<Homebrew> The Port on the Aster Sea

• Lord Thomas Winterborn is an Eladrin nobleman who follows the Fae legal system, which is either insanely complicated or entirely random. Those who come before him are questioned closely on such arcane as their birthday, their favorite color, whether or not they were wearing a hat at the time of the incident in question, and if so precisely how wide its brim was....
  
  His Bailiffs are also Eladrin, and rumored to be his brothers. They wear full helmets, entirely devoid of features, which give them a very ominous appearance. No few of them are warlocks.

• Stefan Petard is a former Naval Artilleryman 1st Class, a rank which is entirely literal in the Port's Navy. A wizard of some power, he was made a magistrate after he did a favor of some sort for the Governor. The details of this have never been revealed, and likely
  never will be.
  
  Petard has turned out to be a surprisingly reasonable Magistrate – he bases most of his rulings on a simplified form of Old Imperium Goetia law -- saving perhaps his habit of personally executing --in a very explosive manner-- anyone that he condemns to death.
  
  His bailiffs are, like himself, veterans of naval service. Their only uniform is a red and black strip of cloth worn on their right arm, intricately knotted.

• Henry Scatter was born into a wealthy family, which promptly disowned him after an ill-fated fishing trip on the Aster left him twisted into the shape of a goblin. How exactly he became a Magistrate is a hotly debated mystery, but it's generally assumed that blackmail of some sort was involved.
  
  Scatter makes no pretense at objectivity; any case that involves a goblin will be declared in his favor, no matter what the actual circumstances. His bailiffs are mostly Bugbears, with a handful of ogres, and it's not unknown for them to beat people nearly to death for failing to give them the proper respect.
  
  It's unlikely that Scatter will survive much longer, as he's already been the subject of several assassination attempts.

• Lord Bartholomew Choke sometimes prefers to be called Dr. Choke, or Lord Doctor Choke, as he is also the port’s self-appointed Minister of Health. He rarely makes his preferences known, however, and his temper is on the short side of mercurial.
  
  The good doctor is, barely, a man; just shy of 8ft tall and more than 500 lbs. Rumor has it he afflicted himself with gigantism during an experiment trial of curative elixirs in which he was the sole test subject. It is said he must regularly endure a ghastly kind of 'pruning' to keep himself even remotely man-sized. It's also said that as his body grows larger, his conscience and his ability to feel for the smaller creatures grows proportionally less.
  
  Lord Choke is usually an indifferent public servant, except during outbreaks of plague.

• Lord Myles Lively and Lady Lively are a rarity; a pair of married Magistrates. Lord Lively is a famous bon vivant and Lady Lively is known for her charitable activities. He is often described as having a ‘delicate cast’ to his face and she as having ‘large hands’. They are never seen together at the same time and it’s likely that they are, in fact, the same person.
  
  Lord Lively is also reputed to be the head of one of the port’s newest syndicates; a sort of entertainers union based in the Quadrille that dabbles in the more criminal forms of pleasure, the so-called Guild of Revelry. Their rapid rise to power is obviously the result of Lord Lively’s rumored intercession on their behalf and not at all because of their rumored connection to powers Beyond-the-Sea.

• Lord Dandy is rather unusual for an Elf; he is far from flighty, he disdains wine and song, in fact, he seems altogether unnerved by, even frightened of, the pleasures of the flesh. While he does have impeccable style and the appearance of a fop, he is better known as the port’s foremost authority on botany (his love of flora is perhaps the only truly Elven trait), and for his seven, beautiful, unmarried daughters.
  
  Despite his daughters, Lord Dandy is long-rumored to be asexual. Of his wife little is known, or even said. Dandy claims to have met her on a botanical expedition into the Interior, though none on the trip recall his leaving the Interior with the bride-to-be. Just wagon after wagon of floral samples, some quite massive.
  
  According to Lord Dandy his wife is his ‘unique flower’, or as he is sometimes wont to call her, his ‘all-consuming woman’. Supposedly she never leaves his manse, spending most of her time in its enormous glass hothouse. However, his daughters are often about town. By name they are Dahlia, Iris, Violet, Lily, Primrose, Hyacinth, and Larkspur.
  
  They are highly sought after, being pretty and always intoxicatingly scented, though their eyes are disconcertingly empty. None have married, though they've gone through quite a number of suitors each. Apparently the experience is so heart-breaking the men leave the port immediately after and are never heard from again.
  
  Also, there exists a certain rivalry between Lords Lively and Dandy.

• Tom Hollow is a half-elf. He’s gregarious and informal; he’s prefers to go by his first name, even when conducting official business. Despite his even-handed rulings and high ethical standards, people still say of Tom what they say of all his kind; that there’s a hollow space in his chest where half of a man and half of an elf should go. That he’s doomed to spend his entire life wanting.

• Billy Twist, who has been mentioned before, is the same as he was; a big black man who likes to be carried around on a surprisingly tasteful divan. Both former slave and slaver in the Snake States, he’s now a man of the people.

• The Lord Moribund is a title given to the Magistrate whose sole jurisdiction is the Hereafter, though ‘sole’ in this case is misleading since, thanks to a legal loophole, it actually extends beyond the mortal world to encompass the whole of the Other Side.

• Sebastian Androgore is a Tiefling Magistrate. Of him the harpers sadly sing (jk). His background is best described as 'pending'.

• Balthazar Lux is a Dragonborn Magistrate. One day we'll invent a story for him that's worthy of his name.

Moniker said:

Can you and your cowriters post this over at the Campaign Builder's Guide? http://www.thecbg.org/news.php We have a very active community of campaign builders.

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It has a free wiki system usable for all campaign builders, and I know the folks over there would love to see this system.

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Kudos for a truly unique setting!

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• Thrice-a-Day is an Eladrin clockmaker. He gets his name from the old Eladrin saying, “even a broken clock is right thrice a day”. He actually crafts a variety of intricate curiosities in the shop he both lives and works in just off Five Fathoms Market, but it’s his timepieces which are most readily identifiable.
  
  In the small yard behind the shop, Thrice-a-Day is building his masterpiece; a Fae Clock Tower. Seen from the street, it resembles an ornate grandfather clock that just peeks over the wall around the yard. When looking out the shop’s back door, however, the Clock Tower looms up 10 stories or more, at an impossible angle, seeming far larger than the space it’s crammed in to.
  
  Thrice-a-Day is always in need of some odd part or ingredient for the elaborate Ritual that is the construction of the Clock Tower. He's sure he'll finish it one day, and from that glorious day onward, his Clock will 'tell time'. People assume he means it'll tell Time 'what to do' or 'how quickly to run', rather than in the conventional sense.
  
  A professor at the University, Wulfram Fritz, has recently become interested, if not obsessed, with the impractical clocks Thrice-a-Day makes. He's convinced that they all show the correct time, a fact which has disastrous, though unnamed, consequences for the Middling Lands.

• Lord Bum is the port's "King of Beggars". He lives, when he can afford to, at a dockside flophouse in the Stagger called Bumcastle, in honor of him. He dresses in a mocking patchwork of "castoff" finery that suggests both a quick wit and a more than passing acquaintance with the criminal underworld. It's said he almost has as many eyes and ears on the streets as the Governor.
  
  When asked his full name he usually gives it as "Arsely Bottom", or "Arsely Keister-Bottom". His "court" of homeless men and women can usually found meeting, or at least sleeping one off, on the benches of a park near the flophouse. They are known as the Unseemly Court.

• Medallion just might be a man, though port odds-makers give better than even money that “he” is actually some kind of animating force that resides in the medallion he always wears around his neck. Either way, he basically owns the nicest part of town, including his fabulous estate on Memorandum Hill, which is said to contain pieces of the World Before.

• Eustace Mar is the Lord High Oceanographer of the Oceanographic Guild. His nickname, primarily among those who don’t respect him, is “Hydrocephalus”.

• Meridian Cantor is the Cartographer-General of the Geographic Society.

• Shem and Shaun are goblin tale-spinners and bards. They are compiling the complete, definitive, and, unfortunately, entirely incomprehensible history of the port.

• The name of the Tiefling empire in the World Before is the Imperium Goetia.

• The name of the Dragonborn empire in the World Before is the Magna Publica Machina, the Great Machine of State.

Mallus said:

When asked his full name he usually gives it as "Arsely Bottom", or "Arsely Keister-Bottom". His "court" of homeless men and women can usually found meeting, or at least sleeping one off, on the benches of a park near the flophouse. They are known as the Unseemly Court.

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