Andre Cockles

## Background

Born in Cryb Skua, Agalor many years ago as Josephine Thorpe. Andre’s family was fairly poor, and her three other siblings didn’t help their finances. Her father eventually decided to join a House named Abalon. This turned out to be a fortuitous decision, as the head of house ended up becoming the next king. Since they had so little money, her father pledged his services to the House. They ended up moving to Heplage Atoll soon after, sailing on one of the family’s fishing boat.

This was a stark change in lifestyle for the family, as Cryb Skua is an island that based its economy on fishing, whereas Heplage housed the richest and most privileged in the nation. It was this change that caused Josephine to distance herself from her family. Her father wanted her to marry a noble, as that would improve their station in life. Josephine rejected the idea and decided to become a scholar in the Heplage Archives. She knew very little about the work she would have to do, but she was determined to succeed, her fear of failure driving her. Her pure stubbornness allowed her to become a good archivist.

She took a massive interest in sorcery, a field that was little known to the citizens, as most of its records were restricted to the archive in a hidden section. Furthermore, all of the texts on it were encrypted, and some were even enchanted to ensure that non-magic users would never be able to read it. Magic wasn’t outright banned, but since knowledge of the topic was so rare, not many practiced it. Despite the lack of the ban, Josephine still wanted to keep this knowledge to herself, and she kept up the tradition of encrypting and later enchanting the texts she wrote.

In her studies, she found that there were many materials she needed in order to practice most of the magic in the books. These were often expensive and rare ingredients, and her obsession with the knowledge led her to steal what she needed. Eventually, she was caught by a Patron of House Blassa. She was blackmailed into creating an enchanted object that would grant the user immortality, even though she had no knowledge on how to do that. Afraid of losing her access to the Archives and jail time, she agreed to this.

This request consumed her life. She neglected her duties and spent almost every waking hour researching how to do this. Eventually, she managed to create an object that could do this task: a knife. The catch was that in order to achieve this immortality, you had to be killed with the knife. The enchantment placed on the knife cursed the victim to immortality. Trying to ensure that she would not get screwed over in this task, the enchantment put a geas on the person who was killed that whispered to them compelled them to return and owe a favor to the one who had bestowed this curse upon them.

When she gave the knife to the patron, she was betrayed. The person who had blackmailed her into creating the object sought to test it on her first. After seeing her die, he thought that the object had failed, but wasn’t until she had risen that he discovered the truth. Instead of pushing her into his service, he decided to make a deal with her. She would be called upon for one favor in the future, at a later date. She took this information and graciously left, not allowing him to change his mind.

She decided to take up a new identity with this new type of life: Andre Cockles. He decided to kill and curse others and took up the life of a pirate captain, combining her thievery, history with the sea, knowledge of sorcery, and desire for companionship. In the first few years of this, he was truly ruthless, accumulating unneeded wealth, lovers, and cursing Louis Blanchette and Richard Walton to obey him unconditionally. Both of them have incredibly strained relationships with Andre to this day. Although it saddens him to know that their relationship will most likely never sweeten, Andre knows and accepts that they have no obligation to forgive him. Especially when he knows of no way to break the curse and change what he asked of them.

He changed his ways after attempting to kill Milton Grendel, a knight who valued dignity above all else. The man had put up an incredible fight and conceded with honor after his defeat. This act compelled Andre to change the favor he asked for. “Live the life you would want to have lived given the chance.” He claimed that he had done so, and asked if Andre could say the same. When it had become clear that the answer was no, the knight said he would help him to do so, joining the crew in the process. He later became known as “Lionheart” because of it.

This action sent Andre into a bit of a depressive spiral, but Grendel was there to knock sense into him, claiming he had a duty to the people he had killed and to do better by them. At this point, he apologized to the ones he had wronged, but was dismissed. Andre accepted this graciously, vowing to research all he could to reverse the favor. Both men claimed he was doing this for himself, and knowing that their opinion would only change through his actions, tried his very best to do so.

After this point, Andre had cursed only those who had attacked him first and seemed to be upset with their lives to give them a second chance. This is when he cursed Faust, he most trusted confidant. Eventually, he stopped doing it all together, knowing that it was wrong to do so in the first place, and left the knife locked up in a chest in his cabin. This ended when a woman who was seriously injured and clinging to life had begged them to let her join their crew, as she felt trapped in her life. He ran to grab the knife and ended her suffering, commanding her to live life as she saw fit, and Vesh Covington chose to join the crew.

After this incident, he decided to keep it on his person at all times, using it only when the person had asked. Andre even let some join the crew without the curse, although this turned out to be a mistake when those people still had the needs of the living, like sleep, food, and water when the rest of the crew did not. Through this method, there were a few crew members who joined, like Sabrina.

Andre eventually found the uninhabited island of Penumbra, claiming it for the Crew, and enchanting it with magic that prevents its discovery. He has an archive on the Island where he stores all of his texts that he brought with him from Agalor and the ones he had taken along the way. They generally avoid raids, but thirst for knowledge compels him to dock the Hydra--the name for the ship--and spend some time in a city where there is a large and ancient archive to sift through their materials.

Eventually, Andre is called upon to fulfil the obligation he had made years ago. He had thought that they had forgotten or died, but the geas forced him to go and fulfill it. When he had arrived in Heplage, he discovered a descendant of the man who had betrayed him still lived: Lucas Ablan. Lucas had found out about the tale regarding the knife and decided to see if he could cash in on it. He asked a simple thing of Andre: find his daughter. Not able to say no, Andre agreed.