Malcolm Locke

The lead investigator of the Investigatorium, Gwyndinas's detective agency — a large, dark-gray-furred catman in a faded pinstripe suit, red tie knotted tight, newsboy cap and amber eyes, never without a cigarette or a brown-bag lunch. Rivalonian, honest, and bone-tired: he has run the Smiling Sam serial-killer case for roughly six months and has nothing to show for it but a map of patternless dots. He believes the only thing that will crack the case is an outside "wildcard."

Session 14

• Sacrificed his lunch break to brief Fenric, Magra and Silithane on the Smiling Sam case: 47 victims, ~7 months, no pattern by any measure they've tried (chronology, age, time of day, even cut depth) — it "sounds like he's purposely not leaving a pattern."
• Revealed a Mage's Society divinator scried an early scene (~Victim 8) and saw the killer only as a blur with no aura or residual — he carries magic that hides him from divination.
• Named the record gaps (nothing from beyond southern Rivalon; only partial Varia files) and the office's theory: a Varian posing as Reclamation. Killings happen only inside Gwyndinas, since the walls went up.
• Gave the party his dog-eared, dotted city map to keep, and tasked them with the one thing no prior group has done: gather every crime record from the lawless country beyond the Palisade to find where the killer came from. Pointed them onward to the basement conspiracy theorist (Wendell Weathers) and the Deacon.

Session 16

• Took the party into the field for the first time — leading them through the dead-of-night South Wall alleys to the butcher's body-handoff meeting, narrating his investigative process aloud Columbo-style. Deputized them so intervening would be lawful, promising to stand as a witness.
• Hopelessly out of his depth in the ensuing combat (2 HP, "level 0," no combat ability): he could only throw bricks (cutting his own hand on one), got stabbed in the gut by a fleeing thug and nearly bled out, but stabilized on his death saves. The GM awarded him a class level for the bricks.
• Afterward, shaky and bleeding, he blamed himself for breaking procedure and invited the party to his home tomorrow for his wife's pot roast — and to have her sign their leaving-papers.
• Crucially, he had never seen the gang leader Rickard at one of these handoffs before, suggesting a new or recently-organized supplier in the body trade. (Rendered "Palumbo"/"Columbo"/"Plumbo"/"Picard" throughout — diarization drift; clearly Locke.)