Calypso

Calypso

Name:	Calypso
Location:	Mercenary
Rank:	<none>
Guilds:	None
Step Name:

Biography

My name is Jezel Di Romanov. Or Balishnika of The Manor. Or Barba Corpus the Black. Or Squidgy-Plop Flim-Flam McGrrrrr. Or Victoria, depending on whom you ask. Or Calypso.

I was born to a family of nomadic gypsies who were quite poor, but very proud of their heritage. But on the frosty Yuletide evening that I was born, the people in our caravan became anxious with fear, for they saw that I was covered from head to toe in a fine fur.... They felt the touch of Beelzebub upon me, as did my own kin as well, and they cast me out into the wilderness in fear and disgust, to live amongst the wolves and the swamp weasels.

And live there I did; feral like Mowgli with a pack of wild canines; and it was there, surrounded by the acceptance of those savage dogs, that I lost the fur that had so far blighted my life. You see, I am an Anthromorph; a shape-shifter; and my talent manifests itself in response to sensations - like temperature and loud goth music - and also to stress. (I figured being born would be stressful enough, but on a January night too...?! - I really had no chance!)

Winter became Spring. Amongst these dogs, I lived as a Free Spirit, and they started to see me as one of their own - they accepted me for whatever I was. Here, in the Wilderness, I found true Inner Peace.

Naturally, once I shed my fur, my pack, seeing I was human, first converged on me, fangs a-blazing, and then had the good grace just to leave me to rot, half-dead and bleeding, out on the hillside.

Fortunately, I was spotted not long after by passing hikers who brought me back to civilization, where one of them adopted me as one of his own; and let me live with his fine family in a fantastic manor on the hillside, with a hundred bedrooms and butlers and maids and acres of land, such that the Master could cast his eye out across it from his balcony and know that all that he surveyed was his.

It was there that I was educated in the fine arts of the time - I learnt to walk and talk like a lady, and how to dress and behave like one; and skills like cooking and sewing, crochet and glass-blowing, and making little chocolates; and also which fork to use for eating jellied eels at a posh dinner.

Sadly, my time at the manor was to be short-lived, for it was nary sixteen brief months since my arrival when my Lord was sent down for masterminding a treasonous plot to introduce the mass retail of flush toilets to every householder in the land: This was quite unpopular with the powers-that-were, you see, on account of their fondness for that now long-forgotten game, once so favoured by society's upper crust, in which contestants did their best to re-affirm their position over the masses by literally taking position over the masses out the window in true Black Adder fashion. Not nice for the masses; even less nice, I'm afraid, for my Lord and his family - - He was sentenced to a fate worse than a fate worse than death; the family were made to eat brussel sprouts and asparagus and then banished from the land, and the servants were all mercilessly insulted and then tickled to death.

I escaped to the street, where I earned my living variously as a Thief, a Busker, a Mime, a Beggar, and a Speller of Toonerisms; until one day, pacing up and down the docks of a town that had lost all its wonder, weary of life and all of its vagrancies, I perchanced to happen upon The Rising, in all of its dark glory: What a magnificent, forbidding, fantastic ship it looked, gleaming in the moonlight like a dabloon in a wishing-well. 'The Rising': It was exactly what I needed at that point in my life. A Second Coming.

Without a moment's hesitation, I jumped on board the ship, careful not to let anyone see me. I had nothing to regret in leaving, and for me, a new lease on life was just the ticket.

I was discovered before long, of course; soon after the ship had set sail for the New World, intent on plundering, savaging, ravaging and looting whatever they might find there. Of course, I was terrified that all of the men on board would just want to rape me- I had never even been with a man before! - but lucky for me as soon as that fear fell upon me I was again covered in fur like a rabid ape, and so none of the scoundrels wanted to have anything to do with me.

Realizing that I was too skinny for eating, Captain Full Moon asked me if I could make myself useful some other way, at which point - feeling the alternatives were most probably to be sold as a slave or to be forced to walk the plank - I thought it best to reveal my talents as a cook, a seamstress, a crochet-weaver, a glass-blower and a chocolatiere*. Astounded though he was that a chimpanzee could do all these things (for, being fuzzy, that is what all of the men assumed I was), El Capitano offered me the opportunity to prove myself, which I did in earnest. I became part of the crew, and again, at last, I found acceptance.

I became the sail-maker on this ship, a true Rising for me, and I have found where I Belong.

• Pron. "sho-ko-lat-ee-air" (Just in case you weren't sure!)