The Undertaker
'I wish ‘ere were some way a bloke could pick up business in dis dreary ol town…Oh wait!
History/Background
Ah, the village undertaker. The job nobody wants but the person everybody eventually needs. The man entrusted to take good care of your lifeless bag of bones. Wife? Forget that. No woman wants to hang around a man who only deals with the dead all day, even when that means he won’t have a shred of a chance of cheating. And the company? Lets just say they aren’t the most talkative bunch, being dead and all.
Case in point, this man with the unfortunate job of burying the dead was not very happy, except for the occasional time he gets paid. Then he goes down to the local pub and gets as much ale as possible. After that, it’s pretty hard to get angry at anything, at least till he wakes up the next morning with a huge headache.
However, this doesn’t happen very often. He lives in a small town, and in small towns people don’t die very often. The population just big enough that not everybody knows you. Truth be told, who wants to say they know this guy?
Finally, the undertaker gets fed up. He realizes his happy days aren’t coming as often as they could. Being simplistic, he had a simple four point plan.
1. Kill man
2. Bury man
3. Get paid for burying man
4. Get Drunk
Short, sweet and effective. However, he lacks the courage to do it. He sits on this plan for a while, anger growing in the back of his head. Why should he deal with this horrible job? The rational thought of quitting never occurred to him and he continued on getting angrier and angrier until he began to be driven insane. The next time he went to the pub, he spotted the he was going to kill: The drunk guy in the back who called him 'The company of Ghouls and Skeletons.' After finishing his ale, he went home and got his shovel, and waited for the man to come out of the pub.
A few hours later, the man stumbled out, drunk out of his mind and oblivious to his death. The kill was quick: A short strong jab right between the eyes. He died instantly.
As planned, the family was at his door the next day. The plan had worked. It was easier to kill the next night, and even easier after that. His killings were random…whoever happened to get him angry, look at him the wrong way, or just be in the wrong place at the wrong time. That was until people inevitably started to suspect something.
They did not know who, but they knew there was a string of murders occurring, all with the same injury. They knew that all of them were connected in some way and that the murderer must be stopped. The Undertaker found out about this, and realized that there can be no prosecution without a judge. That night, he stalked the courthouse until the judge left then killed him in a back alley. Now who will stop him?'
Possible Game Situations
- The PC’s enter the town after or right before the Judge has been murdered and must find the killer.
- An informant of the PC’s is killed in a random killing
- The PC’s are hired as private investigators against The Undertaker and are therefore targets themselves
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? Responses (8)

Colorfully creepy in a a melodramatic sense...
Or, whatever.
A good plot-backed NPC.

While not a bad idea for a low level foe for a starting level band of heroes, this Undertaker seems more like a cardboard cutout than a real character. Also, the presentation while being grammatically accurate, is dry and flavorless.

A bit harsh, but that's ok. I came here to learn.

I think after the second murder the jig would be up. Humans as a whole are not as stupid as this particular person is. People see things. Hmm, who would kill someone with a shevol? Wait - I know who makes his living with a shevol. Sheesh, there is even some blood on his shevol. Get a rope boys!
The basic idea of a undertaker who kills people to drum up work is okay, but this implementation is too simple to make him a sustainable villan. The assumption that people are simply going to let some psycho runaround unchecked without any efforts to stop him is not a good one.

Well way back then they were as stupid as this guy, only around 1% getting an education and all. Secondly, They would not know that he was killed with a shovel, just that he had a huge gash on his forehead and died from the blunt damage to his brain. They din't have the fornsics back then to know it was a shovel. Now someone might figure it out eventually, but its not obvious enough to find after the second person. Thirdly, I think he is at least smart enough to take the of his shovel.
So he would not "run around unchecked," but close to it.

I am afraid I'm going to have to disagree there, people 'way back when' were not stupid, just illiterate. They would very likely recognize a wound inflicted by a shovel, even if they don't know that death was caused by trauma to the brain.

He might work as a short-term menace for low-level village heroes. You get bonus points for an alternative to the stereotype "following the heroes around with a measuring tape" undertaker. More bonus points for a villain who isn't diabolically intelligent.
There's something lacking in the execution, though, and I can't put my finger on it. 4/5

An interesting idea, but I have to agree with Scrasamax that people weren't stupid, just illiterate. Also, rather than just seeing a gash and believing it was a shovel, they would think of a more realistic weapon, such as an axe, a shovel would be used to hit people over the head, really, really, hard. I didn't notice a dryness to the execution but that may just be me.
An interesting post.