Whether you volunteered or were pressed into service, at some point in the past you found yourself aboard a sailing ship. Turns out, you were pretty good at it, and it didn’t take you long to figure out how most everything aboard her worked. Maybe you worked your way up to command a ship of your own, or maybe you were just the old jack-tar that knew your vessel like the back of your hand. Either way, salt water runs in your veins, and you feel most at home on the open ocean.
You probably dress simply if you’re a sailor, or a bit more sharply if you’re the one in charge. Your hands are likely rough from years of hard work at the lines, and your skin has seen more than its fair share of sun and salt spray.
Vectors are most likely to have sea legs, but Spinners have the charm necessary to rise through the ranks of a 19th-century European navy, and Nanos could fulfill specialized roles (sailing master or ship’s surgeon). Note that, while women were not generally found among the crews of Napoleonic vessels, there are plenty of historical precedents for exception, from women who disguised themselves as men, to the openly female captains of earlier Age-of-Sail pirate ships.
Tier 1: Know the Ropes: You know a little bit about almost every function of a sailing ship. You are trained in sailing (points of sail, reading ships’ colours, etc.), climbing, and swimming. Enabler.
Tier 2: Well-Traveled: You’ve put in at plenty of ports around the world, and you know a man or two in every one of them. These contacts provide you with an asset to gathering information that comes through their ports of call. You and the GM should work out the details of these contacts. Enabler.
Tier 3: Sea Legs (2 Speed Points): Accounting for a moving deck has become second nature to you. Your next action suffers no penalties for being performed on an unstable platform (on the deck of a moving ship, from horseback, etc.). Enabler.
Tier 4: Tough as Old Leather: Your time at sea has accustomed you to hardship. You gain +1 to Armor and are trained in Might defense tasks. Enabler.
Tier 5: Heave Together: When members of a ship’s crew can’t work well together, bad things happen. When you help someone with a task, you always reduce the difficulty of the task by one step regardless of your own skill at that task. Enabler.
Tier 6: Poseidon’s Favorite Child: The Sea is fickle, and those who make their living by her come to know this. No plan is ever a sure thing, and luck counts as much as skill. At the beginning of every game session, the character gets one free experience point. This point can be spent at any time in the session for an Immediate Benefit (The Strange corebook, page 123). If not spent, it is lost at the end of the session. Enabler.