Mako
The Dread Pirate Mako The Shark
The Heretical Anathema - The Dread Pirate Mako the Shark, scourge of the Mnemon way of life, comes from very humble beginnings, let them be explained.
Although it's hard to tell with his now obviously western features, Mako is a Nexus native, originally by the name of Jerid, child of a patrician family. Like so many others, his family lived in severed poverty. His father was a stout man, who found odd jobs in the more industrial areas of Nexus, but none held for too long. His mother was a larger woman, of the more nurtering version rather than stern overseer. She was required at home constantly, as Jerid and his two younger sisters were a constant upkeep. Jerid also had an older brother, of which he remembers little, because he was all but driven out by his parents when Jerid was but 2 or 3 years old. To this day, he still knows only his face, which was always smiling around Jerid, and his name: Garet.
For many years, Jerid survived by complimenting what little food his father could provide, with scraps from the street, and what little he could buy with the errands he would run for just about anybody as soon as he was old enough to run on his scraggly legs.
When he was about 15 or 16, Jerid slowly started to realize that his family could not support him, and there was no future for him here in Nexus. Visiting the dock one day during one of his many errands, a portly old man with a long white beard was making a large amount of ruckus aboard his ship, as he was missing one of his "low-down, useless, good-for-nothing piles of gutter filth excuse for a sons". He saw Mako, and invited him onto the ship as a cabin boy. It took Mako about five seconds to decide, and by that time he found himself already climbing aboard the Tommorow's Dawn. Captain Crolto turned out to actually be a kind man, if stern. He taught Mako the ways of the sea, sailing him all the way out west, and many other places, but never back to Nexus. Primarily they sailed about the many islands in the west, and Crolto's favorite port of call was Coral, where "Mako" as he wanted to be called now finally "settled down".
Mako quickly settled down with the pirate crews of Coral, quickly making himself into a respectable, but not too famous privateer. He made a steady living, and he loved the sea. He had no idea how he had gone without it for so many years. He grew into a stout, firmly built man. His hair took on the green tinge often seen in the west, and he shaved all but the long braid in the back down to his bare scalp.
Mako made a fair living preying off of particularly vulnerable merchant ships and Realm ships who had wandered too far from safety. One day, 700 miles or so north-northwest of the Blessed Isle, Mako spotted a Realm vessel that seemed ripe for the picking. It's belly sat low in the water, telling of the riches that must be stowed on board, and only a small scale of troops sat on board. Mako currently had a crew of 42 well trained privateers, who had taken more than their share of lives in a fight. He quickly ran the ship down, cornering it inside a small cove, and boarded the vessel. To his surprise, there were quite a few more troops down below, numbering the well-trained legionaires at almost 60 men. Mako's crew was quickly overwhelmed, most being killed, and a few were taken prisoner. The guard's luitenant was a snobbish dragonblooded, who decided that he would have Mako walk the plank, of his own ship. The soldiers cheered and hurrahed at the sentence, knowing full well how long he would survive this far out at sea.
A young dynastic, a starkly attractive dragonblood, who looked severely out of place on the ship, spoke up in Mako's defense. She pleaded that too much blood had already been shed today, and instead he should be taken back for a proper sentence, and perhaps someday service the realm in a more productive way. There was an akward silence, which permeated the air for a good length, until the luitenant decided that she should join the pirate on his walk down the plank. Being outnumbered quite a bit, there being five other exalts in the group of 60 men, she had no choice. It seemed that the men had no respect for her for some reason, even though she was obviously an exalt also, and could have had some standing back on the Isle.
Mako and the young dragonblooded girl were thrown overboard, and left for dead. They drifted at sea for weeks on end, the smaller form of the dynastic sometimes floating atop the more bouyant Mako. Neither of them to this day remember how long they were at sea. They talked for some time, having nothing else to do adrift at sea. Mako found out that this was one Tepet Jasala, escaped from the massacres of the Tepet legions in the north. The two know that each survived only because of the other. One day, Mako awoke to a moonlit night, the moon waxing into strength, being full in another day or so. He was oddly, not bobbing up and down, but rather lay uncomfortably on sharp beach rocks, the surf crashing about him, the form of Jasala still limp beside him. Above him, a sparkling, moonlit face stared back at him. The goddess of the moon herself was visiting Mako, and made him whole. She made him more than he was before, better than whole. And before she left, she charged him:
"Mako, defend those as you, who had nobody to defend them, and could not defend themselves. Stand strong for the weak, as nobody did for you. A time of great peril will soon envelop these lands, and you are a key in the survival of the people of Creation. Although you are a piece of the puzzle that will solve the troubles of the land, you still are but one piece, and more lie in wait for you. Another piece lies beside you. Remember, stand strong for those who cannot." And with that, Luna was gone. No longer than she had gone, that another form walked down from atop a cliff above Mako, an old man, bearing the gate of someone who had lived a life far longer than that of the average mortal. This was Western Thunder.
It was this old man that told Mako what he was, a chosen of the moon. It was this old man who gave Mako his tatoos, and set his course for greatness. Quickly, Mako was overcome with instinct, and took to the sea. There he fed, on the heartsblood of a shark easily ten times his weight. Feeling his newfound power, he beseeched to Western Thunder that he look after Jasala until he returned.
Mako took to the water like a fish, but as a shark. He hunted down the vessel that had cast him down so, and rent the soldiers like so much rags. He also found that the booty stored below was not in fact treasure, but slaves. One slave was Kaiju, the leader of this group of Icewalkers. Kaiju had also recently exalted in the presence of Luna, and together the two moon-clad warriors freed the barbarian captives, and took the ship as their own. Mako took the ship back to the island where Jasala waited for him, and Western Thunder welcomed the tribe onto the island, which they took as their new home, as they could not return to their now blighted land. Western Thunder too to Kaiju and Mako as his childeren, and told them that he was soon to die, and wanted to leave a legacy. He told them that they were indeed chosen for greatness, and gave them tools with which to implement their destiny. To Kaiju, the humble barbarian, he could leave no more than a simple pair of hearthstone bracers, which he treasures deeply. To this day, Kaiju feels that he owes his life to these two, as his brother and father. To Mako, Western Thunder gave a great blade, wrought of moonsilver, and the manse that sat atop the cliff that Mako himself had beached on below. Soon after, Western Thunder did indeed pass away.
Ever since, the three: Mako, Kaiju, and Jasala have sailed the seas, helping those that needed it, sometimes Mako deemed that they themselves were those in need, much to the dismay of the noble Kaiju. What adventures await are yet to be told.
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