Esmerelda McBane

**Esmerelda McBane** is a citizen of the Spanish Empire. She is currently employed as a shipwright on the Spanish territory of Isla de la Avaricia, and plays a key role in both building and maintaining ships for the Spanish Armada, at its sub-headquarters on the aforementioned island, and is, of course, adept at sailing said ships. She is known for her caring personality, her loyalty, and her daring. She is also known for her somewhat unconventional habit of not wearing shoes, despite the risk of splinters as she works her trade, a habit that started when she gifted a pair of her sandals to an impoverished child in need.

## Biography

Born in Zarazoga, Spain, on the 5th of May in the year 1730, the beginnings of Esmerelda's life were rather lackluster. Having been born to middle-class parents, Esmerelda had a rather dull childhood, filled with the typical rinse-and-repeat monotony that any young, middle-class girl in the Spanish Empire might experience.

Seeking an escape from the senseless repeated patterns of her middle-class life, Esmerelda enrolled herself in a naval academy when she became older, learning how to captain, maintain, and even construct various types of vessels, from humble trading ships, to luxurious yachts, to speedy exploratory vessels, to mighty warships. It was at the naval academy that Esmerelda would meet a young man by the name of Erwin Agustus Sacschen von Zenzefer III, a rich nobleman from the Holy Roman Empire. The two would fall madly in love, bonding over their shared love for the sailor's life, and would eventually marry one another, and Esmerelda would enter a higher-class lifestyle of luxury, basking in the fortune and fame that had come with her marriage. Though she was a noblewoman, Esmerelda continued her business with ships, making quite a name for herself as a distinguished and talented ship builder and repairer, despite being quite young.

Esmerelda's talents would catch the eye of the exiled Prince Ezequiel Clemente, who would commission her to build his prized ship, *La Canción Maldita* (the Cursed Song). In 1749, when he was leading the Northern Caribbean Company, a large band of mercenaries that he had founded himself. The ambitious man was preparing to cross the Atlantic and invade Spain using the Company, having heard about his older brother Ferdinand's planned attempt to begin a war and take the Throne of Spain from their father. To do this, however, he needed ships, many more ships than he had at his disposal. Ezequiel commissioned Esmerelda to build him a fleet, and build a fleet she did. With the ships built for him by his newfound friend, Clemente was able to take his men across the ocean, where they would play a key role in his side's victory in the War of Spanish Succession of 1749, and the overthrowing of King Philip Clemente V of Spain. In 1751, when Ferdinand and Ezequiel had seized control of the Spanish government, Esmerelda was commissioned as the shipwright for the Spanish Armada's sub-headquarters of Isla de la Avaricia in the Caribbean, and occupation she still holds to this day.

Having a great degree of wealth, Esmerelda is known to be rather generous. She would become known as the "Barefoot Shipwright" after a particular act of benevolence on her part. The young woman visited the city of Madrid in the years after it recovered from previously being sacked by Prince Ezequiel Clemente during the War of Spanish Succession of 1749. In the city, she would meet an orphaned girl, begging for a coin or two, simply so that she could eat that day. Instead of tossing the child some money, Esmerelda went a great step further. Seeing that the girl's feet were bleeding from walking the stony streets of Madrid without any protection, she removed her own sandals, and placed them on the girl's feet, and subsequently had the girl fed and placed in better clothing, before taking her away to live in her luxurious estate it Zarazoga, where she would get plenty of food, shelter, and ample education. From then on, as a social statement, Esmerelda would seldom wear shoes, instead giving them to those who needed them more than she did.