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| Isaac Hopkins; Pirate | |
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| Topic Started: 14 Jul 2008, 09:17 AM (78 Views) | |
| Aztec Gold | 14 Jul 2008, 09:17 AM Post #1 |
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OOC Info Username: Pyroriffic How did you find out about AG: Surfed on in from an advertisement Have you read the rules and agree to abide by them? Yes. Character Biography Given Name: Isaac Surname: Hopkins Nickname: ‘The Reverend’ – although he personally loathes this moniker Age: 28 Sex: Male Ethnicity: White British Country of Birth: Wales Current Whereabouts: Tortuga Occupation: Navigator-for-Hire / Mapmaker – ‘Gentleman of Fortune’ (Pirate, by any other name) Former Occupation(s): None. Grew up on a ship. Parents: Parents, presumed dead, not that Isaac particularly cares. Mother was Angharad Hopkins, father was Dafydd Hopkins, a moderately wealthy mine owner and county Squire in the Welsh valleys. He was raised as an only child and so far as he is concerned, is without a family. Siblings: None. Children: None. None that he knows of, anyway. Avatar:  Description: Isaac is tall, at 6’3” and well muscled – most definitely solid. When under extreme pressure or suffering one of his more long-term, periodic dark moods (see ‘Weaknesses’), he loses weight quickly, something which shows easily on his slim frame. He wears his long, black hair simply – either loose (it comes down to his shoulders – no longer otherwise it annoys him), or tied back. Oddly, his hair is his one true vanity. He has dark, navy-blue, surprisingly child-like wide eyes, which he has learned to turn to his advantage over the years. They are a useful tool when he turns on the charm or attempts to convince someone of something, because every emotion shows clearly in them. If he wants to feign a hurt expression, or honest sincerity, he just employs his expressive eyes – and it’s hard to suspect untruths. He has naturally fair skin as is the wont for the Welsh, but the years of working on board ship have tanned him to a nut brown. Being dark as he is, he has a tendency to stubble and generally wears a light beard, due in part to laziness – and also a loathing of shaving. Isaac is distinguishable by a dagger scar that runs the length of his face from his left eyebrow down to his chin, and also any number of whip scars on his back and shoulders. With regards to clothing, Isaac can demonstrate a little more of that peculiar vanity that he has, enjoying acquiring fine fabrics and fashionable outfits. However, he is also eminently practical and spends the majority of his shipboard time clad in simple black breeches, boots and a simple white or red shirt. Strengths & Weaknesses: Strengths: Isaac is absolutely charming – when he wants to be – and when he wants something. He is loyal and determined and has a stubborn streak as deep and wide as the ocean itself. He is a gifted navigator and can plot a course in even the most dangerous waters. He is also a surprisingly accomplished cartographer, which is a natural skill – the man is a born artist, with a genuinely natural sense of scale. His early tutoring before he ran away from home meant that he knew his letters well enough to put them to use, and his first Captain, another once-learned man, encouraged him. Weaknesses: When depressed or angry, Isaac falls victim to the ‘evils of alcohol’ which conspire to make him irrational and unreasonable. The warning signs are obvious to those who know him: for a few days leading up to a hard drinking session, Isaac will fall into a brooding, black mood. Then he will drink himself into near oblivion, take a couple of days to recover from the resulting hangover and resume on his life’s course as though it never happened. He can also lose all ability to reason when his temper flares. When Isaac Hopkins loses his temper, people around him know about it, and on more than one occasion, the best cure for a raging fit of temper has been a full-on punch in the face from one of his shipmates and a one-way ticket to unconsciousness. Surprisingly, when he wakes up, he never bears a grudge. Like many of his pirate brethren, Isaac has found himself falling prey to the evils of gambling and is in a moderate amount of debt to a number of people. At this time, the situation is manageable – but debts grow, and without guaranteed income to pay the money back, things could get far worse in the future. History: Isaac’s childhood was unbearable – at least to him: a mother who was never quite sane and a father who used to beat the pair of them. His father had been the local squire and as such was moderately wealthy. His mother ensured that from the age of six, Isaac received the best education their money could afford and the boy proved to be an apt pupil. His tutor, a former Navy man himself, picked up on the boy’s love of artistry and began teaching him the basics of cartography and celestial navigation, skills which Isaac picked up swiftly and with obvious ability. Finally, after one beating too many from his drunken father, followed by the standard pathetic excuses from his brow-beaten mother that his father ‘hadn’t meant it’, the twelve-year-old Isaac ran away from home. For three months he spent his time living on the docks, making a few coins as a sailor’s runner and learning a surprising amount from the sailors who put into dock. After three months, he stowed about a merchant ship bound for Jamaica and managed to avoid discovery for at least two weeks before the First Mate found him, shivering and feverish, tucked into a corner of the hold. The ship’s captain, one William Anderson, was not a cruel man and after the boy was treated for malnutrition and was well enough, he set him to work on board the ship. Isaac, grateful for the chance, proved himself an able seaman, learning many ‘tricks of the trade’ from the mostly friendly crew and learning very quickly not to upset the wrong people. His youth did not protect him from the same punishments as the rest of the crew and he received more than one whipping for laziness and insubordination – normally ‘crimes’ fabricated by a particularly sadistic boatswain. Captain Anderson’s Lieutenant, Jeremiah Weaver took Isaac somewhat under his wing and neatly filled the gap of father figure. He would take time to show the boy the ‘secrets’ of what it meant to be a naval officer, encouraging his growth in the skill of navigation and cartography as he would any other midshipman on board. This caused a little resentment from the three midshipmen who were a little older than Isaac and they also chose to mistreat the stowaway in the nasty way that only children can. By the time the ship was within several days of Jamaica, Isaac’s head was filled with dreams of joining the Navy as a midshipman under Weaver’s sponsorship and maybe one day becoming an officer and a gentleman like his hero. Then everything changed. The pirate vessel ‘The Lion’s Mane’, under the command of ‘Red’ Phillips, attacked and defeated the trader ship barely three days from its destination. The Captain, Weaver and the other officers were killed and the crew of the ‘Mane’ systematically slaughtered everyone who put up a fight. Those who remained were given a choice – be set adrift and take their chances, or join the crew of the ‘Lion’s Mane’. He was barely thirteen years old and frightened and so, along with five other crew members, Isaac became a member of the crew of the ‘Lion’s Mane’. Red Phillips, like Weaver before him, took a shine to the bright, intelligent boy who displayed such aptitude and as the weeks became months and the months became years, Isaac Hopkins developed into a well-liked and shrewd, canny crewman. His dreams of joining the Navy long since forgotten, Isaac fell into the life of a plundering pirate with surprising ease. Under the command of Phillips (who considered himself a ‘gentleman of fortune’ rather than a pirate, something which Isaac himself adopted), Isaac was recognised as the ship’s second mate at the age of nineteen. When Red and the first mate were killed in action during a raid, Isaac found himself elected to temporary command of the ‘Lion’s Mane’ and his crew followed him where he led willingly. He became known as ‘Captain’ Hopkins, but never felt comfortable in the role and fervently dreamed of someone stepping in to ‘plug the gap’. However, under his able command, the ‘Lion’s Mane’ continued her journeys and plundered, looted and murdered just like any other pirate vessel. A year ago, when Isaac was twenty eight, the ‘Lion’s Mane’ and most of her crew were destroyed following an attack from the Spanish Westindian vessel, the ‘Santa Maria’. Isaac cheated death by barely a fraction of an inch, his body washed up at Tortuga Bay by a quirk of fate. He has spent the time since then selling his skills as a navigator – making up crew numbers wherever he can, but he has never yet found a ship he can call ‘home’. His nickname ‘the Reverend’ comes from two things: his need to see justice done to those he feels need it, and also the fact that he has an unnerving tendency to sing hymns in the face of adversity. He’s been witnessed singing a medley of hymns heartily and at the top of his lungs during a force ten gale, his arms flung around the mainmast, a manic glint in his blue eyes. Sample/Past Roleplay: The richer people - and there were many of them in Tortuga, not everywhere on the docks was completely seedy - owned shops, whether large or small, to peddle their wares. Isaac Hopkins was not one of the richer people and thus it was that he merely operated his little mapmaking business from where he sat against a wall alongside a number of other vendors. To his left, an aging whore plied her trade with varied success. Her name, he had learned, was Margaret. She was in her forties and looked every inch the woman who had lived too much of the rich life. Isaac had rarely seen her without a bottle of rum in tow. Given the yellow caste to her skin and the bloodshot eyes, he suspected that within a very short length of time, the small area to his left would become vacant. To his right, the youngster who had set himself up as a runner was experiencing much more success than the drunken whore. He would accept messages from incoming sailors and deliver them around the town, sometimes for pennies, sometimes for a cuff round the ear. He knew everyone and everyone knew him. Isaac had used his services on more than one occasion. Folk called him 'Rat' due to his innate ability to get anywhere and generally be a nuisance. He was maybe nine years old, without parents. The child’s similarities to his own past were not missed - so Isaac had semi-adopted him, sharing some of the coin he had earned from his map sales in a subtle way: by buying food for the boy. He himself had a comfortable little area where he had laid out a number of his exquisitely drawn maps, the corners held down with stones. Those maps were collector pieces rather than tools of the sea: the navigation charts that earned Isaac his bread and butter were generally copies of old, torn or dog-eared ones that ship captains tossed his way. The beautiful charts he displayed here were expensive. He rarely sold them, but when he did, it was proper rum rather than the grog that his money usually ran to - and a room each for himself and Rat in the inn. Maybe even the opportunity to avail himself of the wares of one the many young ladies who swarmed around the inn. He was absorbed in working on a commission from a scowling, one-eyed pirate who had tossed a decidedly ratty map at him and ordered three decent copies. As he worked, he sang quietly to himself, in a rich, deep baritone, one of the many songs he remembered from his childhood. Songs that had no meaning to him any more, but that seemed to keep him focused. Thus engrossed, he was able to shut out the hubbub and chaos around him. |
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1:10 PM Jan 9