The Pirate Wars, fought between 2458 and 2478 IC, were a series of naval purges launched by the Cult of Manann against the cultists of Stromfels, the god of the dangers of the sea. The conflict lasted for about thirty years and involved most of the Human realms of the Old World.[2b]
Beginning in 2458 IC,[1a] the Cult of Manann in Marienburg declared a crusade against the piratical followers of the shark god Stromfels. Hundreds of devout followers sailed from ports around the Old World to engage with the enemy. An unsuccessful expedition even set sail to Sartosa to strike at the Pirate Princes themselves. The Pirate Wars did eliminate several notorious pirates, but there was no lasting decline in Old World piracy, as the adversary was not a unified navy that could be completely defeated -- new pirates always emerge to replace those who have fallen.[2b]
Despite being mostly waged at sea, there were also some land-based engagements during the conflict, as Marienburg's merchant fleets sought to put to the torch the pirate towns that clustered in the marshes and moors of the Westerland and Nordland. The Knights of the Blazing Sun took the vanguard in this effort, deploying armsmen and brother-knights alike. It was the only knightly order of the Empire to become involved in what was at the time considered to be Marienburg's problem alone.[3b]
History[]
Origins[]
The city and island of Sartosa, the Pirate Principality of Tilea.
The origins of the Pirate Wars lie in the seas around Tilea and Estalia, where piracy is so prevalent that whole Tilean city-states are based around its profits. The Estalian Navy mounted a rare campaign against the pirate ships in its waters, and a great host of pirates decided to band together and sail north to escape the Estalians and find some safe harbour in Bretonnia or perhaps Marienburg. The Bretonnians would oppose so many pirates suddenly arriving in their waters, but the pirates reckoned, with some justification, that they could outrun the Bretonnian fleet.[1b]
Battle of the Tides[]
Mousillon, location of the Battle of the Tides
The pirates did not take into account the malice of the sea god Manann. A series of freak tides dragged some of the pirates close to the shore of Mousillon, and they found themselves trapped, with the coast on one side and a Bretonnian fleet on the other.[1b]
The Bretonnians closed and crushed the pirate fleet ship by ship, shattering them with cannon shot or letting them tear their hulls on the jagged rocks of the shore. The battle lasted a full day and night, during which the entire pirate fleet was destroyed. The next morning saw a prodigiously high spring tide, and it is said that some drowned corpses were deposited a full mile inland.[1b]
Battle of the Torpid Sea[]
The fleet of Marienburg and the Imperial Navy later formed an alliance to break the pirate fleet of Red Maria. The conflict culminated in 2478 IC in the naval Battle of the Torpid Sea.[2a]
Aftermath[]
Pirates' Grave, off the coast north of Mousillon, is a bleak testament to the Battle of the Tides. The Bretonnian fleet, having just witnessed how deadly the Mousillon coast could be, had no wish to salvage the pirate ships that were lost. So the ships were left to rot where they had sunk or run aground, and most of them are still there. From the coast, it is possible to see the sun-bleached masts sticking up above the surface of the water, or the rotting, skeletal hulls rearing up onto the rocks. The high tide during the battle means that many ships settled almost entirely out of the water when the tide subsided, and several pirate ships lie, almost complete, on the rocks like beached whales.[1b]
These ships have long since been picked clean of valuables, including the bones of the dead pirate sailors. Even so, every now and again a peasant on the coast near Pirates' Grave will plough up another set of bones or a couple of tarnished copper coins from some chest of treasure. The Pirates' Grave still holds great mystique, and adventurers or the curious often come to visit it, to clamber among the decaying timbers of the beached ships and gaze on the wrecks of those further out to sea. Many more ships lie beneath the surface, and a few hardy adventurers or racketeers from Mousillon have tried to recover valuables from them, but never with much success.[1b]
Nothing involving pirates and death ever occurs without leaving behind tales of ghost ships ploughing through the waves at night or brine-sodden corpses rising from the surf to take their revenge on the living. More interesting, however, are the tales of the famous looted riches that must lie on ships beneath the surface. The Knights of the Blazing Sun, for instance, would dearly love to recover their lost Sun Crown of Bilbali, and it is probable that it went down on one of the ships destroyed in the Battle of the Tides.[1b]
Likewise, there are many who insist that the Infant Pirate Princess of Sartosa, kidnapped on the eve of her coronation, must have been captured by pirates and probably drowned on one of the sunken pirate ships. Tilean mercenaries have even been despatched to Mousillon from Sartosa to recover her body, but so far none have been successful and few have even returned. Though with time, the timbers will rot and the bones will turn to dust, the Pirates' Grave could still yield up its secrets until the very end.[1b]
A Pirate's Debt[]
Giovanni the Red, a notorious Tilean pirate, went down with his ship in the Battle of the Tides. A noble from the Tilean city-state of Remas claims his family was owed a great deal in restitution from Giovanni, and the pirate's death has not cancelled the debt. The noble wants Giovanni's most precious possession, his diamond-studded false eye, brought back from Pirate's Grave.[1b]
Timeline[]
- 2458 IC - The Battle of the Tides erupts off the coast of Mousillon when a pirate fleet fleeing the naval forces raised by the Cult of Manann ran afoul of a fleet of the Bretonnian Navy and the sea god's own wrath. Following the events of the Battle of the Tides, many rumours spread about Red Maria's kidnapping on the eve of her coronation as the Pirate Princess of Sartosa.[22a]
- 2478 IC - The last of the pirate enclaves in the Westerland and Nordland are torched by the forces of Marienburg and the knights of the Order of the Blazing Sun.[3a] Marienburger and Imperial Navy ships form an alliance to break the pirate fleet of Red Maria, who has become a terror of the seas in the intervening twenty years. The conflict culminates in 2478 IC with the Battle of the Torpid Sea.[2a]