Handsome Greta

Handsome Greta ­ Witch Hunter, Transvestite, " 'im wi' the five foot shaft"

''"Handsome Greta? Yeah, I saw im once. Impressive lookin' chap, 'e were; all high­heeled boots and armoured corsets. Built like the broad side of brick shit 'ouse too... looked like 'e could twist the head from an ox wi' 'is bare 'ands." - ''overheard in the Yaga's Lament.Handsome Greta is a transvestite witch­hunter. Famed for his ability to shatter heads with his 5' tetsubo, and for his killer dress sense, Greta's skills are in high demand amongst the lower levels of Hygard.

Immediately recognisable by his shaved head, rippling physique and knee-high, heeled boots, Greta is said to be a skilled alchemist. He apparently uses such talents to slow hair growth and produce lip stains that lasts for days.

Urban legend has it that he was captured by a witch when a young boy, and that he escaped by cleaving off her head with a butter knife before torching her house using a substance distilled from his own piss.

All rubbish, of course; the butter knife had trouble going through the witch's eye, let alone her neck, and the house fire was quite accidental... who'd have thought that the old hag would've rolled out of the oven, eh? And the piss? Well, he had tried to put out the flames by voiding his bladder onto them, but a poor boy only has so much to give.

Appearance
At an impressive 7' in his heeled boots, clad in an armoured corset, hotpants and draped in little more than a fur coat and his own flesh, Handsome Greta is not an inconspicuous man. His eyes are a piercing light grey and he has the pale skin of many who grew up in the shadowed environs of Level 7.

With shaven head, rippling muscles and a jawline for days, he certainly lives up to his name.

He wears a lot of anthracite grey and black - everyone looks good in black - and is often adorned in feathers and glitter, not to mention dark lipstick and wingtips sharp enough to kill a man.

Personality
Large, loud and wholly irreverent, Greta is, for want of a better phrase, a wideboy. His strong Level 7 accent (think somewhere along the London cockney-estuary scale) and brash manner set a strong first impression. A straightforward man in every aspect of his life, Greta is akin to a sledgehammer being applied to every and all situations.

Despite appearances, Greta is well-meaning and kind. In a world awash in danger and conflict, he's a suprisingly restrained individual when it comes to grevious injury (apart from witches, of course, but they ain't deservin' of such niceties).

Adelais of Stormroque
words

Mr Stevens
words

Past
blah blah. stuff goes here

STORY DUMP

[Stories will be collated properly, feel free to add details / move it around / change it however you wish]

[Handsome Greta ­ Witch Hunter, Transvestite, " 'im wi' the five foot shaft"]

"Handsome Greta? Yeah, I saw im once. Impressive lookin' chap, 'e were; all high­heeled boots and armoured corsets. Built like the broad side of brick shit 'ouse too... looked like 'e could twist the head from an ox wi' 'is bare 'ands." - overheard in the Yaga's Lament.

Handsome Greta is a transvestite witch­hunter. Famed for his ability to shatter heads with his 5' tetsubo, and for his killer dress sense, Greta's monster ­slaying skills are in high demand.

Immediately recognisable by his shaved head, rippling physique and knee-high, heeled boots, Greta is said to be a skilled alchemist. He apparently uses such talents to slow hair growth and produce lip stains that lasts for days.

Urban legend has it that he was once captured by a witch when a young boy, and that he escaped by cleaving off her head with a butter knife before torching her house using a substance distilled from his own piss.

All rubbish, of course; the butter knife had trouble going through the witch's eye, let alone her neck, and the house fire was quite accidental... who'd have thought that the old hag would've rolled out of the oven, eh? And the piss? Well, he had tried to put out the flames by voiding his bladder onto them, but a poor boy only has so much to give.

A Story of Handsome Greta:

The air is frigid and dry; the moisture uncoiling from exhaled breath, an intruder. A twisting landscape of dust spirals out beneath a sky of unrelieved greys. Clouds of something other than rain sprawl across the heavens in ever-darkening layers; drift to unseen currents of sepulchral air. Even the wind lies still. It is a land inimical to life.

Boots press down, the ground surprisingly firm, and raise small exhalations of dust. Each drifts skyward to join its kin, an expanding mass that marks a most unusual pilgrimage. The steps are muffled; even sound cannot long survive this place.

The pilgrim adjusts the cloth tied about his face, squints against the dust hanging in the bitter air. He spits, grey-stained, to clear his throat. It helps little. The journey has been long; three... four days? He cannot recall yet he presses on. Time seems warped here, its passing made sluggish and stuttering as though it too has stumbled into a land it cannot abide.

Time passes. Does it? And a destination steadily coalesces in the distance. Its lines are shrouded and unclear, its appearance uncertain through the adumbrating veil. The pilgrim presses on, a small trail of something scatters in his wake.

Planes and angles unfold from the turgid air as he approaches, each step a brush stroke describing the edifice before him.

His journey ends. He stands before a house rising from the grey. It is known to him, though in another place and another time. He raises a calloused hand and gently lays it upon the knotted oak door; a door that burned long ago, its blackened mass still solid after its ordeal. The house is smaller than he remembers. Charred timbers jut from the remains of heat-cracked stone, no longer burdened by the roof they once held. Drifts of dust press against the outer walls, softening the aspect of the ruin, lending to it an organic fluidity... a rot-blackened tooth breaching diseased gums.

Drawing a deep breath, he pushes open the door, steps over the threshold, the groan of seized hinges deadened as if reaching through layered wool. Boots crunch over shattered clay tiles and burned wood. The pilgrim moves into the building and toward the back room. Memories swim unbidden behind his grey eyes. Memories of heat and smoke and screams and charring meat.

He knows why he is here. This is the house that he built; the house that death built. This is where he died. This is where he was reborn. This is where he was aspected.

He steps into the back room and stands at its centre. It is remarkably free of detritus. Before him, against the back wall, sits the heart of the fire that made of this place a ruin. Seared metal, blackened iron. The altar he has sought.

He kneels before it, knees touching the floor and feet crossed beneath him. His black robes, hemmed grey by the journey, whip up clouds of dust as he does so. The pilgrim unslings a weapon from his back, lays its mass before him at the foot of the altar. Scarred hands reach up and push back the prodigious hood he wears, reveal a pate devoid of hair. He bows his head and places those hands upon thickly muscled thighs hidden under armoured robes.

He has come full circle, is fully realised; returned to the place that defined and marked him. This ruin that he gave birth to, charred timbers a skeletal hand bursting from the earth. Even houses die.

Time spirals and the unusual pilgrim stands once more. He re-slings his weapon and faces the altar. His back straight, he stands with parted legs. He adjusts the front of his robes and, in an act of utmost irreverence, arcs his piss against the blackened iron oven in which he burned his first witch.

He strides from the room, from his own church, and out into the dust of Grimm's realm. Drawing his hood up once more, the man known as Handsome Greta, Witch Hunter, the Knight of High House Death, begins walking back the way he came, the trail of scattered breadcrumbs leading him back to Hygard.

*****

The rhythmic thud of heeled boots quickly vanishes into the Grey and a short figure clad in a tattered and deeply hooded robe steps out of a small side room in the dead house. It peers at the impressive puddle on the floor and grunts in amusement. Hands devoid of all flesh slip from it's sleeves and begin a slow, dry-bones clap.  <p style="margin-top:6px;margin-bottom:0px;display:inline;color:rgb(29,33,41);font-family:helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:14px;font-weight:normal;line-height:19.32px;"> <p style="margin-top:6px;margin-bottom:0px;display:inline;color:rgb(29,33,41);font-family:helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:14px;font-weight:normal;line-height:19.32px;"> <p style="margin-top:6px;margin-bottom:0px;display:inline;color:rgb(29,33,41);font-family:helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:14px;font-weight:normal;line-height:19.32px;"> <p style="margin-top:6px;margin-bottom:0px;display:inline;color:rgb(29,33,41);font-family:helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:14px;font-weight:normal;line-height:19.32px;"> <p style="margin-top:6px;margin-bottom:0px;display:inline;color:rgb(29,33,41);font-family:helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:14px;font-weight:normal;line-height:19.32px;"> <p style="margin-top:6px;margin-bottom:0px;display:inline;color:rgb(29,33,41);font-family:helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:14px;font-weight:normal;line-height:19.32px;"> <p style="margin-top:6px;margin-bottom:0px;display:inline;color:rgb(29,33,41);font-family:helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:14px;font-weight:normal;line-height:19.32px;"> <p style="margin-top:6px;margin-bottom:0px;display:inline;color:rgb(29,33,41);font-family:helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:14px;font-weight:normal;line-height:19.32px;"> <p style="margin-top:6px;margin-bottom:0px;display:inline;color:rgb(29,33,41);font-family:helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:14px;font-weight:normal;line-height:19.32px;"> <p style="margin-top:6px;margin-bottom:6px;color:rgb(29,33,41);font-family:helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:14px;font-weight:normal;line-height:19.32px;">

Recovered Text:
This transcript is taken from a damaged page of a damaged diary once belonging to Handsome Greta. It was found in the cellar of a former tavern on level 7, deep in the Ragfen District, and brought to me by the lore dredger who found it. Unfortunately, I've been unable to put a date on when it was written, but it was uncovered roughly 20 months after Greta's disapearance and horded by the dredger for the past 8 years. A fragment, no more, yet it has been dutifully committed to memory as is proper. Perhaps one of the Order's Godkiller Savants can illuminate its deeper connections.

Escarabus Punt - 4th Circle Accumulator, Esoteric Order of Dust

"... right fucking mess. All this business with Grimm and what's elapsed since the Weaver was brought dow... [text damaged] ... done them anyway; it's what I do, after all. But it's the manner in which these actions later manifest; the unforeseen patterns uncoiling into the future. And that night, with the orphanage, was a particularly grim (haha) example of how thi... [text damaged]

... but it's all about intent, you see. What occured was little more than a reflex - a primal reaction surging into being beyond anything that could've been predicted only a couple of years earlier. What wer... [text damaged]

... boney old fucker ... [text damaged]

... se thing is that it's not even worthy of record in the great scheme of things; a minor injustice destined to be lost amongst an ocean of the unthinkable, with only this hastily scrawled example of poor penmanship to mark it's occurance - less than a footnote in the relentless history of the world. I'd like to regard it as just another facet of civilisation's plague, but who's to sa... [text damaged]

... can fuck right off and tickle his own dusty balls ... [text damaged]"<p style="margin-top:6px;margin-bottom:6px;color:rgb(29,33,41);font-family:helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:14px;font-weight:normal;line-height:19.32px;">

<p style="margin-top:6px;margin-bottom:6px;color:rgb(29,33,41);font-family:helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:14px;font-weight:normal;line-height:19.32px;"> "Thunder rumbled through the damp air. Felt as much as heard, the reverberations crashed upon the nocturnal quiet like surf upon an empty beach. In fitful sleep, the man known as Handsome Greta stirred with unconscious disquiet over that dread sound - what could it portend?""The noise continued unabated, slipping tendrils of anxiety into Greta's dreams, bringing about an uncoiling fear of things unknown - a loathsome, creeping thing born in this deep place of the earth.""The feeling intensified, manifesting a nauseating pall in both body and mind. What foul entity lurked in the depths to have such an effect? What manner of being was so easily able to penetrate the veil of sleep?""Tossing and turning in his slumber, Greta became steadily aware that he, somehow, was able to ascribe a name to this roiling dread.""As realisation struck Greta's mind, he rolled over and, promptly, broke wind. The dread shadow of Indigestion was dispelled and, as the noisome fug of raw fish clouded the confines of the small hut, the gastric rumbles of thunder finally ceased.""All was right with the world once more."

On Hygard:
Hygard. City of cities. I've been here for years - making the most of the hand dealt to me by fate. Living amongst the downtrodden and the poor; hunting those who would prey upon the weak.

It's strange - this city was once a towering monument to cooperation that rang out the death knell of bigotry; a manifestation of all that could be accomplished if we but listen to those around us. Now, the curse of progress has brought it low - made of it a stagnating pit of bureaucracy that serves to keep the privileged in power; a manifestation of the depths to which we can fall if we cease to listen to those around us. A literal representation of the inequity of civilisation, where the rich build their lives atop the poor.

And yet... a stranger has come to the city - one who's ambitions, whilst ruthless, threaten to upset the status quo and bring about a change the likes of which have not been seen in centuries.

When it comes down to it, whether to live amongst a dissolute and failing city, or to challenge fate for another throw of the dice... what choice do we really have?<p style="margin-top:6px;margin-bottom:6px;color:rgb(29,33,41);font-family:helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:14px;font-weight:normal;line-height:19.32px;">

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