Dartemis Mull
Dartemis Mull is the beady-eyed master of wreck and ruin who commands a fleet of dredgers, divers, and salvage hulks that stalk storm-wrecked waters like carrion birds. Unlike most pirates who prey on living vessels, Dartemis is the bane of the dead sea, arriving after the storm, after the kraken, after the battle, and picking over the remains. But don’t be fooled: he’s no mere scavenger. He causes wrecks when they don’t come naturally, calling up whirlpools, false beacons, and sunken snares to drag merchantmen into watery graves.
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2067 NC -
42 years old
Dartemis Mull, Captain of the Deepmother, Warcaptain of the Bilgehand Syndicate, the Undertow Baron. Human Male.
Overview
A grim pragmatist and hardened scavenger, Dartemis is ruthlessly efficient and unsentimental. He values contracts, salvage rights, and loyalty - though only to the letter, not the spirit. He speaks in clipped sentences, rarely smiles, and treats every conversation as a negotiation. Despite his grizzled demeanor, Moll is deeply superstitious, offering nightly rites to sunken saints and whispering to drowned souls before dives. He harbors deep hatred for naval officers, whom he views as pompous thieves of the sea’s true bounty. Though not bloodthirsty by nature, he shows no mercy to anyone who disrupts a wreck he’s claimed.
Description
Obese and beady-eyed, Dartemis wears deep-sea salvage gear worked into his leathers: rusted copper breastplates, hoses turned into pauldrons, thick boots that leave puddles of brine. His eyes are milky blue, as if always fresh from a deep dive, and his voice carries the rasp of water-damaged lungs. Barnacles encrust his vambraces; he smells of rust and wet wood.
Background
Once a lighthouse keeper exiled for blinding a convoy of ships in a fit of divine madness, Dartemis turned to the sea with nothing but a skiff and a bone lantern. That lantern still burns with green flame aboard his flagship. He believes the sea chooses what dies and what is preserved, and he serves as her hand. Dartemis is deeply fatalistic, eerily calm, and speaks in aphorisms like, “That which sinks, sings.”
