Post by The Drunk Bard on Sept 16, 2015 12:26:14 GMT
The Caribbean, 1662.
Spain owns the world. For residents of the Caribbean Sea, this fact has reigned supreme for almost two centuries, even as the British Empire makes its first forays into North America. Across the blue waters of the tropics dozens of galleons sail every day from Maracaibo Venezuela, Panama City on the Pacific, and San Salvador. Blood and slavery are the fuels that pump the gold and silver from the rocks they rest in, and the mighty Armada patrols the waters from Honduras to the Balearic Islands. Mainland Europe still wages war, as the Medway burns and the Ottoman Empire lashes out in its decline.
Some protest this, of course, and nowhere more so than in the chaotic and unformed lands of the New World, home to scurvy and malaria and hostile natives facing extermination. And, of course, gold. More gold than anywhere else in the known world pours out of the South American treasure fleets, attracting pirates and thieves and foreign governments' privateers like buzzards to the dead.
It's on the small and unremarkable island of Roatan that the PCs have set up their smuggling town. Freeport is a land of English buccaneers and French corsairs, German mercenaries and Spanish outlaws with Portuguese ladies of the night, no less dangerous if less numerous than their male counterparts. Command a ship and sack the Spanish rulers of America, or turn your guns in their assistance and hunt down your pirate kin, or choose neither path and attempt to create your own kingdom in the jungles as you seek the fabled treasure city of El Dorado.
Spain owns the world. For residents of the Caribbean Sea, this fact has reigned supreme for almost two centuries, even as the British Empire makes its first forays into North America. Across the blue waters of the tropics dozens of galleons sail every day from Maracaibo Venezuela, Panama City on the Pacific, and San Salvador. Blood and slavery are the fuels that pump the gold and silver from the rocks they rest in, and the mighty Armada patrols the waters from Honduras to the Balearic Islands. Mainland Europe still wages war, as the Medway burns and the Ottoman Empire lashes out in its decline.
Some protest this, of course, and nowhere more so than in the chaotic and unformed lands of the New World, home to scurvy and malaria and hostile natives facing extermination. And, of course, gold. More gold than anywhere else in the known world pours out of the South American treasure fleets, attracting pirates and thieves and foreign governments' privateers like buzzards to the dead.
It's on the small and unremarkable island of Roatan that the PCs have set up their smuggling town. Freeport is a land of English buccaneers and French corsairs, German mercenaries and Spanish outlaws with Portuguese ladies of the night, no less dangerous if less numerous than their male counterparts. Command a ship and sack the Spanish rulers of America, or turn your guns in their assistance and hunt down your pirate kin, or choose neither path and attempt to create your own kingdom in the jungles as you seek the fabled treasure city of El Dorado.