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areadPlayer Information:
Name: Roy
Age: Over 18
Contact: PM to journal
Game Cast: Jim Kirk, Bruce Wayne.
Character Information:
Name: James Kidd/Mary Read. This character is female, presenting as male for a large portion of her life to do such things as join the military and be a pirate unquestioned. For the purpose of this app I'll be calling her a she, but in-game to avoid spoilers I'll use male pronouns to those 'not in the know' so to speak.
Canon: Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag.
Canon Point: Post-death.
Age: Never specifically stated. The estimate for birth-year is any time between 1680 and 1700, due to conflicting reports about her origins and potential mistakes regarding wars she was purported to have participated in as a British soldier. A biography written on the pirates of the era had some shaky information on her, but for the purpose of this app I'm going to say Kidd was born in 1691, putting her at 30 when she died.
Reference: @Asscreed Wikia.
Setting:
Abstergo Entertainment.
Abstergo is essentially a supercompany, a conglomerate that drives industry, advancements, R&D and entertainment. Ran by Templars – an order of individuals hell-bent on achieving their idea of 'freedom', which happens to include having devices that can spy instantly on anyone, anywhere, any time – it's a front for their subtler political machinations.
Abstergo, in roughly present-day Earth, has developed a technology called the Animus. The Animus is a device specifically intended to decode genetic memories locked into people's DNA, and they use it in an attempt to learn the secrets of the brotherhood that has opposed the Templars literally since time immemorial, the Assassins. They've done this by kidnapping Assassins with notable lineages (the primary kidnapee being Desmond Miles, the self-insert protag for the first five games) and trawling through their lineage looking for clues to use against the Assassin Brotherhood.
The branch of Abstergo that is the focus of Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag is presented as an entertainment industry juggernaut, producing games and merchandising based on the Assassin stories. Not because they have any desire to endear the Assassins to the public, mind, it's simply the most efficient way to cover their enormous operating costs and to delve more deeply into the Assassin lineage. Their first in-universe game, Assassin's Creed: Liberation was about a young woman in the mid-18th century, and their second is about Edward Kenway, a pirate who would eventually become an Assassin.
Assassins and Templars (and Those That Came Before).
'Those that Came Before', a race of advanced humanoids also known by the term 'Precursors'. They inhabited the Earth and were responsible for the creation of the human race, essentially creating them to be a domesticated workforce or in less polite vernacular, slaves. Eventually, a war broke out, and the Precursors were wiped more or less from existence, although they remained in human mythology as god-like figures we know today as Juno, Minerva, Jupiter, etc, which live on as a sort of 'ghost in the machine', their brains downloaded into ancient computers so that they may one day live again. But their literal extinction was not before interbreeding with humans, creating a sort of hybridized variant – or Adam and Eve, as we know them by biblical means. They were the ancestors of modern-day Assassins. The Precursors left relics scattered all about the world, such as the Apple of Eden (an ability used to control people's minds), Temples, cryptic riddles, etc. Think of them as the Deus Ex Machina of the Assassin's Creed world. Any plot device required? Guess what! The Precursors did it!
Black Flag focuses on a particular Precursor artifact known as the Observatory which, true to its name, is a place that uses blood samples to 'observe' through an individual's eyes. The plot of the game revolves around Edward looking for it because he thinks it's a thing of value and he is a man primarily driven by monetary gain. It's required that the Observatory be opened by the 'Blood of a Sage'. The Sage is a being tied to the Precursors (if you want to get specific, his name is Atia and he is constantly reincarnated as a human with past memories of Atia's life as Juno's husband intact) and the 'Sage' of this game is Bartholomew Roberts, another well-known pirate. Sages seem to serve little purpose save to open the Observatory and pack around the memories of one of the Precursors.
Assassins. No one is quite certain when they were formally established, only that it happened in 456 BCE. The Order has persevered from that time onward. Their credo is 'Nothing is True, Everything is Permitted'. There are various interpretations of this quote, but as it stands in Mary's opinion, 'But it does not command us to act or submit...only to be wise'. Assassins, as one might imagine, have a tendency to kill people, generally those that stand in the way of another's life or liberty.
Templars. The antithesis to the Assassins. They believe in a world order that stems from submission and subjugation, which they lampshade as being 'true' freedom. Most notably, they've been public figures throughout history, kings and popes and presidents. Templars have a wealth of resources to draw on, compared to the Assassins, which although formidable relies on the sense of brotherhood to predominantly foster allegiances.
Piracy.
The game is set during a six year span in Golden Age of Piracy in Nassau, a stretch of time that ran from the late 1600s to the 1730s. The game picks up in 1715 and Mary's part in it ends in 1721.
Nassau specifically is the capital of the 'Pirate Republic'. One of the biggest commercial cities in the Bahamas, it was founded by Edward Thatch, Ben Hornigold and James Kidd to be a safe haven for pirates and free thinkers. It was considered a democracy, but the ideal of the democracy wasn't the reality for Nassau, and by 1721 it's already a fading star.
Piracy, of course, follows all the historical adages thereof. The game version is a little bit cleaner than the reality (there are discussions within Abstergo about 'editing out the gory bits for public consumption) but it's probably safe to assume that it's meant to accurately reflect the legitimate lifestyle of the age, pillaging/rape/plunder all inclusive.
There are a handful of notable pirates in the game, some names that are very nearly household and others that skirt the lines of obscurity. Edward Kenway, of course, is a construct of the game itself and not a name you'd find tied to piracy in the 'real world' sense, but the game also has Edward Thatch (aka Blackbeard) as well as Benjamin Hornigold, Jack 'Calico' Rackam, and Charles Vane. It also features the two most famous female pirates of the age, and the only two ever convicted of piracy – Mary Read and Anne Bonny.
Mary straddles several different worlds in the context of the game. She is an Assassin and has been for several years, and carries enough clout in the Brotherhood to warrant her word being protection enough for Edward – given that the Assassins kind of want to kill him for betraying them, one can infer that she's fairly well-respected. She was also at one point a member of the British Royal Navy in her guise as a man, and then a privateer before settling on piracy under the alias James Kidd. She claims to be the illegitimate son of William Kidd, a notorious pirate in his own right, and uses that tenuous connection to build herself a network of allies and enemies both.
Her assassin mentor is called Ah Tabai, the leader of the Mayan Assassin branch in Tulum, where she lives when she's between contracts. Given that Ah Tabai became a mentor in 1713 and Mary was an Assassin by 1715, it's safe to assume that she was the first or at least one of the first students he took on around his initial step up to mentorship.
Personality:
Mary is not the pirate your mother warned you about, all things considered. She's cited as being ruthless, fearless, and renowned even with the expectation/assertion that 'James Kidd' is a man barely out of his teens. She commands respect and although she's never the captain of her own crew, it's implied that she's friendly with most everyone else and joins up with whoever she needs to in order to reach the next target on her Assassin's Bucket List. She's a brutal fighter, but whether it's due to her own innate nature or her training as an Assassin, she isn't cruel. Instead, she is utilitarian. Taking life where it's needed and preferring other less final ends when it's not. She's the first person in the game to introduce Edward to the idea of sleeping darts, after all.
She's driven and seems almost entirely self-motivated. To go from a girl being dressed as a boy by her mother to receive the inheritance of her (deceased) half-brother to a woman who gloried in the relative freedom of being perceived as a man, she joined the Navy, fought in several wars (most notably the Spanish War of Succession) and generally spent her time being ambitious and devil-may-care. Mary was married to a Flemish soldier and comrade in arms, but he was killed shortly thereafter and she turned to Privateering rather than transition to relative peace-time. However, when her ship was taken by Pirates she had something of a conundrum presented to her, of the 'join us or die' variety. And this is the story of how James Kidd, at least, became a pirate.
There are some anger issues hinted at throughout the game – she gets intensely frustrated when Edward thwarts her taking down a target, and it's possible that anger was a driving force in her life prior to her induction into the Assassin Ranks. Though she does affect a calm and laid-back nature, it seems learned rather than natural, and once in a while she reverts to type.
Nearly everything about her is a way of presenting herself to the world such that her identity – as a woman and as an Assassin – remains intact. She has a great deal of self-control and a sharp, cutting wit that she uses as a sort of armour. She takes threats in stride – and due to her training is never particularly bothered by them – and she is quick-thinking, with a definite strategic bent to mind. It's she who, throughout the course of the game, manipulates Edward from Point A to Point B along his character arc, seeing the greatness in him that he was choosing to ignore or overlook in favour of coin enough to make his mark on the world.
She tends to be closed-off to people, never telling them more than they need to know, but she's not averse to revealing her secrets should the need arise, and she isn't the sort to defend her personal secrets to the grave. Those of the Assassin Order? Definitely. She is a loyal member of the Brotherhood, and believes in its Creed with damn near every fibre of her being. But she reveals her gender to Edward over the simple manner of believing a woman better able to distract guards, and also to Anne Bonny in an off-screen incident (historically believed to be because Anne went 'Hey boy you're super fine let's bone' and Mary going 'Actually...)
Mary describes her Mentor as 'having a sort of wisdom about him', and it's clear that she seeks to emulate that as much as she's able. She cultivates the same sort of calm and almost aloof intelligence – she doesn't so much as hold her knowledge out of the grasp of others as ready it for them when they're prepared to hear or learn it. She's very deliberate in this regard, never giving people more than they can handle. It's a reasonable inference, then, that she's a good judge of character, and is likewise decent at reading people and adapting to their circumstance. This likely ties back into a lifetime spent cross-dressing – although Mary makes a convincing enough man, she would have had to get herself out of numerous situations in which her gender would have been revealed, which takes a specific type of social finesse and the ability to read a situation and react accordingly.
Mary is also a considerably protective person. She stands up for Edward when the Assassins want him dead (and rightfully so, he betrayed them and resulted in many members of the Brotherhood being slain) and strives to uphold the ideals of the Creed, which means looking out for those that can't look out for themselves. Protecting the innocent and punishing the guilty fall into this category as well, and Mary has a strong, moralistic sense of right and wrong. Oppressing people in any way is a big 'No' button for her – slave owners, corrupt politicians, etc – and it's evidenced by the fact that one of the tenets of Nassau – of which she is one of its triumvirate of founders - is a democratic sort of freedom. She believes in and will uphold the ideals of life and liberty at any personal cost, and is ready to lay down her life for her convictions.
She's faced with her own on-screen death towards the end of the game, having been arrested and tried for piracy while pregnant, a practice known as 'pleading the belly'. Under law, pregnant women were not allowed to be executed. Captured alongside Anne Bonny, who was likewise 'up the duff' (as she so eloquently put it), they received a stay of execution until they could deliver.
Mary survived long enough to have her child, but the poor conditions in the prison and the lack of pre and post natal care saw her stricken with a fever and on the brink of death by the time Edward and Ah Tabai come to rescue she and Anne both. Mary seems to accept the inevitability of her death, pleading with Edward several times to leave her behind. It's with this happenstance in mind that she'll enter the game, and it'll affect how she inter and re-acts to Tu Shanshu.
In many ways she'll be intrigued, a little confused, but generally accepting. She'll want to seek out allies and start creating a network that can serve her in the Assassin's business, which she will doubtless want to take up (she may even think the Templars are behind Keeliai itself). She's going to continue posing as James Kidd, and may even employ other identities as well in an attempt to uncover the machinations of the Emperor/Keeliai/Tu Vishan/etc. As a baseline human, she won't be of any especial help in the fight against Malicant, but she will absolutely be willing and able to track down information and assist in organizing any assaults that become necessary. She'll probably be a little unsettled about being alive after she knows damn well she dies, but she's laid-back enough to take things as they come.
Appearance: Mary is a tall, androgynous woman with black hair and dark brown eyes. She's got her fair share of scars, the most notable of which is across her right cheekbone. She dresses in very gender-neutral clothing and wears her hair in a bandana. In Keeliai she'll scramble to find some approximation of her pirate clothes, since... she'll be arriving in rags, essentially.
Abilities: As an Assassin, Mary is well-trained and versed in numerous types of weapons, from the hidden blades that are inherent to their order, to blowdarts and pipes, to swords and knives and flintlock pistols. Historically she is described as being a very capable fighter, to the point that even after her gender was discovered no man among the crews she sailed with was willing to refute her claim to sail with them.
Mary also has a form of 'Eagle Vision', which she says anyone can learn although the abilities thereof are primarily used as Assassins. She describes this vision as a 'sense' of things. It's never explicitly stated she has it, but given that she's the one that identifies it in Edward and explains to him how to use it, how to 'look past shadow and sound, deep into matter'. She also says that it's an ability innate or latent in everyone and that they need to only know how to use it, further hinting that she possesses it. Though it's likely her ability isn't as strong or concentrated as Edward's, she can likely still 'sense' the difference between allies and enemies, which will of course be only used with player permission.
She's also a fine sailor, and owing to her years both in the Navy and as a Pirate she is likely well versed in every type of nautical lore, from the tying of ropes and netting to navigation to simple shipboard repairs.
Inventory: Given that she was in prison at the time of her death, she'll basically have the vaguely dirty borderline-rags she was in at the time, and nothing else.
Suite: I'm going to say Wood. Kidd has habits and traits native to all the Sectors, but Wood, with the treehouse-y type hominess to it would appeal to her given the fact that she's basically spent nearly two decades on the deck of a ship. Just one floor, please! She's used to living in cramped quarters.
In-Character Samples:
Third Person:
It's a right proper place, this is. All fancy, glitz and glamour the likes of which he ain't seen even in London or the Royal Navy. Like to be something more in line with them that left those relics scattered about the world, like the Pieces of Eden. Like the Observatory. Even the Sage.
Kidd purses his lips. Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.
The beginnings of a wisdom, but not the end. A creed. Something to follow, even here. After a moment, he shifts, feels the weight and the press of the hidden blade against his arm, and drags his fingers through the heatless fire that near define this Sector. Nothing is true, aye? Well ain't it a funny thing, being here and all, after everything. Were some religions said that death was only the beginning to greater things, but for all his training at Ah Tabai's hand, he never really put much stock in the afterlife.
Are you alive if you perceive yourself bein' so, or is it less than that? More? Either way, he won't question it out of kind. He's here, conscious, breathin', which is more than he can say for a lot of people back home. They say this place is a realm between worlds, between Life and Death and the Dreaming mind. It could be any of those, it could be none. Kidd never has been one for blind trust, and like he won't start here, amongst those he's no reason to call friend. So for now, he'll be cautious. Play the pirate on this grand stage. Always was a part of his life in one way or another. It's been a better cover for his line of work than not.
Absently, he sits down on the edge of a fountain, pops the cork on a bottle he'd traded for earlier, and takes a pull. Then he points to an individual walking past. "Oy, mate. Spare a moment, will you?"
Network:
[Well this sure is a video post. It opens on Kidd, who's looking rather casually bored, dressed up in all the stolen finery one might expect of a pirate. His accent is British, from somewhere nearer to the South, and his tone unconcerned.]
I've heard tell this turtle of ours stops off at locations along the course of its journey. And these shores— would anyone say they at all resemble the Caribbean? Nassau, perhaps?
[He assumes otherwise, but it never hurts to ferret out little bits of information. If nothing else, mention of Nassau might weed out any who know the region and what it stands for. Stood for. He cocks his head to one side, there's maybe a hint of something predatory to his expression.]
I find it curious, aye, to be plain, that we can be so long at sea without fear of outside attack. Pirates, and the like. This place is grand enough, but hardly impregnable. Has anyone considered proper fortifications for it t'all? A blockade, perhaps, or cannons? Or something a sight more modern, I understand there's all manner of things not common to my era.
Thanks be to you, listeners.
[A casual salute, and cut feed.]
Name: Roy
Age: Over 18
Contact: PM to journal
Game Cast: Jim Kirk, Bruce Wayne.
Character Information:
Name: James Kidd/Mary Read. This character is female, presenting as male for a large portion of her life to do such things as join the military and be a pirate unquestioned. For the purpose of this app I'll be calling her a she, but in-game to avoid spoilers I'll use male pronouns to those 'not in the know' so to speak.
Canon: Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag.
Canon Point: Post-death.
Age: Never specifically stated. The estimate for birth-year is any time between 1680 and 1700, due to conflicting reports about her origins and potential mistakes regarding wars she was purported to have participated in as a British soldier. A biography written on the pirates of the era had some shaky information on her, but for the purpose of this app I'm going to say Kidd was born in 1691, putting her at 30 when she died.
Reference: @Asscreed Wikia.
Setting:
Abstergo Entertainment.
Abstergo is essentially a supercompany, a conglomerate that drives industry, advancements, R&D and entertainment. Ran by Templars – an order of individuals hell-bent on achieving their idea of 'freedom', which happens to include having devices that can spy instantly on anyone, anywhere, any time – it's a front for their subtler political machinations.
Abstergo, in roughly present-day Earth, has developed a technology called the Animus. The Animus is a device specifically intended to decode genetic memories locked into people's DNA, and they use it in an attempt to learn the secrets of the brotherhood that has opposed the Templars literally since time immemorial, the Assassins. They've done this by kidnapping Assassins with notable lineages (the primary kidnapee being Desmond Miles, the self-insert protag for the first five games) and trawling through their lineage looking for clues to use against the Assassin Brotherhood.
The branch of Abstergo that is the focus of Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag is presented as an entertainment industry juggernaut, producing games and merchandising based on the Assassin stories. Not because they have any desire to endear the Assassins to the public, mind, it's simply the most efficient way to cover their enormous operating costs and to delve more deeply into the Assassin lineage. Their first in-universe game, Assassin's Creed: Liberation was about a young woman in the mid-18th century, and their second is about Edward Kenway, a pirate who would eventually become an Assassin.
Assassins and Templars (and Those That Came Before).
'Those that Came Before', a race of advanced humanoids also known by the term 'Precursors'. They inhabited the Earth and were responsible for the creation of the human race, essentially creating them to be a domesticated workforce or in less polite vernacular, slaves. Eventually, a war broke out, and the Precursors were wiped more or less from existence, although they remained in human mythology as god-like figures we know today as Juno, Minerva, Jupiter, etc, which live on as a sort of 'ghost in the machine', their brains downloaded into ancient computers so that they may one day live again. But their literal extinction was not before interbreeding with humans, creating a sort of hybridized variant – or Adam and Eve, as we know them by biblical means. They were the ancestors of modern-day Assassins. The Precursors left relics scattered all about the world, such as the Apple of Eden (an ability used to control people's minds), Temples, cryptic riddles, etc. Think of them as the Deus Ex Machina of the Assassin's Creed world. Any plot device required? Guess what! The Precursors did it!
Black Flag focuses on a particular Precursor artifact known as the Observatory which, true to its name, is a place that uses blood samples to 'observe' through an individual's eyes. The plot of the game revolves around Edward looking for it because he thinks it's a thing of value and he is a man primarily driven by monetary gain. It's required that the Observatory be opened by the 'Blood of a Sage'. The Sage is a being tied to the Precursors (if you want to get specific, his name is Atia and he is constantly reincarnated as a human with past memories of Atia's life as Juno's husband intact) and the 'Sage' of this game is Bartholomew Roberts, another well-known pirate. Sages seem to serve little purpose save to open the Observatory and pack around the memories of one of the Precursors.
Assassins. No one is quite certain when they were formally established, only that it happened in 456 BCE. The Order has persevered from that time onward. Their credo is 'Nothing is True, Everything is Permitted'. There are various interpretations of this quote, but as it stands in Mary's opinion, 'But it does not command us to act or submit...only to be wise'. Assassins, as one might imagine, have a tendency to kill people, generally those that stand in the way of another's life or liberty.
Templars. The antithesis to the Assassins. They believe in a world order that stems from submission and subjugation, which they lampshade as being 'true' freedom. Most notably, they've been public figures throughout history, kings and popes and presidents. Templars have a wealth of resources to draw on, compared to the Assassins, which although formidable relies on the sense of brotherhood to predominantly foster allegiances.
Piracy.
The game is set during a six year span in Golden Age of Piracy in Nassau, a stretch of time that ran from the late 1600s to the 1730s. The game picks up in 1715 and Mary's part in it ends in 1721.
Nassau specifically is the capital of the 'Pirate Republic'. One of the biggest commercial cities in the Bahamas, it was founded by Edward Thatch, Ben Hornigold and James Kidd to be a safe haven for pirates and free thinkers. It was considered a democracy, but the ideal of the democracy wasn't the reality for Nassau, and by 1721 it's already a fading star.
Piracy, of course, follows all the historical adages thereof. The game version is a little bit cleaner than the reality (there are discussions within Abstergo about 'editing out the gory bits for public consumption) but it's probably safe to assume that it's meant to accurately reflect the legitimate lifestyle of the age, pillaging/rape/plunder all inclusive.
There are a handful of notable pirates in the game, some names that are very nearly household and others that skirt the lines of obscurity. Edward Kenway, of course, is a construct of the game itself and not a name you'd find tied to piracy in the 'real world' sense, but the game also has Edward Thatch (aka Blackbeard) as well as Benjamin Hornigold, Jack 'Calico' Rackam, and Charles Vane. It also features the two most famous female pirates of the age, and the only two ever convicted of piracy – Mary Read and Anne Bonny.
Mary straddles several different worlds in the context of the game. She is an Assassin and has been for several years, and carries enough clout in the Brotherhood to warrant her word being protection enough for Edward – given that the Assassins kind of want to kill him for betraying them, one can infer that she's fairly well-respected. She was also at one point a member of the British Royal Navy in her guise as a man, and then a privateer before settling on piracy under the alias James Kidd. She claims to be the illegitimate son of William Kidd, a notorious pirate in his own right, and uses that tenuous connection to build herself a network of allies and enemies both.
Her assassin mentor is called Ah Tabai, the leader of the Mayan Assassin branch in Tulum, where she lives when she's between contracts. Given that Ah Tabai became a mentor in 1713 and Mary was an Assassin by 1715, it's safe to assume that she was the first or at least one of the first students he took on around his initial step up to mentorship.
Personality:
Mary is not the pirate your mother warned you about, all things considered. She's cited as being ruthless, fearless, and renowned even with the expectation/assertion that 'James Kidd' is a man barely out of his teens. She commands respect and although she's never the captain of her own crew, it's implied that she's friendly with most everyone else and joins up with whoever she needs to in order to reach the next target on her Assassin's Bucket List. She's a brutal fighter, but whether it's due to her own innate nature or her training as an Assassin, she isn't cruel. Instead, she is utilitarian. Taking life where it's needed and preferring other less final ends when it's not. She's the first person in the game to introduce Edward to the idea of sleeping darts, after all.
She's driven and seems almost entirely self-motivated. To go from a girl being dressed as a boy by her mother to receive the inheritance of her (deceased) half-brother to a woman who gloried in the relative freedom of being perceived as a man, she joined the Navy, fought in several wars (most notably the Spanish War of Succession) and generally spent her time being ambitious and devil-may-care. Mary was married to a Flemish soldier and comrade in arms, but he was killed shortly thereafter and she turned to Privateering rather than transition to relative peace-time. However, when her ship was taken by Pirates she had something of a conundrum presented to her, of the 'join us or die' variety. And this is the story of how James Kidd, at least, became a pirate.
There are some anger issues hinted at throughout the game – she gets intensely frustrated when Edward thwarts her taking down a target, and it's possible that anger was a driving force in her life prior to her induction into the Assassin Ranks. Though she does affect a calm and laid-back nature, it seems learned rather than natural, and once in a while she reverts to type.
Nearly everything about her is a way of presenting herself to the world such that her identity – as a woman and as an Assassin – remains intact. She has a great deal of self-control and a sharp, cutting wit that she uses as a sort of armour. She takes threats in stride – and due to her training is never particularly bothered by them – and she is quick-thinking, with a definite strategic bent to mind. It's she who, throughout the course of the game, manipulates Edward from Point A to Point B along his character arc, seeing the greatness in him that he was choosing to ignore or overlook in favour of coin enough to make his mark on the world.
She tends to be closed-off to people, never telling them more than they need to know, but she's not averse to revealing her secrets should the need arise, and she isn't the sort to defend her personal secrets to the grave. Those of the Assassin Order? Definitely. She is a loyal member of the Brotherhood, and believes in its Creed with damn near every fibre of her being. But she reveals her gender to Edward over the simple manner of believing a woman better able to distract guards, and also to Anne Bonny in an off-screen incident (historically believed to be because Anne went 'Hey boy you're super fine let's bone' and Mary going 'Actually...)
Mary describes her Mentor as 'having a sort of wisdom about him', and it's clear that she seeks to emulate that as much as she's able. She cultivates the same sort of calm and almost aloof intelligence – she doesn't so much as hold her knowledge out of the grasp of others as ready it for them when they're prepared to hear or learn it. She's very deliberate in this regard, never giving people more than they can handle. It's a reasonable inference, then, that she's a good judge of character, and is likewise decent at reading people and adapting to their circumstance. This likely ties back into a lifetime spent cross-dressing – although Mary makes a convincing enough man, she would have had to get herself out of numerous situations in which her gender would have been revealed, which takes a specific type of social finesse and the ability to read a situation and react accordingly.
Mary is also a considerably protective person. She stands up for Edward when the Assassins want him dead (and rightfully so, he betrayed them and resulted in many members of the Brotherhood being slain) and strives to uphold the ideals of the Creed, which means looking out for those that can't look out for themselves. Protecting the innocent and punishing the guilty fall into this category as well, and Mary has a strong, moralistic sense of right and wrong. Oppressing people in any way is a big 'No' button for her – slave owners, corrupt politicians, etc – and it's evidenced by the fact that one of the tenets of Nassau – of which she is one of its triumvirate of founders - is a democratic sort of freedom. She believes in and will uphold the ideals of life and liberty at any personal cost, and is ready to lay down her life for her convictions.
She's faced with her own on-screen death towards the end of the game, having been arrested and tried for piracy while pregnant, a practice known as 'pleading the belly'. Under law, pregnant women were not allowed to be executed. Captured alongside Anne Bonny, who was likewise 'up the duff' (as she so eloquently put it), they received a stay of execution until they could deliver.
Mary survived long enough to have her child, but the poor conditions in the prison and the lack of pre and post natal care saw her stricken with a fever and on the brink of death by the time Edward and Ah Tabai come to rescue she and Anne both. Mary seems to accept the inevitability of her death, pleading with Edward several times to leave her behind. It's with this happenstance in mind that she'll enter the game, and it'll affect how she inter and re-acts to Tu Shanshu.
In many ways she'll be intrigued, a little confused, but generally accepting. She'll want to seek out allies and start creating a network that can serve her in the Assassin's business, which she will doubtless want to take up (she may even think the Templars are behind Keeliai itself). She's going to continue posing as James Kidd, and may even employ other identities as well in an attempt to uncover the machinations of the Emperor/Keeliai/Tu Vishan/etc. As a baseline human, she won't be of any especial help in the fight against Malicant, but she will absolutely be willing and able to track down information and assist in organizing any assaults that become necessary. She'll probably be a little unsettled about being alive after she knows damn well she dies, but she's laid-back enough to take things as they come.
Appearance: Mary is a tall, androgynous woman with black hair and dark brown eyes. She's got her fair share of scars, the most notable of which is across her right cheekbone. She dresses in very gender-neutral clothing and wears her hair in a bandana. In Keeliai she'll scramble to find some approximation of her pirate clothes, since... she'll be arriving in rags, essentially.
Abilities: As an Assassin, Mary is well-trained and versed in numerous types of weapons, from the hidden blades that are inherent to their order, to blowdarts and pipes, to swords and knives and flintlock pistols. Historically she is described as being a very capable fighter, to the point that even after her gender was discovered no man among the crews she sailed with was willing to refute her claim to sail with them.
Mary also has a form of 'Eagle Vision', which she says anyone can learn although the abilities thereof are primarily used as Assassins. She describes this vision as a 'sense' of things. It's never explicitly stated she has it, but given that she's the one that identifies it in Edward and explains to him how to use it, how to 'look past shadow and sound, deep into matter'. She also says that it's an ability innate or latent in everyone and that they need to only know how to use it, further hinting that she possesses it. Though it's likely her ability isn't as strong or concentrated as Edward's, she can likely still 'sense' the difference between allies and enemies, which will of course be only used with player permission.
She's also a fine sailor, and owing to her years both in the Navy and as a Pirate she is likely well versed in every type of nautical lore, from the tying of ropes and netting to navigation to simple shipboard repairs.
Inventory: Given that she was in prison at the time of her death, she'll basically have the vaguely dirty borderline-rags she was in at the time, and nothing else.
Suite: I'm going to say Wood. Kidd has habits and traits native to all the Sectors, but Wood, with the treehouse-y type hominess to it would appeal to her given the fact that she's basically spent nearly two decades on the deck of a ship. Just one floor, please! She's used to living in cramped quarters.
In-Character Samples:
Third Person:
It's a right proper place, this is. All fancy, glitz and glamour the likes of which he ain't seen even in London or the Royal Navy. Like to be something more in line with them that left those relics scattered about the world, like the Pieces of Eden. Like the Observatory. Even the Sage.
Kidd purses his lips. Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.
The beginnings of a wisdom, but not the end. A creed. Something to follow, even here. After a moment, he shifts, feels the weight and the press of the hidden blade against his arm, and drags his fingers through the heatless fire that near define this Sector. Nothing is true, aye? Well ain't it a funny thing, being here and all, after everything. Were some religions said that death was only the beginning to greater things, but for all his training at Ah Tabai's hand, he never really put much stock in the afterlife.
Are you alive if you perceive yourself bein' so, or is it less than that? More? Either way, he won't question it out of kind. He's here, conscious, breathin', which is more than he can say for a lot of people back home. They say this place is a realm between worlds, between Life and Death and the Dreaming mind. It could be any of those, it could be none. Kidd never has been one for blind trust, and like he won't start here, amongst those he's no reason to call friend. So for now, he'll be cautious. Play the pirate on this grand stage. Always was a part of his life in one way or another. It's been a better cover for his line of work than not.
Absently, he sits down on the edge of a fountain, pops the cork on a bottle he'd traded for earlier, and takes a pull. Then he points to an individual walking past. "Oy, mate. Spare a moment, will you?"
Network:
[Well this sure is a video post. It opens on Kidd, who's looking rather casually bored, dressed up in all the stolen finery one might expect of a pirate. His accent is British, from somewhere nearer to the South, and his tone unconcerned.]
I've heard tell this turtle of ours stops off at locations along the course of its journey. And these shores— would anyone say they at all resemble the Caribbean? Nassau, perhaps?
[He assumes otherwise, but it never hurts to ferret out little bits of information. If nothing else, mention of Nassau might weed out any who know the region and what it stands for. Stood for. He cocks his head to one side, there's maybe a hint of something predatory to his expression.]
I find it curious, aye, to be plain, that we can be so long at sea without fear of outside attack. Pirates, and the like. This place is grand enough, but hardly impregnable. Has anyone considered proper fortifications for it t'all? A blockade, perhaps, or cannons? Or something a sight more modern, I understand there's all manner of things not common to my era.
Thanks be to you, listeners.
[A casual salute, and cut feed.]
