GoCorral

Duke Jingo was the majordomo of Nomingburg for nearly one hundred years. He pacified the civil strife that ruled the city after Tracy’s second death during the Draco-Gith War. Unfortunately, Jingo could not live forever. Near the end of his life he was assassinated by the Second Alliance Exiles as part of a demonic pact they’d made. Nomingburg’s precarious peace collapsed as a century of grudge killings returned.

Jingo’s upbringing would’ve been that of a blissfully ignorant commoner were it not for his albino older brother, Stanton. The pair were born in the small Xorian halfling village of Toadstool Leaf. Stanton took the lead in the brothers’ mischief as they grew up. They stole, played pranks, and were a general nuisance around the village.

Stanton’s behavior took a darker turn after he hit puberty. The older brother’s magical powers developed alongside his body. His natural talents inclined towards enchantment magic, but Stanton had no restraint in how he used it. He clouded the mind of his teenage crush and raped her. Fearing that she would report his actions after the enchantment broke, Stanton murdered her, but that still left a body and evidence. Stanton prepared to run away when Jingo found him. He begged Jingo to come with him, but his brother refused.

Stanton’s dark mind saw another pathway to preserve his position. He invaded Jingo’s mind and forced him to confess to the town elders the next day. Jingo was imprisoned instead of Stanton. The younger brother used his skills to escape jail and he fled the village with only the clothes on his back.

Jingo practiced his skills to survive as he headed east. He stole, he burgled, and he robbed. Jino put the word out that he was available for hire. He organized robberies for powerful merchants and minor nobles to destroy their rivals. These nefarious acts slowly transitioned into hits on rival gangs and eventually assassinations of opposing merchants and their families. Jingo became a hired assassin.

Assassins flocked to Nomingburg and Jingo was no different. He settled there, but was disturbed by the constant fighting between the different guilds. Jingo attempted to improve the town by donating money and opening orphanages. Unfortunately, nothing ever seemed to be enough. Jingo came up with a plan to end the violence once and for all. He contacted each of the four main guilds of Nomingburg to resolve their differences. He tricked each of the guildmasters into meeting with each other without weapons. Diplomacy truly began. The guilds aligned behind Jingo as a leader for the unified city. He was declared Duke Jingo of Nomingburg, representative of the town, and liaison between the guilds under the conditions that he never leave the town or complete anymore assassinations.

Due to his important role as the adjudicator of disputes in Nomingburg, Jingo became the target of assassinations. These attacks would’ve claimed his life if Jingo had not received help from an unlikely source. The Dahak, a monster that loved static environments sent its minion, a powerful rakshasa named Elijas, to Nomingburg. The Dahak sought a stasis of eternal cycles; thus, it saw a static Nomingburg as one that was always cycling through different rulers as the guilds warred with each other. Elijas did not share the Dahak’s view of stasis though. Elijas’s view of stasis was more traditional, a static government did not change. Elijas arrived to assist Duke Jingo and took on a role as his private assassin, securing Jingo’s rule as the power behind the throne.

Elijas allowed Jingo to rule Nomingburg and explore his own desires without fear. After a time, Jingo realized that the only thing that threatened him was his own mortal body. His halfling form would eventually wither and die no matter what he did. There were solutions in necromancy, but that was only half a life. The gods could grant eternal youth, but they would never do that for a halfling that allied himself with a monster. Jingo searched through tomes of ancient lore and spells for an answer. He found one in a Sumerian ritual to transfer one’s essence into the form of a golem. Jingo only held a portion of the ritual though, as the stone tablet it was carved into was broken. He initiated a search for the remaining portions, but sadly his dream of immortality would never be realized.

The Dahak had never given up his desire to restore static cycles to Nomingburg. Near the end of the Second Alliance War the Alliance Exiles made a deal with the Dahak. They needed his Pitchfork of Ruin to revive Zeus. In exchange, Dahak asked them to destabilize Nomingburg. The Exiles did so by assassinating Duke Jingo and his bodyguard, Elijas. Predictably the guilds fell back into killing each other and squabbling over territory and contracts. Nomingburg is once more a chaotic mess.