If on a winter’s night a traveler like you finds shelter in one of the inns that line the trade roads of Tristia, sitting close to the fire, drinking what is quite likely watered-down ale, and doing your best to stay out of the way of the local bully-boys, you might chance to see a Greatcoat wander in. You’ll know him or her by the long leather coat of office, weathered to a deep brown and tempered by a hint of dark red or green or sometimes even blue.
He or she will do their best to blend in with the crowd. They’re good at it—in fact, if you look over there to your left, sitting alone in the shadows you’ll see a second Greatcoat. The one at the door will almost certainly walk over and sit with the first one.
If you sidle over (carefully, now) and listen in to their conversation, you’ll hear snatches of stories about the cases they once judged in the cities, towns, and hamlets throughout the countryside. They’ll talk about this Duke or that Lord and which crimes they perpetrated on their people this time. You’ll learn the details of how each case was decided and whether the Greatcoat had to fight a duel in order to get the verdict upheld.
Watch these two long enough and you’ll begin to notice the way that they check out the room every so often. They’ll be gauging the other patrons, looking for potential trouble. Look closer at those coats and you’ll see a faint pattern in the leather: that’ll be the bone plates sewn into the lining, hard enough to withstand arrow, blade, or bolt, and yet the coat itself moves as naturally as the one you yourself might be wearing. If you ever got the chance to reach inside, you’d find hidden pockets—some say a hundred of them—all filled with tricks and traps and esoteric pills and powders designed to give them an edge, whether fighting a single man or a mob. And while the swords hidden beneath the coats aren’t fancy, you’d find them well oiled, well honed, and more than pointy enough to do the job.
Legend has it the Greatcoats began as duelists and assassins-for-hire, until some benevolent King or Queen brought them under the command of the monarchy to ensure that ancient laws were preserved in each of the nine duchies of Tristia. The Dukes, quite naturally, responded to this unwanted intrusion by devising the most painful deaths they could imagine for any Greatcoats their Knights defeated in combat. But for every Greatcoat killed, another would rise up to take the mantle and continue the job, going around the country annoying the nobility by enforcing laws that the nobility found inconvenient. That was until just over a hundred years ago, when a group of the wealthier (and more determined) Dukes hired the Dashini—an order of assassins who never failed to spread corruption, even in a place already as corrupt as Tristia—to provide them with a more enduring means of discouraging dissent. They called it the Greatcoat’s Lament.
I will not bore you with the details, gentle traveler, for they are unfit for conversation between folk of good breeding. Suffice it to say, after the Dashini finished giving the Lament to the last Greatcoat they’d managed to catch, no more came forward to take up the mantle . . . at least, not for nearly a century, not until an overly idealistic young king named Paelis and a foolhardy commoner named Falcio decided to push back against the tide of history and recreate the Greatcoats.
But that’s all done with now. King Paelis is dead and the Greatcoats have been disbanded these last five years or more. The two you are watching risk death and worse any time they attempt to fulfill their traditional duties. So instead they will simply finish up their drinks, pay their tab, and wander off into the night. Perhaps you’ll catch a glimpse of their smiles as they reassure each other that the Greatcoat’s Lament is just one of those stories told by travelers in front of a warm fire on a cold night; that even if it had once existed, no one alive today would have the faintest idea of how to inflict it. But they—and you—would be wrong. For you see, I have it on extremely good authority that the Greatcoat’s Lament is very real, and that it is even more painful and terrible than even the most horrifying stories made out. I would tell you more, but unfortunately, the “good authority” I mentioned is me.
My name is Falcio val Mond, one of the last of the King’s Greatcoats, and if you listen very carefully you might still be able to hear me screaming.