*cracks knuckles*
[fieldbox=Holly Corsa, Red, solid, 5, Tahoma&]
Name:Holly Corsa
Age: 26
Occupation: Quartermaster of
The Butcher
Formal Titles:
Heir to Captain Nathaniel Boyle
Vice-Admiral of the Black Fleet
Chief Auditor of The Public Fund
Five Words: Amoral. Methodical. Focused. Loyal. Passionate.
Notable Skills:
Blackpowder Specialist - 'Expert' might be pushing it, but Holly served on the very first gunnery crew on
The Badger and held the title of Master Gunner on
The Butcher before being raised to Quartermaster. She knows her way around both cannon and ordinance.
Pirate People, Dear Readers - Competent sailor, excellent swashbuckler, prodigiously dirty brawler.
The Queen Of Thieves - Holly is an excellent politician. By Pirate standards, this translates to some twisted blend of charisma, easy charm, and being a ruthless, black-hearted bully who will cross every line to maintain her authority.
Neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerd - She's no great philosopher or well-read scholar, but Holly has taken to collecting some of the literature seized through her long career in piracy. She's more versed in the world beyond the sea, piracy, and ledgers than her brutal occupation would suggest.
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[fieldbox=Nation 8 - Lucinda's Freehold, Red, solid, 5, Tahoma]
Nation Number and Name: 8, Lucinda's Freehold
Capital City: Port Vansky
System of Government:
Pirate Republic.
No Kings, No Masters, only Soldiers of the Sea. Lucina's freehold, the so-called free republic of pirates, is home to several dozen independent crews of raiders, treasure hunters, fishermen, whalers, river pirates, ivory poachers, and other lawless water-bound rogues and bandits, collectively known as the Black Fleet, arguably the most powerful naval force in the known world if they could just put their individual self-interests aside for a moment and manage some semblance of cooperation.
More a huge stronghold of crime than an actual country, Law and Order in the Freehold in governed by a Code which, frankly, covers a little too much of commerce and too little about the subject of assault. Individual crew matters are handled democratically; captains are sworn in and deposed based on votes, plunder division is pre-determined, strictly enforced, and taxed. Crime, should they happen within the confines of the crew, will be handled as a private matter.
Aside from the Public Fund, a tax body with positions held from several crews, the only thing resembling leadership come in the form of the captains of the largest crews, the greatest of them effectively being pirate lords with small armadas. Holly is Quartermaster to one Nathaniel Boyle, sailing at the head of ten ships – three of them man-of-wars, and unofficially standing admiral of the Black Fleet should a Call for a defense of the Freehold be issued.
Basic Terrain and Weather:
The Freehold's island hub is a dead hunk of rock formations and pooping seagulls. Perhaps, once, it was a thriving piece of forest, but the rapid push for the Freehold into a sea-faring superpower has stripped the island bare of its verdant lushness, so you can add unmitigated deforestation to the list of environmental crimes. The mainland territory is largely uninhabited, and while timber is still taken in large quantities from those forests, even the greedy Freehold isn't so foolish as to strip such a useful natural barrier against their Amberhomies.
Trade Specialization:
Piracy, Piracy, Piracy. To the common Lucindian, the body of water that stretches from Eldros all the way to the South is known as the Hunter's Sea, and there is much prey for the taking. The Freehold has one rule for those using its trade routes: you pay the toll or you pay in blood. Coastal villages and settlements are often the victims of levies and taxes of one crew or another, and while most piracy stays within the Hunter's Sea, there have been occasional years-long expeditions to the waters of the North-West for less contested plunder.
But the Freehold, too, has much love to give to its nearest neighbor Amberholm. River Pirates, state-sponsored by the Public Fund and far more organized than their naval counterparts, contest the Iressa, harassing river settlements. Poachers often cross into Amberholm territory to hunt the Dwarf Tuskbill, hunted to near-extinction on the mainland portion of the freehold, for its ivory. Pirates, by their very nature, do not make good conservationists.
For slightly more legitimate ventures, treasure hunters scour the Hunter's Sea for treasures from the Old World, Ivory raiders hunt Narwhals and Walruses for their tusks in Frigid Eldros, and Fishermen, well, fish. Which is good and all that, but they really have no sense of territorial boundaries, emboldened by the perceived fact that everything the sea touches belongs to the Lucindian Freehold, and that even men and women on a fishing vessel have at least served some time on a crew prior to retreating to a slightly less hazardous vocation.
Notable or Interesting Facts: For all its many, many moral failings, The Freehold is at least strictly egalitarian and meritocratic. Any able men -or women- can rise the ranks, find his or her own captaincy, and steal and plunder and murder to the best of his or her ability. Rape is frowned upon, slavery is anathema to the free man's creed, and institutional prejudice exists only towards the pirate who truly cannot pull his own weight. The Public Fund is also often employed to help struggling first-time captains to pull through the early woes of their fledging start-up. Socialism yay.
Anything Else: In the same way the landlubbers have domesticated dogs, the Lucindians have tamed seals to hunt for them in open water. They're very adorable – a sentiment that hasn't been held by anyone else for over hundreds of years. The pirates have taken the most loyal and the keenest of the once-friendly pinnipeds and turned them into vicious killers and trackers, their whiskers sensing the turbulence of passing ships from miles away.
Many a merchant have seen a tiny white blob break the water's surface, seen those dead, black eyes and that frozen cat smile look up at them, and know that the Freehold would follow soon after. They are an omen of death, akin to a circling vulture. Killing a seal on the Hunter's Sea is said to be taboo, for the alleged retaliation by the offending pirate crew has been said to be both legendary and incredibly personal.
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