The Twelfth Bell Killer [Unique Madman]

By day the river city is charming: clean cobbles, window boxes full of flowers, gentle weather. But one night a month a heavy fog rolls off the river and creeps through the streets, and the townsfolk bar their doors until sunrise. From behind the shutters they wait for the town clock to toll twelve, and almost every time a shriek rises somewhere in the mist as the last chime fades, and those safe indoors make holy signs, grateful the Twelfth Bell Killer chose someone else.

Scattered glimpses paint a tall, thin figure, taller than most men, under a wide hat and in a flowing black cloak that seems to swallow light. A black cloth hides the lower face, leaving only a strip of pale skin and wild, staring eyes. The weapon is a long, keen blade. Since no witness has ever exchanged words with the killer, so the language is unknown; locals assume a native of the surrounding domain, though some blame an outcast of the wandering fortune-tellers.

The killer never seeks a fair fight but is a lethal assassin from ambush. The black cloak, woven by the shadow fey from what is said to be living darkness, grants Hide in Shadows at 90%. Matching boots of elvenkind of the same make give Move Silently at 95%. Neither item functions outside darkness, and together they triple the killer's normal chance of surprise. A surprise attack gains +4 to hit and deals triple damage.

Base thief skills (before the gear) are: Climb Walls 90%, Pick Pockets 50%, Find/Remove Traps 42%, Open Locks 42%, Move Silently 40%, Hide in Shadows 31%, Detect Noise 20%.

Victims are always lone, careless or unlucky folk caught outdoors at midnight. The killer never strikes groups or anyone who looks dangerous, and if surprise fails, usually slips away into the dark wrapped in the shadow cloak.

The killer's deepest secret is that 'he' is a woman, something the townsfolk never suspect. The hat, cloak and boots disguise her and add to her apparent height, and no one imagines that the timid, silent pickpocket they scorn by day is the butcher they dread by night.

Her story begins with her parents. When she was about five, her father, a handsome woodsman devoted to his wife and child, caught the eye of the domain's witch-ruler, a cruel seductress who resolved to ruin his happiness. She visited him again and again until her unnatural charms drew him into an affair, then made sure his wife found out. Mother and daughter came home early to find the two together. While the witch laughed and egged them on, the quarrel swelled into a frenzy that left both parents dead by each other's hands. Leaving, the witch knelt and kissed the stunned child's forehead, and the girl's sanity broke at that moment.

She grew up a beggar and thief in the city's worst district among criminals and harlots, and grew to hate the harlots, seeing in each one the witch who had ruined her family. Silent and hidden, she drifted ever further from humanity. One fog-bound night as a young woman she came upon a traveling adventurer embracing a harlot. The scene so mirrored that terrible homecoming that she stabbed the woman over and over while the man ran. As she stood over the body, the clock tower chimed midnight, and the Twelfth Bell Killer was born.

She still lives in the shadows, living on stolen scraps, watching and stalking. No one knows the city's forgotten corners, the dank alleys, empty buildings and old culverts, as she does, and there she waits like a spider at the heart of its web.