Rusty

The Ghoul of Gythfield — a gaunt, undead tax-collector for Laewendas who, by his own rigid moral code, never attacks first (echoing the Reclamation's own tenets of honourable conduct). In life he was a farmhand of Rivalon's main farming settlement, Gythfield (~20 miles from the cave) who tried to splice two crops into a sentient super-plant that turned on and killed him; a passing necromancer reanimated him before he was fully dead, leaving him half-alive, half-dead — ageless, deathless of old age, and (crucially) not registering as undead to detection magic. He wears a strait-laced bodice "to hold his organs in," has fanged teeth (kin-recognising Lash's own), slicked hair, and a wiry, clawed frame; he is not strong and relies on parry, hands and teeth. A "villain of his own making," he collects Laewendas's taxes and kills only those who attack him first — "people killed themselves at me."

He named himself for the party from his old farmhand nickname: Rusty.

(Named "Rusty" (a chosen nickname); his home/title rendered Gythfield, Githyld, Giffield, Gilfield across Session 41. Spelling and his real name open.)

Session 41 (debut)

• Found in a bone tomb behind an illusory wall by an invisible-no-longer Lash; recognised her as axolotlan from the Veilwood ponds and gathered Abigail's scattered bones into a vase for her.
• Struck a deal: he will help the party clear the cave in exchange for their oath to vouch him into the Reclamation (via Eldrich the Elder) so he ends up "on the winning side" — accepting Thalia's warning that the Reclamation may still try him for his tax-collecting. He asked two prices: spare the stitched "12-women" maiden (a victim), and lure the Wild Man away (feral but harmless; the ghoul can't lure him, as the Wild Man hates his corpse-stench).
• Delivered the session's lore: the Candleman is not a creature but the avatar of a dead god that takes "something" unnamed from every killer at his shrine; the unkillable noble Thunt must be contained, not killed; the Hat Man is the cave's other true danger; and the pyromancer Simon is a free kill.
• Walks unnoticed among the tomb's wights (fellow undead), and slipped past Pimothy with the cutting "if it isn't the Snatcher — you haven't smelled the same for months; I knew it wasn't you."

Session 42

• Fought the boss chamber alongside the party from the shadows: an old crossbow and sneak-attack daggers, with Feast and Famine to heal off a hyena and immunity to the wights' necrotic "Bad Touch" (their attacks "griefing" him for nothing, triggering his counterattacks).
• Tireless watch. Through the party's long rest in the boss chamber he stands guard the whole time (he doesn't sleep, eat or drink), helping make the rest safe.
• Reminded the party that the camp's raiders won't enter the undead chambers (where they "get eaten alive"), which is why the tomb is a safe place to rest — and why clearing it leaves the corridor open.

Session 43

• Led the south pincer. Fought the camp's beastmen half alongside Magra, Patricia and the six wight-puppets, winning their side of the dawn ambush. (The GM kept softening his name — "Rusty Ron, the Ghoul of Deerfield… his name's getting longer every time I open this token.")
• His two prices honoured. The party spared the Wild Man (whom Rusty wanted left alive — "this cave was the Wild Man's before it was ours, and I'd like it to be his after we leave") and spared the stitched tea-party woman, at whom Rusty gazed with deep sorrow, refusing to keep or kill her — "I imagine each of the ladies that make her up must have been somebody."
• Still set on his Reclamation berth (via Eldrich the Elder); the cleared cave is now a Varian-held kill floor under Pimothy.