Marbles Marlowe

Marbles Marlowe

Biological
Full name:	Marbles Marlowe
Born:
Birthplace:	Guldove, El Nido, Gate Dimension
Sex:	Male
Race:	Undead Human
Hair:	None
Eyes:	Green (prosthetic marbles)
Height:	6'0"
Weight:
Personal
Marital Status:
Family/Relationships:	{{{family}}}
Religion:
Title:	Formerly Cap'n of Devil's Mist Ghost Ship #34, Cap'n of the Foxy Wench, Cap'n of the Rusty Wang
Nicknames:
Hobbies:
Known skills:	Piratery, Swordery, Lootery, Burnery
Favorite color:
Inspiration:	his stuffed bear, Chlamydia
Motto:

An undead pirate captain, currently plying the spaceways and leading a somewhat sizeable resurgent sect of the Unbound.

From what he's said of his past, Marlowe was born in Guldove several centuries ago. As the story goes, he was jumped from behind and beheaded by his own first mate. His severed head was then tossed into the sea, and not long after a patch of the Devil's Mist overtook the area. The mist caused Marbles' head to animate, and the career of an undead pirate was born.

For years, Marbles (who took his name from the shiny green glass eyes he had placed in his vacant eyesockets) commanded the Devil's Mist Ghost Ship #34, adhering to some obscure curse that dictated he and his crew ply the waters enveloped in the mist, being scary and pirate-like for all eternity. Marbles and his crew were released from this curse by Manta. Manta also provided Marbles with a body by beheading a random zombie pirate member of the crew and affixing Marbles to the neck stump.

Indebted to the Priman, Marbles and his band of undead pirates allied with Manta in an assault on a pyra ring on Acacia island. During the intense naval battle that ensued, Ghost Ship #34 engaged in ship-to-ship combat with a smuggling ship called the Foxy Wench, and when the undead boarded the smuggling vessel, Marbles fought personally with the Wench's captain, Tibro. Tibro destroyed Marbles' rotting zombie body, but the undead captain's head detached and bit Tibro to death. After the battle, Tibro was properly decapitated, and Marbles assumed control of his fresher, less-corpsified body. He has managed to keep Tibro's body in decent working order ever since.

For a time after he helped Manta in El Nido, Marbles served as the coast guard of Tunlan under a presidential letter of marque -- now in command of Tibro's ship, the Foxy Wench. He abandoned this post, however, at the call of a pair of Medinans named Locklance and Gash. The two shadow-mages employed Marbles and his undead crew to watch over Janus Cage, and ferry him to Alter-Dragon aboard an old Confederate Dreadnought, the Implacable. To help Marbles and his crew (who had never before crewed or piloted a space vessel) were Tendrick MacHale and his men, former crew of the Implacable before a Reverse X-Zone accident had transformed them all into undead creatures. The arrangement that Locklance had worked out was something like: Marbles and his men would help MacHale and his men acclimate to being undead, and MacHale and his men would help Marbles and his men acclimate to crewing a space ship.

Under Marbles' command, the Implacable was re-christened the Rusty Wang, just in time to escape from Manta (who had just signed on to bring in the bounty on Janus Cage's head). Locklance and Gash perished holding Manta at bay, and the Wang escaped by making an RXZ jump that was interrupted by Manta's ghost-butler, Albert, who had possessed the body of Alain Bernier, the Implacable's former engineering chief.

Albert's sabotage had landed the Wang in Manaspace, near the Gatian colony of Sanctuary on Mana IV. The ship landed to repair the vessel's RXZ drive. As a cover (since Janus Cage was still a wanted man by the Medinans), the crew pretended to be a travelling troupe of space actors performing operettas about pirates. No sooner had repairs been completed, and the curtain closed on the crew's performance, Manta showed up again. The Priman assassin chased Janus and his crew to the docking domes of Sanctuary, but en route he was waylaid by a pair of vampires -- Jasmina DuCire and Dasro Dorsalfin -- who were also out to collect the Janus Cage reward.

In the confusion, Marbles and Janus managed to escape, but not without leaving Janus' bodyguard Alchendic and one of Marbles' crew (a creepy wannabe vampire named Toothington) behind. Alain Bernier was also purged of Albert's possession, though Marbles kept him tied up just in case. Safely away from Sanctuary, the Wang initiated its RXZ drive again, and emerged safely in Alterspace.

No sooner had Marbles and crew come into orbit around Alter-Dragon, the Wang was set upon by the Louvre, an Unbound pirate vessel captained by the Siman rogue Javerl Delors. A botched boarding maneuver sent both ships crashing down to the planet's surface, stranding the crew in the Highlands region near the City of Plinths. Here, Marbles, Javerl and all those travelling with the two crews became embroiled in the Battle of the Plinths, fighting on the side of the Hadozee and Angwantibo clans of Highlanders and their Siman allies against the massive army of Trubolon and Lagothrix Knifesong.

Following the successful repulsion of Trubolon, Marbles stayed on Alter-Dragon long enough to attend the wedding of Kit Leon and Tadpoleon. He then departed and took to marauding the spacelanes, before his crew ran across Manta yet again. This time, Manta was out to collect the bounties Guardia was offering on the heads of space pirates, and the Priman meant to turn Marbles and his whole crew in for some quick coin. Somehow, Marbles managed to out-maneuver Manta long enough to stumble upon a hidden Unbound hideaway, where Trevor Rukons and Leonard O'Connor were holed up. Together, the three captains managed to elude both Manta and a GSF contingent under the command of Barry Svensgaard.

Marbles did not rest idly on his success as a space pirate, however. As enterprising as ever, Marbles linked up with Rukons and O'Connor again to forge a new, strongly united Unbound fleet. They drafted other privateers and pirates into their ranks: Black Bart, DegRencche, Jethro Driver and Captain Tusk, and staged a daring raid on the Gatian colony of Redemption in Mergespace. The raid was a smashing success, and an embarrassment to Guardian power in the Fringe. But more importantly, it established Marbles Marlowe as an Unbound captain of repute, and marked the resurgence of the Unbound as a major player on the Fringe even in spite of the Core powers' crackdown on piracy.