Therese
"My, oh my! Would you look at that!"

The *Rotten Shark Tooth*, a vessel feared and famed (mostly feared) across all Lucidien, prowled across the Sea of Plenty. A favoured hunting ground of Morley's, due to the abundance of vessels, particularly civilian ones. And whilst fishermen were more a constant than wealthy traders, they provided a useful source of the life-giving blood the mad captain so desperately needed

"A Gantrickan warship in a Findaran port, hahaha! Far too good a mystery to miss... Fuck, nothing works there. Alas, far too good I say! Set a course at once!"

As the similarly excitable and eccentric crew members of Morley's vessel crowded at the side of his ship, the great, putrid beast of a ship creaked and heaved, turning at a rapid pace for a vessel of its size. It was a truly monstrous thing, massive compared to all but the greatest warships of the world, and adorned in macabre affectations, the skeletal remains of man and creature alike tacked or roped onto the boat in every conceivable way, rotting strips of flesh and sinew clinging to the yellowed bones as they rattled in tandem with the movement of the ship

Before long, they reached dock, accompanied by a wretched stench of death. The crew of the *Rotten Shark Tooth* Were as raggedy and haphazard as their captain, and despite their exploits remaining successful for almost a millennia, the ship was not, per se, 'pretty'. Fish heads in various stages of decay lay strewn about the ship, what remained of their filleted flesh and scales from the men's uncouth eating habits caking the deck, not to mention the rats and birds and whatever else lying dead and nailed in various locations upon the vessel for the fun of it, as well as the larger, older, corpses, hanged prisoners still swaying off the mast and whole sharks, their desiccated bodies skewered upon the bowsprit 
_ _

With a few asymmetric footsteps, alternating between the squeaking and squelching of his waterlogged boot and the hard impact of his peg-leg upon the planks below, Captain Hotchkiss disembarked, followed by a gang of tittering, disease ridden cronies, twitching and scratching and biting at scabs and scars upon their flesh like addicts and lunatics, spinning daggers in their hands incessantly as they grouped up in a gaggle behind him. A man approached, average in all areas it seemed, an official of the dock, armed with a quill and paper. He hardly looked up from it as he approached, murmuring to himself about prices and ships 

"Good evening sir, that'll be... That... I..."

Midway through his request for payment and welcome to the dock, the man looked up, for a moment scrunching his fave in disgust at the smell, then going wide eyed, and near as pale as the vampire before him when he saw Morley. Even if he didn't know who he was, which he did, it would've been a sorry sight

At 6'3, he towered over the poor man, looking down t him through vibrant, wild eyes. His face was haunt and stretched into a horrid grin, which itself was split, a cleft in the left side of his upper left exposing one of his fangs almost entirely. Said cleft was part of a larger scar, which continued diagonally across almost his entire face. It was an ugly thing, large and noticeable, the still exposed scar tissue looking distinctly off upon a vampire's pale flesh. His nose was gone entirely, presumably lost in the same incident as the aforementioned giant scar
_ _

His outfit reflected his personality exactly, a large tattered overcoat, grand and illustrious, once rich with colour, no tattered, full of holes, and dulled with age. His hat was similarly larger-than-life yet horrible decayed, and he was laden with countless solid gold rings and earrings and broaches and pins, gemstones thick with grime yet glistening all the same. His peg leg, tipped with a rusted metal skull at the knee, gave him an unnatural jaunt as he took a few steps closer to the man, looking almost directly down at him

"Ooohohoho, hello, hello, hello!"

His voice was low, almost crooning, but rife with underlying tension, like a taut rope ready to snap. Morley crouched down slightly, coming to eye level with the man 

"I was only coming in for sightseeing but, now you show up, and, well-"

He leaned in, up against the man's cheek and neck, raking his tongue across the flesh for the barest moment, pulling back and licking his vicious fangs with glee 

"-I might just have myself *Teensy* Snack before I check out that beauty over there"

Glancing back towards the Gantrickan ship, only a few boardwalks over in the gloom of the shipyard's evening, Morley stabbed at his lower lip with his extended need fangs, looking up in thought for a moment, before roughly grasping the stunned-to-silence man by the shoulder and chucking him to the side, leaving him scrabbling on the floor, before continuing the march towards the vessel, his men cackling at the terrified, but largely unharmed, man, who tried to regain his composure as Morley called back to him whilst walking away

"No, I'll check this out first, but don't you go getting ideas! I'll be back any minute, haha!"
Gary
*The sound of hammers and the shouts of workers echoed throughout the harbor. There were many ships in the harbor, from the smallest sloop to the mightiest galleon. Of all those ships the one that was the most out of place was a large Frigate currently occupying the largest drydock. 

The dock was drained, and workers swarmed the ship, dockyard workers worked feverishly to replace several battle-damaged timbers of the ship's hull, while the ship's crew scraped barnacles and replaced the copper plating that helped prevent further sea life from attaching itself to the hull. From the side of the dockyard, the true scale of the ship was seen in all of its glory. While not as physically large as the "Rotten Shark Tooth", the "Wolf's Glory" Was nevertheless a mighty ship. Its design, a new development in naval technology, was perfect for the pirate's needs, being swift as ships several times smaller than it, and as well armed and crewed as the greatest of warships. She was a beauty that any pirate would be jealous of. Proper warships were naturally rare for pirates to own, but this one had indeed found its way from the shipyards of Gantrick to here.*

*Overseeing the repair work was the ship's captain. Being as tall as Captain Morley, and with the build to match, he was easy to distinguish from the rest of the crew. He caught a slight stench on the breeze, and turned to look at the incoming ship as it pulled into a pier a short way down the coast. He was able to deduce its owner rather quickly. He had never met Morley the Mad before, but had heard the tales, an undead terror who had been terrorizing the seas longer than Magnus had been alive. Seeing the ship itself, Magnus was not impressed. A ship of such size may look impressive, but he doubted it was much more maneuverable than a brick, and probably was only about as fast. Nothing that he hadn't seen before.*

*What did concern him however was Morley's infamous uncaring additude, and his instability. Magnus knew that while the pirate could probably go prancing about most other ports and not be bothered, he knew the Royal Guard would not let that slide, at least not here in the Capital. And while he hadn't done any acts of Piracy against Findara, he was still a pirate, and he hated the trouble a guard crackdown could cause with his ship still a day or two away from finished. Magnus shook his head, annoyed.*
Therese
It was lucky that the daylight was waning, erring into the darkness of night slowly, for it meant the city guard for the vast Capital would be alerted somewhat slower. Any sane man wouldn't have docked at all, not in a populated city, especially not in a nation's capital city, but Morley the Mad was neither sane nor man, not anymore. He strutted across the boards towards the dry dock, no concern for anybody or anything in his way, simply walking through any objects in his path, sending many less astute dockworkers flying to the ground upon their collision, not so much as breaking his stride as their tools scattered wildly and their torrent of expletives was cut short by the realisation of *Who* Had just walked directly into them

As a growing trail of kicked over workbenches, upended satchels, and bruised workers spread across the shipyard, more and more attention turned to the approaching captain. His expression as he strolled through was of distant humour, disconnected from the world, loosely aware of what he was doing but primarily focused on the ship, and then upon its clear owner, occasionally chuckling to himself about some unknown joke within his mind. Before long, he arrived, scanning the vessel as its' workers, unsure, slowed, and eventually stopped in their work, at least momentarily 

"Mhm, mhm, mhm. Now that is a real beauty. Not to my taste, of course... Haha, taste! Taste! Oh, they never tell you about all the new jokes you get to tell when you're a Vampire, do they? Always negative, so, so, negative"
_ _

Morley's amicable yet distinctly unnerving spiel was received by mostly silence, only the distant bustle of the city persisting, as the prior noise of work and chats between the workers had shrivelled and died. Many actively recoiled at the captain, for his appearance was, frankly, disgusting, as mentioned. Most saw vampires as threats, yes, but as subtler, manipulative threats, lurking in the shadows, often beautiful. Not brazen wanted fugitives, parading about in the capital, with a ravaged and sundered face, split by an ancient blade millenium ago 

"So, what's your story then big man?"

Morley moved closer, punctuated by the click of his peg-leg and the squelch of his boot, again biting deep into his lip despite his fangs, giggling rhythmically as he did so. Closer now, more details could be made out, the wretched intricacies of that massive scar, the scabs and marks across his lips from that biting. Before Magnus could actually answer, Morley spoke again 

"Gantrick, Hm? Nice place, real nice. Cold, but everything is, has been for the better part of 12 centuries, teehee! Y'know, you wouldn't think it, but they got nice whore houses down there. Real secluded like, and they aren't workers like most places, no no no, slaves. Much easier to get them to look the other way when the blood *Really* Starts pumping, get it? You get it? Hahahahaha! Hahaha! Ha!"

That 'really' was accompanied by an almost comical wink, as if Morley (who didn't even know this mans name) and Magnus were old friends, reminiscing on adventures long last and sharing inside jokes