DM Barcas - Skull & Shackles: Freedom of the Sea (Inactive)

Game Master Isaac Duplechain

Slavery is rampant in Cheliax and Martius grew up surrounded by it. The distinction was made quickly clear between citizen and slave. He began to follow suit with what he saw from other children and berate and humiliate slaves for entertainment value. This stopped when his father found out what young Martius was doing. He punished the young child, forcing him to perform hard labor until Martius could do no more. As Martius cried, Paden looked down at his son, asking, “Do you understand what those people go through? They are not to ridiculed, but repected. Tell this to no one, Martius, but always remember that the pain others is never to be laughed at. Respect their contributions to our society.” It was years before Martius understood, but he followed his father’s instructions out of love.

As Martius grew, he was taught the skills that his family prized. Knowledge of the craft came easily to him and the work strengthened his young body. His mother, Vateria Torgannon, encounter the child to spread his knowledge to other sectors of his life. He pursued a number of different subjects in the extra afforded him by his family’s wealth and soon found a love of the study of alchemy. Wizardly patterns were abstract and bothered his practical mind, but the straightforward patterns of the alchemy intrigued him. He began to study the effects of various concoctions and elixirs effects on the world on the body and the world around him: acids to burn, salves to heal, potions to strengthen, and poisons to weaken. The power to change and manipulate his environment was all around him, contained in materials both mundane and wondrous.

His study into alchemy caused him to be blind to the activities of his father, would became increasingly caught up in the underground slavery opposition. The Torgannon family had long ago followed Aroden, and a deeply seated belief in the value of humanity. His father had long followed both Iomedae and Erastil, paying only lip service to Asmodeus, and tired of the pain and suffering inflicted on people that had so much more to offer society. Spurred by the Andoran revolt that occurred before Paden’s birth, Martius’ father began to help smuggle escaped slaves out of Cheliax. When Martius was thirteen, his father has caught hiding several escaped slaves in a partially completed building, most of which belonged to House Leroung. The noble house was outraged.
The hellknights burst into the family’s home that evening. He, his brother, Lucar, and his sister, Quillia, were taken while the knights interrogated his mother. Vateria spoke little, telling her children to look the other way and not look back. As he and his siblings were led away in chains, he remembers hearing his mother’s cries of pain. He attempted to seek comfort with his siblings, but was backhanded for moving out of place.

Investigations revealed the scope of his father’s operations. It had been growing for years and now encompassed several buildings along the walls that his father had built, using secret passages to move slaves out of the city. Paden’s holdings were confiscated and turned over to the city. Publicly, the passages were destroyed, the buildings turned over to House Leroung and the other houses of the city. Paden and Vateria were publicly executed by the Order of the Rack for treason against the state. Martius, Lucar, and Quillia were sold into slavery, Martius purchased by House Leroung, while his brother and sister were bought by others.

The nobles of House Leroung put Martius to work quickly as a porter. During one round, he was to carry a heavy stack of tomes for a noble of the house, one Serrivan Leroung. While carrying the books, he read the topics and took a chance, asking about the topics of the volumes. Serrivan nearly struck the slave for his impertinence, but paused for a moment to consider the slave’s words. The two began a conversation in which Martius’ knowledge became obvious to the scion of House Leroung. Serrivan had the slave added to his personal attaché, giving Martius access to considerable stores of knowledge.

During his time at House Leroung, Martius saw firsthand the treatment of the slaves that Cheliax was built on. The treatment bothered him as he remembered his father’s words. He came to hate his time as a slave. He wanted to pursue the topics he was researching even as he helped Serivan.

Martius never forgot about his brother and sister. Over the course of years, he was able to find out about their fates. Quillia had been sold to a noble of House Thrune and been taken from the city, but Lucar had been sold to a trader and worked in as a porter in Westcrown, similar to how he had. He eventually was able to meet his brother again as he carried about duties for his master. The meeting did not go well. Lucar had become bitter in his time as a slave, even to the point of resenting his family. He blamed their mother and father, and mocked Martius’ attempts to compare their situations. To Lucar, Martius had received something more than he, and Martius’ situation was much more comfortable than his. Martius left with confused feelings, hating his brother’s response, but understanding it all the same.

After several years of service in House Leroung, Martius was to come with Serrivar on sea trip to investigate reports that a rare tome had appeared that Serrivar desired. They boarded the ship, the Devil’s Promise, and sailed for Absalom with a heavy escort. On route, the ship was taken by a small fleet of Andoran ships. The battle was fierce, the escorts falling quickly to the sudden assault. As Andoran marines boarded the ship, Serrivar attempted to use his slave as a shield, but Martius saw his chance. He overpowered the noble and greeted his saviors. His long-time master, was taken, and presumably executed, while the slaves on board the vessel were freed.

He traveled with them back to Andoran and spent a considerable amount of time there. With nothing but the clothes on his back, he decided to rebuild by offering his skills to the navy. He felt he owed it to them. He enjoyed the life at sea, but the structure of a military began to get to him. It reminded him too much of the life of slavery he had just escaped from. He often chafed under orders, but stuck with it for longer than he might have otherwise due to a lingering sense of obligation. However, as he saw opportunities to free others slip by due to national concerns, he grew disillusioned with the service. When orders had been passed down to let another Chelaxian ship slip by, he confronted the captain. The conversation grew heated and he had to be dragged away. Martius spent the rest of the trip in brig and was discharged from the service when the boat made port.

Martius took the money he had saved from the service and began to travel about the Inner Sea, avoiding Cheliax and Androan out of fear and disgust respectively. For a time, he thought of joining the Pathfinder Society, but the idea of having to work for another kept him away. Thoughts of his family became increasingly common and the guilt of his freedom began to wear him down. He dove into his pursuits, studying alchemy and history to free his mind of those problems; to try and ignore them.

He recently heard of the ancient civilization of Ghol Gan and the strange plants present in the various islands of the Shackles. The thought of being on the sea once again appealed to him, so he set out for Port Peril to see if he could catch anything interesting.

After four years of juggling the competing interests of three very different masters, Synthia had finally dropped all the balls at one foolish stroke.

Raised on the streets of Dockway by her sole living relative, Oris, a brother ten years her senior, Synthia knew she was destined to follow him into the service of the Night Scales, the city's oldest thieves' guild. She quickly proved adept at the high-stakes game of burglary, and so caught the eye of Lady Vammiera Symirkova, leader of a rival guild, the Gargoyles. When Oris was killed by his immediate superior in the Night Scales as part of a putsch for a new Guildmaster, Synthia's first instinct was to flee to the Gargoyles. But Lady Symirkova wanted more from her than just a another pair of deft hands. The Gargoyles wanted eyes and ears within the Night Scales, so Synthia became a spy in a house of thieves, only working for the Gargoyles when a particular job required her particular talents.

But she wasn't working for either the Gargoyles or the Night Scales the night she was finally caught. Impulsively, Synthia had decided to do a freelance second-story job, robbing the personal holdings of a merchant she knew from guild contacts was on an overland run to Korvosa. What her contacts hadn't told her was that the merchant was a personal friend of Captain Acacia Uriana, fiery head of Magnimar's City Watch, and that the good captain was keeping a close eye on her absent friend's holdings.

Finding herself caught elbow-deep in the merchant's safe, Synthia had little choice but to surrender. After first keeping her mouth firmly shut under questioning, she was surpassed into talking when Captain Uriana revealed that she knew all about the double-game Synthia played with her life, though the captain refused to reveal her sources for that information.

And so, the double-agent became a triple-agent.

For four years, Synthia thieved for both the Night Scales and the Gargoyles, spying on the former for the latter. For four years, she fed a steady trickle of information about the operations of both organizations to Captain Uriana.

For four years, she was sensible.

What could upset such a dangerous balance? A big score, of course.

A month past, the ruler of Magnimar, Lord-Mayor Haldmeer Grobaras, threw an extravagant ball at Defiant's Garden, his home in the Naos district. For the wealthy and noble, it meant the social occasion of the year. For the thieves of Magnimar, it meant that every significant manor in the city would be empty for one night. Both the Gargoyles and the Night Scales planned multiple jobs, and both included Synthia in their plans. In the past, when her competing allegiances conflicted, she had always managed to find a way to satisfy both. This time, she would satisfy neither.

Let less burglars rob empty houses. Synthia Candle decided to rob Defiant's Garden, on the night it would be most closely guarded, on the night when everyone who was anyone in the city would be very much present.

Her target was the Lord-Mayor's private safe on the topmost level of the manor. Synthia penetrated the grounds, climbed the outer walls of the house in full view of any of the drunken party-goers who would have simply had to look up to notice her, and made her way past the trapped and locked window. She checked to make sure the room's door was locked, and set to work on the complicated lock of the safe.

She was done in by lust and drunkenness. Not her own, but that of the Lord-Mayor, who chose that moment to cajole a reluctant young scion of a Riddleport merchant family in to his study to look over his engravings.

Caught red-handed, Synthia made for the window and the gardens. She was forced to fight her way free, and to this day does not know if the young City Guard she cut down as she fled into the night survived.

What she does know, is that within an hour, other City Guards were patrolling the streets outside two of her bolt holes, including one she'd never told anyone about. Her third option seemed safe until she noticed two people having a friendly conversation in a nearby alley. One of the people was the Night Scale who had killed her brother. The other was Lady Symirkova's erstwhile daughter, the assassin Mizmina. She was burned on every side.

Not knowing what else to do, Synthia opted to flee the city. She knew the tide was on its way out, and that there would be ships making sail away from Magnimar. She weighed her purse and she weighed her options, then turned and ran for the docks.

And so found herself aboard the Jenivere, bound south.

Being half the size of the human Bonder, Doran had to rely more on wits and skill to show his mettle among the crew of the Bride, and he rose to the task quite well. His intelligence and natural ability as a sailor endeared him to a smaller, more thoughtful part of the crew, and his quick thinking had secured them a prize or two that would surely have escaped otherwise. As one would expect, Bonder saw Doran as a competitor, someone out to overthrow him and take his hard-earned power and position on the ship, and swore to destroy him before that could happen. Doran, meanwhile, was so pleased to finally be free that he had no intent of seizing power from anyone. But his time as a Chelish slave had honed his instincts for who meant him harm, and he sensed right away that Bonder meant him ill.

Bonder began his campaign against Doran in not-so-subtle ways, sending his bully-boys to beat Doran senseless or worse. Doran generally managed to outsmart them, and not be where they expected to find him, or be there with allies of his own, sending Bonder’s thugs slinking away. After some months of this, however, Bonder became slightly more inventive in his approach, though one could hardly call it clever. The Bride had recently taken a small ship, carrying little in the way of cargo, but bearing a wealthy traveler from Almas, in Andoran. A small treasure in coins was taken from him, but the great prize was a gem-encrusted pendant, worthy of a king, which was eagerly claimed by Jak Verling, captain of the Fortune’s Bride. Though Bonder dearly desired the pendant for himself, he also saw in it a tool to rid himself of Doran Tidewrack.

Captain Verling’s cabin boy was a crony of Bonder’s, and Bonder forced him to steal the pendant from the captain’s lockbox and deliver it to him. Bonder then hid the gorgeous bauble in Doran’s kit-bag, and went to tell the captain he suspected a thief among the crew – common enough in a pirate ship, but sorely and violently frowned upon, particularly by Captain Verling. Like many sailors, however, Doran used a knot of his own devising to tie his bag closed, so he could tell if anyone else had opened it. While Bonder was speaking to the captain, Doran happened to notice his bag had been tampered with and he opened it to see what was missing. He soon found the pendant and, at the same instant, heard the heavy footfalls of a group of men moving along the deck towards the gangway leading down to the decrepit crew cabin. In desperation, he hurriedly tossed the pendant into the shadows across the cabin and stashed his gear, heading for the gangway with as innocent a look as he could muster.

Nevertheless, he was seized by a couple of Bonder’s thugs, and Bonder tore open Doran’s bag and dumped it on the ground before the captain, pawing through its contents with an exultant look on his face. His expression soon turned to confusion, then anger and some fear, as he muttered “Where is it? It was here!” The captain looked from Bonder to Doran and back again, his face dark with rage and said ”What’s this? What’s going on here? Throw both of these men in irons and we’ll get to the bottom of it!”

As the captain spoke, however, an urgent cry came from the masthead, “Squall from the starboard quarter! Reef sails! Oh, we’ll never be in time!” and a deep howling could be heard as the sky through the portholes darkened suddenly. The short, sharp storm that followed was more than the aged timbers of the Bride could stand – she was instantly blown over on her port side, masts and spars snapping under the strain, and she soon foundered. Few hands survived, but somehow Doran was one of them, leaving him to wonder whether the sea-gods loved him or hated him.

Doran found a small timber from the ship and held onto it for some hours, though it was barely adequate to keep him afloat. As the sun began to set, he saw a large section of the mainmast bobbing nearby, with something or someone clinging to it, and he felt real hope that he might survive the night. He managed to swim to it, and saw an arm lashed to the wood with a bit of rope, and a sodden head resting on it. His splashing drew the attention of the other man, who lifted his head to reveal he was none other than Makris Bonder, who cried out ”You! Filthy slip! You’re cursed, and you’ve brought an end to us all! I’ll kill you now for good and all!” and began to tug and strain at the rope holding his arm to the section of mast.

The fact that he was a quick swimmer, and that Bonder had lashed himself to the floating debris and could not quickly get free, saved Doran’s life. He got away from the immediate threat of Bonder, but felt sure he would not live to see the morning. He managed to stay afloat through much of the night, however, and the currents washed him ashore on the Isle of Kortos shortly before dawn. As the sun rose, Doran was happy to be alive, but he felt fairly confident of two things: the curse of the sea-gods was real, and Bonder had likely survived as well, so Doran would forever have to watch his back.