Baradin Blackbeard - Captain of the Gilded Seahorse (BUST)

Raised in Baldur’s Slaver Sea, Baradin’s father was a mariner who worked on the vessels that brought captive Orcs from Hardvin to Sowtreck, where they were then prepared for the journeys to various slaver markets across Baldur. Baradin was the only child of his parents, who had left their Dwarven homeland in search for greener pastures in Baldur. Though the promise of this better life always eluded them, and after Baradin’s mother took ill and passed, it seemed all hope of a new life for their child was indeed lost. Thus from a young age, Baradin was forced to work on the decks with his father, seeing the worst that humanity had to offer in its treatment of the Orc captives, those they regarded as beasts of burden and labour. Though he came to accept his station, he always feared the towering, boisterous Orcs. Even in bondage they seemed ferocious, as though they might swallow him whole if he stood to close. So he preferred to be near the helm of the ship, aiding the captain as an “honorary first mate” while his father moved through jobs across the deck. One fateful voyage as the ship returned to Sowtreck with a bounty of new merchandise, chaos unfolded on the lower decks as a group of Orcs had broken from their chains, and began quickly outnumbering and overpowering the guards and deckhands that tried to subdue the revolt. Baradin’s father was among the casualties that day, leaving his only son an orphan at twelve years of age. With little else going for him, Baradin remained on the slaver ships, doing his part to ensure the flow of flesh and gold between Ukrondia and Baldur continued. Taking on the role of his father, he learnt all functions and duties of a ship, eventually rising to First Mate at a young age, after the retirement of his predecessor. Though soon after his rise in position, he came to learn that fortune favours the bold, and those who aren’t afraid to bloody their hands. For Baradin, this came in the form of bribes from a pirate captain in Sowtreck, who asked the First Mate to simply bring a bauble on board which would allow the pirates to track them, ensuring no crew would be harmed. Baradin did as he asked, and when the pirates boarded, he tried to command the crew to stand down, though the captain’s orders differed, demanding they fight to the last man. He was silenced thereafter by a single shot from the pirate vessel, dying before he hit the floor. The pirates boarded the vessel, a dark sorcerer among them who lulled all the captive Orcs to sleep, before loading them onto their own ship. Though Baradin doesn’t know what happened with them thereafter, they weren’t the usual freedom fighters, so it’s unlikely they found a cozy new home. The guilt of this endeavour and the captain’s death weighed heavy on him, and he drowned his sorrows into stupor every chance he got, until those same pirates found him again, offering him a place on the crew. Five years later, he formed his own crew, earning a reputation across Tharador as a force of reckoning and mischief. Now he aims to find the Grand Bounty, the treasure swallowed by the seas by the Damned Galleon a century ago. With his maiden ship, the Gilded Seahorse, he aims to uncover the galley of endless wealth, and see the end of his days of plundering and fighting, retiring to a quaint farmstead in Baldur’s Heartlands.