Giovanni "Pilot" Pilota

Giovanni Brewtaker, better known as Pilot, is the current Vice-Admiral of The Pirate State of Barbossa.

Early Life
Giovanni was found by some Barbossan citizens, unconscious in a rowboat that had beached on the Isle of Krakens. They could not exactly determine age, so they assumed he was around 8. They also couldn't find any information about him, but there was a folded up uniform in the boat he arrived in, with the name 'Giovanni' embroidered inside the collar. He spent the rest of his short-lived childhood as an orphan in the Isle, engaging in theft and other small crime to keep himself fed.

Barbossa had been under Uraka throughout his whole life, so he never got to experience the freedom of Barbossa before the invasion. Although, there was no shortage of stories. These stories inspired Giovanni, who would eventually sneak onto a ship, which he believed to be a pirate ship. However, this was no pirate ship. It was an Irulani merchant ship. It was on a short voyage back to the Irulani mainland, so Giovanni figured it would instead serve as his first maritime adventure.

Well, he was right, this would be an adventure. Not a pleasant one, though. The night after leaving port, he was discovered sleeping in a barrel. The sleep-deprived sailor s that found him decided to put him to work scrubbing the deck, which he would spend all of 5 minutes doing. The ship hit a rock, and began rapidly sinking. The shore was close, so Giovanni jumped from the ship, swimming for the coast. This proved a good idea, as he was the only one to make it back. Nobody knows what happened to the other sailors, but their bodies were never found.

After this, Giovanni fell madly in love with the sea, despite it almost taking his life. When he turned 18, he enlisted into the Barbossan military. Not long after joining, he was assigned to a patrol vessel, which ended up sinking 3 ships while Giovanni served on it. Giovanni, as well as most of the Barbossan military, was sent south to prepare for the upcoming war with the USSE. He eventually took charge of securing Al-Basaad, the fort in which Barbossa would be attacking the USSE from.

During the Battle of Al-Basaad, Giovanni was tasked with overseeing its defense. This would be easy, as the battle ended up being won is under 3 minutes. After the battle, Giovanni was promoted to Oligarch of the newly (re)formed De Vrijmasten Raden, and would go on to be adopted into the Brewtaker family by Erova Brewtaker.

Time in DVR / DE
As an oligarch, Giovanni would go on to build the city of Porto di Stelle, and would even govern his own province, Sirenia. Although he didn't know it yet, Sirenia would become very important in his, as well as De Vrijmasten Raden's history.

During a small border crisis with Alodia, they would reach out to Giovanni, assuming him to be leaning away from DVR. He joined their group, but used his position to peacefully settle the dispute between the 2 nations. These negotiations showed major flaws in DVR's diplomacy, however, which led to Giovanni to becoming the Head Diplomat of DVR, due to his level-headedness. When DVR and Bardonia eventually formed the Dandelion Empire, his title of Head Diplomat carried over to the new empire.

When it was exposed that Michael Imperium was plotting a Sylvanian-backed revolution in the province of New Novice, Giovanni led a swift anti-revolutionary sweep of the province. Michael was banished from all lands of the Dandelion Empire, which now included the newly gained territories of Oceanum and Vladigrad.

Old Banners' Rebellion / Barbossan Independence
As the empire of Uraka began to crumble, conquered nations and vassals plotted an empire-wide revolution. All at once, they declared independence from Uraka, leading it to rapidly collapse. Barbossa was one of these nations, and reformed into a new nation. Giovanni, along with some old Barbossan officials, parted from DVR and took their places in their homeland. When the government was restructured, Giovanni was appointed to Vice-Admiral.

Vice-Admiral
Barbossa itself was a broken land. The War of the Black Flag weakened Barbossa, and the Valorant War destroyed it. Giovanni found the Isle, his hometown, abandoned. Holes still dotted the citadel from wars long ago, and the rest of Barbossa was in a similar shape. Ruins littered the land, and roads were torn up. There was also a new problem, in the form of Squatistan. Squatistan took advantage of the chaos caused by the rebellion and claimed a sizeable chunk of Barbossa, later selling the land to Helsia. On top of this, multiple new settlements had sprung up in Barbossa.

Barbossa had already lost a lot of land, so Giovanni reached out to the leaders of these cities, and was able to get Sindara and High Guard to join under Barbossa. With this, he was free to clean up the land. He began tearing down the ruins and repairing the roads, while other members of Barbossa expanded the Isle. Giovanni also singlehandedly built the island city of Siren's Bay, which would later merge into the larger Port Rosa. Around this time, Giovanni began to notice something odd with his appearance. A strange liquid had been slowly building up around his eyes, and what seemed like black cracks formed on his forehead, and a distinctly large one under his right eye. He began searching through archives, searching for something to explain his condition, eventually coming across a book with a note on it. The note read; "To Giovanni, you were holding onto this when I found you. Hopefully I remembered to give this to you when you learned to read." He had never seen this book before, and began to look through it. In the book, it stated that he had, in an apparently previous life, found a fountain of youth, and drank from it. This caused him to be reverted to an infant, although would cause him to age much slower starting at his teen years. This explained why he looked drastically younger than people his age.

Reading further through the book, he found a line that made his heart sink. It explained a ritual he was supposed to do every 50 years, in order to maintain the fountain's effect. Giovanni had turned 51 just a couple days prior, meaning he had missed the timeframe to perform the ritual. Giovanni, realizing that he would quickly wither away, began frantically looking for something to explain the ritual, as the rest of the pages in the book were clearly torn out.

Over the next few days, his condition began to worsen, but another problem reared its head. Barbossa was a dead nation, and Giovanni was one of only a few inhabitants. A few ex-Uraki officials had approached Giovanni, explaining their plan to "revive and rebrand the empire." Giovanni wanted none of it, and met with Sariel and Ein. Due to many factors, including Uraka, they came to the conclusion that Barbossa would not survive in its current state.

They all decided that the best course of action would be to have Tortuga watch over its land. And, with this decision, the three of them went their separate ways. Giovanni eventually found the missing pages under a barrel in the tavern, and set sail to an unknown land to attempt to remedy his withering.

Yet Another Return
While he was out, Giovanni overheard rumors from sailors at a harbor that the old leadership of Barbossa was getting together again to re-establish it. He wasted no time gathering his belongings and setting sail for Eldham once more. He also learned about the ritual, and was frustrated with its simplicity. All he had to do was spill some of his own blood over a palm leaf covered in ricin oil, no specific time or location. The problem was getting ricin oil, as none was available in the area around Barbossa.

When he arrived at the Isle, he found it abandoned. He assumed everyone had left, following the departure of the leadership. He eventually wandered back into his old home in the cove, and began giving a speech to an imaginary crowd below him.

"As long as I have been here, I have walked in the shadow of a once great empire. I would listen to the ghostly murmurs of beings long dead, and paced a gallery of homes once inhabited by legends. Long have I yearned for a way to experience it, witness the golden age of piracy in Eldham. Even in my brief run as Vice-Admiral, I could only wish for the good old days, the age of people I can only hear about today, but never hear from. Sometimes I can still hear the clashing of swords, the screams of men as they lie dying, the rumbles of explosions that rocked the citadel. However, it has always saddened me that these memories were never my own."

His speech was interrupted by the sound of footsteps and water being pushed around coming from the old shrine of the Silver Captain. And then, he came into view. The Silver Captain stood at the mouth of the tunnel, a massive grin slicing across his face. Before Giovanni could get out another word, the Captain yelled,

"BLOOD AND BONE FOR THE KRAKEN!"

The air instantly went cold, and all a once, the empty homes of the Isle filled with laughter. Apparitions of dead pirates appeared around him, filling the deprived space of the cove. He heard the sound of bottles being slammed against tables from the tavern above him. The streets of the Isle of Krakens were filled with the voices of pirates, only this time, they weren't ghosts. Giovanni was overcome with adrenaline. He ran down to the Captain, just as Ein emerged from his house. Someone yelled from the top of the waterfall, and looking up, Giovanni saw Phillip Brewtaker dangling a bottle of rum over the edge.

Venture to Qadakh
After a few days, Giovanni decided to perform the ritual, and be done with his degradation. He began to ask around if anyone knew where ricin oil was available, and he learned that it was only sold in The Free City, in Qadakh. Realizing that he would have to travel literally to the other corner of the world, Giovanni frantically rushed to gather his things and start his long journey.

After traveling for over a month, he finally reached the port of The Free City. He instantly rushed through the market, desperately searching for whoever sold the ricin oil. He eventually found the man, who then sold Giovanni the oil. He went into a bathroom, and immediately started the ritual. He placed a palm leaf on the sink, but as he was pouring the ricin oil on the leaf, a shard of his face fell to the floor. Panicking, he looked in a nearby mirror. He noticed that the large crack under his left eye was replaced with a hole that stretched from where the crack used to be, over to just under his hairline. Coming from the hole, was a dark mist that barely poured out of the opening. There was a small, dim light where his eye used to be. He looked back down at the shard of his face on the ground. It wasn't fleshy, there were no fragments of skull. Instead, it seemed to be made of porcelain.

He realized that he was wasting time, and used a small dagger to cut his hand, causing blood to fall from the wound. As soon as a drop hit the leaf, the leaf disintegrated into dust. Giovanni looked back into the mirror to see if anything had changed, but nothing happened. He read through the book again, and read a line he must have missed before;

"Upon completion of the ritual, the effects of withering will cease. However, the effects will not be reversed, and any damage caused by it is impossible to undo."

In a fit of rage, Giovanni threw the book at the mirror, shattering it. He looked back at the fragment of his face, which had now turned to a pile of dust, just as how the leaf had. He left the bathroom and began to look at the city around him, quickly falling in love with its beauty. In his desperation, he failed to even realize how far he had traveled, and learned that a return to his home would be impossible for the time being. So, he decided to stay in Qadakh.

He built his own house and started to interact with the locals. He even assisted in the construction of the dome on top of the Great Palace.