Editing Pirate (section)

== Types of Pirate ==
[[File:Piratepainting.jpg|300px|thumb|right|Why do we bury our treasure? Why don't we spend it? On nice things? Or things we like?]]

'''Buccaneers''' - The first major Caribbean pirates, operating in large numbers throughout most of the 17th century until the empires became strong enough to drive them out. The buccaneers, or, to de-Anglicize the term, boucaniers, were named not for their raiding but for their use of boucans to smoke and dry meat. Largely situated on the island of Hispaniola, where the most profitable sugar plantations in the New World were situated, they lived in the jungles to the north, out of the reach of Spanish and French authorities. They were the outlaws of the New World, men and women who usually had no world to return to: deserters from warships and colonial militaries, criminals fleeing Europe, escaped slaves, everybody that needed a little bit more than just a job on a ship on a long voyage to hide. Originally, they just hunted and chilled out in the woods, raiding only occasionally when it was convenient, but when the Spanish started trying to wipe out the animals they lived on and trying to drive them off of the land, many of them moved to raiding full time, leading to: 

'''The Pirates of the Caribbean''' - These guys are a little more complicated, so let's set the stage first. As soon as Columbus got back and the Spanish Empire, finished with the Moors and looking for someone else to beat up, really got going, the great Atlantic powers of Europe wanted to develop their own colonial empires in the New World. Unfortunately for everyone else, the Spanish and Portuguese crowns claimed everything they could stick a flag on, then claimed everything else just to be safe. This was about as enforceable as a speed limit in Texas. Spain was strong, but not strong enough that it didn't have to pick and choose what to defend, and England and France soon claimed large, also poorly defended chunks of the New World. While wars would rage between empires until Spain got its final colonial asskicking in the Spanish-American War, there was a constant low-key running battle between anyone and everyone in the Caribbean, as everyone was in easy striking distance of something and commerce raiding was easy. England, France, and whoever else could defend a fort and a flagpole for a few growing seasons relied mostly on commerce and plantation farming for their colonial revenue, but Spain had another, more pressing interest in the Caribbean. One of the first things that the conquistadors did once they got the Aztecs to stop sacrificing Mexicans to the gods was to start sacrificing Mexicans to the gold and silver mines. This revenue travelled across the sea to Spain in massive treasure fleets carrying absurd sums in bullion, coinage, and funny doodads stolen from temples. Stealing this money both funds your own operation and makes the financially unstable Spanish crown even more so, so the English began paying privateers to raid the Spanish whenever they were at war. As soon as the war ended(and, let's be honest, until it inevitably started again), there was a surplus of heavily armed ships and men who knew exactly how they could get very rich very quickly. Some colonial governors carried on an unofficial policy of "no peace beyond the line," turning a blind eye to raids as long as they weren't against their own nation's shipping. You can see where this is going.

A life of piracy in the Age of Sail was not fun. The utter chaos of exchanging fire at three hundred yards with guns that splinter twenty inches of layered oak then boarding another ship and beating the everloving shit out of everyone on it tends to result in nasty injuries of the kind that kill or maim permanently. Life at sea was hard; water and food went bad fast and you were stuck with a couple hundred other stinky fucks in a big wooden box that might sink if something, like a storm or a much bigger warship or some drunk idiot, fucks up the extremely complicated system of ropes and canvas that keeps it moving forward. To top if all off, if you were caught you were hanged, with not much change for reprieve. However, all of this was more or less the same in the merchant or naval service and being a pirate A. meant you wouldn't get flogged for not saluting some 12 year old kid whose father paid for him to be a midshipman, B. eliminated the danger of being raided by pirates, as you are, in fact, now a pirate, and C. paid WAY more than a sailor's wages and had a more equal distribution of prize money when a ship was taken than the navies at the time would give. For these reasons, piracy remained popular until the empires got strong enough to put a stop to it by force, and places like Port Royal, Tortuga, and Nassau, beyond the reach of the law, just being conveniently ignored by it or had its govenors bribed, intimidated or otherwise be in on the jig themselves (South Carolina and Virginia were infamous for not giving a single fuck about pirates docking in their harbours, as long as the pirates obeyed the local rules and occasionally threw a sack of dubloons their way), were filled with men who would get kicked out of the Disney Imagineering offices before the interview, even if they could sing perfectly. These are the pirates of pop culture, partly because of our enduring fascination with people who tell the biggest bullies around to suck it and survive, and also because these pirates encouraged ludicrous tales about their atrocities, as they made people surrender without a fuss (and probably impressed the whores), which would eventually blend with reality and become the tales that survive to this day of the lives of real pirates. They often used smaller, shallow-draft vessels that let them hide in swamps and rivers where bigger ships couldn't chase them, and the romantic images from Pirates of the Caribbean movies exaggerate quite a bit on how well-organized and well-armed they might be, but the flamboyant dress, fueled by frequent theft of expensive cloth bound for the colonial elite, was real, albeit probably extremely dirty. The Jolly Rogers, the black flags that said "Gimme ur shit n00b ill rek ur ass" to all merchant captains unlucky enough to see them, were real as well, coming in many forms but often featuring the same motifs: skulls and skeletons, hourglasses, swords, blood, etc. In regards to the popular legend of successful pirates burying their treasure; this was largely a myth perpetuated by Treasure Island. Pirates ended up taking most of their ill-gotten goods in the form of trade goods which had to be sold or bartered off, and the average pirate hand would piss away most of their gold on boozing and whoring. Occasionally, pirate captains who could accumulate large amounts of solid metal currency ''would'' bury treasure on occasion, usually just for insurance (and even then, it was only done sparingly): in the event that they were captured, they'd use their hidden loot as a bargaining chip to save them from the noose. This didn't work all the time, as the captors either couldn't be bribed or didn't buy the story. Still, the mystique of a lost and forgotten treasure trove just waiting to be discovered made for great stories in taverns full of adventurers, so legends about buried treasure persisted throughout the centuries in fictional writing. Plank walking is hardcore as fuck and cool and dramatic and completely imaginary, invented by authors and artists for those reasons. Why go to all that fuss when you can just stab the bastard and chuck him over the side? King George's Act of Grace, the actions of Woods Rogers, a pirate hunter as legendary as the pirates themselves, and the increasingly obvious fact that Britannia ruled pretty much every wave from Spithead to Montego Bay, mostly got rid of these guys, but they live on in our imaginations.

'''Privateers''' - Not pirates per se, but many pirates started out as privateers, or, in the case of those like Henry Morgan, waffled back and forth as the situation allowed. Roughly the naval equivalent to land-based mercenaries, these sailed on privately, (probably) legally owned ships who were employed by their home country to raid enemy supply lines (or in rare cases, rival nations that are not at war). Typically a privateer carried "Letters of Marque and Reprisal" to show the legality of their actions; it was only if they stepped outside the bounds of the letter or otherwise lost it that they'd become pirates.  Some were even captained by commissioned officers of their host nation and provided access to naval facilities and supplies as de facto navy vessels.  But even so, enemy nations would sometimes ignore the letters of marque (not without justification, since letters would often be rendered invalid or else forged easily enough to fool the illiterate) and hang captured crews as pirates instead of kept as prisoners of war.  Nevertheless, there was rarely a shortage of eager sailors for privateering, as the potential pay for taking a ship as a prize was very lucrative. Of course the opposite was also true; under King George's Act of Grace, former pirates who renounced their ways would be pardoned and hired as privateers to raid the Spanish. Although they mostly did things like turn Port Royal into Ancapistan, raiding Spanish commerce at the encouragement of English merchants, some captains licensed as privateers did some pretty impressive stuff, usually combining their military obligations with the chances of huge personal enrichment. In a story too long to put here but worth reading, Henry Morgan himself organized multiple raids on Spanish cities, most famously assembling thousands of men and dozens of ships, all legally not pirates under his letters of marque, and sacking the city of Panama, making off with everything not nailed down, and living out a long, happy life retired inland on Jamaica, becoming one of the fat old bastards he once stole from and earning the respect and love of both sides of the law. 

'''[[Vikings]]''' - Scandinavian pirates with badass beards. Despite common depictions, their helmets did not have horns. Existed long before the Caribbean pirates, and they sure made themselves famous all over medieval Europe. "Vikings" specifically were raiders, but the Norsemen often sailed their great ships through the rivers and seas of Europe on missions of trade and settlement, stealing, selling, and leaving graffiti as far away as Constantinople. Nevertheless, when they went raiding they were brutal, taking slaves, burning villages, and doing unspeakable things to sheep across northern Europe and the British Isles until the early Christian saints finally proselytized them into submission.

'''Corsairs''' - Also known as Barbary pirates. They mainly came from North Africa and most of their attacks were focused on capturing slaves rather than stealing loot, although they wouldn't turn it down if they found it. They operated primarily in the Mediterranean sea, but were known to sail as far north as Iceland, depopulating small islands that have yet to recover centuries later. Nations could avoid having their ships attacked if they paid a steep tribute to the Barbary states; it wasn't until the early 19th century, after the military revolutions in Europe created navies that could severely limit their operating range, that Western nations decided to fuck that noise and decided to shut them up for good. The young United States in particular participated in a number of campaigns over insults and stolen merchant ships, eventually launching a few attacks against the ports the pirates operated out of (One of these incidents is the source of "The Shores of Tripoli" bit in the US Marines' Hymn). The term usually refers to pirates in service to specific nations, as they were often employed as something in between a navy and a privateer fleet by the various kingdoms of North Africa. Eventually the term corsair became a synonym for privateer internationally  distinguishing itself from the word pirate. Still one mans corsair is another's pirate having the papers to prove you were a corsair only slightly nudged a case in your favor if you got caught and that depended on the severity of your crimes and the country in which you were being judged.

'''Wokou''' - "Japanese" pirates that raided the coastlines of China and Korea from the 13th century to the 16th century. While initially Japanese their crew turned to be from all three mentioned nations (there's even Portuguese) and later the majority were Chinese. Wokou started dying down with Japan and Korea's collaboration efforts against pirates signed in the Treaty of Gyehae in 1443 and China's strengthened operations after the Jiajing wokou raids in the mid-1500s. 

'''Sea Peoples''' -  A hypothesized seafaring confederation that attacked ancient Egypt/Kemet and other regions in the East Mediterranean prior to and during the Late Bronze Age collapse. Nationality unknown, possibly from various places.

'''Modern Pirates''' - [[Grimdark|Mostly just poor 3rd world uneducated people who are survivors of various wars and regimes.]] Not too different from the boucaniers, really, they just got there by a different road. Their makeup is similar too: Former fishermen who had knowledge about the sea, war veterans who specialize in weaponry, or at least know where to get some, as well as technical experts who operates on electronic devices like GPS devices, [[Freebooterz|but they are still too green]] when compare to the [[Imperial Navy|actual navy]]. Not to mention the days when any wannabe pirate could find a merchant ship, arm her with some cannons and then go toe-to-toe with a genuine military ship have ''long'' since past. The US Navy, absurdly large since the end of WWII, is arguably singlehandedly preventing large-scale piracy from happening in the modern world, but even the Burger Fleets can't be everywhere. Today's pirates are armed with many modern-day weapons from assault rifles to rocket launchers that were salvaged from the conflict. They raid the Gulf of Aden, the Gulf of Guinea, the Straits of Malacca, and Indian Ocean using just skiffs and can travel hundreds of miles from home. Their targets tend to be two varieties: either slow commercial ships held hostage for steep ransoms, or oil tankers that they siphon raw petroleum to sell on the black market. They tend to be on the skinny side due to the lack of food and health care, and they tend to be serious and extremely determined, since most of them just want to survive and they had to turn to piracy when they have no choice due to the terrible living conditions in the war-torn countries they come from, you have to understand that most people under those circumstances are either begging drifters, ordinary criminals or turn to gang or terror organization membership. It takes a special kind of spiteful determination to go pirate in the Information Era. Modern piracy is still popular in places like Africa and Asia, and actually costs the companies anywhere from hundreds of millions to billions in losses. Due to this, its not uncommon to see heavily armed mercenaries aboard civilian freighters in high-risk shipping lanes to deter pirates from boarding and there are permanent international task forces deployed in areas with chronic problems. The modus operandi ranges from firing warning shots to force a surrender to straight up perforating the boat with CIWS fire. Cargo ships in turn have Private Military Contractors with sometimes better than military issue gear, water cannons and other deterrence factors. Occasionally a navy logistics ship gets mistaken for a cargo ship by pirates, leading to hilarity(for the warship, at least).

'''Internet Pirates''' - Hackers who "illegally" download foreign internet goods like manga scan, anime, books or newly released video games for free (though sometimes they do hack, acquire and release data that shady corporations want to hide or make certain douches pay for their crimes like Anonymous does from time to time). As technology advanced and the invention of 3D printer came along, the "pirate" is able to download miniature blue prints for 3D printers. These pirates, unlike their predecessors, need no romanticism to make them glorious antiheroes, fighting the reemergence of cable by swinging aboard servers and navigating hidden coves to evade the Copyright Law Navy. Unfortunately they do tend to smell the same.

'''Porch Pirates''' - people who steal other people's packages. Normally, these are just lazy douchebags who steal a package that's been left on someone's doorstep, and more often then not, the package isn't something worth stealing. More enterprising pirates, however, have gone so far as derailing cargo trains and looting them wholesale.

===The "Pirate Accent"===
We all know and love pirate-speak, what with all its "YAAAAR!"s and "YO-HO-HO!"s and all, but something to keep in mind, at least as far as historical pirates are concerned; most scholars agree that there is no universal "pirate accent," and that most of today's perceptions of it stems from the 1950 Disney film ''Treasure Island'', and the Dorset accent of Robert Newton's Long John Silver. While the West Country of England certainly has a long maritime history, keep in mind that pirates came from just about any sea-faring society, so you're more likely to see a blend of accents and even languages around busy trade routes and other piracy hotspots, such as the Caribbean or the East Indies. If you're doing voices for characters, the "pirate accent" is a good standby, but work up a few more English-speaking accents and throw in a little Spanish, French, West African, etc.