No one really knows where the tradition began or how. That is not important. The important thing is that a system was in place to get the job done for a fair price. This price was scalable depending upon the security level of the intended target and the job was usually an assassination. The place was the village of Throckston on the bank of the Turskel River dividing Arthripos and Kithacore.
There was a prosperous shopkeeper in a fairly well known trade goods shop called “Rusty Scythe Trade Goods” that had the resources to run trade caravans throughout Kithacore, Highgrove, King’s Gate, and sometimes even as far as Grizzleback and Copper Lake.
The shop turned a fair profit from good sturdy goods that were needed elsewhere, some in the form of raw resources, some in refined resources, and some in finished good that were in need of techniques to improve them. Although some suspected the portly old tradesman of being somehow in the service of the Scythe, who made it known that he could eliminate certain “problems” for a price.
It was not a difficult thing to hire the Scythe, all you had to do was buy a scythe from the shop and place it on the scarecrow in the middle of a nearby field with the name etched into the handle. Within a few days the scythe will be gone, if the job is accepted you would be contacted by a messenger with instructions on where to go. Once at the location, all that was there was a small bag with a note to deposit the necessary funds.
No one has ever seen the Scythe, they only know that he sometimes does business in Throckston. Sometimes he ignores the request and sometimes he accepts the job. You can be sure that once a job is accepted that it will be completed.