Lord Feck

Lord Feck is a notable resident of Plex, residing in and ruling over an area called Offut Hills. Not endowed with particular physical or magical prowess, Lord Feck maintains his authority primarily by dint of his strength of personality and his interpersonal skills. Both his strength of personality and his interpersonal skills are formidable enough, however, that his position seems at least as secure as that of the neighboring rulers who use more forceful means.

What is most notorious about Lord Feck, and what many may have heard of who know nothing else about him, is his oft remarked-upon resemblance to an enormous pile of excrement. Though early on he was much mocked for this (and continues to be by many who do not know him), Lord Feck takes no offense at the observation, and indeed has embraced it, adopting egesta as a sort of a personal theme.

Description

Overall, Lord Feck looks like an amorphous, medium brown lump, with a pasty, slightly grainy texture. He can manifest pseudopods from his mass at will, and has been seen with up to four at once, though it's not certain that he couldn't have more if he wanted to. More often, he confines himself to two, perhaps to not stray farther than necessary from a humanoid appearance. He has some control over the shape of his pseudopods, and, presumably again to maintain some semblance of humanity, he usually shapes them more or less as human arms, complete with plump, five-fingered hands. When more convenient, however, he's also produced his pseudopods as tentacles or as segmented, arthropoid legs. Regardless, he seems incapable of generating any hard or sharp surfaces, so the pressure he can exert with his limbs is limited, and they make poor weapons except perhaps when used to smother opponents.

His power to create pseudopods does not extend to an ability to shape his body as a whole, or at least if he has such an ability he has never been known to use it. Regardless of what pseudopods he manifests at any given time, Lord Feck's main body is nothing but a shapeless brown blob. The bulk of his body is too great—and too doughy—for his pseudopods to support it at act as legs; rather, Lord Feck's locomotion is rather like a slug's, though if greater speed is necessary he can use his pseudopods to grip nearby objects and pull himself along if he has to.

What passes for a head and face on Lord Feck's form is a lump near the center of his body, bearing a cavernous, edentate mouth below two pits that seem to serve him as eyes. These do not, however, seem to be permanent parts of his form, and may just be features he manifests to interact with visitors; at rest the lump often loses its features and recedes entirely into his body, and at times he has simultaneously displayed more than two eyes, or even more than one mouth.

Lord Feck's resemblance to dejecture does not end with his visual appearance; he has a mild fimetic scent as well. Indeed, there is nothing obvious about him to prove that he is not in fact literally composed entirely of excrement, though no one has been in a position to definitively test the matter.

History

Lord Feck's history before his exile to Plex remains unknown; it's not even clear exactly what he is, and whether he's always had his current consistency and shape (or shapelessness)—he has at different times implied both possibilities. The crimes that got him exiled are likewise unknown, though he's given several contradictory accounts. (It may be that he was cursed with his current form as part of the same punishment that included his exile, but this is only speculative.) Regardless, he first came to prominence on Plex when he entered the service of a petty lord known as the Gray Axe. Not yet having attained his own lordship then, the new arrival was simply called Feck, though today he's almost never addressed or named without the honorific. In any case, Feck offerred his services to the Gray Axe as something of an advisor and spy, and quickly proved his worth; he was a shrewd judge of character, and his counsel more than once stood the Axe in good stead. In a few years, Feck had so distinguished himself as to have become the Axe's master spy and majordomo, responsible for most of the warlord's diplomatic and interpersonal tactics.

There came a day, however, when Feck gave the Gray Axe unwelcome advice. Feck warned his master of disloyalty on the part of one of his most valued men, his head trainer Cordulane, urging him to beware of possible betrayal. While the Gray Axe had benefited too much from Feck's prior service to doubt his good intentions, however, he had enough trust in Cordulane to be confident that this time Feck's admonition, if made in good faith, was doubtless misguided. Brushing off Feck's exhortations, he left Cordulane to fulfill his position unmolested. Unfortunately for the Gray Axe, Feck was entirely correct about the trainer's motivations, and the Axe fell to his underling's treachery.

While Feck was unable to save the Gray Axe from the consequences of his incredulity, he was able to take measures to limit what Cordulane gained. Thanks to Feck's machinations, rather than succeed smoothly to his former master's place, Cordulane found himself opposed and mistrusted at every turn, and while he did eventually claim a part of the Axe's dominion, his rule was neither easy nor long. Feck, on the other hand, had proven himself canny and trustworthy, and while he made no claim to the Gray Axe's realm, he did attract admirers who were willing to help him establish himself elsewhere. And so with the reputation and the followers he had gained through his service to the Gray Axe, Feck eventually settled in what is now called Offut Hills, and established his own home there. Now Lord Feck, he parlayed his initial small claim into ever greater power, gradually expanding his domain until he became more powerful and influential than the Gray Axe ever had been.

Headquarters

Though he claims rulership over a large swath of Offut Hills, Lord Feck spends most of his time in his headquarters, a palace called the Misken House, at a site called Sterk Hill. Sterk Hill is an elevated area with three rounded, fleshy peaks, riddled with meatmines to harvest the tender plexmeat within. At the center of hill, between the peaks, are three great pits in Plex's surface, over and around which the Misken House is built. Although it amuses Lord Feck to refer to these pits as the "anuses", there is no evidence that they actually serve any such purpose. In any case, prisoners thrown into the anuses seldom return.

Misken House itself is more a castle than an actual house, per se. Its sprawling rooms and corridors span nearly three hundred thousand square meters, their labyrinthine layout virtually innavigable by anyone not already intimately familiar with them. The doors and corridors are all at least three times as large as would be typical for a human building, the better to accommodate Lord Feck's more substantial form—though there is plenty of human-sized furniture for his servants.

Goals and personality

Despite what most might consider an unpleasant appearance and aroma, Lord Feck is a master of diplomacy and manipulation. He is adept at making interlocutors feel at ease, winning concessions from adversaries, and ferreting out those who would seek to deceive and undermine him. To those in his favor, he is genial and generous. Lord Feck is known for being a creature of his word, and to never be the one to initiate hostilities. When crossed, however, his retaliation can be devastating, and he is not loath to visit terrible punishments on those who have wronged him. Among his favorite means of dealing with those who have earned his wrath are fimifaction, transformation into worms or dung beetles, and casting them into the anuses.

Though otherwise largely uninterested in art and high culture, Lord Feck has a passion for dance. This is not to say that he dances himself; while he has been seen to pulse and wriggle his pseudopods in rhythm to music, this movement could be considered dance only by the most generous definition. In fact, it is sometimes suggested that Lord Feck's appreciation of dance in others stems precisely from his inability to engage in the activity himself, though this is probably at best an oversimplification. In any case, Lord Feck enjoys watching dance performances of all kinds, and employs several groups of dancers to provide entertainment at the Misken House.

While at the moment he seems content to rule Offut Hills and consolidate his own power, Lord Feck does have loftier goals of which he seldom speaks to others. His fondest ambition—save perhaps that of escaping the prison world, an all but unreachable goal shared by many of its inhabitants—is to unite a large area of Plex into a stable nation, which would be the first such large nation ever to have existed on the living world. Hidden among his other activities, he has been laying subtle preparations to this end, incurring owed favors by other lords, and delicately planting ideas of unity and coöperation in the minds of his compeers. Certainly persuading the fractious denizens of Plex to unite into any sort of large-scale government is a lofty aspiration, but if anyone could accomplish the task the eloquent and influential Lord Feck may be the one to do it.

Relations

Lord Feck's charisma and social skills have not escaped the attention of his neighboring rulers, who are not above turning to him when those skills may be useful. Lieges and lordlings from many parts of Plex have enlisted the services of Lord Feck for diplomatic negotiations and similar endeavors. In fact, Lord Feck is a rarity among Plex's rulers in that he retains cordial relationships with most of his fellows, and doesn't engage in the petty infighting that is so common among his peers. He may not be entirely without enemies, but they are few; perhaps his greatest foe is a warlord who calls himself Scourge, and Scourge wants to best Lord Feck precisely because of his popularity; he thinks that vanquishing such a well known and well liked ruler will prove his power. If he has few enemies among the other lords, though, Lord Feck also has few really close allies. The only lord who is aware of and fully supports his desire to found a large nation is Queen Asteria, and even she feels safer supporting him in secret.

Among Lord Feck's servitors, perhaps the highest regarded is Lyrydia, the captain of his guard. Despite her title, Lyrydia does much more than just protect Lord Feck's palace and holdings; she acts as his agent in many dealings, and he often sends her on important missions far from home. Actual guards Lord Feck also has many of, of course, the best known being the elite company of the Merdian Guards, who as part of their elevation to their position permit themselves to be magically transmuted into literal excrement. (This transformation does little to increase their effectiveness, per se, but is accompanied by other enchantments that give them useful powers.) Lord Feck also employs a sizable cadre of mages of various sorts; while he can do little magic himself, he sees its utility and enjoys having others around who can do it for him. Charged with the leadership of Lord Feck's mages is one Copper, who calls himself a scaturgist, and who trains other mages in his invented arcanum of scaturgy.