I'm going to let everyone post their own characters so you can keep track of your own little bits of information you'd like to share and add things as you see fit.

I'll also post information on the Dawn Falcon herself here.

Height: From the bottom of the ship to the top deck she stands 30 feet high.

Width:At her widest point she is 60 feet across tapering to 40 feet across at the aft.

Length: From bow to aft she is 170 feet long.

Top Speed: Unloaded traveling on full power with no sand storms or obstacles she can go 60 knots.

However her usually traveling speed is around 25-30 knots.

Refer to this handy guide:
5 Knots = 5.8 MPH
10 Knots = 11.5 MPH
15 Knots = 17.3 MPH
20 Knots = 23.0 MPH
25 Knots = 28.8 MPH
30 Knots = 34.6 MPH
35 Knots = 40.3 MPH
40 Knots = 46.1 MPH
45 Knots = 51.8 MPH
50 Knots = 57.6 MPH
55 Knots = 63.4 MPH
60 Knots = 69.1 MPH


Behold my awesome paint drawing of what the bottom of the Falcon looks like.



The red ones propel the boat forward and the green ones can move it to the left or right. You'll notice they are only at the front, meaning they are meant for steering the ship, not moving her completely sideways.

Most sand ships are built more like tanks, tend to be bulkier with less maneuverability (not that the Falcon exactly floats like a butterfly mind you.) The Falcon is based off of pictures of seagoing ships instead of the remains they have found of cars and tanks. She's lighter than most sand ships as a result of a lot of her internal parts being made of a strange metal (aluminum but few people could identify it as such) unlike the common steel that makes up most of sand ships. Her design makes her a little less strong against enemies but faster and her firepower is double that of most of the desert moving fortresses.

She's been painted white several times in an attempt to help keep her cooler, but you can guess what constant desert travel has done to the paint job.

For her power source she uses both steam and four retractable wind mill turbine thingies that are located at the port and starboard points and fore and aft of the ship. These can be raised or lowered from points inside the ship. It takes two men to raise or lower each one. These also need to be maintained because sand in all the parts obviously is never good.

It's pretty rare that people go on the top of the ship when it's moving, one the wind is likely to push you off the side to your death, two you could be sandblasted to death. When the ship is stopped however it is possible to go up there, and during battles it is pretty common. Do not get caught on the top of the ship or one of the slim side decks during a sand storm. You will die.


The Falon is a bit better armed than most sand ships since she is less fortified.

She has a large harpoon gun at the aft of the ship, used primarily for sand shark fishing. The smaller ones make good eating, gotta get them before they're too tough... and before they get you of course.


There are large triple barreled crank machine guns (Gatling guns? Not sure on my gun terminology here) spaced along the sides, numbering three to each side. These take custom ammunition, so they tend to be used only one of them at a time. Takes three men to run them. One to point it in the proper direction, one to keep the crank turning at the proper speed and one to keep the belt of ammunition working. These are the fastest guns on board but require skilled workers and need to be kept clean and well oiled to stay working right. There are slide down locking doors that open to allow the gun pits access to the outside.

There are five cannons, one at the very front, two at the back and two on the sides. These are the slower but more powerful per hit than the crank guns. Can be worked by one man slowly or two working at a decent pace.

Ardis Winfall

Age: 17

Ardis is a wiry young man, lean and well toned from years of working his arse off on a ship. His hair, generally tied in a black bandana to keep it out of his eyes, has been bleached nearly bone white by his years in the sands. The same time in the sun that has lightened his hair has turned his skin a caramel shade, conflicting with his ever curious bright blue eyes. He's more strange looking than handsome. He tends to wear pre-desert clothes, favoring camo army fatigue pants, plain white shirt and serviceable combat boots he found in a destroyed army base.


The young Captain's usually grinning like he knows a secret that no one else will understand and often launches into stories about how things were in the old days, all of this precious knowledge learned from a small library of pre-desert books. Most of his books however are literature meant for children, resulting in him having a bit of an idealized version of how things once were. He can find an oasis or ruin easily and with eerie accuracy. He claims that the sands speak to him, though if this is just some sort of whimsy on his part is never really obvious. He also claims to have been born in the desert and raised by nomads... but no evidence of tribes of people living in the desert has ever been recorded and most people just assume he made it up to make himself more interesting.

Ardis seems to have a plethora of bizarre weapons, some of them Engie's experiments that he was fond of and many more of them treasures he has taken from ruins or appropriated from other sand ship crews. He uses a blow gun and crossbow with their ammunition tipped with poison created from burrow snake venom, but seems to prefer melee combat. One weapon he has constantly on him is a revolver that he has a small cache of ammo for. Generally he allows himself to be the tester for Engie's invented weaponry after she makes sure chance of explosion is minimal.

He doesn't often resort to open piracy of other sand ships, but occasionally the Falcon comes under attack thinking her slender form would be easy pickings. He like the desert animals and on many occasions has taken desert felines, foxes or snakes aboard the ship and kept them as pets for short periods.

Ardis has an obsession with locating or creating a flying ship. He will tell anyone who will sit and listen for a few moments about seeing one flying across the desert as a child and has a book talking about something called a Helicopter. The colorful drawing in the book depict a strangely shaped robotic flying machine that had a humanlike face and was capable of talking and flying itself without a human inside driving it. He gives large rewards to those that offer old world items having to do with flight machines.

The Dawn Falcon came into Ardis's possession when he was thirteen though the exact details of how that happened seem to be a bit fuzzy. It's rumored that if you catch Lucas well lubricated with liquor and in a talking mood he'll tell you the story, but no one knows if it is true. Ardis simply claims that the Falcon was always meant to be his.

He tends to be a bit awkward around girls simply because he rarely spends much time around girls his own age.

Lucas Newman

Age: 32

Lucas is a somber man. He stands 6'1” and runs about 200 pounds even. His sullen eyes are a velvety chocolate color though he rarely raises his gaze to look other people in the eyes. The quiet man has a large tightly curled mop of dark brown hair that sticks out at odd angles unless he is reminded to try to tame it. He wears plain army fatigues and unlike the captain never bothers with accessories or “fanciful nonsense.”

It is unclear when or how Lucas met Ardis but it is clear they've been around each other for a while. Lucas is fiercely loyal to the boy and protects him in every way he can. Rumors were spread among the crew for a while that Lucas was actually Ardis's father but they were laid to rest by Lucas drunkenly admitting to a couple crew members that he had lost his wife and son in a sand storm eleven years back. He does think of Ardis as a son, but they have no blood relation. Rumors also circulate that he ripped a sand shark in half to rescue the boy on one of their earlier trips into the desert but neither of them really like to talk about it.

Lucas has a variety of skills though more often than not he's content to handle mundane details like helping sweep sand from gun pits and chop tubers in the galley. He likes to drink and when he's drunk he likes to talk. Many a detail about his life and Ardis's taking over of the ship slip out when he's in his cups, though few people bother to sit and listen to his ramblings.

The man tends to be no nonsense and his weapons are the same. They are plain firearms with no embellishments and he has no fancy gadgetry. He also is apt to pick up the closest sturdy item and use that if his weapon has a firing issue. He keeps his gear and his living space spartan clean, despite not taking care of his appearance, and lives by good gear is the difference between life and death.

He is slow to anger but when he does he tends to toss the offender off the ship... do not get him angry.

*insert important things*

"Trust me, I'm a doctor..." Kamina spent most of his life in the slums, and couldn't pass up an opportunity to get out of them. At the young age of 15 is when his career as a doctor started, completely by accident. Whilst wandering the slums he came across a man with a badly infected leg; With no time to find a doctor, he ran into the man's house and grabbed a clockwork handsaw. With it he managed to amputate the limb in under 2 minutes. Luckily enough a stranger was in the area who knew how to bandage badly bleeding wounds. After getting the man to a real doctor, Kamina decided he would become a man to save lives, in record times of course. Always looking to make new friends, and someone else to save, Kamina joins the Dawn Falcon in hopes of doing just this... and hopefully dissecting a creature or two along the way.

Appearance/Description: Kamina is in around his early 20's, from what he can remember. He stands at a lumbering 6'4", but is very thin and appears to not eat enough. His pale complexion doesn't help but frighten his patients when he enters the room in his sand stained doctors coat and black slacks. One notable thing about Kamina is his lightning reflexes when it comes to surgery. Anyone who's been a patient of the Doctor can tell you that he takes enjoyment out of his job, especially if he's timing himself.

Sullivan O’Shea (aka Sully Star-Eyes)
Sully Star-Eyes has spent most of his life (or, at least, most of it that he can remember) aboard one sand ship or another. He couldn’t tell you where he was born or, for that matter, even how long ago that might have been… he seems to know quite a bit about the slums of Vexotia and a decent bit about the city itself but whether that’s because he was born there or because he’s visited and explored frequently enough over the years to have gotten the “lay of the land” is uncertain. There is no one place in the slums or the city proper that Sully identifies as (or even hints at) being ‘home’ and, when he does visit, he seems more than a little preoccupied with leaving the place behind. Home for Sully Star-Eyes, if you ask him, has always been at the helm of a Sand Ship with the desert spreading away to the horizon all around him and the stars scattered like diamonds across the black blanket of the sky and that’s where he prefers to be…

Description: Sully is a somewhat odd-looking individual if you get a chance to really look at him… his physical build is fairly average – about 5’ 10”, weighing in at around 160 lbs or so, lean and lanky – but, despite that, there is something just a little off-putting about the man. Maybe it’s the way his black and white streaked hair seems perpetually wind-tossed, bringing to mind the way the dunes churn in beneath the paddles of a sandship or, for those who have seen pictures of such things, the way the waves once tossed themselves across the ocean… Maybe it’s the fact that Sully’s always got those dark goggles on, even at night time… or maybe it’s because, if he lifts those goggles, people get to see that his eyes are a set of featureless, pearlescent orbs colored a blue so pale that they may as well be white, and they sparkle and shimmer like the stars themselves when any sort of light is reflected from them. Additionally, somewhere along the line, Sully seems to have developed a penchant for and acquired a very modest collection of ‘pre-desert’ clothing, his favorite pieces being a pair of battered combat boots and some cargo pants that may have originally been a khaki color but have been patched with leather so extensively it’s honestly difficult to tell. He wears a leather bracer on his right arm which houses a compass and ‘nautical sundial,’ and one his left which integrates an astrolabe of his own design. Sully wears a bandolier, slung sometimes over and sometimes underneath a knee-length leather coat but, seemingly always with him, in which he carries a number of map cases, telescopes, and other accoutrements of his profession. As mentioned before, Sully, too, is rarely caught (even at night but especially in daylight) without a pair of extremely dark goggles secured over his eyes. Most often, these goggles are little more than the simple ‘sungoggles’ that they appear to be; on occasion, though (most notably when plotting courses and pointing the Dawn Falcon in the direction she needs to go) he does employ a pair that has some navigational gear included in their design (telescopic eye piece, fold-away sextant, etc)… Finally, slung from a wide belt around his waist and strapped to his hip, Sully carries a sawed-off, side-by-side scattergun that, by the looks of it, also is a relic of the pre-desert days… He doesn’t use it much, of course, as ammunition for it is harder to come by than the weapon itself was, but he does have a small stockpile of shells for it stashed away…

History Sully came aboard the Dawn Falcon a few months after Ardis Winfall took possession of the craft. Captain Winfall and his, at the time, smallish crew happened upon a derelict sandship half buried in one of the deserts’ ever-shifting dunes and, hoping to perhaps salvage anything of use from the apparently abandoned wreck, they of course, heaved to and boarded the thing. It didn’t take them long to discover that the sand-covered hulk was exactly as empty as initial appearances had led them to believe… Ardis and crew found what they were expecting, of course – salvageable bits of tech, meager scatterings of supplies and sundries, and a desiccated corpse or two of what surely must have been crew-members of the derelict who had died of exposure, dehydration, or any of the deserts’ innumerable perils. It was what they found in the wheelhouse of the wreck that caught them off guard…

“I told ‘em… warned ‘em… let ‘em know it was comin’… I can feel it, I said… Let me steer us around it, I said… But noooooo… The Captain knows best, doesn’t he?... Steer us right into it, Sully… It’ll wash over us in no time and we’ll be no worse the wear other than a few buckets of sand that’ll have to be shoveled out of the gun pits and we won’t have to tack undue time onto the course…”

…The voice that prattled on beyond the barricaded hatch of the wheelhouse almost matched the frenetic clatter-bang of activity that could be heard on the other side…Almost… The sounds of equipment being dragged around and doors banging opened and shut were, at times, enough to drown out the frenzied chatter…

“…Hope you’re happy with yourself, now, Captain… digesting away in some shark belly, I’ll bet… Not me, though… Noooo… I’ll be staying right here until they show up… They’re coming, I know it… I can feel it… they’re…

…Hullooo?”

…When Ardis and Lucas finally managed to get the hatch opened a crack and shouldered their way into the wheelhouse, they were greeted with utter darkness…

“There you are,” the frenetic voice chirped from the midst of that darkness as the Falcon’s crew tried to get lanterns lit in order to shed some light on the situation, “took you long enough, don’t you think? I figured you’d have gotten here before I got down to my last five gallons of hydro… been sitting here updating maps for days with no way to follow them and…”

…Lucas’ lantern flared to life just then, suddenly illuminating the confines of the pilothouse and evoking a pained screech from the curious looking fellow who had heretofore been hunched over the nav-table but was now scrambling to cover his eyes (were they sparkling? reflecting the light from the lanterns? weird.) with hands and goggles and whatever else might serve as, squealing, he tottered backwards and fell through a hatch in the floor behind him…

“Holy Hannah!!! Are you trying to blind me or what?!?! Turn that damn thing off so I can see!

Bah! Never mind,” the man grumbled over the sound of still more clattering, “I’ve got another set of goggles here somewhe…Ah! There!”

The man with the crazy-tossed mop of black and white streaked hair emerged from the hole in the floor, then, his eyes still noticeably sparkling in the lantern light even though they were now shielded behind at least two pairs of exceedingly dark goggles. “That’s better,” he said, glancing at Ardis and Lucas as he returned to the table and started gathering up the assortment of papers and equipment he had scattered about the thing, “minimum squintage and whatnot, right? Right.

So,” he continued, still stowing maps and gear in his bandolier and satchel as he came around the table and regarded his rescuers, “being as late as you are, I’m thinking you’re in dire need of a new navigator aboard your ship, aren’t you? Well, it turns out you’re in luck, my friends, because I’m a navigator in need of a new ship, right? This one is scuttled beyond repair, after all…”

The name’s Sullivan O’Shea, by the way,” the man, still hurriedly (and somewhat randomly, it seemed) stuffing things into his satchel, grinned at Lucas before slipping past them and out into the corridor, “or, Sully Star-Eyes as some call me… Just Sully’ll do just fine, though… Come on… I’ll help you scrap out what’s left to scrap out, here, and we can be on our way…”

Now, of course, Ardis didn’t really think he needed a new navigator, at the time… and Sully hadn’t the foggiest notion that it was the 13 year old kid and not the older, sterner looking Lucas that captained the Falcon… but, in the grand scheme of things, it didn’t really matter what those initial thoughts might have been on either side of the equation. Ardis and Lucas couldn’t very well just leave this Sully Star-Eyes character there – especially given the fact that they were set on scavenging anything of use from the derelict – so they took him aboard the Falcon with all plans to leave the odd man to fend for himself in Vexotia when they next stopped there, and none to keep him aboard as even a deck hand, let alone the navigator. It was en route to Vexotia, that all of that changed, though… An unexpected and freakishly strong storm had beset the Falcon when she was less than three days out from the city and, despite best efforts, Ardis’ current navigator was unable to so much as take a bearing through the windblown walls of sand, never mind try to plot a course around or even away from it… The Falcon couldn’t afford to just sit and wait the storm out, either (fuel for the boilers was running low and the storm’s winds would certainly tear the turbines from their mounts if they tried to deploy them), not without suffering the same fate as the sand ship on which they had found Star-Eyes, anyway… So it was that, when Ardis’ navigator, despairingly resigned to their apparent fate, told the captain that this storm would likely be their end, Sully just laughed and shook his head…

“You’re seeing things through the wrong set of eyes,” he smirked at the distraught navigator, “I’d lend you mine but I’ve grown kind of attached, you know?”

He grinned at Ardis then, still a little perplexed that so young a boy was actually the captain of this fine vessel; “I told you, you needed a new navigator, there, Captain Kid. If it’s alright with you, young sir, I figure I can get us out of this just fine and maybe even get us to Vexotia without getting any of us tossed into the sands… but you’ve gotta promise to never let this yutz…” he indicated the current navigator “…anywhere near the wheelhouse ever, ever, again… it’s no wonder you were so late picking me up!”

Sully never really waited for Ardis’ answer. Instead, he simply made his way up to the pilot house, turned off all unnecessary lighting, stripped off his goggles and squinted into the storm for a long moment… “Yup… there it is,” he muttered, “and here we go!” Exactly what he was steering by and exactly where he was steering them to was lost on the rest of the crew at the time… for all they could see, there was nothing but the storm outside the safety of the hull… but Star-Eyes seemed entirely confident that he knew exactly where he was going and kept muttering about how the stars weren’t as bright as they should be but Vexotia’s energy pattern was pulling pretty strongly… a day and a half later (well ahead of the time the Falcon’s now-ex-navigator had figured they would have even if the storm had never struck) the Dawn Falcon skimmed into port with Sully at the helm... and there he's been ever since.

Notes:

• It's not exactly easy to tell exactly how old Sully might be and he's never really said anything about his age, himself. Despite the white streaks in his hair, he doesn't usually appear to be more than somewhere in his mid-thirties, though... although, on occasion, especially when he's lost himself staring off into the sky, he can look much older.
  
  
• He'll often refer to people by nicknames he's given them as opposed to their 'given names'. He refers to Ardis as Captain Kid, for example... He certainly wouldn't call Elly "Shorty" any more than he would call Maggie "Ginormama", but he might come up with things like "Li'l Bit" or "Cog" if he decides "Engie" (which he likes a lot, mind you) wasn't fitting somehow.
  
  
• He's kind of hyper where thought and speech patterns are concerned (as exhibited in the "History" bit, above)... Prone to talking to himself as rapidly and randomly as he might when talking to others... uses his hands quite a bit when he talks.. etc... even when piloting the ship, he's constantly making minor adjustments to this control or that...

Elly (also answers to Engie)
Born and raised in the city, Elly was born into a life of luxury. Such a life did not suit her tastes, however. She loved to tinker with things. When she got a musical jewellery box as a little girl, she took it apart and put it back together as a hobby. She still has the box, in her room on the Dawn Falcon, consistently retuning it and changing the melody cylinders to play different songs on a whim. As a result, she ended up enrolled in a school for mechanics.

There were several incidents that occured over the course of her school life, yet, even as she was first deemed dangerous, it eventually became clear that for her explosive results now and then, she had real talent when she put her heart into what she built. However, one incident would change the course of her life. A transfer student came into her classroom, asked to work with her, and called her 'shorty'. Despite the attempt at an affectionate nickname, everyone in the room immediately knew something would happen.

Sure enough, halfway through the hands-on class, Elly blew the transfer student through the wall in her overeager state to show how talented she was, refinishing a furnace piece, as well as get him back for calling her short. As it happened, Ardis was passing by in the street. He wasn't hit but that would be how Ardis first encountered Elly. It wouldn't be long before she dropped out of school to join Ardis on the Dawn Falcon. She didn't even make any remark about how young he was to be captain; it was as though she didn't care how old he was. She just found him and the ship absolutely fascinating, having never even seen outside of the city.

Perhaps that makes her a runaway. As it stands, however, Elly couldn't be happier, being part of something much bigger than she was exposed to in her safe, comfortable life in the city. Plus, she got along well with the ship. She didn't complain at the occasional explosion, and Elly kept her running well.

Description: Elly is small. There is no denying that fact, as she stands at a full 5' flat. In addition, she absolutely hates being called short. Despite her small body, she is not completely slender, leaning a bit on the muscular side due to often carrying around spare parts and tools. She tends to wear overalls and gloves, partly because she's almost always working on something, and also to cover up the burn marks along her pale skin. Elly does have nicer attire from her life in the city, but prefers not to ruin her nice clothes by working in them. She always has her toolbelt with her, and very consistently will have the right tool for the job, due to the number that she carries. She wears simple glasses, mostly when working as she's farsighted. While she's wearing her glasses, her eyes are a bright blue, alert and keen. When she's not wearing her glasses, however, her eyes are a deep blue, more like reflecting pools in the way the irises look. She has black hair, haphazardly cut to a short length, uneven and almost messy looking, due to maintaining it herself. A salon worker, Elly is not. She never talks about her hair beyond the basic answers, or why she adamantly keeps it cut.

Elly always knows exactly where an explosion took place, and also has a strange talent for surviving them, on occasion being completely unharmed, particularly if the explosion was caused by her. If asked about it, she just shrugs and mentions offhandedly something about 'dodge charms'.

Sure life on the eternal desert was rough, but that’s the advantage of being human isn’t it? The ability to live if you don’t know any better. And who’s to say life in the city is better than life on the slums? That fact hasn’t been established to Keira yet. Life in the city may be richer, but is that better? Keira knew that when she was a girl she ran and laughed amongst the dunes, she’d never seen a city kid running or laughing. Though she might have if she’d ever seen a city kid.

Keira comes from a long line of sand ship crewers. Well in perspective it’s a long line, if she came from a line of whatever they do in the city it probably wouldn’t be such a long line, but her grandfather had worked on sand ships and her father worked on sand ships and now that she was 17 it was her turn. Her father had managed to work on one (The Sasndsprey) for a number of years and he’d learned it’s weapons. Knowledge he’d managed to pass on to Keira. Keira had many fond memories of visiting her father at his job in between runs and being shown his “babies.” Her father had shown her how to shoot, how to clean from a small pistol to as large cannon. “Survival” He’d always say “Will almost certainly come down to your equipment, if you take care of your goods then they will take care of you.” A mantra Keira certainly took to heart.

Name Keira Mantry
Occupation Weapon’s master Dawn Falcon
Age 19
Years aboard the Falcon: 1.5
Marital status: Happily single
Gender: female
Weapons: .45 long colt. .45 wrist gun (the .45 long colt was given to her by her father and the wrist gun she just recently fashioned out of material found on runs)
Hair color: Red
Eye color: Brown
Height: 5’5
Weight: 140 lbs
Build: Slim and muscular like a dancer’s
Clothes: Keira wears a brown cape, a pair of blue jeans, low cut v neck light brown shirt, a small brimmed hat, a pair of glasses with magnifying lens that can slide in and out of her vision. .45 wrist gun worn on the left hand.

In her own opinion, there ain’t much to say about Maggie Flynn. Born and raised in the slums, Maggie took to charity at a young age. Not getting charity, mind, giving it. Her husband, rest his soul, found it to be a bit mollycoddling, but that part’s soon forgotten once you find yourself on the wrong side of her tongue. Which may be quite often, depending on the nature of things.

After her husband passed, some ten years ago from the cough, Maggie decided to take on the task of helping sandship crews. By her estimation, ‘those harebrained, high in the sky, mad inventors and batty explorers never look after themselves while they work themselves into the sand’. The last sand ship she was on, The Golden Rise, finally went under after a long string of bad luck and unsuccessful ventures. The word is, when Maggie caught wind of The Dawn Falcon, and the unusually young man that captained her, she marched straight onto that ship and demanded a place aboard it. Whether or not it’s true has neither been confirmed (or denied) by her, but given her nature, it isn’t that much of a stretch.

Maggie always seems to be fussing over something, whether it’s the latest batch of gravy, or the state of Ardis’ clothes. There are rare moments when she finally shuts her yap, heads up to the main deck, and stares out of the windows of the sand ship to enjoy the beauty of the desert. More often than not, she’s busy in the galley, expertly wielding cleavers to dispatch the latest dead critter brought to her, or preparing to take a meal to whomever may have unwittingly skipped it.

Description: Maggie towers around six foot four, and has the vivacious curves and frame to match such a lofty height. Her long, dark brown tresses are usually piled on top of her head, affixed in place with whatever straight kitchen implement happened to be handy at the time. She looks to be somewhere in her thirties, and Maggie gives a look of mock horror and changes the subject if anyone asks her exact age. Her dark blue eyes have the amazing ability to steal away words at a mere glance, but light up and dance when she’s giving someone a dose of friendly grief. Freckles dot her face and arms, and Maggie’s nose crinkles and wiggles when she smiles.

Her attire consists of white button up blouses, high-waisted brown skirts that are slightly ruffled at the bottom, and an assortment of scarves that occasionally adorn her neck. Maggie’s kitchen apron is nothing to be sniffed at; it’s made of a heavy denim-like tan material, attached with crisscrossing straps that hook like overalls, adorned with a number of pockets, and extends nearly length of her skirts. She also carries a stout wooden spoon that is used for a variety of activities not related to cooking.