Sea of Ghosts: Maskelyne

Maskelyne is a character from the novel titled "Sea of Ghosts" by Alan Campbell. The novel is set in the mid 1400's (15th century). Races of creatures which seem to use sorcery called the Unmer have spent the last few centuries at war with it, humans and psychics. Eventually they became imprisoned by the psychics who allowed humans to take over much of the world. The free Unmer then released millions of little bottles into the sea called 'sea bottles' which release toxic brine when opened from a seemingly infinite supply. Because of this, the world is slowly flooding with a dangerous sea which burns anyone who touches it, badly disfiguring them.

There is another race of people in this alternate universe, they are the drowned. As you can expect these are people who have drowned in the brine, but through a large chance they come back to life, to live under the brine disfigured, looking up out of the surface of the water to see the world they once lived. Research conducted seems to indicate that the drowned seemingly lose the essence of who they are over time, after a while to only repeat actions they had done before their mind had gone, unsure what they are actually doing or its purpose.

Moving on to Maskelyne; a character which is mentioned quite early in the book is seen as an antagonist. He has a real malicious and cruel side to him, which contrasts with his caring nature toward his son and (in his own opinion) his wife. He is one of the antagonists to Granger, the protagonist of the novel. Maskelyne took Granger's daughter Ianthe to hunt treasure, killed her mother by drowning and took advantage of Ianthe's unnatural skill to see and hear through other people.

He has an obsession with Unmer artifacts. He researches them with great interest, trying to understand how they work. He philosophizes possible ways they could work and in parts of the novel has mentioned scientific theories that are seen to be true in real life such as particles traveling all possible paths at once. This has left him with various weaponry and gadgets which are difficult to use, but are much more powerful than what any human could create. His favorite weapon is a gun which has a human skull around the barrel, which fires a creatures called void flies. These flies basically destroy matter they come into contact with so this is a very dangerous weapon. One hit sunk a full Emperor sized yacht.

Maskelyne has quite a lot of money, likely from the treasure hunting business he runs. When we first meet him in the novel he is introduced to Granger as a prisoner as a plan to trap Granger to get access to Ianthe and her mystical powers. His 'cell' has high ceilings and various things to help him in his interests. This was one component which helped Granger discover that he was Maskelyne which allowed him an attempt to escape. Unfortunately Maskelyne's men caught him later and imprisoned him.

I feel that Maskelyne is roughly middle-aged based on the fact he has a 2 year old son, but also has a lot of experience of the world and even seems to sometimes show his cynical side. Due to having wealth, he is likely well groomed.