[OOC] At The Scimitar's Edge (A Golden Age of Piracy RP)

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A t T h e S C I M I T A R ' S E D G E
A Golden Age of Piracy RP
{ O O C }

Intro

The world as they know it is a devious amalgam of savage assault and deft intrigue. Conflict festers everywhere, even aboard the pirates' ships. The wind carries the murmurings of mutiny around Captain Brailham's Trident. The crew is uneasy, the captain is paranoid, and the world is falling apart. The seas are bloodied, the privateers are coming in, and the loosely-tied society of pirates in the Caribbean seemingly cannot muster together a defense. It's all falling away in the open ocean. Survival has never been so much a gamble for the notorious sea dogs.

Time: mid-1700s
Place: the Caribbean

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Name: Mabel Agnes Blake
Appearance: Mabel is five feet, five inches tall, though she tends to look smaller because of her hunched back. She gives the constant appearance of peering and scrutinizing. In other words, she looks rather untrustworthy. She has medium-length black hair, almost always in a braid down her back, and usually wears a broad-rimmed black hat. She dresses in men's clothing for practical reasons, wearing sun-bleached cloth and a leather jerkin. If she took the time to wipe the grime from her face, she still wouldn't look pretty; there is almost always a haunting sharpness about her grey eyes, and you half expect to see her lip curl up in a snarl whenever she talks.
Strengths: Mabel is not tightly bound by ethics. She will do whatever she has to to survive, and she'll go even further if it means she won't just get by narrowly. Her instincts verge on animalistic at times, but that doesn't mean she loses her head. She can be clever and calculating. This rationality is the reason why she tends to stick to cloak-and-dagger methods whenever possible rather than charging in head-on.
Weaknesses: Sometimes Mabel gets too fierce. She taught herself that she had to seem a bit like a wild dog if she wanted to survive in this world, but oftentimes that fierceness only makes her a target. Additionally, Mabel is not one to make personal sacrifices. She would rather manipulate other people into "taking one for the team" rather than doing it herself, which makes her unpopular with the other mariners. Lastly, Mabel is of a rather non-threatening stature. Frontal assaults are a huge risk for her, and there aren't always opportunities for her to take stealthier approaches.

Bio

Mabel grew up in the dirty, gritty, dangerous port of Nassau. Her father was an English mariner-turned-pirate, and her mother was a Nassau prostitute. Mabel was raised by a village: the community of women who worked her mother's brothel. Taken care of but never coddled, Mabel learned to do what she had to to survive. Being surrounded by lively savagery taught Mabel how to be fierce, ruthless, and quick. Never officially a prostitute, Mabel served drinks in the brothel's tavern until her marriage at age eighteen. She made a calculated survival decision and married Augustus Blake, one of Nassau's merchants who dealt in ship provisions and hijacked goods. In the next four years, she bore two stillborn children and Augustus Blake was lynched. Personal adversity in the midst of her harsh environment blackened Mabel Agnes into a caustic, incisive creature. She decided to take to the seas. Finding a crew that would accept a woman was challenging, especially since many captains knew Mabel's husband while he was alive. She had to prove her worth to one uncommon captain by assassinating one of his crew, someone who he suspected of trying to incite mutiny on his ship. With this murder committed, Mabel Agnes was, without further questioning, accepted aboard. It has been a year and a half since that time.

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Name: Douglas MacNichols

Appearance: Standing at 5'09" and nearing the apex of his prime at 32 years of age, Douglas is a hardened man from over a decade at seas, his hands rough and calloused from the rigging of the mast, welding a boarding axe to repel invaders and cut their lines, and other day to day struggles on a constantly wet and windy ship. His dark hair has traces of grey and is long enough to reach the nape of his neck, which he keeps tied back with a ribbon. A blue English naval coat adorns his frame and a grey button-up shirt beneath, which more often than not is not buttoned above his chest. A black scarf is draped about his neck, which is used to shield Douglas' face from stormy weather and the fumes of black powder. Grey trousers adorn his legs and meet knee-high black leather boots, cracked and worn from at least two years worth of use. A bandoleer with cartridge pouches adorns his chest along with a pair of flintlock pistols, and his boarding axe hangs from his belt. He is known as an adept marksman and he is often delegated to the mast to shoot down upon enemy crew.

Strengths: Physically strong, keen of eyesight, and a generally well off disposition have made Douglas a well-liked and dependable man in the crew of many ships. Collected and aggressive in battle, Douglas is a man who enjoys the heat of the moment and certainly doesn't flinch from action when it occurs. A firm believer in owning up to your actions, Douglas doesn't tolerate underhanded schemes or backstabbing, believing that a real man deals with his issues head-on. Because of that, he has a reputation for being honest and trustworthy amongst the crew and he is notable for being in favour of boarding actions which don't result in needless deaths; it's the plunder he's after, not the lives. He believes that for pirates to keep flourishing, the common people need to see them as folk heroes, not merciless predators.

Weaknesses: Douglas isn't an overly ambitious man, and he does not like to take risks that aren't clearly easy victories. He is not confident in his ability to captain a ship and he knows his hesitancy would likely result in a lot of missed opportunities for plunder, and the potential for mutiny isn’t far from his mind at any given moment. With that unpleasant possibility driving him, Douglas can be brash and reckless when it comes to a battle in an attempt to make himself visible amongst the men so it will never be said he doesn’t do his part. Whether or not his luck is set to run out remains to be seen.

Bio: Born to a porter and a seamstress in Aberdeen, Douglas MacNichols grew up constantly in the presence of His Majesty’s royal fleet and while he was hardly the worst off child in the city, poverty never was far away from the MacNichols family. At a young age, Douglas began work with his father unloading ships when times were too tight to attend school, while his sister worked with their mother in the shop. Sometimes, the few extra meager coins meant the difference between having enough to heat the small hovel that was home for the winter and having enough to eat each week. A few months after his 16th birthday when the winter snows finally started to recede, Douglas signed on with a privateer vessel, lying about his age. Nobody, most importantly the Captain, questioned it and a lifetime of seamanship had begun.

After 5 years as a privateer, the schooner was damaged beyond repair and it barely limped into Nassau thanks in no small part to the efforts of the surviving crew who had survived an encounter with a Spanish frigate in open waters near the Florida Keys. With not enough manpower to man his ship and not enough funds to repair it, the captain of that vessel retired into relative obscurity until providence shined and he re-emerged as a free man and took up piracy under a wing of a rather successful captain. Douglas had similar luck and found himself aboard a vessel with a man who would take him. The switch from privateer to pirate was far simpler than Douglas had ever imagined and the spoilers were far greater, seeing as the Governor of the Bahamas didn’t take his cut of the earnings and the targets were whomever the Captain deemed worthy of the effort of taking.

In recent weeks, murmurs of mutiny have crossed the deck of the ship and into Douglas’ ears. Uncertain times lay ahead, but the Scotsman knows he rather die than let a few of the most vocal proponents of mutiny take control of the ship. Their path leads to ruin, and his own is uncertain.