Will Foster, the Burning Captain, is a wraith responsible for approximately a half-dozen arson attacks that have occurred across the U.S. Gulf Coast in recent years.
For years, various communities along the southern coast have suffered what seem to be vicious arson attacks with no culprit to be found. What makes this series of crimes unusual is that most targets have been vehicles — and a few vessels — in motion.
History[]
In Life[]
Will Foster was the owner and master of a ship that brought enslaved Africans to American shores, decades after the United States abolished their import. At the time of his voyage, the importing of enslaved people to the young United States was already outlawed. Thus, Foster destroyed the filth-caked evidence of his transgression through the most efficient means available: fire. He beached his ship on the Mobile River’s banks and put it to the torch.
For the rest of his life, Foster largely skirted any punishment for delivering men and women into a monstrous existence as chattel.
In Death[]
In the afterlife, he was not so fortunate, for powerful ghosts — ancestors of those whom he transferred from one form of brutal captivity to another — followed him across the Atlantic. Away from their spiritual home, those ghosts found themselves limited in what they could do to the living, but the restless dead are the very model of patience. The moment Foster died, they cursed his ghost to do their bidding until justice came for those stolen souls. The afterlife being the strange place it is, Foster spent ages in service to an arcane bureaucracy that he neither understood nor chose — until it dissolved. Free, he thought, but no, for still he was bound by the curse. He had to seek out any emblem of that other fallen order, the one that defended Foster’s heartless enterprise in life, and treat it just as he treated his chief tool, the Clotilda, at her end.
Image[]
Abroad only by night, Foster is unrecognizable in advance of an attack. He travels atop the burning bridge of the Clotilda, the rest of his spectral schooner invisible to mortal eyes. Foster, the ship’s wheel before him, and the deck around him all look like sculptures made of live, glowing embers, licked by modest flames. On clear nights he and the ship trail “smoke” that has no scent and deposits no soot. Seen in one’s rearview mirror, he might be mistaken for an ill-advised (because terrifying) promotional display riding atop a semi-cab. Once he has ignited the targeted emblem (or emblems), any fiery aspect to him vanishes, and for a moment he takes on the semblance he had in life: that of a clean-shaven white male with heavy sideburns, dressed in handmade cotton clothing and a broad-brimmed hat, and shod in knee-high leather boots. Seconds later, he and the seemingly levitating ship’s bridge beneath his feet disappear. He leaves behind only the fires he starts.
While engulfed in supernatural flames, Foster grows increasingly distressed and becomes oblivious to anything other than his target or anyone impeding his destruction of it. He will ignore anyone who calls out to him from anywhere other than along the line between the (granted, invisible) bow of the schooner and whatever he seeks to set on fire.
Foster cannot encroach upon consecrated ground or any place of worship. Any cemetery that leaves a Confederate flag still flying after nightfall is susceptible to his supernatural assault, however.
Operations[]
The Burning Captain, as Will Foster thinks of himself, wanders the Mississippi, Alabama, and northwest Florida coasts, as well as nearby roads and waterways, his ghostly eyes searching for the Stars and Bars or related symbols. With a target in sight, he can travel at an unearthly speed — much faster than the average car, truck, or pleasure boat. The few people to escape him are ones who ventured outside the precincts of Foster’s time among the living.
Worth noting is that Foster targets individuals only if they are wearing reasonably well-known hate symbols or bearing one or more Confederate flags, and is powerless against those who don’t. People not bearing such emblems as they insert themselves between Foster and such a target cause him to swerve around them. Being inside the “space” of the ghostly ship causes material representations of such emblems to ignite. Thus, Foster himself can be 10 meters behind a car, for example, and cause its license plate’s painted-on St. Andrew’s Cross to bubble, blacken, and burn its way into the moving vehicle. At that moment, the spectral flames around Foster wink out, and he veers off to end the pursuit. The real flames burning inside the car or boat continue, however; should they reach the gas tank, predictable results occur.
In the case of someone wearing a hate symbol on their person, that person is likely to see or feel the flames and attempt to doff the ignited attire. Speed is of the essence, as hellfire works on physical matter identically to thermite. Act too slowly and any adjacent flesh also ignites. Once that happens, the person typically burns until consumed, as no conventional form of fire suppressant can quench the Burning Captain’s hellfire.
References[]
- HTR: 5th Edition Core Book p.205-207