Those who travel the Astral are a strange lot. Preferring the open Astral to the safety of a world, they willingly give up their homelands to ply the mists and darkness of the Place Between. Most such people call themselves Travelers. Some make their living as traders, moving goods from one world to the next, but others are explorers. These are the true adventurers, forever pushing back the boundaries of the known and treading places never before seen by god or man. The crew of the Le-Pras are one such group, charting new worlds and selling their discoveries to other Travelers.
Warning: This section contains spoilers for Sunrise Over Infinity. Read that first before going here.
The Captain
What can be said about the Captain that comes close to capturing such a man?
He has a name, and he doesn’t mind using it when necessary, but he chooses to go by Captain instead. He is composed, moving with a deliberate ease that makes every action seem both rehearsed and utterly unique. He is enigmatic, rarely revealing his plans or motives in full, even to his own crew. There are doubtless countless secrets locked behind his gold eyes.
But above all, the Captain is intelligent. He can form plans in an instant and can read and manipulate people with ease. But with this skill comes a tendency to over think problems and miss obvious or intuitive solutions. He may be a genius, but far too often he traps himself within his own mind, which is why Maria is his closest friend and confidant. She balances his logic perfectly with her empathy.
Although the Captain doesn’t advertise it like some do, he is in fact a mage, and a rather powerful one at that. But in spite of this he prefers to fight with a sword. He is a talented swordsman and possesses an exceptional degree of acrobatic ability. To the crew he isn’t so much their leader as he is their friend, but it does ultimately fall to him to make difficult decisions when they arise. He is ambidextrous and can speak several languages.
Adrian
Adrian is easily the youngest member of the crew, if not in actual age, then certainly in personality. He’s impatient, overly energetic and often too curious for his own good. He can’t stand confinement and can’t sit still for more than a few minutes unless he’s eating or sleeping. That said, this same childishness also makes him likable and optimistic. He’s naturally cheerful, even under extreme stress, and endlessly clever.
Although, there may be more to Adrian than the carefree child he seems to be. There are moments when he says or does things that show tremendous wisdom or knowledge, often bordering on the philosophical. But these are just moments, nothing more. Soon he’ll be shrugging, saying ‘Just a thought,’ or ‘I must have heard it somewhere before.’
Adrian does have several valuable skills however. He is exceptionally acrobatic, surpassing even the Captain, and is a skilled free climber, as comfortable clinging to the edge of a building as he is standing on solid ground. Adrian is also skilled with a number of … less than legal activities. He can pick locks and knows his way around the wrong side of a city. Adrian is left-handed.
Maria
Maria is the ship’s second in command and designated healer. She’s been working with the Captain longer than most of the other crew members and has become his closest confidant. Maria has a strength of personality that is often intimidating when people first meet her, but they rapidly learn she is an exceptionally friendly and compassionate person. She is the force that keeps the rest of the crew working together as a team and balances out their various personalities into a cohesive group.
Of all the crew, Alexia included, Maria is the most powerful magic user. One would never know it though, because the magic she uses is exclusively defensive. Her specialty and passion is healing magic, although she is also skilled enough working with other forms of magic to create powerful barriers and shields. She is responsible for keeping the rest of the crew alive on their various outings and has saved their lives on too many occasions to count.
Maria is well versed in forms of conventional medicine as well. She knows the medicinal properties of most plants and how to mix them to create remedies. She loves all things living and most of them seem to love her as well. But perhaps her greatest strength is her empathy. Maria has an amazing ability to sympathize with other people and understand what motivates them. She can use this to manipulate others with startling ease, but she rarely does so as she views it as a violation of her talents.
Maria is a powerful enough mage that she could easily learn a second kind of magic alongside healing. She would love to take up animal magic as a second focus, allowing her to communicate with and direct animals, but with all the dangers the crew inevitably face she has far more practice creating barriers than she ever intended to get. There are also far too few animals in the Astral for her to practice the magic on, unless you count Stark of course. She still uses animal magic every chance she gets, but she knows she isn’t likely to ever get very good at it.
Alexia
At first glance Alexia is everything one would expect a pyromancer to be. She is reckless, dangerous and easy to set off. But underneath this, she is a highly perceptive and often startlingly insightful person. She has a sense of curiosity that rivals even Adrian’s and a broad understanding of magic.
She is the newest addition to the crew and is still adapting to life in the Astral. For the time being this has tempered her reckless streak some, although it still crops up again from time to time. Alexia also does truly care about the other members of the crew, even if her idea of caring about them is blowing up anything that threatens to get in their way.
But she is still a pyromancer, and an exceptional one at that. Her exclusive focus on one type of magic has given her near complete control over all forms of heat and flame. She doesn’t wield flames as a weapon like some might; rather, she uses them as her own personal art form. She can call them from thin air and form them into any shape she wishes without effort. Without fire she’s far from defenseless, however. She’s had training in martial arts in the past and her staff doubles as a spear when necessary.
Gehard
Gehard is a warrior, plain and simple. He’s proficient with a wide range of weapons and carries a virtual armory around with him at all times. A non-mage amongst several powerful mages, he more than makes up for his lack of magic with sheer fighting ability and tactical knowledge.
But when he’s not fighting, Gehard is both extremely pessimistic and endlessly sarcastic. He hardly ever smiles, and when he does it’s inevitably for one of three reasons. One, he gets to fight something, preferably something large and fire breathing. Two, he’s on shore leave and he gets to drink something, preferably a lot of something. Or three, he’s spotted a woman he likes and is about to seduce her, preferably a woman with, well, anything actually.
Despite these off-putting qualities, Gehard is an invaluable member of the crew. His lifetime of combat and killing may have hardened him to the brighter side of life, but it also makes him near unstoppable. Although the weight in his eyes hints that it may have been a deeper, more personal tragedy that made him the way he is.
Stark
Stark is the ship’s helmsman and navigator. His role is a solitary one that keeps him on the deck at virtually all hours. But if he has a problem with his lonely post, he keeps it very well hidden. Stark is unflappable and infinitely patient. He prefers to watch and observe over acting and never speaks unless he has something important to say. He is resolute under any circumstances and can be relied on no matter what happens. But these things are not what most people pay attention to when they first meet him. They’re normally too busy staring at his fangs.
Stark is a half-wolf. His body is covered in a thick coat of grey-black fur and his head is that of an animal with only the slightest hint of human proportion added in. He has senses far more acute than those of a human, particularly hearing and scent, and several layers of instinct that give him incredible reflexes and reaction time. He also speaks with a slight accent as he isn’t fully used to human language.
Stark forms the backbone of the crew. He is often in the background and rarely, if ever, calls attention to himself. But he keeps the ship moving and ensures it gets where it needs to go. He is a stable point that everyone else can orbit around. The only person he doesn’t get along with is Gloria. Neither of them accompany the rest of the crew on their various expeditions, leaving them both on the ship for extended periods of time. They inevitably get on each other’s bad sides while confined to such a small space for so long.
Gloria
Gloria is the ship’s chef, storemaster and provisioner. Although her role may seem like a trivial one, it is in fact one of the most important on the ship. She is responsible for restocking the ship whenever it makes port and managing its supplies while out at sea or in the Astral. She prepares all the food the crew eats and makes sure they don’t run out of anything before they reach land again. Simply put, without her the crew would starve.
But Gloria also serves another, perhaps even more important function. She keeps the crew in good spirits. Nothing boosts morale better than good food, or lowers it faster than bad food. She knows this, and so she works constantly to prepare food of the highest quality for the rest of the crew. The ship’s kitchen is her exclusive domain and no one goes in it without her permission, even the Captain. Her room is completely empty except for a bed and a couple of recipe books she never has the time to read.
Gloria is a rather … intimidating woman. She has high standards of herself and others and is good at making them known, even if she never directly says anything about them. Although she doesn’t look it, she has as much stamina as Gehard and twice the constitution. As far as the crew are aware she never sleeps, as she is always awake before any of them are and never retires until long after everyone else has. But inevitably, whenever one of them is in a tough situation or simply feeling down, she is there with a bowl of soup and a word of advice.
The Le-Pras
The Le-Pras is the ship the Captain and his crew spend their lives on. And although at first it may seem to be just another ship, anyone who spends more than a few nights on it will agree that it is something more. The Le-Pras, they say, has a heart and soul.
The Le-Pras was built by the Avandrans, a race from a world near the outer edge of the known Astral. They are renowned for making some of the best ships in Creation, and also some of the rarest. The Avandrans don’t sell their ships to anyone, and how the Captain got the Le-Pras is something of a mystery to the rest of the crew. The ship bears all the usual traits of an Avandran craft; its masts sweep back at a diagonal instead of sticking straight up and its wooden hull is almost completely free of decoration of any kind. But even plain, the ship has an elegance and beauty few others can match. It is also fast. Avandran ships are often compared to arrowheads. They are sleek, pointed and unbelievably quick. The Le-Pras can easily outrun a ship twice her size with little difficulty.
The Le-Pras is relatively small, with only four decks, yet somehow it sits taller in the water than much higher vessels. The main deck is open and has a raised section at the back where the wheel is located. The Captain’s office, which is also his cabin, is located in the space below it. The next deck contains the crew’s quarters and the galley. This and the main deck are where the crew spend most of their time when not out exploring a new land. The middle deck is used entirely for storage and is accessible from a staircase in the galley. Long months spent in the Astral necessitate a lot of room for food, particularly with the way Gloria cooks. This deck also houses the life rafts and mechanisms to launch them into the water, although there are regular row boats stored on the main deck as well. The lowest deck, however, is almost completely empty. A quirk of Avandran ships is that the deck directly above the keel has to be kept clear at all times, so the crew rarely go down there.
