Long Ears Larkin

Every fare increase out of Bridgeport's Iron Gate arrives with the same warning, freshly repainted each spring on the coach-house boards: beware the highwayman whose ears outreach his manners. Long Ears Larkin has never robbed a single traveller in the eleven years since Binaco Stables invented him, which has not stopped three coaching companies, a magistrate's clerk, and one increasingly cornered rabbitfolk from treating him as an established fact of the road.

Detailed Description

Larkin exists only in print. The broadsheets, the Bridgeport Beacon and the Gnome Workshop owned Brass Bolt Chronicles, agree on the essentials: a long grey coat, a plain cloth mask, rabbitfolk ears no hood can hide, and a flintlock pistol. Every sighting is secondhand, made at dusk, and reported from a coach that "only just got away". No robbery has ever been completed, no goods reported stolen, no victim named.

Binaco Stables sells the solution: an "armed escort" surcharge on every fare leaving through Iron Gate or Barn Gate after noon. Rival lines offer the same surcharge rather than look less safety-conscious, and report their own Larkin sightings to justify the fee. A traveller can now cross Bridgeport County paying escort fees against a bandit who has never cost anyone a Crown.

History / Origin

Lilla, owner of Binaco Stables, invented Larkin eleven years ago when a cheaper rival stable opened in Flintlock and undercut her rates by a margin she could not match honestly. Rather than lower her prices, she paid one of her coachmen an extra crown to report a masked rabbitfolk bandit chasing his coach nearly to the gate.

Long Ears Larkin by Tillerz using MJ

Writers at the nearby Gnome Workshop picked the story up, and the next issue of the Brass Bolt Chronicles gave Larkin a name and a woodcut likeness. Town crier Clara Bellows delivered him to everyone the paper missed. The Black Guard at Iron Gate noticed that real robberies dropped as travellers grew warier and joined escorted convoys, and saw no reason to correct the record.

The cost fell on Bridgeport's rabbitfolk. The description fits half their ancestry, and on its strength they are searched at the gates and refused rooms in roadside inns. Complaints to the Council of Ten go nowhere: a fictional bandit cannot be produced for questioning, and neither, it turned out, can the coachman who first reported him.

The Hare-Mail Delivery Company suffers most. Its rabbitfolk couriers pull their carts along the very roads the broadsheets warn against, and their bells, meant as a herald of the post, now serve as proof of innocence: gate guards and travellers have learned that an honest courier announces himself well before he is close enough to be mistaken for anything else. A courier caught with a broken bell has been stopped, searched, and once held overnight at Iron Gate on suspicion alone. Hare-Mail has lodged three formal complaints with the Council of Ten this year; each was filed, read, and set aside. The company now inspects every cart's bells each morning with a care usually reserved for the mail itself.

Role in the World

Larkin remains "active". Any unresolved theft, missing cargo, or late coach in Bridgeport County is attributed to him by default, which suits everyone except the people actually responsible. The escort surcharge is Binaco Stables' single largest source of income, ahead of ordinary hire fees.

The arrangement held for eleven years, until a rabbitfolk tired of being stopped at Iron Gate for a face he shares with a legend decided that if he was going to be searched anyway, he might as well earn the accusation. He has robbed no one yet, but he wears the mask where it will be seen. Lilla has begun finding coin missing from the company strongbox, a few Crowns at a time, always after a night when the till was left unwatched. She has said nothing, unsure whether to call it theft or her own carelessness.

This is GM information

Corwin Padfoot

Size: Small
Move: 6
WS: 35 | BS: 45 | S: 25 | T: 30 | I: 50 | Ag: 55 | Dex: 50 | Int: 35 | WP: 40 | Fel: 40
Wounds: 9
Armour: 1 (1)
Binaco stablehand, wibbit, with ears too memorable for his own good and a pistol he has never once fired at a person.

Skills: Stealth 60, Perception (Hearing) 55, Animal Care 50, Sleight of Hand 45.
Minimal Traits: Danger Sense, Fleet, Reluctant Trigger
Attacks: 2
Danger Sense: Corwin cannot be surprised. In an ambush, he always acts in the first round regardless of Initiative.
Fleet: Corwin's Move increases by 2 whenever he is fleeing or giving chase.
Reluctant Trigger: The first time in a scene Corwin points his pistol at a person, he must pass a WP Test or hesitate and lose his next Action. Exception: this does not apply if he is cornered with no escape route.
Flintlock Pistol: 1d10+4 damage, Reach 30 yards, Reload 1 full Action. He has never fired this at a person and does not want today to be the first time.
Stable Fork: 1d10 damage, Reach: Personal. When approached at work.

Corwin Padfoot

Level 3
Health 9
Armour 0
Damage 3
Movement short (long when fleeing)
Abilities:

• Danger Sense: Corwin cannot be surprised and always acts first when ambushed.
• Vanish Into the Warren: Once per scene, if within short distance of cover or diggable ground, Corwin may attempt a Speed-based task to disappear from a chase entirely rather than merely break contact.
• Reluctant Trigger: The first time in a scene Corwin aims his pistol at a person, the task is made one step harder for him. Exception: this penalty does not apply if he has no other way out.

Corwin Padfoot

Move: 14m (Dash 28m)
STR: 8 | CON: 10 | AGL: 16 | INT: 10 | WIL: 10 | CHA: 11
HP: 10 | WP: 10 | AR: 1
Binaco stablehand, wibbit, with ears too memorable for his own good and a pistol he has never once fired at a person.

Skills: Sneaking 14, Awareness 13, Bushcraft 11.
Traits:
Danger Sense: You cannot be surprised. In ambushes, you always act in the first round regardless of Initiative.
Reluctant Trigger: The first time you point a loaded weapon at a person in a scene, you must pass a WIL Test or lose your next Action to hesitation. Exception: this does not apply if you have no other means of escape.
Attacks: 2
Flintlock Pistol: 1d10 damage. Requires 1 Action to reload after firing.
Stable Fork: 1d8 damage, improvised.

Secrets

• The rabbitfolk wearing the mask is Corwin Padfoot, a Binaco stablehand who knows exactly whose coachman started the rumour and has decided the stable owes him a better wage.
• Lilla knows Larkin is fiction, has always known, and diverts a portion of the escort surcharge to the Iron Gate watch captain to keep the story running.
• The original coachman who "first sighted" Larkin died two years ago; nobody has updated the broadsheets, which still print his testimony as current.
• A rival stable, the Drayhorn Line, has begun paying its own coachmen for sightings and does not know a rabbitfolk is now genuinely wearing the mask.

Plot Hooks

• A coaching company hires the party as "escort" against Larkin for a run through Bridgeport County, on a night when Corwin has decided to make an appearance.
• A rabbitfolk is seized at the gate on suspicion of being Larkin and faces the magistrate's clerk unless the party can produce the real story in time.
• Lilla approaches the party in private to find out who has started genuinely robbing coaches under her invented bandit's name, and stop it, before her surcharge income collapses.
• Brass Bolt Chronicles wants a fresh, more dramatic Larkin story and offers to pay the party to stage a convincing sighting.
• The Council clerk taking a cut from the arrangement grows nervous when an actual investigation into Larkin is proposed, and tries to have it buried before it starts.
• A rabbitfolk community leader petitions the party to find proof it's all a fraud, for a presentation to the Council of Ten.