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Pirate

2022-07-04T01:41:13Z

2A02:8070:87CD:7200:58DA:CB99:99E5:6278: /* Famous 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 and car-jackers, 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 [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Easton (though there were exceptions of course)]. But if they did succeed, they became famous and feared by everyone, and soon that pirate's flag became something people fled as soon as they saw it.

Pirates, despite being a band of misfits, were quite varied. In real life they were cutthroats and bandits with ships or boats, 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 others telling them what to do. The reasons were many and this resulted in pirates being (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 racism as a whole as necessity and a desire for freedom meant a pirate crew could be multi-national and include slaves among their ranks. In fact, equality was common among pirates and slaves saw this as one of the few ways to feel free and equal. Some crews did not discriminate if you could do the job. They took in everyone who wanted to join. One particularly famous example was the Brethren of the Coast, a coalition of pirates and privateers who operated in the Caribbean. However, remember what they are; some pirates would force people to join their crew at times, had brutal punishments for those who broke their rules and some were known to trade slaves if the money was good enough.

A free(er) lifestyle is what attracted writers who presented pirates in a romanticized way, as misfits who seek out a life of freedom, portraying them 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, usually by end of a war leaving them effectively out of job. Others were genuine legends whose stories impress readers to this day.

TL;DR piracy is fucking awesome... unless you actually encounter pirates - usually in places like Burma, Nigeria, and Somalia.

==Famous Real Life Pirates==
*'''Edward Teach''' - Also possible Edward Thatch but better known as '''Blackbeard''', one of the original Golden Age pirates known for his [[Night Lords|intimidation tactics, which including exaggerating and weaponizing his fearsome reputation]]. His ''nom de guerre'' came from the fact that he had black hair with a long thick beard, put gunpowder and fuses in said beard and set it off to give himself a terrifying appearance (it helped that he was over six feet tall when most men of the time were about five and a half). He also often let his victims live to talk about their encounters with him. He was also quite smart, as he once raided a town (as in, blockaded the entirety of Charleston and held its sailors hostage) for medicine because [[Nurgle|most of his crew was riddled with diseases]] - [[Slaanesh|sexually transmitted ones]], then when some of the crew he sent to negotiate got drunk he marooned them in disgust. Another claim to fame was his flagship, a captured frigate he renamed ''Queen Anne's Revenge''; as an actual warship, this gave him another advantage over other pirates, who mostly used captured merchant ships, slave ships or schooners. He died in battle, [[awesome|fighting despite five gunshot wounds and nearly 20 sword slashes before being attacked from behind and having his throat cut. And not before severing three of his killer's fingers and breaking his sword]].

*'''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, and seriously pissing off the East India Company. 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.

*'''"Calico" Jack Rackham'''- A fairly unremarkable man by the standards of this list, who didn't do much major raiding and whose greatest act turned out to be the recruitment of Anne Bonny and Mary Read. While in life he may not have been much more than a mugger with a boat that provided a backdrop for the stories of those two women on his crew, he managed to leave his mark on history by flying one of the best Jolly Rogers out there ([[wikipedia:Calico_Jack#Jolly_Roger_Flag|or maybe not,]] but it's still a great flag).

*'''Anne Bonny and Mary Read''' - Two of the most famous female pirates. Here they get one entry as they have fairly similar life stories and worked together for a time: born in destitution, were disguised as boys early on in their lives, moved to the Caribbean where they took up piracy, and both became the lovers of Calico Jack plus renowned pirates in their own right. When Anne and Mary first met, both were disguised as men and Anne was attracted to Mary, so Anne confessed she was a woman, leading Mary to do the same [[PROMOTIONS|with rumors that they became lovers anyway with Calico Jack's approval]]. 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 unknown except that she wasn't executed, 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 virtually alone, telling off Calico Jack for being a cowardly drunk]] and even [[Commissar|shooting a few of their crewwmates for being too drunk to fight in the battle that led to their capture]] (don't underestimate pregnant women).

*'''Edward "Davies" Davis''' - An English pirate active in the late 1600's who made a career of raiding Spanish silver shipments. Noteworthy for his opposition to slavery; Davies and his crew hit a number of slave ships, liberating their prisoners and recruiting some into his crew. Eventually paid off the British crown for a pardon and retired; part of his haul went into founding the ''College of William & Mary'' in Virginia, the second oldest university in the Americas after Harvard. Probably discovered Rapa Nui (Easter Island) although the records are disputed since he wasn't the first to actually report it to anyone.

*'''Walter Raleigh''' - One of the first English pirates; a minor lord who decided to try multiclassing as an Adventurer-Politician. Founded Virginia and a few other less successful colonies, and was obsessed with finding the mythical golden city of El Dorado. He'd rob Spanish treasure ships as needed to fund his antics, and then brag about it in front of the Spanish ambassador in Elizabeth's royal court. Even plundered the Queen's bedchamber, marrying one of Elizabeth's ladies in waiting. Eventually went from looting ships to looting Spanish settlements. The Spanish responded by telling King James that if he didn't have Raleigh executed, they would treat his attack as a sanctioned act of war. Raleigh was executed, but comported himself to the point of even chatting with and goading his executioner.

*'''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. Also something about circumnavigating the Earth (Magellan would've been first had he survived the trip) but who cares, it's not piratey enough.

* '''William Adams''' - Served under Drake for long enough to get the title. More famous for going to [[Japan]] and becoming one of the few foreign-born [[Samurai]]. How's that for [[Multiclassing]]?

* '''Kanhoji Angre''' - An Indian privateer who spent 30 years forcing England and Portugal to pay him taxes. Probably the closest thing the world has seen to a pirate admiral, and considered today the ancestor of the Indian Navy. At the height of his career he had Dutch sailors coming to him for work hunting European merchants.

*'''Abduwali Muse''' - A well known modern pirate. Isn't as charming and heroic as the above but gets a mention due to being younger than all the above and the media coverage of his actions. Abduwali led small gang of teenage pirates from Somalia (he was 16-19 at the time, and the oldest among them) hijacking the ship Maersk Alabama, an unarmed container ship, from the Port of Salalah in Oman, with orders to sail through the Guardafui Channel to Mombasa, Kenya. Like almost every Somali pirate, he didn't have a good childhood due to living in extreme poverty, with food and work being scarce and poor quality; he turned to piracy to pay off a local warlord. When navy ships got involved, the gang took Phillips hostage and fled onto a lifeboat, resulting in Phillips' rescue and the deaths of every pirate save Abduwali himself, who got a 33+ year prison sentence in the U.S. Despite having no achievements that compare with historical pirates, his story did help create the film "Captain Phillips" - named for the Captain of the ship Muse tried to take - and a meme. (Look at him. He's the captain now.)

*'''Ching Shih/Cheng I Sao''' - Chinese Pirate Queen who not only led one of the biggest pirate fleets but also managed to successfully retire. She got her fleet through marrying a pirate, who gave her half his fleet. And when he died she got all of it by way of political maneuvering with her husband's family. The Chinese government tried to take her down, but she was so good that she stole their ships until they were forced to use fishing boats. She even created a set of pirating laws, including one that made rape of female captives punishable by beheading. She eventually beat the empire so hard that the Chinese Government had to sue for peace. She negotiated for amnesty for herself and any of her pirates that wanted to quit the life, so she retired from piracy to set up a gambling den and brothel.

[[File:Serapis_Flag.png|250px|thumb|right|Totally legit, no pirates here.]]

*'''John Paul Jones''' - An angry Scotsman who sided with the colonists in the American Revolution so he could go on a big piracy spree up and down the English coast. At one point he showed up in the Netherlands and his ship was so badly shot up the flag was gone and the Dutch were like "you need a flag or we have to arrest you as a pirate" ''(also it wasn't his ship; HIS ship SANK in the battle where he captured the one the Dutch were now hassling him about)''. But they didn't like the English either so they looked the other way while Jones found someone to quickly sew a new flag ''([[Counts as|that looks nothing like an American flag and suspiciously like a Dutch flag cut into ribbons and sewn back together]])'' and he was free to go. He kicked so much ass and was so popular that one of the places that he raided actually gave him an official pardon in 1999.

*'''Gertrude Walton''' - A real life ghost pirate! The RIAA claimed that she uploaded pirated copies of over 700 songs despite her ''being dead''. Immortalized in a Weird Al song.

*'''Stede Bonnet''' - The "Gentleman Pirate," Steve was a former plantation owner from Barbados who got fed up with always being in debt and his nagging wife, so he decided to become a pirate. Bonnet is supposedly one of the pirates who originated "Walking the Plank." [[Noobs|Despite his gross inexperience]], he was able to attract a crew by promising a guaranteed wage as opposed to a share of plunder. Things went relatively well until he got bamboozled by Blackbeard (yes THAT Blackbeard) into giving up command of his ship and effectively became a hostage. He was later bamboozled again by Blackbeard and swore revenge, in which he surprisingly became a more competent pirate. But he was captured before he had the chance. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrGf4nJWVOU Dramatic Reenactment now included!]

*'''Felix von Luckner''' - Nicknamed "The Sea Devil", he is the best example of a Lawful pirate (okay, privateer) in RPG terms. Commissioned as an officer in the Kaizerlische Marine during WWI, he was given command of a three-master (at a time where most boats had switched to steam) with orders to do some commerce raiding and make himself a pain in the hindquarters of the Allies. And he did so. Beautifully. In less than one year, Luckner captured and sank no less than fifteen ships through guile and superior seamanship. And the best part? he did so barely ever firing a shot. Over his entire career, he and his crew killed only a single enemy soldier (a poor soul unlucky enough to be right next to a steam line that ruptured when Luckner ordered the enemy's radio shot). For the rest, he made sure everyone was safe and sound before sending his prizes to the bottom. And when he just became overburdened with prisoners, he ordered the latest his prizes to throw the cargo overboard and bring all his prisoners to a neutral country, and then they'd all be free. A pirate and and gentleman indeed, and a bizarre counterpoint to the way in which submarine warfare, the more modern way to attack shipping, was conducted in the 20th century.

==Famous Fictional Pirates==

(For the sake of keeping things brief, we'll ignore Vidya pirates, and try keep it to Movie and Book pirates that your parents or nephews/nieces are likely to have heard of, depending on your age.)

*'''Long John Silver''', from ''Treasure Island''.
*'''Captain Hook''', from ''Peter Pan''.
*'''Jack Sparrow''' (''Captain'' Jack Sparrow, if you please) and '''Hector Barbarossa''' from ''Pirates of the Caribbean''
** For that matter, the ride Pirates are of interest.
*'''Captain Blood''', from the book series and movie of the same name.
*'''Captain Harlock''', space pirate.
*''One Piece'' has a quite a few. We'll not list them, as it would take ''forever'', just like the manga.
*'''Captain Nemo''', from ''Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea''.
*'''One-Eyed Willy''', from ''The Goonies''.
*'''Pirate Jenny''', from the song of the same name.
*'''The Dread Pirate Roberts''', from ''[[The Princess Bride]]''.
*Many, many advertising pirates.
*'''[[Luthor Harkon]]''', from [[Warhammer Fantasy]].

== 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 or just being conveniently ignored by it, 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.

'''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.

== Fictional Pirates ==
'''Swashbucklers''' - The Noblebright side of the Fantasy pirate coin. Swashbucklers actually overlap with genres outside of pirate fiction, such as with the Three Musketeers or Zorro, but their are plenty of pirate examples too. 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. After all, the golden age of piracy happened because the naval powers in those day struggled to maintain power on the edges of their empire (new world) and the vast wealth they were extracting, which meant pirates had a reason to exist. Eventually, the great powers managed to extend control across the fullness of their empires and pirates ran out of room for safe harbors, ports and so on. In space however, it is is infinite enough to run around from any Space Navy, and if there are enough valuables goods trades between planets, one could have an reason to do so. On paper piracy in space does seem possible, contingent of course on the idea of there being FTL drive of some sort, else our pirates have to be in stasis 99% of the time. 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. Another common convention is hidden bases on remote asteroids or space stations that don't orbit anything (which Star Wars dubs a "shadowport"). Despite rumors of this happening already, the only recorded crimes committed in space is a white collar crime involving somebody illegally accessing their spouse's bank records during a divorce dispute, when US astronaut Anne McClain was accused by her estranged wife of
digital invasion of privacy while on the ISS.

'''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 literal ghost ships that are seemly broken pirate ships crawling with moses and maggots while being seemly impervious to cannon fire. [[Vampire Counts|SPOOOOOKYYY]].

'''[[Airship|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. An instance of an airship ''privateer'' '''may''' have existed with the U.S. World War II blimp Resolute, which was reported in 1946 to have been the last use of the United State's power to issue a letter of marque, as part of a legal wrangling to put a civilian vessel into the chain of command rather than intending it loot anything, but no record of this mark being issued exists.

'''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 Norscan are nature born sea faring adventurer that back in the old day, a Norscan by the name '''Losteriksson''' being the first old worlder to settle in Lustria of the new world. There he became famous after plundered the shit out of it and founded a coast settlement named after his daughter that was born on this land: '''Skeggi''', then encourage even more Norscan to have a piece at the place despite its seemly high mortality rate from jungle disease, wild cold ones and Lizardmen. The Skaeling tribe in particular is famed for their seafaring. [[Wulfrik the Wanderer]] uses a magic longship to teleport anywhere whenever he wants or needs (because chaos gods) to go 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, and thanks to the mighty technosorceries of vydiagaems they are a fully fledged faction in the Total Warhammer.

*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]], [[Eldar Corsairs|cunning spiky ear glass cannon]] and the fucking [[Freebooterz|orks]], they are all badasses. [[Rogue Traders]] probably count as pirates too (corsairs would be the most accurate term), 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]]. There is also at least [[Space Sharks|one known loyalist chapter]] that does piratey things like abducting the entire population of a loyalist planet to bolster the ranks of their recruits and chapter serfs, but they work far from the Imperium, and don't really have the opportunity for easily recruited manpower. Desperate times...

'''[[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) especially if they free slaves. If it's the other way around (slave raiders on free peoples), the resulting pirates are probably evil villains, full stop.
**Keep in mind that many people adore Jack Sparrow for simply saying "People aren't cargo, mate!", which was Jack Sparrow's entire descent into piracy to begin with.
* 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. However even proper navies were known to do (and in some cases infamous for abusing) exactly that: the war of 1812 began in part over the British going overboard with forced enrollment. (Look up 'impressment', you'll get the idea.)
* How badly non-pirate sailors are treated by their captains: when the Navy press-gangs their crew into service and keelhauls/flogs wrongdoers around the fleet; 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, [[/d/|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: Piracy is never a safe job, even when you're in port, and every action has a degree of risk to it. Pirates are criminals who endanger shipping, which makes people with money and power annoyed, which in turn leads to a good deal of energy being expended in getting rid of any pirate that causes too much trouble. Unless they're being backed up by another, similar power, or have decided to transition from just stealing shit to forming a functional republic with a navy and laws and borders, a pirate port is not stable. Even then it's not particularly stable either, although it's got a start on the climb to being a nation. Always remember: piracy comes with danger and is affected by politics much bigger than little ships with black flags. You'll present a more engaging setting if there's more to a pirate's life than you can see at Disney World.

With that in mind, pirates still 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. French Tortuga and Dutch Curacao were like this, being effectively surrounded by a target rich environment full of Spanish and ruled by governors who simply did not give a flip about what happened at sea. In particular, Curacao's natural harbor with a tight channel overlooked by a fort on a ridge made it practically impossible to raid from sea, so the Dutch DID NOT care how angry the Spanish got with them over piracy because nothing short of an invasion would dislodge them. Tortuga otoh got raided by the Spanish repeatedly, but there were just too many French and English on the island to suppress.
* 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. This will be complicated and will probably require a reliable fence who can move the goods quietly and with the illusion of legitimacy.
* The Pirates are operating on a frontier, like the boucaniers did. Small colonies and settlements are usually much less concerned about the legitimacy of cargo if its something they can use. They may not be able to pay very much for it, but they often can pay in other ways such as provisions and repairs.
* 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. <ref>See the (in my opinion, at least) fantastic series Black Sails for an idea of how that might work, or fail to work. If you can get past the first season being about 20% excessively long sex scenes with little plot relevance, that is. Thanks, Michael Bay. Seeing Charles Vane's sandy cock was not on my bucket list and it didn't really affect the story all that much.</ref>

For piracy to really catch on somewhere, there needs to be 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 (really any large feathered birds, since feather quills were used as pens). Whale oil (used in lamps) was another hot item, with whaling ships often making easy targets returning from hunts. But whatever the cargo, there is a fine line of intersecting interests, between the risks of accepting stolen goods, the risks of stealing them in the first place, and the potential profit. Of course, there's always robbing payroll ships, but if they were easy to hit everyone would do it.

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 (the defeated sailors were generally down with this since the alternative was usually sitting in the hold in chains), 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 who could not be ransomed off) 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. If there are native peoples in the area they start showing up to trade, or occasionally raid necessitating some basic defenses.

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. Those pirates which had lost limbs to the job may settle down with their compensation package for an easier and steadier life ashore. Tents and lean-tos are replaced by small cottages and shanties and after that houses. 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 attracts the attention of whatever state power claims control over the area. A governor and garrison will be dispatched who start keeping out the roughest sorts, and things settle 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.

==[[Pathfinder Second Edition]]==
{{dnd-stub}}
An archetype where you master the ins and outs of fighting on ships. It was originally a rather limited archetype that appeared on the 2018 playtest before vanishing. It would show up again in the Advanced Player's Guide, looking just as small when compared to other archetypes. This is likely because it's already relying on two other skills with feats that would otherwise overlap with it: Athletics (which helps with rope climbing) and Intimidation.

The prerequisites for entry pretty much boil down to "look scary" (read: trained in Intimidation) and in exchange, you can walk on boats without issue, learn lore about sailing and gain a special action that pretty much lets you go [[Errol Flynn]] and swing your sword while swinging on a rope.
[[List of Archetypes in Pathfinder Second Edition#Acrobat|see more]]

{{Pathfinder-2nd-Edition-Archetypes}}

==Mordheim Pirate Warbands==
One of the more popular "semi-official" [[Mordheim]] warbands, pirate warbands are based on the simple facts that a) there have always been pirates in the Empire, b) the Empire relies heavily on river-conducted trade, and c) this meant the titular city was a big port before the [[warpstone]] meteor hit. So now you have plenty of bold and/or crazy pirates sailing up to the ruined dock and daring to launch raids into the city.

As a warband, Pirates of Mordheim have the special rules ''Ship-Based'' (if you hire both [[elf]] and [[dwarf]] Hired Swords simultaneously, increase their upkeep by '''+20 gold pieces''', as the tight confines of the ship exacerbate their racial animosity) and '''Shanghai'''. This is their mainstay special rule, and what it means is that pirates can actually swell their own ranks by recruiting captured enemies or even the random survivors of Mordheim. Because there are several situations where a pirate crew can successfully shanghai a person, this rule gets complicated...
* Firstly: a Pirate Captain can only attempt to shanghai '''normal human''' warband members; nonhumans refuse to obey or are too dangerous even for pirates to keep, whilst Hired Swords and Special Characters have no interest in the pirate life.
* When an enemy Hero is Captured, instead of exchanging/ransoming them or selling them, the Pirate Captain can attempt to convince them to join the crew. Roll 2d6 and add the Leadership of the Captain, then do the same for the captured Hero, adding +1 to he roll of whichever side won the fight. If the Captain wins, then the Hero defects and joins his crew, becoming a normal Crewman - this includes resetting his ability scores and skills if necessary and swapping all his gear for stuff from the Pirate Equipment list. If the Hero wins, then the Captain simply pressgangs him; the Hero retains his original skills and stats, but loses all his gear for stuff from the Swabbie list and can be deployed as a Swabbie in subsequent battles. Presumably, if the Pirates Rout against a shanghaied Hero-turned-Swabbie's former warband, he rejoins them.
* When the Pirates win a battle against an enemy warband, roll a d6 for each enemy Henchman that was killed (1-2 on their post-game roll after being taken Out of Action); on a 4+, they actually weren't killed, but were instead dragged back to the pirate ship and patched up. The Pirate Captain can attempt to shanghai them in the same manner as a captured hero, as described above.
* If the Pirates discover a Straggler when exploring Mordheim, the Pirate Captain can attempt to shanghai the half-crazed survivor instead of the other options. This requires making a simple Leadership check for the Captain; if he passes, then you gain a free Swabbie (the Straggler is too bonkers to make it as a crewman).
* Similarly, if the pirates discover Survivors when exploring Mordheim, the Pirate Captain can attempt to recruit them. Roll a d3 to see how many survivors there are, then make a Leadership check for the Captain for each Survivor. If successful, the survivor eagerly joins and becomes a Crewman; they can either start a new unit as a basic Crewman, or be added to an existing unit, whereupon their Exp and Stats match their brethren. If the check fails, however, the Suvivor is reluctantly pressganged, and so becomes a Swabbie.

Like all Mordheim warbands, you start with 500 gold pieces to outfit your Pirate Crew, which can be no larger than 15 models.

A Pirate Warband's leader is, of course, the '''Pirate Captain''' - you must start with one of these guys! They start with 20 EXP and can gain special skills from all of the standard skill tables (Combat, Shooting, Academic, Strength, Speed) as well as the ''Pirate Skills'' table. They cost 60 gold, have the ''Leader'' rule, and start with M4, WS4, BS3, S3, T3, W1, I3, A1 and LD8.

'''Ship's Mates''' are your standard secondary hero; you can have 0-2 of these in your crew. Ship's Mates cost 35 gold to hire and start with 8 experience as well as M4, WS4, BS3, S3, T3, W1, I2, A1 and LD7. They have the ''Inheritor'' special rule; if your Captain gets killed, then one of the Mates will take over the warband, just like how the standard Mercenary warband uses Champions to take over. They can learn Combat, Shooting, Strength and Pirate skills.

'''Cabin Boys''' are the obligatory "bare-faced recruit" type hero. 0-2 of these guys, who cost 15 gold to hire and start with 0 EXP and M4, WS2, BS2, S3, T3, W1, I3, A1 and LD6. They can learn Combat, Shooting, Speed and Pirate skills.

Now, for Henchman... your standard henchmen are, of course, the humble '''Crew''' or "Crewmen". 25 gold to hire, and statted up with M4, WS3, BS3, S3, T3, W1, I2, A1 and LD7. You can have any number of crewmen you like.

'''Gunners''' are the ship's cannoneers and marksmen; you can only have 0-2 of these guys, and they have the same stats and cost as the Crew, but they get access to some more firearms - blunderbusses, handguns and swivel guns (aka miniature cannons), specifically, alongside the pistol and duelist pistols that regular crewmen and Heroes ca take. They technically have a special rule in "Swivel Guns is Dangerous, Matey!" but that's more a rule about the Swivel Gun - namely, you can only take 1 Swivel Gun in your warband, and the bearer splits off to form an independent unit, because nobody's stupid enough to stand too close to somebody carrying a miniature cannon that could go off like a bomb at any moment.

'''Boatswains''' are the ship's riggers, and make excellent scouts in Mordheim. They cost 32 gold, have the same stats as a Crewman, and you can only take 0-5 of them. They start play with a Rope & Hook and will never, ''ever'' part with it. They also have the special rule ''Expert Riggers'', which lets them reroll failed Initiative tests made to climb a rope, leap a gap, jump down, or perform a diving charge.

Finally, there are the '''Swabbies'''. You can have 0-5 of these, and you can only recruit them via the aforementioned Shanghai rule, though in a one-off game you get 2 Swabbies for free. Statwise, they have M4, WS2, BS2, S3, T3, W1, I3, A1 and LD6. They also have the largest amount of special rules of any model in the warband:
* ''Not Hired:'' You don't pay for Swabbies, you Shanghai them.
* ''Never Gain Experience''
* ''Rabble:'' You can give a unit of Swabbies any mixture of weapons that you like. Swabbies gained by capturing heroes do not benefit from spellcasting ablities or skills they had before.
* ''"Blimey, they got away!":'' If the Pirates Rout, all Swabbies who had left the table on previous turns successfully escape; remove them from the warband roster.
* ''"Don't mind them mates, they ain't true pirates!":'' Swabbies who run or get taken out of action don't count for the purposes of taking a Rout test.

The Pirate skill table consists of:
#: '''Sea Shanty Singer:''' At the start of Close Combat, the Hero can burst into song, forcing one opponent in base contact to pass an LD test or lose 1 attack for the turn. Doesn't work on non-living targets.
#: '''Sea Legs:''' If the Hero Falls, roll a d3; on a 4+, ignore all hits caused by falling. Additionally, if the hero is knocked down or stunned when within 1" of a precipice, they can reroll their Initiate test to avoid falling.
#: '''Cutlass Master:''' If the Hero is both equipped with a sword and in closed quarters (in cover, in a building, within 2" of a terrain feature, etc), then the Hero can Parry by rolling equal to the To Hit roll, as well as by rolling higher.
#: '''Booming Voice:''' Only Captains can have this skill; reroll for other characters. Once per turn, if on his feet and not engaged in close combat, the Captain can target a single pirate within 8" who has either faileds their test to see if they will flee combat or who failed their test to stop fleeing. The targeted pirate can immediately reroll their test.
#: '''Hardy Constitution:''' When the Hero takes a Critical Hit, roll a d6; on a 5+, the Critical Hit is downgraded to just a normal hit.
#: '''Swashbuckler:''' At the end of any Hand-to-Hand phase in which he is in base contact with an enemy model, his own or the opponent's, the Hero can make an LD test. If successful, the Hero can immediately make a normal movement away from the enemy without taking any hits.

==Gallery==
<gallery>
Image:Capt phip abud.gif| Abduwali Muse, a modern somali pirate, as portrayed by Somali-American actor Barkhad Abdi in film. Also a meme, apparently.
Image:Abduwali Muse.jpg| The actual Abduwali Muse. Currently serving a 33+ years in U.S. federal prison.
</gallery>

==See Also==
*[[Dreadfleet]]
*[[Man O' War]]
*[[Poison'd]]
[[Category:History]]

Pirate

2022-07-04T01:37:29Z

2A02:8070:87CD:7200:58DA:CB99:99E5:6278: /* Famous 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 and car-jackers, 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 [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Easton (though there were exceptions of course)]. But if they did succeed, they became famous and feared by everyone, and soon that pirate's flag became something people fled as soon as they saw it.

Pirates, despite being a band of misfits, were quite varied. In real life they were cutthroats and bandits with ships or boats, 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 others telling them what to do. The reasons were many and this resulted in pirates being (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 racism as a whole as necessity and a desire for freedom meant a pirate crew could be multi-national and include slaves among their ranks. In fact, equality was common among pirates and slaves saw this as one of the few ways to feel free and equal. Some crews did not discriminate if you could do the job. They took in everyone who wanted to join. One particularly famous example was the Brethren of the Coast, a coalition of pirates and privateers who operated in the Caribbean. However, remember what they are; some pirates would force people to join their crew at times, had brutal punishments for those who broke their rules and some were known to trade slaves if the money was good enough.

A free(er) lifestyle is what attracted writers who presented pirates in a romanticized way, as misfits who seek out a life of freedom, portraying them 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, usually by end of a war leaving them effectively out of job. Others were genuine legends whose stories impress readers to this day.

TL;DR piracy is fucking awesome... unless you actually encounter pirates - usually in places like Burma, Nigeria, and Somalia.

==Famous Real Life Pirates==
*'''Edward Teach''' - Also possible Edward Thatch but better known as '''Blackbeard''', one of the original Golden Age pirates known for his [[Night Lords|intimidation tactics, which including exaggerating and weaponizing his fearsome reputation]]. His ''nom de guerre'' came from the fact that he had black hair with a long thick beard, put gunpowder and fuses in said beard and set it off to give himself a terrifying appearance (it helped that he was over six feet tall when most men of the time were about five and a half). He also often let his victims live to talk about their encounters with him. He was also quite smart, as he once raided a town (as in, blockaded the entirety of Charleston and held its sailors hostage) for medicine because [[Nurgle|most of his crew was riddled with diseases]] - [[Slaanesh|sexually transmitted ones]], then when some of the crew he sent to negotiate got drunk he marooned them in disgust. Another claim to fame was his flagship, a captured frigate he renamed ''Queen Anne's Revenge''; as an actual warship, this gave him another advantage over other pirates, who mostly used captured merchant ships, slave ships or schooners. He died in battle, [[awesome|fighting despite five gunshot wounds and nearly 20 sword slashes before being attacked from behind and having his throat cut. And not before severing three of his killer's fingers and breaking his sword]].

*'''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, and seriously pissing off the East India Company. 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.

*'''"Calico" Jack Rackham'''- A fairly unremarkable man by the standards of this list, who didn't do much major raiding and whose greatest act turned out to be the recruitment of Anne Bonny and Mary Read. While in life he may not have been much more than a mugger with a boat that provided a backdrop for the stories of those two women on his crew, he managed to leave his mark on history by flying one of the best Jolly Rogers out there ([[wikipedia:Calico_Jack#Jolly_Roger_Flag|or maybe not,]] but it's still a great flag).

*'''Anne Bonny and Mary Read''' - Two of the most famous female pirates. Here they get one entry as they have fairly similar life stories and worked together for a time: born in destitution, were disguised as boys early on in their lives, moved to the Caribbean where they took up piracy, and both became the lovers of Calico Jack plus renowned pirates in their own right. When Anne and Mary first met, both were disguised as men and Anne was attracted to Mary, so Anne confessed she was a woman, leading Mary to do the same [[PROMOTIONS|with rumors that they became lovers anyway with Calico Jack's approval]]. 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 unknown except that she wasn't executed, 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 virtually alone, telling off Calico Jack for being a cowardly drunk]] and even [[Commissar|shooting a few of their crewwmates for being too drunk to fight in the battle that led to their capture]] (don't underestimate pregnant women).

*'''Edward "Davies" Davis''' - An English pirate active in the late 1600's who made a career of raiding Spanish silver shipments. Noteworthy for his opposition to slavery; Davies and his crew hit a number of slave ships, liberating their prisoners and recruiting some into his crew. Eventually paid off the British crown for a pardon and retired; part of his haul went into founding the ''College of William & Mary'' in Virginia, the second oldest university in the Americas after Harvard. Probably discovered Rapa Nui (Easter Island) although the records are disputed since he wasn't the first to actually report it to anyone.

*'''Walter Raleigh''' - One of the first English pirates; a minor lord who decided to try multiclassing as an Adventurer-Politician. Founded Virginia and a few other less successful colonies, and was obsessed with finding the mythical golden city of El Dorado. He'd rob Spanish treasure ships as needed to fund his antics, and then brag about it in front of the Spanish ambassador in Elizabeth's royal court. Even plundered the Queen's bedchamber, marrying one of Elizabeth's ladies in waiting. Eventually went from looting ships to looting Spanish settlements. The Spanish responded by telling King James that if he didn't have Raleigh executed, they would treat his attack as a sanctioned act of war. Raleigh was executed, but comported himself to the point of even chatting with and goading his executioner.

*'''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. Also something about circumnavigating the Earth (Magellan would've been first had he survived the trip) but who cares, it's not piratey enough.

* '''William Adams''' - Served under Drake for long enough to get the title. More famous for going to [[Japan]] and becoming one of the few foreign-born [[Samurai]]. How's that for [[Multiclassing]]?

* '''Kanhoji Angre''' - An Indian privateer who spent 30 years forcing England and Portugal to pay him taxes. Probably the closest thing the world has seen to a pirate admiral, and considered today the ancestor of the Indian Navy. At the height of his career he had Dutch sailors coming to him for work hunting European merchants.

*'''Abduwali Muse''' - A well known modern pirate. Isn't as charming and heroic as the above but gets a mention due to being younger than all the above and the media coverage of his actions. Abduwali led small gang of teenage pirates from Somalia (he was 16-19 at the time, and the oldest among them) hijacking the ship Maersk Alabama, an unarmed container ship, from the Port of Salalah in Oman, with orders to sail through the Guardafui Channel to Mombasa, Kenya. Like almost every Somali pirate, he didn't have a good childhood due to living in extreme poverty, with food and work being scarce and poor quality; he turned to piracy to pay off a local warlord. When navy ships got involved, the gang took Phillips hostage and fled onto a lifeboat, resulting in Phillips' rescue and the deaths of every pirate save Abduwali himself, who got a 33+ year prison sentence in the U.S. Despite having no achievements that compare with historical pirates, his story did help create the film "Captain Phillips" - named for the Captain of the ship Muse tried to take - and a meme. (Look at him. He's the captain now.)

*'''Ching Shih/Cheng I Sao''' - Chinese Pirate Queen who not only led one of the biggest pirate fleets but also managed to successfully retire. She got her fleet through marrying a pirate, who gave her half his fleet. And when he died she got all of it by way of political maneuvering with her husband's family. The Chinese government tried to take her down, but she was so good that she stole their ships until they were forced to use fishing boats. She even created a set of pirating laws, including one that made rape of female captives punishable by beheading. She eventually beat the empire so hard that the Chinese Government had to sue for peace. She negotiated for amnesty for herself and any of her pirates that wanted to quit the life, so she retired from piracy to set up a gambling den and brothel.

[[File:Serapis_Flag.png|250px|thumb|right|Totally legit, no pirates here.]]

*'''John Paul Jones''' - An angry Scotsman who sided with the colonists in the American Revolution so he could go on a big piracy spree up and down the English coast. At one point he showed up in the Netherlands and his ship was so badly shot up the flag was gone and the Dutch were like "you need a flag or we have to arrest you as a pirate" ''(also it wasn't his ship; HIS ship SANK in the battle where he captured the one the Dutch were now hassling him about)''. But they didn't like the English either so they looked the other way while Jones found someone to quickly sew a new flag ''([[Counts as|that looks nothing like an American flag and suspiciously like a Dutch flag cut into ribbons and sewn back together]])'' and he was free to go. He kicked so much ass and was so popular that one of the places that he raided actually gave him an official pardon in 1999.

*'''Gertrude Walton''' - A real life ghost pirate! The RIAA claimed that she uploaded pirated copies of over 700 songs despite her ''being dead''. Immortalized in a Weird Al song.

*'''Stede Bonnet''' - The "Gentleman Pirate," Steve was a former plantation owner from Barbados who got fed up with always being in debt and his nagging wife, so he decided to become a pirate. Bonnet is supposedly one of the pirates who originated "Walking the Plank." [[Noobs|Despite his gross inexperience]], he was able to attract a crew by promising a guaranteed wage as opposed to a share of plunder. Things went relatively well until he got bamboozled by Blackbeard (yes THAT Blackbeard) into giving up command of his ship and effectively became a hostage. He was later bamboozled again by Blackbeard and swore revenge, in which he surprisingly became a more competent pirate. But he was captured before he had the chance. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrGf4nJWVOU Dramatic Reenactment now included!]

*'''Felix von Luckner''' - Nicknamed "The Sea Devil", he is the best example of a Lawful pirate (okay, privateer) in RPG terms. Commissioned as an officer in the Kaizerlische Marine during WWI, he was given command of a three-master (at a time where most boats had switched to steam) with orders to do some commerce raiding and make himself a pain in the hindquarters of the Allies. And he did so. Beautifully. In less than one year, Luckner captured and sank no less than fifteen ships through guile and superior seamanship. And the best part? he did so barely ever firing a shot. Over his entire career, he and his crew killed only a single enemy soldier (a poor soul unlucky enough to be right next to a steam line that ruptured when Luckner ordered the enemy's radio shot). For the rest, he made sure everyone was safe and sound before sending his prizes to the bottom. And when he just became overburdened with prisoners, he ordered the latest his prizes to throw the cargo overboard and bring all his prisoners to a neutral country, and then they'd all be free. A pirate and and gentleman indeed, and a bizarre counterpoint to the way in which submarine warfare, the more modern way to attack shipping, was conducted in the 20th century.

==Famous Fictional Pirates==

(For the sake of keeping things brief, we'll ignore Vidya pirates, and try keep it to Movie and Book pirates that your parents or nephews/nieces are likely to have heard of, depending on your age.)

*'''Long John Silver''', from ''Treasure Island''.
*'''Captain Hook''', from ''Peter Pan''.
*'''Jack Sparrow''' (''Captain'' Jack Sparrow, if you please) and '''Hector Barbarossa''' from ''Pirates of the Caribbean''
** For that matter, the ride Pirates are of interest.
*'''Captain Blood''', from the book series and movie of the same name.
*'''Captain Harlock''', space pirate.
*''One Piece'' has a quite a few. We'll not list them, as it would take ''forever'', just like the manga.
*'''Captain Nemo''', from ''Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea''.
*'''One-Eyed Willy''', from ''The Goonies''.
*'''Pirate Jenny''', from the song of the same name.
*'''The Dread Pirate Roberts''', from ''[[The Princess Bride]]''.
*Many, many advertising pirates.

== 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 or just being conveniently ignored by it, 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.

'''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.

== Fictional Pirates ==
'''Swashbucklers''' - The Noblebright side of the Fantasy pirate coin. Swashbucklers actually overlap with genres outside of pirate fiction, such as with the Three Musketeers or Zorro, but their are plenty of pirate examples too. 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. After all, the golden age of piracy happened because the naval powers in those day struggled to maintain power on the edges of their empire (new world) and the vast wealth they were extracting, which meant pirates had a reason to exist. Eventually, the great powers managed to extend control across the fullness of their empires and pirates ran out of room for safe harbors, ports and so on. In space however, it is is infinite enough to run around from any Space Navy, and if there are enough valuables goods trades between planets, one could have an reason to do so. On paper piracy in space does seem possible, contingent of course on the idea of there being FTL drive of some sort, else our pirates have to be in stasis 99% of the time. 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. Another common convention is hidden bases on remote asteroids or space stations that don't orbit anything (which Star Wars dubs a "shadowport"). Despite rumors of this happening already, the only recorded crimes committed in space is a white collar crime involving somebody illegally accessing their spouse's bank records during a divorce dispute, when US astronaut Anne McClain was accused by her estranged wife of
digital invasion of privacy while on the ISS.

'''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 literal ghost ships that are seemly broken pirate ships crawling with moses and maggots while being seemly impervious to cannon fire. [[Vampire Counts|SPOOOOOKYYY]].

'''[[Airship|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. An instance of an airship ''privateer'' '''may''' have existed with the U.S. World War II blimp Resolute, which was reported in 1946 to have been the last use of the United State's power to issue a letter of marque, as part of a legal wrangling to put a civilian vessel into the chain of command rather than intending it loot anything, but no record of this mark being issued exists.

'''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 Norscan are nature born sea faring adventurer that back in the old day, a Norscan by the name '''Losteriksson''' being the first old worlder to settle in Lustria of the new world. There he became famous after plundered the shit out of it and founded a coast settlement named after his daughter that was born on this land: '''Skeggi''', then encourage even more Norscan to have a piece at the place despite its seemly high mortality rate from jungle disease, wild cold ones and Lizardmen. The Skaeling tribe in particular is famed for their seafaring. [[Wulfrik the Wanderer]] uses a magic longship to teleport anywhere whenever he wants or needs (because chaos gods) to go 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, and thanks to the mighty technosorceries of vydiagaems they are a fully fledged faction in the Total Warhammer.

*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]], [[Eldar Corsairs|cunning spiky ear glass cannon]] and the fucking [[Freebooterz|orks]], they are all badasses. [[Rogue Traders]] probably count as pirates too (corsairs would be the most accurate term), 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]]. There is also at least [[Space Sharks|one known loyalist chapter]] that does piratey things like abducting the entire population of a loyalist planet to bolster the ranks of their recruits and chapter serfs, but they work far from the Imperium, and don't really have the opportunity for easily recruited manpower. Desperate times...

'''[[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) especially if they free slaves. If it's the other way around (slave raiders on free peoples), the resulting pirates are probably evil villains, full stop.
**Keep in mind that many people adore Jack Sparrow for simply saying "People aren't cargo, mate!", which was Jack Sparrow's entire descent into piracy to begin with.
* 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. However even proper navies were known to do (and in some cases infamous for abusing) exactly that: the war of 1812 began in part over the British going overboard with forced enrollment. (Look up 'impressment', you'll get the idea.)
* How badly non-pirate sailors are treated by their captains: when the Navy press-gangs their crew into service and keelhauls/flogs wrongdoers around the fleet; 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, [[/d/|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: Piracy is never a safe job, even when you're in port, and every action has a degree of risk to it. Pirates are criminals who endanger shipping, which makes people with money and power annoyed, which in turn leads to a good deal of energy being expended in getting rid of any pirate that causes too much trouble. Unless they're being backed up by another, similar power, or have decided to transition from just stealing shit to forming a functional republic with a navy and laws and borders, a pirate port is not stable. Even then it's not particularly stable either, although it's got a start on the climb to being a nation. Always remember: piracy comes with danger and is affected by politics much bigger than little ships with black flags. You'll present a more engaging setting if there's more to a pirate's life than you can see at Disney World.

With that in mind, pirates still 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. French Tortuga and Dutch Curacao were like this, being effectively surrounded by a target rich environment full of Spanish and ruled by governors who simply did not give a flip about what happened at sea. In particular, Curacao's natural harbor with a tight channel overlooked by a fort on a ridge made it practically impossible to raid from sea, so the Dutch DID NOT care how angry the Spanish got with them over piracy because nothing short of an invasion would dislodge them. Tortuga otoh got raided by the Spanish repeatedly, but there were just too many French and English on the island to suppress.
* 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. This will be complicated and will probably require a reliable fence who can move the goods quietly and with the illusion of legitimacy.
* The Pirates are operating on a frontier, like the boucaniers did. Small colonies and settlements are usually much less concerned about the legitimacy of cargo if its something they can use. They may not be able to pay very much for it, but they often can pay in other ways such as provisions and repairs.
* 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. <ref>See the (in my opinion, at least) fantastic series Black Sails for an idea of how that might work, or fail to work. If you can get past the first season being about 20% excessively long sex scenes with little plot relevance, that is. Thanks, Michael Bay. Seeing Charles Vane's sandy cock was not on my bucket list and it didn't really affect the story all that much.</ref>

For piracy to really catch on somewhere, there needs to be 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 (really any large feathered birds, since feather quills were used as pens). Whale oil (used in lamps) was another hot item, with whaling ships often making easy targets returning from hunts. But whatever the cargo, there is a fine line of intersecting interests, between the risks of accepting stolen goods, the risks of stealing them in the first place, and the potential profit. Of course, there's always robbing payroll ships, but if they were easy to hit everyone would do it.

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 (the defeated sailors were generally down with this since the alternative was usually sitting in the hold in chains), 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 who could not be ransomed off) 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. If there are native peoples in the area they start showing up to trade, or occasionally raid necessitating some basic defenses.

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. Those pirates which had lost limbs to the job may settle down with their compensation package for an easier and steadier life ashore. Tents and lean-tos are replaced by small cottages and shanties and after that houses. 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 attracts the attention of whatever state power claims control over the area. A governor and garrison will be dispatched who start keeping out the roughest sorts, and things settle 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.

==[[Pathfinder Second Edition]]==
{{dnd-stub}}
An archetype where you master the ins and outs of fighting on ships. It was originally a rather limited archetype that appeared on the 2018 playtest before vanishing. It would show up again in the Advanced Player's Guide, looking just as small when compared to other archetypes. This is likely because it's already relying on two other skills with feats that would otherwise overlap with it: Athletics (which helps with rope climbing) and Intimidation.

The prerequisites for entry pretty much boil down to "look scary" (read: trained in Intimidation) and in exchange, you can walk on boats without issue, learn lore about sailing and gain a special action that pretty much lets you go [[Errol Flynn]] and swing your sword while swinging on a rope.
[[List of Archetypes in Pathfinder Second Edition#Acrobat|see more]]

{{Pathfinder-2nd-Edition-Archetypes}}

==Mordheim Pirate Warbands==
One of the more popular "semi-official" [[Mordheim]] warbands, pirate warbands are based on the simple facts that a) there have always been pirates in the Empire, b) the Empire relies heavily on river-conducted trade, and c) this meant the titular city was a big port before the [[warpstone]] meteor hit. So now you have plenty of bold and/or crazy pirates sailing up to the ruined dock and daring to launch raids into the city.

As a warband, Pirates of Mordheim have the special rules ''Ship-Based'' (if you hire both [[elf]] and [[dwarf]] Hired Swords simultaneously, increase their upkeep by '''+20 gold pieces''', as the tight confines of the ship exacerbate their racial animosity) and '''Shanghai'''. This is their mainstay special rule, and what it means is that pirates can actually swell their own ranks by recruiting captured enemies or even the random survivors of Mordheim. Because there are several situations where a pirate crew can successfully shanghai a person, this rule gets complicated...
* Firstly: a Pirate Captain can only attempt to shanghai '''normal human''' warband members; nonhumans refuse to obey or are too dangerous even for pirates to keep, whilst Hired Swords and Special Characters have no interest in the pirate life.
* When an enemy Hero is Captured, instead of exchanging/ransoming them or selling them, the Pirate Captain can attempt to convince them to join the crew. Roll 2d6 and add the Leadership of the Captain, then do the same for the captured Hero, adding +1 to he roll of whichever side won the fight. If the Captain wins, then the Hero defects and joins his crew, becoming a normal Crewman - this includes resetting his ability scores and skills if necessary and swapping all his gear for stuff from the Pirate Equipment list. If the Hero wins, then the Captain simply pressgangs him; the Hero retains his original skills and stats, but loses all his gear for stuff from the Swabbie list and can be deployed as a Swabbie in subsequent battles. Presumably, if the Pirates Rout against a shanghaied Hero-turned-Swabbie's former warband, he rejoins them.
* When the Pirates win a battle against an enemy warband, roll a d6 for each enemy Henchman that was killed (1-2 on their post-game roll after being taken Out of Action); on a 4+, they actually weren't killed, but were instead dragged back to the pirate ship and patched up. The Pirate Captain can attempt to shanghai them in the same manner as a captured hero, as described above.
* If the Pirates discover a Straggler when exploring Mordheim, the Pirate Captain can attempt to shanghai the half-crazed survivor instead of the other options. This requires making a simple Leadership check for the Captain; if he passes, then you gain a free Swabbie (the Straggler is too bonkers to make it as a crewman).
* Similarly, if the pirates discover Survivors when exploring Mordheim, the Pirate Captain can attempt to recruit them. Roll a d3 to see how many survivors there are, then make a Leadership check for the Captain for each Survivor. If successful, the survivor eagerly joins and becomes a Crewman; they can either start a new unit as a basic Crewman, or be added to an existing unit, whereupon their Exp and Stats match their brethren. If the check fails, however, the Suvivor is reluctantly pressganged, and so becomes a Swabbie.

Like all Mordheim warbands, you start with 500 gold pieces to outfit your Pirate Crew, which can be no larger than 15 models.

A Pirate Warband's leader is, of course, the '''Pirate Captain''' - you must start with one of these guys! They start with 20 EXP and can gain special skills from all of the standard skill tables (Combat, Shooting, Academic, Strength, Speed) as well as the ''Pirate Skills'' table. They cost 60 gold, have the ''Leader'' rule, and start with M4, WS4, BS3, S3, T3, W1, I3, A1 and LD8.

'''Ship's Mates''' are your standard secondary hero; you can have 0-2 of these in your crew. Ship's Mates cost 35 gold to hire and start with 8 experience as well as M4, WS4, BS3, S3, T3, W1, I2, A1 and LD7. They have the ''Inheritor'' special rule; if your Captain gets killed, then one of the Mates will take over the warband, just like how the standard Mercenary warband uses Champions to take over. They can learn Combat, Shooting, Strength and Pirate skills.

'''Cabin Boys''' are the obligatory "bare-faced recruit" type hero. 0-2 of these guys, who cost 15 gold to hire and start with 0 EXP and M4, WS2, BS2, S3, T3, W1, I3, A1 and LD6. They can learn Combat, Shooting, Speed and Pirate skills.

Now, for Henchman... your standard henchmen are, of course, the humble '''Crew''' or "Crewmen". 25 gold to hire, and statted up with M4, WS3, BS3, S3, T3, W1, I2, A1 and LD7. You can have any number of crewmen you like.

'''Gunners''' are the ship's cannoneers and marksmen; you can only have 0-2 of these guys, and they have the same stats and cost as the Crew, but they get access to some more firearms - blunderbusses, handguns and swivel guns (aka miniature cannons), specifically, alongside the pistol and duelist pistols that regular crewmen and Heroes ca take. They technically have a special rule in "Swivel Guns is Dangerous, Matey!" but that's more a rule about the Swivel Gun - namely, you can only take 1 Swivel Gun in your warband, and the bearer splits off to form an independent unit, because nobody's stupid enough to stand too close to somebody carrying a miniature cannon that could go off like a bomb at any moment.

'''Boatswains''' are the ship's riggers, and make excellent scouts in Mordheim. They cost 32 gold, have the same stats as a Crewman, and you can only take 0-5 of them. They start play with a Rope & Hook and will never, ''ever'' part with it. They also have the special rule ''Expert Riggers'', which lets them reroll failed Initiative tests made to climb a rope, leap a gap, jump down, or perform a diving charge.

Finally, there are the '''Swabbies'''. You can have 0-5 of these, and you can only recruit them via the aforementioned Shanghai rule, though in a one-off game you get 2 Swabbies for free. Statwise, they have M4, WS2, BS2, S3, T3, W1, I3, A1 and LD6. They also have the largest amount of special rules of any model in the warband:
* ''Not Hired:'' You don't pay for Swabbies, you Shanghai them.
* ''Never Gain Experience''
* ''Rabble:'' You can give a unit of Swabbies any mixture of weapons that you like. Swabbies gained by capturing heroes do not benefit from spellcasting ablities or skills they had before.
* ''"Blimey, they got away!":'' If the Pirates Rout, all Swabbies who had left the table on previous turns successfully escape; remove them from the warband roster.
* ''"Don't mind them mates, they ain't true pirates!":'' Swabbies who run or get taken out of action don't count for the purposes of taking a Rout test.

The Pirate skill table consists of:
#: '''Sea Shanty Singer:''' At the start of Close Combat, the Hero can burst into song, forcing one opponent in base contact to pass an LD test or lose 1 attack for the turn. Doesn't work on non-living targets.
#: '''Sea Legs:''' If the Hero Falls, roll a d3; on a 4+, ignore all hits caused by falling. Additionally, if the hero is knocked down or stunned when within 1" of a precipice, they can reroll their Initiate test to avoid falling.
#: '''Cutlass Master:''' If the Hero is both equipped with a sword and in closed quarters (in cover, in a building, within 2" of a terrain feature, etc), then the Hero can Parry by rolling equal to the To Hit roll, as well as by rolling higher.
#: '''Booming Voice:''' Only Captains can have this skill; reroll for other characters. Once per turn, if on his feet and not engaged in close combat, the Captain can target a single pirate within 8" who has either faileds their test to see if they will flee combat or who failed their test to stop fleeing. The targeted pirate can immediately reroll their test.
#: '''Hardy Constitution:''' When the Hero takes a Critical Hit, roll a d6; on a 5+, the Critical Hit is downgraded to just a normal hit.
#: '''Swashbuckler:''' At the end of any Hand-to-Hand phase in which he is in base contact with an enemy model, his own or the opponent's, the Hero can make an LD test. If successful, the Hero can immediately make a normal movement away from the enemy without taking any hits.

==Gallery==
<gallery>
Image:Capt phip abud.gif| Abduwali Muse, a modern somali pirate, as portrayed by Somali-American actor Barkhad Abdi in film. Also a meme, apparently.
Image:Abduwali Muse.jpg| The actual Abduwali Muse. Currently serving a 33+ years in U.S. federal prison.
</gallery>

==See Also==
*[[Dreadfleet]]
*[[Man O' War]]
*[[Poison'd]]
[[Category:History]]

Historical Empires

2022-07-04T01:09:13Z

2A02:8070:87CD:7200:58DA:CB99:99E5:6278: /* Medieval */

{{Cleanup}}

The common definition of an empire, as opposed to a kingdom, is that a commonly but not always divinely-ordained Emperor rules over subjects of multiple cultures, races, and/or religions. '''''Empire''''' is derived from the Latin word '''Imperium''', which means "authority" and more specifically the authority to command numerous Roman legions.

=What does this have to do with /tg/?=

Historical empires are a commonly-referenced source for fantasy and sci-fi cultures. For example, the Holy Roman Empire had a lot of influence on the design of the Empire of Warhammer Fantasy Battles. Most roleplaying settings feature big, huge empires based on historical empires or the decaying remnants of such. And empires are common window dressing for board games like Twilight Imperium. Empires give you more options than typically smaller, more parochial kingdoms.

=Notable Historical Empires=
Not an exhaustive list, though there are relatively few empires compared to kingdoms in history due to the size and demands of maintaining one.

==Ancient==
Empires first emerged as the economic and agricultural needs of individual city-states outgrew the palace economy they had hitherto relied upon and priest-kings began to covet the lands and wealth of their neighbors.

*'''Akkadian Empire''' ''(circa 2234-2154 BC)'': The oldest known empire in human history, arising in the Fertile Crescent in northern Mesopotamia. Arose when Sargon of Akkad conquered the cities of the Sumerian civilization and then conquered its neighbors and subjugated their kings.
*'''Neo-Assyrian Empire''' ''(911 BC–612 BC)'': An empire which had in its foundation a belief that if their army ever lost a battle, the world would end. Unsurprisingly, it lasted until slightly after they lost their first major battle.
*'''Egyptian Empire''': Depending on your definition, one could define it as starting with the Old Kingdom unifying the Egyptian city-states until the fall of Ptolemaic Egypt to the Roman Empire. Mind you, the civilization is not the Empire. For details, please consult relevant professionals and their works instead of a wiki for tactical genius.
*'''Achaemenid Empire''' ''(550–330 BC)'': Most famous for being conquered by Alexander and, along with Egypt, providing visual inspiration for the [[Thousand Sons]]. Infamous for how they're depicted in the [[/pol/|oil-slicked fantasy epic]] that is 300, the Persian Empire was not, in fact, a highly decadent empire of monsters and evil god-kings; only a regularly decadent empire that was actually quite lenient for empires of the time - Slaves were outlawed among Persians (but not their subjects), and slaves had more rights than usual; women could own businesses and they were very off-hand in their dealings with their vassal kingdoms. It was still a militaristic empire, mind, but they were not some evil eastern "other" for the Greeks to defeat - in fact, the "Greeks" did not exist yet! The people that would become the Greeks were as different culturally from each other as they were from the Persians, and many even saw the Persians as closer to them culturally than some of the other city states! Why was that? Well, a good number of Greek city-states (particularly the ones in Anatolia or very close to it) had had years of either being tributary to the Persians or had incredibly good trade relations with them.
*'''Chinese Empire''' ''(221 BC-Present)'': Though already unified under a king as late as 841 BC (re-dating based on astronomy ''claims'' to trace further exact years way into 2100BC and there is evidence of complex agrarian civilization going back well before that), the Chinese did not live under an Emperor until 221BC. They survived interim catastrophes by coming up with the Mandate of Heaven (if the dynasty turns into a bunch of idiots then your local emperor definitely isn't favored by the gods and every peasant can hang them off), their equivalent of a common law, in the Zhou (not empire), and enhanced social mobility with a general disregard in right of blood (began in the Qin(Chin), first empire) and the test system for enlisting government officials (began in the Sui, some 600 years later). Lasted until the fall of the Qing Dynasty in the early 20th century, after the European imperialist ambitions exploited the hell out of the Chinese state and societal structures being essentially the same for almost 3000 (yes, really) years (and also these 3000 years of prevailing against all odds made the Chinese aristocracy complacent to such an extent that the Russian nobles the Soviets had shot looked progressive by comparison). Resurgent, you may say.
*'''Macedonian Empire''' ''(330-323 BC)'': One of the largest Empires in ancient history, created by Alexander the Great. Conquered Persia, the largest Empire in history at the time. Shortly after the empire achieved its height, Alexander died at only 32 years old and his Empire was split into several smaller countries such as Seleucid Empire and Ptolemaic Kingdom, ruled by dynasties started by his generals, called Diadochi.
**'''Seleucid Empire''' ''(323-63 BC)'': The only one of the Diadochi Kingdoms to be called an Empire. By far the largest of the Diadochi Kingdoms, it streched at its largest extent from western Anatolia all the way into modern Pakistan, although that period didn't last very long. In spite of the difficulties of managing a realm of such a size, they stuck around for a very long, because of a whole couple of clever alliances struck with proto-Indians and the gradual assimiliation of its Persian populace. Its strength started to vain in the middle of the 2nd century BC when a couple of political intrigues messed up the day of the ruling dynasties as well as the the constant warring with Ptolemaic Egypt in Syria and modern-day Israel and the somewhat-resurgent Greek states in the west. Its final demise came at the hand of the Romans, when Pompeius dismantled the remainders of the Seleucid Empire in Antioch in 63 BC.
*'''[[Roman Empire]]''' ''(27 BC – 476 AD (Western)/1453 AD (Eastern)/1475 AD (Trebizond))'': The codifier for <s>fictional</s> empires everywhere, and (through borrowing/stealing Greek technology) largely blamed for turning Europe from a backwater land of barbarians into the home of the most ambitious superpowers in history. Has lots, and I mean LOTS, of successors whether it be the directly-descended Spanish and French Empires, or the more-religiously-oriented Roman Catholic Church, et cetera. Roma Invicta.
**'''Byzantine Empire''' ''(395-1453 AD)'': Originally the chopped off eastern half of the Imperium Romanum with Greece, Egypt and Anatolia as its most important core territories. It came into being when the last Emperor of both halves of the Roman Empire, Emperor Theodosius, made Konstantinople his permanent residence and gave the leadership over the Empire to his two sons, Honorius and Arcadius. The Eastern Empire survived the cataclysmic events of the Migration Period (not in small part due to generous bribes to the Huns and throwing the western half under the bus) much longer than its western cousins did and even enjoyed a long period of relative peace between 400 and 503, during which time the East Roman Emperors consolidated their Empire and greatly strengthened its civil institutions. The first major points of its eventual demise came at the hands of the Seljuk Turks and Mamaluks, who conquered Egypt and all of the Empires holdings in Anatolia as well as the sack of Constantinople by Crusaders in 1204. After the sacking of its capital, the Empire only persisted as merely a rump state with holding in Thrace and Greece and saw its ultimate end when the attempt of the Polish King Wladyslav to save Constantinople from the Ottomans failed at the Battle of Varna in 1444 and the city subsequently was conquered in 1453.

==Medieval==
Many medieval empires that are known to fa/tg/uys claimed legitimacy, in some way or another, from the Roman Empire. Even the Ottoman sultans claimed to be Kayser-i-Rum, or Caesar of Rome. New World empires, obviously, did not, and most Asian empires embraced the trappings, if not the lineage, of the Chinese Empire. The great empires of the ancient period thus laid the foundation for the creation and culture of many modern nation-states through the transmission of medieval successors.

*'''The Holy Roman Empire''' ''(962–1806)'': Sometimes called the [http://europeanhistory.about.com/cs/germany/a/Otherreichs.htm first Reich]. Started as a powerful medieval state, but ever since the beginning of [[High Middle Ages]] started to devolve into something "neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire." (Voltaire) So complex that its easier to explain what it was not than what it was. If you know how the [[Empire]]'s politics works, that's the HRE in a nutshell. In essence, the HRE was more of a loosely-connected confederation of innumerable fiefdoms, counties and kingdoms (over 300 by the late 1600s) formally unified under the leadership of the Romano-German Emperors. Its political power in Europe rested entirely on the willingness and ability of the current Emperor to keep his underlings in line, but by the 1300s the Emperor's authority began to crumble and was completely gone when the Thirty-Years-War (1618-1648) ravaged a third of its population and foreign powers (mainly France, Prussia and Sweden) started to chip away at its territory. Saw its ultimate end when Napoleon defeated the Prussians and the Austrians in short succession, prompting the major dukedoms that were still left to formally leave the Empire, and the Habsburg Emperor Joseph II abdicated the imperial crown in 1806. Luckily, the Hapsburgs had installed a backup empire, the Austrian Empire, meaning they retained the title of Emperor even when the HRE dissolved.
**Named "The Holy Roman Empire" because the Pope of the day went around baiting kings with religious recognition to earn more loyalty from the brainwashed, god-fearing masses. The Pope did this because, after seceding from the Roman Empire ruling in the east and declaring its independence from the Emperor-dominated Orthodox Church papacy, the Roman Catholic Church needed to sponsor a Roman Emperor of their own.
**Was preceded by the '''Carolingian Empire''' that lasted for about eight decades until it was partitioned into three successor kingdoms, one of which would evolve into the Holy Roman Empire and the other into the Kingdom of France, thus laying the groundwork for the greatest Hatfield-McCoy feud in history. The Ottonian House that founded the HRE liked to claim descent from the Carolingian House and Charlemagne as a result.
**Note that the Byzantines in the East also laid claim to the title of Roman Emperor and occasionally acknowledged the Holy Roman Emperors as their equals. This was a pretty messy period though and a detailed explanation would require a full article of its own.
**As to the frequent asked question why there were so goddamn many states on the territories that up the HRE, one needs to look at German inheritance custom, which survives to this day. It was the normal custom for each son of a noble family to inherit a piece of the realm after the previous ruler's death and found their own little dukedoms, especially if the sons couldn't agree on who got what. Add to that an incomprehensibly complicated net of political marriages with the addition of bishoprics which were issued by the Vatican and free cities (plus a number of other miniscule imperial territories like the "Imperial valley of Zell) and you get a clusterfuck of fractured territories that were constantly at each others throats and only banded together when the perfidious French tried something.
*'''Ummayyad Caliphate''' ''(661-750)'': The Largest of the four classical caliphates established after the death of Muhammad.It's borders stretched from Northern Spain to Pakistan. Overthrew the last Rashidun ("Rightly-Guided") Caliph Ali in order to gain power. At it's apex, it was one of the mightiest empires the world had ever seen and cemented Islam's new role as a religion of caliphs and kings. When one thinks of the Islamic Golden Age, it's either these guys or the dudes that took them down, the Abbassids. The Ummayyad's were rebels who promoted an early form of Arab nationalism throughout the Islamic World, as well as shifting the role of the Caliph from an elected position to a hereditary one. Eventually, their rampant Arab nationalism would get them overthrown by the Abbassids and the last remaining heir fled to Muslim Iberia, where they established the Emirate of Cordoba
*'''Abbasid Caliphate''' ''(750-1258)'': A caliphate born in a revolution against the Umayyads, the Abbasids are what you think of when you think of the Arabian Nights. Opulent cities glistening with the fruits of empire, [[Dark Eldar|crafty viziers who hide behind puppet sultans]], and all the glories of Baghdad in it's prime. Notable achievements include the many inventions and advancements of the Islamic Golden Age, Dominating the Mediterranean (Just look at Sicily), and battling the Chinese Tang Dynasty for control of Central Asia. Unfortunately with the coming of the Seljuk Turks, their hegemony would shatter and eventually their dynasty would become nothing more than a line of puppet kings hiding out in Mamluk Egypt.
*'''Ethiopian Empire''' ''(1137-1935/1941-1974)'': an empire of Africans, and one of the only two African nations to remain independent of the West, depending on your view of Liberia. Also used to have Judaism as the official religion and then switched to its own version of Christianity. Its last Emperor, Haile Selassie, was revered by a religious movement as [[God-Emperor of Mankind|God incarnate (which, notably, he neither started nor approved of)]].
*'''Portuguese Empire''' ''(1139-1975)'': The lesser Iberian empire that liked keeping their maritime maps secret, becoming the first global empire in the world. Notable for the founding of Nagasaki, moving their capital and court to Brazil to escape Napoleon, and coming back from the brink of dissolution three times. Also, their nicknames, Portugal Overseas: [[Ultramar]] Português or the Império [[Ultramarines|Ultramarino]] Português has something to do with some smurfs made by a [[GW|British company of Grimdark]]. Due to [[Inquisition|secrecy]], nobody has found the old Portuguese royal sea route maps.
*'''Mongolian Empire''' ''(1206–1368 AD)'': '''The Empire made from Empires.''' Your stereotypical savage-nomad-kill-burn-kill-maim-burn empire. But only because they liked their reputation to precede them and do the conquering without the bloodshed and the damage to their soon-to-be territories. Was more civilized than Alexander the Great and their empire lasted even longer than his when you think about it. The empires they conquered were actually at THEIR golden ages too, like the Khwarazm and Song (China).
**Like Romans, once a people surrendered, they welcomed scholars and engineers with their new ideas, especially that of war, and they went from steppe cavalry with arrows to heavily armored cavalry with horse trains, gunpowder, and siege weapons. Religiously tolerant/gave no shits. Built a lot of bridges and blazed a lot of trade routes. Remember Marco Polo was writing about their empire. Put the Four Khanates and the conquered China (Yuan) together, and lol, the second largest human empire, ever, at 88% the size of the British one. Mind you, the Mongol Empire was ''continuous'', though, unlike the British Empire with isolated territories and islands. But the British are a seafaring empire, so there's that.
**Through the 4 sons of Genghis Khan, was the progenitor of other vast, mostly Muslim, empires. Its last successor, the Mughal Empire, only fell in '''''1857'''''.
*'''Ottoman Empire''' ''(1299–1923)'': A vast and powerful Muslim empire that started out as an amalgamation of nomadic tribes uniting to fight off Mongol raiders. From there they became a small Turkish state in Anatolia that conquered Constantinople, the Balkans, Middle East, and North Africa. In its heyday, it was huge, technologically advanced, well-governed and constantly driving forward, the terror of Europe. Its Janissary Corps the most feared and elite group of soldiers in Europe or the Middle East. Yet beginning in the 1600s the Empire began to transition towards a more sedentary state, and while it kept parity with its contemporaries well into the 18th century, missing out on the advances that came with Europe's Seven Years War and then its age of Colonization created a gap the Ottomans were incapable of surmounting. Adding to this was the introduction of Nationalism into the boiling pot of ethnic tensions, (with the Greeks being the first to win their independence in a brutal civil war), the conquest and liberation of much of its territories in Europe by the Austro-Hungarians in the mid 1700s and the Pre-WW1 Imperial Powers of Europe frequently exploiting the political weaknesses of the Ottoman Empire to their benefit. Its eventual end came with World War 1, when the German-allied Ottomans suffered a series of embarrassing defeats against the British-lead Arab minorities and the Russian Empire in the Caucasus. Trying to exterminate the Armenians in the largest Genocide up until the Holocaust did little to alleviate its decline. Kemal Atatürk ultimately dissolved the Empire in 1923 and founded the Republic of Turkey.

==Modern Period==
Note that when WWI started, the crowned rulers of Russia, Great Britain, Germany, Spain, Denmark, Norway, Greece, and Romania were all related by blood or marriage, making both the war the single biggest family feud in history, as well as the royal family the single most successful genepool in all ecology. A similar feud, but between the rival Houses of Bourbon and Hapsburg, sparked pretty much all European wars between 1400 and 1798.

*'''Spanish Empire''' ''(1402-1975, at its height 1516-1700)'': Starting with the discovery of America by Columbus, it quickly colonized huge swaths of the New World, making Spanish the official language of most of Central and South America and the Caribbean. Annihilated the Aztec empire in the process of plundering its gold and silver. They established a trade route with China from the Philippines to Europe going through America, which was one of the first oceanic spice routes of the Early Modern World (the other one being the Portuguese route to India). In its hay day, the Spanish Empire was a frightening entity, controlling the overwhelming majority of trade with Silver and Gold, fielding the largest army and navy in Europe and only adding to it was the union between Spain, Portugal and the Holy Roman Empire under the Habsburg dynasty which dominated much of the history of 1500s central Europe. Its strength started to fade when economic stagnation and an over-reliance on its colonies paired with a serious succession crisis (the result of generations of relentless inbreeding within the Habsburg dynasty) in the early 1700s made its oversea holdings more of a liability than a boon. Adding to this were the constant efforts of the Dutch, British and French to chip away at its powerbase in the Caribbean. In the early 1800s, when mainland Spain was thoroughly beaten into submission by Napoleon, the colonial elites in the new world saw no use in their status anymore and declared independence in quick succession between 1810 and 1830. The final nail in the coffin was the establishing of the Monroe-doctrine as a central tenet in US foreign policy, which saw the Spanish kicked out of Cuba and the Philippines in 1898, ceding its last holdings in the Americas to the United States.
**When talking about the Spanish and Portuguese empires the Treaty of Tordesillas is worth a mention. Created by Pope Alexander VI, the treaty split the New World between the Spanish and the Portuguese, which is why the Portuguese settled Brazil and got to Japan because that was east of the line.
***Also, between 1578-1668 the Spanish and Portuguese Empire were under the same crown, turning it into the biggest colonial entity until the XIXth Century.
*'''Aztec Empire''' ''(1428–1521)'': Inspiration for [[Lizardmen]] buildings and homeland. It had a weird political structure because it was technically the alliance of 3 city-states, each with their own sovereign priest-king, that split up the spoils of war and regular tribute from their conquered territories in accordance to their contribution to the alliance. Infamously incapable of metalsmithing despite their greatest and most dangerous foes, the Purépecha Empire, knowing how to forge bronze.
**The real reason they were conquered by a band of Conquistadors under Hernan Cortes was not that they beardy crack team of war vets and military engineers of the reclamation of Spain from Muslims, not horses, not cannons, not guns (guns aren't all that deadlier than arrows until in the 19th century with machine guns. Guns are easier to handle and train with, and that is what made them useful), but his craftiness in exploiting '''how the native city-states all hated the Aztecs.''' Because they kept demanding humans for their ritual sacrifices, even going so far as to plant spies to instigate rebellions every decade or so, and spies informing Aztec warriors of all enemy intel to easily reconquer them... all just to justify their taking of even more sacrifices/slaves as "punishment." (Really similar to what Spartans did to their vassal cities). Unlike the greedy and short-sighted Columbus who was reviled by his own men for stealing their cut and discoveries (once they even allied with natives to kill him in his sleep). It doesn't matter how good you are, a few hundred men can't control 10s of 1000s of natives especially when you have limited supplies, arms, and bullets. Cortes promised the natives a good life and equal treatment as new subjects of His Majesty of Spain if they cooperated, and later even pushed to get his mestizo children legitimately recognized by the Church. As it turns out, he was the nicest and most successful conquistador as a result. Still killed a lot of people but that was in war rather than pointless massacres and backstabbing/slavery of cooperative natives like Columbus.
***A good example of this are the Tlaxcaltecs. Cortes kept his promise to them. Chichimecs and peoples of Mayan descent also hated the Aztecs and banded together with Cortes.
*'''Inca Empire''' ''(1438–1533)'': Notable for it's size, road systems and the fact that it got so big without horses or wheeled vehicles. Unfortunately for them they got hit with the full Guns, Germs and Steel package when the Spanish showed up.
*'''Mughal Empire''' ''(1526–1857)'': A Muslim-Mongol superpower. After squandering the treasury on buildings and war, British influence managed to increase its presence on the subcontinent. Technically spent its last century as a British vassal.
*'''[[British Empire]]''' ''(1583-1997)'': At its height, the British Empire ruled a quarter of the Earth's land. Began the decolonization process after World War II and the Empire is considered to have ceased to exist as such when Hong Kong was formally turned over to China. Even so they still have handful of overseas territory [https://what-if.xkcd.com/48/ over which the sun has still yet to set]. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars Had a hilarious war over trying to peddle drugs into China.] And again. God Save the King/Queen.
*'''Russian Empire''' ''(1721-1917)'': Big, powerful but often backwards in technology and social development. And when it ''finally'' started to catch up it decided to enter a world war. Genius indeed.
*'''First French Empire''' ''(1804–1815)'': "Vive la Napoleon!" A pampered child of [[/v/]], too. '''Also the O.G. [[Imperial Guard|IMPERIAL GUARD]]''' (Napoleon's La Garde Impériale). In case you don't know about Napoleon, here is the tl;dr version of his and his Empires exploits: Starting as a lowly Lieutenant in the Revolutionary French army, he innovated many tactics of that time (incidentally inventing the basic concept of modern maneuver warfare in the process) and took many of the numerous enemies of the first French Republic by surprise, resulting in astounding victories for France in Italy and Egypt. He then did a Julius Caesar after the government of the Republic lost the support of the masses and installed himself as its sole military dictator, first with the title of First Consul, later crowning himself as Emperor of the French Napoleon I in 1804. His military and logistical genius saw France ground the major powers of Europe fall to their knees in short succession and by 1806, only the British were left to oppose him (although he couldn't do much to defeat them, as the Royal Navy handed him and his incompetent Admiralty a devastating defeat at the Battle of Trafalgar in the same year). Satisfied with his supreme rule over most of continental Europe, he grew a bit complacent which gave his enemies time to reorganize and reform their armies. The first major blunder of his career came when he tasked his Marshals with putting down a rebellion in Spain in a Guerilla War clusterfuck (fun fact: The word Guerilla itself was the name the Spanish rebels fighting Napoleon gave themselves) that rivalled later wars like Vietnam or the Eastern Front in WW2, which they consistently proved to be incapable of putting down, binding precious manpower and resources. THis however was overshadowed in every way by his historic defeat during the Russian Campaign in 1812, where a combination of underestimating the resolve of the Russian Tzar Alexander, overestimation of his own capabilities to overcome the massive distances in Russia, logistical fuck-ups from start to finish and the simple fact that France by that point had exhausted its reserves to the absolute breaking point lead to a devastating and humiliating defeat. This emboldened his former allies to form a new coalition to combine their forces and force him out of Europe in 1813. He did make one (and arguably doomed from the start) last attempt to grab power in 1815, when he was finally defeated at the by now near-mythical Battle of Waterloo.
**Seriously, fa/tg/uys need to stop with the tired French surrender monkeys meme and actually learn some history other than parrot arrogant British mockeries of their rivals. The French up until the Franco-Prussian War had the largest land forces in Europe, because after the Revolution, the military forces of the Republic were filled with people for the first time feeling like they mattered to the country, and this helped Napoleon immensely since his genius in logistical capabilities that let him to outnumber his enemies on the battlefield when least expected and minimize losses so they can keep on going and soon attack the next enemy army.
**Their defeats in WW1 in the trenches were not because they were stupid surrender monkeys like Italians, but too brave to a fault: they kept charging into MG nests and if they didn't make it, they thought they were simply not trying hard enough. Just like many scientific concepts at the time (like Social Darwinism), some generals misused the science/philosophy of the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89lan_vital "Élan vital"], which basically meant a creature is its will to live. Which in military terms, a military force is not dead until its commanders finally throw in the towel, so to keep up the pressure of life, one must never cease attacking. This on the surface The French learned that mindless charges and machismo won't win wars the hard way in WW1, but the Japanese took WW2 to learn it from their devastating losses by American hands.
**Next time you compare them to the British Empire, try minding that unlike Britain, they had to divide their forces among the sea, AND the land (The real reason Napoleon invaded Russia was because of England's blockade + Russia's refusal to cooperate with his isolation plans for the English). Do mind that a war on two fronts was only ever really won in history by Americans in WW2 (Pacific and Europe) by sheer industrial-economic might (One steel mill in Pittsburgh produced more steel than all of the 3rd Reich, for instance).
*'''Austrian Empire''' ''(1804–1918, including time spent as Austria-Hungary)'': Ripped apart after WWI. On the height of its power, Austria commanded respect across Europe through a strong army, reinforced thorugh its very liberal policies towards non-Germans (Hussars were an Austro-Hungarian invention, after all). By the time the run-up to WW1 started, Austria had fallen by the way side and was overshadowed in every way by its larger cousin, the German Empire, (ironically enough mainly because of it and Prussia) and although the peace between the Austrians and the Hungarian state structures was tenous even at the best of times, it persisted quite successfully for a state whose structures looked like a relic well before it collapsed. [https://academic.oup.com/jsh/article-abstract/46/4/971/1065356 Lick a Stamp, Lick the Kaiser!]
*'''Brazilian Empire''' ''(1822-1889)'': Like Russia but more backwards and way less powerful. Stopped existed when the rich landowners that controlled the country [[grimdark|got sick of the Emperor's shit for making the slaves free so they sacked him and declared a republic. Oh how ironic the monarchy was better than the "free" republic.]]
*'''Empire of [[Japan]]''' ''(538–1947)'': They've had an emperor since 538, but didn't actually make significant foreign or cultural conquests of any sort since the prior two attempts to do something in Korea ended in eventual expulsion. Japan really got into the empire-building business after it was first to industrialize among the nations of Eastern Asia, which wouldn't be that much of an advantage were it not for the fact that most nations around them (Russia, Korea, China...) were in pretty bad shape so the Japanese had little trouble defeating and conquering them...except their own staggering ineptitude in some areas like the land-army and the navy actively undermining each other or not making any friends by being genocidal pricks, in some ways being arguably worse than the Nazis. For what it's worth, Japan did manage to build a respectably-sized empire starting from the 30s but saw it all collapse due to aforementioned assholery, poor supply lines and taking on the United Motherfucking States of America.
**Note that while modern Japan is still named the same as the Japanese Empire was, the name is now officially translated as Japanese State rather than Japanese Empire. It also still maintains an Emperor as a constitutional monarch.
*'''German Empire''' ''(1871–1918)'': '''The Second Reich,''' put together by Otto von Bismarck's political genius and Prussian efficiency, it took a collection of feuding principalities and, in a few decades, turned them into the greatest industrial power in Europe until it was exhausted fighting pretty much every other industrial power that mattered, twice. Bismarck famously kept the Austrian Empire out of the German Empire owing to the long-standing Prussian-Austrian rivalry within the HRE and the fact that incorporating the Austrians would've meant bringing in huge masses of non-German populations.
*'''(Great) Germany (Grossdeutsches Reich)''' ''(1933-1945)'': Colloquially known as '''[[Nazi|Nazi Germany]]'''. The '''Third''' and shortest '''Reich''', though not for lack of ambition. Owing to Bismarck keeping the Austrians out of the German Empire, their first major conquest beyond the historic borders of Germany was Austria. They claimed to be the greatest industrial power in Europe until they exhausted themselves fighting pretty much every other industrial power that mattered.
**Did you know the term Nazi was a derisive slur originally used by their political enemies? The political party was actually named NSDAP, '''Na'''tionalso'''zi'''alistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, or "National Socialist German Worker Party". They were called Nazis because, in German, it was an insult for Bavarian hillbillies, and most National Socialists came from Bavaria.
*'''Soviet Union''' ''(1922-1991)'': '''THE HEAD OF THE SECOND WORLD.''' <s>The successors to the Russian Empire,</s> Too many people forget the USSR was a body of many nations and peoples (to the point a lot of ex-Soviet peoples wistfully think of the old days when all were equal under the Soviet rule and Russians weren't jingoistic and neo-Nazis were unheard of), even when Russia was its most powerful unit with no doubt. With a Global Ideology based on [[Communism]]. But do keep in mind that not all (self-proclaimed) Communist nations were actually part of the Soviet Union (quite a number of them were just de facto dictator/monarchs with Anti-Western ideologies that proclaimed they were going to save the downtrodden people with Communism, and also get monetary supplement from USSR for being Anti-West). After defeating the 3rd Reich, managed to extend its influence over Eastern Europe and thanks to the appeal of Communism was also able to influence states on almost every continent. But was unable to keep up economically or militarily with the United States and eventually finally fell apart with a whimper at the end of the Cold War.
**In it's height of power, the USSR's GDP was around half of USA, but its military budget equaled it. And during the Cold War, American military budget was almost 10% of its GDP compared to 4.5% of today, compared to around 3% to 1st world nations who depend on the US military to protect them from China/Russia.
**Really screwed themselves over with a 20% GDP military budget. Every ruble spent in the military is one not spent in civil industry and commerce. But even this is heavenly compared to bleak militaristic shit holes like North Korea.
***That, and their version of Vietnam, called the Soviet-Afghanistan war. Started on the same year when China invaded Vietnam, in 1979. Ended in 1989. Not long before the collapse of the Union.
**The reason for its downfall are not easy to boil down. Aforementioned oversized military budget, being caught in the Cold War did a substantial part, but also a culture of administrative corruption and cronyism the Soviets inherited from the state structures of the Russian Empire. The whole economy was centrally planned around the ideal of maximizing productivity through a series of four or five-year-plans in which certain goals, issued by the Communist Party, were meant to be achieved. However, the slow, monolithic bureaucracy that would give the [[Administratum]] a run for its money in how inefficient in worked, made achieving these goals impossible, be it through the tedious gears of administrators that had to approve every single thing on their desks or just straight up incompetence: The Socialist ideal pushed people from the factories and lowest stratas of society into high level government offices they were in no way equipped or capable to manage. The constant atmosphere of fear and terror that drooled out of the KGB also made sure that no serious innovative initiatives could take place; you had to accept the party line or say goodbye to your (and your families) few privileges, if you had some sort of power or ability useful to the Soviet State. This created a self-destructive culture of officials and directors frequently falsifying factory and bureaucracy records, which were then further edited the higher they went up in order to earn a promotion, make themselves look better or just avoid the all too watchful eye of the KGB - it was only after Chernobyl and the beginning of Perestroika under Gorbachev when the Soviet Leadership started to grasp how deeply fucked the entire Soviet economy even was. The revelations from these inquiries very quickly lead to the collapse of the USSR within just 5 years through the people that finally had enough of the Communists. Gorbachev, for the shit he (on some accounts, rightfully) gets was by 1986 presented with a problem that was impossible to find a solution for, even for more capable statesmen he ended up being.
**These aforementioned problems were further exasperated by rising ethnic tensions in many parts of the multi-ethnic USSR, starting in the Baltic states. The economic situation was so catastrophic that the US (and West Germany) tried desperately to prop up the USSR with billions of Dollars in relief money and debt cuts, as declassified CIA and White House documents show. The current climate of continuing aggression from the Russian side and Western sanctions might have been avoided, if these plans came to fruition, but the USSR was gone before the US had any chance to implement them.
*'''The United States of America''' ''(1776-Present)'': '''THE HEAD OF THE FIRST WORLD.''' There is much controversy over whether the global Hegemony established by the United States counts as an empire or not. The merriam-webster definition of empire reads: ''a major political unit having a territory of great extent or a number of territories or peoples under a single sovereign authority'', which even before you consider out of territory influence the vast amount of states with different cultures certainly means American meets the technical dictionary definition of empire, which means every body still argues about but that some people are just more nerdy about how they do it then others. For argument's sake, we will consider the American Empire a reality here. What is not in doubt is that since the end of WWII, and especially since the end of the Cold War the United States has held near total sway in terms of global power, though recent moves by a resurgent China look to be eroding American Global Power and Influence. Which is all Bush Jr.'s fault for wasting energy on the Middle East when he should have checked China and Russia.
**Much of the Global Hegemony of the US results from ordinary political pushes and pulls that happen between nations popularly called 'soft power'. It's just that America is seriously advantaged in this game, what with the largest consumer market, dollar currency, lack of resource dependency (America produces the most oil. Shocking, I know. America just need even more of it), Lack of hostile/powerful neighbors being and military might.
**Controls the mightiest military force in human history. #1 largest military budget, and this is large as the those of nations in #2 to #10 combined. And excluding China and Russia, all those nations are American allies anyway (maybe except India). And GDP Percentage-wise, '''this is less than half of American military spending during the Cold War.''' Should an alien invasion occur, they are your first and last hope.
***And the military with most real combat experience to boot.
**With NATO, and many nations asking to station American troops around the world (and America pays a large chunk of the expenditures for them too), many nations voluntarily depend on American protection, especially from China or Russia nowadays.
**Still to this day, no nation in history has ever held as much power as it did as the United States of America. And compared to the other 2 contenders (The Spanish and British Empires), still is the most conscious of human rights and freedoms. (Keep in mind, while the US is a bit behind in human rights/freedoms/corruption than some European nations, most other 200 nations in the world have appalling oppression to the point the people there just don't even complain about it because they've been inoculated by [[grimdark]]. If you live in a country that can still complain about injustices happening within it, then there is still hope.)
** The USA is also frankly fascinating in that it achieved something similar to the Roman Empire but even better - it produced a dominant culture that can (relatively) easily assimilate various ethnicities and other cultures and strengthen itself through this process. If you know English and are a skilled worker, you can get a green card, live in the US for 5 years and then take a test to become a citizen, then you can open up a store that sells Sushi/Burek/Pizza and earn millions as you introduce a hitherto-unknown new dish to the country. America is the Borg except you get to keep your biological distinctiveness while culture and tech are shared to strengthen everybody.
**And finally, the simply IMMENSE cultural impact that the USA had/has on the whole PLANET also helps maintain it's status. Don't believe me - Mickey Mouse, Coca-cola, the frigging american flag will likely get recognised virtually anywhere in the world. Hollywood may as well be up there with the Army for the amount of influence it exerts on other countries.

=Notable Fictional Empires=
==Fantasy==
*'''[[The Empire (Warhammer Fantasy)]]''': Holy Roman Empire with bald monks, lots of gunpowder and [[Meme|Karl Franz]].
*'''Nilfgaard''' ([[The Witcher]])): Roman Empire + some HRE and Nazi Germany (at least in the late books) '''again''', although this time you'd probably want to live here than in the most of the oppressive feudal racist and constantly warring Northern Kingdoms. Especially with the fact that it almost became constitutional monarchy before Torres var Emreis took over.

==Science Fiction==
*'''Galactic Empire''' ([[Star Wars]]): An amalgamation of Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, several colonial or semi-colonial empires (Britain, Japan) and USA during Vietnam War. It's background also borrows many things from Rome, with an elected dictator gaining an absolute power to prevent the stagnation of previous democratic regime. Probably the most famous "Galactic Empire" in science fiction, despite having several precedents.
*'''Galactic Empire''' ([[Isaac Asimov|Foundation]]): Space Rome. Asimov based the Foundation series on Gibbons' "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" and so the Galactic Empire is a sclerotic, decaying empire doomed to collapse and be replaced with a new, more vibrant empire. At least, until he went back to write some sequels.
*'''Galactic Empire''' ([[Anime|Legend of the Galactic Heroes]]): What if Otto von Bismarck was a neo-Nazi [[LARP|LARPER]] who went full Julius Caesar on the Galactic Republic? Well, then you'd get the Galactic Empire.
*'''Empire of the Known Universe''' ([[Dune]]): Feudalism in space, its first iteration. Emperor doesn't play much role here (at first, at least), and usually has to meet the needs of Spicing Guild (the real ruler of the Universe) or interact with other Great Houses, who are as powerful as him. Eventually the Imperium turned into an oppressive dictatorship of the all-knowing and all-seeing immortal half-worm half-human hybrid, [[Just As Planned|all according to his plan]] [[Emprah|to elevate the Humanity]].
*'''[[Imperium of Man]]''' ([[Warhammer 40K]]): Dune and Warhammer Empire's evil child. Catholic-themed Soviet Union at first, extremely oppressive Catholic Middle Ages Europe with some Nazi flavor later, Catholic-themed Late Roman Empire/Republic now( with some more bit of the middle ages).

[[category:History]]