Francois Barbier

Physical Description

Lean and wiry at twenty-six, with dark hair that falls across his forehead and the quick, restless hands of a man who is always doing something — mending harness, rolling a coin across his knuckles, adjusting a buckle. His face is narrow and sharp-featured, with a thin mouth that smiles more easily than Charles’s ever does. He is clean-shaven and keeps his livery neat, though the cuffs are always slightly frayed from work. His eyes are dark brown and noticing — François is the kind of man who watches doorways and memorises which way carriages turn.

He is shorter and lighter than Charles — built for speed rather than endurance. Where Charles is a draft horse, François is a courier’s mount.

Personality

François is quicker, sharper, and more willing to operate in moral grey areas than Charles. He volunteered for the Trautmannsdorff delivery in Session 5 without hesitation — driving a protesting Austrian count to an unplanned destination, ignoring the man’s orders, and delivering him into the hands of strangers is not something every coachman would do without question. François did it because Adrien asked, and because the asking was enough.

He is not reckless. He is willing. There is a difference. He assesses a situation, decides whether his master wants it done, and then does it with a minimum of fuss. He has the instincts of a smuggler — not because he is one, but because he grew up in the same Auvergne villages where smuggling was just what people did when the tax collectors came.

Key Traits:

• Quick-thinking and adaptable under pressure
• Comfortable with deception — can lie with a straight face to officials, passengers, and nosy neighbours
• Less physically imposing than Charles, but faster and more agile
• Talkative when relaxed; utterly silent when working
• Observant — memorises routes, faces, and the timing of guard patrols without being told to

Voice

François speaks French natively and German somewhat better than Charles — enough to haggle at a market, flirt with a barmaid, or give a convincing lie to a patrol. His English is minimal. He addresses Adrien as “Monsieur” and tends toward a familiarity that would be insolent from anyone less useful. He talks to horses constantly — a low, running murmur in French that calms the animals and, incidentally, himself.

“The Count said ‘take me to the inn.’ I heard him. I took him to Palais Modena. These things happen.”

“I know this street. We came through it on Tuesday — the bakery on the left, the cobbler with the blue sign. The alley behind the cobbler goes through to the canal.”

“If Monsieur wants the carriage in a place nobody will look for it, I know three such places. If Monsieur wants it in a place where people will see it and think nothing of it, I know two more.”

Background

Born in a village outside Clermont-Ferrand to a farrier’s family. His father shod horses for the Montferrand estate; François grew up around the stables and was taken into service at sixteen. He was too young for the Pyrenees expedition — he joined the household after Adrien returned — and has spent the years since proving himself indispensable through a combination of driving skill, street cunning, and a willingness to handle errands that require discretion rather than muscle.

François is unmarried and shows no particular interest in settling down. He has a talent for making friends in whatever city he finds himself in — by the end of the first week in Vienna, he had identified the cheapest feed merchants, the best-tempered blacksmith, and the schedule of the Josefstadt night watch. This is not intelligence work; it is a coachman’s survival instinct refined to an art.

Statistics

Occupation: Driver (Carriage) — Regency Cthulhu Band 1 (Labourer/Servant)

Skill Point Formula: EDU × 2 + DEX × 2 = (40 × 2) + (70 × 2) = 220 occupation points + INT × 2 = 120 personal interest points

Derived:

• HP = (CON 60 + SIZ 55) / 10 = 11 (rounded down)
• MOV: age 26, STR+DEX > SIZ → MOV 8

Skills

Occupation Skills:

• Drive Carriage/Cart 70% — fast, precise, and comfortable with speed in city streets; knows how to lose a tail in traffic
• Animal Handling 55% — good with horses, not as instinctive as Charles but more than competent
• Navigate 55% — memorises city layouts quickly; already knows Vienna’s Josefstadt, Innere Stadt, and Leopoldstadt districts well after five weeks
• Spot Hidden 45% — watches who is following, who is waiting, who does not belong
• Listen 40% — adequate; better at visual observation than auditory
• Fast Talk 50% — can talk his way past a checkpoint, explain away a suspicious errand, or deflect a guard’s questions with plausible nonsense
• Stealth 45% — can move a carriage into position without drawing attention; can also move on foot through back streets quietly
• Mechanical Repair 35% — keeps harness and wheels in order; not as skilled as Charles with major repairs

Personal Interest Skills:

• Dodge 45% — quick on his feet, instinctive
• Sleight of Hand 35% — a coin trick, a palmed note, a key slipped into a pocket; village skills honed in service
• Streetwise 40% — not a standard CoC skill; treat as a combined Navigate/Fast Talk for underworld logistics — finding black-market goods, identifying safe houses, reading a neighbourhood’s power structure
• Fighting (Brawl) 35% — scrappy rather than powerful; prefers to run
• French (Native) 85%
• German 40% — conversational, good enough to lie convincingly in short exchanges

Combat

François avoids fights when possible and ends them quickly when not. He is not strong enough to brawl with a soldier, but he is fast enough to put a knee into someone’s groin and be back on the carriage box before the man hits the ground. His instincts are escape, not engage.

Weapons:

• Fist/Brawl: 35%, 1D3 (no DB)
• Knife (carried in his boot): 35%, 1D4+2
• Coachman’s whip (improvised): 40%, 1D3 (entangle on Extreme success, 3-yard reach)
• Improvised weapon: 30%, 1D6

Session Appearances

Session 1 — Arrival in Vienna

Charles and François resisted the customs inspection at Vienna’s gate when officials attempted to confiscate the party’s firearms. Both later hauled luggage to the suites at Palais_Kinsky.

Session 5 — Trautmannsdorff Delivery

François drove the carriage that delivered Count von Trautmannsdorff to Lord Harcourt at Palais_Modena, under Adrien’s direct orders. Trautmannsdorff expected to be taken to an inn outside the city; François drove him to Palais Modena instead, where Adrien — disguised as a coachman himself — dragged the kicking Count out of the carriage and into Harcourt’s custody. François said nothing and did not look back.

This is the defining moment of François’s character in play: he was asked to participate in what amounted to a kidnapping-by-carriage, and he did it without protest because his master asked.

Session 7 — White Ox Inn

Both coachmen stationed in the sitting room of the party’s new quarters as a first line of defence.

Current Status (dawn, 9 August 1814)

François’s presence at the Session 9 masquerade is not confirmed in the play notes. Charles is named as the coachman outside Palais_Lobkowitz; François may have been with a second carriage, may have remained at the party’s lodgings, or may have been running an errand elsewhere in the city. Keeper to confirm.

<!-- UNVERIFIED: François’s location during Session 9 — needs Keeper confirmation -->

Connections

• Adrien_de_Montferrand — master
• Charles Duval — senior coachman, mentor, protector
• Leopold_von_Trautmannsdorff — drove him to Palais Modena in Session 5 (involuntary passenger)

Relationships

• Serves Adrien de Montferrand — Coachman and household retainer; loyal to the Viscount, follows orders without question
• Friend of Charles Duval — Senior coachman in the Montferrand household; mentor figure