Jasper Endicott Draft
Description
British, late forties. Pale, soft-handed, fussy. Chalk dust perpetually on his cuffs. The face of a man who has spent more time in archives than in sunlight. He asks too many questions about hold ventilation, argues with the mate about temperature, and is protective of a large wooden crate stored below decks.
Background
Antiquarian and dealer, operating on the fringes of respectability. His crate contains a collection of pre-classical shrine artifacts from Saria, the small island north of Karpathos. The site is a coastal cave-shrine, Minoan or possibly pre-Minoan, dedicated to an unknown maritime deity. Stone carvings, bronze figurines, and inscribed tablets depicting creatures that are not fish, not octopi, and not anything in Mediterranean natural history. The script is not Linear A, not Linear B, and not any known Greek dialect.
He is transporting the collection to a contact in Calcutta who specialises in comparative epigraphy. The artifacts are illegally exported from Ottoman territory (Karpathos is under Ottoman sovereignty in 1814).
Motivations
Get his collection to Calcutta intact. Find someone who can read the inscriptions. Make enough money from the sale to fund his next expedition. He is a smuggler, not a cultist. His obsessive behaviour around the crate is the anxiety of a man protecting an illegal and fragile cargo, not ritual devotion.
Connections
- La_Speranza — Passage to Calcutta
- Capitano_Niccolo_Zanier — Ship’s captain (strained relationship over hold access)
- Freddy_Cavendish — Fellow Englishman aboard (Endicott attaches himself socially)
Appearances
Relationships
- Passenger La Speranza — Paying passenger. Has the captain's cabin and a crate in the hold he won't stop checking.
- Social Freddy Cavendish — Gravitates to Freddy as a fellow Englishman of good family. Latches on for company.