#captain saker

[fablesexymanshowdown]

ROUND ONE!

CAPTAIN SAKER VS BOULDER

Captain Saker

Boulder

Voting ended onFeb 8, 2023

[heroine-of-albion]

I’m going to make a niche question! 😄 for Saker, please!

Ooooh, I love Saker!

As for what makes him smile…I think honestly he likes a good fight. Not necessarily to the death or anything, but like sparring or play fighting or training, stuff like that.

Saker respects strength, and he’s a physical person, so yeah, I think a good fight would make him smile.

[cake-warlock]

I know I’ve said this before but I can’t find it on my blog anywhere so—

During the revolution, Saker being uneasy with Princess Lisbeth going to Aurora so she gives him her favorite hair ribbon to wear in his coat and she take his bandana to wear in her hair. “There! See, now I have to come back so I can get my ribbon back!”

[nightingaletrash]

I'm gonna make a post for my Saker headcanons :p

Left the military because he didn't like being bossed around or being expected to die for unspecified reasons because some man in a castle told him to, but also didn't like being expected to believe he was above his men.

Like this man cares for his crew, he's on Major Swift levels when it comes to giving a shit. They'll follow him to hell and back, that's how much loyalty he inspires.

He was relieved when he learned that Jimmy hadn't been killed, just gotten drunk in the pub. He was then pissed as hell at Jimmy for getting drunk in the pub.

After being spared by Lorna, Saker and his crew started helping out the Dwellers by screwing with Logan's operations in the valley and giving the dwellers a cut of stolen supplies. Its led to a surprisingly fruitful relationship between the two groups.

He and Sabine still butt heads though because they're both stubborn old fucks.

Once the Bowerstone Resistance joins up with the Revolution, Saker comes to admire Page and reckons she'd make a great bandit leader. She cuffed him around the ear for the suggestion.

He's lent her some of his people for sabotage missions and stealing supplies - he trusts her more than anyone to utilise them without getting them killed.

He and Ben butt heads at first because of the whole 'abandoning the military to become a bandit' thing. They settle on their differences when Saker points out that Ben abandoned the military to become a rebel, and that when it came down to it, they’d both left because the military failed them. They're friends now.

He drinks and smokes everywhere, even when he really shouldn't. Keeps offering people cigars if they seem stressed. No one knows where the hell he keeps getting them from or how he hasn't run out yet.

His hands and arms are covered in burn scars thanks to his whole ‘setting things on fire’ and ‘throwing fire around’ and ‘setting his own hands on fire’ like seriously this man is a walking fire hazard - it’s why he wears bandages instead of gloves. Much less expensive to replace when they inevitably burst into flames.

Is it Will or does he just douse his fists in booze and light them up with his cigar during a fight? Who knows. Fire Hazard Man!

He's actually pretty bad at cards and he always ends up betting his clothes and doing a walk of shame back to his quarters because he's too stubborn to just give up.

Ben does give him his clothes back afterwards, but has come to realise that a walk of shame will not get Saker to stop betting his pants after running out of money.

Appoints himself to be the Royal Bodyguard without anyone's permission. He loves intimidating the nobility by being menacing.

He did manage to inspire a whole literary genre of 'ex-soldier turned bandit but secretly has a heart of gold and is super romanticised' because the nobles found him scary but also sexy.

His crew tried to make fun of him for it, but he just turned around and started demanding royalties for every novel inspired by him. It’s proving quite profitable.

Arm-wrestling contests with Boulder! Arm-wrestling contests with Walter! Arm-wrestling contests with Kalin! What can I say, Saker likes to bond over arm-wrestling contests.

He comes to respect Kalin a great deal too. It takes a hell of a leader to face an enemy like the Darkness and not crumple under the pressure.

Me, deciding that Saker chugs his respecting women juice? It’s more likely than you think.

His favourite fact about the old Queen was that she shot at Reaver from the battlements when he showed up to try and mooch off of the Crown.

He taunts Logan a lot. It’s usually tolerated or straight up ignored, but there was one incident where Saker made the mistake of saying how disappointed the old Queen had to be with him, and it led to a fight that resulted in Saker losing a couple of teeth and earning a black eye. Out of respect, he’s kept his taunting strictly to the likes of ‘haha you’re not the King anymore’ and ‘haha you’re shorter than me’ ever since.

His blind eye? Probably happened when he was messing with fire. Maybe the result of glass shards from a molotov cocktail. He is the Fire Hazard Man after all.

[lordriddler]

Saker Moodboard

[fablesexymanshowdown]

ROUND TWO!

THERESA VS CAPTAIN SAKER

Theresa

Captain Saker

Voting ended onFeb 11, 2023

[heroine-of-albion]

The Hero of Brightwall approaches the one person she can trust to tell her the truth, the man she put on his knees less than two days ago...Captain Saker.

You can find this, and all my other drabbles (and I’ve everything else I write), on my Ao3 account, where I’ve put them all in the same work: Heroine’s Tumblr Drabbles.

“Well, I’ll admit, I didn’t expect to see you again.” a rough voice broke through the darkness, followed by the sound of a match striking and a flash of orange light, and then a dull red glow: “Especially not with those bruises I gave you still showing.”

Ailynn shrugged: “They’re calling me the Hero of Brightwall now. It’s hardly far from here, so surely it makes sense for me to be around.”

“Sure it does. Around there. Not around here.” 

Ailynn had to give Saker that. On paper, the warm welcome of Brightwall and its inhabitants should have been far more preferable than the mercenary camp she’d stormed through only yesterday…

…but the reality couldn’t be further from the truth.

Brightwall suddenly seemed claustrophobic. There were too many eyes on her there, too many people with expectations. The Drifter Camp was the same; everyone seemed to be waiting for her to do something.

Less than a week ago, Ailynn had been a sheltered princess living in a castle. She’d hardly been beyond Bowerstone’s city walls! No-one had truly cared about her or expected anything from her; she had been the second child of the Great Hero Queen - people had expectations of her mother, of her brother, but never Ailynn.

Now all of that had changed.

The only people who had no expectations of her were the mercenaries she’d beaten half-way into the ground. They didn’t give a damn about her being a Hero, or a Princess, or her attempting to start a rebellion; all they cared about was about the fact she could beat them in a fight, and so they were happy enough to ignore her completely and let her come and go as she pleased.

At least, that was what she had thought. Apparently someone had thought to inform Saker of her appearance, and it seemed Saker cared enough to come and challenge her presence.

Enough to not accept her silence as an answer.

“So, Princess, why are you here?”

Ailynn sighed, opting to tell Saker the truth and just get it over with: “No-one here wants to ask me for anything.”

To his credit, Saker accepted her response without questioning it: “Heavy is the head that wears the crown, and all that.”

“God only knows how I’ll feel if I’m ever actually queen…” Ailynn snorted.

“So don’t be.” Saker shrugged: “Give up the revolution, don’t go after your brother’s crown, and don’t be queen.”

Ailynn paused.

She hadn’t been expecting Saker to say anything along those lines; he seemed like the sort of man to chase power at all costs, stress and all other emotions be damned…but then again, maybe that had been presumptive on her part. After all, Saker had abandoned his position as a captain in Albion’s army, and he must have had his reasons for that, even if Ailynn wasn’t privy to them.

Power and influence clearly wasn’t everything. He could’ve lost everything after deserting the army, even his life…but he’d done it anyway.

And he was here to tell the tale.

“Do you think that’s what I should do?” she asked him.

Saker grunted: “How the hell should I know what you should do? You’re a Hero, by all accounts.”

“Well, it’s not as if I have any other Heroes to ask.” Ailynn reasoned: “And you’re the person who’s least likely to spare my feelings.”

“I suppose there is that.” Saker sighed.

He didn’t sound pleased by the admission…but he didn’t tell her to leave, either, or deny her an answer. Instead, he seemed to be gathering his thoughts, so instead of pushing for a response, Ailynn waited patiently.

It wasn’t easy; Ailynn wasn’t naturally patient - it was something Walter had been trying to train out of her for years now - but no matter how much it was in her nature to push for a response, Saker’s insight was too valuable to rush him.

What she had said to him was true: he was the only person she could think of who would give her the unvarnished truth. In a whole new world where everyone seemed to want or need her, she wasn’t sure she’d get the truth from anywhere else, not from a source she could trust.

“I think you should do whatever you can live with. Sometimes it’s not about what we want, or even what we need.” Saker finally said: “It’s about what lets us sleep at night. Could you live with yourself if you took the crown? Could you live with yourself if you didn’t?”

Ailynn paused: “...I don’t know.”

“You don’t have to, at least not yet.” Saker shrugged: “You’re not going to be storming the castle gates tomorrow. You have time to think about things…but you will need to know at some point, and that point is probably not too far away.”

It really wasn’t what Ailynn wanted to hear.

She wanted to hear she had time. That she didn’t have to make a difficult decision. That things would just work themselves out.

But she hadn’t come to Saker to hear what she wanted.

“Thank you.” she replied softly, accepting his advice with a nod: “I appreciate you telling me what I needed to hear.”

“Yeah, well, if it’s shit advice, I didn’t offer it freely, so you can’t blame me.” the man shrugged.

Ailynn shook her head: “Your advice will be good. I know it.”

Saker looked uncomfortable…but it didn’t stop him from offering: “If you every need anything else, your highness…”

“Yes?”

“You’ll probably need to get me very drunk first.”

Ailynn grinned.

She could live with that.

[nightingaletrash]

I was working some more on Lieutenant Attaway and then fic happened oops

AO3

--

A gunshot cracked through the air as Saker limped his way back to his cabin, and it was enough to make him wince from something besides his injuries. The Lieutenant must be back already.

Sure enough, a familiar figure marched up the hillside, shoulders set, rifle strapped to her back, pistol at her hip, and her face decidedly stern but otherwise unreadable. She must be really pissed then, Saker deduced as he dropped to sit on the porch and prepared himself for whatever lecture his Second-in-Command was preparing to deliver.

She came to a halt in front of him.

Her posture had always been that of a soldier’s; a real, well-trained soldier and not some cutthroat who picked up a gun and slapped on a uniform or a half-wit private who’d quickly grown bored of taking orders and cut loose at the first opportunity with their weapon in hand. Straight back, set shoulders, and never a sliver of hesitation in her stride.

Lieutenant Attaway might be a deserter like the rest of them, but she still carried herself with the sort of discipline that made more than a few of the crew scratch their heads, wondering why she wasn’t still with the army.

“Captain. Might I ask why the camp is littered with the bodies of our men?”

As ever her voice was hard, cold, and unwaveringly even. Impossible to read and unyieldingly stern. Throw in the earlier warning shot that Saker had heard, and she was definitely pissed.

“We had a visitor,” he grunted. “Now, are you gonna to help me patch up or scold me to death?”

A beat passed and for a second Saker was certain that she was going to opt for the latter. But then she offered her arm without comment and bore his weight against her as he levered himself up with surprising difficulty.

The girl had hit harder and shot faster than he had expected her to. She’d been a slip of a thing, not even out of her teens by the look of her, and yet she’d gotten her hands on Jimmy’s uniform, waltzed into camp bold as brass and then promptly slaughtered everyone that got in her way. It had been, to be perfectly honest, a terrifying and oddly inspiring sight to behold, and he told Attaway as much as she helped him to hobble his way into the cabin and sit down on the bed.

She offered no comment, just assisted with his wounds, passing bandages and rubbing alcohol as and when they were needed.

“And now not only do we gotta leave the Dwellers be, we’ve gotta help them,” he snorted. “Those were her terms when she let me live. Sharing supplies, disrupting the King’s men on the roads. Gotta wonder where she got the idea that going against Logan was a smart idea-”

“Because she’s the Princess,” Attaway supplied smartly. When she caught sight of the gobsmacked look on Saker’s face, she added, “the King has put out an arrest warrant on Sir Walter Beck and the family butler for her abduction and is offering a significant reward for her safe return to Bowerstone Castle.”

“Then why the hell did she come here?” he said incredulously. “What the bloody hell does she think she’s-”

Oh. 

The pieces clicked into place, and suddenly it all made sense.

The Princess was playing rebel against her big brother, and was getting the Dwellers on her side, which was a logical starting point. They despised Logan so weren’t liable to turn her in for the reward he was promising, and they put up a good fight when they weren’t starving to death. The promise of food and safety could see them become a formidable force once more. And having the Deserters couldn’t hurt either, especially now that Saker owed her his life. Their code meant that they were sworn to heed the Princess’ demands, and she was capable enough in battle to change her terms whether Saker liked it or not.

With both groups at her command, not only could she do some real damage to Logan’s operations up in the mountains, she also had the building blocks of an army that - if built the right way with the right pieces - could drag the Tyrant King off of his throne.

And then there was her strength. Her speed. Neither of them seemed proportionate to such a girl, and yet she’d had both in great quantity. The old Queen had been a Hero. The last of her kind, they’d said, when neither her Prince or Princess showed the signs. Maybe they’d been too quick to judge. Maybe Albion still had one Hero left in her.

The warped, burnt flesh of Saker’s hands itched and he resisted the urge to rub them while they were still red and raw. Playing with fire was a dangerous game but it usually kept his opponents off-kilter to see him throwing the stuff around. His hands might never be pretty and one day the flesh might slough from his bones, but what was life without a little risk? To him it was a reminder that he was alive. That he’d been burned by the world time and time again, but he’d risen above it and survived.

Today the fire had bitten back and he’d need a fresh wrap of bandages and a lathering of burn relief as his knuckles bled, but it hadn’t consumed him. He’d drink to that. And to his men.

He thanked Attaway when she handed him the bottle of whiskey and she stepped outside to let him rise tenderly to his feet in private. 

It was one of his favourite things about his Lieutenant. Always prompt and to the point, and never needed to be told what to do. 

Saker took a swig of whiskey and limped back out of the hut into the dying rays of the setting sun. The survivors of the crew were waiting in a huddle outside, some wrapped in bandages and others propping them up when needed.

A good number of familiar faces were missing now, but there were more than enough survivors to keep the clan together. They were all silent, waiting for him to speak, so he raised the bottle into the air.

“We took a beating today. We all lost friends. Brothers and sisters in arms,” he said gruffly. “But that’s how it is in this life of ours, and now we do our damndest to stand tall and make them proud! We’ve got ourselves a new contract, and one with a Princess no less! A Princess who walked in here and proved herself the strongest!

“Tomorrow we get to work, but tonight we drink and we remember! To ourselves, to those that fell, and to seeing Logan’s head on a spike!”

There was a roar of approval from the crew and it wasn’t long before they broke out the casks. Leave it to Bertie to open them up with axes, but hey, they were mercenaries, bandits and cutthroats. If they weren’t using axes, they’d be doing it wrong. The bonfires roared, warming the cold mountain air enough that they could sit without need for furs and heavy coats, and Saker sat on a log with Attaway at his shoulder as ever.

She didn’t drink. He’d never seen her so much as touch a mug much less take a swig. But she remained nonetheless, hands folded behind her back as she stood at ease. Always the soldier, his Lieutenant. Though any sense of military decorum and fire discipline didn’t stop her from firing a warning shot at the feet of the first person that tried to push a mug into her hands.

“At least make a toast if you’re going to shoot people, Lieutenant,” Saker chuckled. 

“I shot at them sir. There’s a difference.”

He shook his head and took another swig of whiskey.

“Just one toast, Attaway. For ol’ Jimmy’s sake. You don’t have to drink it, just-”

“Jimmy isn’t dead, sir.”

Saker blinked.

“I found him at the pub in Brightwall, quite drunk and missing his clothes. He swears up and down that he’d been drinking with Sir Walter Beck himself. I didn’t believe him at first until the barman confirmed his story.” There was a glimmer in her eye and the corner of her mouth twitched ever so slightly upwards. “I still struggled to believe it as I was under the impression that most knights aren’t known for stripping their drinking companions down to their drawers.”

He blinked again. So Jimmy wasn’t dead? He’d just gotten himself pickled, and by a Knight of all people. Well, that was a relief. Of sorts. One less name to add to the list of the dead. But…

Saker slammed his fist down onto the log and it splintered under the impact. The other mercenaries were too busy imbibing in drink to notice or care.

“When I get my hands on that scrawny little shit, I’ll kill ‘im!” he roared indignantly. “What the hell’s he playing at, getting drunk on the job! And getting stripped at that! That no good, light weight, weasley little-”

“I did warn him that he would need a suitable story to explain his absence and lack of clothing, sir,” Attaway interjected coolly, her eyes still glittering in the firelight. “At least permit him to squirm through his lie first, I’m sure he’s worked quite hard on it.”

Saker grumbled and then threw back his head, downing a burning mouthful of whiskey that he barely tasted. 

He knew he wouldn’t actually kill Jimmy. Maybe make him run laps of the camp, or assign him to repair work or gate duty, but he wouldn’t kill him. He had his code and his honour.

Not that Jimmy would need to know that when he got back. He'd let Attaway have her fun first.