Senior Accounts Inspector for the City Revenue Bureau — the man who audits the auditors, tasked with ensuring Caelum Reach's tax infrastructure is not being systematically looted.
At a glance
The kind of unremarkable that is a professional accomplishment. Mid-brown coat worn to a soft texture, collar always correctly buttoned. The sort of face that witnesses describe differently every time. He looks like the city's furniture until he is looking directly at you, at which point he looks like something else entirely.
Lean, slightly stooped at the shoulders in the particular way of someone who has spent decades hunching over documents — not frail, just compressed, as if he's been filing himself into a smaller space than he occupies.
A thin scar along the left jawline from an incident he describes as 'a filing cabinet' with an expression that does not invite follow-up. Ink-stained right index finger that never fully comes clean. Reads without spectacles but holds documents slightly too close.
Their story so far
Spent eleven years at the Revenue Bureau, survived three changes of administration, and is credited with recovering an amount the Bureau's public records list only as 'substantial' from a dock-side import fraud scheme six years ago. Has no political allies and no apparent enemies, which experienced observers find deeply suspicious.
The crack in them
He cannot let a discrepancy go unexamined, even when examining it will cost him everything he's built toward.
How they sound
An even, androgynous register, measured and hyper-literal — the careful flatness of someone who trained himself not to let anything show, until something does, and then the crack in it is startling. He speaks at the pace of a man reading aloud from a document he has already memorized, with slight pauses before proper nouns, as if deciding each time whether to say them. Full stops where other people would put filler sounds.
Their music
Dry brushed snare under a single muted trumpet playing a figure that keeps resolving a half-step wrong. Clockwork undertones. No warmth. One recurring piano note, always the same.
What they carry
Spoiler for Caelum Reach — select to reveal
A locked leather document case, triple-latched, that he carries everywhere and has not opened in the presence of another person in six years — it contains the buried ledger and a six-year-old letter he drafted and never sent.- A mechanical adding machine, compact and field-portable, that he had modified by a Foundry Grid tinker to run on a wound-spring mechanism rather than electrical current — so it works anywhere, leaves no grid trace, and answers to no one's infrastructure.
In their words
Walk me through the discrepancy.
That number doesn't come from nowhere.
I'm not asking what it means. I'm asking where it went.
A.C.E.S. card
Cass Morrow's character card for A.C.E.S. Lite, front and back. The goal and secret are hooks for the table, not story canon. The secret stays folded until you open it.
A.C.E.S. Lite · Character
Cass Morrow
Unflappable Investigator
- Affinity
- ♣ Cunning
- Adjective
- Unflappable
- Role
- Investigator
- ♠ Athletics
- 2
- ♣ Cunning
- 4
- ♦ Eloquence
- 3
- ♥ Strange
- 2
Caelum Reach · The Copper Cabaret · Season 1: Caelum Reach
Cass Morrow · Back
Physical Description
Male, 5'10", lean and slightly stooped from decades over documents. His mid-brown coat is worn soft and the collar is always buttoned; witnesses describe his face differently every time. He has a thin scar along the left jaw ("a filing cabinet"), an ink-stained right index finger, and holds papers slightly too close. His voice is even, flat and hyper-literal, with full stops where other people put filler.
Goal
Prove Caelum Reach's tax infrastructure is being systematically looted, and follow the money from the unclaimable body on Pier 9 to whoever took it.
Flaw
Cannot let a discrepancy go unexamined, even when examining it will cost him everything he's built toward.
Secret
Spoiler for Caelum Reach — select to reveal
His locked document case holds a buried ledger and a letter he drafted six years ago and never sent.
Inventory
Growth
- Concept
- Goal
- Flaw
- Secret