Aussenseiter

Aussenseiter
Archetype	Origin	Level	Primary Power	Secondary Power	Height	Weight	Hair	Eyes
Stalker	Magic	Classified	Classified	Classified	183cm (presumed)	unknown	dark brown (presumed)	unknown
Skills: exists as a living legend; preternatural talents in the fields of surgery and medicine

The story begins in the seventeenth century, somewhere near the end of the Thirty Years’ War in a small hamlet near the Saxony-Brandenberg border. It was here that a Brandenberg viscount, retreating from a battle, collapsed due to his grievous wounds. He would have surely perished had it not been for the aid of the village doctor, a kind young man gifted with incredible talent in the field of medicine. Though he had no way of repaying him at the time, the viscount swore that he would return his kindness.

Several months passed, and one day the doctor received word from a courier that his presence was wanted in a distant manor. He traveled to the manor and, when confronted at the gate, told the guards that he was summoned by their lord. “A few months after his return he left again for battle,” they replied. “He perished in combat and left behind no heirs, but his will was that his lands be left to you.”

Thus it came to pass that the doctor inherited the viscount’s lands and fortune. Though he knew little of ruling, he treated his newfound people fairly and ensured that their well-being was put above all else. When the pestilence came, he personally treated the victims. When the displaced soldiers tried to pillage the countryside for food, he personally manned the field hospital near the front lines. While he was by no means the most powerful ruler, he was certainly the most loved.

The other nobles were another matter. Angered that a man of ill breeding was among their ranks they shunned him, referring to him as “Der Aussenseiter” - the outsider. For all intents and purposes he and his lands were a non-entity, not even fit to be recorded in the regional records. Even when disease ran rampant among their people and the doctor-turned-ruler offered his help they ignored him out of spite. As the years passed their actions began to weigh heavily on him and he began to wonder: If no one remembered him, would he simply cease to exist?

Out of his desperation and anger came a single, horrific thought: If he would not be remembered for kindness, then he would be remembered for brutality. He summoned his most loyal soldiers and sent them out to the neighboring lands on covert missions to locate and abduct the family members of the rulers. Husbands and wives, sons and daughters, all were taken to his manor. It was there that they were systematically dissected, their bodies cut open and limbs removed while still alive. These brutal surgical procedures lasted hours, with every detail of the process painstakingly recorded by the doctor and copied by his scribes.

The result was the most comprehensive work on human anatomy for its time, far outstripping the works of contemporaries such as William Harvey. It was also the most gruesome recording of calculated violence ever seen. In a final act of atonement the doctor left his manor to confess his crimes to the nobles, but not before giving one final order to his servants: Copy the book and distribute it by any means possible.

Two days later the doctor was executed by hanging and his lands divvied up by the local lords. His book was outlawed by the Catholic church and burned when found, but still managed to make its way across Europe in various forms. Der Aussenseiter - the man with the hands of God and the heart of a saint who did the work of the devil - became a local legend. By all rights this should have been the end of his story, but fate had other plans.

Thirty years later the last surviving nobleman of the region was found dead in his bedroom, his heart removed from his chest and placed on a silver platter by his bedside with nary a drop of blood on the sheets. Five years after that a French marquis and his mistress were found fused together at the hip, completely inseparable. Despite this they both lived for two more months until the marquis ended his life with a pistol shot to the head. Two years after this in Sweden the sheriff was found without arms or legs, while elsewhere in the city four amputees found themselves with new limbs. All these acts and more were perpetuated across Europe seemingly at random, but they all had but one common thread: Nobility, mutilated by inhumanly precise medical procedures.

Theories were numerous: Some said that there was a cult dedicated to Der Aussenseiter, others said it was merely a copycat. Still others believed it to be the work of Aussenseiter himself, who escaped death and now took out his rage on the blue-blooded. Regardless, interest in his book increased, and even the church could not suppress it for long.

The truth of the matter was that Der Aussenseiter did in fact die all those years ago. His flesh had long since rotted away and his face had been forgotten, but his legend persisted in the minds of so many people and among so many books that he lived on not as a ghost but as a concept, an idea that far surpassed what he was capable of when alive. When the legend became known in a region, whether it be by word of mouth or the spread of the book, Der Aussenseiter was certain to appear. The sick were healed, the proud were brought low, and once his work was complete he disappeared without a trace.

As for the man - or the concept - himself, Der Aussenseiter still behaves as a humble servant of the people, continuing to ply his trade for the benefit of the common man while advancing his own comprehensive knowledge of medical procedures with each appearance. While he does show great disdain for those with an overabundance of pride and arrogance he harbors no personal grudges towards them, and generally restricts his gruesome vivisections to those befitting of an appropriate punishment: Namely, those who victimize the people or believe themselves to be so far above those they profess to serve that they are blinded by arrogance. In more modern terms this would entail gang members, organized crime syndicates, government officials and the occasional vigilante or rogue criminal. Ultimately, however, he does not regard his actions as being personal in the least and simply sees them as a way of perpetuating his memory.

Der Aussenseiter’s current appearance in the Rogue Isles was triggered when a local publisher came across his book and reprinted it in the belief that it was an old horror novel. Though there have been no official sightings as of yet, there is one anecdotal event that points to his existence: In Darwin’s Landing a young woman reported being shot by a Hellion only to be saved by a mysterious man in a gauze mask, who effortlessly treated her wound and saved her life. Later that day a police officer was patrolling the area when he found the Hellion embedded waist-deep in a chain link fence.