a pirate's life for me

this morning i woke up with the feral need to write pirates. specifically, to revisit a loose idea i had for my main fantasy world called Tulra. there's this set of five islands in tulra called the Hangnails and i've wanted to write about a pirate crew that travels the seas around those islands for like a year and a half at least.

the main reason i haven't done it yet is because i couldn't settle on a cast of characters or plotline. i called the ship the Whaletooth and that's about all i had. but! instead of making characters from scratch, which is Very Hard, i decided to finally make use of the randomizers i made for coming up with tulra characters. i also enlisted my girlfriend to help me come up with characters since i love making characters and art in general with it.

the randomization rules were simple: roll dice for ancestry (since tulra has non-human characters), two character traits, and a song from a playlist curated by me and my girlfriend. i also did some light research into pirate ship crew roles and picked the ones that i felt were most interesting and important for a small crew of ten. much love, i am Not making a full crew of like forty people, even with help.

and let me tell you, the dice COOOOOKED. all of the characters were incredible and such good jumping off points for both the character concepts and the possible dynamics they could have.

one of the randomized characters stood out the most to me, so that's who we'll be focusing on today. the sail master.

like sorry but the fact that i randomly got an air elemental as the sail master really excited me, it's SO fitting. i'm also partial to elemental characters in general, especially air and water.

the song was a random pull from an album my girlfriend suggested for the playlist, and i'm SO happy with it. i think it goes really well with the "important" character trait. originally, i wanted this character to be from one of the hangnail islands, but everything is lowkey pointing toward her (i decided to give her she/they pronouns) being some kind of noble or socialite. or, at least, coming from a family of them.

i think this diva is the black sheep of her family. and maybe she's an only child...yeah. the legacy of the family lays on their shoulders and theirs alone and yet they STILL ran away to be a pirate. yes...YES...

her family probably is one of those celebrity families that are famous for being rich, but the 1700s equivalent. i also think they're maybe from one of the hangnails and still have a vacation home there. the sail master probably keeps tabs on their family still to be sure that they never visit the island at the same time. she definitely had a strained relationship with her parents that snapped when she left.

the "how" of how they joined the whaletooth depends heavily on the captain and how they recruited them, but the captain doesn't exist yet, so we'll figure that out Later. there's a lot that needs to be figured out later because we're so early on in this project but! that's what i've got for now.