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Cassian Rourke
Cassian Rourke
"Rourke is looking for you." · Former Crown Finder of Bannon
Basic Information
Full Name
Cassian Rourke
Nickname
The Finder
Race (Grade)
Human (E)
Class
Slayer
Height
6'2"
Birthday
Goldenleaf 27, 1267
Age
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Birthsign
Bloodline Ability
Unknown
This Bloodline ability has not yet been unveiled to you.
Physical Description
Cassian Rourke, thinking. Not angry. Thinking.
Appearance
Cassian is a tall, heavily built man of thirty-nine, broad through the shoulders and chest in the way of someone whose strength was built for use rather than display. His black hair is swept back from a heavy brow, and a full black beard and thick mustache frame a face that settles, at rest, into an expression most people read as anger. His eyes are a pale, cold blue and very steady. He dresses plainly and almost always in black: a dark shirt worn open at the collar with the sleeves turned back, a worn leather belt, good boots, and nothing that would catch on anything. Dark ink climbs his neck and spreads across his chest in dense, flowing scrollwork, and more of it runs down both forearms. He carries a plain, undecorated sword and a long knife, and both are better cared for than anything else he owns.
Unique Characteristics
Cassian looks directly at whoever is speaking to him and keeps looking until they have finished, which unsettles people far more than any threat could. He is noticing things while he does it: which leg carries an old injury, which hand someone favors, how far they can comfortably reach, whether they guard their ribs when they turn, and what they do with their hands when they are frightened. Most of his tattoos mark cases, not kills. Some stand for people he brought home, some for cases he failed, and a few for people he deliberately let go. He will not say which are which. He has one rule about them: he never tattoos a name, because names belong to families, not to him.
Personality & Temperament
Positive Traits
- Notices everything and forgets almost none of it
- Calm and unhurried in any room, however hostile
- Keeps his word, even to the people he's hunting
- Bone-dry humor, once he decides he likes you
- Does the right thing, even when it costs him
Challenging Traits
- Stares at whoever is talking until they're done
- Asks the one question you hoped he wouldn't
- Looks furious at rest; is usually just thinking
- Trusts almost no one who holds official rank
- Eats like it's a chore, because to him it is
I'm not angry. I'm thinking. [A long pause.] Apparently I think angrily.
I'm not here to threaten you. I have three questions. You already know which one you're going to lie about.
No names. Names belong to families. Not to me.
Likes
- A file with one small detail that doesn't fit
- People who say what they mean and then stop
- The Outer Trails at dawn, before anyone is awake
- Plain food, eaten quickly, discussed by no one
- A good whetstone and an hour with nothing to do
Dislikes
- Anyone who thinks rank puts them above the law
- Being asked his opinion of the wine
- Speeches, flourishes, and dramatic challenges
- Orders handed down without the reasons behind them
- Being asked what any of his tattoos mean
Background & History
A Bannon Boy Who Didn't Care About Dinner
Cassian was born in Bannon in 1267, in a city where family recipes are inherited like deeds and every citizen is expected to be a connoisseur. His family's Recipe Vault was, by Bannon standards, perfectly respectable. Cassian never once opened it. He passed the Tasting Trials on his first attempt at sixteen and admits freely that he could not have told you what half of the fifty ingredients tasted like. He wasn't tasting them. He was watching the proctors, and every one of them leaned, very slightly, toward the right answer.
The Man Handed the File
At nineteen he entered the service of the King's Court as a Crown Finder, the office sent after people who believed wealth, rank, or distance placed them beyond the reach of the law. He was never really a guardsman. The Taste Guard protected streets. Cassian found people: runaway murderers, corrupt officials, kidnappers, smugglers, escaped prisoners, and rogue mercenaries. If somebody disappeared into another city under a false name, Cassian was the one handed the file, and he was exceptionally good at it. Every fugitive in Bannon knew the streets emptied at noon for the Quiet Hour. So did Cassian. It was when he knocked on doors.
The Clerk
In his fifteenth year of service, Cassian was ordered to retrieve a young government clerk accused of stealing classified documents. He found her, two cities away, eleven weeks later. He also read what she had stolen. The ledgers showed that prisoners sentenced to Kitchen Service, the city's gentlest punishment, had been marked as having served their time while in fact being sold to slavers and moved out across the Veyan Steppes, and that several officials had been growing rich on it for years. His orders were very clear: bring the clerk back. Cassian returned alone. When his superior asked where she was, he placed the evidence on the desk instead. That conversation did not go particularly well.
A Dish for the King's Tasting
Cassian resigned in 1301, before they could formally dismiss him. That same month, one covered plate at the King's Tasting turned out to hold no dish at all, only a copy of the Kitchen Service ledgers. Nobody has ever proven who put it there, and nobody has ever asked Cassian directly, which he considers a sign of good sense. The clerk escaped. Several officials did not.
Independent Work
For the next five years Cassian worked for himself as a finder and professional problem-solver, taking the kind of work he used to be assigned and turning down the kind he used to be ordered to do. Lords still hired him, quietly. Families hired him far more often, usually for less money and usually for better reasons. The tattoos kept accumulating, and so did his reputation, until "Rourke is looking for you" became a sentence that ended conversations in several cities.
Choosing Silmarithil
In Harvestide of 1306, Cassian finally left Bannon for good. His work had carried him through the Goodberry portal often enough that the choice was simple: he picked his profession over a city that measures its people by their palates, and he does not miss a single meal of it. He chose Silmarithil because it is small, because nobody there has asked his opinion of a sauce, because it sits within easy reach of Goodberry's portals, and because he likes the idea of living in a kingdom whose laws carry the weight of the Heavens themselves. He rents a plain cabin where the Outer Trails give way to forest. The Lanternwalkers have taken to escorting him home after dark, which he has decided not to take personally. He arrived while Silmarithil was still absorbing refugees from Gelderai, and he has already noticed at least two faces in the crowd that he remembers from old files.
Goals & Aspirations
Work Worth Doing
Cassian intends to keep doing the one thing he has ever been truly good at, for people who deserve it. He chooses his clients the way he used to choose which door to knock on: carefully, and after he has already learned more about them than they would like. He will find almost anyone. He will not find someone just so they can be hurt, and he has walked away from more than one generous fee after asking why.
The Buyer
The Kitchen Service ledgers named the sellers, and the sellers were dealt with. They never named the buyer. Somewhere past the Veyan Steppes is whoever paid for those prisoners, and possibly some of the prisoners themselves. It is the one case Cassian has never closed, and he still carries a single page from it, folded small, in an inside pocket.
Somewhere to Stay
For twenty years Cassian has lived like a man passing through, in rented rooms with one bag and a chair facing the door. Silmarithil is the first place he has chosen for himself rather than for a case. He has bought a proper table. He still sits facing the door, but he is working on the rest of it.
Current Status & Relationships
Residence
Role
Fugitive Hunter
ATTENTION!
Cassian Rourke is an E-grade human, and nothing about him looks exceptional until someone actually studies what he can do. He has spent twenty years ending fights against people who were dangerous themselves, and against intelligent humanoid opponents he is among the most lethal people in Silmarithil. He watches before he fights, learning how you move, what you favor, and what you do when you are afraid, and by the time he acts he already knows how the fight ends. His fights look almost disappointingly simple: block, step inside, elbow, knee, blade, done. Against a monster he is a very skilled man with a sword. Against an assassin, a spy, or a fugitive who has been careful for years, he is the worst thing that could possibly happen to them. He does not threaten people. He asks questions, and they are always the ones you were hoping he would not ask. If someone tells you "Rourke is looking for you," the correct response is to become concerned.