Lieutenant Ambrose Jeggare's page

Ambrose is arrogant and proud, though well-disciplined. His noble carriage shoulders the self-assuredness of one born to lead others, with a commanding voice and an arresting gaze, amplified by his unnatural red-on-black eyes. Despite the terse and imperious attitude he assumes with his subordinates, he is far from humorless. He makes no efforts to hide his intelligence or ambition, but he retains a spirited zest for life when he finds occasion to indulge himself, a contrast that those unfamiliar with him may find startling. He harbors a deep hatred for Chels, and anyone who would mistreat him for his fiendish heritage should expect vindictive retribution. Underneath everything else, Ambrose still battles with the devil inside, and he faces his demons alone.

Normally: Ambrose is relatively human-looking compared to other tieflings. His red-on-black eyes give the first hint of his fiendish nature, followed by the vestigial horns sprouting just below his hairline, curving slightly up and back. His imperious half-sneering grin reveals fanged eyeteeth, and his thin, barbed tail is usually hidden beneath the red coat he always wears as part of his officer's uniform. He is impeccably groomed, his black hair often pulled back into a tidy ponytail underneath his battered tricorn. His gloves, white with red pentagrams on the backs, are never soiled and his black boots are always polished to shining.

After being shipwrecked: The dirty, haggard-looking creature that washed ashore on the beaches of Port Peril barely resembles the proud tiefling that was cast to the sea so many days and weeks before. His usually immaculate uniform is in tatters from exposure to the wind and waves. His cheeks are hollow, his eyes sunken and his body emaciated. His hair is matted and rangy, his skin is burnt, cracked and dry from the salt and sun, and the only thing left of the old Ambrose is the spark of life in his red-on-black eyes, the glowing embers of the sputtering bonfire of his ambition refusing to give in.

Ambrose was born a normal-looking child, nothing hinting at the taint of Hell burning in his blood. Born into a prominent Korvosan branch of Cheliax's House Jeggare, Ambrose enjoyed the privileged childhood of the elite, wanting for nothing. He proved to possess a ferocious intelligence and ambition that would serve him well as successor to his family's portion of the Jeggare merchant empire, and at the age of twelve he was sent to the Acadamae to study the arcane arts. His parents had no inkling that the human boy that left them would return a decade later as a tiefling.

It was clear that young Ambrose had gone through a great many changes, both physical and psychological in his time at the Acadamae. Though still ambitious and brilliant, the tribulations of adolescence were exceptionally harsh. The friends he made early on, especially the Chelaxians, ostracized and tormented him once the change took hold. Ambrose returned as a rebellious, angry, resentful man, given over to the worship of Asmodeus. His parents, initially taken aback, nonetheless accepted their son, but were appalled at his lack of discipline and inability to cope with the world. After the inevitable scandal he caused among the rest of the family in Egorian, his father pressed him into service in the family's merchant fleet, hoping that a few years aboard ship would tame the hellion.

The first year or so was tough for Ambrose, but in time he learned discipline. The hard, laboring life of a sailor tempered him and once the devil in him had been reigned in, his ambition took over. Determined to prove himself, he worked hard and became apprenticed to the ship's navigator, eventually being commissioned as an officer and taking a navigational post aboard the Imp's Purse. After four years at sea, the chance that he might be able to finally return home glimmered brightly in his mind. But on a voyage to Sargava, tragedy struck. Pushing through the fringes of the Eye of Abendego, the Imp's Purse was set upon by a fearsome pirate ship and was overtaken. As the pirates closed, the sailors prepared themselves to be boarded, but nobody was expecting the deafening boom, the deck exploding to splinters beneath their feet, the hull being blown to smithereens. Ambrose, caught in the rigging when it started, was thrown into the sea as the mast crashed and fell. Clinging to a piece of the hull, he could only watch the destruction as the stormy swells carried him away. He tried to track the passing of time, but he quickly lost track as the days bled together, floating on his makeshift raft. He was near death when, one morning as the sun dawned, he spied land on the horizon...

Ambrose straightened his shirt, making small adjustments as he walked through the halls of the Jeggare estate. He had been summoned to his father's study moments before, and judging by the servant's manner, it had to be something important. Ambrose had been anticipating this for some time now, years, really. It was finally time for the meeting. There came a time in every young heir's life when his father, a shrewd and wealthy master of mercantilism, would send for his son and draw up the contract that would begin the transfer of power from father to son. Naturally, there would be a transitional period during which the son would work under the father, learning the ins and outs of the family business. And, of course, sometimes those periods could last for many years until the father finally retired gracefully in old age. But there was no doubt in Ambrose's mind that, once he stepped through the wide oak double doors of his father's study, it would only be a matter of time before it was his study. Approaching the doors, he paused to admire the brass handles. They were a matching set, an imp and a pseudodragon locked in an eternal struggle that reached a ceasefire only when the doors were open and resumed once they were closed again. Ambrose tugged on his white gloves, running his fingers over the red pentagrams emblazoned on the back, and knocked.

"Come in, come in," came the voice from the other side of the door. Obeying, Ambrose threw the doors open, interrupting their battle for his own personal glory. Confidently, he strode into the study where his father sat at his grand desk, head bent down over an important-looking document. Behind him, the window's rich velvet curtains were drawn back, offering a spectacular view of Korvosa beyond. Ambrose could barely keep from grinning as his father, Lord Aloysius Jeggare, looked up at him, dropping his quill back into the inkwell on his desk.

"Ambrose."

"Father." Ambrose did his best to imitate his father's stoic bearing and somber tone of voice, but he lost the battle as his father wordlessly handed him the document.

Ambrose's grin fades as suddenly as it appeared as he reads the document, an expression of confusion replacing it. "I don't understand."

"Those are your orders." Lord Jeggare laced his fingers together, folding his hands on the desk in front of him. No hint of mirth tugged at the corners of his mouth to betray a joke.

"You cannot be serious," Ambrose protested, though he could see for himself that his father was very serious indeed. The document he held in his hand was no laughing matter. Instead of the ownership contract he had been expecting, his father had handed Ambrose orders assigning him to a junior officer's post aboard one of his merchant galleys, the Imp's Purse. "You are pressganging me?!"
Lord Jeggare pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger, wincing and sighing. Suddenly, he appeared very weary. He looked at his son, not unkindly, but pushed well past his limits.

"Ambrose, I understand that things have been... difficult for you as of late. I have tried to be patient with you, shown you leniency more times than can be counted. But I cannot allow it to continue. After what happened in Egorian, after you disgraced our family! Starting brawls, Ambrose?"

"It was not a brawl, father, it was a duel. A duel I won!"

"You cheated."

"I hardly think overpowering your opponent with both martial and arcane superiority can be considered cheating. And Narcissa's father still refuses me her hand, even after I trounced her ponce of a-"

"Enough!" Lord Jeggare was not a man who often raised his voice, much less against his own son, but he had had his fill of his son's complete and total lack of self-discipline. A certain amount of carousing and misbehavior was to be expected from a young man of Ambrose's age and station, tacitly encouraged even, but this latest embarrassment had been too much.

It was a shock when young Ambrose, a bright (and, importantly, human) boy of twelve when he left for the Acadamae, returned a decade later as a devil-summoning, devil-worshipping tiefling! They had tried to be understanding of their new misanthrope of a son, welcomed him back into the family as if nothing had changed. Lord Jeggare had ignored his son's diabolism, raised no objection when he had begun building a summoning circle in his bedchamber, even allowed him to attend Asmodean services instead of joining the rest of the family at the Abadaran temple. It was only to be expected, really. While he had hoped his son would study divination or transmutation, the Acadamae had a certain reputation for turning out top-shelf conjurers and devil binders. Ambrose had even graduated near the top of his class!

In hindsight, Lord Jeggare had to admit that they should have delayed Ambrose's induction into Chelaxian society, but he never would have predicted the reactions Ambrose provoked from the assembled nobles. His appearance was striking, but he looked mostly human, if you ignored the vestigial horns, the barbed tail, and the red-on-black eyes that smoked up the room when Ambrose became angry (which seemed to happen rather a lot). It had been terribly rude of Lord Leroung to withdraw his daughter from the arranged marriage between Ambrose and Narcissa. That contract had been signed years before Ambrose had left for the Acadamae, a strong match for both families! But dueling over the slight? And cheating? Ambrose had dealt a nasty blow to the family's reputation. He simply wasn't ready to inherit the family business, and some years at sea would teach him the discipline he sorely lacked. One day, Lord Jeggare assured himself, Ambrose would thank his father for this.

But today, Ambrose would have none of it. His eyes swept over the words that had so suddenly altered the course of his life, but he did not see them. Thin tendrils of smoke began to leak from the corners of his eyes and he turned on his heel, stalking out of the room without another word.

* * * * *

The Imp's Purse was scheduled to leave within the week. During the interim, Ambrose considered vanishing in the night, but discarded the flight of fancy as ridiculous. Instead, he was determined to keep a stiff upper lip. It would only be a matter of days after setting sail that his father would realize his error and recall his son back to Korvosa, and Ambrose's position would be the stronger for it. A week at sea might even do some good. After being confined to the estate after the incident in Egorian, a cruise on the open sea would be a refreshing change of pace. He was appointed to apprentice as ship's mage, his Acadamae schooling warranting a junior officer's position, and so his duties would not be too strenuous, and the Imp's Purse had just come off rotation with the Korvosan navy, so it was sure to be easy sailing in a purely commercial fashion. And so it was with smug optimism that Ambrose accepted his father's parting gift, a rich red uniform coat with black trim, perfectly tailored and customized with a waterproof pocket for a spellbook. Bidding his parents goodbye and fully expecting to be back in a week's time, he stepped foot in the carriage to board ship. Little did he know that it would be a week of years and more before he would see home again.

Life at sea was remarkably different from what Ambrose had pictured. Rather than the easy days of studying his books in a cabin under the tutelage of the ship's mage, he found his duties were far more laborious. Rather than studying magic, any study time Ambrose had was wasted learning about navigation. His day was filled with endless measurements of the sun, coordinate calculations, and reading the log for ship speed. Much to his chagrin, he was also required to learn about the ship and sailing, as if one day he would actually take the Lieutenant's Examination and assume command of a mast. The other officers were unsympathetic with his situation, giving him none of the respect and deference that was his due as their social better. The crew's treatment of him was even worse. The superstitious, unlettered mariners considered him bad luck, and he suffered umbrageous abuse from them. The evenings were closer to bearable; after supper when the sun had finally set, he had license to stargaze. Of course, even that was accompanied with the expectation that he would learn the constellations and positions, but Ambrose found it a reprieve nonetheless.

To Ambrose's initial dismay, the days aboard ship turned to weeks, and eventually into months. Once he realized that his father was not, in fact, going to send word to return home, Ambrose applied himself more fully to the study of the ship, if only to end the worst of the crew's abuses and in time he metamorphosed into a truly able seaman. After a full year, the Purse was up again for a military rotation, and Ambrose was drilled in naval combat and schooled in strategy alongside the other officers. There was rarely any serious naval action along the Varisian coast; Taldor's days of conquest were long behind it and Cheliax certainly had no intention of attacking its own colonial city-states. There was the occasional spat with pirates from Riddleport, but they lacked organization or conviction and were repelled easily enough. Ambrose took and passed the Lieutenant's Examination, hoping that a successful promotion would convince his father that he was ready to come home, but he was to have no such luck. When Imp's Purse once again began commercial operation, Ambrose took it upon himself to learn the family business from the other end. After all, once he was in control of the business, he might find personal knowledge of the trade routes and relationships in other port cities to be quite valuable. When the Purse received her orders to make a run down to Sargava, Ambrose found himself excited for the journey. In his time aboard ship they had made countless trips around the Varisian Gulf to Magnimar and back and a few voyages down to the Inner Sea, bouncing back and forth between northern Garund and southern Avistan. But traveling to Sargava would take Ambrose across the equator for the first time, and unlike their usual runs, Ambrose had orders to assist the captain in selling off the cargo and replenishing along the route as they made their way back. After more than two years at sea, Ambrose dared to hope that he might finally be nearing his voyage's end.

Traveling south to Eleder was a dangerous voyage. The Inner Sea had its own dangers, of course. There were raiders from the Linnorm Kingdoms up north, pirates from Katapesh to the south, and there were a number of treacherous passes along both coasts that could be challenging to navigate. But the run down to Eleder was a gauntlet of maritime hazards. Plenty of ports down that way were open to trade, but few were friendly. Between Ilizmagorti at the northern end (rumored to be under the sway of the infamous Red Mantis Assassins), to Bloodcove in the south (openly controlled by the prickly and aggressive Aspis Consortium), there lies the Shackles, an archipelago swarming with pirates that prey on merchant vessels without opposition. And even getting to the Shackles was an undertaking. On account of the Azlanti ruins and the infestation of horrible sea monsters, a ship had to make its way around the edges of the Eye of Abendego, a permanent hurricane that had turned the coastline of the whole region into drowned swamps for dozens of miles inland. But the difficulty of the run was the primary factor in its lucrativeness. Goods from Eleder, imported from the jungles of the Garund's interior, sold for outrageous prices in the Inner Sea. From exotic fruits, spices, and woods to luxury commodities and even curios, the expected return on investment from a run down south could measure many times the journey's cost, even after the dangers were considered. It would be an excellent opportunity for Ambrose to prove his value to his father and earn his place at the table.

It was also an excellent opportunity for the pirates that marked them on their way through the Eye. The ship appeared seemingly from nowhere, as if emerging from the waves below, or perhaps even a product of the storm itself. Caught in the fury of the storm, the Imp's Purse stood not a chance. Ambrose was in the rigging, drawing sail as the pirates closed. Fire belched from the enemy's ship as volley of explosions sounded. Moments later the ship shuddered as if hit by lightning, wood splinters filling the air. His mast began to fall and Ambrose was cast into the sea as another round pounded the hull. The sea, whipped into whitecaps by the storm, began to carry Ambrose away from the scene as he clung to a piece of the wreckage for dear life. Ambrose could barely make out the ship's name as he floated away - the Filthy Lucre.

For days, he drifted in the ocean aboard his makeshift raft. Miraculously preserved through the storm and battle, it seemed he was cursed only to die a slower death on the open water. Without food, he could only subsist on the small amount of freshwater he could create by magically freezing the ocean water. Unwilling to surrender to Pharasma just yet, he called out for help in prayer. At first he prayed to Asmodeus, and for many days received no answer. Then he entreated Gozreh to carry him to shore, again receiving no answer. In desperation, he called out to any power that would answer. Nearing the brink of death from exhaustion, he spotted land on the horizon, and Ambrose knew that something out there had heard him.