Shipmate

dwarf elf human   They say a Sea Scallywag Shipmate is born with salt on their lips and the sea in their bones. Dawn breaks over jagged sea-stacks in Vulcanyon Valley, and the shipmates are already climbing aboard galleys creaking with tide. Ropes coil in their hands, sails snap overhead, and each is ready for whatever the surf may bring: storms, monsters, or marauders.   They haul nets bruised from coral, patch torn sails, scrub decks slick with fish oil and brine. When boarding raids come, they leap without hesitation, daggers flashing, cutlasses singing, the ship itself alive under their feet: from crow's-nest lookout to bilge. Their loyalty is to hull and crew; to a vessel they call home when the horizon becomes their horizon. A good shipmate knows tides, wind, and danger as well as any captain—but it’s their sweat, their scars, their whispered prayers between waves that keep the ship afloat when storms howl.