Cutthroat

A Cutthroat is one of the Wanderers, a foreign soul whose released core left room for a heart demon. The soul keeps the demon through every unmaking. It cannot hold ground, so it slips into each new Hallow out of the Mist and sells its blade.

Its kind serves in Pyre, the affinity of fire, destruction and war that Undon, the Unmaker holds. It fights hand to hand with poisoned edges. It grows stronger the longer it serves, but it is never hard to wound.

With service it teaches an employer's raiders to go unseen. Later it learns killing strikes of its own, first in battle and then beyond it, against another kingdom's leaders. The card shows what each strike does, how many turns it costs and how likely it is to land.

Cutthroats have their own history of the Law of Equals. Daegred, the Sunward made that law because great kingdoms devoured small ones. Aefenna, the Lamplighter added the counter, so that a recorded wrong could be answered from beyond the law's reach. The cutthroats add another answer: a knife in the dark is the one blow the great and the small can trade as equals.

It is paid in geld alone, and paid well, more as it grows. It asks no mana. When the pay stops, it leaves. Kill one, and its service ends for the Turning, but the soul goes on, and so does its kind.

Cutthroats say the demon wants to be the last thing its target sees. Whether a cutthroat can be freed of it is not known.

Player-visible facts