Post by Joris van der Haven on Sept 14, 2012 18:44:11 GMT -5
Joris van der Haven
Picture in the making
FULL NAME Joris van der Haven
NICKNAMES Capt’n. Kap’tein, or often just ‘Ned.’ Whatever the crew comes up with…
GENDER Male
AGE 25
ETHNICITY Dutch
NATION OF ORIGIN Coastal lands of Northern Gallia.
WEAPON OF CHOICE The 24 pounder cannons of the Caligo.
Apart from those: 2 pistols and a cutlass for close quarters which are rather standard and as a captain he has to be well armed, which doesn’t mean all weapons are of equal menace in his hands. More characteristically, he often uses a boat-hook that he used as a boy to defend his family.
It’s a very old iron cast, crescent and pike. The pole is hollow, and inside is a chain he fastened to the hook which he added when he needed to repair it. So he can use it either as a pole weapon, or a hook-and-chain if he turns the handle loose.
WHAT SHIP ARE THEY ON?[/b] the Caligo.
The Caligo is a two-deck frigate and the sleek line of her hull reveals she was built for speed and maneuvering primarily, making her elusive and difficult to chase. Her cannons are powerful, but fewer than for instance, those of the Nox.
Aside from the pirate ports in Discordia, the Caligo, frequently sailing southern waters, often makes port in the Cape of Good Hope, the harbour the Flying Dutchman of legend also makes port for but unlike the Caligo is doomed to forever sail the adjacent waters, never succeeding to round the headland. Also known as the Cape of Storms, or simply ‘the Cape’, it’s not an always an easy port to reach, but it’s also relatively safe from prowling Navy ships.
They also frequent Cape Town and the False Bay area in general, with HangKlip (Hanging Rock/Cliff in Afrikaans/Dutch) as the designated place to put any captured Navy crew on trial if captured in the area.
The crew are also known as the ‘Midnight Mariners’ or ‘Moonrakers’, for the Caligo, like its name indicates, often operates under the cover of darkness.
The Caligo knows a special Initiation Rite which goes by the name of Dusk ‘til Dawn, also known as the Triple Trial.
To be truly regarded as one of the crew and prove their worth as a capable sailor, the new recruits have to sail for three nights. The first under the spell of a new or crescent moon, the second wearing one eye patch, preparing them for the third, where their vision will be obscured entirely.
When the sailor meets the dawn without having messed up the lines or having fallen overboard, his/her rite is completed, and they are now a Moonraker.
Subsequently, the captain lets every crew member carve their name on the deck with his boat-hook after they successfully completed the initiation rite. Then they have to cut their hand (but the fool that cuts too deep to hold a weapon or do their work will hear it for months) or a finger and colour a part of their name. After the initiate comes the Captain, and then all other crewmembers with them, to paint the name red with their blood as a token of kinship, eternalized on the ship itself. Even if the crewmember is lost, he/she sails on with them forever.
Desertion however…calls for specific measures.
WHAT IS THEIR POSITION?[/b] Captain
YOUR CHARACTER'S LIKES
* Piracy. Obviously. No love for the ruling class, nor their armies.
* Sailing the seven seas. Joris is a true sailor at heart. He no longer enjoys being on land for longer than a few days.
* Successful hijacks. Everybody loves an ego boost. And a handsome loot.
* A happy crew. The best investment one could make.
* Outlasting the navy. Victory would never be sweeter.
* Smoking. Nothing like Devil’s Leaf. If you want a favour, know what to bring.
* Cartograhpy and navigation. Joris started his pirating career as a navigator, and it is one of his greatest strengths.
*
* Sailing at night. Cover of darkness and mist. Caligo.
* Cape of Good Hope
* Dusk till Dawn, or the Triple Trial.
* Storms. But he will never seek them out on purpose.
YOUR CHARACTER'S DISLIKES
* Noon. When the sun is at its highest, his mood will be at its lowest.
* The farther he is away from coast, ship and sea, the antsier he gets. Going inland is not high on his list. If he can delegate. He will.
* A crewmember disobeying.
* The Lux. It...shines in sparkly gold at noon. Headache worthy. But he tries to keep his aversion to himself, having to uphold somewhat a reputation of neutrality.
* Laziness.
* Crewmembers questioning his authority without reason.
* Being disobeyed.
FEARS
* Members of his crew being reverse-hanged.
* Mutiny. Because that has failure as a captain written all over it.
* Freedom becoming even impossible on the Seven Seas.
QUIRKS/ODDITIES/HABITS
* Joris loves green growing things. Perhaps out of nostalgia of his youth. The Cape of Good Hope is an integral part of the Cape Floristic Kingdom, the smallest but richest of the world's six floral kingdoms. Or at least, it used to be. Now he’s trying somehow to preserve what’s still left of it.
* Instead of a portent of doom, he feels seeing the Flying Dutchman is a lucky charm. So he always looks out for her. Not every crew member may agree...
* Flipping coins. When there is a special piece of cargo, or treasure that is desired by many, but cannot be distributed equally he will flip coins. The crew must divide themselves Starboard (heads) or Port (Tails) The last one to guess correct will get the item.
GOALS
* Staying a free man.
* Helping his crew to fulfill their own goals
* Keeping his crew alive
* Finding his lost siblings
* Get revenge on a certain navy officer responsible for the scar on his forehead.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION He's about 6'3. Dark, very ashen blond hair and seagreen eyes.
OVERALL PERSONALITY
Efficiency is always high on his list. Joris doesn’t like those who waste. Be it time, resources, goodwill amongst crewmates, or energy. He runs things efficiently and expects his crew to do the same for the good of themselves, and all those aboard.
While not unreasonably impatient, he is absolutely intolerant of dawdling when a job needs be done.
Joris is also characterized by a certain severity and a somewhat authoritarian nature that is mirrored in his sharp features and straight-shouldered countenance. He’s not all strictness and austerity though, and the image is softened by a nonchalant grace and a devil-may-care radiance. There is something almost deceptively loose about his body-language, but it is not a looseness that is particularly open or inviting, though it can be, but it’s primarily born of confidence.
He has an arresting voice: deep, resonant and weighty, and while often just short of dignified in speech there is a tinge of a perpetual taunt that on occasion shines through more clearly, as if he’s always mocking the world around him. Where his crew is concerned there may be irony instead, and some playfulness, as he is not without humour, if the situation calls for it.
Joris cares, in his own way, about his crew, and their dreams, wishes and goals. Perhaps not so much openly so, as he is not so much a jovial, friendly man, but he is very observant of what is happening on his ship and subtly or straightforward, he will try to arrange things to the benefit of all.
Orderliness flanked by opportunism: Bend the rules, don’t break them. When it comes to the ship, order is necessary to preserve the ship and all those aboard, and breaking the rules will be punished.
Creative application of the rules may let a transgression go unpunished if not damaging in nature, since the resident Captain has a penchant for those smart enough to make the dice fall in their favour.
However, exploitation is not condoned.
There is one exception to possible bending of rules: stealing. Be it personal belongings or provisions.
What a pirate has begotten as his or her share of the loot or won during a coin-flip remains the pirate’s and unless he or she gives, sells or gambles it away, it remains so. To steal from the ship is to steal from every single of your fellow shipmates, especially in times of need, and it’s unforgivable.
Joris does no see himself so much as courageous, rather than that he is not a coward, and above that, a pragmatist believing in action. No guts no glory, just be smart about it.
To his crew he teaches that not everyone has to stand on the front-lines, make use of your strengths, and know your weaknesses, but stand your ground when you need to, and never stand idle when a shipmate’s in danger.
Hygiene and cleanliness is very important to him. The ship must be proper, and the crew as well, as diseases can spread quickly on such a small isolated area. Ditching on cleaning duties is not a good idea, and there are ample uses to be found for vinegar (which in diluted form is used for sanitizing the ship) to be put to other interesting uses for the sake of education, amongst other things.
BACKSTORY/HISTORY
Joris was born in a small coastal village in the Northern lands of Gallia where the sea is a dark, inhospitable colour lined with cool silver and where the sands are a gloomy gray, dusting the gales chasing the shoreline. He was the eldest of three children in a family of five, making home in a house on the estuaries of one of the great rivers flowing out into the sea, and he learned sailing and fishing at a very young age. He worked the land passed the dunes with his mother and sister during planting and harvest seasons, and shipped their goods to nearby cities and towns through rivers and waterways.
His father started as a fisherman, as his father before him, but ended up as a navigator on a small merchant vessel, and when he took his eldest song along, he taught him about the stars, their true guiding light, and later as he grew older, how to draw maps of the coastlines, banks and currents.
Life was harsh, but it had its own brand of happiness. Hard work left little, but precious time to spare, and while they had little left at the end of the seasons, with some years being better than others, they managed to get by, escaping the peril of international conflicts until, finally, yet another war announced itself on their doorstep.
Resources dwindled quickly, prices went up outrageously fast, and local taxes saw an increase far above what the rural workers and laborers could afford. Poverty, while never too far away now became a harsh reality for large groups of people. Families scraped by to keep their heads above water and their children fed but it was not enough.
The murmurs of unhappy civilians became skirmishes to louden their words for change, and the skirmishes became riots to upset and the riots rebellions to upheave.
Fourteen-and-a-season and being undeniably curious he let the elder boys of the village talk him into joining the protest (and how could he say no and be seen as a coward? Unthinkable) The upstart became a bloodbath as the army and a guard unit of a noble family sought to disperse the angry villagers, fearing too many would be mobilized and unite, making no distinction among those present they cut down, whether participant, onlooker or those who just happened to get caught up in the situation.
He escaped, feeling his youthful courage sink as he was nearly crushed by the mass (though tall for his age) and an overhead swing of a halberd and a crossfire bullet nearly put an end to any further ambitions he may have had permanently.
He didn’t return home that night, out of fear for retaliation against his family for sheltering a son suddenly outlawed. He had recognized the local guard captain, and he was sure this went both ways as he wasn’t exactly unknown to the good people of the law, though any previous transgressions had been minor.
Retributions had been swift. Within hours it was known to all surrounding villages that sheltering ‘rebels’ would be punished severely.
He hid, but fear for his family took the better of him, and he returned the next day hiding in a small riverboat they used for shipping. Exhausted he slept until after nightfall, woken by shouts that put his hairs on end and his heart skip a beat. He took the vessel’s boat-hook with him as a provisory weapon (or rather, defense) and approached the little house roused in alarm.
Lawmen were ominously dragging his younger sister out of the house, threatening to harm her if his father did not tell where Joris was. He had never seen his father so scared, nor so helpless.
When one of the assaulters raised his sword, ignoring and then disbelieving the fisherman’s pleas, ignorance, and then his desperate lie to save his daughter, Joris swung the long boat hook, planting the iron into the back of the guard’s neck, much to his own surprise.
It was his sister’s quick wit and admirable aim that saved him from being stabbed through by the second guard as she hit the lawman with a stone to the head. Joris dislodged the hook, and swung it agnew, more out of fear and hope of luck than practiced aim, but the end result was the same.
Two dead officers. Who would be missed. The Van der Haven’s were not the only ones with a son missing and wanted, so his father took the chance they would not be the only suspects on the list.
They quickly packed the barest of necessities, hoisted the dead men in a sloop, bid their goodbyes, none of them wanting to believe this was an end to anything, and put Joris underway to dump the bodies in the sea on low tide and go up North as far as possible, as close to the shoreline as he deemed safe.
He did. And he never saw his home again.
Starving and exhausted he eventually ended up on a pirate ship as a stowaway by complete coincidence. The Caligo had moored at night, a specialty of its crew, and Joris, too scared, tired and hungry to care took the first chance on a ticket over the horizon. He only found out the next day it was a pirate ship. He was not the only one not amused.
While having the dubious honour of walking the plank for the first time in the new year, the alarm was sounded.
The spiky haired boy was quickly forgotten and Joris quickly took the opportunity to make himself useful and redeem himself, carrying powder and putting his boat-hook to good use for another round of messy fighting . The battle ended in favour of the pirates, and Joris realized he had survived his third combat in two days.
Upon hearing the Sailing Master had died in the assault, he offered he had been a navigator in training. It was bold, but he knew it was his only way to keep an immediate distance between himself and the dark, icy waters circling the most western point of Rossiya.
Seeing he had not shied away from battle, the captain gave him a chance to sail the ship to one of the southern ports of Discordia. If he could do it without fail, they’d let him walk the gangplank with land at the other end.
While difficult he managed to do it, having to wing it at the end, but guessing right. The Captain granted him his safe passage, but he asked to stay on the ship instead and be kept on board as a navigator.
“In training.” was the only remark the captain had for him and they sailed again at dusk.
Joris completed the triple trial and sailed on the Caligo for 8 years before eventually becoming he captain himself.
Four bells. Change of the middle watch. Its rings were softened by cloth, diluted by the wind to keep any ships from alarm that hat anchored unassumingly. Joris looked out over the ocean as a moderate wind, north by northeast, tugged at his coat as he stood, as always in quiet admiration of a half moon, and how much she still reflected on the giant mirror of the world below them.
To any other ship, the dark promised sleep, or at least, slow sailing. A cover of darkness to lay sore limbs to rest after a hard day’s work, save the unlucky souls on watch.
But not so for the Caligo. Her crew could sail even the blackest of nights where even the stars seemed to have all but abandoned them. Silent, swift and deadly.
They sailed on, as Joris chose their direction carefully, aided by the stars. So familiar to him he could hardly imagine traveling otherwise. There came a restrained call from above. Dim lights were spotted dead ahead. The corner of his mouth twitched slightly in mild satisfaction. They had found her.
Soon the lights grew bigger as they approached, the distance between the spots of gentle flame, shaped the outline of a merchant vessel, the Josette, carrying a rich prize that had delighted many of his crew, andas she was heading for Gallia, flanked by a convoy to obviously protect her not so secret secret.
They had spotted two heavier ships in rest. Too big to be their target, but blissfully unaware as the Caligo sailed passed smoothly without a sound.
Joris inclined his head slightly to talk over his shoulder to his first mate and master gunner.
“Prepare for entering. I trust all know their places. Prepare the guns in case others come to her aid, but don’t fire on her, we don’t want to wake anyone if we can help it, and she’s too frail.”
But she was also lithe enough to sail with a small crew and she’d fetch a handsome price if they could bring not only bring the cargo with them, but also the ship. A new model. Low in the water, and fast. But for that the Josette needed to be unscathed to be able to keep up with the Caligo so a takeover had to be done swiftly. Quietly. Expertly. Right under the noses of sleeping giants. All hurried to their positions. The run had been clear beforehand. Who would go first, who would stay.
They chose position, blocking the closest guardian ship so it could not fire without getting the merchant vessel in the crossfire.
Their was no room for doubt as the signal was sent. Just the familiar rush of adventure while keeping your head on your shoulders and your eyes on the prize.
To any other ship, the dark promised sleep, or at least, slow sailing. A cover of darkness to lay sore limbs to rest after a hard day’s work, save the unlucky souls on watch.
But not so for the Caligo. Her crew could sail even the blackest of nights where even the stars seemed to have all but abandoned them. Silent, swift and deadly.
They sailed on, as Joris chose their direction carefully, aided by the stars. So familiar to him he could hardly imagine traveling otherwise. There came a restrained call from above. Dim lights were spotted dead ahead. The corner of his mouth twitched slightly in mild satisfaction. They had found her.
Soon the lights grew bigger as they approached, the distance between the spots of gentle flame, shaped the outline of a merchant vessel, the Josette, carrying a rich prize that had delighted many of his crew, andas she was heading for Gallia, flanked by a convoy to obviously protect her not so secret secret.
They had spotted two heavier ships in rest. Too big to be their target, but blissfully unaware as the Caligo sailed passed smoothly without a sound.
Joris inclined his head slightly to talk over his shoulder to his first mate and master gunner.
“Prepare for entering. I trust all know their places. Prepare the guns in case others come to her aid, but don’t fire on her, we don’t want to wake anyone if we can help it, and she’s too frail.”
But she was also lithe enough to sail with a small crew and she’d fetch a handsome price if they could bring not only bring the cargo with them, but also the ship. A new model. Low in the water, and fast. But for that the Josette needed to be unscathed to be able to keep up with the Caligo so a takeover had to be done swiftly. Quietly. Expertly. Right under the noses of sleeping giants. All hurried to their positions. The run had been clear beforehand. Who would go first, who would stay.
They chose position, blocking the closest guardian ship so it could not fire without getting the merchant vessel in the crossfire.
Their was no room for doubt as the signal was sent. Just the familiar rush of adventure while keeping your head on your shoulders and your eyes on the prize.
YOUR NAME OR ALIAS Dia
WHERE CAN WE CONTACT YOU? PM please ^^ thanks
WHERE DID YOU FIND US? Through ‘A Life of Secrets’
The history and goals around his siblings are editable depending if we get a Belgium and/or Luxemburg and if their players would be open to kinship. Editing Joris’s history to align more with other character plans is a possible option.
I’m in the process of designing an outfit and drawing pictures. I will update those when they are finished.
I will edit the history somewhat after I’ve talked to Shoe to perhaps get a more interesting story behind Joris’s scar (Courtesy of Ludwig)