Planar Chaos
Ignitions: Spoiled Meat
Jacob Rhyne spent the first ten years of his life as the son of a butcher living on the outskirts of Paliano. They were cheerful years filled with many good memories of father and son working together to parcel the best cuts of meat for the nobility living in the upper city. It was common knowledge that Rhyne's Butcher Shoppe produced the most succulent cuts, sliced with expert mastery to ensure that every bit of flavor was retained and as little blood was lost as possible.
However, one day all that would change. Shortly after Jacob's tenth birthday, his father received an order from a noble house of Paliano from a banquet. The cuts were examined and chosen with great care by the only daughter of that house, a Lady Marchesa. She seemed very pleased with what she saw. Jacob hid behind his father's leather apron while she was in the shop. The boy found the young Lady to be very pretty, which made him nervous.
"I'm very happy I came to you, Mr. Rhyne," Lady Marchesa said. Her rings glittered in the light of the sun that streamed in one of the shop's front windows. "Word of your expertise with a cleaver has reached the tops of High Paliano."
"Your words flatter me, my lady," Mr. Rhyne bowed slightly. "I've worked hard to get to where I am."
"No doubt you have." Jacob didn't like something about Lady Marchesa's smile.
It would only take him a few days to find out why. At a banquet hosted in her lavish home in Paliano's upper city, one of her older brothers was poisoned. It was determined that the source of this poison was the meat Jacob's father supplied.
Jacob hid under the bed when the palace guards came to arrest his father for attempted murder. The clang of their armor rang in his ears. From beneath the bed, Jacob watched in terror as his father was interrogated. 'Interrogation' was a euphemism for what the guards of Paliano did to their targets. Jacob's eyes grew wide as the guards took turns punching his father in the face. A tooth flew out of his mouth, clattering across the floor and sliding under the bed. Jacob instinctively scooted away from it, not wanting to feel the object that would make all of this real.
The guards hauled his father away. Jacob crawled out from under the bed and crept along behind them.
The trial was three days later. Of course, his father was found guilty by the high courts of Paliano. They were always stacked against defendants from the lower city. Jacob felt his face flush with anger. That anger was replaced with a mixture of fear and despair as his father was led to the gallows. The ropes creaked in the light breeze as everyone fell silent. Jacob's eyes were locked not on his father, but on Lady Marchesa and one of her brothers. The brother had a snide look on his pinched, pointed face. The rage returned. He wanted revenge on the man who dared frame his father for murder.
The rope snapped taught and Jacob let out a scream of rage. He started to rush through the crowd towards the vile weasel of a man but everything began to fade away. The world disappeared around him and he was suddenly somewhere else entirely, running headlong through a dark tunnel. Jacob cracked his head against a low hanging ceiling and fell into unconsciousness.
He awoke sometime later in a larger chamber, a bizarre creature with snakes for hair standing over him.
"So," its voice was feminine, "you're awake."
"Where am I?"
"In the lair of the Golgari," she said. "I am Vraska, and you're incredibly lucky that it was I who found you and not something more dangerous. I know what you are, child, and we're not so different. You're not from this world, are you?"
"I remember running through a crowd, and then I was in a tunnel, and," he slowed his speech, reaching up to touch his head. His hand came away covered in flecks of dried blood.
"No need to fear, child," the woman with snake hair said. "I won't let anyone here hurt you."
"I need to go back. That nobleman, he did it. He framed my father for attempted murder!" Jacob jumped up, pushing past the woman.
"You seek revenge?"
"Well yeah!" Jacob looked up at the snake-haired woman like she was silly. "I have to. I have to do it for my father."
"A mere child can't hope to exact their revenge, at least not one so untrained as you. Let me... help you, child. You could learn very much from an accomplished assassin like me."
"You promise you'll help me?"
"I, Vraska the Unseen, will help you learn the ways of life and death with the Golgari so that you may have your revenge on your father's killer." Vraska held up her right hand by way of an oath. "Now, what is your name?"
"Jacob. Jacob Rhyne."
"Well, young Master Rhyne," Vraska chuckled, "welcome to the guild."