Cormorant

### Affiliations

Twice-Hanged Artemis's Forces (former); Greenbeard's Forces (former); Eight-Finger Driscoll's Forces (former); The Drunken Dragon

### Last Appearance

46. The Truth of It

Cameron 'Cormorant' McTavish is an elderly human sailor and fighter who uses self-designed flintlock pistols. He is sworn to kill his former lover Skyburn.

Cormorant is the son of a Rumidian Margrave. He has spent his life as a sailor for hire, and fought on both sides of the Wetwar. The party first encountered him on Tortuga, when the Crooked Warden tasked them all with hunting an oni in the Pieces. He subsequently joined the Drunken Dragon's crew.

## Appearance

Cormorant has a wiry, rip-chord physique that's impressive for a human his age.

One of his eyes was cut out, and he now wears a magically functional replacement made of glass and opal.

He openly wears his two swords, but keeps his prized guns concealed within his cloak.

## Skills and Abilities

### Sword-and-Gun

Cormorant is both an excellent duellist and a proficient marksman by any mortal standard, but it's when he holds a sword in one hand and a gun in the other that his combat prowess really comes into its own.

### Field Medicine

Thanks to the year-long tutelage of Vigri in the Fifth Hell, Cormorant was able to pick up some of the slack he had been feeling in the party's composition following Malak's death and Clark's departure. He studied hard in the grizzly art of field surgery, becoming a capable healer.

## Equipment

### Guns

Cormorant's guns are an incredible fusion of magical artificery and technology. Not only are they compact and their ammunition easy to produce, they do not appear to require reloading, they can be fired underwater, and they charge each shot with enough arcane essence to cut through the otherworldly defences that a lot of magical creatures boast.

Cormorant has two guns:

* The Flintlock: a two-handed weapon that packs a punch and has an impressive range.
* The Dueller: a compact weapon that can be aimed and fired with just one hand.

### Swords

Cormorant has two swords:

* Flametongue Sabre: a lovely duelling sabre he's had for a long time. During the year in the Hells, Cormorant paid for the imps in the workshop of the Telphousila estate to give it a magical enchantment similar to the flames that can adorn Badger's sword. Cormorant made the command word to activate the flames 'Deena.'
* Masterforged Shortsword (non-magical +1 sword; silvered): When the party encountered the ironoar craftsmen Sindri and Brokk on Bisquay in the spring of 6277, Wilfred helped Cormorant pay for this incredibly well-crafted weapon - on the condition that Cormorant keep any lycanthropes away from Wilfred should the group ever encounter them.

## History

### Prior to Meeting the Party

Cormorant is the son of the former Northern Margrave, August MacTavish. He first met Skyburn when he was seventeen; the Margrave had her father hanged for piracy, but took Skyburn in out of pity and made her a ward in his house.

As a Margrave's son, he was soon given command of a Rumidian ship. Partly under Skyburn's influence he stole it and went to fight in the Wetwar alongside Twice-Hanged Artemis.

Later, Cormorant was taken prisoner aboard *the Manta,* a goblin junker that now belongs to Madog the Inferno. While there he noticed them experimenting with black powder. The goblins sold him as a slave to Mackerel, where he spent six months in her service. After Mackerel released him he defected to Greenbeard's side for the end of the Wetwar.

His relationship with Skyburn has been long and complicated. She gouged out his eye, but she also give him his opal replacement, an arcane object that allows him to see just like a normal eye.

A decade ago, Skyburn was turned into a vampire. Cormorant has been hunting her ever since.

### Part Two: City of Intrigue

#### The Oni Hunt

When the party was on Tortuga, the Crooked Warden introduced them to Cormorant. The pirate joined in the party's deal with the Warden to remove an Oni from the Pieces, an area Cormorant was familiar with. In return for helping the party track down the threat, the Warden agreed to give him information about Skyburn's activities.

This brief affiliation with the crew of the Drunken Dragon made Cormorant a target in Nogg's purges on Tortuga, a tactic Shandy's man was using to pressure Driscoll's forces on the turtle to meet him in combat away from the city. Cormorant was attacked by a number of half-ogres while looking into the leads on Skyburn he'd gained from the Crooked Warden. He was able to flee and reunite with the party, just as they'd struck a deal with Nix - at the cost of Clwyd's eternal soul - to get off Tortuga and away from the threat of Nogg via Nix's home in the Fifth Hell. Cormorant reluctantly accepted the ride, getting the hell out of there.

#### Debrief

When the party returned to Terca Mahres after fleeing Tortuga, Driscoll called them back to Crab Claw Cove to debrief. At this time, Cormorant learned the horror of Eight-Finger's contingency plan - leaving both the crews that were suspected to house a traitor to die by Nogg's hand. Cormorant was so outraged by the callousness of Driscoll's plan that he went so far as to ask if Driscoll had been the one to send Nogg.

As the party sailed back to Bisquay, Cormorant had Clark use *sending* to check that his friends in the Pieces had survived Nogg's purges. Clark got replies from Cap, John John, and Cricket, but there came no word from Deena, the owner of the breakfast restaurant he'd taken the party to after they killed the oni.

### Part Three: Changes

#### Spring in Bisquay

Cormorant was the one that first met Aerendyl. The human had been searching for information on his quarry while the party were stuck on Bisquay waiting for their ship to be repaired - and nominally doing their assignment from Driscoll, keeping watch in case of the arrival of Shandy's forces. When Cormorant started asking around for information on a vampire, he encountered Aerendyl, the elf himself in Bisquay on vampire business.

When Nix proposed taking the party to the Hells for a year and subsequently becoming their employer in Driscoll's place, Cormorant was the only one of the group that considered not taking the offer. He said he was tired of abandoning crews, as he had done often in his past. Pyt argued that *the Drunken Dragon* was his ship and crew, not Eight-Finger Driscoll. This gave Cormorant pause, and after stewing on it, he agreed to continue travelling with the group.

Following the party's final act as part of Driscoll's forces, the destruction of one of the galleons that made up the Seven Wonders Floating Carnival - which they believed to be housing agents of Mother Shandy, Driscoll's enemies - one of Cormorant's worst fears came to light. Four living corpses emerged from the sunken wreckage of the ship and swam to the dock. In the chaos of the attack on the carnival, few in Bisquay noticed, but Cormorant saw them and so the party approached. They were all zombies, killed and then reanimated by one of Shandy's retinue, and obviously compelled by the magic that bound them to show themselves off in the event the galleon was sunk. One of them was Deena, Cormorant's old friend. He put the other zombies out of their misery himself - Fang and Rurik from *the Banshee's* crew, and Pavo from Bar Bistro Pavo in Tortuga's Bronze Boy - but he couldn't bring himself to do it to Deena. In the end, Pyt did it for him.

### Part Four

#### A Year in Hell

Cormorant spent much of his year studying field surgery under the tutelage of Vigri, a strange looking dwarf that was usually one of the ever-suffering maze runners of House Telphousila.

He also began the process of recording some of his experiences, going so far as to tell the group his Tales from the Wetwar.

He had a flame-based enchantment added to his sabre, and made the command word to activate the flames 'Deena.'

#### Agnor

In the town of Nor, Cormorant helped to partially heal the infection of a man called Lerna. In return, her daughter Nicole took the party to speak to the Siblings of Agnor. On the way up the whispers revealed a number of his secrets.