How would Veeky Forums construct an order of assassins that are not edgy in a campaign? Whether it is a medieval...

Make a Morag Tong ripoff. I mean, it's not exactly hard.

Personally, my favourite sort of assassin is the church executioner: priests literally conscripted by their respective gods to kill people.

By shooting people before banishing their body from the plane of existence, thereby ensuring that the corpse is never found?

I don't mind the church assassin angle, but the gods literally coming down and saying "knife this fucker" kind of detracts from a setting to me

>I'm very discreet. I have no code of ethics. I will kill anyone, anywhere. Children, animals, old people, doesn't matter. I just love killing."

I knew exactly what this was going to be before I clicked on it.

I actually did have a mercenary company based on this idea. Soldiers and other military folk were discharged, retired, or went AWOL but just couldn't get away from the fact that killing was what they were best at/enjoyed most. So they make the best of it and enjoy their work to the fullest. The idea could work pretty well for assassins too.

Make them universally pretty poor or average combatants.

If your an assassin and you train exclusively with weapons as a way to kill your target you will invariably be killed. (live by the sword/die by the sword).

Successful assassins are one of two things. They are either talented social engineers, combat pragmatists, practical, ruthless, and incredibly threat adverse. These assassins do what they do for a paycheck, or perhaps to engender some change in their lives. Either way they want to survive their work so as to enjoy the rewards. The glory hounds don't last long enough for that.

The second type of successful assassin is the desperate individual willing to die for his cause. This man/woman insures the death of his target by using suicidal but direct methods such as the one below.

youtube.com/watch?v=htw1w8lYQdQ

Its very hard in any time to protect an individual from a completely selfless individual willing to die to accomplish his goal. Such potential assassins can be drawn from the homeless or other desperate individuals, who wish to guarantee their families a better life through a promise of payment to those who survive them if they succeed. Alternative assassins could be radicalized using religious or political motivations such as the infamous suicide bombers of today.

You can make them super edgy and not come off as obnoxious if they're not unrealistically competent, or are realistically incompetent
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hand_(Serbia)

Never, because babby-core ass wipes will forever be insecure about not being able to feel any depth of emotion.

Assassins Creed
Just a bunch of folk with a rival organization (that has members in high places) protecting and fighting over significant religious artifacts.

They get a lot of money for killing people.

>that are not edgy in a campaign?
Just have them be every day blokes that are part of a trade union like any other trade union. Just that their trade union involves killing people for cash instead of fixing the plumbing.

They're also extremely racist. They're called the Killer Klown Koalition.

A group based in a crime-ridden third/second world country. Take out hits on criminals from the innocent and use their money to buy and broker information between the rival factions, funded externally by some shady intelligence organization that likes the balance they maintain

Lots of good reputation for 'helping the innocent' and general vigilante worship, but the choice to go after established criminals is a business decision and not an ethical one

Simple, just make sure they're professionals

Just make sure they have a cool boss

Take the dark brotherhood from TES 4 and 5, then do the opposite of that

Though I actually liked the oblivion dark brotherhood because it was incompetent to the point of being very humorous and got completely fucked up by the only actual not-shit crazy murderer in the country.

My Shadowrun group has already encountered such. Luckily they /weren't/ the SEALS targets.

By making them less of an order of assassins and more like a fringe political faction that isn't above marked killing to achieve their goals.

who the shit sits down at their drawing station and thinks

"hecka yes, motherfuckers, today i'm gonna draw a spirit furry bear guiding gavrilo princip to shoot franz fucking ferdinand, the archduke and heir to the throne of austria-hungary"

Commissions are a hell of a drug.

When furries are involved, do you ever need to ask?

The priest is telling them that their God wills it. But he's actually just taking contracts.

who the shit sits down at their computer and thinks

"hecka yes, motherfuckers, today i'm gonna pay a guy to draw a spirit furry bear guiding gavrilo princip to shoot franz fucking ferdinand, the archduke and heir to the throne of austria-hungary"

Judging by the quality of the artwork, probably a low-cost commission for someone to put in a cringe thread in /b/.

They're just not very secure. The bulk of the assassins come from other walks of life and just see fit to align themselves with the organization. Since it depends on the incentive of profit among a bunch of mostly immoral, single-minded people there's very little trust among its members and there's an ever present tension for that reason.

They do train assassins as well (a few specific breeds), but they're fairly simple, straightforward, and disposable. It's hard to train someone for that kind of thing, it's not the same as training a soldier for battle. Assassins and spies must have a balance of a variety of strengths - grace, athleticism, skill at arms, intuition, perceptiveness, placidity, and the willingness to do fucked up shit without getting all consciencey. So there isn't much in the way of an army of assassins, but they're useful nonetheless.

Oddly enough, the Black Hand seem *unrealistically* incompetent.

Worth.
Every.
Penny.

oh god you guys make me cringe so hard

They pose as a casino franchise which has its fingers in many pies. They have a huge amount of associated services; catering, pro- I mean sex workers, etc. One of their gambling elements is that they handle taking bets on every topic imaginable, and one thing they take bets on is when certain public figures will die. Of course this is a coincidence and there's no such thing as an organized group of assassins.

Stranger fanart exists.

If you ask NPCs they say there is probably an assassin guild. Ask the toughs, do some violent side quests.

If a PC wants to be an assassin he joins through criminal syndicate/dock worker connections.

If PC ends up having a streak of virtue then the TRUE assassin guild which is a quasi religious order reaches out to him and makes him break his ties with the thugs.

If the PC is totally evil then the syndicate assassins get increasingly David Lynch'esque

Play Oblivion and copy The Dark Brotherhood. They were not edgy but they did take their craft seriously. They are also all insane but in a good way.

When I was a young boy exploring the internet there was this girl at this forum I used to frequent that drew badly pics of Princip in homosexual situations often with tentacles and equally bad homoerotic fanfiction

You oculd say that took me out of my comfort zone

I say don't you know

They could be literally anyone.
Have one where it was like the brotherhood level of scary in that they can somehow scout you, know the second you commit the deed even if there's no way they could be present, and somehow have an eye on literally everyone.
You just get a note one day asking if you'd like to join and you write yes or no then burn the letter.
If you say no thats cool no more letter no harm done. If you say yes from then on you occasionally get a note with a name and possible details such as accident, broad daylight, gorey, clean, etc. and the rest is up to you. Once done you'll receive a package of one sort or another with your payment within a few days.
Odd bit? The letters and packages make their way to you despite impossible odds of any sort. Several governments have tracked down hiree's and kept them in various states of watch. One was even mortared into a solid granite room and magically watched through scrying for seven days. He somehow received payment for a previous job via coughing up a voucher for 20k gold from a local bank branch, a new target via a letter from his breeches that wasn't there before, questions as to his status which he answered back using a sharp stone and his blood which appeared from his back when it was to a wall, stuck under his foot, and from a quite unenjoyable area due to lack of lube, again all area's checked and in an empty sealed room.
The experiment ended when one of the watchers received a target letter for the prisoner and shut off his magical air supply.
As far as anyone can tell there's no internal infrastructure to the organization as all questioned simply say they just received the letter one day. It goes across settings as well though it mostly goes unnoticed, as designed, simply because it can just look like a random guy in the street being stabbed by a child for no reason.

Severance happens just as abruptly and with no real rhyme or reason.
Some people get one target and their done and some grave robbers dig up coffins full of the letters in various states ranging from decaying to new. Occasional supplies are given in letters such as undetectable poisons to be baked in a mans loaf of bread he buys daily to a novelty sign saying Vote Alexander Bursmith for Regional Manager 2878 with a particularly sharp stake.
Theres also been assassins guilds built up around a receiver from time to time though they are sporadic in their nature and endurance as most fall apart after the receiver dies or gets his severance, which can happen anytime, and most don't brag about it as the local government usually tried to crack down attempting to find the overarching mastermind.

The order is made exclusively of sexy females in revealing black leather cloth and using katanas.

>How would Veeky Forums construct an order of assassins that are not edgy in a campaign?
By having them be just dudes who do it for money?

You must be new here

Underrated. Beurocracy is the bane of edginess.

The order doesn't exist. The myth, however, does and that's more powerful than the actual blades.

The "assassins" are actually bards who go around singing TALES of the deadly assassins who topple monarchies, walk through solid walls, are unparalleled blademasters. Every so often they might trumpet up a death as "TOTALLY AN ASSASSINATION YOU GUYS"- like, Mad King Olaf shat himself to death on the toilet because he was sick, but the bards go "or maybe it was poison? Eh? EH?" until people believe that Mad King Olaf was killed by a heroic assassin for being such a cruel tyrant. They might now and then commit a murder to drum up material for the myth-making, but this is fairly rare.

Basically, Alex Jones but less terrible.

>How would Veeky Forums construct an order of assassins that are not edgy in a campaign?
So check it out: there's this order of assassins right? But listen, listen... they're not the good guys. They aren't grey morality fags who fight for good through contrived means. They're just assholes. They're assholes who offer their services to the highest bidder. Because that's what they do, that's what brings food on their plates.

>Have to fill 1 week worth of paperwork to kill someone
>"Fuck this, I'll do it myself"

And the plot twist is that the Bureaucratic Assassins are actually clerics of the god of anti-laziness

Shadow the Hedgehog and Dante are deep.

Would The Dark Brotherhood in Oblivion be considered too edgy?

You end up killing them all ofcourse but the whole gang in the Cheydinhal sanctuary just seem like such bros that I cant really think of them as edgy. Lucius is GOAT murder senpai as well.

They wear rubber animal masks.

Getting to you but first
PIGSY!!

Now then. You want to make non edgy characters? Stop thinking like a teenager who reads too much twilight! Too much being any amount and by this I mean don't make "deep" characters who think of themselves as monsters or necessary villians. If you really have to make them think their the good guys, examine the mentality of terrorist and "knight templars". Have fun with your gang of
Serial killers, just don't call them that; it pisses them off.

They're Slavs

Fantasy Eversor's.

Read Snow Crash. That kind of "wheelchair".

They use mutant koalas as attack dogs too.

No women, no kids. That's the rules.

It will live as long as shitty writers chase shock value and do it badly.

It's potentially immortal

Fuck you.

>No women

But why?

because he is sexist.
The patriarchy wins again

Impractical rules, enjoy getting shanked by some crazy woman

They're all light hearted.

No seriously. They know what they do is kinda fucked up but it doesn't really bother them. They don't get all "wah muh morality twisting". They just do their job and do it well. They co-operate. This is generally easier to do if they're not following a dark God like in elder scrolls. Maybe they just do it because some people need to die.

Not only that, but Franz Ferdinand is driving his own car and Gavrilo is shooting a modern black polymer pistol.

That's the rules.

In all seriousness, Leon isn't completely rational. He's a badass when it comes to his job, but outside of that he's somewhat childish (probably why he gets along so well with Mathilda). He might be autistic, little as that word means here.

Fuck it, embrace the edge, motherfucking assassins kick ass and it's much more cringy watching people try and fail to avert clenches, only to create worse ones. Who are you trying to impress anyways?

He is a foreigner with development problems who cannot even read. We can assume that all his life he has been slighty more than an attack dog. Also the reason why it is Mathilda who "corrupts" him and not the other way. She is several orders of magnite more savvy.

>That ass

theres no way to make an organized association of murderers without having them be "edgy"

>fail to avert clenches
Well, she should better clench her butt

I don't know why or how, but that picture upsets me far more than it reasonably should.

It works more like a cold door salesmen section:
>This month Johny has managed to execute 12 contracts! Here you have your hitman of the month trophy... On the other hand Jake has botched the mexican affair...Jake, your neck in on the loose.

The. Fuck.

top tier. Do this OP

1. They're in it strictly for the money

2. Most of the money goes to charity

3. There's like a 1 in 10 chance they will turn against their employer so if you hire them you know you are playing with fire

underrated post

Sorry, sir. I take it back, please don't hurt me.

This is possibly the most confusing image I've ever seen if we take it at face value and the questions that raises, it has reduced me to tears of laughter.

Pragmatic organization of assassins without a religious or pseudo-intellectual ideology is a good way to avoid most of the edginess that comes with assassins.

They can be patriotic to a degree. Never take jobs against their kingdom's nobles or politicians and concentrate on weeding out the merchants, criminals and other "acceptable targets" that people hire them to kill. Foreigners too. In a fantasy setting that would explain why they have grown long enough to become an "order" that might even have a legal position within the country. They are not a threat to the current rulers and instead can be an useful tool. They might even be known on the level that Freemasons are known IRL. Like people know that the organization exists and there are plenty of rumours in circulation but most of the members are unknown and if you want to really know the truth about the organization you might have to dig a while.

If you skip the patriotism thingy they must be a more secretive organization because why the fuck would allow something like that to exist in your country unless you have some way to protect yourself from them?

The order is made up of commoners who seek to take advantage of all the infighting and backstabbing among the nobility. They take only noble targets and give the money that they earn to the common folk. In truth, they absolutely despise the nobility for focusing on their petty rivalries and intrigues while much of the nation lives in poverty, and many of them are just in it to kill highborn.

It is their dream to one day assist a single noble family kill off all their rivals, whom they will then turn on and murder before seizing power and declaring a realm without things like class distinction or high versus low birth.

The bards in my world have their roots as a Olidammara "cult" (I mean you don't ritually sacrifice to Olidammara unless it's a goat you're about to eat.) however in current times the organisation is more or less a spy network/information broker. They rarely do assassinations unless the target is deemed a threat to their well being.

>Invent communism in a feudal society

That's dumb.

Right, because communism versus aristocracy was totally never a thing.

Why? We're talking about fantasy after all, communism should fit right in

And even in real life, feudal societies were exactly the place where communists really got their start. Turns out Marx was wrong in thinking that nations like England would be the first to go red. In western Europe and the US they floundered and failed, but in places like Russia and China they crushed their opponents

Nicholas II. was such a cutie

Is there industrialisation?

This. This deserves replies. I'm using all this now.

What do they get for severence?

holy shit is this post real

No user this is a simulation. Wake up.

Can't wake up.

Why did you leave the keys upon the table

No, this is too specific and too detailed to be a troll. Look at that bear... It's clearly the image of someone's actual fantasy.

A large amount of dosh or something equivalent. I view it more like a grab bag, maybe you get cash, maybe you get a literal get out of jail free card, maybe you get a well calligraphed letter, a golden watch, etc.
Sorta depends on the setting to. Why would a random janitor on a frigate in space get what was worth an equivalent 100k USD in representational coin from the 8th century but is worth like .008 cents in tin now, unless he's a coin collector or something.

That's just ignorance of history

What is dead may never die.

The problem with this is that the group doesn't really need the assassins, now do they? If they can get you to spit out money, they could just put cyanide and kill the target themselves. If they can see assassins committing crimes in impossible situations and can reach them guaranteed, such a powerful society has no need to actually employ assassins.