Melisande

This profile was copied automatically from the old chat.

"Melisande? Hm... cap'n of the Mangler, 'course I know 'er. She's a right terror, that one. Ship of hers has more firepower than a dreadnought, and she's only a four-master. Cap'n herself is a 'caster, first mate is crazy, navigator can spot you 'fore you even know you're there yourself, quartermaster's a revenant, and master guns can hit you with a cannon round at twice the range she ought to be able to. Add to those a quarter-jack, a bunch of carnies, a nurse that ain't all there, a cook that fights more than she fixes supper, and maybe two males throughout the whole lot!

Guess what I'm sayin' is, take the advice of an old sailor, chap. Best keep y'self away from the Mangler and 'er crew. They're just loads o' trouble."

----

"I suppose I could make an endeavour to use the 'pirate talk' that everyone else of my profession seems to focus on so much, but honestly... with eighty percent of my crew speaking like that, I think I might as well try to keep some variety, yes?

Now git yer lubber behind in line 'fore I keelhaul ya!"

Captain Melisande of the Mangler. Born and raised in a coastal town to a wealthy father and the world's luckiest prostitute, her childhood and subsequent times were full of turmoil. Beautiful, intelligent and wealthy, she'd have been sought after by many... if they could get past the whole 'born of a whore' thing. Melisa loved her parents, and never did understand why everyone thought their lineage was such a big deal... Dad was doting and happy, and Mom was a picture-perfect lady (she had to be trained up, of course, but this was before Melisande was born, so she never really understood exactly WHAT her mother did until much later).

Melisande's schooling was going quite well... her aspiration was to become a nurse in a local apothecary, to devote her life to healing and helping others.

That all changed one night, however. At nineteen years old, Melisande was busy with her medical studies when a raiding party of unsavory characters decided that her town was next on the list. The unwashed masses of half-drunk, raving lunatics tore through her hometown, shooting and stabbing and pillaging whatever they could get their hands on... including her mother and father, and soon after, Melisande herself. Still wearing her hat and nurses smock, she took three musket bullets before the pirate crew knew what they were doing. In traditional pirate style, they called it 'a horrid waste of a good sow', stole her silk bedsheets, and left her in the hallway to die.

Melisande was a nurse... she wanted to help people, not hurt them... but something sparked inside of her as she lay there bleeding. All of her anger exploded from within her, and with her last breath she cursed the pirates, using words she'd never spoken before.

And suddenly, she was no longer in her house... but floating in star-speckled darkness. There, a voice spoke to her. It told her that her death was premature... that she had something else to accomplish... that she had talents it could use...

When she next woke up, the former nursing student was no longer wholly human. Lying on an unfamiliar beach, clad in a battered black tunic with naught but ten gold pieces, a dagger, and a small book at her side, she gazed into the distance and began her journey.

The book? 'A History Of Warcasters.' A hint to her new identity.

That was many, many years ago... of the world Melisande grew up in, nothing is known anymore. The voice had taken her to a new world, where she could begin anew... the Netherworld.
Melisande is a demon now... soul caged and reborn upon the shore as Melisande the Torrent. Ironic, her new choice of profession... trained up as a nurse while human, she found little opportunity to use such skills in the land of demons, and decided that piracy was far more lucrative... and more fun, to boot. She got the idea from the very people who had taken her life... after all, they seemed to be having fun as they shot her and her family down, right?

To be more specific, Melisande is a pirate hunter. While that technically makes her a pirate, as well, she has no desire for gold or loot. She plies the oceans to cause damage, sink ships, wreak havoc, and laugh raucously while doing so.

The once-quiet, innocent little town girl has been replaced by a loud, rambunctious demongirl pirate. Though she retains the accent of her hometown (she sounds French, if you must know) and is quite intelligent enough to talk her way out of a situation or stay out of trouble, she sees no reason to do either. She's got firepower and magic, what's she need to stay out of trouble for? (No, she doesn't drink rum. She prefers vodka.)

About three years into her pirate career, she ran across a very impressive ship-of-the-line... four masts, gorgeously-constructed hull... the only issue was the Captain. One self-proclaimed Admiral Heath... absolute scum, to be sure, though his Admiralty didn't last too long once she got wind of him. She wasn't the one to finish him off, unfortunately... his own engineer took him out with a bullet to the skull... but she was the one to claim the ship after his body hit the water. Originally named the Siren's Song, she changed it to Mangler. Painted blue and white, she switched to red and black. This is where her journey truly begins... where she became Captain Melisande the Torrent of the good ship Mangler... or, to others 'that damn wench with the pretty ship that goes around blowin' holes in our business!'

Ah, but we mentioned she's a Warcaster. What's this mean? It means that not only is Melisande a pirate... she's a pirate that A) knows magic, and B) can control warjacks. For the uninitiated, a warjack is somewhat like a robot. But, it's steam-powered. And the cortex (brain) of a warjack generally has to be linked to a warcaster for it to function properly. These six-ton engines of destruction tend to add havoc to a battle... especially a pitched sea battle or tough boarding action... which is exactly why Melisande loves them. She owns three of them, in fact, and keeps them belowdecks, ready to pounce upon anyone who dares to close to boarding range of the Mangler.

Melisande has one of the best crews to ever set foot on a ship... at least, in her opinion. Others call the whole lot of them a bunch of raving, cannon-happy lunatics. In particular, a handful of members of her crew stand out over the others as being crazy and/or unique... her First Mate, Asami, Navigator Miho, Quartermaster Vittoria, and Gunnery Officer Nina, for starters. She also has a pair of 'boarding specialists', the sisters Kalliope and Kassandra, a 'quarterjack' named Griselda, and a 'medical officer' ... basically a nurse... named Brady.

Asami is... well, you'd never guess this woman is a pirate if you saw her from a distance. No one really knows what she did BEFORE she became a pirate, though it's likely she's not gonna tell you. Commonly sauntering around the deck in a bikini instead of the assorted pantaloons and baggy shirts the rest of the crew tends to rely on, she spends most of her time relaying the Captain's orders and 'disciplining' anyone who cocks something up. She's a right terror with a rapier, however, and she commonly leads the defense of the maindeck if the enemy happens to be a bit quicker on the upkeep when it comes to boarding.

Miho doesn't seem like much of a pirate, either. Gentle and soft-spoken, Miho was a priestess before she joined Melisande's crew. They share something in common, here... a hometown raided by hooligans. Whereas Melisande was nearly killed, however, Miho was a trained swordswoman and fought back admirably, defending her temple with everything she had. Unfortunately, when the smoke cleared, she had lost both her katana and her dearest brother. Both were irreplacable in her heart, and she left her village shortly afterwards, unable to continue her peaceful life there. Carrying the partner wakizashi to her long-gone katana, she serves as the navigator aboard the Mangler. Through meditation, she can sense an enemy ship long before it comes into visual range. She rarely engages in combat, herself, though she's terrifyingly fast when she is required to fend off an enemy. She drinks sake, not rum.

Vittoria serves as the Mangler's resident quartermaster, presiding over the storage, care, and dispersal of all goods and services aboard the ship. She's also quite mad. See, Vittoria is a ghost... a revenant... a spirit... whatever you'd like to call her. An innocent trip to visit her sister went awry, and the ship she was on was attacked. They fended off the offenders well enough, but dear Vittoria was spattered across her cabin when a cannonball invited its way in. When she woke up, she screamed... and subsequently caused the entire crew to abandon ship due to the presence of a spectre. That ship drifted for years... abandoned as a ghost ship... until a certain someone appeared to salvage the vessel and its goods. Undaunted by the lonely spirit, Melisande invited her to join and do something useful. Having accepted, she got Melisande to scuttle the vessel she died upon and took up residence in the cargo holds of the Mangler, where she lives to this day, though she does wander the ship from time to time. Being a ghost, she had to manufacture her own pirate apparel out of the ether... which, as you can see, turned out a bit awry. While she seems quite useless in combat, she's a terrifying sight to many sailors unused to the prospect of a ghost, and is able to chill a victim fatally, or possess them for a time. She also serves as a morale booster... hence the, er, pom poms. Don't ask.

Kalliope and Kassandra are a fairly unique pair. Sisters, the duo were actually carnival workers before their current stint as pirates. Kalliope was a jester and magician, and Kassandra was an acrobatics master. Both grew disenfranchised with the maltreatment they recieved as members of the troupe, and set off to both hone and sell their skills. These skills, once used to entertain, are now put to use baffling and hounding the foes of the Mangler. Kalliope favors sleight-of-hand, escape artist and duplication tricks... while Kassandra descends from the masts and rigging to strike at foes before nimbly darting out of sight. Kalliope's weapons are generally throwing knives... Kassandra fights with a staff topped with the Mangler's colors.

Considering the fact that the Cap'n used to be a nurse, you might think that she'd be the one taking care of any injuries and maladies aboard the ship... alas, the captain is a busy woman, not to mention she never got any practical experience. Scrapes and cuts are fairly prevalent, with serious injuries such as fractures and the like being a distinct possibility. End result of this being the need to add another medical specialist to the crew. Enter Brady. We only know two things for sure about her. One, she's very good at using her healing magic to fix up maladies amongst crewmembers. Two, she's very bad at remembering that it's acceptable in this culture to wear clothing. Thus, one might find her sauntering about the decks in the nude.

Ship's cook is Hellena, a relatively no-nonsense woman who honestly prefers being out on the decks working with the others. She drew the short straw, however, so she's the one makin' the hardtack and porridge. She does do some fishing, though, to supplement the ship's stores. Not a bad fighter with her kitchen knives, either!

Griselda is... well... Griselda was a sharpshooter at one point in her life. Firing from the masts, rigging, or crow's nest, her motto was 'shoot the one with the silliest hat', and became the bane of officers all throughout the seas. Until one day she took a blast of grapeshot at almost pointblank range. That ended her sharpshooting career pretty quickly, though she survived it. Mangled beyond belief, it's only due to the intervention of a certain engineer that she's able to function as a normal member of the crew again (even so, for three days after the attack she was a double-amputee, blind, half-deaf, and had to be fed and cared for by Brady). Nina saw a prime opportunity to test the limits of her technological prowess. Crafting prosthetics from the finest materials they could 'procure', Nina wired the mechanisms into her shipmate over an eight-hour period. The rest of the crew had to leave the ship, due to the screaming... there was no sedation, it had to be done with Griselda fully awake. The next morning, the crew returned to find that their sharpshooter was a wholly different person on the outside, but had at least maintained most of her mannerisms. Her enemies know her as 'Quarter Jack' now... as a lot of her parts resemble (and indeed, function like) warjack parts, she's able to cause severe damage to even a heavy warjack with a punch. She also has an arc node implanted in her fist, to allow the Captain to rout spells through her.

Nina was the last member of Melisande's crew to join... mainly because she's the aforementioned engineer that ended up killing Admiral Heath... but not before taking his hat and jacket! Just an apprentice when she joined him, she put up with years of abuse (physical, mental, and sexual) before being liberated. But, she didn't want to go anywhere else. She 'came with the ship' so to speak, and under Melisande's command she's become one of the most effective naval engineers in existence. Nina is the reason the Mangler is so dangerous. Nina is both Gunnery Officer and engineer, and she performs admirably in both positions. Even with a normal ship's gun, she can get nearly twice the range someone might expect... and with one of her special heavy longcannons, she can topple masts before an opposing ship even knows the Mangler is nearby. Nina is also in charge of the upkeep of both the ship and the warjacks it carries. She has a warjack of her own (somehow, this girl has the affinity to control them without the powers of a warcaster!), but has not had time to repair it yet. She's a bit addled, and her speech patterns fluctuate often, sometimes even mid-sentence! She also doesn't drink. Personal preference.

Likely the most dangerous of the crew members, and the least predictable, is the little fae monstrosity called Scrye. Scrye basically just started following the ship around of her own accord, probably out of some of that infamous fae boredom or mischief or something. She's much stronger than she looks, though, and she can manipulate things with her magic, so she's often used as a cannon loader, and she likes to take naps up in the crow's nest.

What of the other crew members? Many of them are female, of course... not due to any sexism or personal preference on Melisande's part, merely due to the fact that many male sailors don't want to work under a female captain. Her ship has two full-time male crewmembers at this time... the rest tend to be young women, having abandoned (or lost) their former lives for one reason or another. All joined voluntarily. They all have names, of course, and their own personalities... but, they operate in the background, and it takes direct confrontation to interact with them most of the time~


----

The Mangler herself is a fourth-rate ship-of-the-line, heavily modified from her original form by the engineer, Nina... she has four masts, two of them square rigged, with the foremost and aftmost sail cutter-rigged. She's barely recognizable as a fourth-rate anymore... painted crimson and black, her outside is covered in patchwork steel plating, a testament to Nina's oath that she'll be an ironclad within the next year. Due to her current owner's preferences, much of the cargo space once used for treasure and plunder is devoted to the upkeep of the unique equipment on board, which leaves little room to carry the spoils of war, save an open spot in the main hold where one might be able to stack a few treasure chests.

The rows of cannon on either side look to be fairly normal... the gun deck holds twelve 'standard' cannons along each side... until one spots the extraneous hatches, larger than the others and plated with metal. These hatches open up to reveal the upsized barrels of Nina's custom-made 'heavy long' cannons... these breech-loading monsters fire explosive shells from rifled barrels, or canister shots designed to shred enemy crewmembers. They're essentially primitive howitzers.

The Mangler has ten normal cannons up on the main deck, five on each side. Alongside these, she mounts the brutish, notorious nine-barrel repeaters, one on either side... another Nina special, these difficult to operate weapons are designed to sweep the decks of enemy defenders before a boarding party. They make quite a mess, and break down a lot, but when they fire, it's definitely worth it. Directly amidships, both recent additions, sit mountings for a pair of crank-operated gatling weapons. Generally carried up out of the holds if their use is required, these small arms are placed to repel boarders with a hail of crudely rifled bullets.

The poop deck contains a pair of normal cannons and another long heavy, though due to the mounting this one is able to be fired more like a mortar, allowing it to serve as artillery to ward off pursuing ships.

The last armament of note on the Mangler is the arcane cannon mounted in the bow. Nina built this, as well, though most of the knowledge came from the Captain directly. This copper-and-steel cannon has a one hundred and eighty degree firing arc towards the front of the ship, and casts blue-white arcane bolts at enemy vessels. Generally reserved for ships with three or more masts, a single shot from this cannon tends to put an end to fights fairly quickly.

All in all, this makes for thirty-six standard cannons, three 'long heavies', two repeating nines, two gatling guns and the arcane cannon. A bizarre assortment of artillery, to be sure.

One deck below the gun deck rests the warjack stables. Melisande owns three of them, with a fourth belonging to Nina. The machines have access to the maindeck via a collapsible, reinforced ramp system, and all three of them (the functioning ones, mind) are purpose-built for ship-to-ship combat.

(Author's Note: Apologies for the low-quality pictures. Actual art is pending~)

The Buccaneer is the smallest, and also the oldest, of Melisande's warjacks. This little machine is used exclusively for defense against boarding parties... while it is the most agile, the poor little thing is the only warjack she owns that isn't waterproofed, and it would cease to function if it were to fall into the water! Though, oftimes, the enemy ship is so close, the Buccaneer can gaff sailors from the safety of the Mangler's deck.

The Freebooter is kept around mainly for its heavy lifting capabilities... moving cannons, loading and unloading cargo, it's quite useful for menial tasks. When enraged, however, the same claws it uses to carry crates of food can be used to crush and destroy, and for this reason it's usually the first 'jack to board an enemy vessel. It's waterproof, as well, so it will continue to function if it falls into the water.

The Mariner is the most versatile of the three 'jacks Melisande keeps, and is considered to be her favorite. Improvising weapons with a heavy anchor and a cannon stolen from another vessel, it makes quite the dangerous opponent. During boarding actions, Nina travels with it... it can't load and fire its own cannon, it just carries the thing around. Makes a useful club, that.

The Mule is Nina's warjack. Or, rather, her warjack project. She's not really sure what she's going to use the thing for, as it's in a pile in the stables right now, but when she gets it fixed she'll be sure to find something to do with it!

To facilitate their operation, the first three decks of the ship have been heavily modified. In fact, the gun deck was dropped a full deck closer to the waterline, allowing the removal and modification of the previous gun deck into what is essentially a half-deck. A good portion of the material was taken out and used for the ramp system, which gives the 'jacks enough room to maneuver on the gun deck (to assist if necessary) and get to the cargo hold (especially the Freebooter, which is the go-to when it comes to moving anything heavier than a barrel). It also helps them (the Buccaneer especially) to chase after a boarder that might have been able to slip past the deck defenses, hoping to disable a cannon or sneak away with some provisions. The new half-deck is used by the crew to safely move from the main deck to the gun deck, though in clear water many of them just make the jump, as there's a liberal amount of cargo netting strewn about... the gun deck, hold, and 'jack stables are all linked, and moving from place to place is extradited considerably if one just learns to scale netting.

----

As a warcaster, Melisande knows quite a few spells... most of them chosen by her, or created, to reflect her personal preferences. She's a devil with a sabre, but she honestly prefers to combat her foes at range, and her magic reflects this. If she is forced into a melee duel with another, she'd rather use knuckledusters and a bit of drunken rage. Common spells for her include -

Arcane Shot - Melisande carries a pistol, but no ammunition for it. When she needs to fire it, she simply fires arcane power in the form of a blue-white bullet. Relatively simple, it doesn't require much casting time.

Arcane Torrent - Raising her arms to the sky, Melisande causes a storm of arcane bolts to rain down upon a fixed area, pummeling a group of foes.

Kraken's Embrace - Proclaiming her power to the sea, Melisande summons an ethereal Kraken to... give the opposing ship a loving hug, and snuggle all over the crew. No, really. Unfortunately, this is generally fatal to them... but she means well, really!

Maiden's Mire - A slight flick of the fingers deposits a fingernail-sized chunk of goo onto an enemy ship... this goo grows rapidly until it covers everything, ensnaring and absorbing crewmembers.

Cursed Mist - Melisande summons a heavy, arcane mist, which can be used to mask her own location, make an area difficult to navigate, or doom a ship to wander for days on end.

Mercury's Wind - This spell effectively triples the speed of her vessel when riding the wind, and also allows her to move at roughly normal speed even when no wind is present.

Sweet Serenity - Cast over her ship, this protects the vessel from enemy fire, as well as the elements... though boarding parties can still transfer to her ship, hostile cannonfire will bounce right off, and even in the most horrible storms, the ship will remain dry and calm.

Paradigm Shift - This spell transports her from any port in existence back to her home port. This even crosses dimensional boundaries... she's able to return home from the human world, for example

----

"And so begins the a new chapter story of Melisande the Torrent, Pirate Hunter, Warcaster, et cetera, blah blah. Yeah, listen up, you. You wanna come talk to me, you best have a reason, I don't wanna hear any of this 'ooh, you're pretty, let's have sex' crap I been seein'. I'm a business woman. You come to me if you want work, or if you want me to work for you."

Current Favorite World - Filgaia

(Author's Note: Storylines preferred. All named crew members are demons, and capable of different kinds of vore. Serious inquests only, please!)

----