Picolo

Picolo, also called Pico, is the young leader of the Thieves' Guild in White City in the Raphael Efsanesi ("The Legend of Raphael") campaign, and an old contact of the assassin Raphael. The guild's main base lies elsewhere, but it keeps a strong presence in the capital. Its thieves avoid killing whenever they can, and the guild is an enemy of the assassins of Kalel.¹²

The War Chicken

Picolo had bought one of the inns Raphael had his eye on, the War Chicken, which he uses as his meeting place. Its rooms are full of rigged games and talk of robberies in thieves' cant, and a dwarf keeps the bar. Picolo receives visitors in his room upstairs.³⁴⁵

The contract on Dimes

Picolo told Raphael that the Night Rats were forcing women into prostitution and children into theft, though the guild did not openly oppose them. Several of his valued thieves and a halfling friend had recently been killed, with daggers bearing the mark of Kalel left at their necks, and he had learned that the killer was Dimes, called Shadowblade. He guessed that Dimes was preparing to kill Fin, the garrison commander who had raided a Kalel base. He offered to make up the money Raphael lacked for the North Wind inn if Raphael killed Dimes, and Raphael accepted.⁶⁷⁸⁹

The war on Kalel

When Raphael was released by Kalel and resolved to drive them from the city, Picolo had his hidden money fetched, warned that the new master might be the tiefling Naros, known as the Emperor Killer, and joined the alliance. He sent a paunchy halfling spy who reported thirty-five members of Kalel besides Naros, six or seven of them mages; promised men to distract the city watch and about fifteen fighters; and lent Raphael the money for a third mage in return for first claim on the spoils. In the attack his shot brought down an archer at a window.^1011121314

At the feast that opened Raphael's inn, Picolo forgave the loan as a gift and found him a drow spy with good underground connections. He also told Raphael about Kala, a woman expelled from the guild for killing eighteen people on a job to steal a key, and gave him her address outside the city.¹⁵¹⁶

Adviser in the tests

Picolo spoke of the Palanthor knights who were coming to the city: men of hard law, death sentences, rich and powerfully armed.¹⁷

For a fee he told Raphael how he had once got into the Archon's embassy: an unlicensed conjurer who made his living in circuses had written to the academy for a licence, giving Picolo's inn as his address, and then failed to appear, so Picolo was called in to give a statement and hand over a cup the man had used. He offered the gossip that the gnome archivist of the White Library had read every book there and had been there since the city was founded, perhaps a duty passed from father to son, and he pointed Raphael to the merchant Sirius.¹⁸¹⁹²⁰

For the silver saddle, he argued against an attack and had a friend forge a recall order in the chief groom's name, then supplied the soldiers' uniforms Raphael and Karas wore on the road.²¹²²²³

When Raphael asked about the library, Picolo said he did not know the gnome, that a thief caught there would hang, and that the library kept many secrets. He joked that if Raphael were hanged he would forge papers making himself his kin and claim the inn, adding that in their world they were not friends but colleagues.²⁴²⁵²⁶

Late on the night Raphael was paid for the chain, Picolo came to check a rumour of big money and asked for an urgent loan, which Raphael gave him. He hinted that they might not meet for a while and that strange things were happening that night.²⁷

Spoiler: Picolo's fateRevealSpoils: Raphael Efsanesi #6; Raphael Efsanesi #8 · Say what you have read

Derek Sunshield, who had earlier said he wanted Picolo dead, suspected him of having helped the conspiracy against the emperor. Raphael told him Picolo had visited him that very night, contradicting reports that he had left the city a week before. A few months later Picolo was caught hiding in the city and hanged.²⁸²⁹³⁰