Pickman

Ernestina Pickman, typically known only by her surname Pickman, is a character in Sangfielle. Her class is the Shape Knight.

Appearance[edit | edit source]

Pickman is a very large Caprak. She has wispy, dark gray (closer to black) fur and a goat beard. She has two vertical horns and two horizontal downward-curved horns, like a Hebridean sheep.

She wears armor made of bolted-together pieces of scrap from a train, heavily riddled with bullet holes and scuff-marks. The color of her armor is British racing green. Jack mentions avoiding steampunk and medieval Tudor styles in their touchstones for Pickman's armor, and mentions World War I trench armor as a touchstone instead.^[1]

Normally, Pickman covers her armor almost completely (save for her legs) with a large, black poncho or shawl that makes her look like a bulky, somewhat indistinct shape (with reference to Kingpin in the movie Spiderverse or drawn by Bill Sienkiewicz). The difference between her appearance in and out of armor is compared to two ways Mike Mignola draws Hellboy: either gigantic or narrow-shouldered, exhausted and slouching.

Pickman generally doesn't wear her helmet, which is usually bolted onto the chest of her armor underneath her cowl. It is in the shape of a goat's head with holes for her horns and metal guards that clip around them. The helmet is the same color as her armor but with metalwork detailing flames licking up the helmet and up around her horns. It closes around her face, rather than being put on over the top of her head.

As a weapon, Pickman wielded a barbed espignol, a extremely short range shotgun. She also has a heavy gauntlet in the same colours as her armor, with a rough design of a candle in white paint; this was a gift from the Shape Knights to commemorate her assignment in Blackwick.

Personality[edit | edit source]

Externally, Pickman can seem blunt, terse and single-minded. In the postmortem Jack noted that "Pickman is not blunt on the inside...Pickman is thinking things through, and she has ideas about the world, and she has ideas about how people in the world should be treated, but she does not have the experience or vocabulary to be able to output those ideas."^[2]

She journals and draws sketches on occasion, much like Arthur Morgan in Red Dead Redemption 2.^[2]

She is very superstitious.^[3] She does not worship the 'god-train' Fire Alight or the Shape as a god, but in her view "the thing that the Shape is is so intensely powerful that it doesn't matter what name you're calling [it]."^[4] Her willingness to call upon the Shape (without containing it) seems to make her unusual among Shape Knights.

Calling[edit | edit source]

Heartsong

History and Involvement[edit | edit source]

Pickman used to be a teen bootlegger operating within the Pale Magistratum, picking up the mantle from her father, who had been executed for doing the same job. During an operation to steal from a Shape train, the train caught and trapped Pickman inside of it for fifteen years. The only reason she was able to make an escape was because the Shape Knights executed a plan to rescue an Aldominan heiress who was on the same train as her.

Pickman then went on to become one of the Shape Knights because she was in awe of them and admired them for their incredible efforts. It has been multiple decades since she was freed, during which time, through training and experience, she came to terms with her past enough to face down Shape Trains.^[5]

Relationships[edit | edit source]

Alekest[edit | edit source]

Pickman is initially distrustful of Alekest when they meet on the Jade Moon, as she wants nothing to do with Zevunzolia and assumes he is either a Wright of the Seventh Sun or just another schemer. She also finds his wealth and position as a margrave irritating. Despite this, Alekest persists in speaking with her to explain his relationship to Zevunzolia, until she concedes enough to give him her alternate universe books.

His experience as a Shape Knight and help with the various challenges of the Blackwick Group end up causing Pickman to accept him. In return, he entrusts her with his porcelain heart, in the hopes that it will protect her. They both affirm at this point that neither of them are interested in the other romantically.

Although Pickman consorts with trains (and he was, prior to the intervention of the scale model, after her for heresy), he seems more confused and alarmed by this behavior than angry.

By "Six Travelers: Pickman" they have become genuine friends; he is the only person not present in Zevunzolia who we see Pickman mention in her journal, and he somehow manages to reach out to her (despite the obvious difficulty involved) with a concerned letter.

Abilities[edit | edit source]

Skills[edit | edit source]

Compel
Delve
Discern
Kill

Domains[edit | edit source]

Cursed
Desolate
Technology

Fallout[edit | edit source]

Hunted: The Shape Knights have found your heresy. A hunter has been dispatched. (major Fortune, episode 29.) In episode 32, on seeing the Scale Model of Zevunzolia, this was cleared: the bounty hunter had a vision of this, and believes that Pickman will aid him in finding Zevunzolia.