Royce

Royce is a charismatic and cunning corsair who is not above indulging in knavery and deception. When faced with an obstacle, he is more apt to play his enemies off another than take them head on. As a former member of the Lunar Brigade, he also leverages powerful alchemical spells and his familiar, Altus the Drowned. He uses experimental imbibification ports merged with progenitor technology to enhance the power of his spells, but sometimes to unpredictable results.
While a valuable contribution to the team, Royce often places his own interests above others. He is adept at manipulating political situations to suit his own ends and never hesitates to tell people what he really thinks of them. On rare occasions, Royce may reveal a wounded soul rests beneath his bravado. Or perhaps that's just what he wants you to think.

Early Life

Royce was born on the Homyn Moon, Autumn. His mother, a courtesan named The Rose of Autumn, raised him in a bordello that catered to Homyn nobles. He never learned his father's identity, and no one is even really sure if Royce is meant to be his first or last name. Nevertheless, Royce's early years provided him an education in the seedy side of Homyn politics, one that left him with a knack for their political machinations and a distaste for their hypocrisy.
Like all Homyn, Royce sat for the Academy entrance exam at the age of sixteen--which would determine if he would spend the next two years studying at the Academy or conscripted into military service with the Lunar Brigade. A quick study, Royce knew that his odds of failing the exam were exceedingly low, but it proved to be the boiling point for his tolerance for Homyn society. Taking his destiny into his own hands, he handed in a blank exam and left the test room to enjoy a cup of coffee.

The Lunar Brigade

Upon being drafted to the Lunar Brigade, Royce was processed on the moon, Winter by a clerk named Thoms. Evidently, he made a good impression, as Thoms was kind enough to warn him that he was being sent to Turiken--a dangerous moon on the fringes of civilization, which the Kingdom had given up any serious efforts of annexation decades ago. Instead, Turiken was a posting that the Lunar Brigade used to punish those who had offended Homyn nobility, often members of the peasantry who indulged married nobles in affairs. Royce thanked his new associate for the warning and set off for his new home.
Royce found Turiken lived up to the tales told about it. A jungle moon with an accelerated evolutionary cycle that produced predators of monstrous proportions and cunning. While the jungle itself was a hothouse, Royce's reception by the skeletal staff of officers who governed the moon was as icy as they come. Brigadier General Jani held command of his division, a no-nonsense if unconventional commander. As it happened, Jani had a hand in writing the Academy entrance exam and was none too pleased at Royce throwing his test away. As such, he refused to grant the young upstart a rank in the Brigade beyond the "draftee" designation that all soldiers started out with. Furthermore, since Royce's exam "score" indicated he was not competent to perform any of the Lunar Brigades duties, he placed him doing menial labor in the fort's garden.
Serving on Turiken, Royce got to know some of the other soldiers in his unit. Working him in the garden was a shy and unassuming Spriggan named Reyza. As a vassal, Reyza was treated as a second class citizen by the Homyn. He also got to know his Colonel, Sterling Harto XIII, a haughty noble who served in the Lunar Brigade to improve his family's standing amongst the nobility. Harto had the privilege of receiving a familiar named Calliope the Bloomed, who took the form of a dragon made of plants whose breath could sprout foliage in the ground.
After months of menial labor, Jani finally gave Royce a chance to bond with a familiar of his own. He assigned him an Ifrit god of shipwrecks and salvage named Altus the Drowned, who took the form of a hunting dog made from scrap metal and driftwood. Shortly after Royce received his familiar, Colonel Harto went missing while investigating reports of Scalfi in the area attempting to sabotage lunar brigade operations. Deciding this was his opportunity to prove himself and rise above gardening work, Royce took the opportunity to mount a one-man rescue mission.
He found an unexpected partner in his fellow gardener, Reyza, who revealed that Harto's familiar was actually a Spriggan god whom Reyza worshipped. While he was reluctant to disobey the Lunar Brigade's rules, Reyza felt duty bound to ensure that Calliope was not lost on Turiken. So, the two of them set off to brave Turiken's wilderness. En route, they encountered a tribe of Guao, four-armed apes native to Turiken whose hides repelled alchemy. They were able to escape the tribe's notice with the help of a rogue Guao named Dennis. Unlike his bretheren, Dennis was allied with the Homyn and had spent a good deal of time off-moon, whereupon he joined the Corsairs. Dennis had learned that the Scalfi in the area had found some experimental progenitor technology that could prove dangerous in the wrong hands.
With Dennis's help, Royce concocted a plan to lure the Guao into the Scalfi camp, affording him and Reyza cover to sneak inside and free Harto and Calliope. However, in the process of recovering the progenitor technology, it merged with his imbibification ports, allowing him to cast spells without inserting alchemical potions into them. Royce returned to the fort a hero, having earned the respect and admiration of his fellows in the Lunar Brigade.

Joining the Corsairs

Upon returning from his rescue mission, Jani still refused to promote Royce within the Lunar Brigade as his mission was not authorized. He concluded that Royce was a poor fit for service in a military organization, but his drive and initiative made him a good candidate to join the corsairs. Jani introduced Royce, to their leader, Jin Bei, who agreed to provided Royce with a nomination into the order.
Upon taking the Corsair exam, Royce earned the rare distinction of receiving unanimous approval from the Chimera Council after displaying his unprecedented talents of casting spells without using potions. Some members, like Jin Bei, saw potential in Royce's abilities. Others, like Queen Arkades, saw him as a potential threat to the alliance and invited him adhering to the maxim of keeping your enemies close.
Royce's friends Reyza and Harto also took the corsair exam. Reyza passed along with Royce, using his new familiar. Harto did not make the cut and returned to the Lunar Brigade after the exam.

Joining the White Lion Armada

Even an order as dedicated to personal freedom as the corsairs proved too stifling to Royce. Shortly after earning his compass, he learned of a new organization led by fellow corsair, Prince Lucas, called the White Lion Armada. The White Lion ethos of an army keeping the nations of the Chimera Alliance in check appealed to Royce, as well as their dedication to incorporating ancient artifacts into their military strategy. However, he questioned whether Prince Lucas was the right person to lead such a bold new initiative.
Royce spent much of his initial stint at the White Lion Armada on the Rim. Records of his service there are spotty, as it is a period of Royce's life that he rarely speaks of. However, at some point during his stint there he met a woman named Ishara, who broke his heart. He and Reyza also had a confrontation with their former commander, Brigadier General Jani, which left the general seemingly dead. Shortly after, Royce left the Rim and the White Lion Armada, no longer in Reyza's company and with questions on his mind about how to kill a god.

A New Crew

Royce spent the years following his adventures on the Rim somewhat listless. He used his fame and reputation to assemble a crew of his own and lead expeditions on Turiken in search of more progenitor artifacts. However, his crew grew tired of his selfishness and Turiken's inhospitable climes and mutinied against him.
Royce washed up (literally) at his old fort, which had been expanded into a town and named, Port Royce, in his honor. He stumbled into a local tavern unrecognized by the residents of a town that shared his name and went for a drink. There, he learned that Jin Bei was assembling a new crew to combat the White Lion Armada. Deciding he could offer these novitiates some help in their quest, Royce departed for Lion City to join this new adventuring party.
Initially, Royce butted heads with some of the more conscienscous members of the party, like Simon. However, his alchemical abilities and kinniving disposition proved invaluable on many occasions. When travelling on the moon Skatho to recruit the physician, Aleph, Royce used his alchemical abilities to help save the life of Aleph's mentor and leader of the Pox Mundus, Bastian Kendall. However, immediately upon waking up from the operation, Royce pointed his pistol at Kendall's head and forced him to support the corsairs through a patronship and give up the Pox Mundus's most prized possession, the Pathogen Vault.
The Corsairs also visited one of the seven wonders of the system on Skatho, the Great Foci. While these massive sculptures of trash and found objects produced strange dreams in many of the crew members, Royce walked away from his viewing inexplicably fluent in the ancient Ifrit language, Djinn.

The Moku Annexation and Rebellion

During the party's adventures on Nimbus, Royce tested the Moku's tolerance for outsiders by using his fire alchemy to flaunt their religious taboos. He viewed the Moku religious establishment and its myriand superstitions as an oppressive force to the Moku people and made it his goal to free them from it. Before leaving Hopaku City to rescue Simon, Royce conferred with Brigadier General Howe to share a seven-day plan for how to deal with the Moku. The contents of the plan were never disclosed, but Royce's beliefs about tensions rising amidst the annexed moon proved correct as Brigadier General Howe declared martial law in the city shortly after they departed.
Among the salamanders, Royce took on a contract from a pirate shaman who had come frm the Rim to hunt an abomination in exchange for learning the secrets of how to empower his familiar through apotheosis. Royce also ran into Harto upon returning to the pirate camp, who had since been promoted to Brigadier General. Harto pleaded with Royce not to return to Hopaku City, and warned that the Lunar Brigade had declared martial law there and dispatched the Greywings, an elite unit of god-killing brigadiers responsible for creating many of the brigade's familiars.
Royce returned to Hopaku city with the rest of the Corsairs and fought a Brigadier General named Sheyn in an alchemical duel. He was able to best General Sheyn. He allowed her to live in exchange for her agreement to provide him information on the Lunar Brigade's activities so he would not be blindsided again as he had been in Hopaku City.

A Den of White Lions

When the Corsairs learned that the White Lion Armada was sending a fleet to Jotun, Royce revealed his previous career in the White Lion Armada to Simon and suggested they try to embed a corsair within their ranks to gather intelligence. Thane Kestrel agreed to allow Royce to return to the Armada on the condition that he gave them the Corsairs' progenitor atlas. While the Corsairs were reluctnat to allow the White Lions to access its secrets, they figured the trade was worth it since they already knew where all the artifacts on the atlas were located.
Royce returned to Thane Kestrel's fleet, where he briefly reunited with his old flame, Ishara. The reunion was a cold one (literally and figuratively), as she alluded to pursuing a romantic relationship with none other than Prince Lucas. Royce also learned that the White Lion Armada were keeping prisoners at an undisclosed location connected to their ships through daemon doors. After obtaining information on the capabilities of Thane's fleet, Royce managed to slip away and return to the corsairs.

The Battle of the North Sea

Royce rejoined the corsairs just in time for the Geit forces to be attacked by a fire giant. He remained to coordinate the clansmoot's ships while the others confronted the fire giant head on. By strategically manuevering the clansmoot's ships, Royce was able to prvent casualties and fell the fire giant with the ships' cannonfire.
However, the clansmoot itself was not so lucky. During the attack, a rival clan snuck aboard Jorun Brighthoof's ship and the Geit patriarch fell during the battle.
During the clash between the Geit clans and White Lion Armada, Royce aided the corsairs in strategizing the deployment of thier ships. He joined the others aboard the Nomad to fight Thane Kestrel aboard the fleet's flagship, the Falco Rex.

Leaving the Party

After the battle of the North Sea, Royce and Simon left the party while the others travelled to Sera in order to help the Geit defeat the remnants of the White Lion Armada on Jotun.

Race: Homyn
Gender: Male
Background/Occupations: Lunar Brigadier, Corsair, White Lion
Current Status: On Jotun
Most Powerful Person Offended: Queen Eleanor Arkades