Ace of Wraiths (Hero)
Code-name: Ace of Wraiths
Full Name: unknown
Faction: Blood Watch, Four Aces
Even over one hundred years later, they still talk in Pulp City about that night of poker. That was the night a dazzling card-sharp became the Ace of Wraiths. His name is long-since forgotten, but the legend says that he was the greatest gambler of his day. He could bluff his way to a win with just a pair of deuces, and today Ace of Wraiths is the oldest resident of Pulp City’s Crossroad Hills district.
Over one century ago, that was his night; nobody could best him at cards, until a stranger joined his game. The stranger’s native blood did not match his white man’s clothing, nor did his Old World accent. The two played for hours until the momentum swung back to Ace in the gray hours just before the breaking of dawn. It came down to one last hand.
The stranger had no money, but he laid his gun and card box on the table. At first glance, the gun appeared to be nothing special, but as Ace stared at it he saw its exquisite workmanship along with ornate etching on the barrel. The same pattern was impressed on the solid silver box.
The final game was five card stud. The stranger took one card, Ace took three and drew aces over eights. He laid his cards down. The stranger sighed and looked Ace in the eyes. A smile came to his lips that grew into a laugh that chilled Ace’s soul. Then the stranger’s body collapsed into a pile of ashes. Ace flipped over the stranger’s cards: six, seven, eight, nine, and the one-eyed jack of spades.
That gambler Ace did not realize what had happened that night until a wandering preacher on a pale horse, upon seeing the winnings, told him a story about a cursed gun and deck of cards which damn their owner with immortality and eternal torment. He told the tale that they cannot be given away, but the owner can try to outwit another into winning the trophies in a game of cards, thus condemning the winner’s soul to an afterlife in hell. Ace had met his match that night, and his winning streak had come to a damned end.
Ace soon found he could not die. A bullet, or a knife, or a hangman’s noose may take his breath and stop his heart, but he was always reborn on the following night at the nearest crossroads. A few arcanists that know of his curse whisper that his life on earth will one day come to an end, when every man and woman tricked by the cursed Deck of Souls is redeemed with a claimed life of an evil being. And these days there seems no end of evil souls to harvest.
The powers of Ace of Wraiths rely on his artifacts. A skilled gunslinger and a cartomancer, Ace has had more than a century to master the art of paying his toll with the blood of evil men and women.