Name: Charles Harkins
Age: 25 [born winter 1771]
Occupation: Whatever he can find.
Appearance
Charlie's about 6' even, with dark brown hair that's just long enough to be pulled back into a messy paintbrush ponytail. His skin is paler than a strapping young man's should be, a bit sallow, generally touched with a five o'clock shadow.
His face is square-jawed and strong, masculine and strong, except for his mouth which is almost excessively full.
His eyes are a light enough brown that they wander toward gold, dark-ringed and, generally, unhappy, hidden behind a tangled mess of bangs and under heavy brows.
Once upon a time, his clothing was the best that his family could afford -- not much, not the elegant attire of the upper crust, but good working clothes in solid wool. He clings still to this coat from another era, a heavy grey-blue trimmed in yellow, designed to hold off the wind and spray from the deck of a ship...except now it's battered and old, like the rest of his clothing, torn and patched.
Personality
Charlie has been branded a coward, and not without good cause. It's not that he is afraid of danger, precisely, so much as it is the every day that cripples him. It's been three years since he came back home, and in that time he has barely spent any time outside: he is terrified of the great expanse of open sky above, of the distance between this building and the next, even. The fear builds up enough to choke him, frustrates him into anger, leaves him short-tempered and tense and chained up indoors.
It makes him volatile. Quiet, but volatile; easy to provoke, and willing to venture into violence, when the time comes. The truth is that he's not afraid of getting hurt. He's afraid of drowning. Even if there isn't any water, here.
Skills
Uneducated, the child of a washerwoman and a second-rate carpenter, Charlie's best chance at a good life was to join up with the navy, take advantage of his size and strength and make something of himself. With that gone, he has very little left. He could serve as a guard, if he could bring himself to door-to-door and find someplace new to work; he can fight, can hold ground, and isn't afraid of men save one. But coming and going would be a problem. This, coupled with the stigma against him, leaves him mostly mopping floors and cleaning up at a third-rate bar close to home and stifling away trapped inside.
History
At twenty-two, Charlie went to sea aboard a ship, finally leaving a life of errand boy-ing, lugging and carrying behind in favor of something more glamorous.
Six months later, sallow and sick and in disgrace, he came home.
He'd only been at sea for two months when the pirates attacked. Already he'd decided the water wasn't the best place for him, was coping with discomfort -- but a knife to the shoulder and a tumble overboard, a near-drowning experience, being hauled from the sea and pumped dry left him unable to cope. Recovery was slower than it should have been, Charlie feigning sick long after the wound had healed up, shirking duties. Several times he was punished for his failure to serve, before he was finally send home in disgrace, saved from jail only by symptoms judged as insanity.
Everyone he knew, and everyone nearby, knows Charlie's story of cowardice, his breakdown, and the result is that he no longer has any friends, nor even many acquaintances who want to be associated with him. It is a hard, unpleasant, closeted life.
