The Tolltaker Knighthood

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Overview

"I give my word to break legs, crush skulls and snap necks. I'll put a bullet in your head and a sword in your heart, provided someone pays me to do so and proves to me why it should be done."

The word around the freehold is that the Tolltaker Knights are the foulest mercenaries found among changelings. With blood-blemished blades tucked into their belts and snub nose revolvers strapped to their ankles, they offer up a single purpose in this world: to hurt people for payment. The rumours are that they're particularly good at it, too, as precise or inexact as one needs them to be. If one person pays the toll, another person ends up in the hospital - either in bed, or in the morgue. They're louts, drunkards and murder-for-hire jackboots or at least, that's what everyone believes.

The rumours are true, mostly. They're mercenaries, yes. They're good at what they do, indeed. But there's one clause to their order's Oath that most people seem to forget or ignore, and that's the nature of proof. The Knights won't go after a target unless they agree that the cause is justified - and proof must be supplied toward this end. Now, justice is in the eye of the beholder; one Knight may be a tad more lenient regarding what "injustice" deserves meting out the order's trademark brutality, while another may refuse to give into such monstrous opportunism.

The way around this is that the local order is shepherded by a single figure, the Knight Banneret. The Banneret heads the local Knights, and is the only one who can accept bounties. When he accepts a bounty on behalf of the Tollhouse, he also helps to set the price of that bounty. Once assumed, the entire Tollhouse is expected to work toward a given task, whether it's hunting and executing a fetch or stringing up a lecherous changeling for all to see.

Of course, what this means is that the relative morality of the Tolltaker Knights is set by the Knight Banneret. If he's a genuinely honourable man who believes in the cause of justice, then the Knights better be, too. If he's a depraved glutton, glad to have blood on his hands, then there waits the watermark for the rest of the Knighthood.

What tasks tend to universally draw the order's approval? Some obvious trademarks of inequity include broken pledges, egregious slights at Court in front of the rest of the freehold, unseemly violence toward another changeling and other broaches of freehold decorum. It's worth noting that, unless the Knight Banneret is particularly pitiless, the Knights rarely accept a bounty that requires the death or prolonged torture of another. Shattered knees, concussions or merely the powerful threat of violence usually does the trick. They'll usually assume bounties of bloody vengeance when appropriate, bust stands for such murderous missions tensd to be more severe than for other tasks.

What kind of payment can a Knight expect? Money is often an obvious choice, but the bounty may also be paid out in favours, tokens, pledges or the teachings of new contracts. Living life among the Knight's is bloody and brutal, and many changelings within the order do take to drink or drugs to wear off the blood-curdling screams and bone-breaking crunches that haunt their thoughts and dreams.

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Members

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Rumours

  • No Knight has ever confirmed this, but some say that joining the Tolltakers features a steeper requirement than the order suggests. It's siad that the ultimate toll must be paid to join the ranks and reap the mercenary rewards: a loved one. It might be a loved one from before the abduction, sure, but loved just the same. An ex-wife, a daughter, a best friend, a beloved uncle. It doesn't matter. The loved ones must be brought to the Knight Banneret, and what he does with them - well, nobody exactly knows. Some say he simply ensorcells them, adding to his already vast stable. Others say he sacrifices them according to a powerful old pledge. Darker rumours suggest that he deliverys them into the hands of the True Fae. Why would this be? Nobody knows that, either.
  • They don't like to talk about, but once in a blue moon, the Knights will accept a bounty against one of their own. It's never a soft bounty and always involves the death of the offending Tolltaker. And the price is always through the roof, impossible by most to even consider paying. But therein lies the danger of being a Tolltaker Knight - they commit sins against others, sins that may come back to haunt them one day.
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