The Magistrate

The Magistrate is the leader of Bete Noire. His or her word is absolute law, and any attempt to kill or unseat them ends with that exact level of violence reflected on the person who attempted it.

Magistrates tend to be extremely short-lived. Not because they are particularly prone to being assassinated -- the city's magical protection ensures that they are almost entirely immune to violence -- but that the position of Magistrate is such acute torture that they generally try to pass down the job as quickly as possible.

The job means an intimate psychic connection with the city itself, the 'voices'; any Magistrate constantly hears those voices, awake or asleep, and it's more than enough to drive an ordinary mortal insane.

The average Magistrate, therefore, only lasted long enough to have a son and pass down the city to him on his 18th birthday, the day he would become old enough to take the position. Historically, all Magistrates have been firstborn sons; however, the current Magistrate is female.

Margaret David
The current Magistrate's name is Margaret David. She is the eldest daughter of the now-deceased former Magistrate.

Margaret grew up in Greeley, Colorado. She currently is married and has three children, who she left behind to take up her duties in Bete Noire. The youngest is four years old.

Thus far, she has proved to be a rational and calm leader, one who is perhaps a bit in above her head but is managing to cope with the shocks that the city throws at her.

Samuel David
The Magistrate's name was Samuel David; born in the early 19th century in the antebellum South, David was raised as the son of a city merchant with pretensions of upper-class aristocracy. He believed that he would inherit the family business until the age of 18, in 1843, when he was unexpectedly fetched by a dark-clothed man who told him he had a destiny in the City of Sin. David's biological father, a fairly typical if perhaps excessively opium-addled Magistrate, did the ritual immediately, and gave David the city.

David, at first, followed the usual pattern of Magistrates. He turned to drugs, alcohol, sex, indulgence of every kind in order to block out the voices. He had a son, and counted the days until he could give the city away. Wondering, hopelessly, if he could perhaps return someday and take over his adopted father's business.

One day, when his son was seventeen years old, he made an attempt on David's life. In a fit of rage, David killed him. And stood there, in shock, over the body of his son.

After that, David went into a cycle of addiction, swearing off sin for months or even years at a time before indulging again. He lasted this way for almost a century and a half, alternately raging at his situation and accepting his duty of leadership over the city. His situation was impossible, but his own personal strength wouldn't allow him to give up; he killed every son he had in order to make sure that he would stay Magistrate, that someone who at least understood good and evil would stay in that role.

Finally, the Magistrate succeeded in his 'detox', so to speak. He shut himself up in his tower for nearly two decades and never so much as touched a woman, drank a drop of alcohol, took a single drug. In those two centuries, he had time for deliberation on himself and his situation, and he emerged with an idea. An idea to fight for total control of the city, and shrug off the Hierarchy.

He ultimately succeeded. In a battle against the forces of Yellow Springs, the last of the Hierarchy in the city were killed, though the Magistrate himself was dealt a mortal wound. As he died, he transferred power to his daughter, Margaret, who then went on to take over the city.