Vilt

Vilt’s mother died giving birth to him, so he was raised alone by his father, a listless drunkard who worked the docks for his meager pay. No connection ever developed between them, so when the man died of a failing liver when he was little more than a teenager, Vilt’s heart was already cold, his tongue and eyes dry from never having shared a sentiment with him over their daily meals. With nothing to anchor him to his birth home, he struck out on his own, drifting in and out of jobs and taverns, as free and lost as his old man.

Drinking his ennui away one evening that bled into almost all the others, he overheard a ship captain making the rounds to rustle up a crew to go sailing and find fortune. Vilt decided he had nothing to lose, even after learning that the man was a pirate captain, and so he quit his job on the spot and signed on, curious but not really hoping for some excitement and adventure to color his gray life.

For a time it seemed as though this new calling would be a decent life, but then the crew of the vessel hit a dry spell, failing to take any scores for nearly six months. Disgruntlement bred and grew in the shadows of the crew’s minds, Vilt’s as well, and they soon turned on their captain, blaming his mismanagement for their poor luck. They began making plans for a mutiny, and set out to fulfill it one dark moonless night, sneaking into the captain’s cabin to slit his throat. Finding his bed empty, they turned in alarm, and were greeted by saber tips and cocked pistols, held by the captain and a few of the mates who had pretended to plan the mutiny with them. Betrayed and morose, the failed revolutionaries were herded onto longboats and set adrift near a tiny cay, a day’s worth of water rations and one cutlass their only supplies.

There was no honor among the mutineers after a time, and after a few had taken their own lives rather than slowly die of hunger and thirst, those remaining began to turn on each other in primal fashion. Vilt was by far the hardiest of the lads, though, and succeeded in killing the rest of his former crew. With little water and no food to be found, he subsisted for two months on the remains of his mates, losing strength and will by the day.

Sprawled upon the beach and quite through trying to continue living, he was saved by a ship that had been blown off course the night before and drew into the cay to get their bearings. Coming upon Vilt in his sorriest state, they were moved to pity, and took him aboard and nursed him back to health over the course of a few weeks. They did not need his services as a deckhand, so when his strength was back, they deposited him at their next port of call. Believing his adventuring days over, he returned to a gray daily routine, working menial jobs for just enough pay to feed and inebriate himself on a daily basis.

A deja-vu moment would happen not long after, when yet another pirate captain was hiring crew to join up with an ambitious conclave to the south. This captain, none other than Ebone, was clearly cut from a different cloth than the previous one, and so Vilt once again walked away from his humdrum existence to sail the seas as a skallywag. This move proved much more fortuitous, and Vilt found himself actually enjoying his work and his company, a feeling he had no context for previously. Still, a hard heart yields slowly, so Vilt has little interest in cultivating relationships amongst his mates on the Isle, focusing on his work during the day and his drinking at night. But his dedication has earned him a titled position aboard the Quacken’s Wrath, so there may yet be hope to crack his shell and make him a spirit to be reckoned with.

* Isla de Oro Wiki
* The Island
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* The Council of Bones
* The Fleet
* The Captains
* The Officers
* The Nightwatch
* Yarrbot
* Davy Jones
* Della Rose
* The Quacken
* The Library
* The Hall of Legends