Nickname: “Uncle Mort” (never to his face… unless you’re really brave or already drunk)
Mortimer Vexley, better known as Mort, is the eccentric (read: mildly terrifying) 75-year-old owner of Club Mists. Standing at a proud 5’6” (5’9” if you count the lifts in his boots), Mort is a walking gothic relic who looks like he was carved out of cobwebs and sarcasm. With thinning gray hair valiantly clinging to his scalp, a skeletal grin that never quite reaches his eyes, and the posture of a half-folded lawn chair, Mort cuts an unforgettable figure. He’s rarely seen without his beloved cane—an old, creaky thing with a silver raven head that he insists “whispers stock tips when the moon is right.”
Mort claims to have “seen it all” in nightlife, though no one can quite figure out if that means club management or something involving 19th-century grave robbing. He speaks in a raspy voice that suggests he’s smoked cigars since birth, and his jokes toe the line between witty and legally actionable. His office smells faintly of mothballs, patchouli, and tax evasion.
Promotion under Mort is… mysterious. The staff have long learned that climbing the ranks at Mists doesn’t follow a normal system. No résumés. No performance reviews. Just whispered meetings in the back hallway and vague references to “favors.” Exactly what kind of favors? No one knows—except Azrael, who got promoted to Bar Back Manager shortly after spending a very strange weekend with Mort at “a convention that may or may not have involved robes and chanting.”
Azrael hasn’t lived it down since. The staff still chant “Faaavooorsss!” in unison every time he walks by.
Mort just grins. He never denies it.