JesterInBlack

JesterInBlack was an obscenely wealthy zombie piglin merchant, member of the Aquosian aristocracy and ruling council, first Judge Magister of Aquos, and the Baron of Bogwater. He made contributions to magical research within the DSD, including key breakthroughs on the Elixir.

### History

Jester immigrated to Drevhall from the nether, which in his experience was a hot and miserable place (doubly so without sweat glands) where many wars were fought over gold. But the new land he found himself in had gold aplenty with few fights over it, and something even more rare and valuable in the nether: water in abundant supply. He joined the aquatic nation of Aquos shortly after stumbing into this new land, since they were the closest to the water, a resource of incalculable value.

After getting a lay of the land, he began erecting a trading outpost and bridge of stone in Bogwater, the swamp that divided the Riverlands. By providing a safe shortcut for commerce across the Riverlands which also would serve as a centrally located outpost with easy access to the sea, he aimed to amass a fortune.

With a defensible outpost established, he sailed the seas in search of valuable trading partners, and brought several back with him to Bogwater to join his enterprise. With this partnership, he established Aquos Armories in Bogwater with the aim of mass producing perfect gear of every variety to acquire gold. He used some of that wealth to build the flagship of Aquos' fleet, the Pride as a demonstration of their wealth, and to cement Aquos as the rulers of the seas.

While salvaging a shipwreck, Jester came across fragmentary passages of an old religious text, which spoke of a deity that held domain over the sea, The Deep One. Not one to spurn any potential advantage, Jester sacrificed a few extraneous items to the Deep One and asked for good fortune.

While transporting goods by boat, Jester was struck with misfortune. His boat was attacked and sunk by the only thing worse than pirates: the drowned. Laden with goods and burdened by his gold armor, he sank to the bottom of the sea. As his last breath left him, he was brought back from death as an undead creature.

Having witnessed the power of the Deep One, Jester resolved to repay his debt to it for saving his life by making worthy sacrifices to the Deep One. He built a temple to the Deep One deep beneath Bogwater, began collecting hearts of the sea, leveraged his trading partners to forge Wither's Bane, and even ventured back into the nether to summon and then sacrifice many withers with it upon the altar of sacrifice. After much effort, he managed to break through the bedrock at the bottom of the world, in the hopes of releasing the Deep One from its prison. Instead, he released the sculk...

#### The Sculk Pandemic

In the ensuing sculk pandemic, he tried to find the cure so he could sell it, but was not the first to discover it. Before a true cure had been discovered he tried to sell a fake cure at auction to test if a placebo could cure the sculk, but when it did not work, he refunded the buyer. He later made contributions to discovering the elixir which makes people immune to sculk infection, and immunized Aquos.

While on a routine sand-gathering expedition, Jester stumbled upon the tomb of Emperor Anyr of the Golden Sands Triumvirate, and looted his tomb of his sceptre, and documents of archeological significance. He then sold the coordinates to other tomb raiders.

When New Harbor declared independence from Aquos, he instituted policies to ensure the people that were formerly of his nation still had the same rights within Aquos.

#### The Second Nashar Invasion

At the funeral of Erebus Ignis, he vowed to repay the debt of blood owed to whoever had killed Erebus.

When the AWS Pride was boarded by approximately 20 of Nashar's legionaries, Jester killed all of the pirates himself, but not before they had sabotaged the ship.

Amid the mysterious assassinations, his spies reported that the High King wanted him dead.

He was later summoned to Wakked Castle on urgent business, but when he arrived in Bogwater, he found the knights already there, uninvited. Upon being pushed, he opened the lower hall that they might have a place to at least sit, before barricading himself in a separate room in the gatehouse from which he carried on his side of the conversation. Davi had come there with some mysterious serious business, which Jester denied knowledge of. Though Davi threatened war, Jester refused to meet with anyone without concessions to security with the recent murders, and assassins running about. Retro used magic to enter the gatehouse in Bogwater, and Jester was cuffed. But his home's security had momentarily captured his captors. They had to use an Elytra to drag him from Bogwater bridge.

He was thrown in a cell in the dungeons of Wakked Castle on suspicion of being a member of NILF, which he denied. Though he had sufficient magical power to escape, as a gesture of trust, he gave his word he would not escape his cell by teleporting himself out. While inside, he purchased information from the outside world from visitors outside the cell window, including a report that at least some of the prisoners were supposed to die before trial, and used them to convey information to the outside world, including to appoint Beaf acting head of Aquos. Jester was later teleported out of his cell by someone else, and went into hiding, for a death warrant was issued by the knights for the crime of escaping. While working on a plan to free some of the other prisoners, he received word that the other prisoners had in fact been killed in their cell. He returned to Bogwater, where the knight Thermo tried to kill him before he slipped into a secure room. In response, he blacklisted all of the knights from his bridge.

Displeased with the arrest of himself and Mafia, which led to Mafia's execution without due process, but harboring doubts as to who was truly responsible for this turn of events, Jester decided to wait and watch before deploying proportionate reprisals. In the interim, he declared cuffs contraband in Aquos waters to reduce the chances of this injustice being repeated.

Upon hearing about the High King's reaction to the prisoners being killed, and the miraculous intervention that saved him from his attempted suicide, Jester decided that if he was to stand against a man favored by the gods, he would need the favor of his own god, the Deep One. In secret, he travelled to an ocean monument, and cloistered himself inside. Some time later, a gray parrot mysteriously appeared inside, bearing a message warning him that his death was imminent. Jester left seclusion, and joined his allies in New Harbor. Three assassins came for him and tried to kill him, but he managed to escape with Waffles' help. The battle between him and the assassins dragged on for so long that their invisibility wore off, and two of them were identified as the knights Thermo and Retro. In retaliation for this second attempt on his life on the Chaptermaster's orders, Jester placed an 11 ruby bounty on the Chaptermaster Davi's head, stating he would rescind it if the knights rescinded their death warrant. By way of reply, the Chaptermaster placed a 40 ruby bounty, the biggest in Drevhall's history, on Jester, and also offered that he could pay it off. Rather than engage in a bidding war which threatened to destabilize Drevhall with invaders on their doorstep, after some negotiation, and curious to see what good use the rubies would be put to, Jester paid off his bounty, and the warrant for his death was rescinded ... only for Jester to find that Bogwater Bridge had been marked with a red handprint, apparently meaning another group of assassins, allegedly in Nashar's employ, had marked him for death.

Thoroughly displeased with this state of affairs, Jester reached out to loyal friends who had also been harmed by the events of Bloody Wednesday to have them kill the man responsible for landing him in this state of affairs, Turtle, King of Galinor. A few days later, they reported their success back to him. While some credit Turtle's death to Jester, it is likely that Tilly loyalists or other friends of NILF would have done the same, even without his intervention.

From that point on, Jester never went anywhere in his favorite gold armor, preferring netherite's superior protection, and was always kitted out to flee at a moment's notice. At first, he refused most in person meetings that weren't behind an iron door, and only built in secure locations. He conducted business through dead drops. Gradually, over time, he established contact with many people in on-on-one situations, and when they did not try to capitalize on the situation to kill him, he added them to the list he was secretly keeping of those unlikely to be assassins. He eventually grew frustrated, as it seemed the assassins would never tip their hand to him. He redoubled his efforts against Nashar, hoping that crushing Nashar's forces might also get the assassins to leave him be.

Upon being informed of its approximate location, he scouted out Terebus' island base, but was detected by Terebus, who called his guards on him. Jester escaped by leaping off a cliff into the sea. He observed the comings and goings of the legions' troop transport ships, and the massing of their forces, from afar. He ordered the construction of a new warship in the Aquos shipyard for the war effort, the AWS Undertow.

He helped Classy on her road to recovery after she escaped Terebus' captivity, and let her stay in Bogwater with him under the influence of the beacon's regenerative magics for a time. He joined the fight against the Nashar Legion in the battle along the eastern front at New Harbor and Dreadhaven.

He sailed the newly constructed Undertow on its maiden voyage to scout Terebus' outpost at Eagle's reach, and provide advance intelligence to the coalition, along with several dozen sea dogs. Terebus issued an ultimatum to the vessel: depart, or be shelled by naval guns. Jester ran out the time on the ultimatum, and then requested a parley. In the parley, Jester stated he had scouted the whole island and didn't find a single naval gun, calling Terebus' bluff, and made an ultimatum of his own: Terebus was to pay an inordinate sum for using the seas without Aquos' permission, and given one day to comply. Instead, Terebus chose war, constructing a naval gun. Shortly after it was finished, the Undertow shelled it and destroyed it. With no other means of attack, Terebus' forces attempted to board the Undertow. Jester and his dogs repelled the assault, though not without cost, and kept the island approach safe for the inbound coalition navy.

He participated in the siege of Eagle's Reach as part of the force defending the coalition ship the SoulSpite, and after the battle, true to his word, he "sunk the castle into the sea" by flooding its lower levels.

Jester met Luccy the archivist upon his arrival to the shores of Drevhall. Some time later, Luccy came to Aquos, seeking a place to hide from Davi, who had apparently helped Thermo perform some kind of alchemical experiment on him, something about the air god's blessing. As a religious authority and having some personal familiarity with the air god and its sculk, Jester offered Luccy sanctuary within the temple of the southern water temple of the Deep One, and that he could join the church and seek help from the Deep One in his current predicament. Shortly after arriving at the temple, Davi and Thermo arrived to speak with Luccy, and an argument broke out in which he blasphemed against the air god. The air around Luccy grew caustic, and he stumbled back into the temple, near death. But in exchange for his sacrifices offered at the temple, the power of the Deep One kept him alive. Far preferring the Deep One and its adherents to his old home and its new support for the air god, Luccy decided to join Aquos.

After purchasing a large quantity of Netherite from Jack for Aquos, or perhaps more accurately sniping it (which upset King Davi, who wanted to buy some at a discounted rate), Jester found Jack and he had much in common, and invited him to join Aquos, offering him a position as minister of defense. In a bid to attract the attention of the assassins who had marked Jester for death, and establish contact with the aim of finding out who they were and rooting them out, Jack started a mercenary business where he went on to conduct a few contract killings against troublemakers in Galinor. It was not long before Jack came to Jester and informed him that someone had reached out to put a contract on Jester's head for 40 rubies. Given that few could afford such a steep price, and the irony of that specific quantity, combined with their troubled history, this led Jester to suspect Davi. Jester encouraged Jack to continue playing his part to secure more evidence.

Jack went on to recruit Fantons to join Aquos. While they were getting Fanton equipped from the Aquos treasury, an invisible foe was detected scouting the ship. The ship was placed in lockdown, as Jack and Illu searched for this probable assassin. After a brief confrontation, the interloper fled. Due to it appearing to teleport despite the ship's protective magic, they suspected Void.

Not moments later, Davi tried to teleport to Fantons, who was still in the treasury, the most secure area of the ship, with Jester. Jester issued Fantons into a holding cell before accepting. The king was outraged to find himself in a cell. After stating his purpose was with Fantons, Jester allowed him out of the cell, and Thermo aboard. They then took Fantons and conducted strange experiments on him, as they had with Luccy, but with less apparent ill effect, then took their leave. Jester was displeased with them using an Aquosi with such little regard.

Jester then set out with an armed escort to question Void about any connection to the security breach, but he denied any involvement, and claimed he thought he saw invisibility particles moving toward Thoronor. Jack took the lead in questioning, and was menacing and hostile, while Jester dialed things back to a more diplomatic approach. They went to investigate and found nothing. In the wake of the incident, Jester issued a proclamation banning foreigners without permission from Aquos waters, and warning the punishment could be death.

### Death

Jack returned to Jester shaken, worried, and concerned. He shared that he had been paid in full, and he knew who was behind the assassins, but if he failed to complete the job, he would be killed, and then a major move on Jester would follow. Jester offered that if Jack shared what he knew, they could openly fight those who threatened them both, but Jack was certain that even with all of Aquos behind him, they would lose that battle, further deepening Jester's suspicions of Davi. Jack shared what he could, but some things he was forbidden to share. Fearing magic might be involved, Jester did not press that issue. Jester needed allies. And so, he offloaded a great deal of his personal wealth into the Aquos coffers aboard the AWS Pride, allowed active recruiting into Aquos, and invited his allies outside the Riverlands: Veteres, Frostmare, Frontier, and Galinor to join a military end economic union. But even with this union's might behind them, Jack felt certain it was a losing battle, and they were running out of time...

Jack gave Jester the deadline, which if they did not act by, the assassins and those behind them were certain to act. Jester made what plans he could to see the assassins brought to justice by having Jack dismantle them from within.

He tried to close the union deal, so his nation and its allies could find strength and security in unity, deter the threat of assassination, and fight back no matter who was backing the assassins and end their looming threat.

He confided everything he knew and suspected in Illu, and gave him a set of plans to carry out should he die, and set him to watch Jack should he prove false.

On the final day, he contacted Classy, who had twice saved a ghost from certain death by building it a new body, inviting her to join he, Jack, and Illu at the high temple of the Deep One in Aquos. He proposed a plan where Classy would use the Anima Relics to strike him down and bind his ghost to the relic to bring him back later, and Jack would present his head to the assassins to get into their good graces and destroy them from within with Illu's help from the outside. He said this could be Classy's chance to find out who had killed Julian, and avenge his death. She refused.

Prior to this, Jack had discussed killing Classy for the relic if she refused to comply. Jester had rejected the plan, as Classy had helped him escape the knights in the past, and tried to help him escape his cell in Wakked Castle to avoid the events of Bloody Wednesday.

Once Classy left, it began to rain, then thunder. Jack was feared across Drevhall for his skill with a blade, and even with Illu's help, if they decided to fight him, there were no guarantees they would survive. Furthermore, Jack was an Aquosi, one of Jester's people, who had also got himself into a bind and needed saving. Finally, the opportunity Jack had created was his only and best chance to strike back against the assassins. Weighed against all that, even in his estimation, one life seemed more than a fair trade. With a heavy heart, Jester bid farewell to his old and closest friend Illu, and entered the temple's depths with Jack. He left Aquos in Jack's hands before sacrificing himself to the Deep One by drowning, after which Jack took his head to present it to the assassins.

So ended the life of Aquos' first Judge Magister.

### Legacy

Jester's time ruling Aquos was fraught with the threat of impending war, largely as a result of his approval of the decision to (deniably) cast his lot with NILF, with the aim of securing Bogwater and New Harbor as Aquos territories as part of his agenda to rule the seas. He always publicly denied involvement with NILF. While his expansionist schemes were upended, Aquos grew to its greatest expanse under his leadership, at one time laying claim to the entire sea of ice, and his diplomatic and economic approach avoided war and won him much support.

Jester left Aquos a wealthy nation, with hundreds of mending books, 16 blocks of netherite, and over 40 rubies, mostly a product of his own labors. He personally saw to it every Aquosi was equipped.

In true #noscam fashion, he left his immense personal wealth to his cousin, along with a list of the tasks he failed to complete in his lifetime, and the conditon that his wealth would only transfer once the tasks were complete. Even after his death, he continued to fund the construction and development of Aquos.

Shortly after his death, Aquos dissolved. Jack reformed Aquos again, becoming the second king, and then absconded with Aquos' rubies and netherite and joined Nashar's forces, or perhaps he was always a servant of them. The Aquosis that remained took most of what was left and abandoned the capitol and fled into the forest, founding Salacia. The union's ties were damaged under Jack's rule, as he allegedly refused to share resources and took much for himself, but many of the members still have good relations, and still share in some of Aquos' wealth.

Historians say that without Jester's breakthroughs in alchemical research, it is likely the Elixir recipe would have taken much longer to discover.

Jester's cousin now presides over the nomadium which was historically Aquos, still building up the great monuments envisioned by Jester.

In what might have been a stain on his legacy, the High King Davi posthumously accused Jester of being in league with Nashar upon finding Aquos armories armor in their possession, but this allegation was challenged as many such sets were in circulation, and more than a few had been given to Jack, who went on to serve Nashar, and Jester himself had fought legion forces in several battles throughout the war. It was revealed through private documents Jester was open to helping Nashar, but was rejected by Terebus, and after Nashar's first attack on Aquos, he never again considered aiding them.

### Powers

Jester has few exceptional abilities aside from his outrageous wealth and being well-stocked. His feats of wealth include financing the construction and outfitting of the AWS Segunda with over 70 stacks of TNT personally (the Segunda had a total market value of over 100 Rubies), and then laughing and writing off its loss when it was sunk, and paying off his own 40 Ruby bounty (the largest in the history of Drevhall).

He is a skilled artificer, and those that managed to kill him found he had an annoying habit of not staying dead courtesy of the Deep One's favor. In the end, Jester only met death willingly.

### Exports

Jester specialized in the production of luxury goods including enchanted netherite gear, wine, beacons, spider silk, and fine art, but had a great many other wares on offer.

### Imports

Jester hoarded rubies, gold, and hearts of the sea, and was loathe to relinquish them.

### Notes

Jester's love of gold, especially raw gold is well known, as was his unusual habit of wearing gold armor, when he can afford much more effective equipment. While under threat of assassination he often lamented the situation didn't allow him to wear it. His most prized possessions included a sea chart of most of the explored world. He was frequently called a "capitalist pig".