Lazuli Delacru
Ship: Airship Neo Dulcimer
Title: Captain
Age: 30
Race: Human
Homeworld: Avion
Hometown: Ardonia
Date of Birth: 7th Age, Year 1786, March 19
Personality
Lazuli is very hard to read overall, even to his own crew. He is incredibly reserved, something those who choose to face him find most unnerving. There have been many an occasion that a gun has greeted him face to barrel, always to be returned to its owner's hip using nothing but his glare.
Militaristic but very gentlemanly, quite often he refuses indulgence in smoke or drink, only on extremely rare occasions. Due to his reserved and observant nature, he comes across as cold though he deeply cares for his crew, people in general, and the greater good. Never test him, cross him, or intentionally get on his bad side. Few men have been foolish enough to do so. The quickest way to his gun's attention is through any form of negative directed at his crew or that of the Isabella .
He can vary from any spectrum of the utmost sternness to witty and lighthearted, most often favoring the former for his guardedness and military character. Most of all due in part to the secrets and knowledge he possesses. He holds respect and honor closely to his heart as a staple in what truly makes a man good.
Quick to react and calm in a fight, he may not possess any superhuman or supernatural perks, but he is not to be underestimated. There is a solution to every obstacle, no matter how great, something demonstrated occasionally by his single shot pistol he always wears at his side. It is said that he once brought down an airship with a well placed shot from that very sidearm. It's viewed by many as his trump card, able to do the impossible with a one try only no screw up squeeze of the trigger.
Constantly Lazuli dons any number of different forms of eyewear, all tinted. In the incident where he pulled his now first officer through a rift of time and space into his world, a flash of light from the rift burned his eyes in such a manner that they are now significantly more sensitive to light. Usually he can be seen wearing tinted spectacles, but at times when he is to show not even the slightest hint of emotion, his goggles are down.
Along with the sensitivity of his eyes, he bears a ragged scar that runs down the length of his left cheek also received in the incident.
Biography
Formerly aligned with the Order , ranked as a Great Hand in the Prestige Sect, he has since gone rogue. Now existing outside of their imposed laws, he has resorted to numerous acts of various crimes and piracy. Despite this, he remains very respectful and employs an elegance in much of his surroundings and belongings in their design. A gentlemanly rogue some have called him.
In his youngest of age, he took a fascination with the vast knowledge his father possessed of the world. Constantly he thirsted for his father's guiding hand, be it in learning of the countless cultures, technology, history, there was never enough to satiate him. Most of all was warfare. It fascinated him, all of its intricacies and the many underlying subjects that could be delved into. His father taught him survival, fighting techniques, weaponry, all that he felt his son was old enough to learn and be responsible with.
The Order was expanding faster than ever. It had been a dormant giant for ages, but it was there. Almost overnight it emerged as an ever present world superpower, a beast woken from its slumber. Initially they presented themselves as a constant expanse of relief and effort to bring modern establishment to third world provinces. It was under this guise that Lazuli eagerly enlisted, following in the footsteps of his father.
When Lazuli was 26, his father met his end, ranked in the Prestige Sect as a Great Hand- the highest position in their military structure, of which only a handful of men occupied and only surpassed by the Grand Air Marshall and Father himself. They told him he died in battle but no more, no less. As promptly as he had sailed through the ranks thus far, it was abrupt and unexpected when the Order extended an offer to fill in the blank left by his father whom he was informed had died in battle. It was only until a year had passed that he brought himself to accept the offer that had remained open since. Sharing the rank amongst so few men, their faces quickly became ingrained in his mind. Most notably of all was a man by the name of Faust Horcrust.
In his time of service he never questioned, only served. Roughly a year after his acceptance of the new position, the Order called for a select few of their finest to send through a gateway, one constructed in secrecy. It was a controlled rift through time and space. Judging by the behavior and reactions of the other men, most had already made a traversal through before and thus had prior knowledge of its existence. They were instructed that upon entry, they were to appropriate a specific target and recede back through the rift. The gate was delicate, comparable to the flame of a candle, any mistake could destroy the rift and the results would be catastrophic. They could only go so far through and only for so long before a rupture in the fabric of time and existence would be created. Seize and return before the closure of the gate- that was their order. Their target was a man, not unlike an inhabitant of Lazuli's own world. They apprehended him but upon returning through the gate, a rupture had begun.
They barely pulled the man through, though not without ensuing chaos. The retrieval team were violently ejected from the gate, the rupture refusing their intrusion, but the man was caught in between worlds, not fully in this one or his own. The structural integrity of the gate groaned as it began to fail, and before it could collapse, Lazuli pulled him completely through. It curled inward on itself and the rupture, refusing to cease its pull on the man from the other side, tore into him flooding its way through his right eye with a blinding flash of energy... There was an ensuing silence. They finally began to restrain the man, all of them but Lazuli who had fallen to the floor temporarily blinded and bleeding tremendously from the fresh gaping wound on his cheek.
He had seen something, rather, something was shown to him. No explanation could befit what he had seen in what was merely an instant. A lifetime of knowledge. Though he had not experienced any of it he knew it was his, and yet he couldn't help but feel it wasn't. Something had shown him things that would come to pass, things that were to transpire, and even more, the beyond. What it was that had just fed him this vast wealth of information was unknown, but he knew it could very well see everything and it utilized the incident with the rift to show him. Of these things was his father. Even to its own ranks the Order held a guise of its true self. They were a facade parading as good to societies still untouched by their reign. Some within the deceitful empire knew, others quickly began to learn. It was an inevitable ultimatum that many faced that determined whether they would live to serve or fall to any number of predetermined fates. His father was not killed in battle like they had told him he was.
They had tormented the man they had pulled through, testing on him, treating him like a lifeless piece of technology. They were preparing a new gate, one that far surpassed the one Lazuli had pulled the man from. He knew everything, every purpose and intent that they had for bringing the other world inhabitant to this plane of existence. In short, he was a key to opening a permanent gateway to the alternate world. A goal that once obtained, would end the man's life. Lazuli swore to bring an end to the deception. With the assistance of a contact he discovered to be an undercover cell leader to the Resistance, he helped the man escape and went rogue. To this day only he and Dr. Thaddeus Baptiste Vale , the man he helped escape, know this secret apart from the highest ranks of authority in the Order. Their goal to not only overtake this world, but the next.
Two years had passed, a time that allotted Delacru to procure a marvel of a ship through unconventional means. Siding heavily by the Resistance who favored him and his efforts greatly, he "acquired" and became Captain of the Isis- a massive airship that had just been given the green light for field testing. The ship's intended owners were livid, perhaps the most amongst them was the newly ranked Grand Air Marshall Faust. It was supposed to be his crowning gift to accompany the rank. An airship unlike any ever seen or constructed before, and now it was in the more than capable hands of their enemy, captained by a deserter. They wanted their ship, even more so they wanted Delacru and worst of all Vale, who was now his first officer. Faust laid command to the construction of a ship eater; if he couldn't have his ship, no one could.
Enter the Mad Dulcimer. A monstrosity constructed primarily by alchemy, designed to tear ships from the sky. A steam golem alchemically programmed to target one specific thing: Vale. The land kraken was unleashed, its twisted design crawling, lumbering rabidly across the landscapes and bodies of water zeroing in on Thaddeus' exact location. It greeted the Isis with its long metal tendrils, tearing it apart piece by piece from the stern forward. The crew couldn't even hinder its advancement as it snaked its mechanical tentacles through the hallways and rooms, utilizing magnetic fields to pull the walls ceilings and floors from their place and reversing the field to rip its own path to the command deck of the ship where Vale was. Lazuli refused to allow the Order to obtain their key, nor would he lose his friend.
They escaped the failing ship on one of the small cargo boats, but it wasn't over. Immediately the Mad Dulcimer disregarded what was now only half of the Isis, it's remains crashing to the earth as the ship eater turned its attention to the escaping cargo ship. It covered land faster than they could fly but Lazuli found what he hoped would be a weakness. Though it didn't have the advantage of speed in distance covered, the vessel was small enough to beat the kraken with it's maneuverability. Weaving their way to the source of the tendrils, they found an opening in the Dulcimer's hull and took it. The ship crashed through the inner mechanical workings of the kraken and came to a halt. Colossal machinery churned and amidst it all was the unmistakable core of the beast, the heart of the Dulcimer. The two climbed and dodged as the rampant golem began tearing into itself to get at them. Nearly too late, they reached the heart as one self terminating swoop of one of the tendrils ripped into it. Churning and groaning, they held on as it collapsed to the ground, a monstrosity falling to it's end.
It was an instant ship graveyard, strewn with ruins from the dismantled beast and the fallen war ship. Within the wreckage they happened upon the most unlikely of finds. Attica Valora, an alchemist who was purged from the Order by charge of assisting the Resistance. She was sentenced to death, chained to the front of the beast either to starve to death or be crushed in the onslaught the Mad Dulcimer was designed to wreak. She was barely alive, but she would live. Lazuli and Thaddeus took her and nursed her back to health with the added promise that she had a means of resurrecting the fallen Isis. It would be her revenge and their gain. Through alchemically binding the remains of the Mad Dulcimer and the Isis, a new ship was born. The dark tormented souls that made up the heart of the Dulcimer were once more contained in the reconstructed core, and much to Lazuli and Thad's surprise, the spirits of the crewmen from the former Isis returned to their posts to commence duty. The ghost ship was christened: Neo Dulcimer.
Once again taking the helm of captain, he has since acquired an unlikely new crew. Through their adventures the Neo Dulcimer came to the aid of an airship that was in distress, together pushing through the fight to the end. That airship is the Airship Isabella, a dimension jumper captained by Cedric Whittaker . There is now and forever will be a blood pact between the two airships, and one will never be seen without the other at it's side. Thanks to the secrets known only to himself and Vale, the Order continues to hunt them mercilessly to this day.
Attributes
Lazuli is human with no special abilities. The only abnormal attribute about him is the puzzle pieces of vast knowledge given to him by Altazar upon the transfer of Vale from 42 to Avion. He can't necessarily see into the future, but has a fractured foresight of things to come lending to the validity of his instincts (though they can also on occasion be misinterpreted and lead to bad outcome).
He has vast military background and can carry himself in a fight. It takes outnumbering, greater force (intelligence, weaponry, strength, or skill), or well executed element of surprise to win over him (or obviously a combination of the aforementioned). His combat skill is varied and adept, and his aim is above average (and excels the higher his adrenaline level gets but is adversely affected by extreme stress situations).
His weapons if not improvised, are quite general, reliable, and practical. In most situations this is a firm balance but that can work for or against him depending on the situation. He does occasionally equip a test item from Reardon such as the Gust rifle. Also from Reardon, in heavy combat situations he equips his Non-point Pouldron capable of generating reverse magnetic field over roughly half of his upper body to which he drops into a profile crouch in heavy fire. Almost always worn is his Tesla Bracer.
Goals
- Return Vale to his homeworld at all costs
- Downfall of the Order
- Unity of Resistance forces
- Come to terms with his fate
- Come to terms/full realization with the fate of his father
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© Airship Isabella 2012