[MENTION=6755061]Kiraya_TiDrekan[/MENTION]- It's up to [MENTION=20323]Quickleaf[/MENTION], of course, but I'm sure there's a way to find your way into the crew assuming we're still in port by the time your IRL issues are sorted out.
...On another note entirely, here's something like a background for Mr Teague. I'm afraid it's more colourful than informative. I have an idea that he had an adventuring career as a barbarian before all this, but old age has dimmed the old fire, hence the move into cleric, drawing on a Wisdom he never had before.
[sblock=Background]A lifetime at sea not amounting to much, that’s the sad story of Gunner Teague.
The years and waves have taken much from him, robbed him of the strength of his sword-hand, the faces of a family, years of freedom-- whether breaking rocks for his countrymen at the prison of Point-Saint Charlotte, or languishing in the dungeons of the French island-fortress of Bon Ebon-- and opportunities, so many missed chances. He was young and strong once, practically a hero once. He claims that he and the vain, young, and famous Captain George Lightly Rafferty, whose name has since passed into legend, along with the disappearance of his ship, the HMS Rescue-- the decidedly ironically named Rescue, of which Teague sometimes professes to be sole survivor. Some find it odd that they are only hearing this upon meeting the gunner for the first time. He seems to mention it often enough, though the details of what claimed the ship differ-- a whirlpool with giant fangs of gnashing ice, a huge hand with barnacled knuckles and the bloated skin of a corpse rising out of an otherwise placid sea, a rogue wave with a host of elves on horseback riding its crest.
If he’s drunk, that is. Ask again once he’s sober, he’ll say, “A storm.” And that’s all.
Mottled with tattoos, fingers blue with the touch of blackpowder and gunmetal, his back strewn with the tracks of the cat of nine-- much of the time Teague appears a grim-faced taskmaster, tight-lipped and stern, one gimlet eye and a mouth like a sword. You’d scarcely credit him the imagination which seems necessary for his wild tales.
But his tongue is loosened by rum. The same may be true of his penchant for spinning outrageous falsehoods, delving into the mists of memory and coming up with some scarcely-remembered undersea monster or ghost ship. When drunk, he claims to have crewed with captains who died before he was born, to have sailed to destinations out of stage-plays and fairy tales-- to have docked in Avalon and weighed anchor on a kraken’s shell. Even the tattoos on his back seem to show islands surely too large to have gone undiscovered so long.
There’s one sure bet, and that’s the man was born in Bristol. Dare try and get a straight answer from him on the subject, however, of his long-ago life on dry land, and he’ll clam up sure as if they tide’s ebb.
Those who could give the lie to the more outlandish of Teague’s half-jesting claims, could glorify or condemn him, linger now in the locker of Davy Jones. Teague, for his part, goes on, serving on navy boats and merchanters, aboard privateers and pirate vessels, decorating the inside of many a cell, drawing blood at the Crown’s behest only to sail under the flags of her enemies. In his long life, he says, he’s buried treasure and friends enough to sail a navy out of Hell’s own harbour, and who’s to say he won’t, one day? Maybe that was the plan all along.[/sblock]
