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+---- Thread: Jak O'Mare (/showthread.php?tid=289)
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Jak O'Mare - Conradian - 22-07-2013
Basic Info
Name: Jak O'Mare
Age: 26
Race: Mesalian
Appearance
Height: 6'0"
Weight: 12st 3lbs
Hair colour: Light blonde
Hairstyle: Short-cut with slightly longer fringe
Facial Hair: Usually clean-shaven, though may have slight stubble
Eye colour: Emerald
Build: Lithe, hardy frame.
Clothing: North Coast Naval Officer uniform. A simple white tunic worn with white trousers and black leather boots. Worn over the top is an open-faced blue jacket with gold-laced buttons and gold piping around the cuffs, collar and epaulettes. The epaulettes feature a gold anchor each, both devoid of any form of rode which indicate the second rank an officer in the North Coast Navy can achieve. The jacket has four buttoned-flap patch pockets with box pleats, two on the breast and two on the waist as well as two single-welt pockets that are vertically aligned and orient away from the centre of the jacket, found between the breast and waist pockets.
Dialect
Raised on high the seas, Jak grew up hearing sailor talk. His later life with the officers of the Navy instilled a more upper-class dialect, though it is interspersed with sailor speak, slang, and mannerisms.
Personality
jak's upbringing from the get-go was always the best his mother Karia could manage. Though he was exposed to pirates and their moral ambiguity constantly his mother tried to instill some sense of right and wrong into, though she didn't make it seem wrong to be a pirate. Jak also grew up an obedient boy, well disciplined and always aware of the hierarchy of his surroundings and where he sat.
Jak fears death like any other man does, perhaps even more so. Having seen death and injury often as a boy he quickly understood the ease at which he could join those poor souls. As such Jak is calculating, and balances risks in his mind before doing anything. This doesn't slow him down for Jak has an agile mind, but it sometimes means he will not do something another man would do out of honour.
That isn't to say Jak is without honour. His mother would always speak of Jak's father, giving him a role-model far better for a child than any pirate. Jak thus has a good sense of honour, and will help those below him and protect people's honour, but only when he deems it safe enough to do so.
When angered Jak becomes impulsive, losing his calculating edge to pure instinct. When like this he can be just as dangerous as when he is calculating, but with more rage and less subtlety. To anger Jak would require a fair effort however. Jak is loyal to his mother, to Torn, and to the memory of the crew he once sailed with. Insulting any of them would likely draw a response as well as drawing Jak's sword.
Jak's time in the Navy helped temper his calculative mind, as well as bequeathing him with some leadership skills. He could not lead an army, nor command a whole ship alone, but he could assert himself as the top dog among a small group of people.
Jak doesn't make friends easily. He fears people discovering his history as a pirate, so tries his best to remain an elusive character. This isn't to say he's anti-social, for he is anything but. Just don't expect to be able to call yourself his friend with ease.
Jak is a skirt-chaser. A young man growing up at sea finds himself without much in the way of relationships with the opposite sex. This coupled with his determination to keep his pirate past a secret means Jak does not even consider a close relationship with a woman. He is not adverse to one-night stands, a stance he took from the other men aboard the White Striker though his mother has always wanted more for him.
Behaviour
Jak is a polite man, acting as one would expect of an officer and a gentleman. He is sly and cunning though, and honour is not as important to him as one would imagine of a Naval officer. He will fight dirty, play dirty, and act dirty if he sees it necessary to achieve his goals. Nevertheless he is a mostly calm, pleasant person; though were one to annoy or gods forbid anger him, they would incur the wrath of a pirate playing the part of an officer, and would find a sabre or crossbow aimed straight for the heart before it had time to beat. Being a sailor, Jak is hardy and tough for a young man, and often acts on instinct despite the better judgement of a calm head.
Backstory
A sea breeze. Though he would not remember so, it was to be the first thing he would ever know. The first sound his ears ever heard. The first thing his skin ever felt. Then there was the sound of waves, gentle and calm, lapping against wood. His mother looked down at him, and she smiled. He had eyes of a most brilliant green, like that of polished emerald.
“What ya gon’ call ‘im Karia?” said the old sailor to the mother’s side, his matted beard encrusted with salt, his short hair hidden behind a bandanna.
“I’m gonna call ‘im Jak I think.” She replied. She had dark hair, that she kept clean despite the salty conditions. Her face was gentle for a sailor, not cracked and dry like most others.
“Jak? What kinda name is Jak...” The old dog retorted, his voice curled in a slight snarl.
“It’s the name his father wanted. He told me once, back when we were together.” Karia spoke quietly, smiling as she looked at the babe in her arms that the old dog Torn had helped deliver.
“Well, he be a sailor’s child, and so he’ll be a sailor ‘imself. You rest up, it’s an ‘ard life you’ve got ahead.” Torn’s face cracked in a smile as he moved off, leaving Karia and Jak alone.
And become a sailor he did. Jak learnt to climb the rigging before he truly learnt to walk. Aye, he was no landlubber, and never would he truly be either. He learnt the ways of the sea and how lowly men could tame her with wood and cloth and rope. He learnt about her calm embrace, and her cruel tempers that could take a man or two in an instant. Pulling in sheets, tidying up warp, scrubbing the deck. All became the usual chores for a bilge-rat like Jak aboard the White Striker. Oh the White Striker was nary the biggest ship, nary the fastest. But she was a good ship, very good for those who sailed her. For those men and women could tame the seas like no other when armed with her wooden hull. Those sailors took on all manner of prey, ripping their cargo from them and leave the scuttled ships sinking down to the seabed. You see the White Striker, well she was a pirate ship, and a damned good one at that.
Jak was an obedient child that’s for sure. No room for anything else on board such a ship as was crewed by pirates. He did as he was told, climbing fearlessly to the crow’s nest on command, and heaving the lead. Properly mind you, no swinging for little Jak. Jak was also an adventurous child, always pressing the sailors for stories in their free time and pressing Karia for tales of his father. She told him of a warrior, a man of honour, who fought back with nothing but steel in the face of beings wielding the very powers of nature. She told of how he defended the land against these beings, and how Jak’s father saved so many lives in doing so. Aye Jak was always in awe of the hero of legend, of his father.
Jak grew up on the sea, but that isn’t to say he never saw land. The boy could already walk by the time he set foot on land, and soon found he had to learn how to walk all over again. As you can imagine such a revelation caused great upset in the very young Jak. You see, he had learnt to stand and walk and balance on the decks of the White Striker, which of course rolled and swayed constantly. Now he stepped onto something that didn’t move, and his constantly adjusting sense of balance was thrown off completely.
As the boy grew up there came a time, around the age of thirteen, when the captain saw fit to truly make him a pirate. He was taught to wield a light cutlass, and as time went on he became reasonably proficient with it. However it wasn’t until the crew made port on the industrial shores of Leonderia when Jak was sixteen that his true skill was discovered. Whilst trading their haul for much-needed supplies, ammunition, and new gadgets Jak came across a store selling weapons including a number of crossbows. They were small, with none seemingly over two foot across. Jak found himself very happy with the weapon and so bartered with the clerk until he walked away with the crossbow and fifteen bags of bolts, each neatly holding five strong bolts. Enough to be getting on with, of course.
Aye the White Striker now played host to an aspiring marksman in Jak O’Mare. He practised every chance he got, learning about the drop of the bolt, the arc of its flight. He would hang a target from the yard arms on a spare length of warp and try and bury his bolts into its wooden form, such that he could retrieve the precious bolts. When they made land Jak would set a target up further up the shore, and practice shooting at longer range from the deck of the White Striker. He became quite the shot, and the pirates took down even more ships.
Everything was to change though, for the crew, and more importantly the captain became very arrogant in their certainty of their prowess. They took on a large ship, hoping to not only secure her cargo, but take the ship for themselves too. Fate had other plans however, and the boarding party was cut down the moment they touched the deck of this towering ship. This ship was no merchant vessel, aye instead it was a mercenary ship, out to bring down the infamous West Coast Marauders, a name by which Jak and the others had come to be known. Jak fought fiercely from aboard the White Striker, keeping the mercenaries at bay as best he could with the help of the remaining crew.
The enemy had thrown an almost uncountable number of boarding hooks onto the White Striker and many had snagged the sails or caught the rigging. Several minutes into the fight the mercenary ship began to bear away from the fray, and several men aboard the White Striker started to cheer. It didn't last long, for their cheers were drowned out by the splitting of timber. It was the main mast, which fell away from the ship, pulled by the still tight main-stays of the port side. The impact that it brought on the deck killed a small handful of men, but shattered the deck and the deck below that, leaving a hole open to the sea air. Now though the mercenary ship bore down on the White Striker again, this time coming straight onto her starboard side. An iron-plated bow could now be seen, looming ever closer.
Jak, with the help of Torn, found Karia who was below deck with a young ship's cook named Ashleyn. Karia had been comforting the girl, who was stricken with fear. Jak brought the others up to the deck, and they leapt clear of the ship, towards the sails and the mast that floated on the surface.
There was a sound like sharp thunder as the hull of the White Striker split like twigs in the autumn forest. With the aid of broken timber and ripped sailcloth they escaped the fate of the rest of their crew. They could only watch as the remains of the White Striker and all the cargo she held sank to the deep waters of the abyss.
The group washed up on the west coast of the mainland, south of the grey mountains. They came to the decision unanimously that they would have to migrate across the mainland, leaving their outlaw life behind them in order to survive. It was then, as they travelled across the vast plains and forests of the north central mainland that they discovered the true horrors of the civil war. At the time the war had been raging for nigh on thirteen years, and the scars of such brutality showed in both the people the four met, and the land around them. Forests razed, women raped, children taken, and men strung up by their innards. It was a terrible time, and it became even more so for the group when Ashleyn was taken from the group by barbarians. Oh you can be sure that Jak and Torn put up as best a fight as they could, but in the end the best they could manage was to escape with Karia, and their lives.
Eventually, having past the Chrysaor Plains, they reached the Northern coastline, and could finally relax. Here their previous life, and the reputation that came with it, was far away. They could begin again. They settled in the small port town of Koborough. Torn applied his knowledge of first aid and became a healer within the town, whilst Karia returned to the seas as a charter skipper, often ferrying people across to the forbidden lands to escape. After one such journey she came home very happy, and said to Jak that a very good friend of hers still lived across the seas. Jak thought little of such a vague statement. At the time Jak worked odd jobs around Koborough, mostly in the bars and the inn, sometimes in the back of shops. He kept himself to himself, and kept his past a secret.
A year later, when Jak was reaching nineteen, his past returned. The very ship that had sunk the White Striker pulled into Koborough’s port. Jak worked in the back of the Shipmate’s arms, the tavern closest to the port, at the time; though he never really took to it like he took to the barmaids he worked with. He caught glimpse of the ship and its crew and hid, for fear of being recognised. It was luck that Karia was still a week’s sailing away from town, and so could sail safe in the ignorance of the terrible piece of her past that now swarmed over her new home. The mercenaries stayed ashore for four days, and in that time both Torn and Jak had a close encounter. It so happened that the pair were heading home one day when they crossed the path of one of the crew. He eyed them up, familiarity sparking in his eyes. He asked if he knew them, and Jak’s silver tongue showed itself as he spun a tale of living on the west coast in fear of pirates, working odd jobs and keeping his head down until he finally moved with his uncle to the northern coast after the pirates killed his family. The mercenary bought his tale and they parted ways. Both Jak and Torn breathed a sigh of relief that night, and more than one bottle of rum found itself empty in the pantry.
Jak decided that in order to safeguard his future, he must protect his past. Jak was to find himself a future so different from his past that none would ever think to connect the two. And so it was that on the eve of his nineteenth birthday Jak joined the North Coast Alliance Navy as an officer. Oh aye, it’s hard to believe, but his silver tongue served him well. That and a bit of trickery in forging a letter of recommendation from the Fleet Admiral himself, which none would dare to question. Finding a copy of the Admiral's signature for the letter proved easy, for one adorned a rather pompous Naval notice that was pinned aside the entranceway way to the Naval fort, wherein lay the Naval seal that Jak would need to truly make the recommendation a genuine fake.
Taking both the notice and the seal was always to be a daring mission. The fort was constantly manned by at least a dozen men. Jak took the notice in the depths of the night, between the changing shifts of the watch. It would be a week before the theft was noticed, which gave Jak time to forge the signature onto his letter and get the seal.
The night of the second theft required far more than just a changing watch and a bit of luck. Instead Torn aided Jak, starting a small fire in the depths of the hold whilst working to bring provisions aboard. It was two hours before the small fire grew large enough to be noticed and word was soon carried to the fort, by Jak himself. In a terrible fluster Jak ran into the fort, screaming about the fire. He burst uninvited into the Admiral's office, his face red and his brow dripping with sweat. In a jumble of panicked words and gasps for breath Jak told how the ship, a large ship by all accounts, had caught alight in its berth. The Admiral and other gathered Officers dashed off to organise the fire-fighting effort, leaving Jak alone with just a single Rating. Jak, still gasping for breath, doubled over and begged for water. The Rating, not using his noggin', rushed off to find some water other than the crystal pitcher that sat behind the Admiral's desk. It was lucky gamble that had paid off, lest Jak have to resort to other means of being the only conscious person in the room.
Jak had sealed the letter before the young Rating returned, and all was as he had found it. Jak resumed his gasping and gulped the water down for good measure. He shakily made his way out of the fort, and once out of sight made for the inn where he was to meet Torn. Jak would also return to the fort in the middle of the night to drop to notice near the entranceway, so as to return the stolen property.
He cited experience as a sailor, telling how he had before sailed as a treasure hunter as well as salvaging wrecks. Jak spent the next three years learning the ways of Naval officers. His dialect, his bearing, his manners, all were to change during those three years. That isn’t to say Karia raised him with no manners. Nay she was a good mother for a pirate, but the Navy expected something more than what Jak had learnt. Jak learnt how to ride a horse, for such pomposity seemed to be a necessity in ceremonies. Jak became competent, though never really pushed his riding or his horse far out of his comfort zone. Jak also learnt to wield a sabre, a far more elegant weapon than the unsightly cutlasses he had used prior. Jak much preferred the sabre’s speed and lightness, though he kept his crossbow with him too. It’s presence was one that garnered much attention, and Jak belayed the truth with a story of good trade from a merchant vessel much further south of Koborough.
At the age of twenty-two, Karia fell ill and Jak was allowed leave to care for his mother. Her life was not to continue much longer, and she passed away in a few short weeks. Before her untimely demise though, she explained to Jak something she had said so vaguely years before. On a trip to the forbidden lands so many years ago she had discovered truly amazing news that kept her in good spirits till she returned to Koborough. She apologised to lying to Jak for she had not met a good friend across the far seas. Nay, she had met Jak’s father. The man with dusty blonde hair and the eyes of a Lucin still lived in forbidden lands. She told Jak of a small town on called Auria where he presided.
Jak’s spirit broken by his mother’s death he resolved to find his father and so with Torn’s best wishes ended his service with the Navy and chartered a ship to Auria. The voyage was long, and Jak had much time to think. On sighting Auria though he was met with a terrible scene. The town, now a small village, was surrounded by gray murky waters and wilted rainforest. Jak nevertheless went ashore and met with the people still living in the rebuilt ruins of the old town. He asked after the man he sought, with a blade of legendary sharpness. He was told of the rescue, of a ship that took Jak’s father and the others far away. They spoke of others who travelled after the ash had settled and directed Jak on his way. He followed their trail, but took a different route around the sands of tribulation, instead sailing along the coast. He found his way to a small port town that was met by the waters north of the forbidden lands. He asked of the pilgrimage, of the city at its end that the people of Auria had made mention of. He was found to be east of his destination, and so set out with two guides from the town.
It was a long time, for the whole voyage took over three years, but one day Jak came across an old road lit by stone beacons. The same beacons he had followed once, in a time that seemed so long ago. Here the guides parted ways with Jak, stating that the city was a week away along the path. Rejuvenated by the news, he followed the path with great vigour, and finally spied the ancient city of Ravenna across the river. The thought did cross his mind as to how he could’ve sailed past the river mouth that led here, but no answer came to mind at the time. Jak walked the last few hundred metres in a state of happiness and relief. Jak stepped onto the great stone bridge that led to the answers he was after and he stopped for a moment and smiled before continuing across the bridge.
Skills:
Novice - Basic - Competent - Advanced - Expert - Master
Horsemanship - Basic - Though he never pushed himself far, Jak learnt the basics of horse-riding and put them to practice several times during ceremonies along the northern coastline.
Marksmanship - Competent - A good shot with his crossbow, and constantly improving as he practices shooting whatever targets he deems challenging.
Seamanship - Competent - Having lived his life on the sea, Jak has learnt much about sailing, and put it into use nigh on every day. He is best suited to sailing as crew on board large ships, but is capable of sailing small vessels alone as well.
Swordsmanship - Competent - Jak has learnt two similar styles of sword-fighting. The effective attacks and parries of a pirate’s cutlass, and the far more elegant fencing of an officer’s sabre. Jak finds himself more at ease with a sabre.
Thievery - Novice - Jak is no gray fox, but he managed well enough to garner an official North Coast Navy seal for his letter.
Weapons:
Jak's Crossbow: Jak's crossbow is a one-handed weapon weighing between 4.2lbs. The frame of the crossbow is 10 inches in length, and the limbs extend about 8 inches out either side of the frame. The prod is a composite of Yew and bull horn, giving a strong draw strength of 20lbs at a draw length of 9 inches. This results in an effective firing range of about 25 feet, though with skill one could shoot slightly further. The string is comprised of both hemp and horse sinew, and is nocked back by pull lever.
Jak's Sabre: Jak's sabre is a 26" slightly curved single-edged drymaterite blade. It features a leather and twister wire grip with a brass handguard. The blade weighs slightly under 5lbs not including scabbard.
Possessions on entry:
Jak’s Crossbow (Named Bow)
Jak’s Compass (Named Compass)
Officer’s Sabre (Named Iron Sword)
RE: Jak O'Mare - Conradian - 03-09-2013
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RE: Jak O'Mare - Conradian - 10-09-2013
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RE: Jak O'Mare - Conradian - 13-10-2013
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RE: Jak O'Mare - Conradian - 15-10-2013
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