Leo Haan

"If you find any freshly dead Halflings, I'll pay the best price you'll get. But they must be fresh! Freshly dead! Maybe not even quite dead yet."

- Leo Haan, Vivisectionist

Leo is of medium height and build with thin fair hair, which has begun to fall out in patches. He is very self-conscious about his decaying appearance, which is exacerbated by his addiction to caru, an imported Lustrian stimulant. Leo suffers insomnia and anorexia, and his skin is raw and flaking badly, where it isn't scabbed. A desperate man, he might even be ripe for recruitment by a cult that offered the promise of lifting his curse. It is also obvious that his researches are taking him perilously close to necromancy.

Leo actually does most of the Haan business's enchantments, but has become increasingly reclusive to the point where people think he has left. Five years ago, aged 30, he stole a magical artefact from a shaman's hut in the South Lands, triggering a vicious and powerful curse. The curse makes his body slowly rot away, and Leo can't decide if it will eventually kill him or, worse yet, let him live as a horrible monster. Unable to lift the curse by the normal means, or to find a magician or priest who could do it for him, Leo has sunk himself into experiments to try to create a cure. Experiments with creatures resistant to magic and Chaos (especially Halflings), exoticlive animals and their still-quivering glands, and worse fill Leo's time in the basement. He now only does magic-item work if it's beyond Sybo.

Leo always works alone in the combination of alchemical laboratory, morgue and vivisection parlour which comprises his workroom, spending almost all his waking time there, collapsing into drug-free exhaustion only after long experimenting sessions. The main workshop is a frightful sight, packed with preserved body parts, bottled organsand glands, pickled organs and much worse.

Leo has very few contacts and when, if ever, he goes out at night to meet them he wears a disguise or ahooded cloak to hide his appearance. He deals regularly with grave-robbers, and has some contact with junior morticians at the Physikers's and Barbers' College. While Leo formerly had several friends at the Guild of Wizards and Alchemists, over the years he has not visited the Guild and his full membership has lapsed, retaining only Corre-sponding Member status, helping to foster the belief that he has moved away from Marienburg to a location unknown.

Source

 * Warhammer Fantasy RPG 1st ED -- Marienburg: Sold Down the River
 * pg. 83

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