The following is from the upcoming Sky Pirates of the Floating Realms game, which I’ll post more about soon. It’s an OpenQuest-powered game that focuses on the adventures of Sky Pirates of various backgrounds and previous careers, using a streamlined version of OpenQuest. This piece from the character generation chapter explains why their characters became Sky Pirates.
There are many reasons why people become sky pirates, including the following.
1. Out of necessity. Many communities cling to small sky islands and don’t have enough land for even meagre subsistence farming. So, the more able members of these remote communities end up “fishing” in the sky lanes for food and other resources.
2. As a result of being exiled. Large, organised sky island communities tend to be highly organised and laden with rules and laws simply to survive. The threat of being cast out and abandoned on a distant floating sky rock is something that many lawmakers use to keep their people in line. Also, many communities will have an annual casting of the stones. Where two or more candidates for exile, people who have broken local laws or are simply intolerable in the eyes of their community, receive votes in the form of a stone with their name on it. The candidate with the most must leave the island for a set period (say ten to twenty years) or for life.
3. They are misfits. Like being exiled, but a choice rather than something being imposed upon them. Freethinkers, revolutionaries or out-and-out oddballs choose a life aboard a pirate ship, free to explore their ideas and be themselves.
4. Freed prisoner. Some Tyrants have Sky-Island Prisons, where those who break their laws or get on the wrong side of them personally end up. The prisons range from camps made up of huts or tents, where the inmates labour in the fields, to highly secure fortresses, where there is a daily schedule of lockdowns, exercise in the yard, and sessions in the workshop making crafted goods for the Tyrant’s enrichment. Fortunately, Sky Pirates often attack these institutions, driven either because they are an affront to the pirates’ sense of freedom or because they need to supplement their crew.
5. Promises of a life-changing fortune. Some people see it as a job and that they will either accumulate enough treasure over a career or have one big haul that gives them a post-pirate life of comfort in a villa in a big cosmopolitan sky city.
6. They were born into the life. Mum and Dad were crew members, and the character was practically weaned on deck. As such its all they know, and they often find it hard to relate to landlubbers and get lost when they have to deal with the large cities of the Sky Realms.
