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Silent Hill

2018-11-18T15:30:23Z

2601:582:8602:C02A:F178:6256:C2F2:3E86: /* Silent Hills */

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A long-running series of Playstation survival horror games. Pretty much a rival to the [[Resident Evil]] series, Silent Hill has a reputation for focusing on creepy backgrounds, "fearful mystery" (you never know too much about what the FUCK is going on, hence, scares, since you can't put anything into proper context) and introspection over RE's focus on creepy monsters, gore and jump scares. In fact, Silent Hill differs from Resident Evil in that it focuses heavily on evasion rather than combat. Indeed, one game even makes fighting too much a cause for you to get the ''bad ending''. Combat is still mandatory at some points, but routinely difficult and clumsy, making running much better.

Yeah, this is vidya stuff, but this series is ''da shit'' if you want to run a horror campaign. [[D20 Modern]], [[Dungeons & Dragons]], [[World of Darkness]]... hell, even [[Ravenloft]] DMs could pick up a few interesting tips for designing creepy locales, stories, mood setting motifs... Even the creatures from this game could be lifted and re-used to great effect.

Interesting to note; [http://www.megabearsfan.net/post/2014/03/04/Silent-Hill-is-about-cult.aspx the original quartet of games rely heavily on a theme of the occult and of cultic horror]. The first and third games directly involve the player being forced to confront a cult that is directly involved with - if not responsible for - the madness plaguing Silent Hill, and in particular its attempts to force the birth of its dark messiah into the world. The second and fourth instead having you taking the role of a character who has unwittingly been caught up in the cult's influence; James in ''SH2'' is attacked by monsters because of what the cult did to Silent Hill back in the first game, and in one ending directly joins the cult to achieve his goal, whilst Henry in ''SH4: The Room'' has the misfortune of moving into the room of a crazed, undead cultist and being ensnared in his ritual magic. Most of the games after the original quartet drop the machinations of "The Order" and just present Silent Hill as a generic "bad place", which doesn't necessarily do it any favors.

==Silent Hill 1==
Harry Mason, a widowed author, is at his wits end. His adopted daughter, Cheryl, has been having recurring nightmares about a town named Silent Hill. Driven to desperation, he finally decides to drive her there and see if they can find the cause behind her nightmares. A mysterious figure causes his car to crash, and when he regains consciousness, his little girl is missing. Determined to find her, he sets off to explore the town, wandering through eerie, fog-shrouded streets and evading twisted monsters. All the while, he becomes deeper and deeper involved with a mysterious cult that lurks behind everything...

This is generally remembered as a bit more of a fun romp than something inspirational like most first games are in popular series, mostly because 2 blew it out of the water and many of the staples in the series were not established yet, mostly because it's more or less a self contained story if left on its own. The biggest thing was that everything could be explained by bad cult magic and the town was more a setting for the evil that went down as opposed to the mythical, thinking force seen in later games. A good game, but most fans started with its sequel.

==Silent Hill 2==
James Sunderland receives a letter from his wife Mary, begging him to come to Silent Hill, where they had vacationed. Naturally, James immediately follows to investigate what's happening and how he got such a letter. After all, Mary has been ''dead for three years''...

Regarded as the best by far and single handily made Silent Hill a well known franchise. It invented many of the staples in the series today such as enemies being metaphors, a protagonist who must face the harsh truth of their actions and Silent Hill being an almost living, breathing creature who sucks in people from the outside in order to confront them about the crimes they committed. While many claim it's overrated, it generally comes down to how deeply you look into it. If you just burn though it you'll find it a poorly designed, spooky haunted house of a game with bad voice acting. If you like to look into the symbolism of the world and meanings behind actions and designs then this game will blow your mind.

In fact, there are fans who argue that this psychological horror, whilst done masterfully, has led directly to the franchise's downfall; post-SH4 games have tried to clumsily ape the symbolism and psychological horror of Silent Hill 2, but failed to provide any hint as to why this is happening. This straying from the series' roots, combined with standard flaws like bad dubs, clunky controls and nonsensical plots, have caused the infamous sequel rot.

==Silent Hill 3==
Heather Mason thought that she was done with Silent Hill, and the mad cult that lurks within. But when her dad, Harry Mason, is spirited away, she cannot leave him in their clutches and she returns to confront the darkness within the fog-shrouded town.

More of a love letter to the first game while keeping aspects of the second, it's generally accepted as the second best. If you liked the second or the first you'll like this. If you liked both you'll love this.

==Silent Hill 4: The Room==
Henry Townshend thought that Room 302 of the South Ashfield Heights apartment complex was a nice enough place to live. Until the day he woke up and he was trapped inside, unable to make contact with the outside world in any way, shape or form. And then a hole in the wall opened up, leading him to twisted, nightmarish versions of places throughout his hometown of Silent Hill. See, turns out Henry's room used to belong to Walter Sullivan, a serial killing lunatic occultist with a mother complex the size of an apartment building and a ''really'' bad case of anthropmorphisizing. And he wants his room - or, rather, his '''mother''' back...

Black sheep of the family, a few find it quirky and neat but most despise the game, in no small part thanks to the game symbolizing a turning point for the franchise suddenly making good Silent Hill games a rarity. Despite rumors that the game wasn't originally meant to be a Silent Hill title, it was [http://www.silenthillmemories.net/creators/interviews/2004.08.31_tsuboyama_yamaoka_boomtown_en.htm confirmed] that the game was always intended to be a Silent Hill game, at least as a spinoff.

Introduced the idea of the "evil" from Silent Hill leaking into other cities and people are split on this. It IS more terrifying to think what happens in Silent Hill could suddenly happen everywhere but your view might change depending on how you see the town. If you see the mind behind the town as some Cthulhu style monster who loves seeing people suffer while giving a evil laugh then you probably like the idea. If you think it's some neutral force that brings people in to help them get over their problems and move on, even if it puts their lives in danger, then you would find the "evil" spreading to be out of character. It's differs from person to person.

For what it's worth, it does actually make consistent internal sense with lore established in the first and third game that "Silent Hill's" monsters and otherworldly nature are significantly affected by the rituals of the Order, which Walter Sullivan belonged to before he got caught as a serial killer and danced the hemp fandango.

==Silent Hill Origins==
Seven years before the events of the first game, a wandering vagrant named Travis Grady saves a badly burned girl from a burning house, only to pass out and wake up in a twisted, nightmarish city called Silent Hill.

Generally seen as a good, quirky side story and talked about rather positively. Detractors will mention that it's pretty forgettable, especially the protagonist despite him appearing in later games.

==Silent Hill Homecoming==
Alex Shepherd, a Special Forces soldier who has been discharged from the hospital and sent home after being wounded in battle, arrives in his hometown of Shepherd's Glen and finds that all is not right with the world: the town is covered in fog, people (including his younger brother Josh) are disappearing, his father has left to look for his brother, and his mother is catatonic. The dark forces of Silent Hill soon infect the town proper, transforming it into a nightmarish otherworld where Alex must struggle to survive against hordes of monsters and waves of increasingly obtuse symbolism... as well as a group of mysterious cultists who seem to bear a grudge against him.

It was released so the movie could have something to run along with and it reeks of a tie in game. Not terrible, but below average; many consider the gameplay to be boring and/or uncharacteristically combat focused, the combat mechanics are awkward, and the story is, even for a Silent Hill game, often held up as being illogical and hard to follow.

For what it's worth, its storyline improves a lot when you realise it's a throwback to the first four games, both in the underlying theme of "you're a bystander caught up in the horrors of Silent Hill" and in approach of letting you piece together the true story after you've played the game, rather than making all straight-forward. In fact, it's the last game to make any reference to the existence of The Order, the cult who were heavily to blame for everything in Silent Hill being so crazy in the first four games.

==Silent Hill: Shattered Memories==
A reimagining of the first game that ends up being framed as a result of psycho-therapy that Heather Mason is undergoing. No Cult exists, the entire game is played as Harry Mason in winter version of Silent Hill, which is still lived in like any other normal town...when not in the Otherworld of the game where a disaster movie style mass freeze has occurred. In the Otherworld, Harry has to run from pale naked humanoids intent on freezing him to death. The game tracks your actions, like how much you press the button to call for your daughter and what kinds of things you stop to look at to determine the progression of the story, what the monsters look like, and the ending. The game is only canon to itself, and is not intended to be part of the main series.

Another rather liked side game built up like a good movie reboot, same story and cast but with a new spin on things. If you like alternate world stories or just like to see the first game done differently, give it a shot. Those who don't like it point out that it feels more like a mystery than horror game and doesn't mesh well with the other games, which is probably why it didn't receive a sequel.

==Silent Hill Downpour==
During a routine transfer to a new prison, the bus transporting prisoner Murphy Pendleton crashes and leaves him a free man. With a security officer from the transport on his tail, Murphy - desperate for an escape route and an escape from ever-worsening weather - follows a worn-down road through the woods and into the world's least desirable holiday destination ever: the rain-drenched, monster-infested city known as Silent Hill.

Seen as the middle of the road, not bad but pretty forgettable. Did some things right, did some things wrong, can be fun at times and boring in others. A mixed bag. Calls back to Silent Hill 2 by having little connection to the other games besides the town itself and is a story focused on its characters and their personal demons.

==Silent Hills==
Originally introduced as an Indie-looking demo simply called "P.T.", the player is stuck in a hallway of a house which leads to a small concrete room. The player continually walks this same hall and room over and over and over, the exit always leading back to the beginning with some small changes...plus the ghost of a grinning woman with an eye gouged out, and a bloody fetus that sometimes wails or speaks in the voice of an adult male.
Players cannot interact with anything other than through looking at things, and the game became a massive scavanger hunt of a community online trying to figure out what to do to progress such as looking at shreds of paper to restore their original photograph form, or entering a doorway then waiting five seconds for a phone to ring. Do something wrong or be too slow and the ghost kills you with a jumpscare.
The story revealed is that someone killed their cheating wife and unborn baby, and someone was unable to save their wife and unborn baby. Which, if either, you are is unclear.
At the end of a long and complex path, the front door is finally open. Exiting the house begins a cutscene where Norman Reedus of Walking Dead fame is revealed to be the model for your character, then the "P.T." title becomes "Silent Hill: Playable Teaser".

The genius marketing campaign generated MASSIVE interest, only enhanced when it was announced that monster and horror designer Guillermo del Toro as well as Japanese horror legend Junji Ito were both involved. The game was to be called Silent Hills and would be a complete return to Silent Hill 2 style psychological horror and symbolism from an unconnected protagonist. Then...[[Meme|#fuckkonami]] happened. Konami pulled [[Games Workshop]] tier business decisions by allowing an expose revealing their '''horrible''' business practices and treatment of employees to come to light, and publicly fired and insulted one of the most popular men in the video game industry despite still using his name to sell his last game for them. They then chose to leave all of their many beloved franchises dead by announcing that from that point onwards, Konami would only be making Pachinko and cellphone games. Yes, this really all happened...del Toro was left so disappointed by the process that he said he would never work in an industry as toxic as video games again.
Konami attempted to hide from the massive backlash by trying to bury P.T. (which had quite the opposite effect), with del Toro eventually confirming it was canceled since Konami wouldn't. It was pulled from the market, leaving any memory card with it installed as a VERY valuable collector's item. Fans attempted to make spiritual successors, which were mostly either bad cash grabs or canceled as well in development.

So ends Silent Hills and for the most part the entire Silent Hill franchise for good.

HOWEVER....

It is rumored that Kojima's weird and trippy game Death Stranding is intended to be the spiritual successor for what would have been Silent Hills. The setting is completely different (some strange sci-fi landscape where rainfall causes time to speed up) but many of the people who would have been in Silent Hills (Norman Reedus, del Toro) are in this game, and from what little of the gameplay we've seen, has an emphasis on sneaking past some pretty terrifying monsters, and loads of mystery on just what the fuck is happening. No word on any creepy cults but we do have Mads Mikkelson leading what looks like a spec-ops team of undead soldiers hunting for del Toro. Time will tell if it lives up to the hype.

==Silent Hill Comics==
Silent Hill had multiple comic runs from IDW Publishing, like the other survival horror games of the era. Likewise, they are largely seen as non-canon.

Particular criticism is the sketchy artstyle and chaotic panel layout, which was intended to give a feeling of unease but unfortunately made it hard to tell what was going on when one of the Picasso-esque faces of a main character was not shown. The comics were also disjointed and featured things such as the ghost of a little girl who speaks like a South Park character, a bus full of cheerleaders with guns shooting monsters, a stoner artist lured by the town to paint its surreal nature in order to spread its influence which monsters posed for when he needed models, and a "chosen one" exorcist teenage girl.

Each series can be taken as its own thing and judged on its own merits, but as a whole are left unmentioned in continuity.

==Silent Hill Movies==
The first movie followed most of the plot of the first game, although with Dahlia split between an insane cult leader and an insane broken homeless woman while good Cheryl and evil Cheryl were far more seperate entities. In the ending, evil Cheryl takes control of the town Dark World to torture and kill the inhabitants of Silent Hill involved in her sacrifice while good Cheryl is trapped in the fog of the Otherworld, which extends worldwide now as the protagonist is able to return home in another dimension from the one her husband exists in. The sequel starts to follow the plot of Silent Hill 3, but instead veers off the rails like a Uwe Boll movie into a disaster of a plot with too many screwups to list in a brief manner.

Although the first movie was a grade above arguably all other video game movies ever produced, it was hindered by executive decisions like making the protagonist a woman because "the audiance can't relate to a father searching for his missing daughter like they would a mother in the same situation", making Alessia's trauma partially come from being raped by the elementary school janitor, reusing all monsters from Silent Hill 2 without any symbolic meaning because they were more iconic, and a single ambiguous ending.
The sequel was a desperate cash grab, made in 3D which was underused and had an extremely limited budget to maximize profit off the trust in quality the first movie had inspired among the community. It attempted to mix the fad of movies like Hunger Games and Twilight to create a faux-dramatic and awkward teenage romance rebellion plot. Most of the visual effects were in the trailer, leaving the audiance with a long and very badly paced movie.

==/tg/ Material==
Some enterprising Storytellers put together a fan source-book for running Silent Hill games under the 1st edition New [[World of Darkness]] mechanics, which you can find here: http://mrgone.rocksolidshells.com/pdf/NWOD/Silent_Hill.pdf

[[Category: Video Games]]

Resident Evil

2018-11-18T14:43:58Z

2601:582:8602:C02A:F178:6256:C2F2:3E86: /* Movies */

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'''Resident Evil''' is a series of zombie-focused Survival Horror games (the first big-name franchise of that type, and the first to make the genre at all "mainstream") produced by Capcom from the mid-1990s on. Its longtime rival is [[Silent Hill]] and it spawned a short-lived (three games) rival/spin-off, [[Dino Crisis]], which was basically "Resident Evil on an island with timetraveling dinosaurs instead of bio-engineered zombies!"

As might be guessed, the basic plotline of Resident Evil is simple: the pharmaceutical megacorporation Umbrella has its fingers in some very sticky pies, namely secret divisions working on genetically tailoring viruses and mutant monsters to make illicit millions in the bio-weaponry underground. Naturally, these things keep getting out of their control, and a bunch of innocent schmucks need to try and survive in the resultant monster-filled hellholes. Add in lots of creepy background lore, apocalyptic logs, bizarre traps and puzzles, and enjoy yourself some fun.

Though a video game series, Resident Evil is a perfect source of inspiration and ideas for a DM of [[D20 Modern]], especially if the game being run is at all focused on horror or intrigue. Indeed, Resident Evil 1 has been likened to a horror-themed dungeon crawl in a modern environment. Naturally, the game series would mesh perfectly with [[All Flesh Must Be Eaten]], but since there's no official writeups, that requires a lot of ZM setup.

==Resident Evil 1==
This is where it all begins. An elite force of police officers, known as the Special Tactics And Rescue Squad (S.T.A.R.S for short - see! Clever!) are sent into the Arklay Mountains in response to gruesomely violent attacks on hikers and campers in the area. Bravo Team goes first, then vanishes. Several hours later, Alpha Team goes to investigate and find their missing comrades. They are attacked by a pack of diseased, decaying, bloodthirsty dobermans, and their chickenshit pilot promptly flies off in terror. The survivors flee for a mysterious mansion, only to find it crawling with zombies and other engineered freaks. As either Chris Redfield or Jill Valentine, you need to explore the mansion and find a way to safely escape. In your efforts, you discover that the mansion had been a secret research facility for the pharmaceutical megacorp "Umbrella", where illegal experiments into engineering viral weapons and super-soldiers had gone horribly wrong. At the game's climax, you must defeat Umbrella's ultimate Bio-Organic Weapon, the Tyrant, and escape the mansion's self-destruct system.

Gamers had never seen anything like it before. Resident Evil 1 was a ''smash'' hit. And thus a series was born...

The original version of this game is also famous for its hilariously bad voice acting, with narmy dialogue and actors who clearly don't know how to properly emote, to the point where some people were disappointed with it getting fixed in the remake. In fact, amazingly, the game was actually created IN English by Capcom, and then dubbed in Japanese for their local market!

===Resident Evil REMake===
In the early 2000s, Capcom signed a deal with Nintendo, and brought Resident Evil to the Nintendo Gamecube. One of their first efforts was this game, a remade version of the original game with many new changes; tweaked puzzles, expanded environments, better dialogue, smoother graphics and a reworked story. Unlike earlier platform ports and reshuffles, this game was a total retcon, and is the "official" prelude to the game series. Initially released for the Nintendo Gamecube, it was subsequently ported to PC and PS4.

The biggest change to the story was the introduction of the Lisa Trevor subplot. This was the daughter of George Trevor, the architect who designed the mansion, whose whole family was kidnapped by Umbrella and used as test subjects for early strains of the Progenitor and/or T-Virus. His wife and one of his daughters died, but little Lisa survived, transforming into an insane, brutally strong mutant with an absurd healing factor - she survived everything that the researchers threw at her, even Ebola. In fact, they ultimately tried out the Nemesis-Alpha parasite on her, and she ''ate it''; the foundation for the G-Virus was cultivated from her cells when they were testing her to see what had happened. Ultimately, they tried to kill her... but they couldn't. They even shot her with an ''anti-tank rocket'', and she just got back up. So, when Chris and Jill arrive, they end up having to evade her in the wilderness surrounding the mansion and the tunnels beneath, until they finally get rid of her by letting her recover the skull of her long-dead mother.

===Resident Evil 0===
Whilst Resident Evil 1 told a compelling story, it raised many questions. How was the T-Virus leaked? Where did it come from? What happened to the doomed Bravo Team? And what was the story of Rebecca, Bravo Team's last survivor, prior to her rescue by Chris in the mansion?

This game answers those questions. Shortly after their flight into the Arklay Forest, Bravo Team discovered an overturned military prison transport truck, which had been carrying an ex-marine convicted of mass murder and sentenced to death, and separate to look for him. Rebecca found her way aboard a mysterious train and was separated from her unit. There, she was forced to team up with the ex-marine, Billy Cohen, in order to survive zombified passengers, mutant animals, and killer leeches. Ultimately, they learned that they had become swept up in the machinations of Dr. James Marcus - the mad scientist who was one of Umbrella's founders, who had created the T-Virus by splicing the mutagenic "Progenitor Virus" with leech DNA, and whose sadism and psychosis had grown to the extent that Umbrella had ordered him assassinated. But one of Marcus' leeches had absorbed his body, growing over the years into a giant monster with Marcus' memories, the ability to assume his form, and a burning desire for revenge - his attack on Umbrella's Arklay facilities had released the T-Virus and caused the disaster into which the S.T.A.R.S had been drawn. Slaying the Leech Marcus, Billy and Rebecca go their separate ways; Billy strikes off towards a nearby road in hopes of hitchhiking away to safety, whilst Rebecca, promising him that she will claim he was killed in the Arklay Forest, heads to the Arklay Mansion to wait for the rest of her team to join her.

This game came out shortly after the Resident Evil 1 Remake, and was likewise a Nintendo Gamecube debut. It introduced two revolutionary new ideas; the ability to play as two characters simultaneously, and the removal of the Item Boxes mechanic, allowing players to drop items wherever they pleased and then come back to grab them. Unfortunately, the latter idea just led to players having to backtrack all the time and proved annoying, but at least Capcom tried to do something new! Reception to this game was... mixed, with many disliking its status as an official prologue to RE1, but lore from it is canon to all later games.

==Resident Evil 2==
After the disaster of RE1, Umbrella fucked things over for Raccoon City even further when they inadvertently caused the biggest biohazard disaster in history: in one of their secret labs under the city, a top researcher named William Birkin was working on a prototype super-virus that would put the T-Virus to shame. However, he was being too slow to deliver on this "G-Virus", and Umbrella grew suspicious that he was planning to betray them by selling it to a rival company. So, they sent in a commando team from their private paramilitary forces to take the G-Virus from William, by force if need be. Shot in the struggle, William injected himself with a G-Virus sample and transformed into a hideous mutant, which slaughtered the commandos - but caused a T-Virus leak that leads to a wide-scale infection, devastating the city.

Into the chaos comes Claire Redfield, younger sister of Chris Redfield above. Sherry Birkin, the daughter of William Birkin. Leon S. Kennedy, a rookie cop on his first day in the force. Lastly Ada Wong, a mysterious woman working as a spy for a rival organization.

These four must now forge alliances and find a way to get out of the city. Opposing them are the various legions of undead and mutated creatures, most of whom evolve to be deadlier as time passes. William Birkin, who is now too far gone and has devolved into a strong but cunning Bio-organic weapon. And Mr. X, a humanoid bio-weapon called a T-103, an upgraded version of the "Tyrant" faced by Chris and Jill, deployed by Umbrella to tie up loose ends in the RPD.

The Tyrant is particularly unique in that he doesn't look like an abomination against nature. Instead he's a tall, trenchcoat-clad giant of a man that silently lumbers towards you, akin to something like Jason Vorhees or Michael Myers, only with more violent punching. He's also a total trooper as after getting downed; he'll dust himself off and continue his chase towards you at a later time, also imitating the two horror stated icons previously. That is until you dunk him into a smelting pot, where he stops being cool as a cucumber and simply decides to [[Rip and Tear|tear you apart with extreme prejudice]].

An official remake was announced in late 2015 and is slated for release on December 2018.

==Resident Evil 3: Nemesis==
Set a few days before the events RE2, this story charts Jill Valentine's attempts to survive and escape the zombie-infested hellhole of infected Raccoon City. Umbrella realizes that this entire incident basically proves the S.T.A.R.S team's claims against them after they escaped the mansion incident, and so sends in one of their newest bio-engineered weapons against the team's survivors: The Nemesis T-Type, an even angrier and scarier T-103 Tyrant whose ability to tank any firepower reminds many of the [[Plague Marines]]. Additionally unlike the T-103, he isn't a silent giant, [[Berzerker|he'll roar his arrival and relentlessly chase you down to beat you into a bloody pulp]] like a punchy, muscular, and more relentless version of Leatherface, minus the chainsaw as he's also equipped with a rocket launcher.

Aiding her in this ordeal is Carlos Olivera, one of the many Umbrella mercenaries contracted to assist evacuation of the city, but he and his unit were overwhelmed and largely decimated. Now, the two of them search for a way out of the city before it's too late, while also evading the Nemesis' tireless pursuit with either [[Gork|brutal cunning]] or [[Mork|cunning brutality]].

Overall, it ends with the US government unable to retain control of the city, so drastic measures had to be considered. Fearing the virus getting out (and also the US Government's involvement with BOWs), they wiped out Raccoon city with a barrage of thermobaric bombs, completely obliterating it off the map. Umbrella would later be embroiled in a series of criminal lawsuits that ultimately destroyed the company as a whole, largely thanks to the survivors who provided evidence and their testimonies linking Umbrella and the outbreak.

Quite ironically, due to Umbrella shutting down, their research and experiments are now at the hands numerous other unsavory characters, all of whom are advancing their research in their own ends, which would fuel later sequels.

==Resident Evil: Code Veronica==

CV occurs right after RE2 and has Claire Redfield continuing to look for her older brother Chris, but was caught by Umbrella and ends up on a private prison island run by the incredibly psychotic Alfred Ashford. Things however, once again go not as planned as a bio-terror attack on the island by a mysterious organization left the island in total, flesh-consuming chaos. She later meets an inmate named Steve Burnside and the two of them think up of a plan to escape the island.

Its later revealed that Alfred has been planning the return of his sister: Alexia Ashford, who has been in hibernation for the past 15 years in the middle of an abandoned Umbrella lab in the Antarctic to allow her to assimilate the T-Veronica virus and better control it. Learning of this, Claire, Steve, and later Chris himself, set out to ensure that Alexia does not escape and start a new wave of bio-terrorism. They eventually prevailed, in what is probably one of the most frustrating boss fights in RE history.

Oh and Albert Wesker, the bad guy the team in the original who seemed unimportant in the long term, comes back and gave himself superpowers. Not everything goes according to his plan since he ended up picking a fight a mutant even stronger than he is, with no gun, so he gets Chris to kill her and escapes with a sample of the game's T-Veronica Virus from an easier target.

RE:CV is also notable for being the first Resident Evil game to use fully 3D environments, rather than the static, pre-rendered ones in the PS1 era.

==Resident Evil Survivor==

The last RE game of the PS1 era and largely remembered as one of the worst of the franchise (being recently overtaken by Capcom's attempt at a godawful RE multiplayer game).

Unlike other games, Survivor is played in a first-person view, but still uses the tank controls of previous RE games. It was meant to be played with a light gun, but due to the US' political climate at the time(this was right after the Columbine shootings), the light gun feature was removed and you now aim a nondescript crosshair with your controller. Additionally, the survival horror tension of the previous game is largely removed due to having unlimited ammo for your handgun, ensuring you can just blast away to your heart's content.

For the game's story, you're transported into not-Europe on an island named "Sheena Island", which houses a secret Umbrella lab and unnamed city. The protag is Ark Thompson, an investigator hired by Leon Kennedy, but gets amnesia and think he's Vincent Goldman, the big-bad of the island. Vincent is the reason for the T-virus outbreak on the island, largely because he's a maniacal dick (we're not kidding, he did it to spite the people he thinks are trying to oust him). Now, Ark wanders around with a gun in hand, thinking he's Vincent, and attempt to uncover the truth about him and the island's outbreak.

Needless to say, the combination of bad game mechanics and story-telling unanimously roped it into being considered as the first black mark of the Resident Evil series. Its so bad that nobody in-universe even acknowledges Survivor happened, no references of it in files or conversations. Hell, even Leon doesn't talk about it. The only thing that keeps it from being officially non-canon is that "Sheena Island" is mentioned in the list of T-Virus outbreaks during the prologue cinematic for RE0.

==Resident Evil 4==

This game tells Leon's fate after Raccoon city incident. The US government eventually picks him and Sherry up and he's been roped into becoming a governmental secret agent, partially out of duty, but also to protect Sherry. His first mission is being sent into not-Spain to rescue the US president's daughter named Ashley Graham, who was kidnapped.

Its later revealed that she was kidnapped by the "Los Illuminados", a psychotic cult that worships ancient parasites called the "Las Plagas" that induce mutations and mind control, both of which Leon and Ashley were infected with. The cult's plan is to infect Ashley with a plaga, send her back to the US, then have her do the cult's bidding once the plaga inside her fully matures. Of course this does beggar the following questions:

# Why are the cultists hellbent on killing both Leon AND Ashley, if the latter is so instrumental to their plans?
# Why did they Ashley need to be kidnapped and sent to not-Spain in the first place? Its been shown in-game that plaga infection is relatively simple (be injected with one by a syringe). There was never a need to kidnap Ashley, infect her, then draw attention to it. Especially since the Las Plagas were largely unknown by the outside world until Saddler drew attention to it by involving the US into a rescue mission, so he would have had the total element of surprise once he used his trump card.

Glaring plotholes aside, these cultists are led by three people: Bitores Mendez, a not-Tyrant. Ramon Salazar, a kinda-Spanish aristocrat with a Napoleon complex and two not-Xenomorph bodyguards. Last is the cult's supreme head-honcho Osmund Saddler, a charismatic man who may or may not have [[/d/|a long, bladed tentacle as a dick that he uses to impale people with]] (it doesn't help it comes from under his robes and between his legs). He also faces off against Jack Krauser, [[derp|whom is described as one of Leon's closest old agency friends, but his character and history wouldn't be explored until a few years later in a separate game]], so everyone at the time was just confused when Leon acts like he's a big deal and we should be feeling some remorse for.

Predictably, this isn't taken seriously in the slightest. Hell even Saddler sort-of breaks the fourth wall and mentions how cliche this entire thing is. The B-movie atmosphere and campy writing blend together to make for an entry that was one of the more memorable, if not the most, and actively played into it in a way that gave it an edge over the next couple of entries.

Now, Leon and Ashley must find a way out of not-Spain, fight through the Los Illuminados cult and their many experimental creatures, and get rid of the plagas infesting them. Like in the previous game, Leon is still being aided by his not-love interest: Ada Wong, who is impractically dressed for a spy mission.

==Resident Evil: Revelations==
Chris and Jill end up stranded on ships that have been overrun by a new breed of zombies, and a terrorist cell named Veltro is threatening to infect the entire oceans with their new virus called the T-Abyss virus. Except that the terrorist treat isn't real and it ends up with more plot twists that kind of make sense, and are also kind of dumb.

The most remarkable thing about this game is a spelling error on the box for the Nintendo 3DS version of the game. Otherwise it literally has no bearing on the plot of later games. We're not kidding, nobody exclusive to the cast of this game were ever mentioned in later games, nor did the plot of this game affected the entire status quo at all.

Still, it did introduce a fun mini-game that added a lot of replayability to it called Raid Mode, which is the only thing that did carry over to future installments, so it wasn't all bad.

==Resident Evil: Revelations 2==

Unlike previous games, this plays in two scenarios: one for Claire and one for Barry Burton, a former STARS member.

Claire Redfield and Moira Burton, Barry's daughter, are kidnapped by a mysterious figure called "The Overseer", thrown into not-Russia, and infected with the T-Phobos virus, a virus that only triggers with a certain level of fear. The virus itself mutates its host in.....unspecific ways, the only constant is that hosts have an increased level of aggression and their bodies are horribly mutated and seem to grant them some form of immortality as hosts can survive for months without food and severe necrosis. They may or may not retain some form of higher thought. Overall Capcom can't seem to decide on what they want their virus to be and just does whatever's convenient for the plot.

The mysterious figure is later revealed to be Alex Wesker, a survivor of the Wesker children. Claire and Moira must now venture through not-Russia to find a way out. Claire later manages to escape, but Moira is left behind. Whether she survives or not is dependent on the player's single asinine, poorly-explained choice.

Barry comes in a few months later after learning about the situation from Claire after being rescued and was told his daughter is dead. Unwilling to accept it without confirming it himself, Barry travels to not-Russia to investigate and personally confirm his daughter's fate, all the while surviving the new breed of horrors the T-Phobos virus cooked up over the months. He's aided by Natalia, a young girl who has somehow survived the craziness of the island and sense monsters around her. He eventually finds out about Alex Wesker, and also makes it a priority to ensure the remaining vestige of his old enemy is eliminated once and for all.

Anyways, it's eventually revealed that Wesker was using the T-Phobos virus to achieve immortality, using Natalia as a catalyst. But predictably, something went not-as-planned and she's stuck being a mutated, multi-limbed hag and Barry comes it to settle the score, once and for all.

This game is notable for going back to the genre's survival-horror roots and foreboding dark atmosphere, with some stealth sections thrown in to make the game easier but isn't 100% necessary to do (that said, it does save you a lot of ammo and time, so its recommended). Also comes in with several plot-holes, like how Claire or Moira are dealing with the fact that they might have been rescued, but still suffering from T-Phobos infection, or how Moira has been able stave-off mutation by the T-Phobos virus by being able to stay as clam and collected as Claire, despite having no military background nor experience with a biohazard outbreak (which Claire has survived thrice at this point, games and CGI movie included).

But that isn't an issue since Revelations games do not make any impact to the overall plot of the series.

==Resident Evil 5==

RE5 is... he odd point of the series. This is where Capcom were getting on the "Call of Duty" bandwagon that was growing in the west by making their games more action-oriented, instead of survival horror. A lot of fans were [[skub|divided on this game's new direction]].

For the story, this stars Chris Redfield, whom you would have never recognized due to Capcom designing him as a roid-raging body builder, and Sheva Alomar, which is there as the token black character (we're not kidding, this is the primary reason she's even there). Both of them are members of the BSAA (Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance), an international paramilitary group dedicated to fighting the new wave of bio-terrorism spurred on by the collapse of Umbrella. They're currently in Africa to investigate a potentially large bio-weapons exchange.

This once again features the Las Plagas from the previous game, except it's been refined by a mysterious organization to be more potent. Another is the "Uroboros virus", a new pathogen developed by Wesker himself and covertly funded by another company known as Tricell, led by Excella Gionne, an absurdly seductive Italian woman and not much else. The virus itself is....odd. It turns people into a creature comprised of multiple worm-like organisms that only live to consume more and more biomass to grow, unless they were genetically compatible with the virus, which just grants them superhuman powers.

Wesker plans to spread the Uroboros virus into the stratosphere to infect the entire world, where only a chosen few would rise and those who would be consumed by the virus were deemed unfit to live. This plot is so unbelievably stupid for a [[Tzeentch|cunning sociopath manipulating everyone from the sides for his ambitions]] that even Chris calls him out on it.

Anyway, silliness aside, Chris and Sheva embark on a mission to stop Wesker's plot. Standing between them is the infected population of Africa that have turned into raving lunatics and the new horrors unleashed by the Uroboros virus. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xuXkVzBdJQ Also a giant boulder, which Chris punches into submission], which many fans interpret as either the highest or lowest point of the series that no other event can hope surpass in either spectrum.

==Resident Evil 6==
RE6 is the even weirder point of the series. Capcom was in a conundrum: fans are clawing on the doors for the zombie survival horror theme to come back but the executives still think people want an action-y RE game, as CoD was still hip at the time. The Plaga as the virus of the week wasn't being well-received by the fanbase, and people are hating the fact that they're playing what's essentially a cover-shooter instead of a survival horror game, and RE doesn't even do the cover-shooting genre well. So they come to a fork on the road: Do they go back to their roots and make a dark and brutal game about surviving the zombie apocalypse that made them famous in the first place, or do they continue making a run-gun-and punch game to entice the shooty crowd? Their answer: why not both?

And so this indecisive mess became Resident Evil 6, which is played from 4 different perspectives that inter-connect into one story: The revival of Neo Umbrella and their new C-Virus (which doesn't seem to know what it wants to do, since it turns people into not-Ganados and zombies). NU is led by Ada Wong, or so everyone thinks.

# The first is with Leon Kennedy and a new chick named Helena Harper, a member of the presidential secret service.
# The second is Chris Redfield and his new partner: Piers Nivans, both of whom are with the BSAA.
# The third is Sherry Birkin, who followed Leon's footsteps and became a secret agent after growing up, and her partner is Jake Mueller, who is Albert Wesker's illegitimate son (how or why Wesker decided to have a fling with a random girl is not fully explained, nor why he never brought this up until now.).
# The last is Ada Wong, who's going in alone doing Ada things.

So to sum up the plots of each character:
*Leon gets the Survival Horror scenario. Leon is tasked with protecting the US president during a speech in a university, but is cut short with a bio-terror attack that kills the president and infects the nearby town with the C-Virus. A woman named Helena Harper reveals the truth to Leon, and goes to not-China to stop Neo Umbrella.

*Chris gets the AMERICA FUCK YEA scenario. After a botched mission in not-Eastern Europe that left most of his team dead due to a betrayal by Ada Wong (or so he thinks), Chris goes AWOL from the BSAA out of grief, but is convinced back into active duty by Piers Nivans, the only surviving member of Chris' old squad. He and the BSAA go to not-China to assist in a recent bio-terror outbreak that's later revealed to be orchestrated by Neo Umbrella. He and Piers then go out to tear up not-China to uncover more about Neo Umbrella's plot and take revenge on Ada Wong the only way he knows how: with bombs, bullets, and beatdowns (the most entertaining part of Chris' campaign is just slogging through it by using his haymaker punches to kill everything). Piers is mostly just there to be Chris' cool head as his commander is still [[rage|pissed off out of his mind]], akin to [[Angron]] and [[Kharn]].

*Sherry gets a Survival Horror scenario aswell, but its more action-y than Leon's. Sherry is sent to extract Jake Mueller, a person who's blood is capable of neutralizing the C-Virus and currently in the middle of not-Eastern Europe. However, Neo-Umbrella catches wind of this and deploys a BOW known as the Ustanak, a giant, scary ball of intelligent muscle sent in to retrieve Jake and kill anyone who gets in it's way (a bit of a throwback to the Nemesis and Mr.X). Now, Sherry must get Jake back to the US to synthesize a cure, all the while avoiding the C-virus mutants and the Ustanak. Predictably, things do not go as planned.

*Ada also gets a bit of both. She's just here to find out who's been impersonating her and get even with the culprit. She also helps Leon from time to time, as usual.

At the end of the day: Nobody knows what the fuck is going on and RE6 was received quite poorly by critics and players. It almost ended the franchise, until RE7 came along and showed everyone that's Capcom is willing to go back to the basics again.

==Resident Evil 7==
The most recent addition to the game line, RE7, subtitled "Biohazard", was released in January of 2017. Breaking from the traditions of previous games, it features a complete newcomer to the series: Ethan Winters, a man whose wife Mia was presumably lost at sea on a boating trip 3 years ago. When he receives an email claiming to be from her and telling him to come and get her off of some farm belonging to a family called the Bakers in the backwoods of Louisiana, he immediately rushes off to her rescue. And that's when things go wrong... see, the Bakers, they're like Mia's family. And they're just ''dying'' to welcome somebody new to the clan...

RE7 was the most controversial newcomer, as whilst it promised a hard return to the survival horror in contrast to the more action-horror b-movie feel of the previous numbered games, it did so whilst stating the game would be in a first-person perspective. This had been used before (in fact, it was originally considered for the first Resident Evil, but the Playstation's graphics just couldn't hack it), but only on the Gun Survivor spin-offs.

However, when it came out, it swiftly won fans over with a genuinely dank, creepy mansion to explore, and horrific new foes to fight. The only real complaints was that its blend of combat and stealth made it feel a little like Alien: Isolation and the lack of variety in enemies to fight. Most people don't care, considering it a throwback to all that was good about the 1st game, helped by an awesomely catchy theme song and incredibly quotable enemies who manage to hit that right niche between hilariously narmy and downright fucking spooky.

Seriously, one of your boss-fights involves grabbing a chainsaw and duking it out with a laughing, mutated psycho cannibal hillbilly wielding ''chainsaw-shears''. Who earlier may have hacked off your leg with a common garden shovel for giggles. Batshit insane does ''not'' do this game justice.

Following in the footsteps of [[Silent Hill]], RE7 made use of a playable teaser called the Beginning Hour. Unlike Silent Hills, RE7 actually came to fruition, because Capcom isn't ''quite'' as fucked up as Konami.

==Resident Evil: Outbreak 1 and File#2 ==

Two short-lived co-op games for the PS2 about groups of civilians who banded together in the midst of the T-virus outbreak in Raccoon city and figure out a way to escape. It plays much like the old games, but with a deeper emphasis on survival horror due to the lower amount of resources available in each game, and the ability to be actually infected by the T-virus and zombify after sustaining damage.

The series never really took off significantly, so Capcom abandoned the 4 player co-op concept, and the Outbreak series altogether.

==Movies==
Yeah, there are movies.

The first was a set of live-action films, but like pretty much all attempts at a live-action adaptation of a videogame, they fucking sucked like all shit. These are the atrocities that unleashed [[Alice]] upon the world, and for that they shall never be forgiven. Who is Alice? She's a character created specifically so that director Paul W.S. Anderson could show off how awesome his waifu Milla Jovovich is. [[wat|No, really]]. Alice constantly upstages all of the token Resident Evil cameo characters to the point of being ludicrously overpowered. And despite the shit quality, the series remains one of the top-grossing film series of all time based on a video game.

Mercifully, Capcom got off their asses and have given us some '''real''' Resident Evil movies; three so far, they are all fully animated CGI affairs that are actually set in the actual universe of Resident Evil and use regular characters.

''Degeneration'', the first film, brings back fan-favorite characters Claire Redfield and Leon Kennedy. Set between ''Code Veronica'' and ''4'', it involves their efforts to stop an attempt by a madman to unleash the deadly G-virus and T-virus upon America.

''Damnation'' is a post-''4'' Leon fest involving Leon fighting ganados and lickers in some made-up Eastern European country.

''Vendetta'' is a London has fallen ripoff about Chris and Leon fighting a weapons dealer who got his hands on some Umbrella leftovers. Notable for some impressive John Wick-style gun battles and for finally bringing back Rebecca Chambers.

''4D-Executer'' is the very early CGI movie in the Resident Evil franchise and most disturbing one to boot. The plot of this 45 minute-long movie is centered around a group of mercenaries coming to Raccoon City, before being wiped out, in order to escort a mrs. scientist and her data on a new viral form. Everything goes south when they are attacked by a unknown B.O.W., defeat it, only to realize that the darn monstrosity has a truly scary ability...not to mention the plot twist will horrify you.

==/tg/ Stuff==
You can find material for running RE games under [[All Flesh Must Be Eaten]] here: http://thegraveyard.xtreemhost.com/resievilselect.html?ckattempt=1

[[User:QuietBrowser|This loser here]] has a half-completed attempt at creating a splatbook for running RE games under the 2nd edition New [[World of Darkness]] rules, in the form of [[Resident Evil: Chronicles of Darkness]].
[[Category: Video Games]]

Pirate

2018-11-18T13:16:35Z

2601:582:8602:C02A:F178:6256:C2F2:3E86: /* Fictional Pirates */

{{Topquote|Yar har, fiddle di dee, Being a pirate is all right with me, Do what you want 'cause a pirate is free, You are a pirate!|LazyTown}}
{{Topquote|Oi! You'z lot! You'z part of my crew now. Any problemz with dat, you talk to da complaintz department. Dat'z me gun, by da way.|[[Bluddflagg|Kaptain Bluddflag]]}}
[[File:Pirate.png|300px|thumb|right|A pirate captain. The lack of limbs and eye just shows how hardcore he is.]]
Pirates are scavenging sea bandits that raid and loot anyone on their sight. Despite being the seaborn equivalent of muggers, they are a far more glamorous cultural icon. They were known to be pretty cool for having a ship with black skeleton flag, as well as being badass as fuck for fighting heavily armed navy on daily basis (or so the legend goes; while there were a number of impressive battles, pirates preferred easier marks like unprotected merchant convoys). Sadly, it isn't a profession with the best long-term benefits since they would most likely be hanged by the navy or died of scurvy. But if they did succeed, like hell they will be famous and feared by everyone as soon as anybody saw their pirate flag and run the fuck away.

Pirates, despite being a band of misfits, were quite varied. In real life they were cutthroats and bandits with ships, while during later ages in fiction they were romanticized as something of a concept of freedom despite their infamy. In all cases, pirates are well known thanks to modern pop-culture depictions as anarchistic and anti-governmental. They opposed the oftentimes brutal authoritarian life in the navy and wanted to live out their own lives without anyone bugging in. The reasons were many and this resulted in pirates to be (ironically) closer to the modern establishment. While in Europe kings and queens ruled through an absolutist system of rule, pirates had something akin to modern democracy (the crew choose a new captain from among themselves by voting). While slavery was normal and nations fought each-other, pirates did not care about any of this since a pirate crew could be multi-national and include slaves among their ranks. In fact, equality was normal among pirates and slaves saw this as one of the few ways to feel free and equal. Pirates did not discriminate. They took in everyone who wanted to join (or not). One particularly famous example was the Brethren of the Coast, a coalition of pirates and privateers who operated in the Caribbean.

This kind of lifestyle is what attracted writers who presented pirates in a romanticized way, as misfits who seek out a life of freedom. On the other hand they were portrayed in a more favorable light as anti-heroes. This has some basis in truth, as some pirates began their careers as legitimate privateers in the service of their king until political winds changed. Others were genuine legends whose stories impress readers to this day.

TL;DR piracy is fucking awesome.

==Famous Pirates==
*'''Edward Teach''' - Better known as Blackbeard, one of the original Golden Age pirates known for his intimidation tactics. His ''nom de guerre'' came from the fact that he used to put gunpowder in his beard and set it off to give himself a terrifying appearance. Also because how often he let his victims live to talk about it. He died in battle, [[awesome|being shot at least twice and slashed around 20 times before he had his neck slashed.]]

*'''Henry Avery''' - The most successful (and mysterious) pirate in history. How successful? He was named the king of pirates after looting the Mughal Emperor's treasure fleet, which was worth £52 million today. Shortly after, though, he vanished. Neither he nor his treasure was seen again. Some vidya speculate that he went on to found the pirate utopia of [[wikipedia:Libertatia|Libertalia]] in Madagascar.

*'''Anne Bonny and Mary Read''' - Two of the most famous female pirates. Here they get one entry as they have fairly similar life stories: born in destitution, were disguised as boys early on in their lives, moved to the Carribean where they took up piracy, and both became the lovers of Calico Jack, while becoming renowned pirates in their own right. Despite their eventual capture, they only avoided execution because both were pregnant (although [[Grimdark|Mary died of a fever while in prison]] while Anne's fate is now unknown, with her either being released after giving birth to her child or also dying in prison), though that didn't stop them from [[awesome|fighting off their captors alone and then telling off Calico Jack for being a cowardly drunk]].

*'''Sir Francis Drake''' - The best illustration that the line between regular merchant, pirate, privateer and genuine military officer could be very tenuous at times. A full account of his long career can be found elsewhere, but let us just say that he started his career as a regular merchant occasionally getting rowdy with the Portuguese and the Spanish, then realized looting them for silver and gold was profitable and he became a full-fledged (and endorsed) raider. He was so good at liberating riches from them that he was awarded a knighthood by Queen Elizabeth, then later offered the post of vice-Admiral of the Navy when the Spaniards became fed up with the Anglos raiding them and spectacularly failed at trying to get even.

== 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 classic, the archetype, the most iconic of all pirates that feature in almost in every media. From 1650 to 1720, empires like France and England wanted to develop their own colonial empires in the Caribbean. Problem was, the Spanish got there first, and at the time they had the most powerful navy. However, they also had massive treasure fleets, so the English began paying privateers to raid the Spanish whenever they were at war; but as soon as the war ended, there was a surplus of heavily armed ships that decided to turn pirate to stay in business. And with the ever-growing sea trade, piracy was the norm, especially when some colonial governors encouraged this behavior with an unofficial policy of "no peace past the line." The archetypal pirate captain is known for wearing eye patches, owning a pet parrot, and having a hook for an arm and a peg leg, which shows that this guy is a badass when he lost most of his limbs yet is still able to fight. They are also known for having a black skeleton flag, named the Jolly Roger (see above) while sailing a ship with a fuck load of cannons (if they are rich enough). In regards to the popular legend of successful pirates burying their treasure; this wasn't done out of some odd ritual or anything grand. They did this for insurance (and even then, only did it sparingly): in the event that they were captured, they'd use their hidden loot as a bargaining chip to prevent them from proverbially (and sometimes literally) walking the plank. 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.

'''Privateers''' - Not pirates per se, but many pirates started out as privateers. These were privately owned Armed Mechantmen 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. Even then, 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.

'''[[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. They are also responsible for being the ancestors of 90% of the Caucasians thanks to their continent wide rape-demic.

'''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. 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 that Western nations decided to fuck that noise and steamrolled them. Though the term usually refers to pirates in service to specific nations.

'''Modern Pirates''' - [[Grimdark|Mostly just poor 3rd world uneducated Somalians who were survivors of the Somalian civil war.]] They are not exactly primitive uneducated however, since some of them were former fishermen who had knowledge about the sea, war veterans who specialize in weaponry 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. They 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 and Indian Ocean using just skiffs and can travel hundreds of miles from home to hold commercial ships hostage for steep ransoms. They tend to be on the skinny side due to the lack of food and health care and they are not fun and games because of that, 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 condition in a typical post-war African country.

'''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. TAKE THAT [[Games Workshop| GAMES WORKSHOP]].

== Fictional Pirates ==
'''Swashbucklers''' - The Noblebright side of the Fantasy pirate coin. These guys are basically buccaneers who seek adventure and right wrongs. They may be exiled princes or other political fugitives forced into a life of outlawry. They are also masters of swordplay and trickery; so basically they're more akin to musketeers or Zorro, but with ships of their own. Think of Dread Pirate Roberts from the Princess Bride or Captain Blood.

'''Dread Pirates''' - The [[Grimdark]] side of the Fantasy Pirate coin. Not to be confused with the legend that Dread Pirate Roberts cooked up for himself; these guys are the real deal. Take a buccaneer and mix in the supernatural or even eldritch. This type of Pirate frequently appears as the antagonist in the Pirates of the Carribean movies. See Ghost Pirates for a specific subset below.

'''Space Pirates''' - You know pirates, BUT IN SPACE! A seemly possible concept where ships have solar sails with FTL engine and they sails in void of space instead of ocean. Since space has no oxygen, pirates had to wear concealed power armor to board ships in order to loot and plunder. In some indie games like FTL, the crew can use teleportation device to board enemy ship without space suit, the same goes to the lighting strike ability in battlefleet gothic armada. And instead of making you walk the plank, they'll just throw you out the airlock!

'''Ghost Pirates''' - it is said if some pirates are too badass to die, they become ghost and continue to terrorize ships for fun. Some said it was the caused of some voodoo curses, other thinks they are just too tough to stay in hell. These dead pirate sail in their seemly broken pirate ship crawling with Moses and maggots and it is seemly indestructible from any cannon fire. [[Vampire Counts|SPOOOOOKYYY]].

'''[[Airship Pirates]]''' - [[AWESOME|Piracy in the sky with steampunk technology]]. They'll still say "Yarr!" and "Avast!" but their clothing is decidedly more Victorian instead of Baroque, with lots of goggles and brass thrown in. [[Kharadron Overlords|Let's not forget the short legged version]] for [[Age of Sigmar]]. There is exactly ONE example of airship piracy in history: when the German Zeppelin L23 captured a Norwegian schooner during the first world war.

'''Warhammer Fantasy Pirates''' - A lot of pirates tend to operate either in the seas near Tilea or around Lustria, where there's always opportunities for gold-hungry adventurers (though death is also a high probability due to disease or dismemberment by dinosaurs). There's several different varieties:

* Most famously are the [[Warriors of Chaos|Norscans]] being the fantasy equivalent of Vikings, in that they like to wreck the Empire's shit by raiding their border and would also took the opportunity to explore the new world for plunder and destruction in the name of their gods. The Skaeling tribe in particular is famed for their seafaring. [[Wulfrik the Wanderer]] uses a magic longship to teleport anywhere he wants to go to wreck some fools.

*[[Dark Elf]] Corsairs using Black Arks (which are city-sized FLYING ships) in their raids and like to take captives hostage to be sold into slavery. [[Lokhir Fellhart]] is a famous example, who likes to wear Cthulhu-looking mask that he likely looted from Lizardmen.

*The [[Zombie Pirates]] were a White Dwarf army list under the leadership of [[Luthor Harkon]], who formerly worked for [[Abhorash]] before striking out on his own for Lustria and establishing his own goddamn kingdom called the Vampire Coast. And with all the dead bodies of unfortunate sailors, he's got plenty of recruiting opportunities. Another undead admiral operating in the area is Captain Noctlis of the [[Dreadfleet]], a Von Carstein vampire who teleported his entire freaking castle into the Galleon Graveyard.

*There are also the Sartosan Pirates of the Principality of Sartosa (aka: AN ENTIRE NATION OF PIRATES) that lies south of Tilea. One of the most famous Sartosan pirates is the sea mutant [[Aranessa Saltspite]], rumored to be the daughter of the sea god himself.

'''[[Warhammer 40K]] Pirates''' - Ranging from [[Red Corsairs|chaos worshiper]], [[Dark Eldar|sadistic spiky ear slave trader]], [[Prince Yriel|cunning spiky ear glass cannon]] and the fucking [[Freebooterz|orks]], they are all badasses. [[Rogue Traders]] probably count as pirates too, but they are first and foremost explorers of the imperium (otherwise is [[HERESY]] and would probably be anally raped by inquisitions ship's nova cannon, or an [[exterminatus|cyclonic torpedo]]) but of course, unless they were pillage and plunder a xeno ship, is fine lol. For /tg/ brewed 40K pirates, see [[Black Locks]] who are both pirates and [[Space Marines]].

'''[[Manga|One Piece]]''' - As the pirate king, Gold Roger, was executed, he told everyone that he hid his treasure at the ass-end of the world, kickstarting a golden age of piracy! Some are using this chance to amass riches or oppress the weak, others just want to be free from the dictatorial World Government. The world is vast and uncharted, people get anime superpowers by eating cursed fruit or training really hard, and there exist sea monsters that are bigger than your ship. [[Fun|Have fun]]!

'''[[Samus|Space Pirates from the Metroid Series]]''' - while not being human and lacking the Caribbean pirate stereotype, [[Rak'gol|they are aliens that like to raid and destroy vessels while trying to be the biggest of dicks to every other species, especially the Federation]]. They are led by Mother Brain with Ridley, a species of cyborg/gargoyle/dragon alien being their military commander. They all got shit on by [[Samus]] unfortunately...non-stop.

==Worldbuilding And Moral Considerations==

===Morality===
How evil a Pirate in a given setting defaults to has a few inputs that are worth considering:

* [[Slavery]] is a big one. If the people they're raiding practice slavery and the pirates don't, that's a very serious point in the favor of the Pirate (in fact, it was exactly this moral ambiguity that gave the Buccaneers what good press they had). If it's the other way around (slave raiders on free peoples), the resulting pirates are probably evil villains, full stop.
* How badly they treat captured crews. If they let them go once they've robbed the cargo holds, they probably are considered more "moral" than if they kill or enslave anybody who sees them. (Hostage taking may or may not count for this purpose; if it's purely for ransom, it's in a gray area, with the shade depending on how well the hostage is treated.)
** Enforced enrollment in the pirate crew is on the evil side, and also somewhat on the stupid side--having a bunch of people who don't want to be there as crew on a ship is usually a bad idea when mutiny is a problem.
* How badly non-pirate sailors are treated by their captains: when the Navy press-gangs and keelhauls their crew, a pirate ship is easily seen as a bastion of freedom in contrast.
* [https://youtu.be/XaWU1CmrJNc Pirates who don't do anything] are a thing in media. As they don't do the pirate thing, they usually don't count as pirates.
* How prone they are to mutiny is also a consideration; although any pirate crew is liable to mutiny, the causes of said mutiny can be important in determining morality. If you're sailing under Bill the Bastard has random crewmen flogged and branded for looking at him funny, stealing his hat while he's wearing it and original sin while never giving out a fair cut of the pay and hogging all the Grog from himself, mutiny is an extreme if understandable response.
* What do they spend their plunder on. Most pirates spend their booty on upkeep of their ship, cannons, guns, swords, booze, food, fancy things and, well, Booty. But some will also spend it on their families while others decide to give some of it to an orphanage or school or something in their home port.
* Privateers, mentioned above, are usually considered more "moral" than their freelancing counterparts. ''Usually''.

Note that multiple kinds of Pirates can exist in a given setting, each with their own niche in the Alignment Chart (Even Lawful Good, Neutral Good and Lawful Neutral depending on where you draw the line between lawful navy executing 'commerce raiding' and piracy), although given the nature of Piracy, only a few Privateers will be Lawful of any kind.

===Worldbuilding Considerations===

The big one: Pirates need a safe port of some kind to operate (ships require a lot of maintenance that can only be done when at rest, and the pirates need to be able to sell or trade their captured goods). This has many subtle implications, with a few possibilities:

* The Pirates are effectively sponsored by some port. This implies either full state sponsorship of some kind, or a state that effectively doesn't care about their raiding, usually because the Pirates in question only target the enemies of whoever owns the port.
* The Pirates are disguising where their goods are coming from. This is harder then it sounds, as ships are usually easily identified, and any port that cares about contraband will almost certainly be interested in the origins of whatever goods are coming into it.
* Pirates who figure they can operate their own port are usually faced with the fact that most of the people who engage in piracy are not exactly reliable sorts, which is what is desperately needed in order to have a functioning port.

Further, you need to have cargo worth capturing. A lot of stuff that gets shipped is very hard to sell, not just because it is the proverbial "hot goods", but because it is effectively worth money only to the right buyer (who is usually in one of those ports that care about contraband). You need something that is both valuable, and a commodity. (Historically, sugar qualified, as did tobacco and other luxury goods; of particular interest here is exotic pets, such as monkeys and, yes, parrots.) This acts as a further constraint, unless you have a port that is strongly sponsoring the Pirates, to point of knowingly paying for stolen goods.

For a nation whose government is fairly loose and rudimentary, the distinction between "Pirate", "Honest Trader" and "Navy" is sometimes difficult to make. Many pirates would prefer to go after foreign prey rather than people from their home ports. A down on his luck merchant captain might try to steal the stuff from a rival ship from a rival country if the choice is "make a profit, pay the crew, eliminate some of the competition and live to sail another day" or "starve to death/have a mutiny for unpaid wages/have the ship founder for disrepair/go bankrupt". Privateer work was common in times of war when said actions got sanctioned and sometimes a merchantman could have a few extra guns put on her and be made into a ghetto warship.

To complicate matters even further, even powerful and well-organized nations like France and England had 'prize money' laws in place that made capturing enemy vessels and their cargo a very attractive prospect: any ship captured at sea and its cargo became ''de jure'' property of the crown, but the king would generously compensate the crews with money/valuables once the prize was brought in. On top of that it wasn't uncommon at all for the winner of a naval engagement to quietly enroll any surviving sailor to replace losses and/or keep manning their now captured ship, no matter their nationality; so even a 'national' crew from an 'official' Navy ship could sound like a weird mix of freebooters hauling their capture in when coming into port.

If you get enough pirates in an area, they might come together and found a town. It starts off in some place with a natural harbor to shelter in storms and repair their ships between fights. Then crews begin swapping stuff if one of them has a surplus of gunpowder and the other has a surplus of food and similar. A couple of guys are left behind from each crew (as well as captives) to collect timber, first when it's expected that there will be some damage taken in the near future and latter more regularly around a growing logging camp. A couple of docks go up to make things go more smoothly, as does a forge or two and a couple of vegetable gardens. Then some enterprising pirate cobbles together a pub, selling plundered Beer, Grog and Rum to passing pirates and shore-side workers at first and soon enough is brewing there own, especially when a few full fledged farms get going to provide produce. Soon enough the Pub has some prostitutes and by extension some bastards. Workshops gradually come together and more and more of the population becomes permanent. Soon you get a thriving and lively if disorderly and dangerous new settlement, which eventually settles down into a more quiet and businesslike place much to the chagrin of old timers who miss the gold old days of loose women, hearty songs, exciting brawls and the odd knifings which made things dangerous and interesting.

==See Also==
*[[Dreadfleet]]
*[[Man O' War]]

[[Category:History]]