BASICS

[Tye]

MY information
Name: Ollie
Age: 21
Contact Info: Please PM
Other Character: N/A
Where'd you find us? Georgia
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TITUS

MY basics
Name: Titus
Nickname: N/A
Age: 21
Date of Birth: October 12, 1754

MY body
Face Claim: Djimon Hounsou
Hair: Black
Eyes: Brown
Physical Description:

Titus is a barrel-chested, broad-shouldered man, powerfully built and nothing short of massive at six feet tall. Years of grueling labour as a slave on his master’s plantation have left him with a hideous, twisting mass of ropy scars on his back, but have also given him an iron resilience and strength. He appears as permanent and immovable as a mountain when still, and yet there is the suggestion of great energy and terrifying speed hidden within him. He is dark and hard-faced, with the strength in his features of his Asante warrior's heritage. A quick, flashing grin is rarely seen on his features.

MY thoughts
Personality:

Titus is a man of indomitable spirit and will. Nothing can frighten him or even give him pause. Though he is forced to submit to the will of his master, Corlies, he refuses to let go of his pride. Corlies brought him to town because he needed a house servant that would look well in livery in order to display to society his wealth and power. However, Titus has come into contact with his own society in Trenton and along with other men with the same dreams as he, ways to resist in secret. Through the still that he and a few other slaves and black freemen run on the edges of town; through the night meetings where they speak in low voices of the news from the other colonies, the war they see coming, what it might hold for their own - and always, of freedom.

Titus dreams of freedom, but his dreams embrace a greater horizon than his own future. He wants freedom for every African slave on American soil - and he wants vengeance on those who have made them suffer. He believes his chance may be coming soon. The other men who make their plans with him are placed in some of the best houses of Trenton, and ignored and forgotten like so much furniture, they overhear the secrets of the 'good' white familes that own them as well as the news that filters down. He cared nothing for the whispers of rebellion against the Crown at first, until he began to realise what a new government could bring. There are those among the Patriots who speak out against slavery; it is with these that Titus hopes to throw in his lot.

Although Titus is illiterate, he is by no means stupid; he is clever and well-spoken, with a certain charisma that makes him well-liked among the slaves in Trenton. He can be trusted to stand by his word without trying to cheat, even when dealing with an enemy. Perhaps his greatest flaw is that he is reckless when his blood is up. He can be provoked into speaking out with a tongue that has more than once earned him a flogging, and if pushed far enough, he will fall to violence. Though he has a great deal of physical courage, his volatility and stubbornness are a dangerous combination of traits for a slave.

Raised with a strange mixture of Christian ideology and Asante tradition, Titus holds an amorphous faith in God but none in churches. Though ostensibly, Titus is a Quaker - John Corlies claims to have raised all his slaves in the Quaker faith - Corlies' hypocrisy is evident, and Titus rejects the baby along with the bathwater. However, he doesn't hold with the superstition of Tabitha, who raised him, either. The strange rituals she performs and the stories she's told him are only so much nonsense to him. Although he holds a certain liking that he'll never admit to for the tales she'd tell him when he was small.

Likes:

• Moonshine brandy
• Fairness
• Honour
• Horses
• Freedom
• Dice
• Tall tales
• Things that go Boom

Dislikes:

• John Corlies
• William Corlies
• Bad moonshine brandy
• Hypocrisy
• Cowardice
• Failure
• Backsliders
• Cards

MY past
Loyalty: None (Will be Tory in the end, though, as soon as Dunmore's Proclamation is issued)
Family: Blood mother, Patty (deceased)
Foster mother, Tabitha
Foster brother, Scipio
History:

Titus (given no other name) was born in Monmouth County, in the colony of New Jersey, on the plantation of the Quaker farmer John Corlies. His mother was a slave, Patty; his father could have been anyone. Patty died not long after the birth. No doctor would be called to assist a slave, and with only the rough assistance of the other women on the plantation, she took a fever and wasted away inside of brief days. Titus was given to another slave woman, Tabitha, one who already had a child of her own. She raised the two boys alongside each other without making a distinction between the two. Roughly the same age, Scipio and Titus grew up as close as blood brothers.

They were barely able to walk when they were first put to work. Too small for more heavy labour, they walked behind the field hands during their first harvest, gleaning what fell to the ground and was missed. There was no time for the two to play – Corlies’ principles would not allow him to countenance ‘idleness’ among his slaves, though he saw no difficulty in fun and games for his own children. Yet somehow Titus and Scipio found happiness in these early years.

That changed as they grew older and became stronger, and were put to harder and harder work. Unending labour, without the hope of anything different, made life barely worth living. Corlies was one of the hardest masters in New Jersey. Only sheer animal tenacity kept Titus alive – that and looking out for Scipio. His brother was always smaller and weaker, suffering from severe asthma, and would fall behind in his work; Titus struggled to keep Corlies from finding out, knowing that Scipio would be sold away.

He was barely out of boyhood, only thirteen, when Scipio’s weakness could not be hidden any longer. His brother was sold away from the plantation to be a house-servant to a gentleman in town, and Titus had nothing left except his aging foster-mother. A week after his brother was sold marked Titus’ first attempt to run away. He was hunted down and caught within a day, and flogged viciously. This was the beginning note of a long struggle between Titus and Corlies. Death would have been his lot had he refused to submit to the will of his master, yet he rebelled in small ways however he could. Over the years he was beaten, whipped, and humiliated, but never crushed.

When the Declaration of Independence was made in April of 1775, the news meant nothing to Titus. What did he care for the tyranny of the British King across the ocean when he suffered far worse from the commonplace tyrant who owned him? Although Corlies, under the Quaker laws should have released Titus from his slavery when he was to turn 21, Corlies absolutely refused to do it; he would keep Titus and work him until the day he died. Nothing changed for Titus when he grew from boy to man, nor seemed like it was ever likely to, until the day that Corlies moved his family to the growing city of Trenton and took Titus with them as the household servant, choosing him primarily for his impressive height.

[Lady Liberty]

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