Turnip Bellwater

Turnip Bellwater is the founder and leader of the Shortstack Stranglers, the largest and least organised mercenary guild of Vansreik. He is a halfling from the town of Bellwater, whose people have always been known for their skill with the knife, and he is perhaps the finest example of that kind of Bellwaterian: a master thief and a charming speaker, described as charming, a backstabber and a survivalist.¹

The Shortstack gang

In his youth, with the help of his hundreds of relatives, Turnip founded the Shortstack gang, a band of halflings who sold "security" to establishments in the surrounding settlements. The gang grew a great deal and began to compete with other groups, but Turnip's rivals were no match for him. For all the gang wars, he wanted to rule something bigger than a gang.²

When he turned thirty he moved to Vansreik with his twenty most trusted men, and together they built the inn Halfling is Your Mother. He then called in favours and used most of the blackmail material he had gathered in his early life to obtain a licence for a mercenary guild.²

The strangled priestess

When the guild's first ticket into the Deep Pit came, Turnip and six of his cousins went down. They found a previously undiscovered part of the old city of Mortenox and filled their bags of holding with art, gold, silver and tomes. They also came upon a dark elven caravan carrying magic items to a dark elven city ten days away, and attacked it, only to find themselves facing a noble dark elven high priestess.²

The war priest called on the forces of the Abyss, and it seemed the end of the Shortstacks. Turnip and two of his cousins charged her. She banished one cousin and burned the other with hellfire, but Turnip reached her with his strangling wire: he leapt onto her back, wrapped the wire around her neck and wrestled with her until her last breath. When she fell the dark elves fled, fearing that to return would only earn them a slow execution.²

The halflings came back to Vansreik with their plunder, known from then on as the Shortstack Stranglers. To this day Turnip tells the story to anyone who will listen, above all before a Deep Pit mission.²

Guild master

Turnip is a celebrity among Bellwaterians and has secured many lucrative deals with the townsfolk. He holds more tickets into the Deep Pit than anyone else and means to make the most of them. He and his family are the core of the guild, and he regards its senior members as family too, whatever their race or upbringing. With Jogard Di and Donald Whent he sits at The Grand Table, which meets at his tavern every two months.³

His charm usually keeps the guild on balanced terms with officials of the Empire.⁴

Family

• Shaila Bellwater is his younger sister. When she came to join the Stranglers he was reluctant to take her in, but Jinxy and Cherrybell persuaded him to let her stay.⁵
• Cherrybell, his cousin once removed, is the guild's second-in-command.⁴
• Jinxy is his favourite nephew. Turnip welcomed Jinxy and his mother to Bellwater, saw the boy's physical promise and arranged for him to be trained in swordsmanship; Jinxy's mother still refuses to speak to Turnip for hiring a swordmaster from the Empire.⁶
• Turnip found the tiefling Saphir as a baby in the basement of a hag's hut. After killing the hag he took the child with him to Bellwater and then to Vansreik, where his wife Josebell took her as her own and she grew up as one of the family.⁷

The sailor Wanguff Volter sought Turnip out on reaching Vansreik, knowing that Turnip too had bad blood with Volter's former captain.⁸

Spoiler: Turnip's aimsRevealSpoils: Mercenary Compendium · Say what you have read

Turnip is tricking the Eagle Brigade and the Warmongers into fighting each other, hoping to make a great profit from their war, and he works constantly to keep the truth from spreading.³

The Wing of The Black Veil has uncovered the plan, and keeps silent for as long as a substantial bribe lines his pockets.⁹

In battle

Turnip is an exceptionally skilled ranged fighter who uses throwing knives and a rapier. Laden with magic items, he moves through even the direst situations with apparent ease. His style rests on stealth and surprise, aiming at the vital gaps in his enemies' defences, and he usually picks the foes he can boast most about defeating. He always knows when it is time to leave a fight and retreat.¹⁰