There are plenty of names spoken with pride at Blackthorn Hall. There are also a few that are not spoken at all. Thaddeus Mordecai Saint Clair belongs firmly in the second category.
Thaddeus was a distant cousin of Lucien and Augustus Saint Clair, although the precise branch of the family tree connecting him to Blackthorn Hall has traditionally been left unexplored. Even before the war he had acquired a reputation that made respectable members of the family uncomfortable. He possessed neither Lucien’s intellect nor Augustus’s sense of duty, and whatever advantages education, wealth and family connections might have provided were largely wasted upon him. Thaddeus preferred gambling houses, saloons and questionable company, drifting through Virginia and the neighbouring states while hiring out his pistol whenever somebody was prepared to pay.
What he lacked in character he compensated for with extraordinary ability with a firearm. Thaddeus was fast, but more importantly, he was deadly. Men who faced him frequently discovered that they had badly underestimated the difference between reaching for a pistol and actually using one. He possessed the unnerving ability to remain completely calm while everyone around him panicked, and there were persistent stories that he occasionally engineered confrontations simply because he enjoyed discovering whether the other man was as fast as reputation suggested. Usually he was not.
The war gave Thaddeus an opportunity to practise his talents on a considerably larger scale, although nobody could ever be entirely certain which cause he considered himself to be serving. He rode occasionally with Confederate irregulars, worked as a scout when the money suited him and disappeared for weeks at a time when some more profitable opportunity presented itself. There were rumours of robberies, killings and scores settled under cover of military operations. Augustus regarded him as an embarrassment to both the family and the Confederacy and repeatedly refused Thaddeus’s requests for a formal place within the 27th Virginia Cavalry Regiment.
Thaddeus survived the war but not the violent world in which he had chosen to live. The exact circumstances of his death remain uncertain. One version involved a card game, another a woman, while a third claimed that three men had finally decided to confront him simultaneously because none was willing to try alone. Whatever happened, his body eventually found its way back to Virginia. Family loyalty apparently extended far enough to provide him with a grave near Blackthorn Hall, although his stone was placed discreetly towards the edge of the burial ground. Lucien eventually found it.
At first he intended to raise Thaddeus alongside the other dead gathering at Blackthorn Hall. A man with such extraordinary ability with a pistol would certainly be useful, and Lucien had already demonstrated that death need not prevent a Saint Clair from continuing to serve the family.Then, unusually, Lucien thought better of it.
The problem was not whether Thaddeus would return with his abilities intact. The problem was what else might return with them. Thaddeus had been dangerous when alive, when imprisonment, injury and death still provided at least some restraint upon his behaviour. A permanently risen Thaddeus, freed from even those modest concerns and wandering Blackthorn Hall between battles, presented possibilities that even Lucien found disturbing. There were Ragged Veterans who remembered him. None volunteered to share quarters with him. Lucien therefore devised a compromise. Thaddeus Mordecai Saint Clair would be called back only when he was needed.
When battle approaches and Lucien requires the particular talents of his disreputable relative, Thaddeus is summoned from the grave. Death has changed remarkably little about the man himself. He remains every bit as tough, fearsome and unpleasant as he was in life, but it has done something altogether more disturbing to his pistol. The weapon returns with him as a spectral reflection of the gun he once carried, cold and insubstantial until Thaddeus pulls the trigger, when its report seems to come from somewhere considerably further away than the battlefield.
Against ordinary mortal opponents the effect is particularly terrifying. The spectral ammunition seems to care little for the protection offered by the material world, giving non supernatural opponents a minus 1 Save modifier when struck. Thaddeus appears delighted with the improvement. For the duration of the fighting he is given precisely what he always wanted, enemies, ammunition and almost complete freedom to indulge himself, while remaining just as difficult to put down and every bit as fearsome as he was before death claimed him. Afterwards Lucien always sends him back.
It is an arrangement that suits almost everyone. Lucien gains the services of one of the most dangerous gunfighters ever produced by the Saint Clair family without having to worry about what he might do during the long evenings at Blackthorn Hall. Augustus does not have to acknowledge him as a permanent member of the 27th, while the Ragged Veterans can sleep without wondering whether Thaddeus has become bored and decided that a little target practice might enliven the night.
Most importantly, the Saint Clair family can continue its long standing tradition concerning Thaddeus Mordecai Saint Clair. Nobody talks about him, that is until Lucien needs him once again.
