Re: Pirates - Was: Places: Dragon Rock Map

>From: "SUBSCRIBE REALMS-L tauster" <chefseehund@???.de>
>Subject: Re: [SPELLJAMMER] Places: Dragon Rock Map


>On Tue, 1 Mar 2005 17:27:38 +0100, Marlon Richert
><M.M.Richert@???.???????.nl> wrote:

>><< i think i "typical" pirate ship should have approximately in the same
size
>>than an average merchant ship. ...or do i miss something?
>>
>>Yeah, the thing you're missing is that pirates usually hijacked the
merchant
>>vessels they captured and took them home.

>that way, the pirates would have several problems:
>- they have to operate TWO ships and thus would need 2 crews.

A squidship has a minimum crew of 12 and a maximum crew of 45. This would give you 33
boarders enough to crew all of the ships in the Concordance or Lost Ships except a dwarven
citadel (which you couldn't operate anyway), the Spelljammer (which you could never
attack) and a Stoneship (which doesn't have a helm you can use). I've discounted the Space
Leviathan because that is described as a wreck and would not normally have a crew.

You can even pilot the largest elven ship that is in either of these two books. Boarding
and seizing a ship would be a much bigger problem than running it afterwards. I doubt that
pirates would manage to beat the elves with one pirate ship, because I doubt the elves
would have a minimum crew that could be beaten by pirates.

>i don´t think
>it´s possible to force the whole captured crew to maintain the ship (the
>know that at the destination they are either killed or sold into slavery or
>worse (neogi/illithids).

You don't need to force them all to maintain the ship. You might only need a few to
cooperate and could hold the rest hostage to ensure cooperation. You can kill or throw
overboard anyone that tries to sabotage the ship or free the prisoners.

As for killing captives or selling them into slavery at the destination. Pirates might do
that if they were chaotic evil (they might even eat the crew if they were really nasty).
However, not all pirates would act like that. A pirate that is known for releasing (or at
a minimum marooning) crews of ships that surrender will find that crews they go up against
in future are more likely to cooperate. A pirate captain with any intelligence does not
want his victims to fight to the death as that makes his job harder.

>how many pirates are required to control the
>merchants crew? provided not too many died during the battle, the
>additional crewmen on board need more air - perhaps more than the ship has.

Don't forget that pirates would have a number of clerics and/or wizards working with them.
With the use of the softwood spell you can dispose of the crew (or some of the crew if a
ship is overloaded) by tossing them overboard. You could even drop them into the gravity
well of a small planet to ensure that they will not spend years drifting through space.
You can also tie the crew up or put them in irons to stop them from being able to fight.

Anyway assuming that a pirate hasn't followed my previous suggestion of running an
overloaded ship and they fight another ship that is also not overloaded, your problem will
never arise. Both ships combined have enough air for both crews (they probably also have
enough food and water). If you want to move a lot of pirates onto the other ship you can
always move a few prisoners back onto the pirate ship to reduce the load on the air
supply.

As I already said it would be tactically foolish to attack a ship known to have a *very*
large crew, so I don't think this situation would happen much.

>- the pirates could kill the whole crew, but still have to operate to ships
>now. should they meet another spelljammer during the return voyage, they
>could not defend either ship.

Not true. As you can see from the numbers above a fully crewed squidship can easily fully
man most other ships. I would think that they would keep back enough crew to man the
weapons on their main ship and run the second ship slightly under a full crew complement
if necessary. The pirate would probably put his first or second officer and lowest
helmsman on the ship and keep his best crew with his own ship.

The pirates could always abandon the second ship if they needed to. If their lookouts saw
a force approaching that they could not avoid they could have enough time to do this.
Don't forget that pirates can already steal most of the goods without taking the second
ship, so they would probably just want to rip out the helm on the way out (any secondary
helm would alredy have been removed).

Finally, another spelljammer is less likely to attack two ships than one ship, because
they *appear* to be stronger. A force that thinks it can beat two ships is probably
already able to overwhelm the pirates on their own ship.

>besides, pirates who regularly kill
>everything in their path might leave no witnesses, but i think that this
>strategy would provocate a harder and quicker response from other
>powergroups than the usual "taking of cargo and leaving crew and ship fo
>good", but i might be wrong here...

Pirates who kill everything in their path also get no reputation. A reputation can be a
powerful weapon and can lower the moral of your enemy.

A good aligned pirate would *probably* leave people alive, but an evil pirate might
*still* leave most of the people he meets alive. He could for example call out to his
victims: "I am Redbeard the pirate! Drop your swords and you will live! Raise your hands
against me in combat and they will be cut off!" If Redbeard always kept to his word. Any
spacehands who met him would spread fear throughout the local sphere, *especially* the
ones with one hand.

David "Big Mac" Shepheard
Virtual Eclipse Role Playing Club
http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/virtualeclipselrp/links/d20_system_001071937434/Spelljammer_001071430476
http://virtualeclipse.aboho.com/