Timothy Leisten

A Varian spy embedded near Ponterford, who for several weeks has been impersonating the dead Snatcher — donning the child-killer's blood-red costume to move freely among Laewendas's agents and scout their cave from within. About 6'2", he wears a blood-red hauberk of mixed cloths over plate armour, dark-blue/black legwear, and a slotted tin-can helm with a cross-brace eye-slit (helmet on, he passes for the Snatcher; helmet off, he is plainly a different man). He rides a blacked-out shadow-black horse. Even out of role he carries a residual bad-guy authority — "sometimes you lose yourself in a role" — but is, by Varia's lights, a man risking his life daily to save children for no reward.

His most dangerous possession is the book on his belt: a blank-to-onlookers volume he reads by touch (Braille), holding everything he knows — "take the helmet off, you know he's not the guy; get the book, and you know everything he knows."

(Named "Timothy Leisten" — the boy's ghost reacts when Silithane guesses "Timothy"; the GM also voices it "Pimothy." Surname "Leisten" spoken once. Fits Renforth's rule that Varian agents' names are one sound off.)

Session 39 (debut)

• Walked into the witch church at midnight, vouched for by the ghost of a murdered kobold boy (his "number one asset"), to brief the party on the upstream cave he has infiltrated.
• Laid out the target: a holding base / action-planning site for Laewendas's private mercenary force (the mirror of the Reclamation) — 16–40 exceptionally well-armed agents (avg ~20–25, 23 last night), with at least 1–2 mages. Wants a shock-and-awe strike to clear the bulk, then trap the returning trickle.
• Revealed his scouting: a false-wall vault, hidden breathing masks under the river rocks, ceiling drop-traps, skeleton costumes, and an underground river that could be reverse-flowed into Cathalon's sewers as an infiltration route into the capital.
• Counselled sealing the life-trade shrine under Varian guard rather than destroying it (don't anger things that may be gods; don't let the Mage's Society publish it). Silithane's repeated Insight found him airtight but unreadable — classic Varian diplomacy, "everything he says makes sense, but you don't want to believe him."
• Brought the war news that Garruk the Red is dead, gave Thalia a coded 7-number Post-it to drop with any Gwyndinas spy, and set the rendezvous at the blue-painted rock to strike (as early as the next day).

Session 40

• Off-screen, the rendezvous looms. The party scouts The Snatcher's Cave by daylight ahead of the night meeting with him, confirming his briefing was real — but also that he badly undersold the danger: a crocodile man deadlier than the Grabber Queen, the Hat Man, the Toe Skinner, and the Candleman all wait inside.
• His map's scale proved laughably small against the 250-ft corridor and 800-ft river. The party means to ask him whether he even knows about the crocodile (if not, "he's in over his head too") — and quietly wonders where the rest of his group is.

Session 41

• The rest of his group, revealed. He fronts the raid in full Snatcher plate alongside the other two of the Varian Trio — the catman Pavid and the animatrix Patricia — confirming the trio that killed the Snatcher are these three.
• His scuba plan, dead. His proud scheme (9 oxygen tanks, masks and fins to swim the party in) is shelved once he admits the river crocodile is there. He spends the dungeon hiding nervously from its dangers, and from the ghost girl whose killer he impersonates ("of course I wear the guise of the man that kidnapped her — but it wasn't me").
• Recognised at once by the Ghoul of Gythfield: "if it isn't the Snatcher — you haven't smelled the same for months; I knew it wasn't you."

Session 42

• Fought (and fell) in the boss chamber. In full Snatcher plate he traded blows with the wights, was Feeblemind'd to 7 INT alongside Silithane (fighting feral until Patricia dispelled it), then downed by Halren's own Fireball and stabilised — one of the "1.5 people" who went down.
• The Candleman, vouched-for. Confirmed from long acquaintance that the Candleman is passive — he has passed him "a dozen or two times" and the figure never speaks or attacks unless provoked — steering the party away from a needless fight.
• Healed up on the post-fight long rest, ready for the dawn raid on the camp he scouted.

Session 43

• Fought the north fight in Snatcher plate: knocked the watch-sergeant Kregit prone, wrestled the Hat Man for his hat (and lost the contest to the Hat Man's Luck), and — taking a leaf from Jex — knocked Snurch out non-lethally to keep a prisoner for interrogation.
• Holds the cleared cave. With the camp taken, Pimothy stays to garrison it as a "kill floor," slaughtering any of Laewendas's agents who return — and offers to connect the party to a Varian handler for dead-drop jobs as a next direction (see Session 43).

Session 44

• The unwitting heartthrob. As the party leaves the cleared cave, he thanks them, offers them charge of the four prisoners of war (declined — Varia will handle them), and asks one of them to comfort the church's ghost boy with a kind lie. Back in Ponterford, Lash's glowing account of his heroism makes the witch-keeper fall for him — "I wasn't aware he was capable of such feats."
• Garrisoning the cave. Stays behind to hold the cave as the "kill floor," still setting traps and deciding next steps — off-screen for the rest of the downtime session.