Captain Sam (W.I.P)

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IamLEAM1983
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Captain Sam (W.I.P)

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Name: Samigina \ Captain Sam \ Davey Jones
Age: over 3000 years old
Gender: male
Species: nonhuman, demon

Strengths: beginning life on the mortal plane as Solomon's maritime advisor, the end of the Elder Statesman's life saw him being entrusted with more than simple political advice. A demon having essentially fallen in love with the sea's offered freedom, the last gift he received from Solomon before his death involved his being proclaimed as the watcher and protector of innocent souls riding the waves, as well as the embodiment of the spirit of naval adventure. Pirates old and new are conscripted into his fleet upon death, maintaining their own captainship while still ultimately answering to the Last Flotilla and its commander.

While Matriel controls the Domain of Water, Sam embodies Piracy in all its literal forms, both old and new – and specifically the more romantic and noble aspects of swashbuckling. A crafty sea dog who's sailed with Vikings, Caribbean pirates and Somali coastal raiders alike, Solomon's maintained aegis drives him to twist these dead miscreants and murderers into unseen watchdogs and bodyguards, cursing newly resurrected maritime ruffians to an eternity of service atop the seven seas – with a single yearly leave of one week for them to enjoy, to any and all ports they may choose. Their destroyed ships rise from the waves by his command, with mutiny condemning offending parties to slow and inexorable decay. He also controls specific spells put in place by Meris' predecessor long ago, ancient Veils designed to hide perilous shores from mortal eyes. It can involve something as subtle as visually exaggerating dangerous reefs to make mortal sailors slip past them, or as complex as shielding entire islands from view and mortal attention alike.

His domain over plunder-rich waters also extends beneath the waves: Sam can choose to ignore water's buoyancy and to sink like a stone, moving and breathing underwater as though he were standing on the surface. Drowning him forcefully is a virtual impossibility, as well. Not only is he immune from asphyxia, he can also choose to allow Nature to resume her course around him, and to swim away to safety. His cutlass is rust-proof by Solomon's decree, just as his flintlocks are never rendered useless, even if they're fully immersed in water for long periods of time. Also by the Statesman's decree, Samigina lives free of the restrictions placed on most demons, and is in no need of a mortal coil. He also is the only one who enjoys unlimited leave time – at least in theory – and who can choose to extend a worthy crewmate's shore leave.

As you could expect, his relationship with the world's seas is comparable to the dynamics of an actual couple. His love of the open air is obvious, beachfronts serve as an excuse to frolic with his metaphorical beloved, he argues with her when nasty weather makes sailing difficult – and she confides in him in a very literal sense. Sam's compass points to Adventure in the literal sense, and he instinctively knows the location of every sought-after wreck and buried treasure. As you could expect, many mages sought to gain Naberius' favor in order to use the Old Sea Devil as a way to get rich with relatively little effort. Unfortunately...
Weaknesses: Sam's interest doesn't lie with gold or fineries, or luxury cars stored away in shipment containers. His plunder of choice is Adventure in all its forms, preferrably atop the waves, but also sometimes on solid ground. Those who join the Last Fleet are condemned to haul their last cargo – or at the very least, an unalterable shade of it – and to be unable to ever find takers for it. Every last item the Fleet guards is cursed, each of them waiting to punish still-living pirates or other criminal purchasers for their greed or hubris. It isn't so much of a problem for Sam, but the Fleet is virtually sitting on billions of dollars that simply can't be safely tapped into. To compensate, every new acquisition is let out on shore leave at least once, with a crewman being asked to record the nature of the new object's curse. Sam's first mate keeps a log of every last item hauled by the Fleet, which in turn is offered to the current Heir or Heiress of Solomon at regular intervals.

Similarly, members of the Last Fleet couldn't hope to resume their pillaging of coastal towns postmortem, as Solomon's decree and Sam's authority as the Fleet's commander both keep its ships only partially accreting into the mortal plane. Sam's hundreds of ships have been sliding across the Earth's waters for centuries, immaterial for all intents and purposes, only ever coming into view as hallucinations suffered by castaways and the last ships drowned pirates will ever see.

Innocents cannot be helped, even if the Fleet glides right past a sinking cruise ship. Samigina was forced to watch, helpless, as the Titanic sank. With none of the survivors being deserving of an unending naval campaign, he and his crew and fellow captains could only take stock. The only exceptions to this rule involve Solomon and his Heirs, as well as any Heir's close associates.

While most crewmembers can only enjoy one yearly week off, Samigina can take shore leave as long and as often as he needs, considering how his being available for summons would be difficult to ensure otherwise. The catch is that his love of the sea is so deep, so profound, that prolonged isolation or removal from easy access to shorelines quickly saps away at his powers. Two weeks can go by easily enough, but a month on lubber territory makes him testy. Six weeks make him irascible and two months will drive him absolutely mad. Beyond that, homicidal rage and escape attempts fade away as weakness settles in, with the ordinarily blustery sea dog being reduced to weeping pleas. His physical form withers away following the same timelapse, with the release of a final death being forbidden to him. Eventually, reduced to a dehydrated husk, it'll be up to Meris or her allies to find and rescue him and to restore him to the waves.

Considering, one of the dangers old Davey Jones has regularly had to face involved greedy sailors ready to lock him in their ward and rune-festooned brig for indefinite time periods if only to rip out the locations of various buried treasures from him. The farther away from the shore he goes, the weaker he grows. Having been locked in a box in the basement of Havana's abandoned colonial brig for two years in the early 1910s, he's also developed a rather mundane, if rather crippling case of claustrophobia. Pair that with his physical degeneration in this situation, and you end up with a positively nightmarish situation that could feasibly occur once again, if not several times more.

Otherwise, fatally injuring his physical form on solid ground essentially dispels him, causing him to “respawn” miles away and back aboard the Flying Dutchman. Unlike other demons, however, he hasn't entirely left the mortal plane since Solomon bestowed the Gift of the Seas onto him. Less severe injuries heal in ways that mostly mirror mundane regenerative abilities, unless a skilled Cantor or common physician intervenes. Sickness might not be a problem, but infections can still take hold.

Extreme displays of faith, either religious, rational or scientific, can still upset him to a degree, while his alignment with Solomon's favored causes of old makes it so only particularly regressive displays trigger violent reactions in him.

Appearance: recent movies have seemingly been cribbing from the wrong influences, if you by what the Lesser Key suggests. Far from a Chtulhu-esque mutant creature, the personalized nemesis and hound of pirates the world over resembles more an extreme case of anthropomorphic and ichtian features combined, with a quick jaunt into the aesthetic territory generally left to the Pit's denizens.

Having begun life as a spawn of Leviathan, Samigina has sometimes been erroneously identified as one of Finfolkaheem's Servitors, which does have its perks. With his dull scales of a pale green, large and expressive yellow eyes, a twin set of slits for a nose and a mouthful of teeth fitting of a shark, he does pack quite a few aquatic cues that don't have much in common with the Black Goat's neck of the woods. Add to that expressive lips and a stubbornly maintained chin curtain of a dull grey sheen he keeps falling down to his sternum's tip, and you end up with a face that manages to evoke this Eldritch fleet commander's long years, as well as his expansive personality and generous stores of energy. With slightly bony facial features and a muscle distribution resembling what you'd see on middle-aged men of respectable tone, he seems to pack the kind of insolent and rock-solid bill of health some career alcoholics and daredevils sometimes display. The only indication of prior or current excesses you'll find is his reasonably small beer gut, always carefully cinched by his pantaloons' thick belt and decently covered by a sixteenth-century white linen shirt that's seen better days.

As could be expected, his wardrobe followed his preferred theme. There was a time in which Meris might remember seeing Sam as more of a Viking expy or one of Singapore's own swashbucklers, but he seems to have quite deliberately reverted back to the codes that characterized the Golden Age of Piracy in the Carribbean. The laddies like it best, as he puts it, and he does like to watch happy families enjoying themselves during a beach party, spyglass in hand and several knots away from the shore.

A featureless red bandana usually covers his bald pate, while it largely serves in order to protect his head from his tricorn hat's brim. A heavy and liberally embroidered and festooned dark blue frock coat goes over his white shirt, with six flintlock braces crisscrossing his chest under it. Slung to his right and under one of his coat's flaps is his cutlass' hoop, his midsection being sharply defined by the huge and lavishly engraved belt buckle covering it. Black britches wait underneath, along with high-brimmed boots showing the folded collar so common in footwear of the era. “Function over form” seems to characterize most of his apparel, as only the frock shows signs of anything resembling honest care. One look at him makes it clear he's a rather frugal type who more than likely snorted at the occasional errant privateer's lacy and embroidered excess.

An unusually corporeal Fiend, he is one of the rare cases of a demon showing scars on its own form. The sea seems to have been a harsh wife in his first few years, as bite marks and whip tracks cover his chest and arms by the dozen. As for the chin curtain, it seems to have been grown in order to conceal the myriad failed throat-slash attempts he's had to endure.

Otherwise, a good look is all you need in order to realize that all this time spent at sea has left him slightly unhinged. There a kind of energy to him that speaks of a deep-seated need to put himself in the line of fire, to drag friends along for an adventure or to at least find an excuse to party hard. Again, all you need is a single one of his half-smiles, half-leers to find out that his definition of fun is raucous, boozy, crude, preferably dangerous and ideally scheduled to last until the wee hours of the morning.
Behavior: of course, a lot of Samigina's summoners only get to see this particular side of the man. He leans in, cutlass drawn and paces at the limits of his summoning circle, snarls under his breath and curses your name, promising that he'll send sea-borne plagues your way for daring to interrupt his business – and then bursts out laughing at the sight of the look of concern or sheer terror that might be waiting on your face. Turns out he was pulling your leg, and is actually glad to be of service.

At least, in theory. If you're close to Solomon's Heir, then it's true. Captain Sam's shared a few nautical miles with Meris in the past, along with a few rum bottles and a couple dozen stories. Having seen her die under the Chamberlain's blade and having done all that he could to leave her enough time to complete her Ascension ritual, he's been known to display fierce levels of loyalty and dedication, and has been revealed to the roane as being someone you're stuck befriending for centuries on end. A terrible friend only in the sense that he enjoys pranking or infuriating those he cares about, this party animal can nonetheless turn dead-serious if the circumstances call for it. He wouldn't be much of a fleet commander, otherwise, or couldn't have convinced a few contentious undead captains to graft their own vessels to his band of roving supernatural ruffians.

As said above, he's also deeply enamored with the sea – this meaning all of the world's seas. Giving credence to the romantic image of the old pirate staring intently into the horizon with a look of hermetic satisfaction and deep longing combined, he doesn't so much love what is Matriel's to control as he does what it contains. Storms and shipwrecks, forgotten lore and loot alike, tranquil days and tempestuous nights – he'll sometimes openly claim that the sea speaks to him, and that more often than not, her words would drive a man mad with desire. Storms become heated arguments, his words passing through the Dutchman's wheel, while dead summertime hours with still waters and crippling heat are interpreted as lifeless passages in his seemingly eternal romance with the open tides. He orders the Dutchman and the rest of the fleet to dive beneath the waves with an almost lustful snarl, or braves the worst of all maritime weather events as if to prove that their relationship can stand its test. Davy Jones reads the waves intently, like a lover might the loved one's lips, and tries to instill his respect of the rising tides and withdrawals of the waves to each and every crewman and newly-conscripted captain. The waters that lie between the Shadowlands and the mortal plane are less predictable than those his men travelled in their life, and untold horrors slip away in the darkness. The waking world may never have harbored anything as fantastical as the Kraken, but the liquid borderlands of Faerie and the shores of the Far Reaches shelter all those things fevered men of the sea dreamed up in their spells of cabin fever...

Like any lover, he's also fiercely protective of his bride. Abusive tanker pilots, carelessly-managed oil rigs or defective sewage ejection stations can all incite his anger, as does human traffic and the poaching of maritime wildlife. As he considers that his fleet's endless patrols are keeping the mortals safe from what lurks in the edges of their world, anyone who needlessly endangers the mortal plane's residents also earn his ire. Unlike actual pirates, he does give credence to the notion of there being a code of honor among the Fleet's members, with young and innocent mortal lives being deserving of unseen and unfelt protection – Heaven's pleas for mortal independence be damned. He'll never twist an innocent mortal's hand, but if he finds himself in a position that would allow him to tangibly help people, he more than gladly will take action. Summon him in order to stop him from doing so, and you'll quickly find out what it means to incite a Court member's ire.

Considering, there's no shortage of pride in his actions, something recently-deceased modern ship thieves tend to realize as half of them gets hauled out of the drink by gaffs or nets thrown overboard – while their mortal half is left behind to drown. The punishment he inflicts to these people might initially seem severe, but he oftentimes ends up saving oblivious idiots from an eternity spent drowning within Leviathan's shores.

In Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, Samigina's fictitious counterpart asks rescued castaways if they fear death. Acquiescence earns them servitude, while negation seals their fate. The Davy Jones Meris might remember is fond of asking the same question, but with differing answers in mind. A man who fears death will never understand the Last Fleet's virtues of self-sacrifice. One who does not will throw himself against the steepest of waves if it means some damned shoreline will go on ignored by mortals underserving of its offered calamities, or if ramming an ignited tanker will save millions of lives by preventing an even worse blast from occurring.

There's a kind of madness at play if you're willing to go up against the worst of Mab's aquatic ilk far away from any continent in Faerie, or if almost piercing the Darkhallow's veil is something you can consider with a level head. Samigina might be somewhat insane, but his self-sacrificing ethos comes from a ribald and joyful corner of his heart, something Solomon's freed from Leviathan's grasp thousands of years ago.

Goals: to sail the Seas Eternal, seeking plunder for the joy of seeking it, finding trouble for the joy of confronting it, and safeguarding Mortalkind in a silent and unsung manner only a single woman alive – along with her friends – will ever understand. There's nothing he likes more than to drop anchor a few hundred miles away from the closest shoreline, not to prepare an away party so much as to simply take the mortal traffic in and watch the mundanes, supernaturals and superhumans in their industrious and contented routine atop or below the waves.

Of course, he also likes seeking the plans of maritime miscreants being foiled – especially if this means a few extra fresh faces will join his crew... There's a speech he loves giving, a little cynical and acerbic little welcome routine he pushes the newly deceased and retrieved through, that extinguishes their glory-hogging days and leaves them morose. Then, months or decades or centuries later, these same men and women realize their new state gives them a chance to do something of themselves...

He wasn't much of anything until Solomon gave him a chance. For each and every one of them, Samigina likes to think he's returning the favor.

History:
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