Thane

Thane Kestrel is a founding member of the White Lion Armada. Together with his twin brother, Oliver, Thane helped Prince Lucas build his forces and oppose the Corsairs. Some might even say the twins are really the ones pulling the Prince's strings. Thane Kestrel was the face of the organization, helping them broker powerful alliances.
However, after losing the Battle of the North Sea and presumed dead, Prince Lucas and Oliver washed their hands of Thane, placing the blame for the invasion solely on his shoulders. In truth, Thane was captured by the Party, and currently resides in their brig. However, imprisonment has done little to dampen Thane's haughty attitude.

Diplomacy 1d12+2
Bluff 1d12+2
Assess Person 1d12


Pace 6
Toughness 5

Intelligence (White Lion Admiral Narratives): Upon reaching an interrogation threshold of 20, Thane will reveal part of the story of an admiral of the white lion armada.
Intelligence (White Lion Ships): Upon reaching an interrogation threshold of 25, Thane will reveal the location and statistics of a White Lion Armada ship.
Intelligence (White Lion Forts): Upon reaching an interrogation threshold of 50, Thane will reveal the location and map of a fort controlled by the White Lion Armada.
Intelligence (White Lion Fort Personnel): Upon reaching an interrogation threshold of 25, Thane will reveal the statistics for white lion soldiers guarding a discovered fort.
Intelligence (White Lion Fort Treasures): Upon reaching an interrogation threshold of 25, Thane will reveal the white Lion Armada prototype artifact being guarded at a discovered fort.
Intelligence (White Lion Fort Vulnerabilities): Upon reaching an interrogation threshold of 40, Thane will reveal a secret vulnerability that will assist in the capture of a white lion fort.

Early Life

The son of the famous smuggler and member of the Pride, Jim Kestrel, Thane never saw much of his father. Instead, he spent most of his time in Lion City with other children of the Pride. He was closest with his twin brother, Oliver, and the Homyn Prince Lucas.
Gregarious and vain in his personality, Thane found himself the most outgoing among the Prince's entourage. Prince Lucas, while popular, was plagued by nightmares and doubts. Oliver, while brilliant, was clinical and off-putting to others. While Thane lacked the admirable qualities of his friends, as a born salesmen he excelled at harnessing their talents to extend their influence.

Rising Stars

After their father was executed by the Io East Orbit Company, Thane and Oliver capitalized on his name and smuggler's "black book" to form the Kestrel Brothers' shipping company and challenge the Orbiter's monopoly on the shipping trade.
However, their ambitions did not end there. Along with Prince Lucas, they passed the Corsair exam and accompanied the Prince and Jin Bei to Mong Bal on their mission to try to bring them back to the Alliance. They also traveled with two corsairs hailing from Mong Bal, Sun Guan Yu and Kylia.
While the details of this mission are sparse, the crew walked away from it in failure and a rift forming between Jin Bei and Prince Lucas.

The White Lion Armada

After the mission failed, the twins helped Prince Lucas create the White Lion Armada--an organization dedicated to keeping order in the Chimera Alliance using military force using cutting edge disciplines and powerful ancient artifacts. While his brother handled the technology and logistics angle, Thane was responsible for gladhanding and making deals.
He proved adept at the job, and some even believe he has used charisma-enhancing mutagens to negotiate his deals. He successfully brought powerful allies into the fold, including the most powerful government on the Rim, the Midnight Parliament. By promising their leader, Captain Sload, a seat on the Chimera Council, he secured the White Lion Armada a source of weapons outside Alliance Control and a place to martial their forces far out of Alliance reach.
Thane encountered the Party for the first time at Princess Halle's nineteenth birthday. Sizing up his new enemies, he tried to trade verbal barbs with the Corsairs, only for Helix to upend his drink on Thane's clothes using his telekinetic gauntlets. When Thane went to change, Jaime snatched his old clothes and found an invitation to a black sail auction they were seeking as well as a list of pre-written insults.

The Invasion of Jotun

Thane spearheaded the White Lion Armada's boldest offensive when he led a fleet of four flagships to take Jotun from Jorund Brighthoof's navy. He brought only four flagships to the fold, the Kestrel Brothers' own Falco Rex; a Geit thrall ship called St. Raina's Fury, a Homyn ship with a powerful long-range mortar mounted on the back called the Laughing Viscount, and a Mong Bal ship mounted on th back of a giant turtle caled Sun-Yi. His fleet paled in comparison to that of the Geit, but Thane was determined to demonstrate the White Lion Armada's superior military capabilities to the system's conventional armies.
He also put his diplomatic skills to good use. First, he visited the Vindcaller Clan on Jotun's moon, Watcher. The Vindcaller's manned the Watchfort, responsible for communicating the movements of the powerful Shrikevind to ships on Jotun using signal fires. Their Cheiftain, Sigurd Vindcaller, was already sympathetic to the White Lion Cause and his clan had long been slighted as the only Geit Clan that wasn't located on Jotun proper.
The Vindcallers were an easy mark to turn against the Geit. Thane kept the switch in allegience secret, timing his attacks with the movements of the Shrikevind to maximize the impact of the loss of the Watchfort.
Thane then seperated from the fleet to travel to the northernmost clan, the Habroks. Knowing that Geit feuds and rivalries ran deep, he hoped he could leverage those rivalries to have the Geit kill each other without Thane's own ships needing to fire a single shot.
The White Lion Armada's intelligence told them that the Habroks had a longstanding rivalry with the Brighthooves who led the Clansmoot, but their clan had fallen on hard times due to a failing embermuur that was slowly freezing their city. Thane leveraged the situation to convince the proud and militaristic Habrok Queen, Freya, to attack the Brighthooves and kill Jorund Brighthoof.
He found a last minute set of allies in the Bato Clan, after Garund Brighthoof had executed the chieftain's eldest son, Jacen Bato. As the Clansmoot's foremost scouts, the betrayal of the Bato would mark a devestating blow to the Clansmoot.

The Battle of the North Sea

When the White Lion Fleet arrived on the North Sea, Thane's carefully laid plans seemed to be foiled one-by-one. First, the Party somehow reconciled the dispute between the Habroks and Brighthooves, with Queen Freya combining her forces with Garund Brightoof against Thane's fleet.
Then, after receiving advanced warning of the Vindcallers betrayal, Simon visited a nearby druid clan to obtain a windmap that would make up for the loss of the Watchfort's guidance.
The Bato Clan's betrayal caught the Clansmoot off-guard, but even their navies couldn't stand against the combined might of the Clansmoot forces and Habrok fleet.
To bolster his forces in short order, Thane sent a large sum of money through a bura bura caravan to hire a fleet of nearby mercenaries. However, Itthis and Garund's wife, Kana, broke into the caravan and halted the transaction using forged documents.
Thane resorted to his final play, outfitting the rocketeers aboard the Falco Rex with a powerful and forbidden alchemical spell called Meteor. With their enhanced firepower, they were able to carve a path through the Geit forces straight toward Garund Brigthhoof.
However, the Nomad intercepted the Falco Rex. With the help of Queen Freya and the Habrok Clan's resident cockatrice, the Widow of Cold Town, they stopped the Falco Rex's advance.

Fall from Grace

After his defeat, Thane had only thing left to protect him. He was still a Corsair, and therefore immune from punishment for his actions, no matter how abhorrent. But that immunity did not extend to other Corsairs, leaving his fate in the hands of the Party.
They decided to take Thane prisoner aboard their ship, not wanting to shed more blood and hoping that he might prove a useful source of intelligence.
While defeated in battle, some might say (or, at least Thane might say) the Battle of the North Sea was a strategic coup for the White Lion Armada's overall goals. After all, he decimated half the forces of one of the spheres' most powerful navies at the cost of only four flagships.
However, his comrades in the White Lion Armada didn't see things the same way. Presuming Thane dead, they placed blame on the invasion solely on his shoulders, claiming he acted against orders and without authorization in attacking the Geit people.

Imprisonment

His legacy tarnished and a prisoner to his Corsair enemies, Thane occasionally offers the Party intellgience on the White Lion Armada. Although, his superior charisma means that he often proves a slippery witness.
When Jaime returned from Alteri island, Thane noticed a change both familiar and different in the little Kitsune, but kept his lips sealed about the affair in the presence of his comrades.