#2. Cassidy Miller

Lore

The Marshal of the Old West

Reward ($5,000) for the capture, Dead or Alive, of ex-U.S. Marshal Cassidy Miller. Age 25, 5 feet, 8 inches. Brown hair and eyes. Wanted for dereliction of Duty, harboring a Fugitive Slave, aiding a Known Criminal, and Attempted Murder. Known companions include a Giant Cougar, a Twenty-foot Lumberjack, and a Cherokee Ghost. Armed and extremely Dangerous.

– Poster, Nebraska Territory, 1853


"You just going to stand behind me looking all-fired stupid or are you going to draw?"

– Marshal Cassidy

As the story goes...

When fifteen-year-old Cassidy Miller captured Wild Zeb and his gang, Zeb insisted his gun jammed and the sun was in his eyes. But, outlaws soon changed their tune, and just five years later, Bloody Cal Johnson bragged from prison that Utah had been forced to call in the great Marshal Cassidy just to bring him down.

In her long career, Cassidy’s insistence on justice for all earned her many unlikely friends, including “the meanest horse in the West,” a giant cougar named Boots. But it also put her on the wrong side of the law when she joined the Underground Railroad and became a wanted fugitive herself. Later, Cassidy returned to law enforcement in dramatic style when President Lincoln begged her to track down the Bloodfang Rangers, a company of Confederate Vampires.

To Cassidy, Valhalla is like any other frontier boomtown in need of her rough brand of Justice. She’s always on the lookout for suspicious types and reckons that trouble’s brewing.

Connections

• Learned her Tornado move (hammer dsig) from Lin Fei
• Watched Orion's crash onto Folkvangr
• Discussed with Ada and Jhala the unfairness of Ragnir's participation in the Grand Tournament

Context

Cassidy's lore gives great insight into exactly when and where she lived. Obviously, she lived in nineteenth century America. Specifically, the fact that she was 25 in 1853 means Cassidy was born in 1827 or 1828. She was alive during Abraham Lincoln's presidency (1861–1865, same as the American Civil War). Furthermore, many different sources say the average lifespan of Americans during this time was about 40 years. Cassidy being a legend worthy of Valhalla, let's be generous and say she lived 55 years on earth, giving us a maximum lifespan between 1827 and 1882. 

The "Wild West" era is actually considered to be 1865 to about 1900. Before that time, the western United States as we know it was largely unsettled. The first half of the 1800s was more a time of exploration and discovery (think Lewis & Clark, among others), as opposed to settling and cattle ranching (think Utah, Oregon, and gold rush pioneers). Cassidy would have seen this transition from exploration to settlement during her lifetime.

Of course, living in the mid 1800s meant a lot of issues with slavery, especially in the unorganized territories, where the northern and southern states were trying to stake their claims for "free" and "slave" lands in the frontier. That would explain her wanted status in Nebraska just eight years before the Civil War.

The 1853 wanted poster indicates Cassidy was a U.S. Marshal. The United States Marshal Service was created in 1789 as the first federal law enforcement agency in America. In the nineteenth century, there was the office of U.S. Marshal, and their appointed deputies. In addition, local law enforcement officers were sometimes called "marshals." The fact that "U.S. Marshal" is capitalized in the poster seems to indicate federal employ. Also, Interestingly, the first woman to be appointed to the U.S. Marshal Service in the real world was Phoebe Couzins in 1887, just a few decades after Cassidy's prime, though Phoebe was more a lawyer than a law enforcement officer.

Hammer and guns are the perfect weapons for Cassidy. The guns are obvious, as the "age of the cowboy" saw many people hiring themselves out as gunmen or "pistoleers." Hammers saw common use in the blacksmith and mining trades. It should also be mentioned that Cassidy's nsig also makes use of a lasso.