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Born Costas Voducce, the young third son of an unexceptional minor house expected only to live a life of relative obscurity tallying casks of wine and bolts of silk in one dusty counting house or another. His parents, notorious misers not much beloved by their liege or peers, spent little time on the twice-redundant son, boarding him at a series of schools only to ensure that he would not become an economic burden on the lineage. It had been three years since he had seen his family when he received word from his sister that the family was relocating their interests to a more favorable location in the Saffron Chain and that his brothers had decided he need not hasten to join them until his studies were complete. She begged him to join her so that their greedy brothers could be prevented from squandering the family fortune. All he need do was secure a ship to meet them mid-voyage along the secret route they had travelled together as youngsters on their family's ships. She had even arranged a ship.% So it was that Costas Voducce brought ruin to his house. The ship he rushed to board, eager to reclaim a place in his family, was a pirate vessel. It did not occur to him to ask why, if his sister had secured the ship, she had not also provided the destination. A helpful Costas was eager to assist. It was not until the flags of his family's company were spotted that the pirates raised their own, and he was tossed in the hold. After the battle, he was tortured for five days before they were satisfied that he had no more information that could be made into a profit. He would have been dumped overboard there, throat slit, save for that the ship's navigator pointed out that he could use a man who knew letters if they were to command a fleet of prize ships. For three years Costas swabbed decks, cooked meals, and copied endless nautical directives for ships in the pirate fleet. Never fully accepted into the crew, he was subject to routine beatings. When after one particularly rough drubbing Costas sustained a fractured arm that put him off his work for weeks, the navigator decided to begin training him in the sword so that he might defend himself. He took to it quickly, finding a talent completely unlooked-for and a sense of confidence he had never known. When three months later their ship was attacked by a rival band of pirates, Costas killed four himself. Though he was not added to the marines despite his skill, owing to his value as a navigator, he would be force to repeat the act many more times over the next four years. While it was not a life full of much happiness Costas had come to accept his place, just as it was upended one more time. On a cold and moonless night, while seeking quarry closer than ever before to the southern ports, a patrol of Malvici pirate hunters caught them in a bad wind and a fierce battle ensued. Faced for the first time with the prospect of having to fight someone that wasn't a pirate, he made the decision to try to flee in a dinghy. Magata had other plans. A storm rose up during the height of the attack and he was quickly capsized as the engaged ships battered against one another in a cacophany of splintering wood. When he next awoke, it was to the prodding spears of Malvici bannermen who found him floating among the wreckage. He would have been put to the death there, had not one of them spotted the seal of a noble house on the simple leather strip he wore around his neck. Though long since dispossessed of its lands and titles, the name of Voducce would have a final grace to extend to its last scion.

Costas is a wiry man of an athletic build found in all men of labor the world over. Commonly handsome, his otherwise manly stature is betrayed by a habitual, casual lean. Beard and scalp have been trimmed (surely with a dull knife) to the same length all round, revealing a leathery bronze complexion- the product of years toiling in the sun. These features, along the strong scent of salt spray and pitch, mark him out as a man of the sea. His dispassionate countenance reveals little of his thoughts to the casual observer, though in candid moments his tempestuous grey-blue eyes may flash with life, and an impudent smirk threatens to reveal itself from behind his lips.

Despite his slack posture Costas has the bearing of a man accustomed to receiving orders, if not necessarily completing them with gusto. Quiet and understated in proper company, nimble and colloquial in common, his honeyed voice strays between respectful and cheeky with equal confidence, oft-times within the same breath. While generally seen as even-tempered and patient in the pursuit of his duties, some few may glimpse moments that betray a more mercurial nature in the sharp gestures of his hands when explaining something of interest, or the habit of humming shanties to himself when engaged in idle activities. Possessing the air of a man professionally familiar with violence, his demeanor has been observed to become progressively more casual as moments of actual violence approach.