Endless Isles: Character Archetypes
So what kind of people are you likely to meet in these Endless Isles?
Deathless – Anyone who's taken The Final Oath and swore themselves by Torriaeu, the Sea-Queen and usually a half-dozen other legends, offering their blood to the sea on a stormy dusk, ensuring that they'll never feel the cold caress of Lady Death.
Oh, you can shank 'em and they stop movin' just like anyone else, sure, and they can age and bear children just like anyone else, but as soon as their body's not working their shadow creeps away, across the waves, on its journey back to the rock of their birth… or at least, the closest safe, flat, and dry place. There they can grow a new youthful form, and any remains of their old burns, leaving no ash or bones. It's a very painful process, resurrection, even more so than dying according to most, and the journey can be long and horrible too… but most think it better than the alternative.
There's more details, of course… like the role ship's shamans play, and the blood-magic that can change the age of any new body a Deathless cur might grow… but that's the short of it.
Pirates – Well, this one should be obvious enough. Folk of the Wave, those that play the Grand Game, the eternal test of worth where the winners take the spoils and the losers dance the shadow'd jig back to their birth-rock, to try again another day; almost all are Deathless, of course.
A few take offense at the the term "pirate," styling themselves "freelance traders," but make no mistake. Whether he barters with landlubbers, raids ports, or seizes other ships to get his cargo, every man who sails is in for a fight, and he knows it.
Most try to control an area, make friendly with the landlubbers there so they know where they can take what, or so they can take in "protection money." The most successful at this… those who've dominated a big scrap of wave for a century or more, generally… we call Sea Barons, and each is a legend is his own right.
Horizon Reachers - People who view the constant flow of the living away from the core and towards the fringe (due to the constant flow of the shadow'd in the other direction, generally) as more than just a natural consequence of Deathlessness... or maybe they're just sick of all these people and want to be out there, alone, out of the core, out of the fringe, off the maps.
You can always tell a Reacher from anyone else. They don't care where they're going, but yet they always sail the same heading... away.
Still, you can't go forever, though that doesn't stop 'em from trying. Sooner or later, bad weather, local wildlife, or even other Reachers, settled down and panicked that civilization might be finally catching up with them... one way or another, some time they get done in and show up back here, to start their journey all over again.
Sometimes, though, before they do, they leave children behind… or so some claim. There's wild rumors of seas beyond the Fringe, settled by Reachers of centuries past, where men ply the sky or the depths even as we do the waves, carrying the Grand Game with them… but who can say what truth there may be to these?
Gazers – Deathless that decided they'd rather do something else with eternity besides enjoying the myriad rewards of the Grand Game, so called because many of 'em simply shack up in monasteries and gaze at their navels, or so the joke goes. Whether its dedicating their unlife to perfecting the art of stone-stacking, producing the perfect fiddle, or reading every word ever set to parchment, these queer fellows just aren't of the same persuasion as the rest of us Deathless.
'Course, some say they aren't all so boring. Rumor has it somewhere there's a monastery where the arts they're perfectin' are of a more… carnal… nature. Now there's a place I could take some shore leave!
Crusaders – A blanket term for any fool who's got it in his head that the Grand Game ought to stop, and who sails around tryin' to take the Deathless prisoner, forever, since executions are only temporary.
Most of 'em are just your garden variety landlubbers that got lucky and grubbed themselves a ship, now out for revenge or some peace and quiet or whatever… but some of em's more organized. In particular, keep an eye out for those Order of the Wheel nutjobs, with their mystical hoodoo and that terrible Fort Cross of theirs. No one comes back from there, shadow or otherwise…
Barons – Well, you already know a Sea Baron is a successful pirate with turf that's been his long enough fer people to think twice about violatin' it. But those ain't the only sort a' Barons about… Landlubbers ain't always just poor dirt-tillin' fools, you know. Sometimes, one stumbles on true wealth, and is either already rich enough, or smart enough to figure out how to defend it and force any Folk of the Wave who want their goods to either play nice and trade fairly, or face the fight of their lives.
Typically these are named after the source o' their wealth… but due to how compact, valuable, and easy-to-defend a resource it is, Gold Barons are among the most famous and successful, and the few successful (and some of the unsuccessful) raids on Gold Baron fortresses tend to be the stuff a' legends. Bold text