Hamish McNeil

Pawn Hamish McNeil was one of the last anthropophagi in the British Isles and a Checquy Pawn whose action helped turn the 1677 invasion of the Isle of Wight against the Grafters. A leper, he released a virulent, abnormal disease among the Grafter troops, making his own compromised body a weapon in a battle fought at devastating cost.

Identity and Background

McNeil is identified as a Pawn and a leper, as well as one of the last twelve anthropophagi in the British Isles. The account does not explain the nature of anthropophagy or provide further personal history; it places him instead within the small group of Checquy troops whose presence became decisive in the island fighting.

Action on the Isle of Wight

The battle unfolded during the Grafters’ 1677 incursion, when supernatural war reached British soil. For three weeks, Checquy forces, with Pawns under the direct command of the Rooks, fought the invaders. The Checquy gradually brought down the Grafter creations, but each victory cost dozens of its soldiers, and hundreds of civilians died.

In one of the battles, twelve troops—the last anthropophagi in the British Isles—joined together and slaughtered seventeen monsters. The fighting leveled an entire village and left surrounding fields toxic. Amid this devastation, McNeil released a virulent and abnormal disease upon the Grafter troops. Their bodies fell apart under the force of their own shuddering exertions, making the disease a direct means of stopping the enemy.

Significance and Limits of the Account

McNeil’s contribution is recorded as part of a collective act of resistance rather than as an individual biography: the narrative names him among the troops and specifies the effect of the disease, but does not describe how he released it or what became of him afterward. His leprosy and the disease he unleashed create a stark reversal: a condition associated with his own body becomes the means by which Grafter bodies are brought down.

The invasion ended only after the remaining enemy force had been reduced to its seemingly invulnerable general, whom Crimson Rook John Perry killed at the cost of his own life. McNeil’s action belongs to the costly sequence that made that final confrontation possible, while the village’s destruction and poisoned fields register the price of victory beyond the battlefield.