Rinder Mardek
Captain of the Black Fleet — by the reckoning of Archivist Gianni's Itinerary of Pyrirtras, the master of one of the most active and violent fleets terrorising Orathi waters. His signature is not boarding actions or ransom but artillery on civilians: he is known to stand off at range and launch volleys of incendiary grapeshot into unarmed civilian settlements before shoring to perform the raid itself. The town burns first; then his crews land and take what is left, including the people.
He is named in the vault as the ally of Seadog Jon Thomas, the pirate captain who rules Atollia and lets marauders work its waters for a cut (Atollia, Hitihare) — which places Mardek's fleet inside the protection of the province's own ruler.
Command
- Commands the fleet from its lead vessel, whose Third Mate was Pyrirtras across the fleet's most notorious years, 1380–1395
- His fleet's confirmed body count, counted only through Pyrirtras's participation, runs to 30,000+ dead, 100,000+ injured, 60,000+ missing, and 10,631 kidnapped — with the archivist noting the true numbers are believed higher
- The charges attached to his fleet's operations: piracy, mass murder, forced abduction, village burning, unlawful enslavement across the island chains — filed as Crimes Against Atollia
Method
The incendiary-grapeshot doctrine is the detail that separates him from an ordinary raider. Bombarding an undefended settlement from the water costs him nothing, kills indiscriminately, and leaves survivors too scattered to resist the landing party. It is the practice that Laku described from the receiving end in Session 05 — raiders sailing in at will, taking people, money and weapons, and killing for sport — and the reason the Isles fortified Amos with walls at the cost of its harbour.
The Coalition's own Code of Honorable Conduct bans exactly this: no indiscriminate area effects (fireballs, siege weapons) against Orathi settlements. The code reads, in part, as a rule written against men like Mardek.
Status
At large, and never encountered in play. Nothing is known of his person — species, appearance, age, statline, whether he still sails. He exists in the record as a name at the top of a chain of command, in the same way Seadog Jon Thomas does: a strategic threat with no observed combat capability.
The one thread that reaches the party's side of the world is his lost third mate. Pyrirtras went overboard in 1395 and was written off as drowned; she is alive, in Rivalon, under the name Latar, inside the reclamation. If Mardek believes her dead, the fleet's own records say so. If he does not, she is the only person in the Coalition he has a reason to look for.
Open questions
- Is the fleet still operating after 1395, and is Mardek still its captain?
- What is his standing with Seadog Jon Thomas — subordinate, ally, or rival sharing a hunting ground?
- Does the Black Fleet's business touch Varia — specifically House Mayfore, whose corsairs plunder shipping in the same seas under a "don't ask, don't tell" arrangement with their own government?