Here's what I have so far for Brennon (with an O, not an A). Of course, I am open to change or suggestions.
He grew up in a seaside town, son of the Madam of a house of pleasure, 'Lady Margaret', now referred to as Old Maggie or Auntie Maggie. She (and her son) are incredibly long-lived for the people of that shadow; Brennon is somewhere close on 99 years old and seems to be in his twenties, while his mother spent more than thirty years at the trade before she retired, and while she now has grey hair she isn't what people would call ancient or cronelike.
The shadow is called <Ixtol>, and the city is Porthaven, called such because of the Eye of the Dragon, a giant whirlpool whose rocky undersea archipelago breaks the surface of the ocean and restricts the sea lanes in the area. Porthaven is somewhere between temperate and sub-tropical in climate, and the northernmost safe port before rounding the cape and entering the Funnel, the safe currents between northern and southern waters.
As a young man, Brennon learned the sea trade and all about the topside and the underside of city life. His mother paid for a number of expensive tutors to keep her son out of trouble, but to little effect, other than forcign a basic education onto him and teaching him how to use a blade. Running away to sea as soon as he was able, his skills and abilities led him to become an officer 'over the bow'. This gave him a broader perspective of every part of how a sailing ship works than most ships' officers, who are introduced to ship life only as midshipmen.
Although he never served in any official military capacity, Brennon worked as sailor, guard, and smuggler on any number of ships in the area, choosing to 'retire' when a man o'war surprised an operation he was a part of, capturing and executing as many of the smugglers as they could find. He escaped into the nearby foothills, and married a homesteader's daughter, Rilma. He built them a cabin on one of the slopes overlooking the city, not far from her father's house, and they raised goats and chickens, with Brennon sneaking into town often to fetch supplies and visit with his mother. Eventually, the furor over the smuggling ring died down, the King's ships left back down south to the capitol, and Brennon went back to more honest sea trade, now with a daughter, Mirelle, to provide for as well.
Life was good for several years, until Brennon came home from a voyage to find his home and many surrounding homesteads had been sacked by an invading force. Unable to take the city, they had decimated the countryside instead. There was no sign of his wife or daughter, but Brennon buried his father-in-law on the mountainside before wandering inland, not really paying attention to or caring about his surroundings.
Brennon doesn't talk much about that time of his life, but he eventually returned to Porthaven as master of his own ship, a strange crew, a dark power, and a haunted look in his eyes. The ship was lovingly sculpted, and fancifully carved, but few people trusted walking near her slip at night, and he never docked her close to the town. People soon learned not to pick fights with his people, not with anything like even odds. While nonhuman travelers were uncommon in Porthaven, it was doubted that any man or woman of the Celessia was even half-human, up to and including her captain, no matter what they looked like while ashore. They were too good; too pretty, too quick with a blade, too strong. And unlike many normal sailors, they obeyed their captain's word even when he wasn't watching, and always went ashore in pairs. With all the rumors surrounding her son, and in mourning for her granddaughter, Lady Margaret finally retired and bought herself a manor amongst the city's lower nobility.
With a marked decrease in open piracy around the city of Porthaven, the King's military ships pretty much left the city alone. Patrolling up and down the southern coast and occasionally through the Funnel, Porthaven was left to itself, its nobles making money off the northern trade, as well as providing an 'open port' to any vessel that paid its harbor fees. This spread corruption and vice throughout the town, but this was nothing new in Porthaven. The ruling class kept things peaceful, even as they laundered stolen property and kept the streets of the upper city 'safe for a young woman to walk alone at night with a pouch full of gold'. Porthaven today is known for being a port full of pirates and smugglers, who are peaceful enough within the stone arms of the bay, and in the triangle between the city, the Funnel, and the Eye of the Dragon. Some of the same crews that are so convivial with each other on the shore are known to actively hunt each other as prey in either the southern or northern waters. People don't wander down to the far dock when Celessia is in port, claiming the ship is possessed, or haunted, or even alive, with strange motions and noises after dark, often accompanied by a woman's sweet laugh, carrying over the water at a far louder volume than any mortal woman's should. And when the Celessia leaves Porthaven, it is said that she doesn't go north or south for her bounties and plunder, but straight through the Dragon's Eye, to the worlds of fantasy and legend beyond.
Brennon is an adventurer and a profiteer. His lonely, solitary journey led him to a place of Power, from which he obtained the ability to walk between worlds, and first heard of the land of Amber, and her Golden Circle connected by avenues in the sea and on land. He met many strange people in his travels, washing up at the house of a retired master shipwright, an elf named Arthos. Near starving, poisoned from whatever he had picked up in his wanderings through swamps and war and plague-torn lands, Brennon was barely conscious and beyond wanting to live. As an elf, Arthos respected all life, and did what he could to heal Brennon's wounds, sending for a doctor to treat the physical injuries, and giving the small man space and compassion to work on the mental wounds. Eventually, with the strangeness of the people and culture about him, Brennon took an interest in life again. He discovered that Arthos' people had a tradition of sea burials, but one where the principle parties went out to sea before they were dead. Supposedly, they were taken to a new land and an afterlife, and Arthos had been one of the shipwrights who made their vessels. With all that Brennon had seen, or could remember from his feverish wanderings, it seemed plausible enough to Brennon at the time. Arthos had been mostly retired from that profession for a number of decades, but he showed Brennon some of the drawings he had made for a number of the small, graceful ships, including some ideas for his own eventual ship. When Brennon asked why Arthos hadn't begun building it yet, he was treated to a whole series of lectures on elven mythology and beliefs. What he took away from it, aside from feeling that his host had quite a lot of very strange beliefs, was that Arthos hadn't found the right material to make it from yet, hadn't felt some sort of mystical urge to begin the work, that would signify his life was to end, and didn't really want to make the usual one-or-two man ship that his people used.
Before he had been deemed skilled enough to build and carve the funeral ships, Arthos had worked on normal sailing ships for the people of the town nearby. Yet he couldn't morally take a crew of others on what would in essence be his death trip. What he had in mind was a ship that could sail itself, one that could provide companionship on his journey without dragging another soul into the afterlife with him. There were woods that could do this, he claimed, in stories and legends. Brennon realized that this was something he could provide the old elf in return; he could travel to places of legend, and if Arthos wanted someone who knew sailing as he knew ships, then Brennon was perfectly willing to sail with him into other worlds.
With just a bit of travelling between worlds, Brennon found several varieties of wood that could imitate life. Most were too rare, or in too small a size or quantity to build a ship. Finally, in a damp steamy jungle where there seemed to be more large predators than things to prey upon, Brennon tracked down a pale, silvery wood that was said to be able to take on life of its own- if it was called forth with blood. The wood, even after being cut, dried, and shaped, could bond with magic and with other woods, strengthening the material and making it valued by spellcasters in making wands, charms, and talismans. While the wood was very expensive in the market, most of its cost was in actually going into the jungle and harvesting one of the giant trees, or sometimes even just a large branch. Brennon went into the jungle and brought back a sample for Arthos to examine, explaining the problem of obtaining it, but not the price to make it live.
Taking a 'back road' into the jungle, Arthos, Brennon, and a party of heavily armed and armored men managed to obtain one of the great magical trees for wood. It wasn't enough to build an entire ship, but it was enough to lay down the keel, form the main ribs of the hull, and to carve the figurehead. with all the parts connected to each other. Arthos' artistry came to the fore as he built, at last, the ship of his dreams. Brennon scoured the local port, as well as many others, to find the best people for his crew. Arthos might have thought he was going to die with this ship (something he had insisted Brennon put in the contract before he would build it), but by then Brennon's good spirits had returned and he was pretty sure he, at least, was going to live past that.
Celessia was a good ship, even as a normal wooden one, and under Brennon's hand she did lead Arthos off into other realms. At time and tides and battles came and went, she seemed to store many of their memories and experiences, sharing them back again with many of the crew in the form of dreams and sometimes waking visions, if the man in question was enough in tune with the motions of the ship. This even worked through her oak decks, and parts of the ship that weren't initially made of the magical wood, but bleached out to the same silvery quality over time. Brennon secretly bled for his ship as well, keeping a written Captain's log, and bringing the memories to mind as he pricked his finger and dripped his blood onto the figurehead every full moon- whenever and wherever that happened to be. At last, the great mass of psychically resonant magical wood reached some sort of internal balance, and the ship began to waken. A few moments of conversation, when the images and memories seemed to respond instead of just replay what had been stored, flickers of color under the silvery skin of the wood, a spar or line seeming almost to adjust itself. Instead of bleaching out further, the Celessia seemed to be slowly taking on color, until one night in a stormy sea, as they were crossing the line between one shadow and another, a giant wave about to crash in on them and running down the waves for all she was worth, Celessia awoke.
With a cry and a flailing of her arms, the figurehead took on color and life, the planks of her hull tightening to resist the water, and her rigging nearly pulling itself out of her crew's hands. She called directions to Brennon back at the wheel, her high voice carrying through the storm, and he held her rudder where she told him. They pulled into the next shadow and with a burst of speed, outran the ends of the storm. The calmer waters and weak sunlight revealed the changes in Celessia. Her hair was now the color of red amber or rich honey, and flowed in the wind. Her arms and face looked like pale skin, with a faint, fine grain running through underneath it. Her eyes were the same grey color as Brennon's own, and she was able to turn her figurehead to speak to or reach those close enough on the upper deck, or those who walked on the small balcony below her. She could also take over her own sails and steering, if the sea and the breeze weren't too strong, and she could tell them where every living thing aboard was located. As well as letting them know what sort of damage she had suffered, and where she wanted repairs.
Celessia also had quite a personality. She enjoyed chasing down ships that were slower, by nature of being dead and fixed in position, than she was. She also liked conversation, and most of her memories were of her crew, past and present, and of Brennon. She treated Arthos like a father, but Brennon was her partner, someone who also heard the calling of the sea to journey to other places, without wanting the ending and the rest that Arthos' people were said to find. And she contained the lives of every sailor who had died aboard her, collecting their memories and storing them as her own before they were consigned to the sea. Celessia is lively and robust, fun-loving and competitive. She dislikes having to play at being 'dumb wood' in harbor, but will do so when asked- for as long as the sun is up and the lighting is good. With so many of Brennon's own memories inside her, though she cannot take absorb more now that she has awakened, she can find him anywhere he goes in shadow, as well as finding any sea lanes that cross between shadows and sometimes making her own.