Hylmer

Red Crest Islands by Naelin

The biggest of Karte's Kingdom national enemies is a man of sad and tired eyes that can be usually found looking to the sea from the railings of the Beheaded, the Irate flagship, or looking to its main mast, where the skull of the beheaded prince Kuja is exposed, tied near the base.

A lifetime of fleeing

Hylmer, a furry societarian of horse phenotype and black hair, was born on the Red Crest Islands on 9/4/2960 E.Alz, and lived for his first two decades on a tiny fisher town on the southern coast of the island. His family was poor and struggled to maintain a living, and he grew surrounded by the town's resentment of the ever more restrictive laws and taxes imposed by Merthiorn, the kingdom they were a colony of. Like most of his family, he became a fisherman and a sailor, trading the day's work with the towns at Merthiorn's northern coasts and with Red Crest's inland settlements.
His parents died early on, both before he turned 20, and he and his sister went to live with an aunt, with which he formed a terrible relationship. He usually tried to "escape" the house and roamed the streets of the town for hours. Early on, he started spending most of his money on all kind of distractions from drugs to prostitutes.
On 2985 E.Alz, the same year Red Crest became a principality, Hylmer was coming back from one of the "long routes" to the northwest of Merthiorn, when a pirate ship intercepted them and demanded their earnings. Hylmer saw a sudden opportunity and, giving his back to the other fishermen, asked to join the crew and immediately gave away the location of the hidden portion of the ship's treasure. That was the start of Hylmer's life aboard the pirate ship called Wild Goes Faster, captained by a slightly younger but fearsome rat woman called Heliom.

The Raising

Hylmer grew on his reputation on the crew of the Wild Goes Faster for his dexterity and knowledge of the sea and for the first time in life, he made himself likeable to his workmates. Rough times came when the king of Karte, Rastapuj, organized an active and quite successful "pirate hunt" on the seas of the archipelago, and him and his crew were face to face with death more than once.
At the worst of this war on piracy, Heliom, his captain, decided to make a definitive hit on Karte: She spent time and effort reuniting other pirate captains to organise a raid into Karte's capital, Dia, with the specific purpose of capturing Rastapuj's most precious thing: His son, heir to the throne, the prince Kuja.
Along with other people of similar abilities, Hylmer was chosen to infiltrate Dia's royal palace and kidnap the kid, that was then 14 years old. The day of the assault, the pirate's best assassins went into the palace, entering through all openings, but it was Hylmer who managed to find and capture the young prince, and, in a feat of both luck, ability, and the shared efforts of the team of pirate raiders that ambushed his pursuers, fled with his and Kuja's life in his hands.

Flag of the Irates by Naelin

Hylmer was able to make the pursuers lose his track and reached shore in which the main force of pirates was waiting on a captured ship. He handed Kuja over and spent the next days on the captured ship, torturing the prince alongside the rest of the pirates. At the immediate moment that the forces from Karte found the ship, Hylmer handed the prince over to a pirate woman who shown the bruised and injured kid to the Kartian military and then proceeded to behead him on front of them and throw the body overboard keeping the head as a treasure, and so the pirates fled the scene.
After this incident the guild of the Irates was born and Hylmer gained an enormous recognition, becoming the captain of the Wild Goes Faster, as Heliom moved to captain the captured ship, renamed the Beheaded.

I've grown harder on the eyes and salty on the taste
My pride has gone with the wake as I wait a cold wet grave
I rose to the smell of a wet desert hell
And I thought to myself how'd I wind up in this jail
Till a voice called to me from deep within the sea
"Dry your eyes my dear fisherman, your ass belongs to me"

— Flogging Molly, "Cruel Mistress"

Phenotype
Horse

Alignment

Neutral Evil

Currently Boarded Vehicle

Beheaded

Species

Societarians

Age

63

Date of Birth

9 of Burning, 2960 E.Alz

Birthplace

Red Crest Islands

Current Residence

Irate Hideout

Sex

Male

Aligned Organization

Irates

Related Historical Events

• 8 E.Alz
  The Irates assault the city of Dia
• 11 E.Alz
  Kartian War on Pirates
• 54 E.Alz
  Birth of Hylmer

"If things had been different..."

Tomorrow smells of less decay
The flowers greet this blooming fray
Be thankful, that's all you can
Oh, but don't, don't sink the boat
That you built, you built to keep afloat
A ripe old age, a ripe old age
I'm a ripe old age, that's what I am
I'm a ripe old age, a ripe old age
A ripe old age, just doing the best I can

— Flogging Molly, "Float"

Hylmer did a good job on his new life as a captain... for a time.
In a very short span of time, he seemed to grow a lot older. While he never spoke of what was going through his mind to the crew, some clever folk figured out that he had started to avoid any children they found among the crews of the ships they raided.
Just two years after the assassination of the prince, he met with Heliom on the Irate Hideout, an island south of Thaur, and asked to join back under her command.
The Wild Goes Faster was given to his second, and he joined the crew of the Beheaded.

While his fame didn't leave him, he grew weary, pensive and melancholic, though he never stopped showing his brave and savage side during raids, or pulling his weight on the ship.
He talks very little to the rest of the crew, though some brave folk had confided to others to have eavesdropped his continuous conversations with Heliom while they looked to the sea over the railings, and hearing him say "She calls me, Heliom"

"Be proud of your part in it, it wasn't easy"

— Fallen London, "If things had been different"