Born: 1664, village near Ávila, Crown of Castile
Age: 26 (as of 1690)
Current Location: Tortuga
Affiliation (Former): Order of Santiago, Spanish Catholic Church
Status: Apostate, fugitive from the Inquisition, unaffiliated swordsman

Overview

David of Castile is a former paladin of the Spanish Church, now living in self-imposed exile on the pirate haven of Tortuga. Once a devout warrior of faith, David’s world was shattered when the woman he loved was executed by the very Church he served. In the years since, he has become a hardened, nomadic figure—guided not by dogma but by a strict personal code forged from guilt, grief, and justice. Though no longer faithful to Catholic doctrine, David retains the combat discipline and moral clarity of a holy warrior, and he is known across the Caribbean as “the Heretic Saint.”

Early Life (1664–1677)

David was abandoned at the gates of the Monasterio de Santo Tomás in Ávila, Castile, as an infant. The monks took him in, seeing his survival as a sign of divine providence. They named him David, invoking the biblical warrior-king as a symbol of strength in service of righteousness.

The monastery, a Dominican stronghold with close ties to the Spanish Inquisition, raised him with a blend of rigid discipline, scholastic theology, and martial training. By his adolescence, he was recognized as a candidate for the Order of Santiago, a religious-military order tasked with defending Christendom and enforcing the authority of the Church across Spain and its colonies.

Service as a Paladin (1677–1685)

At age 13, David was formally inducted into the Order of Santiago as a lay initiate and began full-time martial and spiritual training under the supervision of both monastic scholars and seasoned knight-brothers. He trained rigorously in the use of the rapier and rondel dagger, as well as in mounted combat, Latin oratory, and the theological principles of Just War. Though he took the vows of chastity, obedience, and purity, he was not yet a full knight, but a novice-warrior, expected to prove his worth through disciplined service and loyalty.

From 1679 onward, David was regularly assigned as an escort and enforcer to inquisitorial detachments operating in rural Castile, León, and Extremadura, where pockets of suspected heresy, crypto-Judaism, folk magic, and Enlightenment-inspired dissent remained persistent concerns. His duties included guarding prisoners during tribunals, conducting arrests under warrant, and accompanying Dominican and Franciscan inquisitors into isolated villages. He earned a reputation for his quiet demeanor, sharp reflexes, and rigid adherence to the rules of engagement—even when others in his company indulged in cruelty.

Though the Church preached justice, David saw that it was often wielded like a sword for political ends. Rural landowners paid to have enemies tried. Folk healers were accused out of jealousy. Poor villagers were condemned based on nothing more than whispers and malformed births. David did not question the system aloud, but he began keeping his own written record of inconsistencies in trial procedures and dubious confessions. These private notes, hidden in a compartment of his satchel behind a stitched image of Saint Michael, were his first quiet act of rebellion.

In 1683, David was temporarily stationed in Salamanca for formal evaluation by the Order’s Chapter Council. Though they commended his discipline, he was criticized for a perceived “lack of zeal” and for showing “excessive compassion toward those under trial.” He was denied advancement to full knighthood and instead assigned to itinerant protection duty, a post meant to test obedience in difficult conditions.

It was during this liminal period, while posted near Talavera de la Reina, that David met Ysobel.

She was a healer and midwife of remarkable ability and calm strength. She lived alone on the edge of the village but was welcomed by its people—respected, if quietly feared. David was sent to interview her in connection with a case of spiritual impurity involving a local widow’s infant, and though he found no evidence of wrongdoing, his commanding friar marked her name for “further observation.”

David found excuses to return—ostensibly to check on her compliance, but in truth, to speak with her. They debated scripture. She taught him herb-lore. Once, he helped her deliver a breech birth in the home of a peasant woman while snow fell outside. What grew between them was not sinful, but it was intimate. They never kissed, but they shared fires, meals, and memories.

For the first time, David felt torn—not between good and evil, but between the abstract ideal of righteousness and the quiet truth of love rooted in the earth.

By early 1685, tension had begun to grow within the local inquisitorial network. An anonymous report had been sent to the tribunal in Toledo, accusing Ysobel of diabolical midwifery—a term often used when infants died during difficult births. The Church moved swiftly.

Despite his private protests, David was ordered to serve as her escort to the trial. He complied. He sat behind her as she was condemned. He prayed aloud while she was questioned. He stood in full uniform on the day of her execution, believing that divine intervention would prevail.

As the fires consumed Ysobel and her screams of pain filled the air, David’s faith in the Church was burned away as well.

That night, he stole his rapier from the dormitory, crept back to the ashes of the pyre, and blackened the blade with what little remained of her. Then he fled under moonlight, his name soon whispered as a curse by the brothers he left behind.

Flight to the Americas (1685–1688)

David fled south through Valencia and bartered passage on a ship bound for the Canary Islands, then onward to New Spain under forged documents. He worked as a shipguard, translator, and mercenary in Veracruz, Santo Domingo, and Cartagena—drifting from job to job but never staying long. He avoided churches, slept in the open air, and earned a reputation for defending those without power, especially women accused of sorcery or sedition.

It was during this period that David crossed paths with Fray Tomás de Santo Iago, a Dominican friar with a hidden role as a courier and intelligence agent for Captain Corlissandro de Villanueva. In 1686, Tomás offered David refuge at a covert mission in Bayaguana, a backwater Dominican town used as a stopover for exiled soldiers and secret communications.

Tomás did not preach. He did not press for confession. He offered David a sword, a stable bed, and a quiet place to wrestle with his demons.

Mission to Havana and Meeting Corlissandro (1686–1687)

Late in 1686, Tomás entrusted David with a sealed letter for Corlissandro de Villanueva, then docked in Havana for repairs. The message contained damning evidence of corruption in Puerto Plata’s supply chain—evidence that could compromise Spain’s ability to defend its Caribbean holdings. Tomás, having gained some insight into David’s character, divulged to him what the letter was about, giving David knowledge of the role he would play in ending corruption.

David delivered the message without fail. Brought aboard the San Ignacio under cover of night, he met Corlissandro for the first time. Their exchange was brief but became tense when Corlissandro observed David’s discomfort with the Catholic decor in his cabin:

Corlissandro: “You do not serve the Church?”
David: “I serve the dead.”
Corlissandro: “Does it bother you that your employer is Catholic?”
David: “It only matters that they are a good person.”

Though their faiths differed, Corlissandro recognized David’s clarity of purpose and moral rigor. He handed him a reply for Tomás and said nothing more.

Exile to the Mosquito Coast (1687–1688)

David spent nearly a year on the Mosquito Coast—a wild stretch of Central American rainforest beyond colonial authority. Working alongside Miskito and Sumo peoples, he learned survival skills, Spanish-guerrilla tactics, and a humility he had never known in Spain. The indigenous communities, recognizing his sincerity and his hatred of Spanish oppression, offered him protection and purpose.

It was during this period that David began carving small crosses out of driftwood—not out of devotion, but out of habit. He left them behind wherever he slept, along riverbanks, in tree roots, near the graves of animals and strangers alike. Locals came to believe he was haunted, or that he warded off spirits with these tokens.

His presence in the region was not without danger. In late 1687, a Spanish patrol—sent from Trujillo—attempted to reclaim influence over several coastal villages. Their presence threatened both David and the native peoples who had welcomed him into their fold, and it quickly became clear that the Spanish men were not above use immoral forms of violence to subdue the locals. David ambushed them in the jungle with a group of young fighters, disabling their advance and forcing a retreat. It was his first open act of violence against a Spanish military force since his apostasy.

By early 1688, pressure from both the Spanish and English had increased. David left under cover of fog, traveling west by canoe, then bartered his way onto a merchant vessel headed for Tortuga.

He never told anyone in Tortuga what he saw or did on the Mosquito Coast. But a few survivors there still speak of a quiet man who taught them to fight, mourned with their dead, and left behind wooden crosses that never rotted in the rain.

Life in Tortuga

By early 1688, David had arrived in Tortuga—a lawless crucible of ambition, vice, and displacement. Though the town was home to smugglers, pirates, and bounty hunters, David did not seek membership in any crew or syndicate. Instead, he survived in the margins, offering his blade only in narrow, carefully chosen circumstances.

He lived simply in a rented upper room above a cooper’s workshop near the southern edge of the harbor. There, he worked intermittently as a bodyguard, debt-settler, and duelist-for-hire, though he accepted only contracts that aligned with his strict personal ethics. He defended the powerless—especially women at risk of abduction or persecution—and refused payment more than once when the cause was desperate. His clients were often innkeepers, herbalists, or low-born merchants threatened by extortion, and word of his principled resolve spread cautiously through the town.

He came to be regarded as a neutral enforcer—a man who could be hired to deliver messages, mediate disputes, or retrieve missing property, so long as the truth and terms were clear. His duels, when they occurred, were rarely lethal. He preferred disarmament and humiliation, but was fully capable of ending a fight if no other option remained.

David avoided religious buildings entirely, choosing instead to pray in private—at night, by candlelight, seated on the floor in silence. He carved driftwood crosses as he had on the Mosquito Coast, though in Tortuga, he burned most of them after completing a job, as if offering them to the fire rather than leaving them behind.

In March of 1690, while moving through the market quarter, David crossed paths with a familiar figure—a man going by another name but unmistakably Corlissandro de Villanueva. Their encounter was plain: a nod, a narrowed gaze, and a few quiet words in the shade of a doorway. Both men had changed. Corlissandro, too, was living modestly, staying out of the town’s deeper intrigues.

Their reunion led to a quiet arrangement. Since then, the two have operated as allies of convenience, exchanging information discreetly and watching each other’s backs when needed. There is no warmth between them, but there is trust born of shared integrity. They rarely meet in public, nor do they collaborate on any larger scheme. But in Tortuga’s shifting tides of violence and opportunism, neither man has had cause to doubt the other’s word.

In the month since their reunion, David’s work has continued much as it did before—measured, discreet, and firmly independent. He has broken up two planned abductions near the docks, declined an offer of coin from a French privateer captain, and accompanied a dying midwife to her home on the inland trail so she could die among her kin.

Though he had forsaken the church that once ruled his life, David had not turned away from God. He serves the world in a way that honors his memory of Ysobel, the core commandments of his God, and the principle that true faith requires rebellion against injustice—even when it wears a cassock. The rumors of his deeds and his behaviors earned a nickname among those living in Tortuga: “The Heretic Saint”.

Journey to the Phantom Sea

David was recruited by Captain Scarlette Jane at The Raven tavern in Port Cayonne, Tortuga, in mid-April 1690, after being recommended to her by Corlissandro. The two men had maintained their quiet alliance since their reunion in March, and when Scarlette sought crew for a dangerous voyage, Corlissandro identified David as someone whose moral clarity and combat discipline would prove valuable.

At The Raven, David observed the proceedings with his characteristic restraint, ordering only water while Scarlette delivered her recruitment speech promising wealth and wonder in exchange for absolute loyalty. When she stressed the rule of “no mutiny” under pain of death, David engaged her directly about the nature and terms of their journey. Though new to sailing, he presented himself honestly as eager to learn and capable of becoming a good deckhand, drawing on his discipline and adaptability honed through years of exile.

Before departure, David followed his customary preparation—prayer and physical exercise—refusing the indulgences that consumed others in the port. His temperance and focus marked him as an outsider even among outcasts, but it was this very discipline that would prove essential in the trials ahead.

The Voyage

The Night Wind launched into the Phantom Sea on April 21, 1690, entering a supernatural oceanic expanse where light and sound faded, minds unraveled, and monsters stirred. From the journey’s beginning, David served with diligence despite his inexperience at sea, and he quietly earned his place on the ship despite learning how to be a sailor in the most difficult circumstances imaginable.

On the second day, the ship was violently rocked by an unseen force beneath the waves. David proved his worth immediately, scrambling up the rigging with exceptional skill to secure the sails and prevent catastrophic damage. His training in the Order of Santiago had prepared him well for such physical challenges—his body moved with practiced grace as he pulled down canvas and tied off lines while the deck pitched beneath him. A massive bioluminescent sea serpent glided beneath the hull, its scales casting eerie light through the darkness, but it made no move to attack.

Later, a supernatural crisis tested the crew’s resilience. Chester, the young artillerist, became enthralled by some malevolent force emanating from the cursed waters and attempted to sabotage the ship’s cannons. When Corlissandro also fell under the same supernatural influence, chaos threatened to overwhelm the vessel. The crew worked desperately to break the enchantment on both men, restoring them to their senses before irreparable damage could be done. The incident served as a grim reminder that the Phantom Sea’s dangers were not merely physical—they reached into the mind itself, turning allies against one another through invisible manipulation.

The third day brought psychological horror. During Ceiran’s watch, ice and mist thickened around the ship as approximately one hundred wooden coffins materialized in the dark waters, surrounding the Night Wind entirely. The lids popped open in sequence, revealing decayed faces and skeletal hands reaching desperately toward the vessel. What followed became deeply personal—ghostly apparitions of deceased loved ones manifested on deck to torment the crew. David encountered the specter of Ysobel—the woman whose death at the hands of the Inquisition had shattered his faith and driven him into exile. The apparition of Ysobel appeared as she had in her final moments, reaching toward him with desperate need. The vision was so powerful that Corlissandro had to pistol-whip him—delivering 3 points of damage—to snap him back to present reality.

In the confused aftermath, as Corlissandro drew his pistol and David his rapier in response to lingering supernatural threat, Scarlette declared herself immune to fear and struck both Corlissandro and Gestra with sharp punches—using physical shock to snap them free from the terror and help them see clearly. When David began preparing to smite what he believed were remaining entities, Corlissandro pistol-whipped him to break through his combat focus. Though the coffins and apparitions had vanished, distinct footprints pressed into the frost covering the deck proved the encounter was more than hallucination. David’s use of Divine Sense confirmed residual undead energy, validating that their experience existed on the boundary between reality and illusion.

On April 25th, during David’s watch, he spotted something moving in the darkness. His perception, honed by years of vigilance, caught the telltale shimmer of tentacles on the ship’s railing. David realized that something was actively attempting to probe and penetrate his mind with telepathic intrusion, and his years of spiritual discipline helped him to resist the mental assault. His vigilance proved critical when he spotted a tentacled creature positioned on the ship’s railing—a grotesque, fish-like aberration that immediately leaped back into the ocean upon being discovered. Investigating further, David discovered multiple similar creatures clinging to the ship’s hull, their tentacles wrapped around the vessel’s structure in preparation for coordinated assault. Recognizing the immediate danger, David sounded the alarm without hesitation, rousing the entire crew for combat as the creatures began tearing apart the ship’s wooden structure with acidic secretions.

The battle that followed showcased David’s combat prowess. He fought alongside his new crewmates as the four aboleths attempted to tear the Night Wind apart with acidic secretions and psychic assaults. The creatures’ mucus ate through the wooden deck, leaving smoking holes that threatened the ship’s integrity. David wielded his holy magic with devastating effect, channeling divine wrath through touch. When one of the creatures drew close, he struck with Inflict Wounds, his hand blazing with necrotic energy as he dealt a massive blow that left the aboleth reeling. Throughout the combat, when the creatures struck him with their tentacles, hellfire erupted from his body in response, searing his attackers with Hellish Rebuke.

During the cleanup afterward, both David and Corlissandro observed Scarlette treating a severe necrotic wound on her arm with some form of supernatural healing magic. David confronted her directly, asking what she truly was. Scarlette’s response was cryptic but revealing: “You have your God and I have mine.” The statement confirmed David’s suspicions that she served divine powers outside conventional religious traditions. When she questioned his own divine service, David revealed the journey of his faith—that he had previously served as an instrument of divine wrath but was now attempting to embrace mercy instead.

Shortly after the aboleth attack, while Corlissandro worked to repair the acid-damaged deck with cold tar, David took his turn on watch, lashed to the mast for safety. The two men who had known each other briefly in Tortuga finally spoke at length. Corlissandro, covered in black pitch and wearing torn clothes, asked how the sailor’s life suited David. David admitted the challenges but noted with grim satisfaction that “the monsters are not hiding in plain sight” as they had been in his previous life. He asked whether he was fulfilling his role as a crewman, seeking honest assessment from someone with far more maritime experience.

Corlissandro’s response was measured and respectful. He acknowledged David’s temperament for enduring the Phantom Sea—a quality rarer and more valuable than mere technical skill. Then came a question that cut to David’s core: did he think he would regret the decision to come here? David paused before answering with characteristic directness. He explained that while he had come to regret many things in life, this voyage would not be one of them. The most likely outcome, he believed, was death before seeing Tortuga again, but he would not regret such an end—it would be God’s will.

Then David asked a question that revealed how deeply theology still occupied his thoughts despite his apostasy from the Church: what did Corlissandro think awaited him after death? The former admiral’s single word answer struck with terrible finality: “Damnation.” The admission hung between them in the lightless air, a confession of soul-deep agony that Corlissandro had never voiced to anyone before.

On April 26th, during Sabine’s watch, a magical bell began tolling from beneath the ocean, summoning a massive whirlpool that threatened to destroy the Night Wind. David secured the ship’s rigging with exceptional skill, his acrobatics check achieving remarkable success as he pulled down sails and prevented damage during the storm-lashed chaos. Meanwhile, Corlissandro rappelled down the side of the vessel to cut away kelp blocking the rudder, and Alethea used her magic to disrupt the bell’s ringing. Finally, Scarlette dragged Percy—the mysterious first mate who had remained unhelpful throughout the crisis—up from below deck and demanded he act. Percy levitated above the ship, his eye glowing as he poured weather-controlling magic into the ocean, calming both whirlpool and storm. The casual indifference with which he returned below deck afterward frustrated the entire crew.

Circe’s Island

Some time after the supernatural storm cleared, Circe’s Island materialized on the horizon—a tropical paradise that had not existed moments before. The crew disembarked onto pristine sand, and David joined his companions as they climbed the massive staircase of an ancient temple featuring Aztec and Mayan architectural styles mixed with Greek influences. The climb proved exhausting, but David’s endurance carried him through.

Inside the temple, the party navigated chambers decorated with portraits and statues depicting unfamiliar mythology. They encountered three sealed doors marked by animal symbols and chose the swan door, descending through increasingly dark corridors into a large chamber containing multiple sarcophagi. Each bore divine titles in Arabic and other ancient languages: “Lord of Wind,” “Goddess of Time,” “Goddess of the Moon.”

At the chamber’s far end, guardian statues stood atop two special sarcophagi bearing riddle inscriptions. David investigated the broken tablet embedded in the sarcophagi, discovering it had been intentionally split in half—the riddles worked together. When Sabine correctly identified the answer as “Love,” torches flared to life and the statues animated, revealing the passage deeper into the temple.

The party entered the notorious Hall of Mirrors, where Scarlette distributed protective coins containing rubies to help distinguish reality from illusion. David was separated from the others and forced to confront an echo that delivered a brutal psychological assault. The reflection referenced someone he had killed—“her”—almost certainly Ysobel, whose execution he had attended in full uniform, believing divine intervention would prevail. It accused him of killing her through his compliance, of standing by in his uniform while she burned, of believing himself God’s chosen when he was nothing but a coward and a murderer.

The psychological assault intensified as the echo stepped out of the mirror, becoming physically real and attacking with drawn blade. Rather than succumb to despair or rage, David maintained his moral conviction by reciting the 23rd Psalm during the extended combat, using scripture as both shield and anchor. “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul…” The words, spoken in the darkness of the mirror maze while facing a manifestation of his guilt and grief, represented David’s refusal to abandon the core tenets of his faith even as he rejected the Church’s authority.

Most significantly, David refused to kill his own malevolent reflection, maintaining the principle of restraint he had embraced since his exile. When the echo taunted him about his divine calling, David made a defining declaration: he asserted he was “never God’s chosen,” rejecting the exceptionalism and self-righteousness that had once allowed him to serve the Inquisition without question. This statement represented profound spiritual maturity—the understanding that genuine faith required humility rather than claims of divine mandate.

When David finally overcame his trial through faith and self-acceptance rather than violence, he emerged shaken but resolute. He had confronted the worst of himself and chosen mercy over wrath, proving that his spiritual transformation was genuine. For surviving the Hall of Mirrors, David received divine inspiration—a blessing that would grant him extra power for his smiting abilities when next he needed them.

The party reunited in a marble foyer where Scarlette anxiously checked each survivor. They then entered Circe’s throne room, an opulent chamber rivaling Versailles in grandeur. There, they witnessed an explosive confrontation between Circe, Poseidon, and Scarlette. The sea god arrogantly demanded the return of his stolen eye while Scarlette pressed a gun to his throat, invoking a blood pact they had made in Tortuga. When Poseidon broke her arm, Scarlette shot and stabbed him before transforming into her terrifying voodoo form—gathering shadows and mist to battle his divine lightning.

Circe proposed a final arrangement: the party could kill the Minotaur in her labyrinth to claim just Poseidon’s eye, or solve the labyrinth puzzle to also rescue Scarlette’s captured crew. The party chose the harder path, entering the deadly maze in three coordinated teams.

The Minotaur’s Labyrinth

David joined “Team Cobra” with Sabine and Gestra, tasked with stealthy reconnaissance through the labyrinth’s winding passages. His training allowed him to move with surprising silence despite his equipment, posting consistent stealth checks as they navigated the maze. The team discovered altars laden with offerings to the goddess—gold, bones, jewels, and stones—which they wisely left untouched.

The labyrinth required retrieving four magical obelisks while evading the cursed Minotaur that hunted them through the corridors. David and his team worked methodically, checking dead ends and coordinating with the other groups through Scarlette’s blood magic communication totems. When they encountered the massive beast—a creature of muscle, horn, and ancient rage—David helped his team evade detection through careful timing and silence.

During one of the Minotaur’s charges, David witnessed Scarlette deploy powerful darkness magic and spirit summons to delay the creature, buying precious moments for the teams to converge at the vault. Despite his lingering distrust of the pirate captain, David used his healing abilities to keep her alive during the fight, snarling “I still don’t like you, but I don’t want you to die” as he channeled ten points of divine energy into her wounds.

When all four obelisks were finally placed into their rune-matched slots, the massive statue opened to reveal Poseidon’s Eye. The Minotaur vanished instantly into smoke. But the triumph was short-lived—Poseidon and Circe manifested in the chamber. When the god reached for his Eye, Scarlette intercepted it and, channeling her petro lwa Marie Duclair with blood tears streaming and white eyes blazing, forced Poseidon to break Corlissandro’s unwanted warlock pact. The severance tore through Corlissandro with worse agony than death itself, earning Poseidon’s eternal enmity before Circe’s divine authority ended the confrontation. Circe made it very clear it was time for them to leave then teleported the party back to the beach.

When the Night Wind was fully away from Circe’s Island and steady at sea, Scarlette distributed bottles of rare whiskey she had saved for such an occasion. Standing atop a chest, she properly introduced herself as Scarlette Jane—Red Jane, the Blood Pirate, the most feared and wanted pirate in the Caribbean. She admitted she had hired bodies, not sailors, and expected none to survive, but they had proved her wrong in skill and mettle before gods and monsters.

David asked why she had gone through all the trouble to break Corlissandro’s pact. Scarlette’s answer revealed a moral principle David could respect: she would not abide duplicitous bargains where consent was stolen, and besides, she owed a favor. It was a glimpse of honor beneath the ruthless exterior.

As the celebration began, David found Corlissandro and the two men shared a quiet moment away from the revelry. They clinked bottles and exchanged truths about faith and prayer. When Corlissandro wondered if God would hear him after what had happened, David replied with gentle conviction: “I think he always listens. He does not always answer though.” They toasted to “unexpected adventures” and confessed mutual gratitude for each other’s company. The two shared a gentle laugh comparing the whiskey’s bite to communion wine, then placed a lighthearted wager on which youngster would drop first from drinking—David betting ten gold on Ceiran while Corlissandro chose Chester.

Unlike many of his crewmates, David avoided the drunken shenanigans entirely, retiring soberly below deck. The next morning, he used his healing abilities on himself to cure the mild effects of alcohol before beginning his daily routine of calisthenics and prayers. He then sought to understand the Night Wind’s character by addressing a Spanish rigger, who called him “lexicon” and told him there was no ship like the Night Wind. David pitched in wherever labor was heaviest throughout the day, helping the crew with ship duties as he always had.

From the treasure division, David received five thousand gold pieces, a spell scroll of Find Steed, a potion of greater healing, and a potion of invisibility. But the true treasure was something that could not be measured in coin: he had faced the darkness within himself and chosen light. He had stood before gods and monsters and maintained his principles. However, with the Night Wind underway to Cyprus, there would undoubtedly be further trials of his character ahead.