Captain Fortuno 'Lucky' Maddwhisker

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Captain Fortuno Maddwhisker, known by his friends as Lucky, is a sailor operating out of Sunwake, primarily involved with transporting passengers to locations outside of normal shipping lanes.

No sailors are willing to sail on his ship, and they whisper that he has conversations with seagulls, names every barnacle on his ship’s hull, and somehow manages to survive storms that sink much larger vessels.

His real first name is Edmund, but he insists that the sea spirits renamed him “Fortuno” during a particularly vivid hallucination involving a dancing octopus and a mermaid choir. He’s been known to navigate by following what he claims are “star-fish constellations” living in his beard, yet somehow always arrives exactly where he needs to be.

Quirks

• He insists on sailing backwards out of every port because he claims “it’s rude to turn your back on a harbor that hosted you.” This somehow works out fine for him, despite the obvious challenges.
• He has a “weather bell” mounted on his ship that he refuses to ring. Instead, he makes “ding” sounds with his mouth whenever he passes it. According to him, “The real bell is only for emergencies, and if we ring it when there’s not an emergency, how will we know when there IS one?”
• He’s convinced that his ship (which he named “The Reliable Hallucination”) only floats because he’s successfully convinced the ocean that it’s actually a very large, oddly-shaped duck. He occasionally throws bread crumbs into his own wake to “keep up the illusion.”
• Every time he spots land, he has to spin around three times and bow to each cardinal direction, or else he claims the land might “sneak away” before he can dock.
• He maintains an extensive collection of what he calls “emergency barnacles” in glass jars. Nobody knows what makes a barnacle an emergency barnacle, and he’s never actually used one, but he insists they’re essential for seafaring.
• He only navigates by what he calls “the funny stars” - which turn out to be perfectly accurate readings, even though he’s looking at completely random parts of the sky and muttering calculations that make no mathematical sense.
• He keeps a “crew manifest” listing himself as Captain, First Mate, Second Mate, Cook, and Ship’s Cat. He signs in for each role with slightly different handwriting and gives himself performance reviews.