The Jockey

Lore & Background

In the Company's records, The Jockey is catalogued not as a soldier or a gunslinger but as a rider—someone whose bond with his horse predates the curse that swallowed the bayou. He came to the marshlands long before the Company posted its notices along the muddy roads, and he knew the waterways, the cypress roots, and the places where the fog pooled thickest. When the first Hunts were announced, he simply saddled up and walked into the kill zone as though it were another morning ride through the cypress flats.

His play in the arena is unmistakable: a figure cutting through the undergrowth on horseback, the saddle creaking, the reins tight, the horse's breath steaming in the humid dark. He favors close-quarters engagements, where the momentum of a mounted charge turns a standoff into a slugfest. Riders who have crossed paths with him in the Hunt speak of the sound first—the gallop, the snort, the thud of hooves—before they ever see the man or the gun he raises from the saddle.

The Company's file on him is sparse, almost dismissive. They note his class, his ability, his weapon loadout, and a single marginal annotation in a clerk's hand: "Does not dismount. Not even when told to." Whether that is a compliment or a warning, the file does not say.

In Their Own Story

The fog came in off the water at dusk, thick as wet wool, and the Jockey felt the horse shift beneath him, ears rotating toward something the man couldn't yet hear. He didn't pull the reins. He never did. The bayou stretched out in every direction—black water, black cypress, the distant groan of something large moving through the reeds. Somewhere ahead, a flare hissed into the sky, painting the mist in sickly orange. Another hunter, calling for the Company's prize. The Jockey clicked his tongue, leaned low over the pommel, and let the horse find the trail through the mud. Behind them, the groan came closer. He did not look back. He never looked back. The saddle leather was warm against his thigh, the gun was heavy in his hand, and the bayou was breathing. He rode on.

Reader's Guide

From the Company's Field Archive, Vol. III — Entry on Rider-Class Hunters:

The curse took hold in the season the water turned black and the cypress wept sap like blood. No one in the parish can say precisely when. The Company's charter, drawn up in the months that followed, is explicit in its purpose: to cull the bayou's horrors through the application of human violence, and to do so under conditions that ensure the monsters are drawn out, cornered, and destroyed. The Hunters are the instrument. The prize is the incentive. The fog is the arena.

The Jockey is noted in the archive as a rider-class operative. His Saddle ability permits him to mount and dismount with a speed no other hunter matches, granting a burst of movement through the dense undergrowth where on-foot competitors are slowed to a crawl. His brawler classification means he is expected to close distance, to press engagements, to make the bayou's chokepoints his advantage rather than a liability.

The formal rules of the Hunt, as posted on the Company's notice boards, are few and absolute: enter the zone, survive the duration, kill what the Company designates, and collect the prize at extraction. There is no rule against killing another hunter. There is no rule against riding. There is only the fog, the creatures, and the clock. The Jockey, the clerk noted, treats all three with the same indifference a man shows to a storm he has ridden through a hundred times before.

Did You Know?

• The Jockey is one of the few Hunters whose entire identity and playstyle revolve around a horse, making him the only rider-class competitor in the roster.
• His Brawler classification means he is designed to engage at close range, using the momentum of his mount to close distance on opponents in the dense bayou undergrowth.
• In The Hunt, the fog and the creatures are as much a threat as rival Hunters; the Jockey's ability to traverse the terrain quickly makes him particularly effective at repositioning during prolonged engagements.
• The Company's records treat all Hunters—regardless of class or ability—as expendable instruments in the culling of the bayou's horrors, a fact the Jockey seems to have accepted without comment.