Elijah always dreamed of becoming a playwright. With five older brothers and two older sisters, his position in the Grey estate was one of luxury and a quiet sort of loneliness that he welcomed gladly. With focus spent on his brothers, he was often left to his own devices and the love he found for the theater was both encouraged and indulged by his parents as it kept him out of trouble.

It was a matter of fate that he would be loaned a servant’s coat when he caught chill in the theater one night, and that he would be mistaken for common rabble by a captain’s needy crew. Pressed into service, his consequent disappearance caused a furious manhunt financed by his father as well as grandparents on both sides determined for him to be found.

It was six months of grueling work and an intensity of closeness for a boy used to both a pampered lifestyle and a certain amount of isolation, but in that time Elijah found himself changed by the call of the sea and the brotherhood of the sailors who banded around him. For this reason, he stood against his father’s wrath against captain and crew, insisting they had not known and pleading adamantly enough for their lives that they were spared; little did he think the act would be remembered.

Enamored by his time at sea, Elijah immediately beset upon his father for a commission. At barely fourteen years of age and known for his frequent bouts of ill-health, he was immediately denied and when he persisted his father distracted him by way of a full season of opera in Italy.

With his eldest brother married and set in place to inherit the estate, two older brothers holding prominent positions in the army, and two more besides with promising political careers ( not to mention his sister’s husbands, a baron of pleasant reputation and a highly acclaimed military strategist respectively ) there was absolutely no need for Elijah to get involved with – of all things – the King’s Navy!

Obsessed despite his father’s efforts, Elijah’s writings and poems shifted toward his call for the sea, and he would sit in the theater and half engage in his favorite actors and actresses while secretly reading nautical textbooks. Two years later, he sang his hopes and dreams to his mother and sought her assistance in convincing his father – between the two of them and Elijah’s obvious efforts, His Grace relented and permitted the purchase of commission.

Elijah enjoyed six years as a midshipman before he made it any further – for while he was offered opportunity to take the lieutenants exam on multiple occasions, he had no desire for leadership and only wished to sail and write his poems in the off time. Elijah feared so much command, but his father started to pressure him to show ambition in his career or find himself decommissioned and returned home immediately. Unwilling to lose the sea, Elijah took his examination when next it was presented and passed with flying colors.

Stationed aboard a ship that claimed two prizes barely three months after he achieved his new station, Elijah found himself acting captain for four months before being drawn to the admiralty by his father’s machinations. Commissioned to captain a ship amid the fleet to be led by Pellew into France in a bid to reclaim her from Napoleon and the revolutionaries, the young lord found himself attacked not long after gaining his orders and being directed to return to the docks.

Stabbed in the side, Elijah made it back in time to warn that the orders had been stolen – but between his injury and his weak constitution, he fainted out before he could. When he came to, the fleet had already departed and there was nothing to be done while he remained laid up under the surgeon’s care.

His mother and father engaged in a rampant argument over the efforts His Grace took to force his son higher than he wished to go and the surgeon granting dire warning that he must be careful not to strain himself all fell deaf upon him as he waited as long as he could manage before getting up and penning a letter explaining why he had to leave. With that managed, Elijah rushed to the docks and breathed a sigh of relief to find his still in the harbor – another sent in her place, no doubt.

Short several men, Elijah went to a nearby tavern to finish filling up his roster and met with the men of his past, the ones who introduced him ( however violently ) to the sea in the first place. Explaining to the seniors among them his need and intentions, Elijah found them all willing to assist, and was underway just as his father’s carriage reached the docks. His Grace’s bellowing could be heard until they reached the open waters, by which point, Elijah had gone below to rest.

With all haste mustered, Elijah and his men raced after the fleet in the hopes of warning them in time. They saw the return ships, but not the Indefatigable and so, they sailed on until they met with her to escort her home. Elijah’s journey, since, are adventures yet to be seen.

He remains captain of HMS Siren and provides his assistance where he may; his father no longer interferes with his career, though his mother wishes him home and even his brothers write to bid him back, all of them aware of how his health has faded since his injury – but there is nothing that will call Elijah from the sea save the King – at which point, he rests easy only in the theater.