The Rogues' Gallery: Character, Side, and Back Stories...Et Cetera

[MWBailey]

I sometimes like to write a bit about a character or characters and his, her or their adventures prior to the events of a particular RP or set of RPs or after the fact. That's what I intend for this thread. Some of the stories will be about past characters, some about future ones, some about characters I've never used, and some about characters that I may never use but feel the need to play about with for a bit. Please feel free to put your own such in as well, especially if you're having a brainstorm and feel a need to write it all down someplace - or if you're getting impatient waiting for you turn at posting in whatever RP you're in at the moment. That's what this is for, among other purposes.

[MWBailey]

The Island had a name, of course. Such a place had to, or the rogues and cutthroats who had begun to people it's streets and back alleys and brothels and rooming houses would have the devil's own time finding it.

The Rebellion had gone badly; The Empire had hounded the various elements of the Independent's Alliance Air Navy to the very brink of extinction.  Silas' own home ship, the Hadrian, had been ambushed with the rest of Raider Squadron R-17 and had very nearly carried all aboard her into the deeps, her Aerium drive and lofting shot to flinders and she burning at nearly every quarter. Only the very timely rescue by her fellow strafer Artemis saved Silas and three other crew, the only survivors able to walk for themselves, from plunging into the awful depths with the rest. Artemis was not long for the air herself, however. Her captain, Wallace Strickener, had transferred what was left of her complement, plus all she had rescued, to the vice-flagship Quinlan's Fancy, and then exploded as she turned away to seek a far position at which to be scuttled to keep her from the hands of the imperials. It was surmised that either the scuttling charges had somehow gone off prematurely, or that whoever had betrayed the squadron to the marauding rebel-hunters had been aboard her and tried to take out both ships by setting the charges off before the Artemis had got cleanly away.

In the end, the only ship left was Quinlan's Fancy, all others having succumbed to severe battle damage and either sunk into the awful depths of the sky or simply blown up in mid-flight. They limped a;long for a time, hiding in cloudbanks and mooring to random bits of rock floating like miniature islands in the air, some barren as a cannonball, some veritably bearded with vegetation and teeming with all sorts of life in numbers that defied the diminutive size of their hoe. It was in a vine-bestrung archipelago of such bits of silicate flotsam, so hung about with vines and trees and shrubbery all intertangled and stuck together that it seemed almost as though it were all one landmass, that the Quinlan's Fancy had moored While her engineer and his mates struggled to keep what Aerium they had intact and prevent any more from leaking out as they battled against the damage done to the aerium drive and a drivetrain that threatened to kink itself into pretzels every time there was a gear change. There it was that it became apparent that the leaks and damages would only allow the ship to remain aloft for less than a standard fortnight, if that, and that they had better strike for a certain backwater bolthole for desperate crews that the captain just happened to know about, before the ship began to sink in earnest.

So, they had called the adventuring malingerers in from the rocks around the ship (A task  Silas himself had participated in none too gently), and cast off, amid loud-voiced opinings from many throats that they should stay to live off the rocks until the Rebellion died and they could all go home again. This was none too well received by those still loyal to the cause; Silas himself, who had lost his father and mother to the Imperials decades before, had broken two jaws and cracked a skull of the loudvoiced would-be deserters before the captain called him off and bade him simply keep an eye on the miscreants. It was thus that Silas was doing exactly that  at Twenty Bells of the following evening, when the ship finally began to founder, a bare ten miles from the aforementioned island. Fortunately, the lifeboats'  aerium drives still functioned, and Silas had managed to get aboard one with his full kit, or what was left of it, precisely because he had been wearing and using it at the moment the alarums rang out. With a heavy heart, he watched with his fellow castaways as the Quinlan's Fancy sank below the Mean Line, at or around which all shipping navigated, and then began to fall faster and faster into the yawning abyss below, finally plummeting into and disappearing in the Fog that hid whatever lay below the clouds, the fires fanned by her downward passage through the air lighting the fogbanks briefly before fading away entirely.

"Where d' ya s'pose it went, Silas boy?" the engineer said, nudging Silas in the side to rouse him from his reverie.

"same place ever' wreck ever goes, I'd say," he answered. No one really knew the answer to that question. Oh, some scientists supposedly theorized that there was a landmass of some kind 'way down below that everything crashed down onto, and some others said everything got crushed by heavy air and gravity, but nobody he knew about had ever been down there, so (he reckoned) nobody really knew. And right now it was more important to get the Borite Twins settled down and stopped from fighting and wrecking the lifeboat. A sound thump on each head from Silas' largest revolver's butt brought about that respite, and the rest of the long, dark night passed blissfully peacefully, if random passages of gas, complaints of waking sleepers, and grumblings of disgruntled castaways can be considered peaceful. He was relieved by Doorway, the engineer's mate, around four bells, and dozed off ion his chosen bit if deck to be woken up about three hours later by shouts that the Island could be seen in the distance.

Three days after making landfall, Silas walked the streets of the town, stopping at taverns and saloons and managing to  get a little coin at each one by playing a couple of hands of whatever was being played, and by picking up others dropped winnings and handing them back to the all-too-grateful winner, who invariably gave him some small token for his help and "honesty." He had just managed to get a job as bouncer and enforcer in a gambling house; His reputation from R-17 had preceded him, and most miscreants owned up and trod the straight and narrow with only a hard glare from his steely eyes, but there were of course always those with more testosterone or whisky in their blood than was good for them. On a day when he had shot one cheater and clubbed another senseless, both before breakfast (the business like so many others here was open and operating around the clock), when he overheard the thing he'd been waiting to catch wind of: A ship being outfitted to sail against the Empire once again.  Things were possibly looking up...

[Prof. Isambard Ravenwood]

He'd only been docked on the island for three days, but Captain Darian Rolston was already neck deep in trouble. It's hard to recruit a crew without attracting attention to yourself, and all too soon, the wrong sort of attention had found him...

He flew out of the saloon doors and landed on the cold mud outside with a sickening crack. The rain was pouring on his head, and splashing mud all over him. within seconds, he was soaked to the skin. Groggily, he peeled himself off the ground, and spat out a gob of blood. He realized he'd bitten into his tongue on impact.
"Right you, you filthy independent scum."
a man stormed out of the doors, followed by another four men. they were muscly, heavy, tall men.
This man was Jarras Plaige. He was a notorious gang leader, of whom Captain Rolston had conned several months back.
"now now, lets sort this out like nice, civilized-"
he was cut off by the man grabbing him by the collar and pulling him up to his feet.
"or not, we can do it like this if you prefer..."
"look here, Rolston, you know that last time we met you ran off without saying a proper goodbye.
"I run away quite a lot, remind me what deal this was..."
"you palmed me off with substandard aerium- you promised quality stuff- straight out of the refinery, you said"
"well I might have said that" He said, looking around shiftily.
"And then, when I sent back your informant"
"In a matchbox, yeah, I recall that"
"you scarpered, leaving me with cheap crap, and an empty wallet."
"I took it as a sign I wasn't welcome..."
"so you owe me 50,000 In platinum Gideons- and if you won't pay up, i'll take it from you. your ship, please"
"Well, I don't have it at the moment..."
"Then I'll take it out in the pleasure of killing you"
The Captain looked alarmed.
"Now hold on, lets talk this through" he said, raising his arms in the air.
"There must be something I can do for you, maybe, something like THIS!" and on this last word, he right hooked Plaige in the face. He felt his fist contact his nose and the warm blood on his knuckles. Plaige released him, stunned at how quickly the tables had turned, and The Captain ran straight back into the saloon, and his thugs followed. when they burst in, the crowd turned to chaos, and Rolston grabbed a bottle of ale and smashed it to get himself a weapon. one of the thugs pulled out a lever action double barrel shotgun. Rolston looked at the thug, and to his bottle.
"shit."
 he threw down his bottle and ran as the shot blasts narrowly missed him. He ran up the stairs, into a room, and lept out the window. suddenly, he realized what the hell he'd just done, and collided with the ground, and felt his nose burst. He looked up, and saw a poster he'd put up, advertising his crew. He saw the word "Taken" scrawled across the poster, and smiled.

[MWBailey]

"Lootenant, you gots ta come see!" the Quinlan's Fancy's former chief engineer called out urgently as Silas walked down the muddy street, brown greatcoat on and rifle slung over the right shoulder. People on the boardwalks and flagstone slabs out in from of teh shops and slaoons stopped to watch him and the grubby engineer walk by. His pistols made occasional flashing appearances as he walked, as did the sheathed sword bayonet at his left hip. Just his possibles bag was the only other thing he wore or carried as he went in search of the Independent's ship that was rumored to be moored in the airdock at the end of town

"what is it, chief?" he answered. "I'm on my  way to get a job, so make it quick."

The engineer answered, "a brother officer, tha's what! In the next street over, a buncha imperial scum's got him down and beatin' tar out of 'im!"

You took care of your own. That was one rule that stuck hard and fast with all of the browncoats; it was just about the only thing that had kept the navy from disintegrating altogether. "Alright,. Let's just hope it don't get us kicked outta town before we even get another berth," he answered as he checked his pistols and made sure of his rifle's magazine. HE took off after the engineer and arrived on the scene just as a figure in a similar-looking brown greatcoat plummeted from an upper window of what looked like the rear of a cheap flophouse-slash-saloon and slammed into the ground. H noted teh man's smile and his eye on the poster with the "taken" scrawled across it. "you get the other arm, Chief," Silas said shortly, and they hauled him to one side just as a trio of toughs came around the corner of the building.

Silas answered their shouted threat by throwing aside the right side of his greatcoat and exposing the butt of the huge-caliber Lemat at his hip, while he whipped the bolt-action rifle from his shoulder and held it pistol-style in his left hand. "You got business with my comrade, mister?" he snarled, and readied himself for the fight that seemed imminent. You're facin' Silas Banamadter of Raiding Squadron R-17," he said, knowing that wanted posters with his name and likeness ion them had already been seen in several places around town, lft by the local equivalent of an imperial law contingent (most of which avoided this town like a particularly bad geobound plague). He'd already killed three men here in whjat passed for fair fights, so he was reasonably famous  already for a bad temper, a bad attitude, and a really frighteningly good gun arm. The men's faces blanched...

[MWBailey]

Not sure Where I'm going with this one. Maybe a new character for a new RP, maybe just an exercise to keep my muscles toned. Maybe even to come up with archetypes or characters for a novel or short story. Maybe a whole short story idea. Here Goes...

Steam Electric Blues

I cut the power to the magnetic cables and racked the telegraph to Full Ahead. We surged forward as the cables reeled in and we accelerated away from the mining ship we'd been towing. Us Spaceport tugmen and our ships work by contract, and this one was over; the lumbering behemoth would be grabbed by the berthing arms and pulled in without a hitch; it was that kind of a job. The credit counter rolled over to 3000, a tidy sum but not enough for the new burners we wanted. The Receivables comm ticked over as we pulled away, and I guided the Ox back toward the port gateway to see about another fare; it was 17:00 and just enough time remained on our scheduled Work Cycle to maybe pull in one more freight. The boiler monitors showed full steam, fuel was still at half-bunkers, and fluid was being recirculated about as fast as it drained into the boilers as teh Dynamos  whined away happily. More than enough juice to handle a big one and make it back to Berth 28 in time for the Comissary Rush.

She was a big one, this last freight of the day - except she wasn't freight, but a big decommissioned aethercruiser, rearmed to match bounty hunter specs (enough guns , big enough to blast criminals to smithereens, not enough or big enough to worry the Military)- Or so one had to assume. You can't really search a ship for weapons without a government license to do so, and the men and weapons on your own side to make it stick. Out here in the Belts, everybody, even us harbor rats and even the rich kid yachts in the Upper  Levels were armed to some degree, but our two missile tubes and turreted blast rifle were laughably unequal to everything but another tug or a midlevel yacht in a hove-to fight, unless we hot-wired the rifle beforehand (dangerous and in any case usually too time consuming to bother). Our twelve operations crew and six deckhands were for driving and maintaining the ship and doing the towboat grunt work. Hardly a boarding squad, certainly not a privateer unit, though ships like ours had been used in the last rebellion as gunships. Tactics helped, but damage and work time lost were demons we preferred to avoid dealing with.
(to be continued soon)

[Prof. Isambard Ravenwood]

This is an extract from a short story that has been on my mind for a while. Using the character of Captain Rolston from Flying Free, This story will be about one of his past exploits,a year and a half-roughly- before he met the rest of the crew in the RP. This is the story of how he came to meet a rather close friend of his, a certain Captain Harvin Thatch, who may or may not be appearing later on in the RP. The character of Cap'n Thatch, is based of the real life Edward Teach- better known as Blackbeard, mostly off of his portrayal in Assassin's Creed IV- Black Flag. He is also based off of Captain Grist from Chris Wooding's The Black Lung Captain (a most excellent read for steampunk pirates cross the seven skies)

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Captain Rolston was rather down on his luck. He was running out of Aerium, He was running out of food, He was running out of ammunition, and he was completely out of money. No money meant no fuel. No grub. No bullets. He'd bloody wasted all of them on failed robberies. Worst of all, oh, worst of all, He was running desperately low on rum. He wandered the dim-lit streets of a small island port, hoping to find a tavern, to spend the few Gideons he had left in his pocket. He passed a wooden lamp post, the light emitted a faint glow and a faint hum, he could hear the generators in the distance. He could always nick some Aerium from them, if things got seriously desperate. Pinned to the wooden lamp post, was a wanted poster, someone named "Harvin Thatch". "Hmmph. Sounds like a right wanker to me." He thought, and wandered on by, following the sounds of merriment and debauchery from just down the street. He entered the tavern, Ordered a bottle, and Sat down in a booth in the corner. An hour or two later, after having a right old laugh playing drinking games, Rake (a poker like game, to which Rolston had a slight addiction) and telling crude jokes, he sat back down in the booth, and drank away the few coins left in his pocket. He saw a pretty redhead, with green eyes staring at him from the bar, she was sat with friends who were laughing, completely oblivious to their friend. Rolston wasn't what you'd call traditionally handsome, but he had a rugged quality that seemed to attract a lot of female attention. Normally, He'd have gone over and sweet talked her into bed, but tonight, he just wasn't in the mood for picking up young maidens who would fall desperately in love with him, it always took some clever and constructive lies to get himself out of staying with her the next morning. He'd begun to reflect on his life over the past few days, when prospects looked down, it was his way of being mopey and sorry for himself. Nothing had gone right over the past couple of years. Not since the war. That war that he'd almost single-handedly lost his side. After a court martial and a dis-honorable discharge, life couldn't really get much worse- Oh, wait, it did. His side losing meant that the Imperial forces took over all of the known map, and ruled with a brutal regime, again, almost entirely his and several other officers fault. His life, and everyone else's had been made almost impossible by the imperial navy, and the only way he could make a living nowadays, and be free from the constraints of the government was to be a pirate. A smuggler. A thief. It was alright work, when you got it, provided you didn't get shot. These trains of thoughts could last for hours if he let them, he stared into his glass, seeing his reflection in this last cup of rum. He drained it, put down his glass, and saw the pretty redhead Standing at his table. "Hello" she said, smiling shyly.

Later, while they were under the bed sheets, he thought about this girl, and what if he settled down, raised a family. This girl seemed nice enough, they had certainly gotten along when they talked throughout the remainder of the evening. He felt the redhead's slender body beneath his as they kissed. "No." He thought. "that life is not for me.". Was there something wrong with him? Why did that concept hold absolutely nothing for him at all? As they lay together, the sounds of her sleep filled his ears, but sleep eluded him. Why was he so restless at the moment? He stared into the darkness, and eventually slept a light, troubled sleep. He was awoken to the smell of cigar smoke, and lots of it. His eyes fluttered open, at the end of the bed was a shadow sat on a chair, and two others, standing either side of the shadow. They were both armed, he could tell that much, but the room was so filled with smoke, it was hard to see anything, even with the light pouring in from the windows behind the figure. The redhead was stood in the corner of the room, wrapped in one of the sheets from the bed. What was her name? he struggled to remember, and failed. The end of a cigar flared and glowed orange, as the figure on the chair breathed heavily. The figure took the cigar out of his mouth, and exhaled a large amount of smoke. It spoke, with a voice that sounded like an engine revving, deep, throaty, and imposing, yet somehow soft. "Cap'n Rolston, Oi presume?" he said, with a west country accent, his voice maintaining the throatiness, no thanks to the cigars, thought Rolston. He got up, and walked out of the smoke, allowing Rolston to see him clearly. A large beard was the first thing visible, as he slowly walked towards the end of the bed. His face was angular, especially his nose, clearly broken many times. His eyebrows were frowning, adding to the imposing nature of this intruder. He was wearing a large, elaborate coat, with lots of buttons and thick bands of embroidery, tarnished and frayed with wear. He had a large cutlass on show, and a bandoleer of flintlock revolvers. He also wore a large hat, again frayed, with a rather shabby looking feather out the top. it had obviously once been grand, but had diminished through many seasons of hard abuse, and by the looks of him, many battles. The redhead looked rather alarmed and was chewing her lip. She hadn't dared refuse these strangers entry when they came knocking, but now she wondered what she'd done. The last thing she wanted was someone murdered in her bed. Apart from anything else, the cleaning bill would be horrendous. "Yer an 'ard man te foind, Mr Rolston..." He said putting his cigar back in his mouth.  "That's why I'm still alive," said Rolston, rubbing a hand through his hair. "Mind telling me how you did it?". The man cracked a smile out of one side of his mouth, making him look even more menacing. " 'erd about that bank heist o' yours. After tha', it were a simple matter o' askin' around." He said, giving his cigar another puff. "Could this have not waited until I was back on the liberty?" Rolston asked, slightly irritated about the possibility being cheated out of what might've been quite a pleasurable morning, half relieved  at the fact he didn't have to sneak out while she wasn't looking. "Or better still, 'till the middle of next week? I'm quite busy at the moment" he lied. "An' we ain't got that kind of time," said the big man. He looked at the redhead and sucked on his cigar. "Forgive the intrusion, ma'am. We'll be out o' your hair shortly.". "You're not going to hurt him, are you?' the redhead asked anxiously. "Damn, what was her name?" Thought Rolston. " Alice? Alexis? Annie? Nope...". The big man chuckled, smoke leaking out between his teeth, rising around his head in a cloud. 'Hurt him? No, ma'am. I'm going to offer him a job."

Half an hour later, Rolston was back in the tavern, enjoying a breakfast of Chicken, carrots, potatoes and gravy, washed down with a morning beer. There was four of them at the table, the bearded man and his two bodyguards, both of which looked very ready to punch somebodies lights out. The Bearded man introduced himself as Harvin Thatch, Captain of The Red Star. Rolston enjoyed every bite of his breakfast. Food always tasted better when it was being paid for by someone else. "Seriously," he said around a mouthful of chicken. "Why me?"
"you are Darian Rolston, are yer not? the man who ransacked the Archduke's fortress in Arden? who plundered 'is vault for every penny from righ' under 'is nose?" That story had made it's way around it seemed. In two and a half years since the war stopped, he'd been involved in quite a few major scrapes, most of them to do with his antagonism of the Archduke. Yes, it was true, he had robbed the Archdukes vault, but dividing up loot between a crew of 14 significantly cuts your money, and when you piss it away on rum, food and salty wenches, it doesn't go that far... It had also been failed to mention that the money they got way with was stolen in turn, so they lost the majority of it within a day or two of the incident... But he wouldn't tell anyone that part. "Then I got a proposition for ya' " said Thatch. "A dangerous expedition, it's true, but there's vast wealth at the end of it." Rolston's suspicions abruptly faded into insignificance. "Vast wealth, you say?" Thatch chewed his cigar and grinned. "Vast." Rolston sat back in his chair and took a swig of beer. Well. For once, it was looking like being a day worth getting up for. "Speak your piece," he said. "I'm a smuggler, to be plain. Mostly I run Shine an' rumble-dust, but now and then I deal in more unusual bits 'n' bobs. Exotic artifacts an' the like. Antiques, spices. Been known ter steal rare aircraft for collectors, when the mood takes me.". "Can't blame a man for making a living," Rolston said. His ears had pricked up at the mention of Shine. He was partial to a drop or two himself. "My point is, I get around, and I hear a lot," said Thatch. "One day I heard there was some explorer shootin' his mouth off about something he'd seen, so I found him, and I asked what it was all about. Says he found a downed aircraft in a rainforest. A craft full o' treasures, just lyin' there, abandoned. Waitin' for someone to come take 'em." said Thatch. "A rainforest?" Rolston asked. He raised his beer. "Where abouts? Samaria?"

"Durn."

Rolston choked into his beer, spraying a cloud of froth out of the glass and all over his face. He wiped it away with his sleeve and stared at Thatch. "Blood and spit, Man, you want to go to Durn?". "Yep" replied Thatch. "An' Oi want you and yer crew ter come with me." Durn. The vast island off the capital, Arden's, north-eastern coast. Impenetrable. Hostile. Populated by beasts so horrible that the mere mention of them made the local wildlife scatter. Rolston secretly thought that he was being had. He must be joking, but the look on Thatch's face said he was anything but joking. "I take it you have some form of proof of your story, I'm hardly going after this with no knowing if it exists or not." Said Rolston, skeptically. "O'course" said Thatch. He Pulled out a long package, wrapped in canvas. He pulled out a long piece of metal, a hydraulic lift- a landing leg. Rolston had never seen anything like it, it was different to any thing he'd ever seen on any craft. It had vines grown around it, so it must have been in the forest- This could be the break he was looking for. "But jus' to be clear," said Thatch, leaning over to Rolston, "I'm in charge of this one.". That was fair enough. "Right. I'll do it." said Rolston. "I'll inform my crew, and meet you at the Devil's Crag in one week, give me time to prepare."said Rolston, already thinking of the money he was going to get. "No" Said Thatch "We don't have time, the explorer I foun' had gone an' bloody told everyone an' their cat about the wreck. We need ter move, an' move quickly." said Thatch dangerously. "Well, right now, I am running rather low on Aerium, I would appreciate time to refuel. Speaking of money, what are we thinking in terms of payment?" said Rolston."I'll cut you in. Mark me, there's treasure on that craft. Your crew and mine, we'll find it. I can get it to people who'll know it's worth, and that worth is gonna be huge. Whatever I make, we split. Eighty-twenty."
"That' very decent of you, what will you do with your twenty per cent?" Said Rolston, calmly. Thatch's eyes hardened, just a bit. "Seventy-thirty".
"Fifty-fifty" Rolston countered. "Sixty-five, forty-five." Thatch snarled. "That adds up to one hundred and ten." Rolston pointed out. "Fifty-fifty." Rolston said again, "or we say goodbye right here. Your "plan" stinks like rancid dogshit and the only evidence of this vast wealth you're talking about is a lump of twisted metal and the promises of some half-baked inbreed." He said, referring to the explorer. "Frankly, I'm inclined to forget the whole thing and count myself one breakfast richer.".
"Sixty-forty, and that is final." Said Thatch. "I'm damned if I make less than you on my own trip- my crew is larger than yours.". "Durn. Monsters and beast-men. Risky business." Said Rolston. Thatch puffed on his cigar. Pungent clouds surrounded his dirty, bearded face. He leaned forward, looming through the smoke with a yellow grin. "Some things are worth riskin' everythin' for." he said. He held out a rough-skinned, grubby hand across the table. Rolston stared at it for a long moment. Why not? It was better than being bored and poor the rest of his life. He held out his own hand. "Fifty-five, forty-five."
"Done, you thievin' son of a bitch!"