Reva Antonek
Captain of the Sworn Song, the Lark's avatar in her own estimation, and the reason a crew of singers is taken seriously.
Overview
Reva Antonek runs the Sworn Song, and she runs it severely. The faith she leads is built on theft, appetite and reputation, and none of that has made her warm — she treats the Lark's commandment as a professional obligation and holds everyone under her to it without visible pleasure. The crew sings because the god sings. She sings because the crew does.
She considers herself the avatar of the Lark, and states it the way other people state their profession. Nobody in the crew disputes it and nobody outside it has been given a reason to care. Whether she believes it in the way a devotee believes something, or in the way a captain believes in her own command, is not a question she has ever been asked twice.
She is a skilled problem-solver and, when it suits, a skilled problem-causer. When something needs handling she handles it, and handles it brutally — not out of temper, which she does not have, but because a solved problem stays solved and an example is worth more than a warning.
Appearance
- Known by her hair — long, cut to shoulder length, kept purple with a single line of pink
- She is trivially identifiable, and that is deliberate. Reputation is the only commandment, and she wears hers
- Otherwise unremarkable, which people find disorienting
Personality
- Severe. The joy in the faith is doctrinal, not personal
- Always humming when she is not speaking. The song never fully stops, because she is never fully off shift
- A skilled negotiator and manipulator. She is much better company across a table than her reputation suggests, which is the manipulation
- Eccentric in the specific sense that her priorities are internally consistent and legible to nobody else
What she wants
The crew's reputation intact. Everything else is negotiable and she will say so
To be the Lark's avatar in a way that survives her, which is a different and more dangerous ambition than it sounds
Relationships
- The Lark — the god she believes she embodies
- The Sworn Song — hers, completely
Status
In command, and unchallenged.