Finn Hamm

*"Nobody's going to serve you if it doesn't serve them."*

**Finn Hamm** is an infamous Granchian pirate and crime lord. Born to a rural *sojourner* community in the Sivellan Republic, he now commands the sloop-of-war *Adipocere* and is the de-facto boss of the international crime syndicate known as the Confederation of the Rift (aka the marauders). He began as a small-time sailor and conscript aboard an Exchange mercenary vessel before becoming a privateer for the Commonwealth of Dreiton, and eventually an independent pirate.

## Appearance

*"I always make time for a lad or lass with a death-wish."*

Finn has a somewhat severe and gaunt figure, standing at 5'9" and weighing in at 130 pounds. Despite appearing relatively diminutive or even emaciated, he is exceptionally toned and can easily contend with much stronger-looking individuals; his flirtations with the dark arts of the Old Ways have warped and twisted his body, though he uses the arcane sigils tattooed on his skin along with other occult artifacts to greatly augment his physical capabilities.

As with most Sivellan sojourners (a historically repressed community associated with dark magic), Finn has dark black hair and dull yellow eyes which uniquely glint in dim light. He is said to most closely resemble his father and grandmother. Due to his occult rituals, he sports a deathly pallor and generally appears remarkably sickly and malnourished - especially his eyes, which rarely see meaningful rest.

## Personality

The Prince of Vipers earned his title through his reputation as a master manipulator and cunning rogue. He takes pride in being an iconoclast in all aspects, subverting traditions and making a mockery of every societal institution simply because he can. His intimidating yet charming disposition combined with a deliberately cultivated "bad boy" persona make him a charismatic force of nature who is often said to be more dangerous with his words than with his blade.

Finn can essentially be thought of as Aquila's first rock star, maintaining a cult-like control over his devotees and indulging himself with the basest pleasures. His psychopathic tendencies have made meaningful emotional connections with others virtually impossible outside a select few who are close to him; many a sir and madame have fallen under his seductive wiles only to never see him again come morning.

In spite of his Machiavellian nature, Finn rarely tells outright lies, and abides by his own strange code of honor. Instead, he employs misdirection and manipulation to get to the heart of those who challenge him, exploiting their doubts and desires to make them bend to his will by their own volition.

*"Everyone and everything has a price. So, what's yours?"*

## Character sheet

* Battle (Passive)
* Battle (Physical)
* Battle (Magic)
* Equipment
* Personality

 Unnatural Preservation
 Mindthief

 Unceremonious Execution (Cutlass)
 Blade Storm (Cutlass)
 Adder Storm (Dagger)
 Blast (Blunderbuss)

 Mesmerize
 Grave Touch
 Shadow's Grasp
 Phantasmal Killer
 Misty Step
 Mirror Image

 The Viper's Eye
 Baron Samedi's Fantastic Talisman

## Biography

### The Bad Old Times

Bianca Valentino was born in the early hours of Brightstar the 17th in the year 4824. She was raised by Gomez and Sonja Valentino in the sleepy village of Poveglia, one of several tiny settlements pockmarked throughout the Granchia Autonomous Zone of the Sivellan Republic. Despite having tilled the arid lands of Granchia since at least the imperial civil war, the so-called “sojourners” of the region were not recognized as citizens of Sivella, and thus would not be afforded the security and luxuries enjoyed on the other side of the Valencian walls. Instead, the land surrounding Poveglia had been auctioned off to a private land development corporation owned by a wealthy Occan magnate who made good after the destruction of Providence - and happened to be southeastern Aquila’s most powerful Templar grandmaster.

The landlord was known only as the Seneschal, and he was quick to salvage his losses by exploiting the chaotic political state of Valencia at the time (the period immediately after the assassination of the first Clockwork) to purchase effectively the entire province of Granchia for just over 50 pennies per acre. The land seizure incensed the people of Valencia, but the native Granchians were somewhat optimistic about their new lords, having been pushed by the breaking point to meet Clockwork’s impossible demands for ever greater steel and grain quotas.

The Valentinos had been a respectable family of scribes and publishers for several decades by the 4820s, being the only household with a functional printing press and usually possessing enough capital to employ up to a dozen Granchians at a time to copy every book the firm could obtain. However, their remarkable success and financial stability for so many years had soured many of the locals’ opinions about the family, leading to credible accusations of grain-hoarding and private smelting during the Hard Times brought about by Clockwork. Their assets were seized by the Valencian state and then destroyed; the local authorities believed that such frivolous activities as transcribing were the cause of Poveglia’s recent inability to meet its quotas.

Their luck remained much the same after the Seneschal’s purchase, perhaps deteriorating even further now that they were beyond Valencia’s reach entirely; what little flow of capital and infrastructural assistance they had received before had been cut off overnight, and they now had to fend for themselves against both the company’s brutish enforcers and the wild street gangs that now terrorized the suffering town. Bianca and her brother Gio came of age during this period of the Harder Times, escaping the confines of their humble shack to run with the street kids and make a few extra pennies here and there to provide for the family. To obscure their heritage as “degenerate” sojourners, they took on more unassuming Occan pseudonyms: Gio became Jim Hamm, and Bianca became Finn - the Hamm brothers. Finn settled into his newfound identity just fine.

Events in Poveglia came to a head in 4839 when a 15-year-old Finn was caught in the front lines of a period of violent social and political upheaval; a newly formed gang called the Haymakers had conquered a huge swathe of contested territory in the growing city and had begun organizing the workers on industrial lines, encouraging the brutally repressed workers to depose their Occan bosses and seize control of the farms and factories themselves under the protection of the Haymakers. In truth, the gang-leaders probably had no actual ideological interests and simply bought out the budding industrial union movement so they could position themselves as the new bosses once the old order was thrown out. Finn and Jim were both footsoldiers within the Haymaker hierarchy, charged with making supply runs and conducting reconnaissance on the Seneschal's territory.

Finn was mostly just happy to have something to fight for, having long sought a purpose beyond just surviving and scraping by. Jim, however, became a key organizer within the union movement, writing dozens of pro-industrial pamphlets and getting them into circulation by whatever means necessary. Around the spring of 4841, the Seneschal deemed that the issue had gone unaddressed for too long, and ordered a city-wide crackdown on all syndicalist activity which effectively instated a period of martial law. As the fighting got worse, the Hamm brothers were forced to become guerilla fighters in the uprising, and shortly after the crackdown, the Haymakers began conducting targeted bombings of Templar-aligned factories and supply depots which failed or refused to become union shops.

As the size and scope of the industrial sabotage campaign grew, so too did the military-police retaliations, and dozens of unaligned workers were arrested and interrogated every day for suspected union activities; those found guilty of fomenting labor organization or of participating in the sabotage campaign were made gruesome examples of in response to the revolutionary terror which was spiraling out of control by that point. After a botched mission to destroy a diesel station (thwarted by the government's counter-terror program), Jim was badly hurt and captured by Templar strike-breakers. Finn pleaded with the Haymakers to sponsor a mission to retrieve his brother, but his case fell on deaf ears, leading him to return home to consult with his family. The authorities had already arrived some hours before and murdered Gomez; whatever happened during their confrontation, the house was left in ruins and Sonja, along with Finn's young sister Gabriella, had been abducted to parts unknown. Locals claimed that they had seen a woman and a small child dragged away in a transport cart headed towards the infamous labor camps in Casativa.

Incensed at the revelation, Finn mustered a posse of half a dozen other sojourner Haymakers and led them into the belly of the beast - the Seneschal's bunker at the center of town, which functioned as the Templars' primary stronghold in Sivella, and also appeared to be the headquarters of the mercenaries which had been imported from Dreiton. Hamm began to grasp the larger picture beyond the Poveglian civil war, discovering that the Templars were in league with powerful companies across the world, the most prominent of which being the Dreiton Exchange. With a private army of hired guns at his disposal, it appeared that the Seneschal was preparing to take back the union-run parts of the city by any means necessary. Hamm's posse attempted to infiltrate the bunker and assassinate the Templar leader to stop his campaign, but they were woefully ill-equipped and outmatched, resulting in all of them being captured or killed.

Hamm spent the next year of his life in the expansive dungeons below the city, quietly organizing them for a potential prison break by proving himself against the other gangsters and earning the respect of the strongest inmates. A clever and resourceful leader, Finn had effectively founded his own clandestine unionist cell right under the Seneschal's literal nose, using his connections with the guards to get messages in and out of the prison complex. From the safety of his cell, he ordered dozens of carefully coordinated strikes against Templar bases by sharing intel with the larger Haymaker network above them.

In 4846, 5 years since the beginning of the government crackdown and ensuing civil war, the Haymakers reached the zenith of their strength and popularity. Red and black flags flew over each district surrounding the besieged capital building, with anarchist guerillas constantly hitting the Seneschal's supply network and effectively cutting them off from any outside help, especially once they ran out of courier airships. However, the central fortress had such an extensive underground farm project that they could feasibly survive years of siege provided they conserved their equipment appropriately. It was time for Hamm's underground cell to activate.

Beginning with the explosion of a time-set set of dynamite disguised as munitions for the guards, the underground dungeons erupted into a state of controlled chaos. Roughly 75% of the large inmate population were firmly Haymaker loyalists, following Finn's designs and executing them to the letter in anticipation of the break-out. Another 20% were considered non-aligned, meaning that it was difficult to predict whose side they would take in the event of a riot. That left an estimated 5% of prisoners who were "scabs" for the warden and the government, working as confidential informants and likely to rat out their follow inmates. When the riot began, the Haymakers immediately made a break for the cafeteria, within whose walls a huge cache of jury-rigged weapons were meant to waiting for them. Due to the blabbing of the scabs, the cache had been sabotaged by the guards well before the riot, resulting in the deaths of dozens of rioters by a pre-set booby trap which detonated a massive explosion that shook the entire complex.

Thinking on his feet, Finn led the remaining rioters to make a mad dash for the guard armory - a desperate gamble which would provide them with weapons and an easily defensible position were it to succeed.