"I know you, fiend. You killed my wife, my father, and my only son. You may yet kill me. But by Sigmar, I will drag you and your Undead scum screaming to hell with me...."
- —Captain Roth.[2c]
Jaego Roth, captain of the Heldenhammer and leader of the Grand Alliance
Captain Jaego Roth is the mastermind and driving force behind the Grand Alliance that opposes Count Noctilus' Dreadfleet. Blaming the Vampire for the death of his family, Roth will stop at nothing to get revenge on his nemesis.[1b] Jaego Roth is the Sartosan captain of the Heldenhammer, the flagship of the Grand Alliance that ventures to the monster-haunted depths of the Galleon's Graveyard to hunt down Count Noctilus. But this was not always the case, nor how our tale truly begins.[1a]
History[]
Origins[]
The legendary captain Jaego Roth was the only son of Sartosan explorer and cartographer, Indigio Roth. In his prime, Indigio Roth was a large and fearsomely intelligent man. He was known to the common people of Tilea simply as the Mapwright, for he sailed the farthest reaches of the Great Ocean in search of knowledge, and his sea-charts were the finest in the land. The Mapwright's name passed into the lore of the Old World for his nautical exploits. The same is true of his son Jaego who, with his last act, became one of the most celebrated captains of the high seas.[2b]
His fame grew so great that soon there was no shortage of people looking to hire his services as a naval commander, and he has sailed in the fleets of Tilea, Bretonnia, and the Empire. After each victory, Jaego returned to his family with his holds laden with riches.[3a]
The story of Captain Roth's burning need for vengeance upon the Dreadfleet begins within his father's warship, the Enlightenment, a warship permanently moored at the Rusting Harbour of Sartosa. When the Mapwright lost both of his legs to a Sea Giant attack, the weather-beaten old explorer finally retired his warship and settled with his family. After all, he had already made maps of all the islands and coastlines of the Old World - and, if rumour was to be believed, of lands much further afield. The Mapwright enjoyed a great deal of respect in Sartosa, though his wife would regularly scold him for filling the mind of their son Jaego with stories of the surreal realms that lay beyond the veil of midnight, and the curse of the restless dead.[2b]
The young Jaego was raised within the Enlightenment's labyrinthine corridors and empty barracks. Every vertical surface and ceiling was plastered with maps and charts; even the most threadbare rug bore depictions of Araby, Ind or Cathay. Such scenes of far-off lands and tales of derring-do had a profound effect on Jaego's young mind. The Mapwright's son fancied the life of a pirate lord, and spent most of his days at sea aboard his uncle's boats, fighting imaginary monsters with a wooden sword. As Jaego grew into a powerful and determined leader of men, his father deteriorated further, sinking slowly into nightmare-haunted senility. The old explorer seemed to have become obsessed with his last voyage, rambling on about ship's graveyards, Vampires and sentient whirlpools. Word in the tavern was that the Mapwright had seen too much; that his most recent maps owed more to madness than to the conquest of the unknown.[2b]
Jaego could not bear to see his elderly father, once an intellectual giant, deteriorate into a mad old fool. He left home, setting sail to find his destiny. His father's gold afforded him a decent ship and a crew that could almost be considered trustworthy.[2b]
Over the next three decades, Captain Roth became a figure of awe across the Great Ocean. His extensive knowledge of the strange and unusual geography of the high seas stood him in good stead; little known-islands became Roth's hidden bases, short-cuts through deadly reefs allowed the captain to escape even the most ardent pursuit, and lucrative deals were struck over the delivery of strange and rare ingredients to rich southern sorcerers. Roth also proved to have an astonishing gift as a naval tactician, hiring his services as a privateer to any who would meet his price - his sleek and deadly warship, the Nightwatch, had sent a dozen vessels to the bottom of the sea before Roth's first year of captaincy was out.[2b]
As Roth passed a half-century in age, the lure of piracy was replaced by a longing for the shores of his home. After a near-disastrous raid upon the mosquito-ridden shores of Lustria, Jaego Roth began to tire of adventure and the ever-present risk of death. The captain had seen thousands of comrades and crew fall in battle over the years, and just as his body had become scarred and tough, his resolve had hardened too. He would forsake the life of the reaver; return to the wife and child he had left behind in the Rusting Harbour of Sartosa, and make amends for taking the open sea as his mistress instead of caring for his own.[2b]
Dark Homecoming[]
Jaego Roth
In the small hours of the night, Roth was returning to his ancestral home in Sartosa. To his puzzlement and alarm, the sea air was choked with acrid smoke. As the Nightwatch neared the docks, Captain Roth's joy at his homecoming faded and withered away altogether. Rusting Harbor, the dockyard district where Roth's dwelling-vessel was berthed, was all but reduced to cinders. The isle of a thousand masts was in flames.[2a]
Captain Roth's men bullied the truth out of a soot-streaked refugee who was fleeing the conflagration in a rowing boat. Sartosa - thought by its denizens to be a realm so notorious only a fool would dare attack it - had been pillaged by a titanic war-hulk made from the broken remains of other galleons, a ghost ship that was impervious to harm, and a vast black machine forged in a likeness of a deep-sea kraken. The legends were true - Count Noctilus of the Dreadfleet still lived.[2a]
Hoping to save his family, Roth plunged into the water, swam to the burning dock of Rusting Harbour; and sprinted heedlessly into the fires of the dwelling-vessel he called home. He was too late. His wife, Lisabet and his only son, Armando have been taken by the horde of Noctilus's minions. Roth's elderly father; the Mapwright, also lay dead, his body curled around several artefacts as if to protect them from the conflagration. Teeth gritted and beard aflame, Captain Roth grabbed the artifacts; an eldritch moondial that plotted the phases of Morrslieb, a great sea turtle shell with a sea-chart pinned to its inside, and an enchanted Arabyan spyglass.[2a]
Roth carried what remained of his family's bodies to the harbour's edge. Silhouetted by fire, he buried the mortal remains of his loved ones in a deep pit on the shore. Though Roth's expression was as cold and still as the rag-doll corpses of his family, his mind was aflame. Then and there, he swore a solemn oath upon the souls of his family: Vampire or not, Count Noctilus would pay with his life.[2a]
War on the Reik[]
Though the smouldering fires of Sartosa's harbour were eventually put out, Captain Roth's anger seemed to get fiercer with every passing day. Determined and ruthless, Roth called in every favour and spent every last crown of his ill-gotten fortune upon assembling the most die-hard crew that money could buy. He knew well that it would take more than a single crew to take down the Dreadfleet; Roth needed an army behind him if he was to stand a chance against Noctilus.[2a]
Before the week was out, Captain Roth had set off in search of aid from the Empire. The greedy officials and arrogant nobles of the port cities were far more interested in their own affairs, and battle-scarred pirates ranting about undeath proved unwelcome in polite company.[2a]
Roth reasoned that even if the courts of the Empire would not lend aid, the witch-hunting Cult of Sigmar would provide the means of Noctilus' destruction. Every pirate had heard tell that the burning power of divine energy could sear and destroy the undead; after all, the god-king Sigmar had defeated the Great Necromancer Nagash himself shortly after the founding of the Empire.[2a]
Sailing around the coast of Bretonnia, the Nightwatch passed through Marienburg (where traders have reason to hate the name Roth)[3a] in the guise of a merchant vessel and made its way toward Altdorf. It moored within the dockyards of the majestic Reik river; nestled amongst the splendid galleons moored in every spare berth. Even the largest of them was dwarfed by the Grand Theogonist's capital ship, the Heldenhammer.[2a][3a]
The Heldenhammer
In the glimmering candlelight of the Reikstemple, a vengeful Roth made his demands for aid to the Grand Theogonist himself. His talk of vampiric warships and mechanical sea monsters was met with a sad shake of the head. Though the Cult of Sigmar did indeed have the means to destroy the Undead, the Empire was at war; and the weapons of the holy were needed elsewhere.[2a]
Enraged beyond measure, Roth stormed out of the Reikstemple and back to the harbour. That night the Heldenhammer set sail, but it had Captain Roth at the helm, and Sartosa's finest instead of Sigmarites manned its massive cannon batteries.[2a]
Word swiftly reached the Grand Theogonist of Roth's theft, and the Sigmarite fleet set sail after the Heldenhammer with deadly intent. But Roth's first mate, Salty Pietr, and a small crew of veteran sailors were still aboard the Nightwatch, and they silently cast off from the dock after the Sigmarites like a wolf stalking a herd of sheep.[2a]
Up ahead, the Sigmarites fired chasing cannons upon the Heldenhammer with little real effect. In response, the Nightwatch turned hard-a-port just as the Heldenhammer heaved hard-a-starboard, bracketing the Sigmarite fleet fore and aft.[2a]
At Roth's roared command, hundreds of cannonballs raked the Sigmarite vessels. Caught in the crossfire, the Heldenhammer's pursuers stood little chance and were smashed to pieces. The Nightwatch took an impressive toll before eventually succumbing to superior numbers, whilst the Heldenhammer escaped intact.[2a]
Nehekharan Gold[]
"Thank Manann we outdistanced them, the dead tend to be rather possessive, after all, especially those Nehekharan kings. Mad as scarabs, the lot of them. They’ll hunt a man to the ends of the earth just for looking at their grave-treasures, let alone harbouring them on a ship."
- —Captain Roth to the Golden Magus.[4b]
Though Roth's latest acquisition was one of the mightiest warships ever to be built, it was still a single vessel. Roth needed a fleet, and the quickest way to enlist one was with gold. Before long Roth had set a course for the arid and bone-strewn lands of the south. There he sought out the ruined city of Zandri, guardian of Nehekhara's haunted coasts. Roth led three hundred of his most hard-bitten mariners through the desert to the sandy reached of ruined Zandri, where he intended to relieve the catacombs of the golden treasures that were rumoured to be scattered all about.[2a]
In the shadow of colossal pyramids that drank in sunlight and towering skull-faced Necrosphinxes, Roth's men fought their way into the great tombs. Ranks of armoured skeletons and giant jackal-headed statues came to life at their approach, and Roth's men were slowly, irresistably pushed back. They barely made it a half-mile into the ancient city before they were forced to retreat back into the desert. Only eighty mariners returned to their warship alive, (to be precise Jaego lost two hundred and twenty men)[4b] securing it but for all the peril of the tomb-cities, each mariner escaped with a king's ransom in gold and priceless artefacts stashed about his person. Little did Roth know that by raiding Zandri he had made an enemy who would spend all eternity hunting him to the ends of the world.[2a]
Evading the Undead fleet that pursued Roth, the Heldenhammer set a course due westwards. Less than a week later Captain Roth met up with his mercantile contacts on the pirate coast of Araby, where the flamboyant wizard known as the Golden Magus was recruited to the cause. Roth bought the allegiance of the southern sorcerer and his massive pleasure-warship Flaming Scimitar with sixteen treasure chests brimming with gold; not even the self-proclaimed Sultan of the High Seas could resist that much wealth. Aranessa Saltspite, the merciless Pirate Queen of the Swordfysh, was the second to join Roth's quest - though it took a week of Roth's precious time and a chest full of fist-sized sapphires to secure the wench's famously dubious loyalty.[2a]
The Hunt Begins[]
And so the year wound onward. Captain Roth gathered information as well as manpower; for only a fool would seek to do battle against a Vampire Count without first learning the secrets of how to destroy it. Delving into the gambling dens and rum-warrens of Sartosa, Roth searched for surviving members of his father's old crew. The Mapwright had never been the same after his last voyage, and had often talked in garbled sea-chants of an undead hell which Roth now believed was Noctilus' lair. The strange map left to Roth looked very much like it depicted an evil otherworld of rotting wrecks.[2a]
Roth's stolen gold opened many doors. Everything from solid facts to the superstitious ravings of salt-mad drunkards made its way to the Heldenhammer's crew. A recurring theme was that the Galleon's Graveyard was the home of a brotherhood of ghosts; evil spirits that were vomited into reality by a churning maelstrom of skulls and, when their bloody work was done, sucked back down into the otherworld once more. It seemed to many of Roth's crew that the grog-sodden pirates of Sartosa would say anything for a gold doubloon. Yet as the captain pored over the sea-chart that had been his father's last gift, there it was, amongst the confusion - a strange and unnatural maelstrom, ringed by shipwrecks, corpse-faced cliffs and sulphurous volcanic reefs.[2a]
The stories that surrounded the Dreadfleet's rampage around the coasts of the world grew ever more elaborate. Some claimed that a Nehekharan war galley of unprecedented size was now fighting alongside the Bloody Reaver, others that an undead leviathan with its guts infested by ratmen had joined Count Noctilus' strange fleet. One detail that all the latest rumours agreed upon was that each time the Dreadfleet had struck since its attack upon Sartosa, it had sailed out from a thick bank of fog upon the strike of midnight and then disappeared without a trace. This particular story became maddeningly familiar to Captain Roth and his allies as the hunt began in earnest. The Dreadfleet was attacking the port-cities of the Empire without warning and vanishing like morning mist, no matter how closely they were pursued. All that was left to mark their passage was a bobbing trail of barnacle-encrusted skulls that petered out in a loose spiral before disappearing altogether.[2a]
In learning where the Dreadfleet had recently struck, Captain Roth was able to lie in wait at the most likely target for the Dreadfleet's next raid. He berthed his warship amongst the galleons of Luccini, the sprawling Tilean cityport from which his mother had hailed, and waited.[2a]
After weeks of galling inactivity, Roth's ambush tactics finally paid off. A violent electrical storm ravaged the coast of Luccini and, soon after, the Dreadfleet's sails appeared on the horizon. Roth and his allies intercepted Count Noctilus at Brimstone Sound, and a raging sea battle took place under the stony gaze of the sentinel-houses studding the cliffs. Over nine hundred veteran seamen died in Roth's attempt to bring the Dreadfleet to bay, blasted apart by the Bloody Reaver's cannon batteries, crushed by the Black Kraken's tentacles, or cut to ribbons by the ghostly crew of the Shadewraith. The mighty Tilean fleet joined the fight and attempted to cut off the Dreadfleet's escape, but it was all for nothing. The Dreadfleet melted back into the fog once more, leaving nothing but a loose spiral of skulls to mark its passage.[2a]
Desperate Measures[]
The baleful truth was becoming impossible to deny. There was no stopping Count Noctilus on the open ocean, for whenever the Dreadfleet was brought to bay it would escape back to its strange otherworld. The fight would have to be taken to Noctilus.[2a]
With the Golden Magus' help, Roth learned to use the exotic moondial and enchanted spyglass left by his father and painstackingly deciphered the strange instructions scrawled on the sea-chart. The pirate lords theorised that if they could but be under the right constellation of stars at the stroke of midnight upon thrice-cursed Geheimnisnacht, Roth could sail straight through the thinned veil that separated the Dreadfleet from the material realm, hunt down the Bloody Reaver, and slay Noctilus in his own lair.[2a]
Though he found no support from the nations of Man, Roth was to find an unusual ally on his journey back to Sartosa. A gouting plume of smoke drew the Heldenhammer towards the site of a sea battle, where the shattered remains of a Dwarf Ironclad bearing the rune of the seaport Barak Varr were slowly sinking into the depths. Mangled beyond recognition, the Dwarf craft looked to have been crushed like a platemail breastplate in a Giant's hand. Clinging to the wreckage of the ironclad were dozens of bedraggled Dwarfs. Roth ordered his warship to drop anchor and rescue the stranded Dwarfs, reasoning that just as Dwarfs never forget a grudge, they would always repay a debt.[2a]
Roth's supposition proved quite right. The commander of the Dwarf survivors, Red Brokk Gunnarsson, was furious beyond measure - his experimental ironclad, Grungni's Forge, had been crushed beyond recovery by the tentacles of a submersible he called the Black Kraken. Roth revealed that the Black Kraken was amongst those warships that his fleet was pursuing, and told the Dwarf of his own quest. When the Dwarf engineer and the pirate lord learned that they shared the same taste for revenge, a wary respect was born. Gunnarsson made a deal with Roth, sealed with spit and strong spirits - if Roth returned Red Brokk to his home port of Barak Varr, Gunnarsson would then go to war alongside him, lending the revolutionary Grudgebreaker-class battleship Grimnir's Thunder to the cause.[2a]
Into the Darkness[]
As Roth provisioned his fleet at Barak Varr, Geheimnisnacht drew ever nearer. According to the moondial's strange cog-plates, the time of reckoning was soon at hand. Roth had the means and the manpower to send Count Noctilus to a watery grave. So it was that on the night before Geheimnisnacht, the Heldenhammer, escorted by Flaming Scimitar, the Swordfysh, and Grimnir's Thunder, set sail for the cursed seas.[2a]
The hunters sailed towards the Dread Gulf, the area of the Great Ocean which Roth had ascertained corresponded with the Galleon's Graveyard. Sure enough, as midnight of Geheimnisnacht struck, a great unnatural storm blew in. Fell laughter could be heard in the skies. The tempest that followed was fierce beyond measure. Great squalls of bone and chattering skulls hammered the decks and tore the sails. It was not long before Roth's warfleet was separated, all cohesion lost in the desperate struggle to survive before they disappeared altogether.[2a]
When the storm passed and the waters finally stilled, the Heldenhammer was alone. Swallowed and then spat out by the electrical storm, it was isolated in a labyrinth of wrecks, unnatural rock formations and strange, half-seen ghostlights. The fabled Galleon's Graveyard had been found.[2a]
That night was the last time Roth's Grand Alliance was seen by mortal eyes. Months later, wide-eyed mew whispered of the Galleon's Graveyard across the ports of the world. For some unaccountable reason, the Dreadfleet's raids had stopped. The curse seemed to have been lifted, too. From that year onwards, whenever a ship sank at sea, its wreckage would remain in testament to its last battle.[2a]
Wargears[]
Jaego Roth is seeking anyone who might give him answers about these artefacts.[3a]
- Roth’s Moondial – A complex device somehow able to track Morrslieb’s movements.[3a]
- Enchanted Spyglass – An Arabyan spyglass, etched with delicate script. It pierces any obfuscation, whether natural fog or magical illusions.[3a]
- Turtle Shell Map – A map covered with grotesque iconography, with a swirling maelstrom at its centre.[3a]
Family Members[]
- Armando Roth - Jaego saw Armando last time when he was just a seven-year-old boy. Broad shoulders, strong chin, and large nose were the clues that have allowed him to identify, his body showed the signs of a fight.[2]
- Lisabeth - Wife of Jaego, she had long wonderful black hair when young. He had called her his sea-siren because of that glorious mane. That and the way she sang in the morning to lure him into her bathing quarters. There had even been times when they couldn’t stand the sight of each other but they loved each other.[2]
Ships[]
The Nightwatch is equipped with one Large Cannon placed on the prow and facing forwards, and eight Medium Cannon on the deck, four facing to port and four facing to starboard. She had a crew of around 50 men.[3a]
While the Heldenhammer can carry more than 2000 people, among which there were more than a thousand Sartosans.[2] The temple-ship’s subsidiary craft, the Alaric, is as heavily built as its parent warship. It takes sixty men, using a complex system of pulleys hung from the jutting beaks of the Templus gargoyles, to haul the stout cog out from its housing. A great deal of sweat and fury is to be expended in order to manoeuvre the Alaric overboard without capsizing the cog. Roth finds it impressive, but impractically large. Much like the Heldenhammer.
Crew Members[]
"Listen to me, all of you, we’ve come this far, and by Manann’s teeth we will see this through to the end. Revenge, remember? We came here to punish that bastard Noctilus in the name of our friends. Our families. The scum-raddled dives we drink in. Would you rather we killed each other and ended up like that? I’m your best hope of getting out of here, you all know it in your hearts. We need to find the others, do what we came to do, and get the Magus to work his magic. Then we’ll loot the largest galleons we find and head back for open seas, richer than Greasus. This haul will make Zandri look like pocket scrapings. You’ll see."
- —Captain Roth facing Dallard's mutiny in the Galleon's Graveyard.[4d]
- Billy-o - Billy-o is the ship’s doctor of the Heldenhammer. Roth has no respect for his work.[4h]
- Burke - Burke is the master gunner of the Heldenhammer.[4c]
- Dallard - The first mate of the Heldenhammer, he was a pistolier with great cure of his beloved pistols.[4c] Once reached the Galleon's Graveyard, taken by despair, believing his captain to have carried his crew to certain death, Dallard tried to kill Roth but before Dallard’s pistol could clear its holster, Roth whipped out his weapon and shot the man in the face, spraying blood and brain matter across those at the foot of the stairs. Before the body could fall the captain lunged forward, caught it with his sickle, and flung it bodily over the side of the warship. A sudden wind whipped up and the sails above him cracked full with a low boom. Dallard’s headless body had hauled itself out of the water and climbed onto the protrusion. His flesh falling away, his body began to fuse with skeletons that studded its sides, hands turning into claws as the muscle sloughed off them. Beside him, a hundred bony arms waved and clawed at the sky.[4d]
- Freier - Freier is the rigsman of the Heldenhammer.[4d]
- Ghow Southman - A thick-set man, from Sartosa. His obscene tattoos (located also on his head) and extensive piercings were not well suited for polite company, but he was dutiful in his own way, and his habit of always being there when Roth needed him was invaluable for his captain. He'll die at the hand of Noctilus in the Galeon's Graveyard.[4a][4f]
- Oath - Second mate of the crew.[4d]
- Old Ruger Old Ruger is an old member of Jaego's crew. Old Ruger’s head was injured by a spectral skull in the Galleon's Graveyard.[4e][4f]
- Salt Pietr - Salt Pietr, called like this by his companions, was the former first mate of the Nightwatch. He sacrificed himself to allow Jaego to flee from the Imperial navy.[4g] During Roth's final battle against the Dreadfleet, a tall, massively built corpse grabbed Roth by his shoulder and forced him upright against the Golden Magu's urns, backhanding him across the face so that his head rebounded from the painted ceramic. Roth snarled and shook himself, blood, puke, and tears mingling in his beard. He stared with the intensity of a wounded beast at his persecutor, his mind flaring into life once more. It was Salt Pietr. Dead, rotting, and clad in seaweed, but by the sheer size of the man and the tattoos on his bald head, it had definitely once been Salt Pietr. No one else Roth knew had a neck thicker than his head. When Roth tumbled with the urns aboard, Salt Pietr grabbed his arm at the last moment, holding his captain suspended over the void.[4a]
- Will o 'the Waves - Will o 'the Waves is a weasel-faced hunched man armed with fishtailed dagger. A merciless killer as ever plied the ocean.[4c][4d]
Trivia[]
Roth's family features many tributes to the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, for example the names of his wife and son are puns to Elisabeth and Orlando, a character and an actor from the film, respectively.