H.G. Farmswatter

Description

A charismatic, balding gentleman with slicked-back hair and a long moustache, the ends twirled up. Wears an emerald green paisley suit with a waistcoat. Holds a crowd enraptured — speaks at such length and volume that it is impossible to get a question in. Runs the most active stall in the market from a large wooden waggon — essentially a room on wheels.

Notes

• Sells "Farmswatter's Miracle Cure" — a tonic he claims cures what ails you, helps if you are tired or angry, and works on wrinkles. "It does whatever you want it to do."
• Prices swing wildly: as high as $10–$50, as low as $1 or two cents. Maude bought it for two cents last week; this week it costs her ten dollars, because she knows it works and "the formula has been improved"
• Only one sip a day is needed; he promises buyers will want more and must return to the market next week to restock — Doctor Webb reads this as a classic addiction scam (first taste free, then raise the price on the hooked)
• His waggon is a workshop: glass vials, distilling machinery, four small pulsating unpotted cacti, a chainlinked set of doors, and a curtain hiding further rooms. Behind the curtain sits an eight-foot cactus with a heart-like flower in a vat of offal and blood
• The waggon is hitched to two horses; he intends to leave Hole as soon as the market ends and move to another town. Ms March sabotaged the axle to strand him
• Diagnosed Ms March (faking drunkenness) with "a case of the melancholy exacerbated by the drink" and the "woman's disease," then asked if she wanted to be a test subject — and locked her inside the waggon
• Senses when people are trying to interfere with his work; tried to coax Cuthbert to the back of the waggon with a free sample
• Got the mother cactus from "the blessed desert"; called it "Mother" and fed it his own blood, squeezing it from his wound into the vat of offal — he genuinely believed he was helping people
• In Session 9, was shot in the stomach by Ms March, stabbed with Doctor Webb's poison scalpel and used as a body-shield, and kicked unconscious by Alfie; briefly turned the market crowd against the party before Alfie exposed the water-theft. Died when he opened his eyes just as Ms March burst the final cactus beside him and its spines flew into his eyes
• On being asked whether he'd "fucked the cactus," protested "No kink shaming!"

Session 10 — Reanimated

His body was left unpreserved in the waggon for six days in the desert heat, alongside the tub of viscera, to Doctor Webb's horror. Cuthbert, Alfie and Jacob Johnston cast a ritual that summoned his memories to briefly reanimate him — reaching his actual soul would have required travelling to a different plane. His eyes had already melted; light heated the melting body, his chest rose, and his head raised. Most of the team vomited.

He talked as fast as he did when alive, and gave up everything:

• The cacti came from a grove on a ledge on a mountainside — the "blessed desert." He pointed out the location on a map: near the mining village, with the hot springs on the other side of the mine
• He heard a strange noise at the grove. "It had a pull, a pulse. It was a hum." When he demonstrated the hum, Doctor Webb recognised it as the sound from his recurring nightmare
• He first tasted the tonic at the grove itself, tested it on himself, felt better, and experimented further
• There was no one else in the grove when he was there
• He dug up bodies from a cemetery to feed the mother cactus. Having researched carnivorous plants, he first tried feeding it insects — unsuccessfully — then guessed the cactus wanted flesh. It grew stronger on human meat
• Asked whether the baby cacti were his children — the question was raised and left hanging

The team poured some of the vat viscera onto his reanimated corpse to see whether it would make him feel better. It dripped through him. Then the magic ended and H.G. Farmswatter was dead once more.

Session Appearances

Quotes

"It does whatever you want it to do. Including that thing you said about the penis."
— Session 8, to Cuthbert

"Hey, ma'am, would you like to be cured?"
— Session 8, to Ms March, inside the waggon

"I can at least feed Mother."
— Session 9, squeezing blood from his own wound into the vat

"What I'm trying to do is help people and you two are ruining it."
— Session 9

"No kink shaming!"
— Session 9, on the cactus-fucking question

"Go, my little ones, be free, be free."
— Session 9, releasing the last cacti

"I got freaky with the cactus."
— Session 10, reanimated, on how he first came to the tonic

"It had a pull, a pulse. It was a hum."
— Session 10, reanimated, describing the noise at the cactus grove — then demonstrating it