AN
This is a bit of a combination love letter to LogicalPremise who writes the wonderful OSaBC stuff and specifically a side story titled The Ahern Report which is 100% the inspiration for this. It also serves as a bit of worldbuilding to a DD campaign I'm running that has so much stuff in the world, I feel it'd be a shame if some of the stuff that populates it never exists anywhere except in my mind. So here it is.
The Ardaxian guide of things you shouldn't f* with
To my good friend Ardaxian.
With war about to be declared a lot of my lads might get dragged into this mess. And we're all a lot more familiar with monsters and beasts than we are with people. Most of my lads couldn't tell you the difference between a Blade-Captain and a Legionnaire. I'd like to ask you to help highlight the differences between terminology, and generally how dangerous someone is so I can keep my boys and girls from running headfirst into a foe that will swat them down without blinking. Given your experience, and more importantly, lack of bias. I figured it'd be prudent to ask you so I don't get an opinion skewed to make one side 'look' stronger. I just want something concrete to rely on. Not some propaganda saying how weak our foes are.
Sincerely
Basset Monteral
BASSIE!
It has been far too long. Are you still hanging around that awful collection of docks you call a city? Never did understand why anyone would want to live full time on the water. Smells funny, and I rather like being able to stretch my legs without having to deal with pushing people into the water or off a bridge when they don't recognize I'm in a bad mood. And you've moved up in the world it seems, no longer dumping muck out of your boots and now you get to sit comfy behind your big desk in the guild hall with a warm fire and plenty of hot food and hotter company. You still working closely with that red-headed broad? Let her know if she wants a real man to take care of her, to just come my way. I might be one of the few men around who could give her a proper spar. Anyways, you want your boys to know about what they're up against? Well most people would assume that the Pirates aren't organized and all more or less the same. Those people are very quickly going to end up very dead. As a way of giving a kind of scale I'm going to be using something I'm going to call the Ardaxian Scale. 1 Ardaxian is equal to 1 of me. And seeing as I am the baddest MoFo in the corps, its safe to say that anyone worth 1 of me is going to rip your guys to shreds if they go in unprepared. Anyone worth multiple of me falls squarely on the Do Not F* With list. If you don't like this system. Tough. I'm sure you'll be able to translate it into something your guys can understand. But this is my list, so my system.
Pirate Crew
Basically anyone and everyone that serve more as galley rats than trained fighters, now every single one of these guys knows how to fight, and every single one is armed, but all in all they aren't soldiers or warriors. Just guys the pirates give a sword and point towards whatever they want dead. They usually rely on sheer numbers and attack in droves. I'd call a crew of 50 of these guys about .1 Ardaxians. Not a huge threat, but then again, if you're fighting them, it means you've already gotten through most of the main threat anyways, and they might pull some nasty tricks. So just don't let them catch you with your pants down, treat em seriously and you'll cut them down in droves.
CutThroat
These are the shock troops that you'll see most often. Most are armed with short range easy-to-draw stuff. Scimitars, daggers, handaxes and the like. On land these guys actually aren't that much to talk about, keep firm rank, out range them with shields and polearms, and you'll chew through these guys with ease. Unfortunately that isn't how these guys operate. If you see these guys it's either in the streets of a burning town, or on board a ship. And spears aren't nearly as effective in such close quarters, shields are great, especially since these guys are so fire happy. And I mean these guys are complete and totally crazy about fire. Every single one of them downs a concoction that makes them more resistant to the heat and they cover themselves in a gel that ramps it up even more. They will come at you, screaming and on fire flinging molotovs and swinging burning swords with no regard for personal safety. It's worked pretty well so far on untrained civilians who break and run. Cover your shield in some lacquer or flame-retardant dust and these guys will try to set it on fire. If you keep calm and work in groups, a good archer can shoot from behind anyone holding the line. Shield and sword up front with good discipline and someone competent enough not to hit the guy standing in front of them, and two people can take out dozens of Cutthroats. Just don't panic and you'll realize inside that screaming pillar of fire, is just a barely trained man in cheap leather armor so dry it'll crack under a strong blow.
Scarier in groups, like to sow panic, I'd say a crew of 50 of these guys is probably .2 Ardaxians.
Berzerkers
Now we move on from the crazies, to the nutjobs. These are the guys who are at the front of the charge. The veterans of dozens of raids, and fueled by the greed of first comes first served. A lot like cutthroats in a lot of ways, but more experienced, and willing to retreat instead of running d* first into death. The thing that makes these guys real scary, is their ability to shrug off damage. These guys diet on some weird fish they gather somewhere out wherever these guys gather and live. Whatever it is, it turns a normal dude into a six and a half foot wall of muscle that can suplex a bear. I once lodged a pike through one of these a*h* and he just pushed his way down the shaft to try and strangle me. Got a knife in the eye for it and went down after that, but they can ignore pain that would put other people out of action. I've killed more of these guys than I can count and they normally travel individually, but if you let one of them catch you off guard they can tear through a man like he's made out of cardboard. I'd say one Berzerker is .1 Ardaxians. Tough sons of witches and I'd recommend just using any sort of longreaching polearm to keep them at bay. Billhooks, pikes, man-catchers, whatever you've got on hand. Treat them like a charging boar, let them kill themselves on a pointy stick and make sure you keep leverage on them so they don't rip you a new one. Decapitate them just to be sure they're really dead.
Acolyte.
These are the guys most people are going to get caught off guard by. Dressed more or less the same as a cutthroat but usually not on fire. These are the reason behind the fire, in Fire Pirate. Potions, alchemist fire, greek fire, dragon fire, these guys have a fire for every occasion. Now the common misconception is that if you prepare in advance, simple fire resistance potion from your local alchemist and you're good right? Wrong. Dead wrong. The first thing these guys will throw at you FREEZES a potion of fire resistance. And if you drunk one, it'll ice up your lungs till you're coughing up blood and snowballs. Or they'll just throw acid at you. They like to throw nasty things is the point I'm getting at. Pain in the a* to get close to, usually better to just shoot them from range behind decent cover. They need both hands to mix and throw all of their s* so if you've got a decent shot, you can take them down before getting close enough for them to f* with you.
.2 Ardaxians. These guys are real versatile and that's what makes them so dangerous, they've got a lot of options to choose from in a fight and usually are clever enough to come up with something painful. I once caught one of these guys by dropping a barrel of hard tack on him. Crushed all his vials and s* at once. The explosion he made took the entire ship down with him.
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Disciples
Alright this is probably the most diverse category but every ship has at least one Disciple. These are the proper spellcasters among the pirates. The guys who might be able to take out an entire group of steelborn with some words and some hand-waving. These guys vary pretty heavily in strength and bulls*tery. Most of them I think of as a ballistae. Got a lot of firepower that can be aimed, expensive to maintain and usually don't do so well after taking a little bit of damage. Usually accompanied by a small group just to keep it safe. Best bet for dealing with these guys is to hit them where they aren't looking. Hard to concentrate on summoning a firestorm when the floor suddenly drops out from under you or it starts raining shots from your blind spot. Teamwork makes the dream work on these guys, sustained pressure from multiple angles and eventually they'll crack. Especially if you can get a big piece of steel swinging around their face. If you're ever stuck solo, fight dirty, most of what they need relies on line of sight, smoke bombs, heavy use of cover, and a willingness to be aggressive. Or be unconventional. I once lured one belowdecks and knocked a wall full of carpentry supplies onto the idiot. Got so torn up didn't even see me sneak up behind him. After that I left him painted across the walls. .4 to .9 Ardaxians. The best of these guys can smite a battleship from trebuchet range and others cap out at a handful of dangerous party tricks. Most fall somewhere in between.
Captains:
Allright now we're getting into the scary territory. You know who's capable of leading a bunch of criminals and hopped up backstabbing bastiches? The people strong enough, or scary enough to keep them in line. These guys range a lot in style, and you can usually tell what kind of person they are based on how the rest of the crew fights. If they're a big bruiser type, then chances are the rest of the crew follows by example. Crack shot with a rifle and you might see more sharpshooters among the crew. All of these guys carry firearms, nasty pieces of work that usually take a while to reload but can make a pretty messy hole and can punch through poorly made plate. On top of that these guys tend to be wearing the best gear on the ship and usually carry one or two magical trinkets or baubles to give themselves some sort of edge. There's a thing with pirates where the more important you are the bigger your hat is. So if you see someone who isn't on fire staring down a whole bunch of nastiness with confidence and a real big hat? Probably a Captain. These guys fight and earn their way to these spots so they can be brutal in melee, they won't fall for most underhanded tricks because they have to put up with them all the time. All in all, I'd say most of them come in at around .8 Ardaxians. I've killed six of these guys myself and every fight they pulled out something that surprised me and almost got me killed. Flush them out with gas or tanglefoot bags, use heavy firepower where you can and if you get into melee, always expect some hidden blades or guns or boot-knives. Usually all of the above.
Commodores
These are the big hats. Most of them are women and most of them can roast you alive from range and all of them can single-handedly take down an entire warship solo. It's part of the hazing process apparently. These are the ones who have real experience, and real firepower. Dozens of ships at their command all decked out with proper equipment and of course they keep the really fun toys for themselves. All of them have some seriously heavily enchanted gear making them real slippery to hit and even harder to pin down. Most of them carry a multitude of elementally enchanted weapons to keep themselves with an edge. And most stray away from the fire theme at this point. Sure they can still set a building on fire with their mind, but now they'll mix it up by freezing it, or melting it, or vanishing it to another plane of existence or something. Keep in mind that the Steelborn have only ever killed 2 commodores, and I have it on good authority that it took Jake the MotherF*ing Ravager to kill the second. And the first managed to take out the majority of a fleet before she went down and it took 3 days of her fighting FROM THE WATER, before she eventually caved to exhaustion and sheer numbers. Let me repeat that, she was taking on battleships, while fighting from little more than a floating barrel, and we still almost lost. Commodores are no joke. Easily 2 Ardaxians. Gods can you imagine how glorious and devastating I could be if there were 2 of me?
DNFW
Alright so if there's one thing I know it's that every group has some people that you just do not mess with. The ones who can tear apart metal with their bare hands, or stare down a dragon and make it their b*h. These people are all firmly on MY dnfw list, so you best believe your boys had better know about them.
High Admirals
We don't know a ton about the High Admirals, all four that we know about are women and all of them have f*ed up our navy every time they're seen. We don't know their names all we know is that there are 4 of them, and one of them once took on a battleship solo. She walked on board, challenged the entire ship to 'Come at me' and put her sword away after she'd gotten through half of the crew saying 'it'd be more fun that way'. Now I'm not saying I'm in love, but if a woman did that and I was told to go fight her I might just take her out for dinner instead. These women are insanely dangerous. Most of them have bounties worth a position as nobility and enough money to retire absurdly wealthy for a couple generations. So far the only time we've ever seen one of them really even try was at Savanaport, that fiasco where a bunch of merchants threw together enough cash to hire out a dozen destroyers and a battleship to escort them to Nymeria. Yeah, that was a High Admiral who caused that disaster. Who saw a sizable portion of our fleet, including an admiral of our own, and proceeded to rape the ever-loving s* out of them. 7 Ardaxians and next time we'll need to bring something a lot bigger in case they throw more than 1 sea-dragon at us, did I mention the sea-dragon at Savanaport? B*h told it tear our ships apart and it did. Like a trained hound of thousand tons of armored plates and teeth.
Queen Amber
The lady herself, the head of the great big fiery thorn in the side of everyone who just wants some beachfront property. She'll participate in raids every year or so. You can recognize the damage as hers by the concentration of it. Reports say she has some sort of focused beam of heat, like a red dragon's breath only even more focused and significantly more ranged. I remember hearing tales from a few decades ago when the fire pirates were only a threat across Lake Carrasco. How they laid siege to a city and she cut through buildings like a knife through melting butter, without ever even bringing her ship past the blockade. All this without hitting her own guys who were on the docks of the city. That was almost 30 years ago now, I'd hate to see what she can do now. All we know is she's a powerful sorcerer. She's got a raging hard-on for anything fire related, and that all the other selfish, self serving b*s that make up the rest of the fire pirates, all answer to her authority. Let's call her 10 Ardaxians and if one of your guys runs into her? It better be at the tip of the spear of a lot of very dangerous people, or they'll probably just get swatted like a gnat.
Ladd
This guy deserves mentioning just because of how dangerous he is. Now, when I say dangerous, keep in mind that in the context of a bunch of pyromaniac rape-happy bloodthirsty cutthroat killers, the captains who leave sole survivors and cut down hundreds of others for kicks, and the fire b*h queen herself I'm calling this guy dangerous. Ladd is dwarven male all done up in a white tuxedo who will happily dive face first into a phalanx of our finest and come running out the other side covered in blood and his only complaint is that he'll have to torture a new tailor to fit him a new suit. He's the guy that acts as the personal enforcer of a bunch of backstabbing pirates, and their fear of him helps keep all those harda*es in line. Fortunately we know a bit more about this guy than most since he's so happy to be on the battlefield. Prefers knifework and close-quarters, fists when he needs to but what makes him really stand out is his brutality. I got reports of him having a broken arm and he ripped out his own godd*n radius and used it to bludgeon to death the guy who'd done it. My recommendation? Bombard with spellfire and keep a real good distance. He doesn't strike me as the real intelligent type so maybe lure him onto a ship full of powder and blow it all sky high? Though make sure to find the body cause it might just make him angry. Like I said he ripped out his own bones to fight and yet every time we see him he starts out looking the same, pristine white suit, immaculate hair, and maybe just a few new scars. Someone said he's a half-vamp but I leave that to your expertise. 5 Ardaxians.
AN
I realized that this type of content belongs more on fictionpress than here so that's where I'll be moving all of my stuff from now on. Unfortunately I gotta wait 12 hours because I didn't have a fictionpress account till today. So for now, so that my players can access it, I'll leave this here, I'll delete it after it's confirmed and saved on fictionpress. If you liked this then go read the Ahern report. it's the same style but bigger, better, and less censored-er.