Sailing: Pressed at a young age Lorarin is no stranger to the tides. Comfortable in rigging and line, at bow or in the bilges there is no part of a ship at which he has not tried his hand.
Navigation: As a boy, before his obvious fasciation with the tall ships and those who rode them earned him a billet and a bunk, Lorarin had been apprenticed to a map maker. While cartography is by no means a perfect art- particularly as captains hoard their charts and peer review is unlikely- Lor has the happy talent to both read and recreate those maps that are so vital to travel. Comfortable with both sounding chart and sextant he is confident in his ability to plot an accurate course and does not fear the reef.
Astronomy: As with his talent with charts Lorarins ability to map the heavens began on land but was fostered on the waves. Able to spot those most vital points of light and fix them in his mind, Lor is comfortable using the heavenly bodies to pinpoint both his location and his course.
Swordcraft: Nothing in his short time on land prepared him for combat, but having spent years before the mast blades have become something of a fixture for him. Over the years he had learned from captains and corsairs alike, watching and practicing when time allowed. While no great fencer he can keep himself alive with sword or cutlass as needed, and is rarely without some small blade about his person.
Fiddler: Aboard ship boredom can be as lethal as any weapon. While no great singer Lorarin has over the years picked up some talent with the string and bow. On a paticularly interesting shore leave he 'found' himself in possession of a fine fiddle in a wooden case, and there is time and the weather cooperates he has been known to get the crew singing out on deck and rigging.
Weapons: Smallsword Dirk (often in boot or strapped to calf)
Physical Description: Years aboard various ships under an unforgiving sun have weathered Lorarin's features, burning once pallid skin to a leathery gold. He inherited his mother's pale almond shaped eyes, set beneath high brows the same reddish brown as his hair. The same hair that he keeps shorn tight to his scalp, a fashion adopted after a bout with fever at a young age and never set aside.
Like many sailors who began their careers young he is bandy legged, standing at a moderate five feet nine inches and carrying his weight well enough. His hands are stained at the fingers, the result of years working with pen and ink over hundreds of charts, and the tops of his little and ring finger were shorn off by a taut line while fighting a hurricane. The scars are old, puckered and white and make for a good story, but no longer cause pain.
Armor: Lorarin does not put his trust too heavily in armor, fr he has seen too many pieces lovingly bought that could not withstand the wind and waves. Instead he invested in a single piece of leather brigandine armor, designed to protect his chest and back, and a pair of studded arm bands that ride low on his wrists. For those voyages when the weather is foul he has a fearnought coat and sturdy boots.
Equipment/Other: Sextant Fiddle Seaman's chest full of charts Sundry items as a sailor collects over the years
Mental Description/Personality: As stable as an man can be who chooses to live his life with only a shell of wood betwixt himself and fathoms of water, Lorarin is a calm enough man on most day. He can be driven to passion or fits of rage, particularly in battle or conflict, and is as vulnerable to the doldrum depressions as any man. But literacy and his past roles as a navigator keep his mind busy enough, and he has escaped so far the sea madness that strike so many before the mast.
Goals/Apirations: A consumate sailor, Lorarin is a man whose greatest love truly is the ever changing tides. But his second greatest joy is discovery, and the documentation of the same. He ardently desires to chart the seas- and to earn a heavy pocket while he does so-, but with the freedom and camaraderie that more...structured vessels lack.
Background/History:
There is a town on the coast of Praeilor, its name of little use to any but those who lived there, that had ever made it's living on the sea. Lorarin was born outside its walls, the son of a stone mason with too many children and too few options. Had he not been a bright and inquisitive child who had- while helping his father during a Marketday journey- wandered into the map making guild and proceeded to ask every question that came to mind he might have ended up simply a labourer, or far worse. But he had been a precocious child, eager to learn, and so at the age of nine he had left home to be apprenticed to Halwin Ergiso, cartographer. It was interesting work, which taught him his letters and the shape of the world, but a young boy can grow bored behind a musty desk and endless charts.
And the sea lapping only a stone's throw away from the shop, had been a perfect distraction. Within the two years that he would stay Lorarin often found reason to sneak down to Ships row and watch the tide of people- of every color and shape and size imaginable- flood the streets. Often when a new ship came in he would scramble up any twer of crates that would hold him to get a better view. And it was there that the crew of the Caldera, who had lost their mizzen boy in a storm and needed someone to scramble up the ropes and fetch and carry for those that asked, had tempted him down with stories of adventure and then carted him aboard ship.
Not that he had ever much complained, even when all he knew had vanished over the horizon. It was the beginning of a long career, and he would grow first into a boy and then a man on many a bark. Those two years behind maps and charts, tracing the lines by which the world was bound and conquered had stuck with him, and as he grew older Lorarin has taken several voyages as a navigator or navigators mate. A great commodity- aside from those skills- are his ever present collection of maps and charts that he has either copied in secret or purchased over the years. Worth a small fortune on their own they are invaluable to any sea captain treading the unsettled waters.
Relationships: Your character's thoughts on the other crew members. Fill this part out when I say, not before.
