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lastbrokenline's Journal

Created on 2007-12-22 02:33:47 (#14509725), never updated

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Basic Info

Name:	Brad Crawford

Bio

Player Name: Sakki
Email Address: lordoftheiphail@gmail.com
AIM Screen Name: snakesonacondor

Character Name: Brad Crawford
Series: Weiss Kreuz
Age: 27

Physical Description: Tall (6'), with short dark hair, gold eyes, and posture that hasn't been seen outside the aristocracy for centuries, Crawford is an imposing figure from the first glance. He is fit, strong, and not shy about it; while he is mostly covered most of the time, his strength is clear just from the way he carries himself. He isn't terrifically angular, but you can see hints of it in his face and hands. His eyes are sharp and bright, gleaming oddly gold; his hair is typically smoothed back except for the bangs, which spike erratically in front of his face, and is so dark it almost shines blue; his skin is paler than you'd expect for a pirate, and mostly unscarred - for what's visible, anyway.

He typically dresses like a gentleman pirate captain - fine but loose clothes, built for wear and tear as well as aethstetic appreciation. The clothes are often dark-colored, to accentuate his dark nature (ha ha ha I am witty), and along with being loose enough for comfort, there are often hints of disturbing and wealthy imagery on them. For example, one of his trademark icons, his long dark cloak, is clasped by what looks at first glance like a gold-and-ivory clasp. Closer inspection will reveal that it is indeed partially gold, but the ivory is, in fact, a joint of a human finger. He is also constantly armed with both knives and guns, as well as a scimitar and a set of brass knuckles. As a final point, Crawford also wears a pair of glasses at all times, as he is quite blind without them.

Personality: Being an older man and therefore with more life experience to turn him into a hardened veteran in the world he lives in as well as a brilliant genius, Crawford is naturally jaded, skeptical of others, incredibly calculating, and extremely sure of himself. He's highly intelligent and can obtain information through either his own ingenuity or bribes and threats, or via his subordinates, although he'd prefer to do it himself.

Crawford isn't, under any circumstances, a nice person. He's closer to sociopathic than most people tend to be, only showing mercy when he feels it will be to his advantage later. He kills without feeling (pleasure or otherwise) and does most of what he does out of a desire for both vengeance (against the upper class who he has come to hate now that he's seen the way the poor live, as well as how they treated him when he was a mercenary) and his own future goals. Aside from that, he shows very few real emotions, and tends to lie when it is suitable and tell the truth when it is needed.

Abilities/Strengths/Weaponry: Crawford is strong, intelligent, learned, and both an excellent fighter and shooter. He can brawl, kill, and do otherwise evil deeds with exceptional ease with no qualms. His intelligence, wit, and both educated and high-class history lend him an advantage in situations dealing with less intelligent people - mostly pirates and civilians. While not having a moral compass is sometimes considered a disadvantage, it has given Crawford a one-up on being a pirate, allowing him to do the vile deeds required of his job title without having to worry about bothersome things like guilt.

At all times, Crawford carries around a holstered gun, a scimitar, and a pair of brass knuckles, all of which he uses to fight or threaten should the opportunity arise. He is most notorious for his use of the knuckles, however - he has frequently used them to end people's lives by cracking their skulls open with just a few hits. When on board the Schwarz, he only carries his gun; when raiding another ship, however, he takes along two guns, the knuckles, several smaller knives, and his scimitar. Crawford is deadly, and he knows it.

Weaknesses: His physical weaknesses, while not too obvious at a first glance, consist mainly of his poor eyesight and weak heart. Without his glasses, Crawford can barely make anything out - all he can see are blurry, colored shapes. As for his heart, he was born with a minor defect that has gotten worse over the years. Occasionally, it will falter, putting the fear of a sudden and undignified death into him and rendering him useless for a short period of time until it recovers. Because he knows how easy it is for a particularly bad shock or poor lifestyle to cause it to stop altogether, Crawford is particularly careful about things that would upset the otherwise delicate workings of his heart.

Mentally, Crawford still carries a few lingering senses of doubt at his current role in life and a tiny, barely-there string of guilt over his mother's death. For the most part, he is not very easily swayed mentally; even the sight of his old life probably wouldn't cause him to falter. However, he is fiercely protective of his ship and first mate, and when it comes to Schuldig, he rather easily lets down his guard - it wouldn't be hard to use Schuldig to get Crawford to do something in a life-or-death situation.

History: Born in Dubrovnik to wealthy, mid-to-upper class parents, Brad Crawford was given more opportunities at birth than most people had over their entire lifetimes. His father was a law man, a judge in the local courts, always looking for an opportunity to be promoted and go to Dardenelles; his mother was a proper lady from a family in Saranda who nearly all had jobs at the St. Faustus University. As such, Brad grew up in an extremely condusive learning environment, and there was never a lack of books or education for him as he got older. He was a bright child, quick and eager to learn, which pleased both of his parents immensely ... until they realized that he was a little smarter than they thought.

As bright as he was, Brad often grew bored with the education he was getting, and whenever he wasn't being taught by his pre-school tutors, he would sneak into the rooms where his parents were working or socializing and listen in on their conversations. It was there that he got his first taste of the sharp wit and subtleties of adult language, and also began his somewhat uncouth education in the art of upper-class politics. His parents discovered what he had been doing when, one night at dinner, he asked his father when one of the family acquaintances was going to jail; his father, taken aback, asked what the boy meant. Brad responded with a comparison between something his father had said to the friend earlier in the day and something he had said a week ago while discussing a prisoner who had been arrested. Suddenly aware of the entirely too-sharp intuition of their son, but pleased nonetheless, Brad's parents decided that they could send their son to the Faustus Academic Institute of Learning a little early.

Although he was several years younger than his peers, Brad's youth provided no difficulty in his much more potent education. He devoted himself to his schoolwork and made several acquaintances, many of them older than himself, and quickly began to "study" the world of socialization and social nuances. Already bright, it barely took him any time at all to gain notoriety for both intelligence and sharp wit. He spent several years in the academy not as their top student, but near it; as he got older and the work harder, his natural intelligence was supplemented more and more often by sheer hard work. The fact that he wasn't the best of the best frustrated him. He enjoyed being at the top, having power and dominion over people, having a reputation; and while he did have all of those, he wasn't the best.

When the boy reached fourteen, Brad's father finally received the promotion he'd wanted for so long and moved to Dardenelles; within six months, he called for his son to join him. Aggravated because he had just gotten into St. Faustus' and was doing his damndest to get to the top again despite the hundreds of other brilliant students, Brad sent his father a sharp letter detailing exactly why he couldn't come. His parents were slightly upset, and his father sent another letter, telling his son that with this newfound power and prestige, continuing education to get a job wouldn't be necessary; Brad's response could barely be considered a letter, it was so short and terse. After that, his parents didn't try to bring him home permanently.

Everything shifted when he was well into his fifteenth year. Still working as hard as he could at the University, Brad was still fairly sociable and could almost be described as normal, if a little morbid. He wasn't at the top of his class (a continued aggravation that was building by the day), but he was still near to it; he kept in contact with his parents, visiting them occasionally; and he had a sweetheart, a girl his age who he often had long conversations with. Had everything continued in this manner, he likely would have gone on to graduate and get a good job in Dardenelles as a politician or lawman.

But then his mother died.

To say he took it badly was an understatement. She had been traveling to visit him and an accident along the way took her life, and so for some time Brad carried tremendous guilt over it. Outwardly, he was still a strong student, but his sociability nearly vanished - he stopped talking to people, only snapping terse and angry responses if absolutely necessary. He withdrew into his studies and himself in a terrible and lonely isolation for over two years, driving away his lady friend and all his other friends, as well. This depression, guilt, and loneliness grew exponentially, until the day the final grades came out his eighteenth year and Brad learned that, once again, he had placed fifth in the class. That all his hard work and struggle despite his suffering and isolation had lead only to this - to the idea that he still wasn't the best, that someone else was still better than him - was the straw that broke the camel's back. He cursed the entire island, packed up a minimal amount of possessions, stormed out of the University, and headed for Saranda in a bitter rage.

There he met the man and the ship that would change his life. A captain of a then-privateer ship took an interest in the angry, sharp-witted young man he found pacing the docks and looking for a ship to ride to one of the other islands. He took Brad on board and for the next four years, until he was 22, the young man learned everything there was to know about piloting and the inner workings of a ship. Having never been at sea or seen much of the world outside his home island, it took some time before Brad settled into a place on the ship and began working toward becoming captain. His ambitions of being at the top had never lessened, even though the situation had changed.

By the time he was 22, Brad was a jaded, sharp, intelligent young man who had shed a good portion of his failing moral compass and all the guilt and depression of his younger days and was a force to be reckoned with. The captain who had taken him in was, in Brad's eyes, not using the ship to the full extent it could be used; privateering had long since grown boring to him. Shortly before they made port in Illyria, Brad roused as much of the crew as he had convinced to his side and, in a bloody mutiny, killed the captain and his loyal crewmen. They pulled into the port and the new captain paid off all of the remaining men, telling them to find another ship or life - the fear of them munitying against him was an ever-present worry in Brad's mind. So now he was a captain, his current ambitions fulfilled ... but with no crew.

A similar situation as what happened to him occurred again: he saw a young man with flaming red hair prowling the docks, and after a conversation with him, Brad nearly dragged him onto the ship. The boy had no knowledge of mutiny or pirating, but had a sharp mind and was incredibly street-smart; it didn't take long for those skills to transfer over to the life of being a pirate. Brad quickly formed a relationship with his newfound first mate Schuldig that was both professional and decidedly unprofessional at the same time, with strong ties of friendship and camaraderie being frequently intertwined with sexual intents.

Initially, Brad decided to run the newfound Schwarz as a mercenary ship, following the work of the highest bidder. Their first client, a wealthy man living in Epidarus, sent them on a decidedly dangerous mission, but the entire crew made it out of the resulting struggles alive and with their treasure. They turned it over to the client only to find themselves face-to-face with the local authorities: they had been betrayed. The battle that ensued took the lives of nearly all of the crewmen, leaving only Brad, Schuldig, and a handful of the crew alive as they escaped on their ship. The mercenary business ended shortly after that; the rest of the crew was sent away, and the captain and the first mate hid away for a time to decide what to do next.

When they emerged again, it was as pirates: the Schwarz, their deadly ship, was now more a shark than anything else. As the years passed, the fearsome reputation of the ship, the calculated captain, and the firey first mate spread across the seas and islands of Aegis. To this day, they remain pirates, traversing the seas and taking what they want. And Brad, who started being addressed by his last name instead of his first not long after the switch to piracy, now waits for the future to reveal his path. After all, fate is on the side of the man who makes it.

This is a puppet journal for the RPG