balmung The Judge of Addler's Bend [ex-Garlean barber surgeon and ganglord]

[saccharine_bliss]

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[align=center]The Judge of Addler's Bend[/align]

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Howls filtered out of the Bishop Lane barbershop at regular intervals as a surgeon worked diligently at his trade. The sign over the entrance was fashioned of old oak and it read like an epitaph: The Bishop Lane Barbershop: we’ve got opium, whiskey, and prayers to god. The bowels of the Ul’dah slums were rank with the smell of whiskey and mildew, the kind of aroma that hung heavily and gagged in the throats of the more well-to-do folks. Men and women hustled by the old surgeon’s shop, small hovels of bones that gave a wide berth and casted nary a glance towards it or the grim and dour-faced “doorman” that stood as vigilant as some loathsome blackguard before it in all his brigandine and linens swaddled up into aged jackboots. Another man came up on the first in much the same attire, his leathers like a wash of grime and squalor and an aged and beaten cleaver tied off by a strip of rawhide to his hip. In his tow he hauled by the scruff of a filthy tunic a pitiable and wretched-looking man who had the broken bearing of a beggar. His escort was grinning and barking taunts at his charge while he wrangled him, selfsame as some beaten-low cur.

 

“Ever heard why they call ‘em the Judge o’ Addler’s Bend?”

 

The vagrant shook his head. It was only mostly true; he’d heard stories. The doorman laughed and he was mirthless and cruel and his swill tongue had an ominous sneer to it. “Reckon he’ll know soon enough. Wiff enough time, Cassius brings ‘em all to heel.” These men that sought audience were a rare breed of folks, brothers both trussed in the iniquity the streets had bred them for, and in their fists and their hearts one could see murder brooding still. They and their quarry stood there for some minutes as the muffled howling endured and the supplicant was mute and terrified like one is yet before their execution on the gallows sprawl. And then the howling stopped. The doorman grinned, a ferryman of some hellish Styx and he rapped his knuckles against the barbershop aperture in a rhythmic series of beats. Silence answered at first and then the heavy rasping of hobnail’d boots over the boardfloor. A metal and unoiled bolt shrieked open behind the door and then it swung open.

 

Standing in the doorway, in his bespoken coat all bloodstained with maps of violence, was a hard-looking and truculent man with broad shoulders and broad wrists and a thin smile. His white and greasy hair was slicked back and tied off into a topknot and a single, blue eye stared out at the gathered patrons, the other knotted up in stitches, long punctured out by blunt force. He held clutched in one of his hands a soiled rag that he then slapped over his shoulder and gestured the two in. He did not wait before receding back into the blackness of his crafthouse, leaving the beggar to be hauled in after this new player. The doctor trundled about the small and antiquated room, its effects sparse and raw save what little embellishments there were outside of the jars and the workshop wall of surgical instruments hanging by nails. In a corner, a man lay on an operating table and the surgeon was speaking to him. His voice was set in a low register and it rumbled like distant thunderheads.

 

“Sorry Pete, got a bit of business here. If the whiskey starts wearin’ off, jus’ give me a little howl and I’ll fetch out the laudanum.” The man gurgled up incoherently in response. “Wisdom teeth,” he explained grimly and discarded a rag onto the countertop where it unfoiled and two sawed out and bloodied teeth lay within. He began to work in a water basin near the rag where he haphazardly washed at a pair of surgical implements, the thick miasma in the air rank with alcohol and that tell-tale smell of iron. “Sit ‘em down,” he said after a few moments and jerked a thumb over his shoulder to a chair in one of the corners. The beggar was dragged from his spot in the threshold and handled roughly into the seat. He winced at the crude treatment but seemed too meek to speak out. “What’s your name, son?”

 

“Solomon.”

 

“Solomon? That’s a good name. An honorable name. So tell me, boy, where be yours?” Cassius turned to him with an aged bonesaw hanging slack at his side. The man jerked and attempted to scramble desperately from his seat before being seized up by the shoulders and violently slammed back.

 

 “Sir, sir please. It ain’t that way. I’s got plenty uh honor, suh. Plenty! Just-- just hungry is all.” The surgeon grimaced.

 

“Stop your yowling, boy. It’s unbecoming.” He moved to the man and settled then on his haunches to watch this vagrant with that cold stare. He ran his fingers through his mop of oily hair and sighed. “I’m a very traditional man, Solomon. I believe in the order of things.” He paused and glanced to his blackguard that stood hovering over the man with hands clamped firmly about his shoulders. “Did they tell you where I got me name?” The man began to speak but his words were snapped back into his throat by a pair of brass knuckles carving itself into the side of his mouth. His head cracked to the side and he went slack. The surgeon tendered his fist into his hand as he waited for the man to resurface from the daze. “Addler’s Bend, probably a place ye’ve no notion of. How could you? Little spit of dirt on the edge of the Shroud. I was a centurion in the army then. Those under me had been tasked with capturing some of the more isolated towns, useful for easy intelligence on the locals, y'see. Most of them were easy enough to bring to heel when we arrived, but this little hovel of a town defied us.” The man’s thin grin returned a strange pride and dignity to this sordid icon. “They were fine men and women, but when we brought them low examples had to be made and I made them. For every man who brought a sword to bear against us, I took their hand so that they might never make the same mistake again. For every savage that spoke an errant word in our regards? I took their tongue. This, son, this is what I mean by the order of things. It must be upheld. There are punishments for your actions. If a man takes from you, you must assure that he never does so again. And you stole from me, Solomon.” On cue, Solomon’s security escort lunged for the man’s arm and hauled it roughly to an accompanying table next to the chair and Cassius came to his feet, and with the man restrained, poised the bonesaw just above his victim’s wrist.

 

"Spare the rod, me boy." Outside, the muffled screams resumed.

 

Themes and Connections

 

From Soldier to Kingpin: Cassius was born on Garlemald soil and enlisted in the military when he came of age. When the Garlean offensive began treading back into Eorzean territory in 1571 of the Sixth Astral era, he signed up under Nael van Darnus' legion. Shortly after the atrocities of Addler’s Bend, he and his men were captured and imprisoned for a time before, on good behavior and shows of willingness for naturalization, they were offered their freedom and released into a new life in the foreign land. He and his men formed a rag-tag of “workers” in one of the Ul’dah slums and began to eke out a harsh life among the crime and misery of their district. Their brutal tactics at war served them best here, and they carved out gang territory with the barbarism befitting their savage trades.

 

Quit That Yowlin’: To my friends, my love of antiquated medicine is no mystery. Spontaneous amputation to stave off gangrene, humorism, maggots, and unsanitary surgical procedures are the bread and butter of this character. If you’ve a love for dirty realism and need a good stitching, a shot of whiskey, and a piece of wood to bite down on, I’m your man.

 

A Haircut: Don’t forget the “barber” in barber surgeon. Just like those military medical practitioners of old, this character is more than trained and equipped to give yours a haircut while shooting the breeze.

 

What War Will Bring: Though Cassius pretends to be a naturalized, reformed citizen of Eorzea, his heart is still in Garlemald. He’s gathered in his retinue a slew of Garlean sympathizers and Garleans themselves and uses them to push his nationalistic agenda.

 

 

If interested in contacts, please message me on Cassius Uberti or Ja'rhem Khalaa!