"Luxor" Jones

Maxwell Jones was a merchant sailor, running sugar from the Americas to locations in the Old World, and became dismayed with the treatment of the slaves on the plantations with which he did business. After being stiffed by a warehouse owner in the city of Luxor, he decided that he had had enough of that life, and turned to piracy, performing his first act thus on that same warehouse. Taking the name of that city for himself then as a sign of new beginnings, he returned to the New World and began liberating slave colonies along the coast. He met Della Rose on one of these raids, and as a reward for his spirit, she gave him a very special tattoo: a great ship on his back, which gave him an intimate connection with whatever vessel he served on.

This was less than ideal when he died following one of his raids, when the Spanish Fleet finally ran him down and meted out their justice. He felt every cannonball that crashed through her hull, and was senseless even before she began to sink. Della’s gift drew the attention of Davy Jones, and when Luxor arrived at the Locker, the Lord of the Deep peeled his skin from him before stripping away his flesh, giving it back to him afterward as a long coat so he could keep Della’s gift. At the Isle, he acquired a less powerful but also less painful tattoo from Nightwatchman Vela: a working compass, on the inside of his left sleeve. Both tattoos served him well aboard the Graveyard Galleon.

After being thusly blessed, or cursed, for a time, Luxor began to pine for life again; the fresh breath of the sea air touching his skin, the simple, sharp, and spicy joy of a mug of grog... so one day, he went out onto the seas and killed a lad during a raid, putting his own soul into the body and reanimating it through forbidden magic, taught to him by none other than his friend, Vela the Wretched. As the flesh returned to his bones, he pulled in his first breath in an age - and set to work, slicing the tattoos from his coat, peeling away his own, newly-formed skin, and grafting his blessed ink back onto his flesh. Upon his return to the Isle, he quit the Nightwatch (whom he had only served a short time), and instead signed on with Captain “Sea-legs” Syd aboard the Sunken Cephalopod, revelling in the sun and honest work, though endlessly curious as to why Davy Jones had let him out of his contract so quickly. He endeavored not to look this gift horse in the mouth as well as he could.