Youth and Navy Days (Arc 668-685)
Liam Lowe came to adulthood on the frosty and harsh shores of Scalvoris. As a boy he had been a lowly son of a dock wench and some unknown sailor. While he was common to the mud, Liam had always been eerily handsome. It earned him the nickname Lovely Liam as a young dockhand, at which he worked from dawn til dusk to help his mother. Like most boys growing up with a whore for a mother and sailors as role models Liam’s peerless face was contrasted with a foul mouth and a violent and troubled attitude.
He would fight and steal, born with a chip on his should and a fiery passion. When his mother died when he was twelve Liam decided to abandon the dead end town to which he had been tied. He attempted to buy passage on a Scalvoris Navy ship and was instead press ganged into service. As it turned out Liam did not mind the life of a sailor, taking to the craft quickly. He handled the ship as if he had been born to it, and in those early days along the coast of Scalvoris a deep need was born in him. A need for freedom and adventure, a need for the high sea.
While he was a good sailor, he was not a good soldier. Liam was constantly getting into trouble with his superiors for belligerence, gambling, and fighting. He lacked a certain conformity that was needed in a good navy man, and it meant there was always friction between Liam and his superiors. Liam was a great sailor though, and picked up rank quickly only to be busted down time after time because of some misdeed.
He spent two arcs aboard a schooner named Brinebreaker with a small crew, learning the craft and patrolling the coastlines for pirates who were not on the government payroll and protecting the fishermen of Scalvoris. There he picked up the shortsword and found it an exciting and diverting pastime in what he considered a rather boring duty station. There weren’t many times when the Brinebreaker was far enough from the Scalvoran coast to lose sight of it. The small crew was made up of the old sailors and the young inexperienced ones, of whom Liam was the youngest, the wildest, and the most restless. In those early days he was a constant headache to the poor captain of that battered old schooner and his first mate.
Eventually they found a bit of excitement in the form of a set of sloops. They were manned by disgruntled fishermen who had taken up arms and meant to plunder. Piracy was common along the coast of Scalvoris in those days, back before the place had been purged of those bilge-hearted miscreants. But two sloops of fishermen with daggers and fishing harpoons were hardly something of note, so they sent the Brinebreaker. That was a formative moment for the young Liam, because it was his first taste of battle.
The sloops were easy to find, they couldn’t go far from the coastline, for they were slight little things meant for hauling nets. When Brinebreaker found the pair they were racing hard into a cruel winter wind, their small sails battered by Delroth’s breath. When they saw the larger schooner they went about and armed themselves. The ships spread to board the schooner on port and starboard and Liam and the crew made ready for a defense. Each sloop carried five men, and the schooner carried twelve.
The newly minted pirates brailed up their sails and crowded that bulwark which was closest to the Brinebreaker with harpoons and daggers in hand. They screamed their anger at Liam and the rest of the crew and in good naval fashion the Scalvorans screamed insults back. That was when it happened. The first time Liam felt the pull of the power within him, like a hidden current beneath the surface. He leapt the short distance onto the sloop before they could board the Brinebreaker. Liam fought with a ferocity that caused the fishermen to pause long enough to allow the rest of the crew to dive down howling their own battlecries.
He was not, alas, very experienced in combat. The young mortalborn was overwhelmed by the fishermen and one got a lucky jab to his shoulder with a harpoon, cutting deep. Liam was forced back and had to be rescued by his shipmates. He slouched against the small bulwark of the sloop and dripped blood from his shoulder into the water. That was when it happened, the moment Liam knew he was not like others. He felt the surge of power run through him and he laughed as he released it. The water lurched beneath the small sloop and there was an explosive splash as the boat lurched. A fine spray of water landed on the deck and seemed the trick abnormally toward Liam. The stuff clumped oddly, like he had never seen before. Liam watched as it coagulated into a ring of salt around where he slumped.
Everyone was so stunned that they just stared at the softly chuckling young sailor. It gave his compatriots enough time to seize the opportunity to gut the rebellious fishermen. That began the odd rumors about the young sailor who seemed to carry a power over the sea. From that moment on Liam found the land repulsive and slowly weakening. He spent more and more time aboard Brinebreaker and eventually was transferred to a larger ship called Creststrider.
Creststrider was a warship. As a brig ship it carried many sailors, and once again Liam was butting heads with a new crew and a new set of officers. Eventually Liam’s need to be at sea and his agitation at his superiors made the young sailor stir crazy. Forcing him to be on the ship more and more and in the presence of the men and women he so detested. It wasn’t that they were bad people, they were just constrained by the law and utterly ordinary. He wanted adventure and glory, and they preached duty and sacrifice. He sought a way to rid himself of the Elements Navy of Scalvoris once and for all. Liam began thinking about jumping ship. He had never left Scalvoris before, but in that winter so long ago, while the Creststrider was confined to the docks and he to it, Liam decided he would take the next opportunity to be free.
It came that springtime, when the ocean calmed and the world thawed. The captain took Creststrider out on a mission to reacquaint his sailors with the sea, turning prow to cruise along the entirety of the Scalvoris coast. It would be a long trip, or so they thought. Pirates appeared on the horizon. They were desperate after a hard winter of freezing and starving, and they were hungry. The two schooners were already pulling up on the merchant Cog when the lookout atop the rigging of Creststrider shouted sight. The bell for stations sounded and Liam took up his lines and pulled the sail to height with a thrill in his heart. This part, he enjoyed.
Two schooners was nothing, the massive Creststrider could take them easily. As the wind tugged the ship along they were all surprised to see both schooners waiting for them. Surely a couple dozen men at most would see certain death sailing at them. Liam, by this point, had spent three arcs aboard the Creststrider and knew her deadly capability. When the Elements ship pulled up astride the cog they threw lines across. They were pulling in to lay the planks when the ship erupted with crossbow fire.
The battle that ensued was nasty and short. The pirates had not come across the cog by chance, it had been a trap. The men aboard all lay in wait and sprang to when the brig was too close to push off. They killed two dozen men in that first volley. The rest of the pirates stormed aboard and gained the deck too easily. They killed any who fought. Liam, who was by then a decent swordsman, was left in the lower deck with the captain and a few other stalwart men. Unwilling to yield the ship, the last of the crew readied themselves for a last stand. They faced off across the bilge against the hard faces of the pirates whose captain roared insults.
Until Liam grabbed the Creststrider’s captain from behind and set his shortsword against the man’s throat. The young sailor said he’d kill the man if the crew did not surrender. In the end they did, with the pirates roaring with laughter. Liam traded the lives of his crew and their ship for his own life and freedom. From that moment on Liam Low was a pirate. The capture of an Elements brig ship was a story that spread around Scalvoris rapidly. Soon Liam’s new captain, a man named ‘Spicy’ Geoff Ramsor, decided to turn south into the deep sea.
When he asked where they were going, Captain Spicy, named so on account of his fiery red hair, chuckled and threw a small reddish coin at Liam. It had a knotwork octopus on it.
“Blackbrine, home of all free sailors.” Spicy had said. Blackbrine would become Liam’s true home, outlasting his time aboard Unrelenting with Captain Spicy, and all the ships that came after. He was seventeen when he became a pirate.
Captain Ramsor and the Unrelenting (Arc 685-692)
Liam grew in skill and confidence under Captain Ramsor’s tutelage and that of the other pirates of the Unrelenting. They were a vicious lot that dealt in stolen goods, slaves, and other nefarious misdeeds. Ramsor flew the Leviathan and remained loyal to Blackbrine and the Brineborn, but he hired his ship out to the different pirate crews. Liam fit in well, gambling and drinking with the men on their off hours. He did not feel the sickness when revelling in Blackbrine, for it was on the water and he could consume the seawater whenever he needed to by simply lowing a bucket. He tried to never let anyone see him do so, but the rumor abounded anyway.
He learned to fight and to pirate, he learned to sail the open ocean. He learned all this and more from Ramsor and his crew. He learned what love is half a dozen times, and heartbreak to boot all at the hands of the ladies of Blackbrine. He learned the ports and trade routes of the Orm’del and how to recognize ships by their rigging and sails.
He made a modest name for himself as a pirate and a loyal friend to the men aboard Unrelenting. They fought many battles at sea and ran a long a healthy course as a successful crew. But as the men grew older and more weathered, and young men joined the crew, Liam did not age. He remained the young man he had always been. He found it just as odd as any man who commented, and wondered if it had something to do with the peculiar powers he had by now learned to hide unless in the direst circumstances. They called him Saltdrinker by then, even the younger men who knew not why. He was only twenty-five and thus his youthful appearance was not more than a mere peculiarity at that point.
Nevertheless, Liam found it prudent to move on. He began looking for other employment, knowing his reputation as an able bodied and skillful sailor would find him work. Spicy, by now grey of hair, heard of this and confronted Liam. The two came to blows over it and Spicy banished Liam from his ship forevermore. Liam, now a know enemy of the Unrelenting, was limited in the captains bold enough to take him. Eventually he was hired by one of Spciy’s old enemies, Rose Mevery.
The Blackrose (Arc 692-697)
The Blackrose as she was called because her hair was raven dark and her heart blacker still. Her ship bore the same name. Blackrose flew the flags of the Leviathan and the Black Widow. She traded poisons and pirated Rhakrosi ships. It was said her husband had cheated on her while she was away, back when she was a mere merchant, and she murdered him and his mistress. Her crew was almost all men, and they feared her as much as anything else in Idalos.
They were without mercy in their slaughter of Rhakrosi, the Blackrose being Rhakrosi herself. The time aboard The Blackrose was one of jarring bloodiness for Liam. It jaded him, but forged in him a cold heart to protect himself against the atrocities of the open ocean. During those arcs he grew vicious in his combat, and employed the nefarious trickery of his captain and her crew. They sailed mostly in southern and western lands.
Eventually, though, Blackrose’s viciousness became known. A merchant cog they set upon was heavy with mercenaries. They poured out from bellow deck like rats from a trash heap. They routed the pirates, who had been expected an easy prize and got a bitter fight. Blackrose fell with a cutlass through her chest and her men were falling fast. The mercenaries, unconcerned with a prize themselves, had thrown torches and flaming arrows aboard the Blackrose. Liam escaped by diving into the sea and clinging to a clump of driftwood.
He drank seawater to survive and hoped none had noticed his flight. He drifted for trials and was baked by the sun. He survived longer than a normal man would though, because the saltwater nourished him. Liam Low survived the massacre of The Blackrose. He was found five trials later, nearly starved and exhausted, by a merchant ship headed for Volanta. The merchant believed Liam a young sailor who had been set upon by pirates. Liam encouraged that belief once he was strong enough to speak again.
At Volanta he thanked the merchant and departed to search the port for a likely pirate ship to take him home to Blackbrine. Eventually he found a captain named Pheron Pilver who bore a faded inky tattoo of an octopus on his sun-tanned shoulder. Liam presented him with one of the Blackbrine coins and asked for assistance going home.
Captain Pilver and the Windborn (Arc 697-708)
Pilver turned out to be a kind man and a good leader. After the cruelty and violence of the Blackrose, Liam was eager for someone who concerned himself with stuffing his ship with rum and profit rather than the blood of his enemies. Pilver occasionally took prized of lesser ships, but mostly ran an extensive smuggling trade across western and southern Idalos. He treated Liam like a young, wet-behind-the-ears sailor because that was what he looked like. Liam was now twenty-nine arcs old but appeared to be a youthful twenty at most.
Soon Pilver realized Liam was as able a seaman as any of his men. Liam relished his time with Pilver, who flew the Leviathan and the Wanderer flags when in port in Blackbrine. They were a friendly lot, and taught him much about smuggling and where to find what fence in cities all along the western coasts. Liam found a girl aboard Windborn and they spent many nights together. But eventually she left to seek her fortune elsewhere. They had a brief row when Liam told her his true mistress was the sea and he would never leave her. That night he had drunk himself into a stupor and went with Pilver to get tattoos. He had the man ink a map of the Orm’del onto his left forearm so that he could always know where his heart belonged. It marks each city with a skull and tentacles seem to grip the coast in places.
Liam thrived on the ship, becoming a well known and well liked member of the crew. He even served to lead shifts at times and command a few of the smaller craft once captured by Windborn, until they could be navigated back to Blackbrine and sold. Pilver and the crew began calling him Saltdrinker, which shocked Liam. He wondered if they were old enough to remember a crewman from Unrelenting who drank seawater so long ago. It was impossible, that sailor had been a young man, and surely Liam would have been nothing more than a little welp at the time.
Liam grew to think of the crew as a family, the like of which he had only come close to aboard Unrelenting. Alas, all good things… Pilver died on the eleventh arc after Liam joined the crew from nothing more than heart failure. They gave him a burial at sea and the Wanderers pressured the first mate, a man named Frank Rottem, to come command one of their brigs, where the Windborn was a cog. When Frank left, Jess ‘Jackel’ Ackel became captain. She was bold and wanted to make a name for herself.
Captain Jackel sailed them out into a storm one evening, hoping her bold tactics would pay off and create a reputation for her amongst the more seasoned captains of Blackbrine. But the storm was sent by the Immortal Chrien, it must have been. It broke against Windborn port side over and over again. The hull was empty of treasure and the ship rocked dangerously. Eventually Liam and the quartermaster, a stout woman named Pen, argued their captain into consenting to abandon ship. The crew fled away from the Windborn, which was now taking on water at a dangerous rate, her stern almost level with the water.
So Liam found himself without ship or captain or crew once again, on the planked gangways of Blackbrine.
Various Other Ships and the Westward (Arc 708-718)
Liam spent the next few arcs bouncing around to different ships and different crews. He saved his money and fostered a hope to one day have his own ship, a true home and a true freedom. He no longer found an enemy with the Unrelenting, Ramsor being in his salty grave amongst the fishes now. He even crewed her a few times over the arcs, never recognized as the same young pirate who had once spurned their dead captain. But it was not the same crew any longer, and he felt less inclined to stay.
He bounced about the different factions of Blackbrine and eventually found the Westward a small cog with a pleasant enough female captain named Natalie Forense. She flew the Leviathan of course, and the old Harbringer Hawk flag as well. Liam found her utterly beautiful and signed onto her small crew before he could really think about it. His time there was spent running the old familiar smuggling routes and setting upon unsuspecting merchant vessels.
While he loves the Westward and is grateful to Captain Forense for the hammock she gives him every night aboard her ship, he still dreams of his own ship. He still dreams of finding his truth and figuring out who he really is…
