Captain Fer
"Being a sailor means being on the lookout for pirates, but Captain Fer was the one nobody wanted to engage. He was bloodthirsty, and not just for a vampire."
Physical Description
General Physical Condition
Captain Fer, when last seen, was in an overall good physical condition even if the state of being was one of a person in distress. His left leg was broken, he was bleeding from his nose, left ear, and several cuts across his chest.
These injuries either happened during capture, or during the duration of his capture, but when pointed out that the blood would bring sharks to the ship, several more cuts were made to the back of both his arms.
Uninjured, Captain Fer is a tall man, thick as a barrel of beer, and able to life said barrel with one had. His legs are chiseled tree trunks, and his feet and hands could be used as shovels.
Identifying Characteristics
His size is his best identifying feature, but there are enough tattoos and cuts on exposed skin that a child could pick him out of a group of tall people.
Physical quirks
When angered, his fangs will pop out, but this is when his wrath is most fierce. Other than that, he doesn't have many physical quirks. (Most of his quirks are mental, such as stalking his prey).
Special abilities
Special abilities include the ability to ingest blood and grow healthy off of it. Other than that he has no way to use magic, and his intelligence is a result of genetics.
Apparel & Accessories
One of the clothing items that he wears is a heavy trench coat that is enough to drop an unsuspecting person to the floor if they don't know the weight. Most of Captain Fer's clothing was made to be comfortable and stand up to the damages of sea water + work.
His legs were cut wide and with slack so his thick legs experienced a bit of a breeze from the knee down, and his shirts were more like vests (but with the jacket they looked like a shirt).
He is a far cry from the urbanite vampires of the city, who have a tendency towards heavy use of makeup, tailored suits, and pointed shoes.
Accessory-wise, he doesn't wear jewelry, though there are rumors he has a necklace he hides beneath his shirt.
Specialized Equipment
There is a "cigar case" filled with test tubes of blood that Captain Fer will discretely sip at if he's thirsty. Nobody asked where the blood came from, and he doesn't divulge his secrets that easily.
Mental characteristics
Personal history
Captain Fer was born a small, sickly child in an ocean port, the youngest of five children. His mother was a fishmonger and travelled the length of the city to sell the fish that came in every evening.
His older siblings took up trade in either fishmongering or fishing, and for most of the day he was left alone to amuse himself. He started venturing outside when he was in his late teens, desperate to do something, and because he was so unassuming, he was allowed to wander wherever he wanted.
One day, when he was in a back alley, throwing stones at the cats who were after fish bones, he was noticed by a taller woman. She coaxed him over, and whispering into his ear, gave a slight nibble and shared the taste of blood that poured out. That day, he gained a taste for the blood he spent his life spilling.
With his mother and siblings out, Fer started sampling every bit of blood he could find locally - fish blood, cat blood, dog blood, but always drawing the line at human blood (with the exception of his own). The mysterious woman took a room in the middle of town and continued to teach him the best ways to draw blood, and other elements to mix it with to bring out more subtle tastes.
By the time Fer had reached his early twenties, he was looking less like himself and more like the rest of his family. He gained weight, muscles, and color. In fact, it looked as if he'd never been sick at all. Finally, his astonished family decided to hold a celebration for him, happy that whatever he'd been born with had finally decided to stop plaguing him.
The woman joined him for the celebration, and his older siblings made crude jokes about how "becoming a man" was what had cured him. They had drink, sweetbreads, and other foods... within the hour, everyone except Fer and the woman was sedated, sleeping where they had sat.
What happened next is a tale for the horror books, but one that is also recorded in history. He and the woman partook in their own celebration. They drained each body dry while the person was still sleeping, from the eldest in the room (Fer's mother Dermas, 88 years old) to the youngest (Fer's niece Susah, 2 years old).
This foul deed was not discovered until the next week, when the carcasses began to rot, but it was too late. The woman had left, and Fer (until his affirmation later), was considered murdered and hidden.
With that event, Fer became a vampire, and decided to be a captain of the seas in order to taste as many types of blood as possible.
Gender Identity
Captain Fer is male and uses the pronouns he/him. He presents himself in a very masculine manner, with a braided, bushy beard, slack-cut pants, and a great overcoat that is heavy enough to floor someone not ready for the weight.
Sexuality
"I have no hunger for flesh while I thirst for blood."Throughout his long life, Captain Fer took no lover or "partner."
Education
Fer was quick witted enough when he was younger, and his mother tried to pay for any schooling that she could (there were months when he went without). Due to that, he was better educated than his siblings, able to write his name while they could only have a X on the line.
After his transformation in to a vampire and his gains from piracy, Fer was able to give himself the gift of further education in whatever subject he wished.
Employment
Captain Fer, as he began to call himself, started with one boat and several loyal crew members willing to tell nary a soul that he was a vampire. They sailed, pillaged, and attacked other boats taking coin pleasure, and blood for themselves. At some points the boat turned into half vampires, but then they would arrive at a destination and disembark, spreading that line of vampires further and further.
He continued as a captain as his fleet grew bigger and bigger, and though the opportunity presented itself many times over, he never left the boat for long. He was still a pirate when he "died."
Accomplishments & Achievements
Captain Fer achieved leadership of an army that many others would say was made up of uncontrollable beings. He led them to be successful sailors who were welcomed in port because they respected the locals as well as feared pirates that roamed the seas.
At the end of his career, Captain Fer's assets listed, among the obscene amount of gold:
- Ownership of five islands
- Zero salves
- Twelve businesses
- Twenty-five ships in his armada
- More than 2,500 people who declared their allegiance to him
Failures & Embarrassments
Captain Fer, even as a man with as many accomplishments as he had, didn't not arrive at that amount without failures and embarrassments along the way:
- The pillage of Linasert (this was when he realized that the beings under his control needed directions not only on how to act with other crew members, but on how to act when they were raiding and pillaging) - a high-ranking officer led others to burn and murder several townspeople that were unwilling to pay tribute. The decision was a bad one made worse by the high wings and very flammable rooftop materials. Not only did many townspeople die, but so did much of his pirate crew.
- Captain Fer realized that he needed to drink blood quietly and without a fuss. Some of his pirates were fine with his actions and deeds, but superstitious about working for a vampire, and on more than one occasion they tried to use garlic, stakes, or sunlight to hurt him.
Mental Trauma
[Note - It's unknown what sort of actions or situations would account for mental trauma in a man who drank his family dry during a celebration of his health.]
Intellectual Characteristics
Captain Fer enjoyed the freedom (political, geographical, and financial) of being able to learn whatever he wanted. He had a sharp mind and was quick to drink in facts. He ended up speaking several languages and developing a slight native accent in all of them since he preferred method of learning was to station himself on a ship that was staffed only with speakers from nations that spoke that language.
Morality & Philosophy
Captain Fer's philosophy is if it something benefits him, then it's good for him. Mortality is something that only priests and children care for.
Taboos
Possibly going against his word. [Note - Not much is known to be a taboo to Captain Fer. Possibly eating the meat of other intelligent beings, but how far is that from drinking the blood of other intelligent beings?]
Personality Characteristics
Motivation
Captain Fer's motivation was to take what he wanted. After he was caught though, his motivations changed to survival. If he has survived, who's to say what his motivation would be now?
Likes & Dislikes
Likes
- Pasta and other noodles
- Blood
- Sailing the seas
- People deferring to him
- Getting what he wants
- Unhygienic people
- People who act to only injure, wound, or kill others
- Stupid people who waste his time
- People who don't obey his orders
Virtues & Personality perks
The Captain was not a villainous man, and had his virtues and perks too. When he was raiding a town or settlement, he made sure there was as little death and fire as possible (mayhem was another thing altogether).
He listened to people in his crew, no matter how old they were, their gender, or even their lack of experience (though he drew the line when the person didn't talk to someone with experience before coming to him - if both of them approached, he was all ears since he knew it would improve something they used daily).
In addition to all that, he did more than the average person during that time period when it came down to asking consent and respecting boundaries.
Vices & Personality flaws
While his motivation was more "get everything he wants" he went about this in ways that would leave scars across coastal communities. If he thought there was a bright child that needed to be "freed" from the town or settlement, he "freed" them by taking them aboard his boat. The same went with husbands and wives who were in toxic relationships, but he never stopped to think about how this kidnapping would change them. Several that he "rescued" eventually found their freedom at the bottom of the ocean.
Flaws would be that he didn't listen to others unless he liked the idea already, and that if he didn't like the idea he still didn't listen (which, in one case, led to a ship "greeting" a typhoon).
Personality Quirks
One of his quirks was to following a "new blood" to their haunts and homes for a few days before offering them the choice to consent to a biting, or for him to make a cut and let their blood drip into one of the tubes he carried on him for that purpose. While most people didn't see this as really a "choice," Fer said that it was: a person was choosing to give consent or they were choosing to not give consent. When someone pointed out that a choice made under duress wasn't a choice at all, Captain Fer was reported to have replied "It's better than having no choice at all." And that was when the good captain followed that person for a while before bleeding them a bit (they refused to agree).
Hygiene
Unlike many of the people that he grew up with, Captain Fer was interested in bathing daily, and if he had to skip one, then at least twice in a three-day period. He kept his beard and hair oiled, perfumed, and combed, with ribbons festooned in the braids, and made sure his laundry was done while he was washing. [Note: thanks to him, in that time period there were a lot more pirates washing up than there had been before. None of them wanted to run afoul his temper by "smelling wrong" or "looking nasty."]
Most of his bathing was done in the ocean, where he would leap (naked) from the stern of the ship and jump into the waters no matter which ocean they were currently sailing in. He also made sure to brush his teeth on a regular basis, another habit that was picked up by the crews he sailed with (one scholarly thought was that he went from ship to ship not for language practice, but to influence his underlings to be hygienic).
Social
Religious Views
Captain Fer, at least publicly, didn't show any inclination toward religions, however, every port he stopped into he bought a good luck charm from the market. These covered the interior wall of his cabin, almost eliminating any "white space."
Social Aptitude
The captain had a huge ego, but with it was enough charisma to float a ship, and the etiquette he demanded from himself and his sailors made him a famous pirate (famous as in, "I'd rather be raided and pillaged by him.").
Using the social aptitude he had on hand, he was able to evade capture for a long time because people always went out of their way to help the "devil they knew."
Circumstances of Death
He was thrown overboard the Siren and given to the Sea Goddess to judge. His body was never seen again.
Children
Gender
male
Eyes
One white, one black
Hair
Long, sleek, and usually tied into two braids
Skin Tone/Pigmentation
Tanned skin festooned with rope marks, scars, and wounds
Quotes & Catchphrases
"A life spent staying in one place is a life not lived, and that goes doubly so for the actions a person takes in life."
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