Louise Selvich

Subject: Louise Selvich Fri Mar 23, 2018 2:05 pm

|BASICS|
Name: Helena Selvich
Age: 28
Gender: Female
Race: Human
Birthplace: On a ship in international waters, somewhere in the Eastern part of the world.
Current Residence: Born on a boat, lives on a boat. As a captain of the ship Ashen Dismay, she lives on the ship.
Bender or Non-Bender: Non-Bender
Rank: Pirate
Occupation: Loot and plunder
Element: ---

|PETS/MOUNTS|

Name: Scuffle
Age: Unknown
Picture:

Spoiler:

Personality: Scuffle is...out of it. Picture the chicken from Moana. Totally stupid, but at the same time, very useful and smarter than most give him credit for. His eyes are a good representation of his personality. He’s constantly looking in two different directions at once, neither eye focusing on anything. Some may say this is a sign of stupidity, but it can also be a sign of intelligence, showing how he can see everything and nothing all at once.

Scuffle, for the most part, sits still and observes. He’s not one for wandering or exploring. He learns from seeing, and that’s all he needs. He’ll watch and wait. He’s patient, waiting for the world to come to him rather than charging headfirst into the world.
Brief History: No ship goes completely without infestations. Some sort of vermin is lurking, lying in wait until the ship arrives at its destination. It’s how disease is often spread, but most of the time the vermin are just looking for a free ride.

Helena’s father ran a strict ship, and made it incredibly important to keep the ship clean. Which, of course, was his young daughter’s job. The lowest rank cleans the ship, so it goes. Being the captain’s daughter earned the girl no favors. She was treated just like the rest of the crew. So she cleaned, scrubbing away at the ship until she was too tired, and kept scrubbing beyond that.

However, as previously mentioned, no ship is immune to infestation. Rat-birds. A lot of them. So of course, Helena was assigned to get rid of them. One by one, she tossed them over the side of the ship, wrapping their wings so they couldn’t just fly back on. However, there was one that had taken a liking to her. When she tried to throw it overboard, it gripped her hand with its talons. She gritted her teeth, trying not to yell in pain.

Multiple times, she tried to throw it, but it only dug deeper into her hands. It was smarter than the rest. Regardless of how much of Helena’s blood matted its fur, it held on. Tears of both pain and frustration welled up in the girl’s eyes. “Why don’t you just let go?” Her voice cracked, and she quickly covered her mouth with her uninjured hand. Anybody who heard her would never let her live that down.

The animal turned its head and looked directly into Helena’s eyes, something she’d never seen from a rat-bird. Both eyes, looking in the same direction? Unheard of. Yet there it was, staring deep into her soul. Helena looked around. Nobody else was close to her. She stuffed the rat-bird into her jacket, and it immediately let go of her hand, perching underneath her left arm.

She managed to keep the animal a secret for years, only revealing it when her father was on his deathbed. From then on, Scuffle found a different place to sit, usually on Helena’s hands and arms.

|WEAPONS|
Name: Golden Fire
Picture: WARNING: LARGE IMAGE

Spoiler:

Note: She carries two of these

Brief History: With an injured right hand thanks to a certain rat-bird, Helena was forced to learn to use her left hand for all of her chores for some time. This led to her developing strength in both her right and left hands, thus inspiring her desire for weapons that could be dual wielded. It wasn’t long before she was drawn to dual pistols.

The twin guns were prizes of a conquest. She miiight have looted an imperial ship of the Fire Nation, stealing as many weapons as her crew could carry. One of the gold pistols was the first thing she could get her hands on so she could shoot down the messenger hawk before it could report the pillaging of the ship. Pleased with both the aesthetic of the gun and how well it shot, she kept it, along with its twin.

|OPTIONAL|
Birthday: 3/21
Family: ~~Father: James Selvich~~
Mother: Louise Payton
Character Theme:

|APPEARANCE|
Height: 5’7”

Image:

Spoiler:

|CHARACTERISTICS|
Personality: Helena has become rigid. She rarely shows emotion to those around her, keeping up her appearance of captain. She refuses to show any sort of weakness, out of fear of losing the respect of those around her. It was hard enough for a woman to become a captain. Maintaining that position is even harder.

Helena is the kind of person who bottles up emotions. Just because she’s a tough pirate, doesn’t mean she doesn’t feel anything. She’s just good at putting on a brave face for those around her. But there have been moments where she’s had to go to the captain’s quarters and just break down.

Helena hates relying on other people. She was raised by a father who didn’t care for her. She grew up on her own, and learned to be stubborn and headstrong. She hates even taking advice from other people.

Personal Strengths: Tracking down her target, leadership, making decisions, breaking social norms
Personal Weaknesses: Hearing that her father was better than her, lack of sleep/nightmares, impatience, hot-headedness
Hamartia: She’s incredibly reluctant to accept help from anybody.
Personal Hero: None
Dreams and Ambitions: The sea is her home. She has nowhere she’d rather be.

Likes: Gold, music, animals, the smell of sea salt, and, like any pirate, booze

Dislikes: Losing, storms, sexism, children, rejection

Brief History: “You know, a captain and his first mate shouldn’t be doing this, it wouldn’t be proper.”

“Aye, but since when have I ever cared about propriety?”

That was the discussion that started it all. It was supposed to be a one night stand. But even pirates can fall in love. Before long, captain James Selvich and first mate Louise Payton were expecting a child.

And of course, by the time they realized it, it was too late to do anything about it.

And that’s how Helena came into the world: on a ship, in the middle of the ocean, with no doctor around.

At first, Louise was determined to raise the little girl. But it became very clear very quickly that she wasn’t cut out to be a mother. One day, when the ship was in port, she disappeared, leaving the baby with James.

If Louise couldn’t be a parent, there was no way James could. Raising a girl without a mother would be impossible for him. Broken hearted at the disappearance of his lover, James considered killing the child and leaving the past behind him. But one of the women on the crew had grown attached to the baby.

James was the kind of man who believed that any woman who could fight like a man would be welcome on his crew. Though the women were few, his crew wasn’t entirely male. So, one woman took Helena under her care, despite James’s orders to kill the child, an action he couldn’t bring himself to do.

By the time James discovered that Helena was alive and being raised in secret, she was a toddler. It was too late, he knew. The little girl was officially a part of his crew.

Helena grew up being pushed around by the adults. The woman who had raised her from infancy died in a fight almost as soon as Helena learned to speak. With nobody who cared about her, she started out very timid. She wasn’t sure when she changed, when something clicked in her mind that she should fight back.

She was eight years old when she finally took that chance. She’d been observing for years, watching the crew fight, learning techniques from them. Using her size and dexterity to her advantage, she took down a full grown man.

The crew still tells the tale of the little girl who was tired of being called the bastard kid of a pirate. They say that from that day on, nobody dared even use the word “bastard” in her presence, and that those who did paid a hefty price.

Though she’d proven she could fight, she still had to start at the bottom of the heap, doing the chores and cleaning all over the ship. But she’d become a pirate, and was determined to be one of the best pirates the world had ever seen.

Some were amazed that a teenager was a higher rank than other crew members. At 16, she was the one pushing around the other pirates. She enforced the rules, she fought in battles, and she triumphed. Nothing short of respect greeted her every time she walked the deck.

At 20, her father fell ill. Helena stood at his bedside, as his newest first mate due to the recent departure of her predecessor to the same illness that was taking her father.

“Helena,” he spoke, his voice raspy. “Daughter.” Helena’s eyes widened. Never once had he referred to her as his own. Of course, she knew he was her father, but he had never acted like it, never asserted it. She often doubted if the rumors were true, since he treated her like any other member of the crew. But his voice confirmed it.

“I’ll be dying soon, kiddo. But I want you to know, your hands are more capable than any pirate I have ever seen. Lead with pride. You have my blood. And so, you have my strength.”

“Capt- no, father, I swear on my blood, I’ll lead this crew to greatness.”

He nodded solemnly. “Good.”

They sat in silence for a bit, until he started coughing. He leaned back, his breathing heavy, as he looked at Helena. “I...always knew you’d come back...Louise…” His breathing stopped, and his glassy eyes stared at Helena, unmoving.

Forcing back the wave of emotions, she helped the other crew members present to bag him up. They sailed the ship close to the same port where Louise had disappeared, tossing the body overboard in open water.

“Captain,” one of the crew members asked Helena. “What should we do?”

“Leave the past behind us,” she said after a moment of silence. She climbed part way up the ladder to the crow’s nest, then turned to face the crew, holding on with one hand.

“My father’s legacy will live on in all of us! Now, men, we’re pirates! We sail in freedom, taking all the riches we could ever want!” Cheers rang out through the ship. “Set a course for the South Pole. I’ve always wondered what secrets lay hidden in the ice.”

Subject: Re: Louise Selvich Fri Mar 23, 2018 3:10 pm

Approved!