Maelen Draethe
Warcaptain Maelen Draethe is the most mysterious and feared sorcerer among the Seventeen. Where others raid with steel, fire, or charm, Maelen uses shadows, whispers, and fear. Believed to be a former druid from the Calmerian Marches turned cult leader, she now commands the Black Nacre, a ship cloaked in sorcery and manned by fanatics, witches, and lost souls.
Maelen is known to shroud her ships in supernatural fog, weave illusions of safety, and replace real horrors with false ones… or vice versa. She claims descent from the Old Blood of the Moon Temples, and whether that’s true or a myth she planted in the minds of her enemies is unclear. It is generally believed she is a priestess of Mania, but others whisper of an even darker pact with some demon of the deep...
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2069 NC -
40 years old
Maelen Draethe, Captain of the Black Nacre, Warcaptain of the Moonless Wake Fleet, the Scarraven, Mother of the Shadowed Deep. Human Female.
Overview
Many believe Warcaptain Draethe can see through shadows and speak into dreams, and her presence at Compact gatherings is always accompanied by unease, flickering lanterns, and a subtle drop in temperature. While other captains chase glory, Maelen seeks something deeper: control through fear, prophecy, and occult knowledge.
She is known to be cold and calculating but deeply mystical, often speaking in riddles, metaphors or oracular tones. She is a strong believer in fate and prophecy and claims to have forseen her own death in the waves.
Description
Maelen Draethe cuts a striking and otherworldly figure: tall, statuesque, and as pale as moonlit bone. Her long black hair is streaked with silver strands and woven with dyed feathers, whispering with her every movement like an augury. Her eyes are pools of shimmering darkness, violet glints flickering like trapped starlight… ritual scars of her initiation into forbidden sight. She drapes herself in flowing robes of shadow-dyed silk, embroidered with the iridescent scales of creatures unknown to natural seas, and moves with the grace of a deep-sea predator cloaked in elegance. Her fingers end in long obsidian-lacquered nails, sharp as knives and never idle. She refuses the touch of metal, her adornments and weapons crafted instead from polished bone, gleaming shell, and black pearl. Even her voice is a weapon: low, musical, and laced with a cadence that draws listeners in like the pull of a tide they don’t notice until it’s too late.
Background
It is rumored that Maelen Draethe was once a druid, exiled from her kin for studying forbidden arts with oracles of the dead, who taught her to peer through time’s veil and touch the minds of gods long exiled. There, she was initiated into a forbidden order of shadow-weavers who whispered to the void beneath stars. But her ambition outpaced their patience; when she sacrificed her own betrothed to some being called the “Moonless One” for deeper insight, they cast her out in horror and fear.
Fleeing eastward, Maelen arrived on Tamerynd Isle, where fate placed before her the Black Nacre: an armored frigate abandoned by its plague-ridden, dying crew. She claimed it in silence and soon filled its decks not with common pirates, but with cultic zealots, each one symbolically “drowned” and renamed upon joining her flock. Where others fought with harpoon and blade, Maelen won through premonitions, whispered lies, and orchestrated collapses of mind and morale. Her victories left no corpses… only empty ships, sobbing traitors, and captains turned mad by nightmares. She slowly built up a fleet of cultists and became a Warcaptain about eight years ago.
Today, Maelen trades in secrets and cursed relics, her pale vulture sails seen as omens on the horizon. She walks both the physical world and its dreaming mirror, known to broker Heka-bound oaths from her sanctum within Deepberth’s Veil Market. Some call her a prophetess. Others a curse in velvet. All agree: no pact with Maelen comes without a price whispered only in dreams.
Base of Operations
When not aboard the Black Nacre, Draethe may be found operating her shop in the depths of the Veil Market in Deepberth.
Religious Beliefs
Cultist of an unknown entity
