Floating around (Flashback)

Quint runs into some guy named Finian

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An inland sea created by Ivak's cataclismic fury during the Valterrian, the Suvan Sea is a major trade route and the foremost hub for piracy in Mizahar. [lore]

Floating around (Flashback)

Postby Quint Caravel on November 21st, 2013, 5:38 am

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Autumn, 509 AV, Day 81
One day almost exactly three years ago, near the very end of Autumn in the year 510 AV, Mr. Quint Caravel found his casinor drifting into a patch of sea that was nominally controlled by the Truewind Pod. He knew little of these people except that they were often lazy and made him do all the work of setting up the time and place of various meetings. As a naturally lazy person himself he found this rather annoying to have to deal with, but on the plus side most Truewind men were rather easy-going and affable and could therefore be easily cajoled into going along with whatever harebrained scheme Quint had come up with. As most of these schemes involved either women, drinking, acquiring Mizas without having to work for them, spending said Mizas on the women and drinks, or any combination thereof, most people were usually quite willing to go along with his plans.
The fact that they often failed was simply due to the basic fact that his natural laziness had prevented Quint from ever accomplishing anything enough to acquire any sort of competence at it. With the possible exception of seducing lonely drunken women, he really was not very good at anything at all. And the few things he had a tiny bit of ability in were not the sort of abilities any mother would be proud of. Well, a Svefra mother might be moderately proud of them. Quint didn't know. He hadn't seen his own mother in years.

It's not that they were estranged or that she was missing; it was simply that Quint had many, many, many brothers and sisters, and his mother was often busy raising them or having more of them or attempting to have more of them. He was not even sure some of his siblings were biologically compatible with each other. For whatever reason his mother had soured on Svefra men some years ago, and so now-- according to his sister Xiva, who was prone to lie and exaggerate about such matters-- Quint's siblings included a half-Nuit, a half-ghost and a half-pycon. Quint had absolutely no idea how any of that was possible; he had thought that those three races could not... well, he thought the story implausible. But he lacked the knowledge to even know if she was pulling his leg or not.

At any rate, Quint himself was not a full Svefra and thus was always getting lost or was finding himself straggling behind and ending up with some new Pod for a while. More often than not he ended up wrecking his own casinor and had to stow with his sister until he got a new ship of his own. Fortunately today was a calm autumn day, neither too hot nor too cold and the seas were particularly serene.

Quint yawned and stretched and waited to see who he would stumble across first. He himself was a plain and average looking man who wore the most basic and plain clothing, and his casinor lacked any sort of harpoon or weapon.

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Last edited by Quint Caravel on November 22nd, 2013, 12:28 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Floating around (Flashback)

Postby Finian Truewind on November 21st, 2013, 6:59 pm

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Finian’s great-grandmother always claimed to be the daughter of a Lia, or at least a different Lia than she, herself, had since become, and often told stories of the Truewind pod once sailing the waters south of Taldera in the northern Suvan. That was why, she claimed, the Truewinds were naturally such fantastic shipwrights, for everyone knew that the best Svefra ships were built along the southern coast of Taldera—well, the second-best these days, considering she and her family no longer lived in those waters or along that coast. Whether or not any of that was true, however, Finian couldn’t say. He’d hardly ever been able to sit still long enough to listen to his father’s instruction for the majority of his young life, let alone to listen to the long, rambling tales of any of his grandparents or great-aunts and great-uncles. They weren’t even ever boring, they were just too petching long for anyone of his disposition to be expected to sit through.

Besides, the only place he’d really known since his birth was the Anchorage Flotilla.

The sea that was beneath the hulking city of ships and ancient sea vessels was the only sea he called home, whether it was the eastern side of the Suvan sea in the summer or the western side in the winter or anywhere in between along the way. Sure, he’d done some traveling with his family to some of the various, smelly, crowded, law-enforced cities to trade or party or fix a ship or two, but he couldn’t imagine ever wanting to live somewhere that was forever in the same place. So, as autumn drew to a close in 510, the part of the sea his family currently borrowed a claim to as their own was underneath where the sprawling, undulating make-shift town of the Flotilla was currently drifing on it’s way south-westward, following the warmer currents and the fish.

It had been exactly eighty-one days since Ian’s father had announced his decision as to who would be his replacement as master shipwright of the Truewind business …

And it had not been Finian.

Had the blond Svefra been a better man with a little less passion or a little less of a competitive spirit, he may have been able to take the rejection in stride with congratulatory praise for his cousin, recognizing that perhaps his father had meant this for his good in the hopes that he would grow into the position later in life; that perhaps he felt a twenty-year-old trouble-making youth who cared little for the discipline required for real craftsmanship was not the best representation of the Truewind family name in the somewhat honest shipwrighting business; that perhaps his father had his best interests in mind and was giving him some freedom to expand his skillset and find some focus; or that perhaps his father knew exactly what he was doing and was completely without cruelty in his decision.

Unfortunately, Finian was not that better man.

He was petching angry and could only see his father’s choice of an older cousin to step into the head of the family business as both a personal affront to their relationship as well as a complete lack of confidence in his abilities as a craftsman.

Thus, he’d spent the entire season blowing off abso-petching-lutely everything his family expected of him. Really, everything. While the weather had been getting wetter and colder and the Suvan had been getting choppier and stormier, Finian had weaseled his way out of every major repair job needed to make winter preparations. Two of his brothers and a young niece had been required to replace him in the various ship-building projects they had going on across the Flotilla, much to his father’s chagrin.

Oh well.

Ian was either too drunk, too busy getting busy, or too far out at sea in his own casinor to care. Oftentimes, it was a combination of these things. Today was one of those days. Or, more correctly, the night before had been one of those nights.

Not that this was anything that one Quint Caravel could possibly have been privy to, sailing along in happy ignorance. He may not have even known his general proximity to the Anchorage Flotilla, about three bells’ sail or so away in the westerly-ish direction, just out of sight on the undulating horizon. He may not have cared, either. No, all that was clear at the moment was another casinor had slowly come into view, its sails slack in the wind, drifting. Upon closer inspection through the closing of distance, someone blond was dangling themselves in clumsy delicacy over the starboard railing, offering the contents of their stomach to Laviku himself.
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Floating around (Flashback)

Postby Quint Caravel on November 22nd, 2013, 7:27 am

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Out of character (OOC: Timestamp in first post modified at your request to fit into your timeline. And.. huh, I forgot my original concept was to have Quint seasick. But it works for me! I shall join you in pain and misery.)(/ooc)

In character (IC):

Quint would never be anyone of importance on the Suvan Seas. First of all, he was a man and theirs was a matriarchal culture.

Except for the one time that it wasn't. He had heard once of a Pod that had elected a man to rule them instead of a woman. It was more than practically unheard of: it was somewhere between blasphemous and sacrilegious. But it was a small Pod that had for whatever reason given birth to many men about twenty years back, and a few of them had gotten together and decided to give it a try.

It was said that they felt it was worth a try, and that they didn't think any lasting harm could come of it. Many knew of Loren Dyres and the other male rulers scattered around Mizahar, and they said it was time for some new leadership ideas in their Pod.

Not being full Svefra, Quint had heard this story from a female sailor who had heard it from someone else who had known of this Pod but who had been reluctant to tell any full-blood Svefra for fear of their reaction. He himself had been sleeping with both the woman and her sister, and so he trusted her as a trusted and reliable source. He had no reason to doubt the story, especially when it was concluded later that season. When Quint ran into the woman again after having had to run an errand for his Uncle Pondar, she told him that the Patriarchal Pod had been wiped out to a man.

Apparently they had gotten into their collective heads that now that they had a man in charge, they didn't want to just have him rule a small patch of water. They decided to pick a land target, one ruled by a woman. They had attacked the nearest port. Some kind of snake-women or spider-women had been living there. Were still living there. But the Pod was gone.

Well, so that was one reason he would never be anyone here: he was the wrong gender.

But more important than that, he was not a full Svefra. Which might be overlooked by some, but in his particular case, the half of him that came from the province of Sylira was not of the stock that had ever sailed the seas. And that meant that he was sometimes seasick. About half the time, all other things being equal, depending on what he had just eaten, the time of the day, and the moon and the currents and tides.

Unfortunately for Quint, today was one of those days where he was truly feeling under the weather. He had tried all the tricks that he knew of, such as looking at the horizon and trying to focus on a single point, but nothing helped settle his stomach. It was truly a painful and horrible feeling and it made him wonder if he would ever had a life as a sailor.
It was ominous enough that he had gone through life without a gnosis from Laviku; it was clear that Quint was just not someone that the sea god would ever favor, unlike his sister Xiva.

Quint had almost gotten a hold of himself and his roiling stomach when he spotted the blond man having a rather bad go of it. The smell came to Quint, and considering how he was already feeling, he retched, came up with some dry heaves, then regretting the sardines he had just eaten, raced to the railing and gave his own offering to the gods.

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