Quarn the Quiet
Quarn the Quiet is a mute and enigmatic Warcaptain of the Pirate Isles, commanding the dread fleet Black Lament with uncanny precision and ritualistic silence. Cloaked in mystery, Quarn communicates only through gestures and symbols, inspiring a fearful, near-religious obedience in his crew. His past is clouded by rumor: some say he made a pact with a sea god, others that he is a revenant driven by vengeance from beyond the grave. His ships strike without warning, vanishing into darkness, leaving only blood and silence in their wake. Among the Warcaptains, Quarn is not simply feared... he is believed in.
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2056 NC -
53 years old
Quarn the Quiet, Captain of the Silent Dirge, Warcaptain of the Black Lament. Human Male.
Overview
A grim and inscrutable figure, Quarn the Quiet is one of the oldest and most enigmatic of the Warcaptains of the Pirate Isles. His fleet, the Black Lament, is rarely seen before it strikes, typically arriving in the dead of night, its ships painted in dull hues and rigged to sail near-silent. Quarn is a man of few words and fewer allegiances, commanding through fear, precision, and a superstitious reverence that borders on cult-like. His ships are crewed by the maimed, the vow-bound, and the damned. Where others seek fame, wealth, or chaos, Quarn is driven by some unknowable vendetta lost in time... and the sea remembers.
Description
Quarn appears as a gaunt, ashen-skinned human draped in black and oilcloth, with a veil of woven shark-hide over his mouth and barnacle-etched armor polished to a bone gleam. His eyes are clouded and pale, as though drowned long ago. Rumor says he cannot speak (not from vow, but from a cursed injury) and some whisper that the voice of a sea god speaks through him instead.
He wears no visible weapons—only a rusted key and a knotted rope on his belt—but his presence is commanding, like a noose tightening. His ship, the Silent Dirge, is adorned not with trophies, but with the carved names of every port he's razed.
Background
No one knows Quarn’s True Name, if he ever had one. What little is known of his early life comes from scattered, often contradictory reports: a mute slave boy sold from the dungeons of Aescalapea or Bakal or even Cambrecia; a deckhand on a cursed vessel lost off the coast of Haethgrind; a ghost child said to walk alone into storms. What is certain is this: Quarn first appeared as a pirate more than thirty years ago, when a minor slave ship vanished near the Atoll of Broken Teeth. Weeks later, a single survivor was found drifting on flotsam, his tongue cut out and his lips sewn shut.
Quarn rose swiftly through the pirate ranks, not by charisma, but by fear and flawless precision. He is said to have cut out his own tongue to seal a pact with a sea-entity from the black depths; perhaps Taltos in a darker guise, perhaps something worse... He never speaks. He never writes. Orders are conveyed with gestures, glares, and the ritual call of a black conch. Despite this, his crew obeys him with religious devotion. Some say he seeks not treasure, but vengeance against something sleeping beneath the sea. Others say he is already dead, and the Black Lament sails only because it cannot stop.
Religious Beliefs
Unknown, though it is rumored that Quarn worships Taltos (and some legends even claim that Taltos himself speaks through Quarn).
