"Mad" Rooney and the Rumbraves

Force Name: The Rumbraves
Force Leader: Admiral “Mad” Rooney (Hauer, though she has not answered to it in years)
Force Location: The North Seas
Force Description: Naval Privateers

Summary: The Rumbraves are a naval force for hire who normally operate along the north and east coasts of Trevast. They have a reputation both of being effective contract workers and borderline pirates, for better or worse. Most who have worked with them are happy customers who requested difficult, often nasty handiwork in order for contracts to be filled. Some, however, have made the unfortunate mistake of denying reward money and have not lived to tell the conclusion of such a blunder. All in all, the Rumbraves are not shy of taking most tasks, and will do almost anything if it means the crew won’t have to eat fish for another week.

Modifiers:

“The Mad Mutineer”: -1 Loyalty
“Shipwright’s Daughter”: +1 Logistics, +1 Navy

Point Allocation:

Army: 1
Logistics: 2 (+1) = 3
Loyalty:4 (-1) = 3
Navy: 4 (+1) = 5


One who has never seen the Rumbraves before would be quick to call them pirates. Though they often sail under a sun-bleached cloth of white, their demeanor suggests a surly, fortune-seeking force of seamen who would act upon the slightest advantage if given the chance. In reality, most are simply men and women who don’t make enough to afford the finer things in life, and who must often seek their pleasure and entertainment in port-side taverns and whorehouses.

They treat each other with a mutual respect, and know that they are among equals no matter what. Their Captain, “Mad” Rooney, creates an atmosphere of fairness to encourage the loyalty of her privateers. This manifests when a contract is paid, when foreign ports are raided in times of survival, and when additional spoils are received. Due to this, most of the privateers are content to remain in service to the Rumbraves, and there is only occasional dissent. Most of the crew are from all over Trevast, though a few hail from the western Kingdom of the White Skull. Many stories are shared between them because of this melding of cultures, and the variety of nationalities helps keep the force able to more easily adapt to different situations.


Rooney Hauer was born in Rjillund on the coast near the Luskan border. She was named “Rooney” for her reddish-brown hair and grew up to be a comely young woman. As the daughter of a profitable shipwright it didn't take long for someone to seek her hand in marriage, and she finally met that someone during her nineteenth summer. Rooney’s husband was a man who worked for her father for a long time, and who climbed his way up the ranks to be one of her father’s most trusted shipwrights.

Their marriage was a happy one for nearly five years. They had two children between them, who grew up in the same town as their parents and proved to be quite a handful. On a fateful spring day, however, everything in Rooney’s life would change. Her village, notable for its exports and her father’s ships business, became the target of a violent pirate raid. Unfortunately for Rooney, the pirates were desperate enough to lower the red flags. They gave no quarter.

Rooney saw her husband slain by the pirate captain, and lost sight of her children as she was dragged onto the largest of the ships. Rooney found out quickly that the captain had seen her as a trophy of sorts, and had immediately singled her out as the one person his men were not allowed to slay. His name has since been stricken from history, or at least to those with tongues to speak it and memories of him, but he was a brutal man who kept her as a slave on his ship for nearly two years.

During this time, the Rjillish woman suffered much on the pirate captain’s account. He used her in every way that the mind could imagine, though to her credit, she was never broken. The pirate crew were often quiet around her, and it was evident that even they saw their captain’s actions as bordering the edge of what they thought was acceptable treatment of a captive. After planning, sneaking, and waiting for the right moment, Rooney finally reached a breaking point after her twenty-sixth name-day.

On the very evening of the second year since she’d been captured, Rooney was pulled out onto the deck in order for her captor to have his way with her in what he called their “anniversary”. As the crew was gathered and the captain took ahold of her, Rooney thrust a shiv into the man’s sternum. Caught off guard and shocked at the woman’s speed, the captain gasped and tried to cover the wound with his hands. He lost his balance and fell onto the deck, and to his horror, the man’s crew stood motionless as Rooney fell upon him and ended his life.

In a show of rage, the woman stood from the captain’s corpse and named herself as the new master of the fleet, and proclaimed that if any argued her claim, they could speak with the captain at the bottom of the sea. Though they’d served their captain for a number of years, his treatment of Rooney and his decay into insanity had drove a wedge between him and the crew. It was only natural that they were hesitant of the woman’s own level of sanity, but the crew were “motivated” by what they had seen, and lowered to one knee in fealty to the woman they would then call “Mad” Rooney.

Over the next few years, Admiral Rooney turned the fleet away from their raiding nature and into a privateer force. This resulted in many of the former crew being abandoned at port, slain, or left at sea. Some remained, however, including a rather large man who would become Rooney’s First Mate and act as her personal bodyguard. The fleet became known as Rooney’s Rumbraves, or more widely as “The Rumbraves”. They gained a reputation for being savagely effective and quick to finish contracts, and have since roamed the northeast coast in search of work. Rooney recruits men from the ports they dock at, and due to her former knowledge of ship-making she inherited from her father, The Rumbraves have been outfitted with some of the most functional ships she could afford from Alendron, Routaille, and Luska.


Due to the nature of the Rumbraves’ business, a small force is sometimes needed in order to fulfill a number of contracts they receive. Rooney maintains a number of contacts throughout the ports of the north and east coasts, and has pulled from them to generate a force of one thousand trained marines who are transported on light ships. They are clad in little more than leather armor and a few can afford ring or chainmail, and all bear spear, cutlass and shield in combat. Only as of the past year have they began weekly drills and received proper training, which has led to an increase in their use to fulfill contracts.


The Rumbrave fleet consists of five heavy ships outfitted with an array of weaponry. Springalds, siege crossbows, reinforced hulls for ramming, and grappling hooks are all manned by a crew of one-hundred individuals. These men and women also control the oars, masts, and all other operational processes aboard each ship. Every heavy ship has a captain and a first mate that answer directly to Admiral Rooney, and they are often the smartest and most well-educated of every ship.

Ten light ships are used as transport ships as well as for skirmishing tactics, which were learned and modified upon by Rooney and the most strategically-minded of her crew. Each of these ships, like the heavy vessels, is commanded by a captain and first mate.