Jack Taylor

Jack Taylor was the first mate of a ship known as the Velvet Lady in the 1860s-1870s. Unbeknownst to the rest of the crew, Taylor was a Slasher, a serial killer who took his pleasures out on prostitutes when visiting various ports. During one such adventure, he fell afoul of Dr. Friedrich Magnussen, leader of the Serpent Brotherhood, a malevolent secret society of serial killers and other murderers. Magnussen saw the potential in Taylor, and inducted him into the cult.

While serving on the ship, Taylor entered a fierce but initially good-natured rivalry with a young sailor known as William Astley, who worked himself up to becoming the second mate of the ship. On one fateful trip the ships’ Captain took sick and died while at sea. The first mate assumed command and wanted to continue with their trip but William cautioned him to return to Portsmouth, since they were only a few days out and the delay would be minimal in the long run. It was this action that led William to earn the true enmity of the first mate, Jack Taylor. Being second mate, now first mate due to the death of the Captain, William worked hard under the new Acting Captain and when they had eventually returned to Portsmouth William and the First Mate gave their statements and handed over the ships log. The senior partners in the Company agreed with William that the ship should have returned to port. Because of this, the company agreed to make William the new captain of the Velvet lady and Jack Taylor would remain First Mate.

As one would expect, this didn't sit well with Jack. He felt that he was being snubbed by the trading company and felt his hatred towards William grow.

Captain William's first task was to sail to Dublin, and transport some cargo and passengers back to Portsmouth, but on the way back, Jack Taylor and his loyalists took matters into their own hands. William, alongside an albino passenger from Dublin, Abigail O'Malley, was thrown overboard to drown.

Taylor's first act as the new captain was to divert the Velvet Lady from its original course and take the remaining passengers as hostage. In Dublin, he received instructions from his master to acquire the flask of Ybalashi from a black market vendor in Tangier. However, after taking the flask, Taylor became obsessed by the powers of its inhabitant and instead of returning it to his master, he began using the bottle as a means of realizing his most cruel desires on the captives, and then on his own crew. For the next several months, Taylor used the Velvet Lady as his own pleasure ship, using Ybalashi's power to hide from authorities and occasionally dock at ports.

Eventually, everyone but Taylor was dead on the ship, and so he retreated to the bottle's inner realm. With time, the Velvet Lady drifted into Portsmouth in 1873, much to astonishment of the authorities, who took Ybalashi's bottle with them as evidence. Later, at the police station, Taylor returned from the bottle, and used its powers to escape from the station in a suitably brutal fashion.

Taylor planned to eliminate his former master and the rest of the Serpent Brotherhood, by visiting the nearby Windham Estate during a masquerade held shortly afterwards the Velvet Lady's arrival. Using the bottle, he wished for everyone at the estate to "disappear". Ybalashi interpreted this wish in a characteristically literal fashion, and dragged everyone present into her realm, save for Taylor.

His fate afterwards is not known.