Appearance

Kane appears to be a tall, thin man in his early to middle forties.  He has sandy red hair, and is pale enough that he looks almost sickly.  He usually dresses simply, in black or gray.  His eyes are ice blue, and faintly luminous, though the brightness depends on his current emotional state.  Usually, he wears a pair of dark glasses to hide his eyes.

History/Background

Once, so long ago he can barely remember it, Kane was a magistrate in an isolated dukedom.  He was a combination of sheriff, regional judge, and prison warden, and took great pride in his job.  Some said he was a hard man, and while he might have been, he was also a fair one.  All were equal in his eyes, regardless of name, place, or status.  He showed no mercy to the guilty, but also felt it his duty to protect those who were not guilty.

For twenty years, he faithfully served in this capacity.  He hadn’t any family, so he was able to devote all of his time and energy to the pursuit of justice.  In fact, he had rather assumed that was what he would spend the rest of his life doing.

When he witnessed a young man assaulting a local peasant girl, he did what he would have done in any case.  He stepped into the girl’s defense and arrested the man.  The law was quite clear, and Kane had no qualms about sending the man to the gaol.  The man was a stranger to him, but it mattered little; the rules applied to everyone.

The Duke, however, disagreed.  What Kane didn’t know was that the attacker was the Duke’s son, and neither the father nor the son thought it was a magistrate’s place to tell them what they could and could not do.  The Duke ordered his son released.

Kane had never gone against the Duke, but when he was given the choice of doing as he was told or upholding the law, he chose the latter.  He refused to release the Duke’s son, explaining that he himself had witnessed the attack on the local girl, and the evidence was beyond question.

In retrospect, that wasn’t the wisest course of action.

Kane suddenly found himself confined to his own prison, while the Duke’s son returned to his father’s house, unpunished and unrepentant.  Kane was too shocked and confused to put up much of a fight, and had the matter rested there, there would have been nothing memorable about it.  But prison or no, news still traveled, and it wasn’t long before Kane heard that the peasant girl he had protected in the first place had been assaulted by the Duke’s son again, and this time he had killed her.

That was more than Kane could tolerate.  He sat alone in his cell, brooding on the blatant miscarriage of justice.  It was enough to make a man like him a maniac, but he was so fanatically devoted to justice, and so enraged by the Duke’s actions that it went farther than mere mania.  Something changed. 

After an indeterminate length of time, Kane slowly realized that a prison could not hold him if he didn’t wish to be held He walked out of his cell, and out of the gaol.  Anyone who insisted in standing in his way was dealt with in short order; he did not even realize his own strength until he had killed several guards with his bare hands.

The Duke’s manor was three days’ hard ride from the prison, but by sunrise of the next day, the Duke, and his son, were both dead.  The last thing they saw were the cold, brightly glowing eyes of a magistrate who had once been human.

Roleplaying Notes

Kane is now technically a demon, although he doesn’t care for the term.  What makes him unique is that he is driven to see that justice is firmly upheld and that those who are guilty pay for their crimes.  He finds himself drawn to great injustices and has the urge to right them.  Mostly, this means punishing the guilty, generally by death.  However, Kane will very occasionally step in to protect someone; it tends to depend on what’s going on.

He is a quiet, soft-spoken man; even when he’s incredibly angry, his voice never rises.  When he does get angry, the glow of his eyes increases in intensity.  He is very patient, but also very cold and relentless.  Once he’s targeted someone, he shows no mercy.

He is a good deal stronger and faster than humans, and has an uncanny ability to sense if a particular person is guilty of a given crime.  To a lesser extent, he tends to know when someone is hiding something, although not what.  It isn’t all that hard to injure him in combat, the problem is that he seldom notices injuries.  He has established that he can’t be killed permanently, although he doesn’t hold an undue grudge if he is killed temporarily.

Kane seldom works for anyone; those who would take advantage of his services are people he is likely to target, and those he would be willing to help almost certainly do *NOT* want his help.  He is fanatically devoted to justice, but his version of what is just may not be the same as others.

Possibilities

Local criminals have been targeted by a serial killer, one who seems almost supernatural.  Either the guilds, or the authorities have requested that someone (expendable) look into this.

Someone of great importance has been targeted by Kane, and they want bodyguards.  Dealing with Kane won’t be fun, but since he never targets without reason, finding out their client’s guilty secret could be equally dangerous.

Perhaps the PCs have come to right some great injustice themselves, and in the process encounter Kane.  He might make a good ally.  For now.

And, of course, given the typical activities of a typical adventuring party, Kane could very well target one of the PCs.