William (the) Flayer

In my search for appropriate miniatures for my Dwimmermount campaign, I came across the following image on the Reaper Miniatures forum:

It's an old Grenadier gnome illusionist from a set called "Specialists." I remember it well because it was used by a player back in my old campaign for his gnome illusionist with the seemingly ridiculous name of Illusium.

Well, truth be told, Illusium is a ridiculous name, but there's a story behind it. You see, my friend, who also played Morgan Just, would often tire of his current character and create new ones. He'd grab some dice, roll them, and see what he got. In this case, he rolled up a character with high Strength, Intelligence, and Dexterity, but low Wisdom and Charisma. So my friend decided that he'd create a burly, cruel human illusionist whom he named William (the) Flayer. He called him this because William, you see, liked to keep trophies of his defeated opponents, chiefly scalps, which he then used to terrify and intimidate NPCs who got uppity.

Scalping wasn't William's only peculiar personality trait. He also had a pathological -- and inexplicable -- hatred of gnomes. I suspect my friend added this trait as a way to emphasize that he was unlike his other characters, some of whom were gnomes. Anyway, Fate did not smile upon William, who was slain during an adventure. The party lacked a cleric but had a druid with them (formerly a magic-user who'd foolishly used a wish to "gain the ability to cast druid spells" -- naturally, I turned him into a druid of equivalent XP). Said druid cast reincarnate on William, bringing him back as, you guessed it, a gnome.

William was so distraught over this abominable turn of events that he immediately tried to kill the druid. He failed, thanks to the other characters' stopping him, and fled into the woods. When he returned, he used the pseudonym Illusium to hide his true identity and mask his shame at becoming a hated gnome. After that, my memory is fuzzy as to what happened to Illusium, but I suspect, like many sociopathic characters, he eventually became evil and a villain in the campaign. Regardless, it's funny how seeing that picture brought back all these memories.