> [!infobox|wikipedia] > # Barak Stormrider > [![[Codex/Assets/Characters/Barak_Stormrider_small.webp|cover hsmall]]](Codex/Assets/Characters/Barak_Stormrider.webp) > ###### Basic Information > Attribute | Details | > ---|---| > Type | Character | > ###### Character Information > Attribute | Details | > ---|---| > Creature Type | Humanoid | > Species | Human | > Gender | Male | > Pronouns | He/Him | > Age | ~50s | > Languages | Common | > Place | [[Camaar]] | > Connections | [[The Mawbreakers]]<br>[[King Marius Noren\|Marius Noren]]<br>[[The Bloody Nails]] | > Profession | Sea Captain<br>Leader of the Mawbreakers | > ###### Status > Attribute | Details | > ---|---| > Status | Alive | **Barak Stormrider** is a sea captain and the leader of [[The Mawbreakers]], a rebel sailing company operating out of [[Camaar]]. He commands [[The Albatross]] through [[The Maw]] — the treacherous whirlpool guarding the [[Gulf of Miriel]] — and has spent years using that mastery to strangle [[The Valtorran Empire|the Empire]]'s supply lines. His son **Baran** was killed by an Imperial captain for defending his crew. Everything Barak has done since has been aimed, quietly and without apology, at making that matter. ## Description #### Appearance Barak is an enormous man — broad-shouldered and built solid, the size of someone who has spent a lifetime hauling rope and standing into the wind rather than growing it in a training yard. His hair and beard are deep red, the beard long and scraggly, braided in parts with cord and never touched by a razor. Weather and salt have done their work on his face: it is creased, roughened, and looks older than his years, but his eyes are sharp and steady — the eyes of a man who has been reading sea and sky for decades and trusts his own judgement over anyone else's. He wears practical clothes, nothing ceremonial. The one concession to identity is the Mawbreaker blue he dons for battle — most memorably the cloak he wore when he shouldered through a wall in [[Val Noren]] to pull [[The Bloody Nails]] out from under [[General Korvas]]'s sword. #### Personality Barak is a plain-spoken man with a deep interior. He commands without ceremony, listens more than he talks, and has no patience for sentiment or performance. When he gathered the party at his cabin table before the assault on [[Skyreach]] and asked each of them why they fight, he was not making conversation — he needed to know who he was sailing into battle beside. His own answer to that question is simple: the Empire took his son. It gave him no body, no word, no justice. He has been fighting that moment ever since — not out of grief alone, but out of a cold and purposeful conviction that the Empire's ability to do such things must be destroyed. He does not ask others to share his reasons. He only asks that they have some. He is loyal to the bone to those who prove themselves. [[The Bloody Nails]] earned that at [[Skyreach]] and he has repaid it without hesitation since. ## Biography #### Background Barak grew up on the water. He does not speak much about his early life, but by the time he found his way to [[Camaar]] and fell in with [[The Mawbreakers]], he was already the kind of sailor that others deferred to without being asked to. He rose to captain of [[The Albatross]] and, in time, to leader of the Mawbreakers entire. His wife died in childbirth, leaving him a son — **Baran** — who was the last living thing of hers in the world. Barak raised him at sea and loved him the way that quiet, capable men love: through presence, through teaching, through time. When Baran came of age, he earned his own ship and his own command. That was always the plan. The Empire requisitioned the ship. The Imperial captain abusing Baran's crew pushed Baran to intervene. The captain had him killed for it and dropped his body at sea. Barak never got to see him again. He heard later that the Imperial captain responsible had been overseeing the construction of [[Skyreach]]. The night the Mawbreakers marched on that bridge, he knew the address. ### [[The Bloody Nails|Campaign: The Bloody Nails]] #### [[Session 08 - The High Road]] [[Gemma Finegold|Gemma]] brought the party to the Mawbreakers' guildhall on the docks of [[Camaar]], where they met Barak and his lieutenant [[Ari]] for the first time. The package from [[Darmouth]] contained the [[Skyreach]] blueprints. Barak explained the strategic picture — destroy Skyreach, and the Empire must route supplies through The Maw, where the Mawbreakers hold total naval dominance — and requested two days for his engineer [[Gromdal]] to study the plans. In private, [[Ryo]] revealed his elven heritage to Barak, who noted quietly that he had not seen a native elf in nearly a century. #### [[Session 12 - How to Start a Rebellion]] Barak welcomed the party into his hidden basement war room and introduced [[Gromdal]], who had found three structural weak points in Skyreach. He laid out the operation: Mawbreakers assault the prison camp to draw Imperial attention while the party infiltrates and plants explosive charges at all three supports. #### [[Session 13 - Waves, Wings and Sails]] The fleet departed [[Camaar]] with [[The Albatross]] at its head. Barak steered the ship through The Maw at full speed, slingshotting through the whirlpool's edge. The voyage was marked by a harpy ambush in a fog bank, a violent storm, and the sighting of Imperial red sails on the horizon. #### [[Session 14 - The Devil's Wish]] The red-sailed vessel proved to be *The Devil's Wish*, captained by [[Yarna Coldfist]]. Barak attempted a parley, posing as merchant transport, but the ruse failed and he refused the order to surrender. The resulting sea battle was decisive. He led the funeral rites for eight Mawbreaker sailors lost in the engagement. #### [[Session 15 - Operation Skyreach]] The night before the assault, Barak gathered the party in his cabin and told them about Baran — the son he lost, the Empire's indifference, the captain responsible now overseeing the very bridge they were about to destroy. He asked each of them why they were fighting. He sent [[Ari]] back to guard the ships over her objections, then addressed his crew for what he knew might be the last time. #### [[Session 16 - The Fall of Skyreach]] The mission succeeded at great cost. At the extraction point, the party found Barak lying in a pool of blood, near death, cut down by a [[Hand of The Empire]]. They exhausted every resource to stabilise him. He was carried aboard [[The Albatross]] as [[Skyreach]] collapsed behind them. The Mawbreakers had lost thirty men. [[Ari]] presented the party with his reward chest. #### [[Session 36 - General Korvas]] Months later, with the party on the verge of execution in the streets of [[Val Noren]], a massive warrior in a blue cloak shoulder-charged through the wall — Barak, unrecognisable beneath stolen Imperial armour, leading rebel fighters into the breach. He stabilised the dying party members and pulled them to safety behind the barricades. #### [[Session 37 - March of the Dead]] The following day Barak escorted the party to the Keep of [[Val Noren]] for their audience with [[King Marius Noren]]. He remained present through the intelligence debrief and the strategy discussion that followed, watching the party with the careful attention of a man who has already decided they are worth believing in. #### [[Session 38 - A Trail of Blood]] Following the King's kidnapping, Barak regrouped at the Keep and stood alongside [[Captain Erendir Thalos]] as the truth emerged: the kidnappers had worn rebel armour, and witnesses identified the leader as [[General Korvas]] — the man the party had known as [[Vaeleran]]. He backed the decision to pursue immediately rather than wait. #### [[Session 41 - Reclaim the Reclaimer]] At the war council following the King's rescue, Barak proposed using [[The Albatross]] to cross the river — ruled out by the river gate's low clearance. When [[Berberis]] suggested a pontoon bridge, he saw the angle immediately. He and [[Ari]] were tasked with leading the Mawbreakers to commandeer the boats needed for the crossing. #### [[Session 42 - Liberation of Val Noren]] Barak arrived at the occupied garrison in full Imperial armour to move the Mawbreaker fleet through the city undetected. With the party securing the river gates and [[Kai]] laying down fog cover, he coordinated the rapid pontoon construction under fire. When the Loyalist army crossed and the battle turned, Barak was in it. [[Lirien]] tended his wounds at the garrison celebration that followed. #### [[Session 44 - The Elven Archmage]] As [[Val Noren]] recovered, the party prepared to sail south with the Mawbreakers to pursue [[General Korvas]]. Their departure was intercepted by [[Ayana Syndrosa|Ayana]], and the mission that followed took the party to the [[Faewild]] — well beyond the reach of any sea captain. Barak's planned voyage did not take place, but his fleet remained at anchor, ready. ## Trivia - The Imperial captain responsible for Baran's death was overseeing construction of [[Skyreach]] at the time of the Mawbreakers' assault. Whether he died in the battle or the collapse was never confirmed aloud. - Barak was carried off the field of [[Skyreach]] in critical condition — technically dead before he was brought back. - He is one of the few people [[Ryo]] trusted with the knowledge of his elven heritage before it became widely known.