Captian Woodes Rodgers's page

Woodes Rodgers
Male Human Swashbuckler/Psychopath-1
LE Medium Humanoid
Init +5
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Defense:
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HP:11
AC:15 (FF:10 TCH:15)
Fort/Ref/Will:0/7/0
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Offense:
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Melee:Longsword +7 (1d8+5)
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Statistics:
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STR: 10 DEX: 20 CON: 10 INT: 16 WIS: 8 CHA: 14
BAB:+1
Feats: Weapon Focus(Longsword), Slashing Grace(Longsword)
Skills: Acrobatics +9| Bluff +6| Escape Artist +9| Intimidate +6| Perception +3| Profession (Sailing) +3| Knowledge(Local/Nobiltiy) +7| Sleight of Hand +11|Stealth +11| Swim +6.
Special Abilities:Deeds(Derring-Do,Dodging Panache,Opportune Parry and Riposte), Panache, Swashbuckler Finesse, Obsession(bloody murder), Premeditation, Psychopathy.
Traits:Anatomist, Grave Robbery.
Languages:Common, Elvish, Celestial, Gnome.
EQ:N/A

As a small child, Woodes had it all. He had a roof over his head, two parents that loved him, and he was very popular among the kids around the town, but everything came crashing down when he and his father were kidnapped by bandits. His father was killed almost instantly when they got back to the bandits camp, but Woodes was forced to live on. Living as a slave for almost five years, he slept in a cage with his father’s corpse and a three inch thick pool of blood. While his body lived on, his soul died in that cage. He was nothing more than a shell of a human, devoid of all emotion with nothing but his twisted imagination to keep him company. All that kept him going was the thought of him ripping through the bandits flesh and watching their blood spill out onto the ground. Woodes’ soul had left, and a monster had moved in. Throughout his five years in captivity he had come to admire the pirates that made there way into the camp to sell their spoils. Woodes had enjoyed the way that the pirate captains had acted so classy until they got ripped off and the beast within came out. He had dedicated himself to acting like them: hiding the monster inside of him until the time was right to unleash it. Well now was that time, Woodes had overheard one of the pirates that morning saying that they would be docked in town until sunrise tomorrow and Woodes knew that, if he could escape from the bandits, then he could sneak onto the ship and become a pirate. So once all of the bandits were asleep, he broke out of the cage using a makeshift lock pick that he had made from one of his fathers ribs and he grabbed a makeshift knife that he had made from the femur. Woodes was about to run back towards the docks and hope he could make it there before sunrise, but something was holding him back. He looked back at the camp that he had spent five years burning to the ground in his imagination. He couldn’t walk away. Woodes wasn’t angry-emotion had become alien to him-but it was more of an itch the he needed to scratch. Woodes crept into the camp and stabbed the one that was on watch in the back. There was more blood than he thought there would be, it came out like a river. Sputtering and spewing until nothing nothing was left. Woodes had spent the better part of five years soaked in someone else’s blood, but this, this felt so…right! When the body hit the ground all he could do was laugh, he laughed so hard he almost fell into the fire. He turned the body around and looked into the man’s eye, lifeless, Woodes laughed again. ”My apologies lad. My sincerest apologies but, thank you!” Woodes dug his thumbs into the mans eyes and laughed again. Still, something was off, Woodes still felt that itch, he still wanted more blood. Woodes stood up and, slowly, crept into the tents one by one and bound and gagged the bandits. When he was done he pulled the out of their tents and had them lined up outside. After that he walked back to the first one he had pulled out and put a knife to his throat. ”The first one was to slow,” said Woodes as he looked the bandit in the eye, “I didn’t get to see the look in his eye. You I’ll kill more slowly.” And so he began, a line of thirty bandit all line up to be slaughtered like cattle. Woodes cherished every second of it, but the itch was still there, something was missing. Finally Woodes got to the last bandit, but this one was special. He was the leader, he was somebody. Finally Woodes realized what was wrong, everyone he had killed were nobody’s, but the chief was somebody worth killing. Woodes had also learned that he didn’t have a taste for torture, he enjoyed the blood but he found himself getting very impatient to watch the light bleed out of his eyes. After a moment of thinking, Woodes new how he was going to kill him. So he leaned into the bandits ear and he whispered “Over the past five years you have enslaved me, tortured me, and treated worse than a dog, but I don’t hate you. No because that would be human of me, and that part of me died a long time ago. The truth is that I love you, I love the faint pop of your skin when I pierce it with my knife, I love that light in your eye that starts going out ever so slowly when the blood starts leaving, and I love the sound of your blood singing in your veins. The reason I am going to kill you is because your blood sings so much more beautifully when it is no hidden beneath your flesh.” With that, Woodes stabbed the bandit in the stomach and watched the light leave his eyes. Just before the bandit died, Woodes looked at him and said, with no sincerity, “Apologies Lad,” and with that, Woodes first kill was laid to rest. Woodes felt like he could finally breath again, the itch was finally gone. However, Woodes new it would come back, and when it did he would have to kill again.
That day Woodes returned home, now a young man, half starved, and soaked in blood, no one even recognized him when he collapsed on his mother’s doorstep. When he woke up three days later, everyone instantly started bombarding him with questions, but all Woodes would say is that he forgot and he wanted to go home and rest.

After the first month, Woodes was starting to feel on edge, he tried to ignore his urges, but they wouldn’t go away. After the second month he was starting to feel like a nervous wreck. He was jumpy and he felt like everyone was watching him like they knew his secret. He wasn’t sleeping or eating, and he would barely talk to anyone. Killing some of the stray animals around helped, but Woodes knew that he would have to kill someone very soon. After the third month Woodes couldn’t take it any more, he felt like there were eyes everywhere, he couldn’t sleep or eat, and the only time he went outside would be to scope out people who he could be killing at the moment. Finally the time came when he was going to get the chance to kill someone. He had known who it was going to be for months now, the sheriff. Woodes waited until the sheriff was taking laps around the town, then he ran up to the sherif and said something about a dead cat in an alley. When the sheriff followed, Woodes waited until he and the sheriff were deep within the alleyway before he turned around and stabbed him in the stomach so fast the sheriff couldn’t be sure he was dying until he looked down and saw the knife for himself. “Apologies Lad” was the last word the sheriff would here before he dropped the ground and closed his eyes for the last time. As Woodes looked at the body, he felt that he needed a keepsake to remember the kill, so he knelt down a cut a piece of blood-soaked cloth from the dead mans shirt and put it in his pocket. “Now you can sing to me forever,” Woodes said as he drug the body away to be buried. Woodes no longer felt on edge but something was still off. His mother knew. She had done nothing to indicate that she knew, but he could feel it. Every time she looked at him it was like she was staring into his black heart. Eventually he couldn’t take it anymore, he had to do something about her. One afternoon he walked into his house and gave his mother a smile, It doesn’t matter, he thought. She knows anyway, she can see me. As he approached her his heartbeat quickened. It became so loud that he was afraid his mother could hear it, so to stop her from running he took a knife from the table and stabbed her in the stomach. The look on her face surprised him, she looked so surprised that there was no way she could have known. Woodes stepped back, shocked at what he had done, everything felt different this time. Her blood was so hot that it burned his skin, the light in her eyes lingered on and burned red with hate, and the look on her face wasn’t one of hate or fear, but only one of the deepest sympathy. As she collapsed to the ground Woodes took a step back and looked at her body. This woman was the only one who has ever cared about me in my life…and I killed her. for the first time in five years Woodes felt something that might be called an emotion, but he all he said was “Apologies lass.” He buried his mother and covered his tracks without cutting a piece of her clothing of to keep-she was no trophy, but her blood still sang through the old wooden house, and when the guards came in to ask Woodes questions about his mothers disappearance, the blood sang even louder. Woodes was a perfect gentlemen to the investigators, he even managed to joke and make them laugh, they never saw the monster inside of him. Still, the blood was singing so loudly, they had to hear it eventually. After an hour of talking to them he was sure they knew what he had done. Nothing they did or said betrayed their false ignorance, but they had to hear the blood sing throughout the house. When they left Woodes figured that it had to be that they were getting reinforcements. As soon as the door shut, Woodes ran to his room and grabbed his sword and his hat (two items that would soon become symbols of great terror to merchants sailing the seas) and he ran out of the door to stow away aboard a ship.

He hid out by the docks until nighttime and then he crept aboard the nearest vessel. When he hopped over the railing he found himself facing the captain. What might you be doin’ here mate? The bandit asked. Woodes looked at the captain and then turned around to look at the crew. When he took in the whole scene, he realized that this was no ordinary ship, this was pirate ship. His back still to the captain, Woodes said with a smile, “What am I doing here?” he whirled around and stabbed the captain in the stomach, “Why I’m your new captain mate! I should’ve told you sooner, apologies lad!” And that was the beginning of Woodes relatively short tenure as a pirate. He very quickly excelled at it though, and his name became a household symbol of fear throughout the coastal regions. Over the course of his piracy he learned to control his madness, he no longer felt paranoid, nor did he think that other people could hear the Sanguine Symphony as he liked to call it. His crew had questions though, like why they always took the plundered ship’s captains as prisoners, or why they always seemed to disappear. One day when they were docked in a town near his home town he heard tell of a group of slaughtered bandits that were found in the foothills. They had been buried in the town cemetery by the church. Woodes knew he shouldn’t but he couldn’t resist, he had to see his first kill. So at night he crept into the graveyard with a shovel, and started digging. When he was knee deep in the grave, he found himself surrounded by guards. A short while later he was shipped off to Branderscar prison. Being a captain, Woodes appreciated the structure that law gave, but he vowed to topple the wicked government that denied him a visit to his oldest friend. On his way there, he also decided that he would get revenge on his crew that wasn’t there to help him.

Woodes was kidnapped as a child by bandits. They killed his father and Woodes spent five years in a cage with his fathers corpse. When he escaped he slaughtered the bandits with particular glee and took special delight in kill the chief. When he got home he told everyone that he remembered nothing. As the months went by, he needed to kill someone again. He decided to kill the sheriff, but when he did, he feared that his mother was on to him. Fearing the worst, he killed his mother and found that he gained no satisfaction from it. After fearing that her blood was singing too loudly and the guards were on to him he stowed away on a ship that night. When he killed the captain, he inherited the ship and its crew. He learned how to think and act like a normal person while being a pirate. His downfall was when he decided to pay a visit to his oldest friend, his first kill. He was in the process of digging him up when the guards came in and sent him to Branderscar prison. Woodes vowed vengeance on the Talengarde government and his crew for getting him arrested.

Woodes has learned to act like a high class individual and his confident air I think that’s the word I’m looking for is very convincing. He understands the importance of law but he also understands the righteous law needs to be destroyed. Like many psychopaths, he longs for human attachment. That is why he reacted so badly when he killed his mother. Wodoes kills mercilessly and indiscriminately, but he takes special pleasure in the murder of the ones that he feels are “somebody’s” in society. A psychologist would diagnose him with Anti Personality Disorder and Narcissism, most other people would call him bat crap crazy. Still, Woodes is faithful to his crew (so long as they don’t betray him like his last crew) and determined in his mission. He also loves a great joke and a sea shanty.