Pokey was a sworn brother of the Black Company. He was mentioned in the Annals during the band's contract with the Syndic of Beryl, and again later in the Lady's Empire, so
The Black Company[]
Pokey was one of four Black Company men who were poisoned by the Blues during a visit to the Mole Tavern in Beryl. The Company physician, Croaker, had developed an antidote for the poison by performing postmortem examinations on two earlier victims, Walleye and Wild Bruce. Pokey was the first to drink the foul-tasting antidote, and he survived. Later, another victim, Curly, drank the same potion and was saved as well. Mercy, accompanied by Silent, Croaker, and others, soon confronted the barkeeper, Verus, and announced that he was charged with 2 counts of attempted murder and 2 counts of murder by the Syndic. They avenged the Blues' murders of Walleye and Wild Bruce and the attempts on Pokey and Curley in a bloodbath and many arrests.
Pokey survived the Company's conflict with Beryl's Urban Cohorts and next the forvalaka that slaughtered many of them in the Paper Tower. He was with the group when they made the fateful trip across the Sea of Torments aboard Soulcatcher's giant galley, The Dark Wings, to Opal.
Pokey was with the Company in Oar, the provincial capital of the Imperial province of Forsberg in the northern continent. Elmo ordered Whitey, Still, and Pokey to kill Cornie, an informant working for the hostile Colonel Zouad. After they did, Pokey returned to the main group, where he saw Shapeshifter for the first time a moment after Croaker. He yelped in fear when he realized he was in the presence of one of the Ten Who Were Taken. Shifter ordered Pokey to retrieve the corpse of Cornie, so that the Taken could examine it for the purpose of taking on the dead man's appearance.
Pokey's fate after these events was not recorded. However, as he was not among the 10 Black Company survivors of the Battle of the Barrowland many years later, he must be either deceased, missing, discharged, or possibly even a deserter by the end of The White Rose.