JWRisingGull
Rising Gull, crew complement of 25. The Gull is a typical blue-water merchant vessel the prime virtue of which is its heavily modified cargo holds, which make possible the business of the ship: the transport and display of Fabulous Beasts from Lands Unknown. The Rising Gull is not currently in the possession of Tarla Sha, but in time they will surely be reunited.
Owner, Captain, and Kubernetes: Tarla Sha (the PC)
Not much more needs to be said about Tarla Sha – as she’s the player character, it isn’t my responsibility to flesh her out. A quick bit of history: she is a native of Chiaroscuro (key-are-RUH-skyoo-row), the great glass city of the Tri-Khan. She was courted and wedded to Mankon Sha, the owner of a traveling shipboard menagerie. When Mankon died suddenly in a loading accident Tarla took over the business as his widow.
Tarla has been on the Gull for about nine months, and has been all across the South aboard it. Mankon’s death was six months prior to the beginning of the game, so Tarla remains somewhat inexperienced with the business end of the menagerie. She has, however, very much taken to the sailing-around-on-a-ship end.
Proreus: Ala Nynair\\
Nynair is a tya, one of the Western women who renounce their gender and declare themselves legally male. She is native to Albalone, capital of the Wavecrest republic, but has not been west of the Inner Sea in several years. Those from the West recognize her tya status immediately, while less cosmopolitan observers note her thin gray clothing, veil of the same material, and the brightly-colored swirling tattoos down her cheeks and arms (barely visible through her garments) without comprehending. \\
Nynair’s shipboard duties are analogous to those of a junior high school vice-principal: she enforces discipline and the kubernetes’s edicts, and is responsible for maintenance (and in crisis, distribution) of the ship’s arms. Ship’s arms include one dozen short blades, kept in a lockbox in her quarters, and two dozen clubs, positioned on racks throughout the ship. Nynair is also a master-at-arms, unarmed, in the kickboxing style common in the southwest Coral dictatorship. \\
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Sea Witch: Yan Bihrma \\
Whispers-in-the-Ebbing-Tide is a minor spirit, patron of a particularly picaresque lagoon on a tropical island in the furthest Southwest. Some decades ago, the explorer Aromune landed on the island, hunting a massive boar-spirit for her Dragon-blooded master’s trophy room. Aromune slew the boar-spirit, but was gravely wounded in the battle, and would have perished far from civilization if not for the ministrations of Whispers-in-the-Ebbing-Tide.
One thing led to another, and when Aromune eventually returned to the Blessed Isle, she carried a son within her. The boy grew up to be Yan Bihrma. Bihrma’s otherworldly nature prevented his intergrating fully into the society of the Realm, but their loss was the Rising Gull’s gain. \\
Bihrma is immediately recognizable as an exotic foreigner: squat, broad-shouldered, bronze-skinned, thick blue hair. His training and natural talents allow him to communicate with (and placate) most spirits. Additionally, his God-blooded heritage grants him other powers: he can swim as fast as a dolphin or walk on water, breathe water as if it were air, harden his skin to the strength of stone, and can create small amounts of coral (about four pounds at a time). He is, however, extremely introverted and does not work well with other mortals.
Bihrma is also extremely strong, and looks it. \\
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Ship’s Surgeon: Kobolor Borost Spatres \\
Spatres was apprenticed to the Order of Morticians in Sijan, the City of Shrouds, at a young age, and grew up learning the trade of embalming, interring, cremating, and animating the dead. His clothing was taken from dead bodies and his food was a share of the offerings clients sent to the city. \\
After an “incident” shortly after completion of his apprenticeship and assumption of initial journeyman-level duties, Spatres suffered a nervous breakdown and was forced to quit all human contact for six months. Upon his emergence and apparent return to health, he was declared unfit to practice necrosurgery by the Elder Morticians, and exiled from Sijan. \\
The cause of this exile is likely his heterodox beliefs with regards to the rights of the dead. While Sijan traditionally serves all supplicants, judging not and carrying out the wishes of the deceased, Spatres believes it is immoral to create free-willed undead – war ghosts, nemessaries, and the like. Further, such creatures are a blight upon creation. As roughly twenty percent of the Elder Morticians are undead, this is not a belief popular in Sijan. \\
Spatres is about fifty pounds overweight, and shaped like a potato. \\
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Surgeon's Woman, Veterinarian: Polkh \\
From the tree-towns of Halta is this young ranger sprung into the world. Quiet and secretive, she serves as the keeper of the menagerie and also assists Spatres when necessary. Polkh sleeps in the central cargo hold, with the beasts of the menagerie, apart from the rest of the crew. A vegetarian, she eats the same mix of beans, oats and grain she feeds the menagerie’s herbivores. As far as anyone knows, she has only one set of clothing, which no one has ever seen her wash. \\
Polkh has been known to go entire weeks without speaking. Also, she has a boomerang. This is all the crew really knows about her. \\
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Carpenter: Kaka Saap \\
Kaka Saap was a warrior in Strong-Limbed Cutter’s band, on one of those far-out Western islands. Raised among the barbarians, who rejected the trappings of civilization, he believed himself and his kin to be the strongest force in Creation, with the possible exception of the gods. \\
He was therefore understandably taken aback with Ledaal Kura Akai, Dragon-Blooded adventurer, and his small army of troops invaded his tribe’s archipelago. He disbelieved the tales his kinsmen told, of entire hunting bands cut down by the invaders’ arrows, of battles so fierce the beaches were soaked with blood. \\
He did, however, believe his eyes when Ledaal Kura Akai and his soldiers fell upon Strong-Limbed Cutter and cut the great warrior to pieces. With their chief slain, Kaka Saap and his tribe surrendered en masse to the Prince of the Earth. The Dragon-Blooded had no interest in conquest, however, and after a few weeks sailed back to the Blessed Isle. Kaka Saap and a handful of his kin sailed too, eager to experience the world that was stronger than Strong-Limbed Cutter. \\
Kaka Saap is stubborn and slow to admit error. He has a strong sense of personal honor, something often foreign in the Scavenger Lands. He once was deadly with a spear, thrown or in hand, but his skills have atrophied. He remains, however, an expert carpenter and shipwright, able to build a canoe from scratch alone and without tools in a handful of hours. \\
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Carpenter's Woman: Tui Phi Yen (Eight Planks) \\
Eight Planks has had a remarkable amount of bad luck, or has made a staggering number of poor choices, depending on your point of view: she is a kleptomaniac. Raised on the streets of Nexus, her pathological desire to possess shiny things quickly overcame her neighbors’ goodwill, and she was de facto exiled from her hometown. She traveled slowly southwest, always just a few steps ahead of her creditors and wronged property-owners. Eventually she was captured by servants of the Perfect, along with everyone else in the rogue merchant caravan she had joined. \\
The state purchased her in the slave auctions of Paragon, and she was forced to swear the oath of citizenship and released into the city. Realizing the extent of her predicament, Phi Yen vowed to flee Paragon and her new master, the Perfect, at the first opportunity. She stowed away aboard the Rising Gull that very night. Mankon Sha took pity on her and, against his better judgement, allowed her to join the crew. \\
Eight Planks is able to keep her kleptomania in check aboard the Rising Gull, for she knows that her first offense will be her last – the proreus, Nynair, despises her and has warned her repeatedly that any act of theft will be punished with keel-hauling. She is a competent, if untalented, assistant carpenter. \\
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Sailmaker: Param Ledicie \\
The Haslanti League, in the far North, is the source of many of the most knowledgeable and skilled savants in all Creation. They possess more than a few wonders of the past ages, guarded jealously as national secrets or flaunted proudly as national treasures. The most prominent of their technologies is the dirigible, the airships of the League. \\
The Haslantan Guild of Airshipmen is a powerful political entity within the League, and they hold closely the trade secrets that permit the massive vehicles to fly through the air. Each of the fifty-six grades within the Guild, from Apprentice Button-Sewer to Rightly Accredited Master of the Compass, carries with it a fragment of those trade secrets. To overreach your rank and attempt to pierce the veils protecting the higher knowledge is a crime punishable by death or exile. \\
As Param Ledicie learned the hard way. \\
Now Ledicie applies his skills as the Rising Gull’s sailmaker. He drinks, though only rarely to excess, and makes no attempt to hide his bitterness toward the “fat cat sons of bitches” that booted him from the Guild. He is aggressive and short-tempered, but not malicious, and holds no one aboard the ship in ill will. \\
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Purser: Gon Kagatan \\
The merchant vessels of the Realm are generally as well-run, tightly-disciplined, and respected. And then there are the merchant vessels of House Tepet. \\
For centuries, House Tepet has been the Imperial family responsible for naval defense of the Blessed Isle, and by Imperial edict forbidden from engaging in trade as it would be a conflict of interest. No source of funds can remain long untapped, however, and for nearly as long as the Scarlet Empire has ridden Creation, House Tepet’s ships have surreptitiously ferried goods across the Inner Sea. Unlike the Imperial navy or merchant marine, these vessels run entirely off the books, and their crews enjoy none of the protections Imperial law grants official sailors. \\
To Gon Kagatan’s eternal chagrin, he had been stationed on the port side. If he had been on the starboard side that night, he would have simply been knocked into the water, and probably suffered no permanent damage. As it was, however, he was in the wrong place at the wrong time when the rigging on Invisible Hand snapped, and the accident cost him his right leg and left arm. \\
Imperial sailors in such a situation would receive a considerable workerman’s compensation package, a stipend large enough for Kagatan to live comfortably, if not luxuriously, for the rest of his days. Gon Kagatan was not an Imperial sailor however, and the Invisible Hand was not a sanctioned Imperial vessel. He was dismissed from his position and left to die in a slum outside of Noble, on the Blessed Isle. \\
Mankon Sha, however, found him and hired him on the Rising Gull as purser, a job that does not require both legs or arms. At first suicidal, Kagatan has since clambered back from the brink and now his heart is a mere three sizes too small and filled with hatred of the Scarlet Empire in general and House Tepet and the Imperial Navy in particular. \\
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Cabin Girl: Ochi Midorik \\
Other people were always trying to run Ochi’s life. First her ancestors decided her family was going to be poor. Then her parents decided she was going to become middle-class, and they apprenticed her to a watchmaker in the Imperial City. Then the watchmaker, Emaneta Yon, decided she was going to have to live under a strict curfew.
Screw that, thought Ochi, and ran away. She ran exceptionally far – stealing enough jade talons to buy passage to Lookshy, where she lived the high life for three whole days before she ran out of money and people insisted that she pay for food and lodging (trying to run her life, again…). Penniless, naïve and alone, Ochi would have been easy fodder for the worst sort of scum in any city but Lookshy. In the Garrison City, she survived on the streets for two weeks without aid, before Mankon Sha (who by this point was starting to think of himself as a soft touch) took pity on her and signed her onto the Rising Gull. \\
The second or third time the proreus saved her life in a strange port by beating up surly drunks, Ochi realized how lucky she was. \\
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Master of the Tops: Eri \\
There are savages from the wild, and then there are savages from the Wild. Eri is a birdman -- feathers, beak, the whole bit, from Mount Megalapa, where the elven invasion a millennium ago wreaked havoc on the local environment and population. By the time the Scarlet Empress activated the Realm’s defense systems and beat the elves back, Mount Megalapa and surroundings were forever changed. The mountain floats thousands of feet in the air, and is populated by many strange species, including birds the size of buildings and the birdmen, men with feathers and beaks and wings sprouting from their shoulder-blades. \\
Most birdmen are low-grade morons, enslaved by the humans who colonized Mount Megalapa centuries ago, but Eri is a genius among his kind, and reasonably intelligent even for a normal human. Dissatisfied with his second-class citizenship, Eri fled the floating mountain and eventually found work on the Rising Gull, where his ability to fly is highly valued. \\
Eri is very proud of his position and authority aboard the Rising Gull, and is devoted to the kubernetes for her faith in him. He speaks Imperial, the working language of the ship, with a strong but comprehensible accent. \\
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Master of the Bow: Penorn Sha \\
Penorn is Mankon’s uncle and an experienced old salt. He has no ambition or desire to run the ship. Indeed, he is very happy with his middle-management advisory role. Since Mankon’s death, Penorn has adopted a position as unofficial policy advisor to Tarla, whom he regards as family. \\
Indeed, Penorn regards the entire crew as his extended family. \\
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Cook: Bold Elk\\
Bold Elk never wanted to do anything more than run her bakery in a middle-class neighborhood in Nexus. She was extremely put out when, one morning, she was roused from bed by a troop of mercenaries retained by the Council of Entities for the express purpose of informing her she was no longer welcome in Nexus and had three hours to vacate the city. \\
She never found out why she had been exiled from the city of her birth, but in the five years since then she’s tried to make the best of it. Bold Elk is a friendly, motherly type who also possesses a real talent for making hardtack palatable. For these two virtues she is beloved by the Rising Gull’s crew.\\
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