"Sea Snake" Snapper

## ***Backstory:***

Snapper was born to diametrically opposed parents. His mother was a refined lady in Port Royal, kind, proper, and beloved by the town. His father, on the other hand, was a drifter who rolled into town one day with nowhere to sleep. Kind as she was, she didn’t turn him away when he came begging at her door, and he stayed a bit longer than he ought to have done. At one point, she let slip that she was in debt to the governor of Port Royal, and the scoundrel saw his chance. He promised to pay off her debts, in exchange for her hand in marriage. Having no other choice, she agreed, and in the course of their union, Snapper was born.

His mother loved and cared for him mightily, but there was no other love to be found in his childhood home. His father was a wastrel and a drunkard, often flying into mad rages with little provocation. At age 15, he was unable to bear it any longer, and so he left to join the Navy, having no idea that he would never see either of them again. He served aboard a frigate for little more than a year before receiving the letter that would change his life. In it, the governor of Port Royal informed him that his father had been swindling him on paying off his mother’s debts, paying with counterfeit coins for years. When officers were sent to apprehend him, he had already skipped town, so his mother was taken into custody in his stead and scheduled to hang. Snapper frantically implored his captain to return to Port Royal so that he could save her, and the captain, being a fine upstanding man, assented.

But by the time they arrived, he was too late. His mother’s sentence had already been carried out, the earth on her grave cold and packed. Delirious and distraught, Snapper wandered to the docks and stole a small dinghy, rowing out into the open ocean until he came upon a small deserted island. He docked and made his way inland, aimless and aloof, and resolved to waste away there. Employing a little trick he learned in his time in the Navy, he spent all of his time procuring and fermenting sea snake urine, slowly mastering the process as he drank his sorrows and his senses away.

For three years he managed to survive in this state, constantly tipped and subsisting off the sea snakes he collected his supplies from. Then one day, a very odd-looking pirate brig appeared on the horizon, making way toward his isle. He watched from the treeline as they dropped anchor and rowed ashore, a sorry-looking mate bound and hooded in the bowels of their boat. They threw the man over unceremoniously and began to head back out to sea, and inspiration dawned on Snapper. He burst from the treeline at full gallop, alarming the skallywags. Stumbling to a stop with all of their flintlocks trained on him, he implored them to take him along, exchanging himself for the doomed mate as the isle’s lone occupant. They were not savvy on agreeing, until he reached into his belt pouch and pulled out a flask of his special brew. The captain, none other than O’Fortune, was so impressed with the flavor and bite of it that he changed his mind and invited the lad aboard the Gutless Goon.

When they returned to Isla de Oro with their new crewman, his unique booze became an instant hit with the rest of the inhabitants. Some were less than appetized when he told them how it was made, but they could not deny its quality, so they appended the name ‘Sea Snake’ to him in cheeky recognition. Over time, he served the Goon well enough to earn the rank of Master at Arms, and became a positively dastardly devil at it. Driven by anger at his father, and a desire to find him and make him pay, he bides his time and listens for news of him so that he can avenge his beloved mother.