Dolohov Family/Rasputin

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Intro

Rasputin Dolohov came of age in the South-West Island, and so he missed out on learned various social conventions. He's bright, and capable, but -- not put too fine a point on it -- he's a little off. He's a perfectly good troop leader in many respects, and had performed spectacularly as judge, but his social skills are lacking. He's just a bit too bluff for most people: noblemen do not like being told that getting up at 4:00 in the morning for what he vaguely calls a "constitutional" is "good for you, and you could use it, you look like a corpse! I might just have to kill you just to be sure you aren't one, haha!" Unsettling as he can be, he is nevertheless damned good at his job, and so he's tolerated. (In fact, he was made Warder of the Candles in the guild Sungard, an assignment which has been alternately called "brilliant" and "downright malicious.")

In The Bushes

The regions of Cjelegy and Avengmil became filled with undead after the tides of battle started to turn. Rasputin left the safety of Athol Margos to go and oversee these regions, and to help ensure that they remained loyal to Riombara. Not long after, the Riombaran Army struck back, and retook Cjelegy. Hearing that their judge was in the region, the commanders decided to send a few units round to the courthouse to make sure he was all right...

A crazy-looking straw hat peeks up above an unkempt hedge as your unit marches past. Suddenly an even crazier-looking fellow leaps out, dressed in dirty judicial robes, and armed with a South Island-style scimitar with a few nasty chips in the blade.

"Well, well! It's good to see you all!"

"It's actually been pretty safe lately -- I pretty much barricaded myself in the courthouse, and made all the peasants come to me with their disputes. Of course, there are no bathing facilities in the courthouse, and the public bath was turned into a zombie spawning area a couple months back."

"You'll have to pardon the mess, it's hard to keep house when there are undead creeping around -- the gardeners were all eaten last week when I 'asked' them to trim the hedges out front."

"Don't touch that! It's a zombie trap! Home-made, thank you. See all the little spikes? They really do a job on those buggers -- pretty nasty, let me tell you."

"Now that you all are here, I think I'll vacate the courthouse and take down the planks from the windows. I'll head to Avengmil, probably. Lots of undead still romaing around, but I think there are a few live gardeners."

With that, Rasputin disappears again into the brush. The exasperated commanders order a search, but all the soldiers find are his hat and his sword, which are sent back to Athol Margos for safe keeping, in the expectation that Lord Rasputin will eventually come most of the way to his senses, and want them.

Holding Court

Sure enough, Lord Rasputin turned up in Avengmil the next day, as though nothing was wrong. As far as he was concerned, nothing was! "Nothing like a few undead to make things a little more lively", as he never once said until suddenly insisting that he'd always said that. He got down to work holding court. Unfortunately, the locals had not seen him in quite some time, and had apparently forgotten what sort of judge he was...

Rasputin strides into the dilapidated (and undead-chewed) Avengmil courthouse. He climbs the steps to his desk and sits sagely, overlooking the courtroom. A clerk shuffles up to him and whispers in his ear,

"Milord, what sort of court do you wish to hold today?"

Rasputin considers this carefully, and muses, "I think these people are getting a little independent-minded. Better curb that."

"Very good, milord." The clerk checks his clipboard very carefully, and then leaves the room. He selects a plaintiff and a defendant, two middle-aged women who are quite angry with each other.

The women plead their cases before Lord Rasputin, and he nods carefully as they speak. They finish, and wait fearfully for his verdict.

Slowly and carefully, Rasputin proclaims, "The solution is clear. You must cut the baby in two, and each woman will get half."

The two women are shocked, and the whole courtroom is stunned as they are carried away. A shocked observer turns to the clerk, and asks, "That's the most terrible thing I've ever seen! All the kid did was break the other woman's front window -- she just wanted the mother to replace it!"

The clerk gives a world-weary sigh. "I know. Here's the thing: Lord Rasputin doesn't actually listen to the cases. He has no idea what these people actually want from him, all he knows is that he wants to either be harsh, be just, or be merciful."

"I'll say that's harsh! That's the harshest judgement I've ever heard!"

The clerk shakes his head. "The judgement itself never changes. Someone showed him a book once where the wisest judge in history passed that judgement for two women who were fighting over a child. Lord Rasputin, who spent most of his youth on one of the South Islands, read that and got entirely the wrong idea. Now, every case he hears, the judgement is the same: Cut the brat in half."

The observer stares at the clerk, horrified, as the man continues to explain, "Now, that was a harsh court. Knowing what the judgement would be, I went and picked a case where that judgement would be considered harsh. You'll see -- everyone in Avengmil will be minding their P's and Q's pretty darn well for the next few days."

"And a just court?"

"Well, there's really only one type of case where the sentence is actually just. And let me tell you, rare is the woman who can't say for certain whether a kid's hers. It's the father who's in doubt, more often than not. I can usually manage some approximation. Sometimes I hire actors, sometimes I find a real case and just invent appeals so that he has to decide the same case over and over."

The observer shuts his eyes tight. "I'm going to regret asking this, but... merciful court?"

"Hmm? Oh, noise complaints, usually. Lots of those. Kids these days -- what can you do?"

The observer wanders off in stunned silence, leaving the clerk to look over the docket for tomorrow. Rasputin comes back into the room, looking bemused.

"You there. Have you seen my sword anywhere?"


Important Orders

Lord Rasputin was most recently seen begging other senior officials to issue him Important Orders, because he'd run out of "that nice bright paper" and his dog was attacking a peasant. The peasant would be offended, he decided, if he called off the dog using mere "Orders" on the dull red paper, so he futher decided to just wait for another batch.

His assistant complained later that it would have been better to just go out and physically pull the dog away, but Lord Rasputin demurred, saying that it's always best to do things officially, that the dog may have been acting under someone else's orders, and that it would be more effective to send the orders for the dog to the entire realm, just to be sure. His assistant complained again that there were dozens of people in the realm, to which Lord Rasputin replied, "Exactly! Which is why I can't give those orders with just the five sheets I have left!"

Like Brothers

"Dear Worthy Grand Justiciar Gnutt:

It has come to my attention that you have jailed and are planning to torture my cousin Alexei. I understand that you get pleas from relatives all the time, and of course I understand that you cannot give particular weight to my own heartfelt plea. Nevertheless, with so much at stake, I feel that I must try.

I know you have family of your own. Please know that Alexei and I grew up together, long ago, as mere boys in the desert sands of Talerium. We did everything together. He was like a brother to me. This is how I know that, for example, there is a fracture on the back of his skull on the left, about three inches behind the ear, which has never quite healed. Repeated blows there with a rubber mallet are sure to hurt like the dickens without actually knocking him out.

The soles of his feet are also particularly sensitive. Now, novice torturers are bound to rush into the whole breaking-toes and burning-with-a-candle thing. And that's all good, there's nothing wrong with that. But I urge you to start with a light touch: needles, for example, are quite effective. Feathers are good for a giggle, but only before applying flame (otherwise you deaden the nerves too much)

If your tortures do not over-tire you, I wonder if you might put a few questions to my cousin for me:

  1. Did you, or did you not, kiss Cecelia Gordon when she was dating your own cousin, your own flesh and blood, you filthy conniving bastard? (This question may best be asked while administering a kick to the groin. Just a friendly tip.)
  2. Did you or did you not break Aunt Natalie's favorite blue porcelain dish, and then maliciously blame it on your dear innocent cousin? (Please torture him until he admits this, and send a copy of the torture report to my aunt. I'm actually the one who broke the stupid dish, but these sorts of opportunities ought not be passed up!)
  3. Did you or did you not, when you were six years old, steal poor Rasputin's teddy bear and have it hanged?
  4. Did you or did you not borrow eight gold from your generous cousin Rasputin, and then sail away to SEI without repaying him this debt? Do you intend to pay him back? (if you can get him to pay interest on the loan, I'll split the difference with you)

Please, worthy judge, hear these pleas, and follow the dictates of your heart in this matter. I eagerly await your reply, and any gold, clothing items or slightly more biological souvenirs you might be willing to send me.

Sincerely Yours,

Lord Rasputin Dolohov

Grand Justiciar, Riombara, Beluaterra"


Filing System

Overheard in the Justiciar's chamber:

Hmph. It appears that my scribe has a new filing system. Bloody nuisance, if you ask me -- I liked the good old days, when he just shoved a bunch of papers at you and said, "Here's the mail, Milord" and ran off before I could whack him with my stick. (On the really good days, if the mail was light, I'd tuck it under my arm, catch up to him, and give him a good thrashing! One of these days I'll even remember why.)

These days, no! Everything's got to be filed away, and I've got to sign off that I've read it, or he thinks I haven't read it, and gives it back tomorrow with the new mail. Pah. If he thinks this little ruse will slow me down, why I'll give him a beating he'll not forget!


Dueling Dizzy

Dizzy and her cousin Distorted both resided in Riombara. Distorted was arrested for attacking a Riombaran noble, and banned. Dizzy, however, used her position as a priestess to spring him from jail. An infuriated Rasputin chased her down from Athol Margos to Fwuvoghor, and finally cornered her in an alley...

"Give it up, Dizzy, you're surrounded. Your uncle's already fled the island, and I had the gates of Fwuvoghor closed. You're trapped."

Rasputin is answered by the sound of a sword unsheathing.

"Is that the way you want this, eh? Fine."

The fight in the alley rages a long time, back and forth. Rasputin and Dizzy are both bloodied, but they fight fiercely, amazing the guards. They start off at a defensive posture, but as the hour goes on, the fighters get angrier and the blows strike harder and harder.

With a roar, Rasputin brings down his scimitar on Dizzy's blade -- and breaks right through. The scimitar cuts deeply, but the broken sword edge slashes Rasputin's tunic open. The guards have had enough, and they rush in to break up the fight, and drag the combatants to separate healers' houses.

...

Rasputin passes an uneasy day in the healer's house. They give him all the tea he can drink, but no messages, and nor will they allow him out of his room for his morning constitutional. He paces all day, fending off the healers and their assistants who scurry in and out to change the bandage on his shoulder where the slash had gotten a dozen stitches, and on his head where it hit the pavement.

At morning on the next day, his scribe is allowed in, and fills him on the news: War between Mesh and Plergoth. Realms jumping into the fight, more out of bloodlust than any real sense of honor.

One more thing, the scribe says. Lady Dizzy did not survive the wound she received. The healers did their best -- indeed, they expected her to live, but they said that she seemed to have no will to survive. She merely asked the healers whether Distorted had indeed made it off Beluaterra, and then fell asleep and slipped away during the night.

Rasputin sits quiet for a long time. He packs up his clothes and messages without a word, and leaves the houses of healing, and heads toward the courthouse to get back to work.

On Receiving an Artifact

Rasputin received the Ring of Glory from a passing adventurer on his way to the rally point in Ardmore, the forward operations base for the campaign against the Daimons.

Rasputin looks over the ring now on his finger, eyeing it suspiciously.

"What's it do, then, eh?"

His scribe gives him a shocked look. "My lord, it is an artifact of considerable renown. It has sat on the fingers of warlords, kings, and heroes -- a kingly gift under any circumstances, but right now a potentially life-saving one."

Rasputin rides on, mulling that over. "It is sort of pretty. Shiny, even."

His scribe sighs, head held low. "Yes, my lord. Very shiny. Please don't lose it. Or pawn it."

... (Later on the road)

"My lord! Take that out of your mouth immediately!"

"Mmm! Peh! Real gold!"

Rasputin's scribe fixes a steely gaze on him. "My lord, you are not to pawn that ring."

"Bah, I never pawn anything. Get such ideas out of your head. I merely -- "

"You merely use precious artifacts as collateral for loans which you may or may not deign to repay."

Rasputin scowls. " 'Precious artifacts.' You make me sound irresponsible."

"The Sword of Daimonslaying, my lord?"

"Oh, that. Yes, well..."

"The Helmet of Protection from Daimons?"

"Er..."

"The Trebuchet of Daimon Smashing?"

"Oh now come on! How was I supposed to know he could beat two pair?"

"The --"

"Oh, all right, come off it. I'll hang onto the damned ring."

"Keep it on your finger, my lord."

Rasputin jams it onto his fat finger. As his scribe rides by, Rasputin sticks out his tongue at him.

Brains, and the lack thereof

Fighting alongside undead troops can have its awkward moments...

Lord Rasputin paces the ramparts of Grehk, impatient for the coming battle. His Dupaki Guard, highly trained and extremely brave, have been whittled down to just a half dozen able men, and five wounded. As he paces, he walks past the uninhabited section of the city where their undead reinforcements have been stationed. Abruptly, he comes across colors he knows -- his own. The undead guard on duty is freshly dead, and very familiar with light hair and a goattee. The claw wounds across the throat are, of course, not quite as familiar.

"Good lord, man, I know you, don't I?" He exclaims.

"Braaaiins." replies the guard.

"That's right, I do know you -- you were in my Dupaki Guard. Er, until yesterday. Look, I am sorry about that, er..."

"Braaaaaiiiins." replies the guard, looking a little irritable.

Lord Rasputin peers at him a little nervously. "Yes, right. Tell you what, I normally just pay the widow, but seeing as you're up and about..." He fishes in his pocket a bit, but slows to a stop under the guard's withering stare. "Ah. Perhaps I should just send it to your next of kin after all. I think I met your wife, didn't I? Melanie something."

"Braaaaaaaaiiiiiiins!" replies the guard, becoming agitated.

Lord Rasputin backs off a step, despite himself. "Ah, yes, quite right, quite right. I'll just, ah, just get on that."

The Marquis of Mio Dupaki turns back and makes it back to the inn in the city where he locates his scribe.

"Ah, just the fellow I was looking far. Look, I think it's best to pay off -- er, send the bereavement money to the widows, before things get too hectic around here. And while you're at it, do you happen to remember a soldier from Mio, light hair, goattee? Killed yesterday."

"Ah, yes sir," replies the scribe. "That'd be Joshua Brains, sir. Good lad."