Captain Omri Syluxyn

Captain Omri Syluxyn is a character in The Calamitous Campaign.

Description:
Captain Omri is an imposing figure with a large bristling beard (black but greying in places), a prominent scar across his face and a permanent scowl. He is tall, sturdily built and slightly lopsided upon his left side due to his prosthetic left leg. The leg is very technically advanced, a precision piece of machinery designed to ensure the absolute maximum in comfort and mobility. With that said, the leg suffered some pretty severe damage a while back and is now a malfunctioned heap of metal fused onto Omri’s leg. It is more a burden than an actual working limb, though surprisingly it does not slow him down as much as it probably should. He wears a black pea coat, which usually hangs open and a breather mask which connects to an oxygen supply tank strapped onto his back. He carries a plasma harpoon launcher.

Captain Omri has one focus in life, one passion, one desire that trumps everything else. It keeps him awake at night; it consumes his time, his money, his mind, his very life. All he cares about is the pursuit of Star Whales. Given the opportunity to strike out against the creatures that he so despises there is little telling what he might do, what lengths he might go to in order to destroy the object of his hatred. He doesn’t care one jot for the lives of others or their feelings, though that said he isn’t actively cruel or vindictive, he just does not care and does not even attempt to hide this. He will put himself and those around him in peril if there is so much as a chance of bringing down a Star Whale and he will do so without a second thought.

Abilities:
Despite his useless prosthetic limb, Omri is reasonably athletic. He is used to operating heavy machinery and working in unstable conditions. He has gotten so used to his malfunctioning leg he doesn’t really think about it any more. He is a very good shot with his plasma harpoon launcher which would probably translate to a good shot in general but that’s pretty much the only weaponry he has ever used.

Biography:
Omri has always hated starwhales pretty much as far back as he can remember. One of his first memories was being told that his parents and most of his family had died in an accident where some stray whalesong devastated his hometown. He had been space boarding school at the time, and his new legal guardian, his great aunt couldn’t pay for it any more. Even from that age it was clear to him that his life would have turned out very differently if he hadn’t had to go to public school on a backwater colony planet. He resented the star whales not just for destroying his family but for destroying his future as well, but that said back then it was not such an all consuming thing. It was a hatred that would periodically manifest itself in tearing down of ‘save the starwhales’ posters but no more than that.

It was only after he lost his leg that he became obsessed. He was part of an illegal whaling crew operating in the Kargal Nebula and they were tracking a starwhale that had become separated from its pod. Normally they’d be able to take down a solitary starwhale without too much fuss and bother, but something went wrong. Omri still doesn’t know exactly what happened that day, only the consequences of that failure. The ship was all but destroyed. Most of the crew died and more importantly, to Omri anyway, his left leg was atomised. They only just managed to get out of there alive.

Omri was treated in the back room of a shady inn by some of the best unlicensed medical practitioners that he could afford. In retrospect the prosthetic limb they attached was probably a knock-off. He had to spend a couple of weeks in that back room, unable to leave his bed, recuperating, waiting for the neural graft to heal. In that time he grew more and more bitter and twisted about the star whales and all that they had done to him, all that they had done to mankind as a whole. He saw them as the architects of everything that was wrong with his life and he knew that he had to dedicate himself to eradicating them. His hatred was all-consuming, fevered frothing at the mouth stuff and even as his body healed and his infection ebbed away his hatred never faltered.

When he was well enough to leave he headed back to the illegal whaling crews he had been a part of formerly and he knuckled down. He learnt his way around the ships as though they were part of him, he saved every penny he earned and he was personally responsible for the deaths of more star whales than he could count. Eventually he purchased a ship of his own, the Dodet, and hired himself a crew. He was tracking an entire pod of starwhales when suddenly he was snatched away.