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| Michael Quintin; Marine Private | |
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| Topic Started: 28 Oct 2008, 03:00 AM (230 Views) | |
| Aztec Gold | 28 Oct 2008, 03:00 AM Post #1 |
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OOC Info Username: Quintin How did you find out about AG: Gee…I don’t know. Have you read the rules and agree to abide by them? Ja. XP Character Biography Given Name: Michael Surname: Quintin Nickname: Mikey, Quin Age: 26 Sex: Male Ethnicity: English Country of Birth: England Current Whereabouts: Port Royal Occupation: Private (Marines) Former Occupation(s): N/A Parents: Henry & Polly Quintin Siblings: James Quintin (elder) Children: None Avatar: N/A Description: Appearance: Quintin is a sturdy, vigorous figure, with broad shoulders and a barrel chest. His limbs are suited to his bulk; his arms and legs are brawny and powerful. He stands and moves with martial precision and rigidity, which is second nature to him after years of drilling. His presence, although he is not as big a man as some, is still imposing, with an air of steady imperturbability about him. His bluff, weathered face could not be called better than plain. His nose is crooked, having been broken more than once, and he has a broad mouth in a strong jaw, surrounded by deep lines. A once sanguine complexion has subsided and darkened in the heat and intense sun of the Caribbean into a leathery tan that makes Quintin look older than he really is. Shaggy, dark eyebrows overshadow his keen, rather deep-set brown eyes. His dark brown hair is coarse and straight, reaching about to his shoulders, and pulled back into a queue at all times. When he is in full-dress, it is powdered white and clubbed. His calloused hands are crisscrossed with the scars of old accidents and powder-burns. His back bears the scores of a flogging, with raised, reddish lines that have healed over rather recently. Underneath these scars is a longer memorial that slashes diagonally in a smooth mark from his right shoulder to his waist; another similar scar cuts across his left side underneath the ribcage. One final scar, seemingly much more insignificant – only a little whitish-pink line on his abdomen – is the sign of a wound that nearly took his life. Quintin has a very loud and powerful baritone voice, with a Dorset accent, and when he’s roaring orders it can be heard all the way across the ship. He can also heartily belt out a song with the same power and volume; fortunately he does sing more or less in tune, depending on how sober he is at the time. The Marines are sea-service soldiers; Quintin’s uniform is the same as a line infantry man, except for certain distinguishing marks that are unique to his regiment. The most prominent feature of his uniform is of course the red coat, the hallmark of the British soldier, member of the finest army in the world, for two centuries past. It is made of heavy woolen broadcloth, and gets extremely hot underneath the sun, but Quintin has long since become used to it. The snowy facings on the coat identify him as a Marine. He keeps it carefully brushed and cleaned, and the pewter buttons on facings and cuffs are polished to a high sheen, particularly the two that fasten his red shoulder epaulettes; he is smartly turned-out at all times. His white linen shirts are somewhat less well cared for than his coat; they’re starched and ironed as often as he can get it done, but they’re all worn a little threadbare. His waistcoat, of the same red wool as his coat – in fact, it is made out of a worn-out old coat of his - is a sleeveless, close-fitting garment. He wears white linen fall-front breeches; they’re not as tight as a gentleman’s, or an officer’s, as it’s not too easy to tailor trousers. His stockings are sturdy wool. Quintin’s neck is enclosed by a stiff black leather stock; he’s broken regulations and shaved it down just a little for comfort and to allow him greater freedom of movement, an offense which has not yet been detected. He’s extremely careful with the other elements of his uniform, so perhaps shaving the stock is not unreasonable. His white leather crossbelts are kept regularly pipeclayed to perfection, looping over each shoulder to make an X in the center of his broad chest, and a silver plate over that inscribed with GR, the cypher of King George. He has a white leather belt around his waist; a white leather cartridge box and his bayonet hang from it on his right side. His shoes are slightly scuffed, but the brass buckles are kept free of any tarnish; the shoes are partly hidden by long leggings or gaiters that run from mid-thigh to ground. Quintin wears white gaiters in full parade dress, and black ones on other occasions. To complete the full regalia, he wears a black felt tricorner hat, with white piping about the upper brim and a black-and-white cockade on the left fold. When Quintin is at liberty, he’ll usually dispense with the uniform. He’ll wear the same shirt, trousers, stockings, and shoes, but instead of red, he wears a plain grey coat and waistcoat with white facings. A battered floppy-brimmed hat that shades his eyes is the final touch to his off-duty outfit. Personality: Quintin is a relatively uncomplicated man. He is happy when he and his squad are performing efficiently. His primary pleasures are physical in nature; he likes solid, heavy food – he is definitely a meat-and-potatoes fellow – and a drop of rum, though he’ll never be caught drunk on duty. He likes an attractive woman as much as the next man, although he’s not the most attractive man in the world and hence he is confined to whoring, for which activity he hasn’t got much spare money. He likes a good, rousing tune, either a hearty bar-room chorus (he has a very wide stock of off-colour songs and a fine, loud singing voice) or a merry fiddle to dance a jig in time to. Quintin likes things to be stable, to follow a pattern without changing too much from day to day; it’s hard for him to get bored. Because of his preference for familiarity in this way, he will see only one whore at a time, with remarkable fidelity for an extended period. It has nothing at all to do with his morals. He doesn’t care for anything that reflects badly on the Marines. He despises the East India Trading Company, and particularly the merchant marines that serve in it. He’s not very fond of small children; in fact he absolutely hates them. Most animals are considered equal with children in the hierarchy of nature; he does not care for riding on the rare occasions when he is obliged to mount up, and dogs and cats are only useful for getting rid of rats in his opinion. Quintin is skeptical, tending to rely on his own observations rather than adopting someone else's conclusions - unless it is a friend's. The report of one of his mates is better than would be a certificate signed by the King and every last member of Parliament. And they can rely upon him in return: upon his word, upon his support, and upon his absolute unbending loyalty. Quintin honestly doesn't give a damn about King George or the British Empire (though he'll cheer as loud as any for them both) - it's together with his squad that his heart lies. He is no contender for a prize in ethics, but he is a decent man on the whole. Quintin would not kill a man in cold blood, though he will hit one when he’s down, and doesn’t bother playing fair. He’d not hurt a woman or a child, either. His sense of justice defines his code of honour; God is a distant entity whom Quintin doesn’t dare to approach. He lets the supernatural alone, and trusts it will let him alone in return. If he wants a favour from the Man Upstairs, he’ll ask a more devout friend to put in a good word for him into his prayers. He's not given to horseplay and foolery; he has good judgement when left to himself, but allows himself to be persuaded easily by a close mate into trouble. He has been dropped into a pickle more than once under the influence of a friend’s advice. With strangers he is laconic and brusque, and even with his friends he is not overly talkative most of the time. He says what needs to be said, and not overmuch more. When you get right down to it, however, Quintin is forthright and honest if a little abrasive. His closest mate is Brendan McIntyre, despite the difference in their ranks. They’ve been friends since they first served as privates together on board HMS Antelope; they’ve stood by each other through thick and thin over the years. McIntyre taught Quintin the very basics of literacy, and is continuing to give him lessons in reading and writing during their off-duty hours. What exactly draws them together is hard to define; the simple answer would be that each owes the other his life, probably several times over (they don’t keep score). That’s hardly anything unique in a service that depends so heavily upon the unit, however. For his part, Quintin admires McIntyre’s ready, agile mind, his quick humour and his instinctual cunning and courage. That would be the closest that he could come to explaining the brotherhood he feels for the Irishman, but it leaves a great deal indefinable. Quintin is not really a naturally inspiring or charismatic man, and is unlikely to advance in rank as a result. His best trait as a soldier (other than his marksmanship) is that he is able to hold himself together even at the worst of times. When push comes to shove, and no one else is stepping up to the plate, Quintin can be relied upon. If given orders, he’ll follow them to the letter, but he’s also capable of improvising for himself if no superior officer is present to direct him. He’ll never shirk responsibility or fail in his duty; he’s intensely proud of what he stands for as a Marine. He used to have a slowburning temper that he kept a tight lid on; however, his fuse has been getting shorter lately with the new developments in Port Royal. He finds himself at loose ends more than he would like; when not on duty, he does not quite know what to do with himself. Black moods will come over him at times. He’s become belligerent, taking any excuse to fight, especially when he has been drinking – and Quintin has been drinking more than usual lately. He’s even snapped at his mates on occasion. Strengths & Weaknesses: Strengths:
Weaknesses:
History: Michael Quintin was born the second son of a farmer in Dorset, Henry Quintin. His father’s farm was large, but not prosperous; half of the fields were regularly swamped, and Mr Quintin could not afford the works to drain them properly. Thus, only half of his arable was useable. The overgrown remainder served handily as a place for two young brothers to claim as their own personal property; Quintin grew up playing there, and learned to trap and shoot from his older brother James. He was early-on a quick hand with a musket, though his father frowned on the sport and as soon as his shoulders were strong enough set Quintin to working in the fields. When Quintin was ten, a battalion of soldiers was quartered in the village not far away from the farm. The red-coated men practiced drill on a neighbouring farmer’s field, and were instantly an object of curiosity to many of the boys from the village and outlying farms. It wasn't uncommon for them to play soldiers, mimicking the men. James, although only a couple years older, found the games too childish and busied himself helping their father with the farm. After the soldiers had been in residence a few months, Michael too grew out of his interest with the soldiers, having seen them do little more than conduct drill on a field. What a boring life they led, he thought, and went to work on his father's farm. He was now old enough to do much of the heavier work, and had little time to spare to play his old games. The work, however, was scarcely rewarding. Long hours spent in the fields behind a plough, turning the earth in preparation of planting seed. Then planting down the interminable rows, carefully digging small holes and covering over the seeds. At harvest, racing to gather in the grain before the autumnal rains could spoil it; reaping, baling, threshing, and all the rest of the backbreaking, endless labour. Michael tired of the monotony but there was little chance for him to escape it. One of his best mates came running across the fields from the neighbouring farm one day. Michael was only a boy at fourteen, and his judgement was about usual for his age, though he had height and breadth ahead of his years. Thomas was two years older and Michael's constant companion; he was full of excitement, babbling about the man in the red-coat he had just seen in the village. The man had promised five guineas to every man who wished to join His Majesty's Marines. Five guineas was more money than Michael's family generally saw in half a year's time in pieces, let alone all at once; he was strongly tempted. For days he considered seeking out the man and accepting the offer. His father and mother were strongly against the notion and his brother had simply shrugged when Michael told him of it, indifferent. But Michael's mate, Thomas, had already made up his mind on the matter and Michael decided to do likewise. After all, what else could he do with himself? His brother James would inherit his father’s farm, and there would be nothing left for Michael. Five guineas seemed an enormous fortune, surely enough to set him up for life. He met up with the recruiting officer in a tavern, choked down his first drop of neat rum (trying his best to appear as if he were used to it), and lied about his age. Michael claimed to be the minimum age of sixteen, and the man did not trouble to question him too closely. The boy had a strong, healthy back and arms; such a young man was the ideal recruit, and the officer had no wish to disqualify him from the service. Both young men made their X's, kissed the King's shilling, took the promised five guineas and before they knew it, they were on their way to far-away Portsmouth to fulfill their promise of service. To Michael, who had never been in any city bigger than the provincial village near his home, Portsmouth seemed like the greatest metropolis in the world. It offered sights and sounds unlike anything he had imagined; the whores, he was sure, were the most beautiful women in the world (though he could not work up the courage to approach any of them, his mother’s teaching staying in his head at least this far). Everything glittered fresh and new in his eyes, and he could not be persuaded to see the sordid nature of the city no matter how Thomas tried to unblinker him. Not until Michael was cornered in a back alleyway by a lovely young woman not a year older than himself, kissed thoroughly in a way he had never dreamed or imagined, and left reeling for a full five minutes before he realised that the girl had picked his pocket and taken his whole fortune of five guineas, did Michael begin to figure out that Portsmouth was not in fact Paradise. He was glad enough to begin his first commission aboard HMS Antelope. Though it was a difficult transition for him into the discipline of the service, Quintin found it to his taste; there was enough stability in shipboard life to allow him to feel grounded, and yet enough variety in his environment at sea and when the ship came into new ports to make him decide that this was the best of all possible worlds. He served well and honourably to the end of Antelope’s active commission, and was then transferred to HM Frigate Pyramid for a short stint, until Pyramid was badly damaged in a storm and was forced into dry-dock for an expected several months. Quintin found himself aboard HMS Dauntless, bound for the Caribbean. The battalion of marines to which he was assigned was entirely new to him, having been re-assigned in the middle of a third commission in the Channel fleet. The battalion was under the command of a boozy captain from Yorkshire, which surprised Michael. He'd always had capable officers over him. The noncoms in charge of the various sections were no-nonsense marines, though. He found, also, to his great delight, that the corporal in charge of his squad was an Irishman called McIntyre, with whom he had served on board the Antelope during his first commission. McIntyre and Quintin had formed a close friendship, and they took up right where they had left off after Quintin was reassigned to the Pyramid. They arrived in Port Royal to garrison duty, which at first disappointed Quintin. They had no proper barracks, and had to get by in tents; the tropical heat was smothering, and disease carried off several of the men in the first few months. Not until Captain Collins arrived did the marines see a decent barracks built for them in Fort Charles. Quintin finally began to settle in properly. He endured the heat and nearly-endless monotony with his usual taciturn coolness and carried out religiously the day-to-day routine of patrols and sentry duty. The pattern was rarely broken, and the appearance, dramatic escape, and recapture of one Jack Sparrow all in one day was not something he considered particularly important. Well, if it hadn’t been a rather humiliating failure in marksmanship on his part, but Quintin got past that without too much difficulty. He had no idea what the pirate’s arrival would herald. The sudden and violent attack of the Black Pearl on Port Royal was the first major action since his first commission, and Quintin’s activities during the brief battle earned him a stay in the fort's hospital and two long scars across his back and side from a pirate's sword. The pirates would haunt his dreams for months afterwards; he clearly remembered shooting one dead in the face, only to see the man get up seconds later as if he were uninjured. Only the news that the Interceptor had been hijacked and stolen by Sparrow and the town’s blacksmith persuaded Quintin to rise from his hospital bed – though his injuries had not yet healed. He insisted that he was as good as new, and managed to talk his way back into active duty onboard Dauntless before she set out in pursuit of the uncanny pirate ship. Quintin nearly forgets the sequence of events that led to the Isla de Muerta; he will never forget the night attack at the cursed place, however. The silent passage in the ships’ boats to the island, with the metal of their bayonets dulled to hide the reflection in the moonlight, and then the interminable waiting for the attack…only to hear the sounds of conflict back at the Dauntless and the frenzied alarm of the ship’s bell, warning them that they had been tricked. Then Quintin remembers the marines’ clambering over the rail, boarding their own ship in the teeth of their own boarding-nets only to find themselves facing creatures out of a nightmare. The pirates, in the moonlight, were skeletal horrors with only gobbets of flesh and the ruins of clothing clinging to their bones. In the first moment of laying eyes on his enemies, Quintin could have thrown down his arms and run like a coward. Somehow, he did not; he found himself by pure accident as part of a square of marines that formed about the mainmast. Then fury took over, and Quintin fought like a devil against the creatures that never seemed to die. He lost track of anything else, until suddenly the pirates changed; they became men again, only mortal opponents, and his bayonet sunk in and this time there was blood. The pirates laid down their weapons and surrendered, but Davenport had to literally knock him over the head in order to stop him from going for the disarmed prisoners. After they returned home to Port Royal, Quintin almost welcomed the placid calm of island life. The embarrassing escape of Sparrow – for a second time- was not of much interest to him, laid up in hospital once again after the battle at the Isla de Muerta. He wouldn’t be able to attend to his duties again for nearly a month, during which time he luckily missed out on his mates’ shenanigans with Collins’ cane, as well as the flogging they received. Shortly after Quintin was once again fit for the service, he saw another disruption to his world. He and Higgins were patrolling the docks when what Quintin saw as the invasion began: Lord Cutler Beckett made his landing at the head of East India Company troops. Quintin roused the garrison, only to see the Company men become a fixture in the port. Over the next few weeks, Quintin’s powerful resentment towards the Company merchant marines festered and grew, until it broke out in violence in the King’s Shilling tavern when a few of the Company men pushed things a little too far. Quintin, a few of the lads, and some men from the Army regiments in Port Royal soundly defeated the Company men, stripped them naked, and marched them back to the docks where they forced them to present a humiliating salute to their master, Beckett. After this fiasco, Quintin and the others involved received a heavy flogging of fifty lashes each and the far-worse news that their beloved Captain of Marines, Jonathan Collins, was resigning his commission. The officer now in charge of them, Captain Forsythe, badly mishandled the situation and when news ran around the fort that he was cooking up a public-relations scheme to order the Port Royal marines to build a barracks for the Company men, the resentment boiled over into mutiny. Though Quintin remained loyal, the events that took place on Dauntless would break him down into a shadow of his former self. Sample/Past Roleplay: … Answer here if you give permission for a link to exist on the website to your bio: Ja |
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9:32 PM Sep 3
