Shylock McFenney
| Shylock McFenney | |
|---|---|
 Portrait by DALL-E 2 and Huw Williams | |
| Class | Human |
| Occupation | Banker |
| Affiliation | Guild of Free Adventurers |
| Appearances |
Main Hall Vaalpa's Plight |
| Relatives | Dave McFenney (nephew) |
Shylock McFenney is the banker for the Guild of Free Adventurers and operates in the guild's Main Hall. He gladly keeps safe any gold that adventurers do not wish to carry.
Function Within the Guild
Shylock can be found in the Main Hall where he is always willing to open accounts for adventurers to safeguard their money. He does not offer loans; he also doesn't charge interest because, as part of the terms of his operation, he gets to keep any cash left by deceased adventurers.
Personality and depiction
Shylock's personality seems to be that of a typical, old-fashioned bank manager: friendly, obliging, and just a little greedy, as shown by his large belly which makes him stand out at the guild. On at least one occasion Shylock has directly helped a community in financial trouble, and the number of people who entrust him with their gold implies that he has a strict sense of professional ethics.
Eamon Deluxe depicts Shylock as brown-haired and dressed in a green shirt and blue trousers with a long maroon cape.
Appearances
In Vaalpa's Plight, Shylock was said to be helping the people of the Kingdom of Vaalpa whose mad emperor was spending large amounts of money and bankrupting the country. He not only funded resistance but also employed an adventurer to help the resistance remove the emperor.
McFenney makes an appearance in The House of Horrors; after the player recovers the stolen funds of the Keep Eamon Clean Committee (K.E.C.) it is McFenney to whom they are returned. It is also suggested that McFenney sits on the board of the K.E.C.
In Adventure in Interzone, the player encounters a portrait of McFenney's nephew, Dave McFenney, who, it is suggested, is the President of the nation-state Freeland.
Paul Van Bloem's Super Eamon depicts Shylock in more modern dress and surroundings, wearing a dark suit and tie and sitting at a counter near a computer. His location is labeled, "Sixth National Bank".
In Keith Dechant's Eamon Remastered, the banker's name is given as Seamus McFenney and he operates the Bank of Eamon Towne.
In Michael Penner's Eamon CS, the banker's name is given as Rowan McFenney.
Bruce Miller's Eamon Functions adds the ability for McFenney to rent safe deposit boxes to adventurers. The boxes, actually lockers, are in his back room and suitable for adventurers to store extra weapons.
According to the available information, McFenney maintains an ongoing dispute with the wizard serving as the antagonist of Paul Stadfeld's lost adventure The Palace of Mirrors, who accuses the banker of sending a series of "vandals" to plunder the eponymous palace.
Trivia
- Shylock's first name comes from the Jewish moneylender Shylock in William Shakespeare's comedy The Merchant of Venice, c. 1597. Shakespeare's Shylock embodies cultural stereotypes identified by many critics as antisemitic, and similar concerns about Brown's character have occasionally been voiced. Beyond the name, though, there's little to suggest that the hall's banker plays into these stereotypes or is even Jewish; commentator Jimmy Maher writes that Brown may have been unaware of the name's "historical and cultural baggage."
- In The Computer Club of Fear, the adventurer finds some IBM-compatible Lotus 1-2-3 disks and thinks that "Shylock McFenny would love them."
- The adventurer believes he could cash pilfered rent checks with McFenney, "no questions asked" (The Mattimoe Palace).
- Shylock's equivalent in CE Software's SwordThrust is named Shylock Fitzhugh-Smythe; he performs the same functions for Diurla's Guild of Free Rogues as does McFenney.
- His equivalent in John Nelson's Knight Quest series is bank manager Waldo Farnby.
Gallery
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Shylock's bank (lower left) in the Graphics Master -
The hall as shown in Eamon Deluxe
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