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The River Serpent, and her Crew

Never was there a ship built as soundly as the River Serpent, and never was there a crew quite like the men that manned her. 74 feet from bow to stern, three point Imperial rigging with a Foresail, and excellently constructed of the finest wood from the East – the River Serpent is one of the finest ships build during the Second Age to float down the Yanaze. The Green Serpent Ships’ mission is one of trade, as well as profit, but also one of contact and exchange.

The Officers of the River Serpent are Solar Exalted, their crew hand-picked and hardy men who trust and swear by their leaders. Everyone knows that, while the ship tries to make a profit and make sure that everyone on board can feed their families and live life a little better for their dedication, the main goal of the ship is to make everyone a little richer and knit the Scavenger Lands a little closer together – and, subtly, spread the word of the Return of the Solar Exalted, and their true Nature.

The River Serpent travels all over the Confederation, but a few ports are perhaps more important than others. The walled city-fort of Gaerval in the Hundred Kingdoms is the ships homeport by virtue of being the home city of the ships Captain, and the Serpent returns home to roost every so often. Much of the rest of the Hundred Kingdoms receives a visit from the River Serpent as well, as does the land of Cho-Holuth and villages around the Grey River. Great Forks and Nexus always receive a bit of attention, especially if the holds are getting a bit low and the ship needs an influx of profitable trade. Lookshy is the only major city in the Scavenger Lands that is mostly avoided, out of distrust for the Dragon-Blooded who lair there and the Immaculate Order that preaches lies. Greyfalls is avoided as well, for similar reasons. Occasionally, the ship sails up the River of Tears into the North, to trade with the Haslanti or the Icewalkers.

Officers of the River Serpent

<bCrownedSun/BurningFalcon</b>, the Captain of the River Serpent, was the oldest and only child of one of the finest Shipbuilders in the Hundred Kingdoms – the famed Copper. Falcon’s mother had died during the birthing, and Copper had never remarried after the death of the love of his life. Now, raising the young Falcon on his own was no mean task for she was a headstrong and rebellious child and grew even more so as she got older. However, one thing called to her that she couldn’t deny – just like her father, she had the Craft flowing through her. With the tutelage of her Father, she grew to match and even surpass his art with wood in all its wondrous forms: Shipbuilding, Carpentry, even Decorative Carvings were arts at which she excelled. She could set down with a project for hours or days or even weeks, just an idle bit of work to distract her for a time, but with that dabbling she produced masterpieces. The only thing holding her back, her Father would often lecture her, was the fact that she refused to take anything seriously. Yet the seeds of greatness lay within her, merely awaiting the proper catalyst.

The form that Catalyst took, however, utterly changed her world. He had been away, her Father, overseeing the Delivery of the hull for a new warship to the docks of Lookshy so that he could assist them in mounting the various weapons they would add and in making any needed alterations with his own crew. Months passed, with no word, until eventually bits of the burnt wreckage of his ship was uncovered. River Pirates, who had looted and scuttled the ship, had most likely attacked him during the voyage. None of them had survived, or at least had come forward with knowledge of what had happened but the facts spoke for themselves. Grief hit hard, as suddenly she was all alone in the world and thus she fell into the one thing that calmed her soul.

The River Serpent was constructed slowly, at force, one board at a time, the hull slowly growing as she added to it. She didn’t have a plan, or even blueprints. She just knew what to do, exactly where to saw each board and where to put the resultant planks. She wondered as the great vessel began to take shape. Then, one day, she climbed aboard its deck for the first time – she was not even surprised when she began to glow with power, the shock of finding herself one of the ‘Unclean’ taking a bit of time to hit her. Nights were spent dreaming of the First Age, of people and faces she did not know and wonders she couldn’t imagine. She cried at how far the world had fallen.

She gathered the crew of the River Serpent slowly, working the taverns along the docks and taking only the best men she could find – she was not a sailor, but she had a boat and she would use it to build a better world. One person, one town, at a time.

CrownedSun/Ferret, the ships Kubernetes (Pilot), is a tiny and somewhat sneaky looking man who was once one of the best Smugglers in the sometimes-employ of the Guild, hired on primarily to run shipments of Bright Mourning and other drugs into the Realm past the V’neef Customs Cutters so that the Guild could make a decent profit on the eventual sale of the illegal narcotics. When not running contraband for the Guild he lived in Nexus, or was engaged in various other less-than-honest endeavors aimed at making himself rich and powerful beyond all imaginations.

Eventually, one of them worked. Kind of. Well, not really. Sure, Ferret is now a “Night Caste of the Solar Exalted”. Alternatively, an Anathema of the Wretched variety, if you believe all that Immaculate Dogma – like, say, the multitudinous Dragon-Blooded in Aruf, where you took your Second Breath. A quick get-away was in the cards and if not for your skill at the helm of a fast courier you were able to ‘borrow’, you would never have gotten away before the Wyld Hunt caught up with you.

Even so, the bastards were waiting for you back in Nexus. You have no idea how they found out where you lived, but nonetheless it was time to get out of town. You’d been laying low, hiding out and avoiding attracting too much attention for nearly a year when you first ran into Burning Falcon. Now, she has the whole “help others and make the world a better place” thing down pat, and that’s great and all, but to tell he truth your only here because you can’t resist a thing she says – especially when the wind is blowing in that long black hair and she gives you that off-center smile.

So, yeah. You’re a hero now. You can live with that.

Tekal, the ships Proreus and Arms Master, was a young slave girl in Great Forks, working on the cities qat or grain fields. It was a dreary life, but less so than that of slaves in other parts of the Threshold. A Slave in Great Forks has certain rights, among them the right to marry, or own property. Families cannot be casually separated by sales, various punishments are forbidden, and it’s even possible – if not easy – to buy ones own freedom. Yet the life of a slave is not so much better, either; they are still owned property, forced to work out their lives at the behest and to the benefit of another. Their deaths are not even the deaths of free citizens, but the destruction of property – a civil offense, if that. Every day, she would be taken out to the fields and given her daily ration of mete leaf – a mind-dulling drug that immersed those who take it in a dull euphoria full of waking dreams. 16 years of Tekal’s life passed like this, in a dull living dream as she wasted away picking and separating. Then, night would come and she’d be returned to the Spartan but comfortable Slave Pens.

One year ago, the haze lifted as she worked under the relentless gaze of the sun, endlessly picking tobacco leaves. She was dreaming of her days as a child, up in the high branches of the Eastern Jungle, hunting for game and avoiding the Fae. She was happy, in that dream. “Tekal”, a voice called out. She looked around, and slowly began to realize that she was not in the jungle. “Tekal”, the voice – a strong, manly and powerful voice that roared through her soul – came once again. The clouds of mete lifted entirely, and she looked around her at the slave fields. She dropped her bag of tobacco leaves, and walked around the near-mindless slaves that were around her. Some were familiar from the nights free of the drugs embrace, or even from long ago when she was a free child.

”Who is calling to me?” she asked, quietly. Then, she saw her mother, an old and haggard but familiar face, and one that had given her hope when she had first been captured by the Slavers and in the years of servitude since. “Mother…” she said, but stopped as she noticed the blank look in the woman’s eyes. She swallowed, reached out and shaked the woman, “Mother! Wake up!” Slowly, the older woman’s eyes began to focus once again and she smiled.

The Overseer came then, angry and yelling in a language that Tekal still didn’t completely understand – she knew enough to know that she was being told to get back to work, asking if she had taken her mete. She frowned at the man, confused. “Why do you do this to us?” she tried to say in his tongue, but the look on the fellows face only furrowed with anger. He raised a hand to strike at her – and she ducked away from it, coming up under the blow to punch at his stomach with such tremendous force that he shot away and crushed several tobacco plants.

”Tekal!” the voice says in a strong and even godly tone, “you have suffered Bondage, of the Body and the Mind, and even the Soul. I see all those who suffer, hear all the voices that cry out for justice, and even those voices that do not cry out but only meekly whimper. Once, I turned my face from the hardships of the world and deafened myself to those whispers – but no longer! You shall be the voice for those that cannot cry out on their own, you shall be the hand and blade of Justice, for I Exalt you above all others. Go out into the world, and make it a Righteous place as you know how.”

She was glowing then, burning with Purity and Righteousness. She looked around her, and raised her voice – calling out for those who have suffered to join her, to fight for their freedom. Even as the Essence poured around her, the other Slaves heard her worlds through the pall of their dreams and clawed their way free. What followed was the quickest, and largest, Slave Revolt in the history of Great Forks. Every overseer on six fields was killed that day – the fields set to the flame. Large quantities of Mete were destroyed, burned with the Tobacco. Then, before the Soldiers in the command of the Tripartite Lords of the City could respond, the Slaves escaped into the Hills and Plains around the city.

Tekal lived in the Hills and Grasslands around Great Forks for some time, learning to control her powers and helping the various slaves who had fled with her (as opposed to those that ran off on their own after the Revolt) to overcome their addictions and deal with the waking world. Many eventually settled with the various Hill Tribes and Horse Clans that dwelt on the land, but Tekal herself knew that such a life was not for her. She could not merely liberate the slaves of a few fields, or even a few cities. She had to find a way to strike at the very core of Slavery itself, a way to destroy its foundations and ensure that no man or woman is ever owned by another again.

She arranged a number of other Slave Revolts, at Guild Plantations and other such places until she had made a name for herself and attracted the attention of the Guild itself. They tried to bribe her, co-opt her and then kill her, but there is no force more enduring than the Sun and she had been given its power. When she first met Burning Falcon, the two women became fast friends almost on demand – she travels with them now, helping to train the crew in defense against pirates, self-reliance, and even discipline. She still has not quite discovered exactly what she must do, but she is convinced that the River Serpent has both her best chance of doing good in the short term and in finding a larger solution to the problem of Slavery.

Jarvin Ghaal, the ships Purser, was born far to the South, in Chiaroscuro. A dark-skinned man with a ready smile and a friendly demeanor, he’s spent much of his natural life in the Bazaar’s of the South. Only when he got older and inherited his Fathers’ stall did he decide that business was not good enough at home, and thus decide to risk larger profits as a traveling peddler. The fact that this would also allow him to see the world was a secondary benefit. It took him a while (and some patronage from the Guild, as a matter of fact) to raise the money to buy a Wagon and a Horse to pull it but once he did the young Del’Zahn was off into the world to put his own mark in it.

He traveled up and down the Southern Coast, from the Lap to Kirighast, and after a number of round trips he got the urge to go even further and hooked up with a Realm Caravan that was heading to the Scavenger Lands. He immediately fell in love with the place and hasn’t left its embrace since he arrived three years ago. Nexus is like a larger, less cultured yet more…vibrant…version of his own home. Its markets are even larger, if such a thing is possible, or at least so close as to be hard to tell! However, it is the small villages that dot the rolling landscape that truly capture his eye. So many of them, and each so unique and wonderful! He simply had to visit them all.

Most of his look had been good, until a year ago, when he and his wagon wandered a bit too close to one of the lairs of the Fair Folk. When the small group of nobles, so beautiful as to make the breath catch in ones throat, came out to ‘barter’ (braced, of course, by strong-looking Cataphracts) he wasn’t sure rather to fall in love or keel over and die from pure fright. The tall ‘female’ Fae had led the negotiations, looking over all of his best goods and casually dismissing them as insignificant. Then, she produced some of her own works and made the offer to trade – upon which time a demon-mark appeared on his forehead, and everything changed. Jarvin could never be sure just what they intended, but he knows that the next several seconds were some of the most frantic ones in his life and that he walked away from the meeting alive…and with a few goods crafted out of raw Glamour!

The last Solar to join the Crew, Jarvis has done wonders for it’s mission – while Burning Falcon is a workable salesman, she can’t quite compare to his talent in the deal. Moreover, with his expertise in matters of diplomacy and exploration the ship has been fulfilling it’s other duties more easily than ever as well!