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Captain "Redeyes" Maxon leads a bloody crew in search of treasure!
THE DINO-PIRATES
These islands are thick with pirates of all types, ranging from charming gentlemanly rogues to savage throatslitting psychopaths. Some travel in a single ramshackle ship with a starving crew, desperate for any sort of prize that will at least feed them another day, while others live like aristocrats in fine mansions, directing their fleets the same way a rich merchant directs his business. There are those who think only of themselves, and will steal and swindle anyone in order to expand their wealth, and others who dedicate themselves to a particular mission, such as crushing the Imperial sea power, and think nothing of sacrificing themselves for such a dream. Even stranger, many of the pirates appear to come from many foreign lands, and there appears to be no rhyme or reason to their arrival. Some say they are plucked from other worlds and other times.
But virtually all the pirates of these islands are joined in a series of orders or loose societies, named after the most fearsome natural inhabitants of the islands: the dinosaurs. Thus were born the DINO-PIRATES -- a wide-ranging set of affiliated pirate "gangs", all associating themselves with a particular type of dinosaur. The gangs are all friendly with one another (usually) and consist of hundreds of members each. Pirates being such a disorganized bunch, there are few standardized ways to identify what gang a particular pirate might belong to, but they usually bear some sort of indication -- a tattoo or a printed scarf or a big embossed ring. Pirates, they do like their bling.
The Orders
The best-known of these orders correspond with the most wide-spread or well-known dinosaurs throughout the islands. There are the Rex pirates, who favour ferocity and valour, the Raptor pirates with their acrobatic swashbuckling, the Trike pirates who just like punching people, the Thunderer pirates who outlast their foes, and the Dactyl pirates, quick and agile. Of course there are others, less well-known, but in almost any pirate crew can be found members of these orders.
Members of a given order tend to look out for each other, and can count on a friendly welcome from their fellow members. Of course, if two pirate ships end up in combat with each other, all bets are off, but if you're a hard-working pirate just trying to get by, it's good to have folks you can rely on to help you out when things are tough.
In many of the larger cities and towns the more affluent orders will have houses maintained, where members can stay if they're down on their luck or just need to lie low for a while. There aren't usually formally-recognized officers or executives in these groups (we're talking about pirates, here), but the wealthier members exert some authority over their less well-to-do brethren, and often work together to keep things peaceable among the pirate crews of the islands.
The DINO-PIRATES thus help keep the pirates working together, and make this ragtag bunch of criminals and thieves a potent force capable of holding off the grand Imperial navy, and preserving the freedom and independence of the islands.
