Rutherford Farfetcher

Rutherford Farfetcher is the dwarven alchemist and alchemical millwright who designed and built the pump systems that underpin the Farseas' methane and resource economy — systems whose sabotage triggered the Black Tar crisis that defined much of the campaign's first three seasons.

The Farfetcher Pumps

The pump systems — now known as The Farfetcher Pumps — are Rutherford's masterwork: a network of alchemical machinery threaded through the swamp that separates tar from water through distillation, channels methane for collection, and (crucially) allows Hydracephelate to be dispersed through the system as a neutralizing agent.

When Thayan agents embedded among the Drovers of Silverpool sabotaged the pumps, Rutherford was implicated in the ensuing crisis through a combination of noble family insurance claims filed after Vader Kropus's death. The players' involvement in clearing his name — and in escorting him safely to Silverpool for repairs — was the central arc of The Iron Garden season.

Character

Farfetcher maintains good relationships with all swamp denizens — unusual for a dwarf in a region defined by beast-folk suspicion of humanoids — and is genuinely, viscerally worried about One Eye's eggs. His repair work requires INT and Tool skill checks across multiple rounds, using an auto-bolter and manual spanner in combination.

He is one of the few people in the Farseas whose expertise is so specialized and so irreplaceable that multiple hostile factions have refrained from simply killing him. The pumps need someone who understands them. Rutherford is that someone.