground above the waterline, its gardens manicured to geometric perfection, its dining hall long enough to seat forty without a single elbow touching the next. He was a man of letters, of fencing, of quiet condescension toward those who could not afford silk. Then the Company's agents came, and the estate was seized, and the name was struck from the rolls, and the Marquis was left with nothing but the two rapiers his father had pressed into his hands at a coming-of-age ceremony.

He did not rage. He did not take to the roads as a bandit. He simply walked into the Company's office, accepted a contract, and asked to be told where the next allurement lay. The clerks found this either amusing or unsettling; the Marquis found it the only rational course. One does not negotiate with a power that has already won. One simply becomes useful to it, and in doing so, preserves the one thing no charter can confiscate: the right to die on one's own terms, in one's own style, with a clean blade and a straight spine.

In the bayou, the Marquis is an anachronism made flesh. He tips his hat to a fellow hunter before drawing steel. He refuses to fire a pistol at a man who has not drawn his own weapon. He sheathes his rapier after a kill and walks on, as though the act were no more consequential than closing a book. The other hunters call him mad, or a fool, or — in the rarest and most respectful instances — a gentleman.

Reader's Guide

FROM THE COMPANY ARCHIVE — HUNTER DOSSIER, FILE 7-C

The subject, known only by the title 'The Marquis,' presented himself at the Company's bayou office in the third week of the curse's second year. He carried no papers, no letter of introduction, no proof of identity beyond a coat of a cut that had not been seen in the provinces for a generation. He asked for a contract. He was given one. He has not missed a kill since.

The Company's charter, as the Marquis understands it, is simple: the allurements must be harvested, the leeches must be culled, and the hunter who fails to deliver is fed to the thing he was sent to kill. There is no appeal. There is no pension. The Marquis finds this arrangement acceptable, as it mirrors the old fencing masters' rule: you enter the salle, you commit, you do not leave until the point is drawn or the blood is spilled.

His methods are… irregular by the Company's standards. He refuses to use firearms at close range when a blade will serve. He will not fire upon a hunter who has not yet drawn. He has, on two recorded occasions, sheathed his weapon and walked away from a wounded opponent, citing 'the matter being settled.' The oversight committee noted these incidents. No action was taken. The Marquis's kill rate remained within acceptable parameters, and his blades were, in the words of one clerk, 'clean as a surgeon's.'

The formal rules of the Hunt, as the Marquis recites them, are few: arrive, engage, deliver the allurement, and do not dishonor the blade. Everything else — the Company's ledgers, the other hunters' grudges, the leeches that crawl into your coat at night — is merely the weather. One does not argue with the weather. One puts on a better coat and walks on.

— Filed by the undersigned clerk, who has requested transfer to a drier posting.

Did You Know?

• His aristocratic background is a narrative counterpoint to the Company's utilitarian, transactional relationship with its hunters — he treats the contract as a matter of personal honor rather than mere survival.
• His refusal to strike first and his insistence on clean, personal combat have made him a community favorite among players who prefer skill-based, close-quarters engagements over ranged suppression.