Stick Thatcher, an English Ripper – Steal this Character

This character was written for the way cool game of Rippers…

Stick Thatcher’s mother, uncle and grandfather were touring New York in 1860. At the same time, the English Cricketers were touring Canada and the United States. When an exhibition match of Baseball was arranged between the English Cricketers and an American Baseball team in New York, the Thatchers decided to attend.

When they were invited to an after-game party, the Thatcher’s accepted. Over the next few days, Amanda Thatcher (Stick’s mother) was romanced by one of the American baseballers. When she, her brother, and their father went back to England, he was forced to stay in America.

A year later, this American received word that he was now the father of a baby boy. Not wealthy enough to travel overseas on his own, he convinced his team’s benefactor to take them on a short sports tour to England.

When he arrived (luggage, baseball gear, and all), he was not received very well by her father and brother. A fight broke out, and her brother ended up killing him. Amanda kept all of his belongings as keepsakes.

A year later, both Amanda and her father died to the pox. Her brother inherited everything, but decided to put his dead sister’s boy in an orphanage.

For the better part of a decade, the uncle drank away almost all of his inheritance.

When the boy came of age, he left the orphanage for the streets of London. However, he was first visited by his uncle, a man he hadn’t seen in over 12 years. His uncle told him briefly of his mother and father, how they came to pass, and why he put him in an orphanage. He then gave the boy some money, and the keepsakes that his mother kept (a few changes of old clothes, and a bunch of baseball gear).

Confronted with all this information (who his parents were, that he almost could have lived a rich life, and that his uncle killed his father), he spent the next few days in shock, then anger, and then resentment. He finally found some relief when he took his father’s baseball bat and smashed up window after window after window.

In an effort to connect with his dead father, he always carried around his bat wherever he went, and occasionally hit baseballs in the alleys. Because of this, he came to be known as “Stick Thatcher.” Whenever he broke his bat, he’s spend whatever money he had (including money he stole) to get a new bat. This was no small feat, either, because baseball bats weren’t always so easy to come by (not good ones, anyway) – everyone wanted cricket bats.

Over the next few years, Stick tried to find work. He worked in the mill, the mine, and the shop, but he just couldn’t find anything steady (or, at least, he couldn’t stay focused long enough to keep anything steady). He’d stolen to find money to replace his broken bats, so he naturally began stealing to pay for other things, too. Soon, he had a regular gig as an enforcer for some gangsters. He’s kind of a big bloke, so intimidating others comes easy for him. He still had trouble shaking that thief in him, though.

After a particularly good score, he decided to splurge a little bit. He took a few friends to The Knight’s Moon, an establishment for men who are usually of a higher class. At first, he and his friends were tolerated because he had money to spend. But as he continued to drink, he became a little angry – angry at the life he could have had, had it not been taken away by his uncle. Feeling pressure from the patrons, Stick’s friends left the alehouse, but Stick stayed to continue to drink – and to “shove it up their pretty little arses.”

Also at this pub was John Bray, a ranking member of the Cabal. Feeling insulted (and entitled), John Bray made it clear in no uncertain terms what he thought of such a gutter-dwelling stench. John was not as big as Stick, but his ego sure was. Stick didn’t want to fight a smaller man, but the taunts laid at him made it difficult to ignore. Stick beat the man down, and then began to leave. However, John Bray got back to his feet and went after Stick again.

Now feeling the danger of fighting an upper classman in an upper class establishment, Stick simply wanted to leave, but John kept coming at him. In one final hit by Stick, John fell backward, hitting his head on the corner of a table. He died immediately, and Stick was soon arrested for murder.

With no connections or money, Stick was quickly found guilty of murdering an upper classman. However, that didn’t matter so much as the real trouble he would soon face.

Fortunately, the death of John Bray opened a door to the Cabal that the local Ripper Lodge was able to exploit. The Cabal suffered for it, and subsequently put out a hit on Stick’s life. By the time the Rippers found out about the hit, Stick had already survived two attempts on his life, and was in the prison’s infirmary because of a third.

The Ripper Lodge felt that they needed to do right by Stick Thatcher, and so pulled some strings on his behalf. Through some well-placed bribes, Stick found his sentence reduced by a large margin (problems with the prosecution), and then received an early parole (“apparently” the warden felt the prison was overcrowded).

The Rippers invited Stick into their ranks, and with nowhere else to go, he accepted. He was skeptical, at first, right up until he came face-to-face with his first Vampire. Stick has always been big and strong, but he had quite a handful with his first demon. The creature received two well-placed cracks in the head with a baseball bat, and he still didn’t go down. Stick nearly lost his own head in that fight, barely managing to escape. This is when he paid a buddy to alter his baseball bat with large nails and broken saw-blades. The next time Stick cracks a demon upside the head, he aims to take a bit of flesh as well.

When his bosses told him to follow around some Yankee to see what he was up to, Stick jumped at the duty. For one, he liked the feeling of belonging, and having responsibilities. Also, watching this American might give him some insight as to what his American father might have been like…