Franzer Halvess

Gnome / Swashbuckler

Submitted character story

A gnome's gnome. Franzer Halvess is all three Musketeers - plus D'Artagnan - rolled into one three-foot-something package (who can tell for sure with that hat). Immaculate, libertine, dangerous. He knows the thing you don't.

"All real fights are dirty fights, but not all fights are real fights."

Born on a gnomish trade caravan, and traveling with it for his first decades, Franzer and his brother Finnan have been through the markets and bazaars of each of the Seven Cities, even the ever-migrating Nomadis, and a fair bit beyond as well. Lacking formal training, the Halvess  brothers learned to fight on the road, sparring constantly with each other as brothers do, learning the knocks of barroom and tavern style, and defend the caravan from the odd heavies and highwaymen.
   While Finnan loved, and still loves, the traveling life, Franzer each town and especially each city engendered in Franzer a taste for the civilized; the complexity of design, and art, and stability that staying in one place. Though politics did not interest him, court intrigued him. He didn’t want to run a shop, but he loved the idea an entire building could be dedicated to spices, or tailoring, and watching a smith working at a forge that weighed more than any two of his family’s wagons. There was so much living to do, corners to explore, people to know. The cities fed his taste for the rakish and outlandish, even the libertine, and eventually he traded merchant ways for urban fortune seeking in Ciroon, the central-most of the Seven Cities, at least for a time. He spent much of his savings for fine clothes, swordsmanship training, and introductions to the high, and low, elements of the city. Though his fortunes have risen and fallen, he’s never gone wanting for a meal or a bed in the years since he arrived. He is  always interested in seeing new things, tasting new foods, fighting new foes. 
   Franzer’s been sucking the marrow out of life since he was a whelp, and has gained some recognition and reputation (both kinds, depending on who you ask) in the city and surrounding towns and countryside, and even little beyond. It’s not exactly clear how he maintains any standard of living, but whether he’s emerging from a flophouse or a Countess’ boudoir, he’s always smiling like he knows something. He always seems to know when the family caravan, now under Finnan’s leadership, is returning to the city, and when they are together, the brothers together have their own reputation. 
   Does Franzer have some tragic trauma from early life? Some deeply buried pain of loss? Some blood vendetta or debt? You’ll never know.
   Franzer loves a good fight, even one that spills blood, but he doesn't care for taking lives unless necessary. He's taken the time to stabilize vanquished foes, because who needs to die before their time? Unless it is their time, after all.
   As devil-may-care as he is most of the time. He will not stand for unrighted wrongs. Among his fundamental personal tenets are: “Every real fight is a dirty fight,” but also “Not every fight is a real fight.” For Franzer, fighting for what’s right is absolutely and always a real fight.

   Though Franzer keeps a very small, cheap room not far from the main river port of Ciroon, he has few possessions that he can't carry with him. His hat and singular outfit are key and prized. The hat is a flamboyant wide brimmed affair that bears an ongoing enchantment; it magically adorns itself with a new, different feather every midnight. The feathers vary widely and wildly from day to day, and occasionally come in multiples. Each feather confers a different, minor, magical boon to Franzer while it is part of the hat. For example, one day he can’t be tripped, the next day he is impervious to the effects of alcohol, the next after, a coin tossed near him will come up what he calls. When a new feather appears, the old falls out, and remains a mundane plume, the prettier ones can often be traded or sold for a silver or two. The hat was crafted as a gift by his aunt, the caravan's resident hedge witch and healer, when Franzer parted ways with the traveling life.  
   Franzer primary outfit is striking. It comprises finely tailored leathers armor with thigh-high boots, and a duster-like overcoat. The getup is magically enchanted to (loudly) match/compliment the feather in his hat, and remain almost unnervingly clean, even in the dirtiest of fights. On nearly anyone else, the outfit would look garish or ridiculous, but Franzer has the combination of swagger and self awareness to pull it off. On him, it looks standout, but sharp enough to cut. 
   The effects of the enchantment are several-fold. On the downside, it reduces Franzer’s stealthiness against visual detection. On the upside, as a battle continues, the outfit always remains pristine looking - and minimizes the appearance of injury, even if he is wounded. This becomes increasingly intimidating or distracting to opponents with more than animal intelligence and gives him advantage in a fight. 
  The outfit has a half-cloak that he wears both for extra panache and to occasionally wield in his off hand. A leather belt holds his gnomish rapier and poignard, coin purse, and few other small pouch/accessories. Gnomish blades are not necessarily magical in and of themselves, but are often capable of striking targets that can only be hit with magic or magical weapons. When not using poignard or cloak in off hand, Franzer is often reaching into his pockets and pouches, where has easily accessible sand, dye, caltrops, oil, a length of tanglerope… he’s got a bit of everything a dirty trickster could want. Are you sure want to be in this fight? If you're asking the question, it's probably too late.

Franzer began as character in Glimmerdrift, a homebrew Pathfinder 1e campaign that lasted a couple years. He evolved into a story character and moved to Ciroon and the Seven Cities for a series of adventures inspired by Fritz Leiber's Lankmar stories.