Nemo
From Changeling Venue
| Seeming | Beast Swimmerskin |
|---|---|
| Court | Summer Court •••• |
| Freehold | Isla del Perdido |
| Player | Sean McKeown |
Contents |
Overview
Alias(es): Nemo, "Mal", Malcolm Danneskjold.
Real Name: Unknown
Location: New York City to Boston, by the waterways...
Age: Appears late 20's, early 30's.
Seeming: Beast
Kith: Swimmerskin
Court: Summer
Virtue: Temperance
Vice: Wrath
Concept: Moral compass, immoral deeds...
Physical description:
Mask: Nemo's clothing is rustic, often featuring an outdated "duster" coat the coppery color of dried blood. He professes that this comes from his surprisingly Victorian upbringing, in slavery to the Drowned God, and is to his addled mind the first and worst hint of what time-period he might hail from... but it's this coat, as well as his apparent profession, that have earned him the nickname of "Mal" and thankfully he's not yet "got the joke". He appears to be a rather nondescript, somewhat care-worn man in his late twenties, the only thing distinguishing him from the pressing crowd of not-particularly-attractive men being his intense and focused personality, suggesting there is more than just the unassuming surface to be seen here.
Mien: Nemo has gray, seemingly always damp skin, drawn taut over tense, corded muscles. Nemo reminds the onlooker of the krakens of the deep dark sea, resembling nothing so much as one of H.P. Lovecraft's "Men of Innsmouth". Despite his damp skin and presumably chilly origins, a sense of warmth and heat feels just below the surface of his skin, perhaps due to the boiling blood of one who would take his wrath out on his Keeper if he but could.
Relevant Mechanics: Fame • (Coast Guard), Mantle ••• (Summer)
Character Livejournal: Radio Free Fae
History
Basic Timeline: Abducted at an unknown time, somewhere before his fifth birthday. Escaped at the start of 2000 as part of the Red Nettle Revolt... and has been up to both good and no good ever since.
Current Activities: Courier. Smuggler. Warrior. Terrorist. ...DJ?
Angry and stubborn, Nemo is not the brightest of folks but he does have a good head on his shoulders, or at least one that thinks fast on its feet as it's gotten him out of more than a few scraps that direct violence contiuously applied would not have accomplished. Nemo is angry at the Fae that have robbed him of a life and made him what he is, but has tempered that wrathful streak with his resolve to live his life and seek out the freedom that was taken from him before, living by the credo "I swear, by my life and my love for it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine". Staunchly loyal to his friends, Nemo crews his own ship and trawls between New York City and Boston to patrol as a sort of independent one-man Coast Guard Search and Rescue, robbing the sea of those whom it would claim and pass on into the Hedge so that he can save others from the fate he himself suffered... and perhaps taking what he can salvage from them as payment, before depositing them safely ashore, though they never know what happened to that boat of theirs that "sank". Nemo tempers the straightforward aggression of the Summer Court, and his alliance with Niemand Keiner and his Cold Iron group, with enough Winter Court sensibility that tells him perhaps being a bright flaming beacon isn't the best way to run a long-term mission at bearding the Others. He may not be smart, but there's some sense in there yet.
This Winter Court sensibility, as well as his constantly mobile, often hermitlike ways, leave him as a perfect "transmitter" for Radio Free Fae, and his small bit of Fame in naval circles as a well-meaning recluse that has saved any number of innocent lives since his sudden appearance within the last decade helps to keep that signal on the down-low as he travels from place to place... as well as enables a little bit of crime, to go with the honest work as work comes up.
Merit Details: Nemo's Fame comes from saving shipwrecked mortals before they can become lost at sea... not because of altruism or his love of mortals, but instead because he seeks to deprive his former Keeper of the ability to ruin the lives of any more humans the way his life was ruined. Nemo is the captain of the "Danneskjold", a mid-sized shipping vessel just a bit bigger than a personal pleasure yacht, and is known by the name "Malcolm Danneskjold" as a local sailor who keeps an ear to the emergency radio bands.
Background:
“I am No One”. I was born to this world, but I cannot remember it. I was born to live a life of love and warmth, but I did not get to live it. I was taken as a child for a changeling, or so I was taught as I grew cognizant of the world around me and learned what I was from those who had lived some of their lives before being taken as slaves to the Drowned God. I don’t know from what time I came, for time is a strange thing once you sink beneath the waves... I learned to speak English with a Victorian twang, from those fellow sacrifices who lived with me in the stagnant but air-filled slave-pens of the Drowned God. I was born a human... but I am that no more.
Men were not meant to live beneath the waves, and to live there first you must die: drown, and learn to breathe the magic in the water rather than the air in your lungs. Dying, unfortunately, was the easy part of living there... a life of service and toil gave the Drowned God his comforts, and those nice things others take for granted came from sheer muscle and hard labor. It makes little sense then to take a child, a helpless thing, drown it beneath the waves and expect it to go to work... but the lives of the men drowned to serve the god beneath the sea were brutish and short, for they lived in the realm of air and freedom, and all too often they died... their only means of returning to that freedom. Take a child and drown it beneath the waves and you shall find instead a child free of the notion of ‘freedom’, whose mind does not rebel against the slavery because it was never raised free. Take a child and drown it beneath the waves, let it grow to adulthood in the life below the crashing waves, and you will grow a creature that is no longer human but somehow suited to the life it lives, hardened sinew and slippery skin, made to work and swim and suffer.
I never had a name. I never had a life. I never said I was human... or at least I wasn’t until the day I broke free. Even a born slave can be pushed too far; even a creature that sups on torment as its daily bread can hurt beyond the breaking-point. The master priest directed us all in our toils, carrying rocks across the sea-floor to drop deep into the trench in which the Drowned God lives... and all too many of those adult slaves lose limbs beneath the grinding boulders as the slaves work to pass them even a foot, and the head is just another limb to lose as far as the stones are concerned. One very bad day the team of us were to move a cornerstone to drop into the trench, and in the last feet we lost an arm. The man screamed, as best one can with a mouthful of brine, and the sharks circled... but we fought them back, with the master’s help, for even a slave has some value to its owner. With the last foot to go before the stone would teeter over the drop, we lost a head... that woman didn’t scream, she merely died, and fed the sharks and lampreys as we dragged the slave away in a red haze. With mere inches to go, the boulder began to tumble... the most dangerous time of all. It was my job to push it, and escape the ripping current that it dragged in its plummeting wake, for I was strongest and hardest amongst the slaves, bred for a warm life but raised to the clammy murk, grown with a body to suit it.
This time, like so many others, the stone fell... but unlike those other times I was pulled in the current, and the strength of my legs could not drag me out of its fall. As the stone turned it pulled me beneath it, and I was to ride the comet of my doom to the sea-floor far below... and for once, the slave in me rebelled; I did not know freedom, but I did know life, and to embrace the latter I had to struggle for the former if I was to pry myself from that fate. Freedom is a tricky thing – teach a body a little of it and it will crave the lot of it. I struggled, nearing exhaustion as I tried to scrape myself from the killing-stone, swimming and climbing and cursing and screaming as I beat myself bloody against the uncaring rock. My doom rushed up for me before my eyes, but somehow I averted it... scraped free of the rock as it fell, far enough that the deadly current did not rip me down to the sea-floor behind it to my death. And I swam up the trench, swimming for my life, swimming for my freedom. Above me the darkness ended in murk, and above even that there must somewhere be light.
The priest screamed at me as I swam past, expecting me to meekly submit – I always had, after all, for I knew no other life, and I was raised to see the master-priests kill their mortal slaves for no better reason than the whims of the moment or the failure to keep some miniscule obligation that had been pressed upon them with their service. And I knew that first taste of freedom, and I knew that though I might be exhausted I was made to be hard and strong, harder and stronger even than the priests of the Drowned God, perhaps. I knew that somewhere there were waves, and above them, air... the end of the Drowned God’s realm, and the means for escaping his power. And so he screamed, and I swam... and the Drowned God had changed me to be strong indeed, living the life that I did, as hard as the rocks in his quarries and strong enough to move the immovable.
Associations & Associates
- Isla del Perdido - Nemo's sometime home, a smuggler's cove hidden within the Hedge itself where all sorts of layers of Faerie society can live in relative safety and away from the prying eyes of the law and government if they need to... or just want a place to call their own, with people like them, sometimes.
- The Innkeepers - Occasional visitor, often with a rescued Changeling still wet behind the ears.
- Radio Free Fae - Just another part of the whisper chain, broadcasting from somewhere in the north Atlantic...
- Never Again - Sympathizer and perhaps more... better not to ask, nor look too closely.
- the Drowned God - No, he doesn't want to talk about it...
- Niemand Keiner - Pointed the same way... doing the same thing for the same reasons.
- Althea Sexton - A fellow slave of the Drowned God, called the Duke of Darkwater by her knowing him far more intimately than a body desires.
- Elizabeth Ann Sexton - Nemo's "niece" and adopted daughter of his "sister", Althea... a ward of Erised's living in New York City for training and education.
- Persephone - One of Elizabeth's mentors, a complicated woman of the Duchy of the Icebound Heart who seems to enjoy reminding Nemo of the fact that there is very little that he does that is 'proper' to do in front of a young lady.
- Rigger - The one who found Nemo and brought him back into the world. Rigger met Nemo in 2000 while inside the Hedge. He helped the escaping Changeling find his way into the world, and together they found the Isla del Perdido.
- Calico Jill Harkness - A friend and fellow seafarer out of the Isla del Perdido, half pirate, half cat, and half spaceship.
- Captain Lelland, the Saltwater Snake - Erstwhile business-partner and the most charming pirate in all of Louisville, Nemo has been known to do business and trade tall tales with the Captain whenever his travels take him down into the warmer waters below Virginia's coast.
- Erised Eveningsong - The more proper "Innkeeper" of the New York City area, and occasional boss when there's courier work to be done or people to be escorted about. A good person to stay on civil terms with, seeing how Reverie sits on top of the nearest Doc-in-a-Box if Rigger can't be found, Myo's Apple Clinics.
- C.J - The "Innkeeper" of Washington D.C., and a good contact for work both legal and illegal. Sometimes you need to ship things by sea, and sometimes those things are even legal. Other times, you find a particularly expensive and particularly hot car in your cargo hold and you really have to hope that you don't start taking on water. Just because a fish can swim doesn't mean he needs more holes in his head.
- Suicide King - Autumn King of Boston proper and another business contact for all sorts of useful crimes... and he's always got a bit of work that'd work out a fierce temper if that's your pleasure.
- Ulysses 'Cudgel' Carter - Who do you turn to, to enforce the law in a lawless place? Rather than swear Oaths, something the residents of the Isla del Perdido might not be willing to do, there's a rule that says "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you". Rather than be hypocrites or discuss endless cycles of violence as people do unto and are done upon, Cudgel will be the one tasked with the chore of "do unto you". Don't make me call him down here to go medieval on your ass, he's not a very cheerful soul and it don't make us too happy neither to have to pay him to whup you.
- Salom, The Summer King - Nemo has paid for the broke Seer's beers for a long time. Who else can see the best way to kick the crap out of the rest of a bar? Two Kings of Summer versus one bar... They always take that bet.
- Alex Drake - Current Summer Marshal and oathsworn compatriot as a fellow survivor of the Battle of the Bronx, Alex is a little bit crazy in the same sort of way that the Pope is "a little bit Catholic". This sulfur-breathed dragon-man has been told to do what he needs to do in defense of the Freehold... but please, don't leave a wake of charred corpses leading back to our doorstep.
- Ox - Another Summer Courtier of New York City, Ox is a good man to have in a fight and a good man to have around when your enemy goes to ground hiding "in that building over there somewhere". No building, no hiding.
- Rook - Another Summer Courtier of New York City, Rook is a Vietnam veteran like Ox and Alex Drake, but his time as a sniper has colored his perspective very heavily. Like Nemo, Rook leans a bit towards the West when it comes to courts... he's not just an angry warrior, but one whose desire for wrath is currently beating out his ingrained discipline and honor in his heart when choosing his Court.
- Arachne - Nemo ran into Arachne while passing through Atlantic City, where she was polite enough to answer some probably-rude questions as to the nature of her Court, which felt different to him as expressed through the Mantle of the Lost. She may or may not be tempting Nemo away from his angry "childhood" among the Summer Court to an adulthood bearing the heart of a warrior of the West Court.
- GB - First she wants to kill him, then she throws her "sister" at him... this girl has issues. But then as an intelligent woman of the Summer Court, that was more or less an inevitability.
- Emma Hart - A complicated woman for a complicated man. Nemo met Emma through Rigger, indirectly, as a friend of a friend... then ended up possibly saving her life from the Wild Hunt as privateers were called down upon her, and like a bad penny there they turn up together time and again from place to place. Nemo ran out to her home town for a Valentine's party at the Cold One, and may or may not have been seen escorting her upstairs to say "good night" at the end of the evening... and has shown up an awful lot in Colorado lately, more than can be explained away as "innocent".
Character Inspirations
Captain Malcolm Reynolds, of Firefly
Jayne, of Firefly
Ragnar Danneskjold, of Atlas Shrugged
The Men of Innsmouth, from the tales of H. P. Lovecraft
Cautionary Tales
"Is that all I am? A calculator that works up right an' wrong in his own little fishy brain, an' follows the pattern the Drowned God knit in there? See, I came out of that place not knowin' right from wrong. Had to teach myself the difference between good an' evil, I did, and learned that difference as by doin' both. Perhaps I should tell you where I learned the difference between right an' wrong.
The year was 2001. I was livin' as a rutting beast, more or less, barely wearing a human skin and certainly not givin' much thought to making better of myself. I'd been out of the Hedge about a year, maybe a little more, enough to pick up a name and learn a bit of a trade, working hunting men down for the thrill of the chase. First bounty I got that I was workin' by myself, I had a hunch as was worth playin', about a man as was wanted by the police for murderin' his wife an' their two children an' dumping their hacked-up bodies in a nearby lake. Reckon I knew a thing or two about the kind of person as could do something so terrible... an' figured he'd not think much of anything was wrong, just go about his life as normal as could be while he ducked off to dodge the law.
So rather than join the state-wide manhunt that was rifling through the airports and train stations, I just followed the scent north on the way to the border, chasing him on his way to Canada. Found a small town on the way up off the main road just past Albany, looked an' felt like his small town suburb out on Long Island and reckoned as he would try an' set himself up a reenactment. Feel what he felt before. So I waited for nightfall an' just listened... knowin' whatever it was playin' through his soul, it found what it wanted here an' it was hungry for more. An' in the dark, an' in the quiet, I'd be able to follow my ears an' find him by what didn't sound right. I found him all right, blade in hand, menacing the wife o' the household while standin' over her husband's bleedin', coolin' corpse.
She wanted to run for her life, you see, but... maternal instincts ride a body hard, an' he was threatening to do the same to the children if she tried to run. Let him have his play, he says, an' he'll leave them breathin'. What she had was what he wanted, he told her, an' it was that power in his voice as held her fixed in his gaze. Reckon he'd have gotten away with it if I weren't there... but that weren't why I was there. She lived. The children lived. He died. You might say I did the right thing... I killed a very bad man, guilty as sin and rotten to the core.
But you can do the right thing for the wrong reason, an' I killed the man because it pleased me to take his life. Something in me was born strong, impossibly strong, all coils of muscle an' a desire to squeeze. I cracked his neck with a noise so loud I reckoned as it'd splintered the night, shatter the darkness in two right there... but that was just the ringin' in my ears of what I wanted to hear, didn't even wake the children. I faced what I was then, an' learned from it. That was the moment when I taught myself the difference between good an' evil... because in that moment I was no different'n him, I wanted the same thing for the same reason even if I did what everyone'd say was "the right thing". The abacus of good an' evil'd even agree with that. Two lives lost, instead of four... an' one of those as was getting a needle in the arm soon's we could bring him in hale an' hearty anyway.
The policemen came and called me a hero. Even wanted to give me a medal, for the "citizen's arrest", acting in a respectable fashion an' committin' "justifiable homicide". Just seein' that poor man, neck slit ear to ear, grinnin' up at me... how could you not believe I'd done the right thing?
But I knew. After all, I knew why I did what I did. An' I know who gave me that strength, an' who put it against my fellow man as a ticking time bomb 'case I ever got loose o' him. But if everyone tells you you're a hero, an' you know you're not, are you supposed to just believe 'em?
I walked away from that. Livin' like that, that weren't life. Weren't what I came back for, why I swam free o' the boulder as was draggin' me down behind it to my death. I had a choice between worshippin' life an' worshippin' death, an' I reckon as I knew which choice was the easy one. But that weren't the one as I made. I taught myself somethin' new. Went off the rails, started re-workin' the programmin'..."
Quotes
"Whether it's honest work or dishonest work, it's still work. Man's got to eat, and ain't nobody getting hurt by it as matters really."
"If I had my way, the Drowned God wouldn't just walk the plank... that plank'd be shoved somewhere the sun don't shine, and I'll be damned if it ain't got a few splinters to it that weren't there yesterday."
"I ain't being paid to hurt you, so if'n you don't mind, I'd be thanking you if you'd be so kind as to get out of my way."
"He seemed a good sort, the sort of chap I wouldn't mind chatting with over a glass of Mead again." - Witte Wieven
"In New York City, fish sushi you!" - Alex Drake
Rumors
Nemo may or may not have played a part in the desecration of some graves outside the Tomnahurich Market. Most are pretty sure he spent the evening drunk in Eight Pint Meg's Bar, though, hitting on anything female and over eighteen that moved... and perhaps a few things male, by evening's end, or with some flexibility on that "over eighteen" part.
