Jack and Cairn [Archive] - Wizards Community

Jack and Cairn [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
ShiverTheBard
07-27-06, 02:36 AM This is for an upcoming campaign where me (Cairn), and my best friend (Jack), will be playing twin rogue assasins. As the story shows, we both take very different approaches to things, (much like us in real life.) So, getting to why i'm posting this, I wrote this short story to serve as a background for my DM and I was just wondering what my fellow flavor-nerds thought of it. I tried to even stick in some number crunch bout my char, like getting a spear through the arm. Because of that, he lost all strength but kept his dexterity, aka the Noncombatant flaw.

Jack and Cairn

So there I was, twelve more feet and I would be shooting our payday. My finger twitched as the target lined up in my sights. I didn't know this man, and I didn't particularly care who he was. All I know is someone was willing to pay a good deal of money to "get him outta the way", so to speak. I almost pulled the trigger when I noticed someone closing in on my target.

"Dammit, Jack", I muttered under my breath.

Here I was, sitting on a rooftop thirty feet up and my idiot partner was about to engage the target, while I had the clear shot! That was Jack's style, screw the sneakiness or theatrics, just go up, tell the man your there to kill him, then do it. This time, however, Jack decided to close a bit too quickly.

Outta the corner of the sight I saw two other guards closing in on him.

"Well, help him, or let him deal with this ****," I asked myself. "Screw it, but he's gonna owe me," I said as I launched a bolt at the one on the right. So then, Jack pulls his speedy crap and next thing, the target's guts are splattered on the pavement. Always with just that single knife, Jack was deadlier than any three men I know. With his showboating, we'd managed to pull in a few decent contracts over the last few months but a well known assasin is a dead assasin.

"I'm starting to get damn tired of the way you work Jack," I admonished him later as we relaxed back at the Golden Swan, our hideout of the week.

"Sorry, Cairn but you know that's the way I like to do things."

"I understand buddy, but at least let me take the shot first, then if he's still walking around, you can finish em'. You nearly got us picked up by the watch today." I kept telling him how we should do things, but that was Jack, his way all the time. The problem to my argument was that he was too damn good with that knife. His skill was so immpressive that nowadays people talked about the legendary demon of speed, Jack the Knife. That's all you'd hear about him, anyone who knew anymore 'cept me was already dead. Of course, Jack was the only one who got a mention, don't mind his partner, the brains of the outfit.

"Eh, we got away didn't we?", He lazily shot back like always.

"Fine", I admitted, "long as we don't get caught we can work this way, but I swear to Cuthbert, if we get caught, they're gonna need sacks to carry what's left of you." I tried to scare him good, I even used the evil eye, but nope, nothing. Funny thing was Jack would've made a great family man. He was patient, laid back, and truly cared about the ones around him, at least the one's we wasn't gutting.

But enough about Jack, this is my story isn't it? My name's Cairn. Nothing more, just Cairn. I never had no parents and the orphanage didn't really care what you were called. So one day, I found this book about some ancient king or something and the great cairn erected on his tomb. The word had a nice ring to it, so since then it's been my name.

I grew up on the streets, (cliche ain't it?) and I worked the usual way kids do, I joined a gang. Things were good till about the time I turned sixteen when the town I lived in cracked down on us after that temple got raided. I had nothing to do with it, of course. Afterwards, they forced us all into being altar boys at the different temples. The town council thought it might knock some sense in us. (Also it was kinda ironic, since that temple got trashed. Guess no one wanted to foot the bill for the cleanup.) So I end up getting gently "shown the way" into St. Cuthbert's service.

The priests weren't bad but some of their philosophy was really weird. Like I shouldn't do something wrong because of it being evil, but because I would get retribution for it. Seems kinda off, don't it? So's I got stuck under some crusty old priests for a few years till I got really bored round' the time I turned nineteen. Once the heat was off (and a New Mayor elected), the gangs started reforming and I got myself into the cream of the crop, the Green Daggers. Let's see if you can guess what they carried? Was it Green Daggers, maybe?

So like I was saying, their leader was some weird type, really shadowy. Despite the group's name, he always used a crossbow. Well round the time I turn twenty, he takes a shining to me after I save him from a guard's spear running through his chest. (I shoved him out the way and got the pointy end through the arm, painful but not disfiguring, least not too much.) Becuase of that, I lost all the strength in my right arm. I was useless with a sword after that, but my fingers remained as nimble as ever. So leader then hands me his crossbow, and teaches me how to use it. After that, I always sat at the back and sniped whenever we raided anything.

We were mighty succesful for another two years before some guy decides to try and take out leader. We were raiding a warehouse when this tall, lanky guy wielding a single knife comes up to us.

"Are you the Green Daggers?", He asked quietly with determination.

"What if we are?", leader snapped back.

"Well then I'm here to kill you.", he spoke as he sprinted into a run. Within a few seconds he took down two of our guys. He slowly advanced, dropping our men like flies, all the while only using a single dagger. At this point, leader sprinted into a run, as all our men were gone like dust in the wind. (Like dust in the wind! Ha, damn i'm good.) Running might've been the worst thing he could've done.

"Shoot him!", were the last words leader spoke as Jack's dagger lodged itself in his spine. I couldn't fire then; much as it hurts my ego to say it, this guy mesmerized me.

"You a Green Dagger too?", he spoke as he easily saw my hiding place.

"Seeing as how you just killed 'em all, I don't suppose so anymore.", I uttered in fear and amazement.

"O, alright then, I was only paid to kill the Green Daggers, have a nice day.", he articulated with a happy finish.

After that, I did the only thing I could do. I followed. Me and Jack have been working together since. He lines 'em up and distracts the target, dispatching the guards, while I shoot down the target. Afterwards, he steals the bolt and stabs the corpse up a bit, makes people think that's what killed em. So far, together we've had a myriad number of succesful contracts. But this next one kinda scares me, tailing a group of adventurers, not killing them till we've assessed their abilities and usefulness. Killing people is a lot easier, but this job will pay too well to pass up. Guess it's time to go to work.

The plot for us in this campaign is that were payed to tail this fledgling group of adventurers and ascertain there potential usefulness to said shadowy dark conglomeration. If the response is positive enough, I might just start a series of short stories around our sessions.

Edit: Sorry bout the templating, it's readable, but the english major in me hates not being able to do indentions.
Double Edit: BTW, anyone know an easier way to post stuff from a Word document onto these boards?
remmun
07-27-06, 03:01 AM i like the backround story. kept me scrolling down eagerly. as for my opion on the characters cairn could use a few aspirations. what are her goals? does she wish to become rich and retire to a comfortble life? or does she kill for the thrill of it? i'm not seeing a whole lot of motivation for being an assassin. your character sounds as if she is not such a bad person. she jumps in the way to save her gang leader. a noble act indeed. does she perhaps have a desire to seek revenge on jack for killing her gang? or does she see him as a better assassin than herself and is jelious (there could be some romatic desires deep inside her for jack which would explain her helping him out to take down the two members of the city watch)

i like the idea of getting inside the mind of hired killers and seeing why they act the way they do. does cairn have a moral delemia at some point and begins to mess up jobs as a result? the answer to some of these questions could set cairn apart from the typical assassin.

very good start it will be insteresting to see how this progresses.
ShiverTheBard
07-27-06, 03:08 AM I guess i'm a chick then because Cairn is most definitely a guy. Seeing as how Cairn is kinda almost based around me, you cut out my heart with a spoon. Gender confusion is a no-no. Eh, whatever, still a fun character to play and write the background for.

I guess i'm gonna need to get a dress then................

Edit: I guess the Avatar doesn't help much, I should probably find a manlier one than a hot elf wizardess.

Double Edit: Didn't really answer any of your questions there buddy. Cairn just kills because its what he is good at. Until he joined up with the Green Daggers, he really didn't have much of a purpose. During that troubled time, he figured out he was good at shooting people with a crossbow. If you've never known anything beyond that your good at killing, wouldn't it be easy to stick to what your good at? In case I didn't make it clear, the opener is the latest contract we took, then we go back to our hideout and I do a bit of reminiscing for yall.

Triple Edit of Powah!: For those who might seem confused that my avatar is differnent than how it was earlier described, I just switched to Aramil the Adventurer. The sipmple reason as we all know is that gender confusion is very awkward and a serious no-no.
remmun
07-27-06, 03:26 AM sorry...i thought you were...um...nevermind.

one way to flesh this character out more ( in my opinion which until now has been a bit different than yours) would be to have him experiance more than just killing. to see how cairn reacts when faced with a job that requires killing children or a mother.

in keeping with what you mentioned earlier that all cairn knows is killing, what asspirations might HE have? does he want to become rich from his expliots? or maybe to gain some glory and repuation (as jack has). or does he simply wish to test his skills against whatever difficult jobs come his way.

some goals for the campiagn could help give your character a driving purpose and make for some fun roleplaying.
ShiverTheBard
07-27-06, 03:34 AM Thanks for the apology. Nothing hurts the ego like someone thinking your a chick.

Onto the more important matters, if it were a mother or child, Cairn would do the job. He would have some remorse but everyone's gotta die sometime right? Cairn is really close to me as at the start of the campaign he's gonna be in the situation I find myself in, knowing not what I want or what to do, but making some money along the way to getting there.

Seeing as how this was merely a test draft to sort of, "test the waters", so to speak. I plan to do some more fleshing out on his childhood. Like what was the orphanage like and how did he work between the ages of 12 (ran away from orphanage) to 16 (Stuck with the stodgy old priests.) Thanks for the opinions (at least the ones not about the character's gender.) I'm just kidding ya, not a big deal.

ALLRIGHT PEOPLE KEEP IT COMING!!

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
ShiverTheBard 07-27-06, 02:36 AM	This is for an upcoming campaign where me (Cairn), and my best friend (Jack), will be playing twin rogue assasins. As the story shows, we both take very different approaches to things, (much like us in real life.) So, getting to why i'm posting this, I wrote this short story to serve as a background for my DM and I was just wondering what my fellow flavor-nerds thought of it. I tried to even stick in some number crunch bout my char, like getting a spear through the arm. Because of that, he lost all strength but kept his dexterity, aka the Noncombatant flaw. Jack and Cairn So there I was, twelve more feet and I would be shooting our payday. My finger twitched as the target lined up in my sights. I didn't know this man, and I didn't particularly care who he was. All I know is someone was willing to pay a good deal of money to "get him outta the way", so to speak. I almost pulled the trigger when I noticed someone closing in on my target. "Dammit, Jack", I muttered under my breath. Here I was, sitting on a rooftop thirty feet up and my idiot partner was about to engage the target, while I had the clear shot! That was Jack's style, screw the sneakiness or theatrics, just go up, tell the man your there to kill him, then do it. This time, however, Jack decided to close a bit too quickly. Outta the corner of the sight I saw two other guards closing in on him. "Well, help him, or let him deal with this ****," I asked myself. "Screw it, but he's gonna owe me," I said as I launched a bolt at the one on the right. So then, Jack pulls his speedy crap and next thing, the target's guts are splattered on the pavement. Always with just that single knife, Jack was deadlier than any three men I know. With his showboating, we'd managed to pull in a few decent contracts over the last few months but a well known assasin is a dead assasin. "I'm starting to get damn tired of the way you work Jack," I admonished him later as we relaxed back at the Golden Swan, our hideout of the week. "Sorry, Cairn but you know that's the way I like to do things." "I understand buddy, but at least let me take the shot first, then if he's still walking around, you can finish em'. You nearly got us picked up by the watch today." I kept telling him how we should do things, but that was Jack, his way all the time. The problem to my argument was that he was too damn good with that knife. His skill was so immpressive that nowadays people talked about the legendary demon of speed, Jack the Knife. That's all you'd hear about him, anyone who knew anymore 'cept me was already dead. Of course, Jack was the only one who got a mention, don't mind his partner, the brains of the outfit. "Eh, we got away didn't we?", He lazily shot back like always. "Fine", I admitted, "long as we don't get caught we can work this way, but I swear to Cuthbert, if we get caught, they're gonna need sacks to carry what's left of you." I tried to scare him good, I even used the evil eye, but nope, nothing. Funny thing was Jack would've made a great family man. He was patient, laid back, and truly cared about the ones around him, at least the one's we wasn't gutting. But enough about Jack, this is my story isn't it? My name's Cairn. Nothing more, just Cairn. I never had no parents and the orphanage didn't really care what you were called. So one day, I found this book about some ancient king or something and the great cairn erected on his tomb. The word had a nice ring to it, so since then it's been my name. I grew up on the streets, (cliche ain't it?) and I worked the usual way kids do, I joined a gang. Things were good till about the time I turned sixteen when the town I lived in cracked down on us after that temple got raided. I had nothing to do with it, of course. Afterwards, they forced us all into being altar boys at the different temples. The town council thought it might knock some sense in us. (Also it was kinda ironic, since that temple got trashed. Guess no one wanted to foot the bill for the cleanup.) So I end up getting gently "shown the way" into St. Cuthbert's service. The priests weren't bad but some of their philosophy was really weird. Like I shouldn't do something wrong because of it being evil, but because I would get retribution for it. Seems kinda off, don't it? So's I got stuck under some crusty old priests for a few years till I got really bored round' the time I turned nineteen. Once the heat was off (and a New Mayor elected), the gangs started reforming and I got myself into the cream of the crop, the Green Daggers. Let's see if you can guess what they carried? Was it Green Daggers, maybe? So like I was saying, their leader was some weird type, really shadowy. Despite the group's name, he always used a crossbow. Well round the time I turn twenty, he takes a shining to me after I save him from a guard's spear running through his chest. (I shoved him out the way and got the pointy end through the arm, painful but not disfiguring, least not too much.) Becuase of that, I lost all the strength in my right arm. I was useless with a sword after that, but my fingers remained as nimble as ever. So leader then hands me his crossbow, and teaches me how to use it. After that, I always sat at the back and sniped whenever we raided anything. We were mighty succesful for another two years before some guy decides to try and take out leader. We were raiding a warehouse when this tall, lanky guy wielding a single knife comes up to us. "Are you the Green Daggers?", He asked quietly with determination. "What if we are?", leader snapped back. "Well then I'm here to kill you.", he spoke as he sprinted into a run. Within a few seconds he took down two of our guys. He slowly advanced, dropping our men like flies, all the while only using a single dagger. At this point, leader sprinted into a run, as all our men were gone like dust in the wind. (Like dust in the wind! Ha, damn i'm good.) Running might've been the worst thing he could've done. "Shoot him!", were the last words leader spoke as Jack's dagger lodged itself in his spine. I couldn't fire then; much as it hurts my ego to say it, this guy mesmerized me. "You a Green Dagger too?", he spoke as he easily saw my hiding place. "Seeing as how you just killed 'em all, I don't suppose so anymore.", I uttered in fear and amazement. "O, alright then, I was only paid to kill the Green Daggers, have a nice day.", he articulated with a happy finish. After that, I did the only thing I could do. I followed. Me and Jack have been working together since. He lines 'em up and distracts the target, dispatching the guards, while I shoot down the target. Afterwards, he steals the bolt and stabs the corpse up a bit, makes people think that's what killed em. So far, together we've had a myriad number of succesful contracts. But this next one kinda scares me, tailing a group of adventurers, not killing them till we've assessed their abilities and usefulness. Killing people is a lot easier, but this job will pay too well to pass up. Guess it's time to go to work. The plot for us in this campaign is that were payed to tail this fledgling group of adventurers and ascertain there potential usefulness to said shadowy dark conglomeration. If the response is positive enough, I might just start a series of short stories around our sessions. Edit: Sorry bout the templating, it's readable, but the english major in me hates not being able to do indentions. Double Edit: BTW, anyone know an easier way to post stuff from a Word document onto these boards?
remmun 07-27-06, 03:01 AM	i like the backround story. kept me scrolling down eagerly. as for my opion on the characters cairn could use a few aspirations. what are her goals? does she wish to become rich and retire to a comfortble life? or does she kill for the thrill of it? i'm not seeing a whole lot of motivation for being an assassin. your character sounds as if she is not such a bad person. she jumps in the way to save her gang leader. a noble act indeed. does she perhaps have a desire to seek revenge on jack for killing her gang? or does she see him as a better assassin than herself and is jelious (there could be some romatic desires deep inside her for jack which would explain her helping him out to take down the two members of the city watch) i like the idea of getting inside the mind of hired killers and seeing why they act the way they do. does cairn have a moral delemia at some point and begins to mess up jobs as a result? the answer to some of these questions could set cairn apart from the typical assassin. very good start it will be insteresting to see how this progresses.
ShiverTheBard 07-27-06, 03:08 AM	I guess i'm a chick then because Cairn is most definitely a guy. Seeing as how Cairn is kinda almost based around me, you cut out my heart with a spoon. Gender confusion is a no-no. Eh, whatever, still a fun character to play and write the background for. I guess i'm gonna need to get a dress then................ Edit: I guess the Avatar doesn't help much, I should probably find a manlier one than a hot elf wizardess. Double Edit: Didn't really answer any of your questions there buddy. Cairn just kills because its what he is good at. Until he joined up with the Green Daggers, he really didn't have much of a purpose. During that troubled time, he figured out he was good at shooting people with a crossbow. If you've never known anything beyond that your good at killing, wouldn't it be easy to stick to what your good at? In case I didn't make it clear, the opener is the latest contract we took, then we go back to our hideout and I do a bit of reminiscing for yall. Triple Edit of Powah!: For those who might seem confused that my avatar is differnent than how it was earlier described, I just switched to Aramil the Adventurer. The sipmple reason as we all know is that gender confusion is very awkward and a serious no-no.
remmun 07-27-06, 03:26 AM	sorry...i thought you were...um...nevermind. one way to flesh this character out more ( in my opinion which until now has been a bit different than yours) would be to have him experiance more than just killing. to see how cairn reacts when faced with a job that requires killing children or a mother. in keeping with what you mentioned earlier that all cairn knows is killing, what asspirations might HE have? does he want to become rich from his expliots? or maybe to gain some glory and repuation (as jack has). or does he simply wish to test his skills against whatever difficult jobs come his way. some goals for the campiagn could help give your character a driving purpose and make for some fun roleplaying.
ShiverTheBard 07-27-06, 03:34 AM	Thanks for the apology. Nothing hurts the ego like someone thinking your a chick. Onto the more important matters, if it were a mother or child, Cairn would do the job. He would have some remorse but everyone's gotta die sometime right? Cairn is really close to me as at the start of the campaign he's gonna be in the situation I find myself in, knowing not what I want or what to do, but making some money along the way to getting there. Seeing as how this was merely a test draft to sort of, "test the waters", so to speak. I plan to do some more fleshing out on his childhood. Like what was the orphanage like and how did he work between the ages of 12 (ran away from orphanage) to 16 (Stuck with the stodgy old priests.) Thanks for the opinions (at least the ones not about the character's gender.) I'm just kidding ya, not a big deal. ALLRIGHT PEOPLE KEEP IT COMING!!