First off: Sawbones, Moonie, Reeva or Mygg, if you’re reading this, DON’T!
I’m running a pirate-themed homebrew campaign set in a homebrewed place which I’ve plonked down in The Sea of Falling Stars. I call it The Southern Isles, and its rife with piracy. The de facto ‘government’ is The Southern Islands Company, who run the place for profit and starve the population with high taxes and tithes, and who brutally suppress any rebellion. I’ve used every pirate and maritime trope I can think of in planning the plot, creating encounters and filling it with characters.
I figured this will help me add flavour to the world, and could be a good resource for anyone planning a similar campaign, or one shot or whatever.
Edit: I should maybe note I already played quite a bit in this setting and after a long hiatus I am starting it back up for Season 2, so partly this is a way for me to get it all fresh in my head again.
Sounds like fun. I’ll have a go at some questions.
How do they get the profit? If the local population are starved and downtrodden, the stolen pirate goods have to go somewhere else. Is there some black market organisation they’re linked to which gives them the funding to run the place like their personal kingdom?
Is it oppressed in the sense that collaborators are treated well while the rest just try to survive? Or like a population of slaves and a couple slave drivers to keep them in line? How does the local community run? What are they able to do to make a living and what are they there to do? There has to be something there to be exploited in the first place.
Is the government an actual pirate crew that owns the joint or just a group that lets piratss come in and do business? What sort of security do they use? Personal army? Mercenaries?
The Southern Islands Company (SIC) is basically a stand in for the East India Company. They wear red coats and speak with posh English accents, and are basically a private army, owned by a merchant company, who in turn operate with the blessing of their home government. They are a human colonial force. There are developed towns with a merchant class, who do quite well, and an underclass made up of pirates, other races and the indigenous people of each island. The Company takes a cut of all the food that, is grown, and have recently begun increasing their cut to the point that the underclass are going hungry (and getting angry). The indigenous people are treated the worst, some sold into slavery others just worked like slaves.
The local pirates stand in opposition to them and its mostly SIC affiliated merchants who get raided. The SIC do their best to hunt down the pirates, but they are spread quite thin, particularly in the Western parts of the Isles.
There is a black market run by the pirates to sell their booty, and a lot of the goods end up back in the hands of the company, either trough seizure or through the more corruptible Company men.