Ross Thompson
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Race: Human
Birthday: Loshis, 13, 2690
Age: 30
FC: Matthew McNulty
Birthday: Loshis, 13, 2690
Age: 30
FC: Matthew McNulty
Place of Origin: Hullwen
Current Location: Old Rose Harbor/Mimsby-in-the-Marsh/Fen Kierden
Occupation: carter/smuggler
Player Name: springy
Current Location: Old Rose Harbor/Mimsby-in-the-Marsh/Fen Kierden
Occupation: carter/smuggler
Player Name: springy
Physical Description
Physically, Ross is pretty average for an Anaxi human. He stands around six feet tall and has a lean, wiry frame, with long, corded muscles from a lifetime of physical toil. His complexion is of medium hue for his kind, tanned by weather, wind and sun as he spends most waking hours outdoors (and many sleeping ones as well). He has dark brown eyes and hair, and generally sports facial hair, often unable or not caring enough to shave, sometimes for weeks or months at a time. His clothing reflects his lack of wealth, and is shabby to say the least. Invariably he is to be found in old, knee high leather boots, patched woolen trousers and linen shirts of an ambiguous color and tailoring, a leather vest, when needed, a broadcloth jacket, when needed, and a longer leather coat, when needed. A beat-up leather hat of nondescript shape is almost always to be found atop his head, rain or shine, summer or winter. In total, physically Ross does not cut an imposing or memorable appearance, and that suits him just fine. If one wants to carry out a stealthy, secretive trade, it pays to go unnoticed.
Yet there is something about him that some might found notable, and that has to do with his expression and presentation. His look is bold, and hard, for the most part. Although, when he is set on chasing after a woman, he can have an almost appealing, definitely flirtatious look in his eye, and in his smile. He carries himself with a rather aloof, very assured air, because he does believe in himself, and his abilities. Fate threw him a curveball, and he lost everything he had and has had to start over. But he’s very determined and his no-nonsense demeanor reflects that. He never struts, or stalks about or stomps loudly as he moves through life. But there is something about him that makes those who meet him think, here is a man who is going places.
Personality
Ross is all about Ross. He’s opportunistic, ambitious and has no scruples when it comes to trying to claim his place at the top of the dung heap. He has a good work ethic, though, as long as the task is in furtherance of his own needs and objectives. Sure, one day he’d like to be rich and able to sit back on his arse and enjoy his hard earned wealth. But he also realizes that if he ever hopes to get to that place, he needs to put every ounce of his mental and physical energy into the effort. He doesn’t shy away from that realization. In fact, he’s a fairly restless man and it’s unlikely he’d ever really be content to just laze around, even if he could. He seeks adventure, excitement, the rush of conquest and successfully defeating some obstacle or challenge, but then grows bored quickly and must have something new to tackle. This gives him a dark and passionate aura, which has lead him to countless entanglements with women, who tend to find his lustful nature alluring. But he’s quick to escape any attempts to secure him as a husband. The fact that he’s already married is often useful as an excuse to make his hasty exit.
In terms of where and how Ross sees himself fitting in to any grand scheme of life in the ten kingdoms, or beyond, he tends to take a very pragmatic view towards society, the government, the races and what’s going on beyond his own doings. He basically doesn’t care about anything that doesn’t affect him, or interfere with his own plans. Of course this means there are quite a lot of societal factors which do impact him, as a human, as a criminal who operates on the periphery of more mainstream criminality. He navigates these as cannily as he can, with a view towards running undetected as much as he possibly can. If he had the luxury of being on the top of the heap, he’d gladly be there and have no qualms about oppressing those under him.
Yet with all that being said about him, which may sound very amoral, he isn’t a particularly unpleasant or brutish man to be around. Part of his skillset, as a smuggler, is doing deals and being a man of business. Although he knows his stuff and won’t be put upon, he has a certain amount of congeniality about him, and knows a lot of people who operate in the same spheres as he does. Probably, if asked, those who know him would say “Ross Thompson? Why yes, he has a good head on his shoulders. You won’t put anything over on him! And don’t think that you can cross him, for he’s a hard one, he is. Hard headed and hard hearted, if you try anything funny. But a good man to share a pint with and have a laugh with. ‘Long as you stay on his good side, mind.”
Backstory
Ross was born into a sizeable family which eked a living from the often fickle bounties of the sea. Their ramshackle home lay on the outskirts of Hullwen, “a small fishing village on the east coast of Anaxas, south of Old Rose.” As has been said of Hullwen, there was and is little to remark about the tranquil pace of life there. However slow and sleepy is not to be mistaken for easy. The honest fisherfolk, and a notable contingent of small time smugglers and less successful pirates who came and went, worked hard, day in and day out, to keep body and soul together. Ross’s father and uncles were no different and as he and his brothers and cousins grew, they took their place on the yawls and ketches, hauling in the fish that was critical to their meager existence. Thus Ross learned the skills of a sailor, a netmaker, a salter and smoker, and the value of a very hard earned hat, or quart-penny for those were to be found in the village as well.
It was a rough and tumble life, where all in the family were expected to help out, as their age permitted, in all that it took to keep food on the table and clothes on their backs. Education was confined to the practical skills needed for just that, and leisure time consisted of swimming and playing and getting into mischief with the other children in the village. Ross grew up fast and soon enough was inducted into the adolescent boys’ more mature games which usually meant trying to get their hands on tobacco, alcohol, or whatever other substances were supposed to be reserved for adult consumption – and talking about girls. Talking about and thinking about girls, and sex, was a favorite pastime of all the boys, and Ross was no exception. He was a comely lad and soon enough was flirting, in his primitive way, and actively chasing after the girls who so loved to tease, but who withheld their favors so expertly. His life was work, work, work and then running a bit wild with the other lads and that was fine, until he reached his mid-teens and began to rub elbows more and more with the rough and seedy looking men who drifted in and out of the little port.
For Ross had a wayward streak and a restless soul, and the village seemed to be growing smaller and duller by the day. Of course, his options to do anything other than follow in his father’s footsteps were severely limited. Yet he yearned for something more than a life spent wearing himself out hauling in the lines. He had an affinity for the sea, but little taste for fishing, and the rogues and scalliwags who frequented the few kiddleys and pothouses in the village seemed exotic and their tales of “adventure” alluring. Day by day, week by week, month by month, some other life, outside of Hullwen, called out to him, and at the ripe old age of fifteen, he left home on a smuggler’s skiff, ready to make his own way in the world, never looking back at home or hearth.
The old rascal he shipped out with was an itinerant smuggler known only as “Ol’Newk”, a man who’d seen better years, and even those had worn hard on him. Somewhere along the way, Newk had lost most of his right arm, and the years were quickly catching up with him in the form of arthritis and getting winded far too easily. He’d decided it was time to both literally and figuratively hire on a much needed hand, and Young Ross was willing to learn the trade without fretting over anything like percentages. Ross was young and naïve and far removed from the hard man he’d become, after years at Newk’s knee, soaking in what the older man had to teach him about sailing the small, shallow-draft, light vessels that were the smugglers’ blessing and the revenuers’ bane.
Ross learned to furtively navigate the shores between Hullven and Old Rose, and then the longer sea voyages to Mugroba. He absorbed the practice of stealth, the art of deceit, and the business of striking a hard bargain and how to make sure those he dealt with were “encouraged” to stick to the deal made. Young Ross and Ol’Newk never got rich. They were a penny-ante pair who only had the means to deal in small ventures, and who had always to give a wide berth to men like Silas Hawke and his many minions and captains. It was a life worth living, but a hard and dangerous life nonetheless. The art of negotiation was paired with that of wielding a long bladed knife in the dark. Ross learned how expedient it was to use a thin wire garrote with wooden handles, to extinguish life without risking detection. Not that his profession was that of a killer. But sometimes, killing was something that was either necessary or even merely efficient. If he had any qualms about it early on, he soon got past that. Life was a game of survival of the fittest and he didn’t mean to lose.
The years passed, and Newk got older right along with Young Ross, who reached adulthood and so the descriptor “Young” seemed far less fitting. As just “Ross”, he eventually found his way into the marriage bed, caught up in some fit of blinding lust that quickly burnt itself out. He woke one morning feeling as if he was suffocating. So he slipped away and he and Newk had an unvoiced agreement to avoid Isla Yambe from there on out. He heard on the wind that his beautiful wife had given birth to a son, but he never went to any trouble to determine the veracity of that rumor. For Ross, life was meant to be lived on the sea, on the fly, in the shadows, always at the edge of danger. That’s what kept the blood pumping in his veins. That’s what drew the air in and out of his chest. Settling down was never going to be for him.
Well, fate and the gods always seem to delight in upsetting a man’s dreams, don’t they?
Fate came in the form of a storm that saw old man and young man alike cast overboard, not too far from shore but enough so that Ol’Newk sank like a stone long before he had any chance to put foot to sand. The skiff too was lost, and Ross was lucky to escape with his life, swimming to shore and collapsing on the sand, knowing the clothes on his back were his sole possessions. He cursed the old man for being such a distrusting soul that he always insisted on keeping the pouch containing all their money tied securely to his own belt. He cursed himself for failing to knock Ol’Newk over the head some night and steal the skiff and take the money that was rightfully his, as he did most of the work by that point. He cursed fate, he cursed the gods, but in the end, cursing did nothing and with the dawn he rose and set out to see what he could make of his life with nothing more than his hands and his head, and the knife and garrote at his belt.
Ross had washed ashore in an uninhabited place, but within a day’s walk he found himself in Mimsbury-in-the-Marsh, “a small wick and human village in Northern Anaxas, near Fen Kiernan.” The Fen is described as “a forbidding swamp that blurs the border between Anaxas and Mugroba, often a land of contention and illegal border crossing…The swamp is considered impassable – too deep to wade, too muddy to boat and too tangled to navigate through except by the most intrepid of explorers” – or the most desperate of landbound smugglers, namely, Ross Thompson. Without other recourse, he hired himself out as a common laborer, finding what work he could around the village, turning his hand to whatever was offered. Barely able to keep life in his bones this way, he turned to exploring that dismal, forbidden swamp, with a view towards turning it to his own needs, should he get the chance to obtain a boat. It would not be just any ordinary boat, but a pirogue of sorts, with a flat bottom, an extremely shallow draft and capable of being manned with no other crew than himself. To Ross’s mind, the swamp was a gateway to riches, with all the goods, and even human chattel, that might be ferried between Anaxas and Mugroba, through its impenetrable depths – for one who could discover the byways and secret routes by which to travel.
He spent several years slipping away into the swamp between temporary jobs, returning with whatever he could find that the villagers might be willing to barter or pay for, while at the same time searching for those elusive watery paths through the seemingly unnavigable Fen . He eventually scraped enough together to purchase a kint and a horse to pull it. At least that’s the story he let people believe. There was really no need to look too closely at the truth, or dwell on the solitary wick tinker who went missing before ever he made it to the village. Now with the means to establish himself with a façade of legitimacy, Ross set himself up as a jobbing carter, taking on deliveries from Mimsbury to Plugit, or Elmonton, or even Old Rose, and back and forth between them all, Of course, he was not averse to taking on the odd transportation of contraband, and many of his talents stood him in good stead to do so successfully and without being caught. But he was always careful to make sure he did nothing that would bring him to the attention of Hawke and his followers. Ross remained a very, very small time operator when it came to criminal activity and those who made their living by it.
For some time now, he has lived on the road, sleeping under his wagon, slowly building up some capital, planning for the day when he can once again have a watercraft, and turn his hand full time to smuggling.
*text in italics is taken from the ThornsWiki
Aptitude Skills
Mental
Average
Average
Physical
Average
Average
Social
Excellent
Excellent
Focus Skills
Career and Income
Housing and Inventory
Goals
Long term: become fabulously wealthy and retire to a comfortable living in the Muluku Islands (but not Isla Yambe!!)
Short term: somehow obtain a boat so he can get back to smuggling for real!
