<div class="floatleft">(http://i53.tinypic.com/2gufl76.jpg)</div>Dylan's father, Thomas Faber, was a well known, tenured professor at Columbia University who had pretty much wrote every contemporary piece of research on Caribbean history and folklore worth reading. Dylan's youth was spent learning the flags of every major pirate and most of the lesser known ones as well. Thomas spent a career searching for and cataloging everything he could find about the old pirates. A major discovery he had, when Dylan was only just out of diapers, was a pirate map that had belonged to a lesser known pirate named Black Tom. An Irishman sold into slavery after the Cromwellian Conquest of Ireland. Black Tom escaped captivity and became a pirate but his career was short, vanishing one night while in Port Royal. It was said that he left behind a massive treasure that no one had ever found. Thomas Faber believed he was on his way to one of the biggest discoveries in recent history and bankrupted himself and his friends chasing after the treasure.<br/><br/>In his quest he also lost his marriage, alienated his son, and ruined his name as a researcher and an archaeologist. Dylan grew up not believing the stories and instead believing the whispers he heard when with his mother. She would say that the map was likely a fraud and that it was even more likely that even if there were a treasure that it had likely been salvaged by Black Tom's crew shortly after he vanished.<br/><br/>Dylan was the first man in his family in three generations not to pursue academics and instead joined the Army. All his life he had been very athletic and very intelligent which paid off in the Army, allowing him to be sent to a number of schools. Ranger School, SEREs, Jump School, Combat Dive School, and others, it didn't matter, Dylan proved time and time again that he was cut from steel. Perfectly happy to go career military, Dylan did his time in the mideast earning a few decorations and eventually placing well into the NCO corps.<br/><br/>All was good until one day his mother sent him an email. There was a young grad student who had just done her masters thesis on the small village of Pelegosto. His father had spent his career trying to figure out where the village was as it was a major key to understanding the locations on the map. This grad student had not only figured out that the village and the small island it set on had been swallowed in a hurricane but had done a lot of underwater archaeology at the site.<br/><br/>Suddenly faced with the realization that his crazy father might not have been so crazy he contacted the grad student via email and asked her the craziest question he'd ever asked anyone....<br/><br/><em>Want to find some pirate treasure with me? </em><br/><br/>First thing was first, Dylan did some research and found the name of a man who was old money from the east coast, who has sponsored digs and various other archaeological efforts over the years. Working hard to sell the old man he tried to convey his new found passion for finding the treasure and clearing his father's name in academic circles. The old man wasn't impressed and Dylan walked away, worried that the whole thing would be over before it started. But then the old man's daughter called, offering up a large portion of her trust fund to help with the search, impressed by the passion she'd seen in her father's office.<br/><br/>That had been only a few weeks earlier and Dylan had quickly put the money to good use. He got a boat that had the equipment necessary to haul salvage up from the ocean floor and stocked it well with all they would need. To save money they'd stay on the boat as much as possible and spend as much time searching the village sight for the markers to set them on the hunt. Dylan had sailed the ship from Miami down to Port Antonio, Jamaica. This was where he was to meet both his grad student and their financier. Getting into port hadn't been a big deal and he had spent a few hours registering everything and filling out paperwork. Once that was out of the way, Dylan simply went back to his boat and started pouring over the print outs of the dig site, hoping to get a head start on things while he waited for the ladies to join him.