Davis Cantrell

### Occupation

Captain of The Precious Balance (previously)Bandleader of Rabble Rousers (previously)

## Appearances

### Debut

A Path Made

Davis Cantrell is a Half-Orc/Half-Human Warlord and a member of the Crass Menagerie.

## Description

Davis has gray skin and shoulder-length straight fiery orange hair with jaundice-yellow eyes. He has the typical tusks of half-orcs, and a lean muscular build. He is about six feet, four inches tall. His hair used to be black before the events of Carver bonded him with Agni.

## Biography

### Revealed In-Campaign

Davis left his hometown of Gatherhome at around age 15 to see more of Materia. After serving as a bodyguard and traveling companion for a merchant who was headed east towards the Crownlands, Davis eventually found himself working as a dock worker, assisting in loading and unloading of all sorts of ships as well as doing maintenance work in the dry-docks. Eventually, he served on several merchant vessels and he spent over a decade largely at sea off the east coast of Ruun.

In the months before the formation of the Crass Menagerie, Davis was part of a traveling carnival act known as the Rabble Rousers. He served as the bandleader for the troupe, which he had helped form and encouraged them to travel across the continent. During this trip, the Rabble Rousers came across Allegretto, who joined them in their travels. After middling success, the group decided to try to find a following in the largest city in Kled, the capital city of Whitlaw. A disappointing reception at the Rhapsody Hall led the group to decide to go their separate ways, though they decided to do one last show in Vulpine near the split of the Masonfare Byway before heading out on their own.

### Prior to Campaign

Davis was born at a small ranch outside of Gatherhome as **Tanask**, to Mary Catalon (human mother) and Morask (orc father) on 28 Dreamyr 224 PBT, the only child of the two. Most of his childhood was spent relatively isolated at home with family.  Occasionally during trips to Gatherhome he would interact with the other children, but his contact with other groups of children showed that he only really stood out for his strength and goofy charm, so he used that to entertain others (think “class clown”).

#### Exodus

Gatherhome was celebrating the 300th anniversary of the town's founding and many performers and artisans were brought in to show off their crafts.  Tanask had seen small street performers before but nothing of this scale.  He was entranced by the way they could hold a crowd's attention and with the feats of artistry and wonder he saw.  He knew then that he had to go see what else was out there.  He discussed with his parents that he would be leaving, they gave him supplies and some coin and he tagged along with one of the many caravans that left when the celebration concluded.

The caravan was mostly merchants who were heading along this trade route to each town along the way.  He had seen these sorts of traveling merchants in the past: some would set up shop in the market square in Gatherhome, and others would make house calls to his home.  When they reached the next major town, the caravan broke up and the merchants each went their own way, leaving Tanask to his own devices.

He sought out an affordable inn, and then began a job search through asking around and the posting boards throughout the town.  Having had a little experience with cooking and  meal prepping, he worked as a barback at one of the taverns near the inn he was staying at.  He would write to his family, and they even came to visit once, making the two-week (each way) trek to stay for ten days while Tanask showed them around.

For the next few months Tanask sought out any performance he could make it to.  Music, magic, sleight of hand, strength, you name it.  He made it his business to  experience them all.  Eventually he started to inquire where everyone was coming from and going to, which led him to a local cartographer.  This cartographer showed him a map of the city, and Tanask had probably been to 60-70% of the areas shown in a matter of a little over a year.  Given his adventurous nature, the cartographer showed him a map of the continent.  The parts he had seen amounted to about the size of one palm of his hand on this large map.  He could see that he was not even halfway to the ocean, which was a thing he had just learned about from this map.  He decided that he had more to see and would soon make his way to the coast.

#### To the Coast

One day while working as a barback at the tavern, he recognized that there were two groups of patrons shooting each other dirty glances.  Now, since he didn't want to have to repair more tavern furniture, he decided to be proactive and went over to the group of dwarves and more or less intimidated them into behaving, while then sweet talking/slightly intimidating the group of half-elves nearby that they should be on their best behavior as well.  This caught the attention of a nearby merchant by himself at another table who saw how Tanask defused tensions before they began and saw how his half-orc frame was intimidating enough on its own that he proposed that Tanask travel with him as a protector/bodyguard.  Tanask gladly accepted, and over the next five months they traveled the homes and towns that dotted the countryside on the way to the coast, ultimately ending in Shipshape.

Tanask sought out work in the dock ward but had to settle for tavern work because he wasn't in the appropriate guilds to work the docks.  He eventually worked his way into dock work and then subsequently onto ships as a deckhand.

#### The Lady

At age 24, Tanask met a young lady at a cartographer's shop in Shipshape where he was looking for a map of the town and she was looking for a map of Ruun. He quickly became friends with her, discussing their love of travel, though she was very reluctant to discuss where she came from. She lives with a little girl who Tanask believes to be her daughter.  Tanask learned that she wanted to apprentice under the herbalist near the dock ward and he tried to help as he could by doing favors with the connections he has, and she quickly got the position she sought.

#### Out to Sea

Having worked on ships for almost a decade, Tanask has graduated to being part of a regular crew on the merchant ship **Fortune's Favor**.  They would ship goods up and down the coast mostly, but would occasionally hire out their ship to adventurous parties in need of passage to dangerous places.  Tanask took part in many of these and even served as a mercenary for them at times.  This is where he learned to fight with polearns and other weaponry.

Throughout his time on the sea, Tanask had run into a bit of piracy but for the most part it seemed to him as just the cost of doing business.  Generally the routes he sailed featured many of the same ships and when stopped and boarded it became very transactional.  One time they were boarded after an adventuring party who went to an island in search of some treasure came back empty-handed and half dead.  Tanask had gone as a guard detachment for the group to keep watch at their base camp when they went inside the ruins.  When boarded, Tanask parleyed with the pirate captain (Abigail, the Mistress of the Deep) letting him know that they had no goods to speak of and didn't receive any spoils from their passengers so the take would be minimal.  He instead offered to come back to the pirate ship and serve them and if they desired, they could seek out the treasure on their own or they could patrol nearby seeking to get a cut.  The captain accepted and Tanask was given a rendezvous point where he could meet up with their ship.

After returning back to the coast in Fortune's Favor, Tanask hired out a small vessel to rendezvous and he was permitted entry as a temporary crew member of **The Terrible Dogfish**.  Tanask understood this to be a temporary assignment and by escorting the ship and its crew to the ruins, he will have paid his debt.  The captain admired Tanask's honorable nature and would have obliged, but lied to Tanask and said that while he wouldn't be a prisoner, he would have to serve for a few months on board because it would be too dangerous for them to dock until safe passage could be insured.  In reality, the captain wanted to spend more time with him to try to potentially convince him to take her spot as captain.

In these months, the captain spun tales of how she took umbrage to the classical idea of high seas piracy and she saw herself as a defender of honor and righteousness in an otherwise unpatrolled expanse.  She sees herself as a sort of patrolling militia protecting the freedom of the seas and putting a stop to anything she would consider "wrong".  She lives by three core principles which she applies in this role: no unprovoked violence, no unjust deprivation of freedoms (slavery and kidnapping), and no subversion of nature.  Anyone caught by her watch doing any of these would face a swift boarding and given a very brief opportunity to explain themselves.  If it failed to meet these three principles, the captain would decide their fate.  Though she preferred teaching lessons, she became more jaded in her later years and began enacting more severe and permanent punishments.  She has been seeking out a suitable captain for a second ship to patrol a larger portion of the ocean, and thinks Tanask could grow into this role.

Tanask was intrigued by this simplistic set of principles as a way to answer all questions, and accepted the role.  He was given a ship named **The Precious Balance** and assumed the pirate captain name Captain Ash the Merciless.  He got many other (sometimes contradictory) aliases as well:

* Spikeface Ash
* Ash the Dread  (he began to wear his hair in dreadlocks to somewhat differentiate his appearance)
* Dread Pirate Ash
* Ash the Merciful
* Ash the Fierce