Adhemar the Harpooner

[Adhemar]

Player Name: James

Name: Adhemar de None Of Your Damn Business, Alright? No, I said shove off. Adhemar De Going To Harpoon You if you don't leave off with the personal questions.
Profession: Harpooner, Whaler, Sailor, part-time prophet of doom.
Age: 28
Race: Mostly Human with a strong dash of dwarven heritage
Height: 5' 8"

===Physical Description===

You've got your typical sailors, who are all wiry muscle and bad attitudes. Then you've got your whalers, who are built like the whales they hunt. Stocky bastards whose profession tends to develop powerful torsos and arms for sticking spears into gargantuan sea-beasts for food and profit.

Adhemar is a big burly bastard with a permanently apprehensive look on his face. Although the man is built like he was meant to be part of some megalithic construction effort, almost every inch of his skin is covered in tattoos meant to bring good fortune and protect him from bad luck, bad magic, the evil eye, women on deck, demons, ghosts, women in general, ill-favoured winds, and the lustful advances of sirens. A person could stare at the bewildering array of tattoos, small and large, for hours and still spot new details. Though doing so'd be a bad idea: that much staring could only be someone attempting to give Adhemar the evil eye. Lucky he has those tattoos.



===Possessions===

=Whaling Equipment=
Harpoons
Whaling lances
Whaling spades
Large knives
A custom designed harpoon and lance for delivering prussic acid, for the hunt.
Small case containing vials of prussic acid

=Lucky talismans and fetishes=
Lots of them. I mean, pimps have bling, Adhemar has his lucky charms. And some of them reek: the bad smell keeps the evil away, you see.

===Strengths and Weaknesses===

==Are you feeling lucky?==

Well are you, punk? Because Adhemar thinks you are a bloody idiot if you are. Bad Luck is just around the corner, without a shadow of a doubt. Best prepare yourself, son.

Weakness:
Adhemar believes in luck. To be precise, he believes in Bad Luck. Fuck monsters, Fuck magic, fuck malice: it's Bad Luck that'll do a man in every damn time. In a completionist's approach, Adhemar collects tattoos, charms, fetishes and talismans of every variety to stave off bad luck. He is a walking encyclopaedic preacher of superstitions, and it's enough to drive anyone spare to listen to the man tell them just how doomed the portents say they are.

Strength:
Turns out, Adhemar is blessed with a little magical talent which manifests itself as a sixth sense for imminent danger. However, he attributes this gift to his plethora of lucky talismans and tattoos. The harpooner has survived many scraps and calamities by the skin of his teeth by heeding the instinct. The talent has, over the years, had the regrettable side-effect of strengthening his belief in the power of Bad Luck and in his varied countermeasures to the level of utter fanaticism.

==Yo Ho, a Whaler's Life For Me==

Adhemar has been a sailor for most of his life, and a whaler for a significant portion of that time. This fact entails its fair share of benefits and shortfalls.

Strength:
Adhemar is good with ropes, good with knots, good with boats, and is all-in-all a damn good sailor. He knows the weather signs, the roll of the waves, and how to keep his footing in the harshest of weather. He's an experienced whaler, and knows the tricks of that trade as well - see below. For all his numerous faults, from a skill/experience standpoint, there are few more handy to have on a boat than Adhemar.

Weakness:
Take Adhemar off his boat, and all he's good for is complaining about how he wants to get back on the ship.
It's bad luck to be on land for too long, you see.

==Having a whale of a time==

It's a man's life. But more frequently it's an effective way to horrendously shorten one's lifespan.

Strength:
To be a whaler is to have nerves of steel and great courage. The ability to harpoon, to drive in the killing lance, to flense with cutting spade and head spade, all require physical strength and endurance. It is also a profession which benefits from Corezo's pragmatic approach to magic: captains of more profitable ships and flotillas often invest in magical devices to enhance a harpoon's ability to more swiftly shock and incapacitate the prey and thus reduce their opportunity to dive. The killing lances are often similarly enhanced.

==Doom on you, Doom on your cow==

It's not enough that there is Bad Luck in the world. There are signs everywhere, and they must not be ignored! The End is so bloody Nigh, just stop and pay attention before it is too late!

Strength:
Some superstitions are based on anecdotal awareness of nature. Sometimes, the flight patterns of certain birds DO in fact suggest strongly that a storm is coming. Sometimes subtleties in the play of dolphins do indicate horrors lurking in the deep. There are times when superstitions give Adhemar the kind of advanced notice a veteran survivor needs to keep his head above water and stay alive.

Weakness:
It does have to be said, however, the flight pattern of birds doesn't have the slightest damn thing to do with evil, sorcery, curses, or the like. But Adhemar is convinced they do, along with all the other myriad of superstitions he's picked up, and he'll be damned certain to ensure everyone knows what the signs and portents say. (To give you an advanced teaser, of just what the portents advise, I'm going to sing the doom song.) God forbid Adhemar find a woman on board a ship. Nobody would ever hear the end of it.

==If you can't say something nice... your name is probably Adhemar==

A hard life makes for a hard man. But there have to be limits.

Weakness:
Adhemar is a gloomy bastard. Morose, cantankerous, crotchety, bad-tempered, and generally an opinionated pain-in-the-arse to all around him cursed with working ears. Whereas some people might greet a new morning with a smile and relief at surviving another day, Adhemar prefers to grimly remind folks "Every new day increases the odds that y'going to die. It's numbers, innit. Numbers an' Bad Luck lurkin' at every corner. You mark my words, this day is going to end badly."

==Friends with the Captain==

(All details pertaining to this, both here and in the history, can be amended or removed. This is just one way I can think of linking Adhemar into the Leviathan thread)

Adhemar and the Captain of the vessel, Jeronimo Luis Gonzalo De Jerez, have something of a history. They were both on the ship Serpent Runner, a Quijas-sponsored vessel set to the task of protecting merchant vessels from the sea serpents which occasionally harassed the ships between Qadis and Darleone. As it was, most of the trouble came from pirates. But the experience forged a bond between the two men which directly led to Adhemar's joining the Leviathan endeavour. Someone had to keep the captain apprised of the portents after all. His life could depend on Adhemar's insights.

Strength:
There's a certain security and standing to being on-side with the ship's captain. Less likely to get chucked overboard for running one's mouth, for example. And on a quiet night it's not uncommon for the two to talk shop and discuss old voyages.

Weakness:
That being said, the Captain doesn't put up with bullshit, even from Adhemar. Even less so, because the familiarity between the two means that the captain doesn't have an ounce of fear for the much larger and physically capable man. He also has a decent idea of some of Adhemar's superstitions and frequently uses them to keep the harpooner in line. The other downside is that Adhemar's sense of loyalty to his friend means that he's found himself on this all-too-clearly doomed enterprise with no sign of a silver lining anywhere.



===History===

==When He Were But a Lad==

Adhemar's family were poor fisherfolk, living on Hasele's coastline, of what could be called a mixed heritage. Adhemar's mother Losaneta was mostly of Hasele stock, with a splash of Corezan blood and a hefty dose of dwarven blood from her mother. Adhemar's father was a Bellezan sailor, Afonso Pero Ruyz de Galiano, whose ship had sunk and who had ended up washed ashore in Hasele. It was a dreary love-at-first-sight with the-pretty-fishergirl-who-rescued-him kind of tale which led eventually to Adhemar's birth.

Adhemar was a stocky lad with swarthy skin, and started off life amidst the smell of the ocean and fish. As a youth he was taught to sail on the small fishing boats, but it was his father who said 'No damn son of mine is staying a fisherman. He'll be a proper damn sailor, on a proper damn ship. That's a proper man's life, that is.'

So when Adhemar was twelve father took son down on a trip to a port city in North Belleza where he caught up with an old sailor friend, Joham Nuno Goterrez Ovelho, and offloaded Adhemar by way of informal apprenticeship on his friend's ship. Thus began Adhemar's life on the ocean proper, as a riggings-rat on the 'Faithful Lance', a whaling ship.


==Sailing, Superstition, and Learning The Ropes==

Adhemar could tell you a hundred tales about these years, probably more, with the right liquid encouragement. There's a lot of hardship and excitement when learning the art of sailing the larger vessels. But to save you the cost in rum, here's a one of them to tide you over.

Old Joham was first mate of the Faithful Lance, and as canny a sailor as ever spliced a line. He was, in a way, primarily responsible for planting the first seeds of Adhemar's fixation on superstition. They'd taken on a couple of passengers for a run to the southern continent, and on a ship it was impossible to disguise the fact one of them was a woman. Now, on top of being a touch superstitious, Old Joham was also a misogynist prat. He had no qualms telling the captain he'd made a mistake in his choice of passengers, loudly, where everyone could hear.

Long story short, and one freak storm later, the ship was missing its first mate and Adhemar was forever convinced that what others called 'superstitions' were a deadly serious matter. Sometimes, that's all it takes for the strangest of notions to take root in a person's head.


==Whaling, Harpooning, and the Serpent Runner==

By age 20, Adhemar had proven himself a loyal and capable sailor, and had taken on so much bulk and brawn that the captain of the Faithful Lance had him prenticed to One-Arm Valdemar. Now, Valdemar had two arms, but the running joke was that he only had one which mattered. Adhemar, already heavily tattooed by this stage, took to harpooning like a spear to a pig carcase.

The trick to whaling, and the bit that separated the experienced ships from the wreckages, was the ability to tell the difference between a genuine whale and the sea monsters which resemble them. The former harvested easy-like. You waited 'til they surfaced, then darted them with harpoons, like putting the hook and line in a fish. Thing with honest whales is they can't dive again 'til they've had their spoutings. So they run. The whaleboat would give chase, and when the beastie tired somewhat the head whaler would lance them, pushing the long spear deep into the reservoir of blood near the lungs to prevent it from diving again. Rough work, to be sure, and dangerous.

But get it wrong, mistake a Ketos for a whale, and you could lose your ship and everyone aboard it. From the top down, the Ketos seem whale-like in form, and many a ship has been torn apart by a Ketos enraged by harpoons. The Ketos, if seen from the side on, resemble a chimerical conglomeration of whale, shark, and Man o'War. Long training tentacles drift below its immense body, wrapping around prey to flick them into the path of its tooth-lined sharklike maw. As it is not a mammal, the weaknesses which allow for the harvesting of whales do not apply to it. A killing blow to the brain, through the eye, is the only known way to kill one short of powerful magic. Of course, such a killing blow requires the weapon to pass through a couple of metres of eyeball and sink through the back of the retina into the brain matter. Not an easy or likely task. Experienced whalers wait for the first spouting, to confirm they've got a whale. Amateurs and the hurried are liable to stick a harpoon into more than they can handle. Which largely led to the sinking of the Faithful Lance, Adhemar's near-miraculous survival at age 23, and his subsequent rescue by the Serpent Runner.

To this day, Adhemar attributes his initial survival to the speared Ketos tattoo on his shoulder, rather than dumb luck. Despite that, there was one aspect of the circumstances which Adhemar could not put down to protective tattoos: that the captain of the Serpent Runner, Jeronimo Luis Gonzalo De Jerez, had willingly risked the extreme poor fortune of rescuing a man marooned by a Ketos by bringing Adhemar aboard his vessel. Like it or not, Jeronimo had Adhemar's unstinting loyalty from that moment forward. It was regrettable for Jeronimo that such loyalty came with an Adhemar attached. Such are the vagaries of misfortune.

=='Leviathan' is just another word for 'Everyone aboard this vessel is doomed'==

At present day, aged 28 after many high sea misadventures, Adhemar is a veteran Harpooner and an even more veteran prophet of doom. If Adhemar were a more cheerful, less 'Good morning, we're probably going to die horribly today' kind of person he might well have made first mate. But he's not, and he didn't.

But when Jeronimo took the commission to have the Serpent Runner join the society of the changed, Adhemar was an inevitable part of the transaction. And despite Jeronimo's exacerbated reassurances of the crew's competence, the ship mage's ability to properly ensorcel the harpoons, and the Serpent Runner's ideal rigging for manoeuvring round a large target, Adhemar remains convinced this is his last voyage. Just like every voyage before it.

[Saruna]

Approved.