Lord Frakka
Captain Fitzroy was seated behind his desk when the knock came at his cabin door. He uttered the command to enter and the Demeter's first-officer stepped through and shut the door behind himself.
There was silence for a moment and then Halldor Leifsson spoke: "Lord Frakka is now aboard and wishes to speak with you."
The sole illumination in the Captain's chamber was a brass and crystal lamp filled with whale oil that cast a circular glow over the sun darkened features of the firstmate and turned his red hair to flame. Halldor was a big Icelander head-and-shoulders taller than his captain and he had to stoop to enter the cabin. When so bent the flickering light danced in the man's vivid blue eyes reminding Fitzroy of the brilliant daytime sky he would never see again.
Halldor Leifsson like the rest of the crew had only been a member of the ship's compliment for the last seven years. 1897 has been a bad year for the Demeter and her captain after they had taken a comission from a Romanian nobleman seeking safe passage to London. That arrangement had soured with the unexpected pursuit by unknown parties bent on violence and those same pursuers had harries the Demeter from the Black Sea to the English channel.
The conflict had ended for Malken Fitzroy and the crew of the Demeter when the ship crashed upon the rocky shoreline near the seaside town of Whitby. The ship was catastrophically damaged, most of the crew killed, those that survived the accident found themselves embattled by the Romanian lord's enemies and with the sun rising Malken Fitzroy had found himself unable to save even the survivors and he had gone to ground.
For some time thereafter Malken had wandered without purpose or place across the English countryside until months later agents of the Romanian aristocrat found Fitzroy and offered him recompense, coin enough to resurrect his beloved ship and to hire a new crew. The only caveat was that Malken would abandon all thoughts of revenge and move on with his life. In the end the futility of a vendetta against someone so much more powerful than himself or a useless campaign against mortal fanatics decided Malken and he took the money.
