Jailer

*"Good morning, master thief. Did you enjoy the face branding yesterday? I can see that you did. And how are you enjoying the accommodations? More lip from you and I’ll be glad to brand the other cheek."*

## Basic

(Core) The Empire is a nation of laws, which means it’s also a nation of jails. Despite the best efforts of the clergy of Verena, the Goddess of Justice, the innocent are just as likely as the guilty to end up in jail. Better too harsh than too lax is the opinion of the law. Imperial jails are foul dungeons that smell equally of fear and excrement. Jailers preside over these institutions, using a combination of brutality and humiliation to keep order. Jailers generally have no sense of justice or pity, and are seldom swayed by pleas or speeches (though bribes are gladly accepted). The worst are outright sadists, delighting in the power they hold over their charges.

### Secondary Profile

**Skills:** Command, Consume Alcohol, Dodge Blow, Heal or Sleight of Hand, Intimidate, Perception, Search

**Talents:** Resistance to Disease, Resistance to Poison, Specialist Weapon Group (Entangling), Wrestling

**Trappings:** Bottle of Common Wine, Tankard, Any one of: Bola, Lasso, Net

### **Career Exits**

Bailiff, Bodyguard, Interrogator, Rat Catcher, Watchman

## The Empire’s Strange Penal Code

It is assumed by most of their ‘guests’ that jailers are simply brutish sadists who enjoy torturing them. And while certainly this is true of some, many jailers are bound by an archaic and often bewildering code of laws.

For example, in Altdorf it is illegal for a jailer to beat a prisoner with a club thicker than this thumb. In Middenheim, any prisoner that will be executed must be fed roast beef.

The city with the most and widest variety of bizarre and even laughable penal laws, is Talabheim. In Talabheim, prisoners must wear colourcoded tabards according to their most heinous crime. This bizarre selection of often garish colours (yellow for theft, red for murder, green for forgery, pink for rape, and white and grey stripes for treason, to give a few examples) creates a prison that to one observer’s eye looks more like a circus than a jail.

## Friedl Grützmüller, Jailer of Brissenwald

Friedl is almost terrifyingly ugly. Born hunched and marked by pox in his youth, he looks the typical jailer – a horrid monster eager to torture prisoners. Friedl puts on a good show whenever the warden or nobility come around – slurring his speech, whipping any prisoner who steps out of line wildly, and so forth.

But in truth, Friedl runs the most comfortable and easiest jails in the Empire. Located right outside of Nuln, Brissenwald receives a lot of prisoners from that bustling hub of trade and crime. Friedl is on the payroll of multiple crime lords within that city and he provides them with a valuable service. When one of the crime lord’s men gets caught, and simply getting them off isn’t an option, a bribed official will send that man “to the hell that is Brissenwald.”

Friedl ensures (for no small fee) that his guests’ needs are taken care of. In fact, Friedl is more an innkeeper than a jailer, seeing that his clients are well-fed and stay in relative comfort. A few well-chosen women of the night (paid as much for their discretion as anything else), work the prison under Friedl’s supervision.

Wine is served with supper. The guards are hand chosen to make sure they understand what this job requires and are well paid for their silence. However, nothing will help any prisoner sent to Brissenwald who can not pay Friedl’s fees. After all, someone has to be made example of when the local lords visit.