Sham ap Soorap



Sham ap Soorap is the protagonist (& arguably one of the              heroes) of Railsea.   Shamus Yes ap Soorap

Personality
Sham is generally quiet, & doesn't say half the things he thinks. He frequently questions his own life choices & second-guesses himself, though when he finishes doing this, he is capable of concentrating on doing things.

He greatly dislikes animal cruelty, condoning molehunts only because the moles had an equal chance of wrecking the train as the trainspeople had of killing it, & was shown to be willing to put himself in harm's way to protect small animals from being made to fight for the amusement of people such as Yashkan Worli & Valtis Lind.

Though Sham appears to be kind & softspoken, he is far less so internally, especially towards Captain Naphi, whom he immensely dislikes--though towards the end, he becomes bolder & starts voicing these thoughts.

Out of dedication to their cause, Sham is very loyal to the Shroake siblings & will go to great lengths to help them out, though he does find their inability to take things slowly exasperating at times.

Appearance
Not awful lot of detail is put into describing Sham's appearance, though it is said that he has short brown hair & is somewhat overweight. It can be assumed that he isn't very tall--maybe short, even--as he is stated to be the same height as Captain Naphi.

Character Arc
By the start of the story, Sham's guardians Troose & Voam have coerced him into taking a job as an apprentice doctor on the moletrain Medes, a job which he dislikes & is utterly incompetent at. He goes about his life on board with much cynicism & irritation, especially with the captain. However, when the Medes finds a wrecked train & are obligated to investigate, Sham finds a memory card containing pictures, one of which depicts something that shouldn't exist: a single rail, not surrounded by other rails, but just there by itself. Another one of the pictures depicts two children who appear to be from Manihiki, sitting under an arch made of salvage. Captain Naphi destroys the pictures, much to Sham's dismay, & orders him to forget about them. Sham, however, makes it his goal to find these two children & ask what the single rail picture was all about, however is unable to do this due to Captain Naphi's obsessive persuit of the mole Mocker-Jack.

Eventually, the Medes does stop in Manihiki, & Sham tries to ask about the children & their arch, however is told nothing until he meets a salvor called Travisande Sirocco, who tells him where they are. The two children are called Caldera & Caldero Shroake, though Caldero abbreviates his name to Dero because it is extremely similar to that of his older sister & could confuse people. The Shroake siblings are going to find the single rail depicted in the picture, which was taken by their late parents at some point when they were younger, & ask Sham to go with them, which he does not.

Later, Sham is taken captive by pirates who want information about the Shroake siblings--but rumor gets out that he is with Sirocco. He escapes from the pirate train Tarralesh when it is blown up by the Manihiki ferronavy, however he ends up stranded on an island trying to escape from the Manihiki ferronavy themselves, who turned out to also want information. He nearly starves, but is saved by a tribe called the Bajjer, & eventually returned to the Medes, where he informs the crew of what's going on with the Shroakes & their quest.

The Medes attempts to cross the bridge to Heaven, however they are attacked by the 'guardian angel,' a rail angel in charge of keeping intruders out. Sham & Sirocco use a two-way tracker to lure in Mocker-Jack, which kills both Mocker-Jack & the angel, causing the now ex-captain Naphi to attempt suicide, which Sham prevents by stabbing her through the left hand, pinning her to the back of the train.

Sham, along with the Shroake siblings & Naphi, crosses the bridge to Heaven, where he meets a group of people who seem to be primitive degenerate versions of some gods worshipped across the railsea, such as That Apt Ohm, who tell the main characters about a bill that the whole world has owed for use of the rails for eons. Sham becomes angry & tells That Apt Ohm that that much money doesn't exist in the entire world, & that the bill will never be paid. The degenerate god, irate, attempts to drown Sham--but Sham is rescued by Naphi & the crew of the Medes, who came on board a dead angel to "have a quick look-see."

In the end, Sham, the Shroakes, & Naphi set off to explore the sea (the actual sea, not the railsea) using a makeshift boat made from an upturned train with sails.