Gyles Figginroy Stowett, also known as Young Gyles, of the perhaps not-so-ancient House of Stowett, was born on Merry 12 in the year of His Grace the Emperor 1734 to Gyles Q. Stowett and the noble Frenata Spotche. This auspicious date marked a year since the notorious Rampage of Bully Harbor by the Coalition of Those Who Do Not Wish Us Well, an event that culminated in the transformation of his father’s assignment, the Skeered of Nothing, into a Clingfire-burned shell on the northern harbor shore.
Gyles' sire, the miscreant Gyles Q. Stowett, a self-aggrandizing stoat who insisted on being called "The Captain", worked with what he could from the Skeered’s remains and transformed its charred skeleton into a ramshackle home, dubbing the beautified corpse Skeered’s End. It was within the End's creaking, wind-battered walls that Young Gyles grew up, spoon-fed by the fireside on an imbalanced diet of his old dad's grandiose tales—epic sea battles, lost loves, exotic lands, and treasures beyond imagining (all of them buried in conveniently inaccessible faraway locations). Much was fabrication, but Gyles couldn't help feeling there was a grain of truth behind it all, a mystery to his sire he couldn't quite square.
Oulde Scorpion Sting, "The Captain's" vice of choice, was eventually the Family Stowett's undoing. The drink fueled endless rows between the old jack and Gyles' jill mother, Frenata Spotche, a high-society stoatess who had long grown weary of the elder Stowett's destitute living and pretentious claims of hidden fortunes.
One final, explosive fight in 1740 forced Frenata to expel the Elder Gyles from Skeered's End. The bitter old sailor put to sea and never returned. Before he left, in a rare moment of sobriety, he gave his son a key and directions to an old seachest buried on Pricklee Pointe. Inside were a few affects, among them his father's sword, dagger, and Navy coat, as well as miscellanea from a life roving the waves. Important in this collection was a folded map, forgotten, faded. Somebeast at one point in time had written on various locations across the Known World, but now they were smudged away and indiscernable to the young stoat.
In 1747, after some seasons of finer living among the Spotches and two years' military education at the Imperial University, Gyles dropped out, gave up a sure destiny as an Honor Guards officer for any one of Amarone's stuffy élite and signed instead aboard the INS Golden Hide as a midshipper - a junior officer of just thirteen determined to trace the trail of his missing sire and make his own career with plenty of adventure and courage to spare.
Along the way, he found the life of the old "Captain's" stories; due to his charisma and wretched beginnings dressed in dandy trappings, he was able to float between circles of wealth and penury, making as many friends in sackcloth as in silk, and earned the trust of his command on the gundeck and in the fighting tops. One such friend forged in combat, a young ensign named Sarabande, became his closest comrade and friendly rival. What befell her is a bitter memory known only to Gyles himself, but however it happened, her fate haunts him.
A dozen years flew by. The Gyles of 1765 is a changed beast— far-flung voyages, countless battles, encounters with terrible beasts, and a knack for enterprise have made a successful businessbeast, gentlestoat, fighter, and senior officer out of the younger Stowett. He has made many true comrades and instilled loyalty and kinship in his crew, and built wealth. Yet a series of empty dug-up holes across a hundred remote isles later, he is still pursuing his sire and feeling none the closer. |
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