Charles Duval

Physical Description

A broad-shouldered man of thirty-eight with sun-darkened skin, a heavy jaw, and calloused hands that have spent more years on reins than off them. His brown hair is cropped short and usually hidden under a wide-brimmed coachman’s hat. A scar runs along his left forearm from a carriage accident years ago — the horses bolted on a mountain pass and Charles held the team. He dresses in practical dark wool, a heavy greatcoat in cold weather, and keeps his boots waxed to a soldier’s standard. His face is weathered but not unkind; he has the patient, watchful expression of a man accustomed to waiting in the dark for his employer’s signal.

Personality

Charles is steady, silent, and loyal to the bone. He has served the Montferrand household since before Adrien’s Pyrenees expedition and considers the Viscount’s safety a personal obligation. He does not volunteer opinions, does not gossip, and does not startle easily — though the screaming crowds and police whistles outside Palais Lobkowitz in Session 9 pushed him closer to panic than anything in his twenty years of service. He recovers quickly. He follows orders. He does not ask what is in the packages he carries or why his master’s friends are bleeding.

Key Traits:

• Unshakeable under normal pressure; rattled only by the genuinely supernatural
• Physically brave — will put himself between his master and a threat without thinking
• Laconic; speaks only when addressed or when something needs saying
• Fiercely protective of François, who is younger and less experienced

Background

Born to a tenant farmer on the Montferrand estate in the Auvergne, Charles entered service as a stable boy at fourteen and earned his way to senior coachman by competence and reliability. He accompanied Adrien through the Pyrenees expedition as driver and camp manager — he did not enter the abbey, but he heard the screaming from the mountain and he saw what Adrien looked like when he came back. He has never spoken of it. He does not need to understand what his master fights; he only needs to know where to bring the carriage.

Charles is unmarried. His family — a widowed mother and two younger sisters — remain on the Montferrand estate in France. He sends money when he can.

Session Appearances

Session 1Arrival in Vienna

Charles and François resisted the customs inspection at Vienna’s gate when officials attempted to confiscate the party’s firearms. Both later hauled luggage to the suites at Palais Kinsky.

Session 5Trautmannsdorff Delivery

François drove the carriage that delivered Count von Trautmannsdorff to Lord Harcourt at Palais Modena under Adrien’s orders. Charles’s role in Session 5 is not specified in the play notes.

Session 6Nightgaunt Aftermath

Adrien dispatched Charles on horseback to fetch Lord Harcourt immediately after the Nightgaunt attack at Palais Kinsky. Charles also assisted the wounded Varrio into the building. This is the first time Charles was personally trusted with a critical solo errand — and he completed it without hesitation.

Session 7White Ox Inn

Both coachmen stationed in the sitting room of the party’s new quarters as a first line of defence.

Session 9The Masquerade Escape

Charles waited with the carriage outside Palais Lobkowitz during the masquerade. Varrio navigated the palace gardens to locate him — Charles was alarmed by the screaming crowds and police whistles but held his ground. He drove the entire party (including Nikolai, Sasha, a bound Adler, and a catatonic Fräulein Lindqvist) hard for the Josefstadt district, reaching Thaliastraße 12 in roughly ten minutes.

After the party settled at the safehouse, Charles was dispatched with an urgent note to Honoria to report the situation and request medical aid.

Connections

• Adrien de Montferrand — master, twenty years of service
• François Barbier — fellow coachman, younger, treated as a protégé
• Lady Honoria Lyndhurst — dispatched with urgent message, Session 9