Pirate Fashion is a picture of the Pirates who wear it, that means it is of a variety which challenges any attempt of description. However and possibly even more than for the rest, a common basis exists, naturally stemming from the Mariner's life of any Pirate having some respect for himself: maritim environment is very aggressive (wind, salt, storms) and it is obvious in practice that, even the most elegant of these Pirate Ladies will not put a high priority on procuring court shoes or stiletto heels to be worn on the Deck. As well, even if simple vests are convenient for physical tasks under a blasting sun, he is crazy the Mariner who wouldn't have taken in his gear an oilskin to stand amidst the raging elements.

The same remarks apply to the Accessories, salt, the cluttering of the Board and the small enjoyable private space for Crew Members being the main factors in that case: for instance, steel is terribly put to the test, which leads to prefer such materials as bronze or silver, depending on the expected use and the financial means… In that perspective, the techniques of body marking, as Accessories, have proved well adapted to the hard living conditions of the Mariners and Pirates, especially Tattooing, even if the sun tends to fade their colours.

Garment and Accessories for the Board: the « Pirate Touch »

Let us try to identify the « basics » of the Garment and Accessories for on-Board:

  • Canvas clothing and oilskin to sustain wear and protect against rain, sea spray or even « flushing » by a bigger wave;
  • Headgear to protect against the sun and rain: at the minimum, it consists of a simple square of cloth tied around the kin and hair, possibly completed by a hat; a thicker cap to face higher latitudes or / and colder seasons;
  • Shoes or Boots if the means are sufficient: the latter better hold the ankles. In any case, oiling and soles with a good grip are unavoidable!
  • Gloves: depending on the task, may be absolutely necessary! Hands are precious and wounds become easily worse at sea.
  • Belt, codpiece, pockets or toolbag: those Accessories are used to carry every necessary thing when living on-Board a Ship, especially one to several weapons, a knife, tools, a compass and a sextant, one's most precious possessions, fetishes, mascots, talismans, soft toys, etc.

All that is very well but not yet really specific to Pirates. The Pirate « touch » stems, essentially and beyond any usefulness (though one could argue still…), from colours and the extravaganza of the accessories and possibly jewels - sometimes in amounts and quantities of no proportion – carried by Pirates: gaily colours, up to loudness and sometimes mismatch, big jewels, numerous piercings and accessories as gaudy as possible, belt buckles ornated with skulls, shrunken heads (depending however on the region…), leather bracelets or made of silver or gold, etc. Well, oh yes: one could still argue… Said we? Aye, that we said!

Some Pirates work out their look in a very systematic manner and with a precise objective, most often for getting an advantage during a fight. Worth noting are the attempts to obtain a surprise or fear effect in the victims (its starts of course with the Jolly Roger) so as to diminish their defending capacity by using not only the clothing style but also the voice and, for instance, war paint or even tattoos or / and scarifications…

Obviously, all that starts really having an effect first when the Pirate - or the Crew - has already reached a sufficient Fame but surprise effects can work whatsoever.

Note:

We just mentioned here body marking among Pirates. It can cover different things, in particular piercing, scarifications and tattooing.

The practice of scarifications is of Guinean origin and never really develop anywhere else. It could however be used - even abundantly! - by a few Pirates, as few as they were unconventional, but, because of its rarity even until today, we will not spend more time on the topic. Piercing, for its part - the pierced like it or not! - has just been already briefly discussed in the Accessories section, and sufficiently for now.

We will thus concentrate below on Tattooing because it is a little more than an Accessory and a little less - depending on the point of view! - than a Garment.

Weapons for Pirates

The effect of surprise is over and, except if there's a general panic on the ennemy Deck, all the clothing, accessory and tattooed stuff of Pirates isn't of much use without a set of some good weapons which be not only effective but also surprising and, upon all, adapted for the use on Ships' Decks: one generally prefers weapons with short and curved (if not hooked!) blades, like for fighting in tropical forests, so as to avoid being hindered by a rigging, unfortunately enough hanging there, or else makeshift weapons: hence one uses a lot some items of the Riggings' Lines (Belaying pins, hooks) because they always are available on Board, in hand's reach and therefore do not need be carried all the time.

Shortly after, without specific order, the following may come in handy: hatchets, (sledge-) hammers and some weapons, otherwise not anymore in fashion, but still in use over murky waters at sea for their highly flexible uses: noteworthy here are Bucklers, which are little shields, sometimes with a spike and used as a parrying weapon or a sort of sword breaker and for blocking or disarming moves.

Let us go on with fire arms, Marine Pistols and Muskets of course! Those weapons are generally very expensive because their design has high requirements, again because of corrosion at sea but also because of the precise needs of the Mariners and Pirates: indeed, during a Boarding, space being cramped, action happens very fast and distances for firing are very short, which requires fast loading and cocking, as well as precise mechanism, the whole being mounted in a weapon which still should be as light as possible; it remains however true that numerous technologies exist or are still being tested, notably in the field of cocks, and that of the weapon the quality and ornamentation vary enormously depending on the means at one's hand… It's easy to understand why the use of Fire Arms is granted almost exclusively to specialists!

To finish with the topic, let us have a look at some more exotic or unexpected weapons and more specifically weapons meant for defending the Deck or bomb the ennemy:

  • The Grenade: as well in its, expensive, metallic as in its coconut (or even pomegranate?!) version, the principle is the same: the more or less spheric thing is stuffed with Gunpowder and Shot and one inserts a Fuse… After ignition, no mistake with the counting down and throwing away!
  • The Firy Cocktail: simple and dreadful, a bottle of rum full of alcohol and stoppled with a piece of cloth which becomes impregnated; ignite and throw away immediately! And do not abuse of it if you intend to take over ennemy Ship…
  • The Crossbow: in the smaller versions, that weapon, even if it has been outranked by the various Popguns and Pistols, manged to keep on charming Pirates thanks to its low cost of ownership. (Aye! On economic questions, Pirates are no rough landlubber, that no!) There exists in the case of Crossbow too an almost limitless inventivity to make the weapon continuously more effective… (Aye! On such a topic neither!)
  • The Blowpipe (or Peashooter if you prefer!): light and easily carried in the pocket or, in a longer version for a greater range, the Blowpipe has its main use in eliminating an well-defined element among the ennemy, the Captain for instance, from an embushed position; loading the (usually poisonous) dart being a difficult and dangerous operation, it is impossible to conduct it in the turmoil of the battle on the Deck.
  • The Weighted Net: it goes without saying, a net, weighted by masses (of lead or even of wood) is dropped on the Deck to trap (and possibly haul!) as many opponents as possible after or just as they boarded. Even if they can get out of the tangle, the Net provides precious seconds for the defending Crew. Used precisely and with experience, the Net can allow to make prisonners more securely.

The list could grow much longer yet but we leave you that care, dear Friend Game Master, for you will do, aye, that you'll do as your needs or the ideas of your Players will come up.

Pirate Tattooing

Tattooing and Piracy

Tattooing is relatively wide spread among Pirates, have it be wanted or not. Indeed, it happens that a particularly authoritarian Quarter Master makes mandatory for all Members of the Crew that they get a precisely defined mark, a rather unconventional way to « nail » a man at Board… Most often however, the Tattoo of a Pirate dates back before his or her passing to Piracy or from a personal choice in order to « fine-skin » (if one dare say!) his or her Pirate Character and at that point we'd better say imagination has no limit!

Hence on the one hand Tattooing is a mark of origin: it can be the region where the Character grew and / or a period of life such as slavery, imprisonment, etc. On the other hand, Tattooing can be a mark of belonging to Piracy and then be relatively homogenous or, on the contrary, have the function of an Accessory item aiming, beyond its potential utility against the ennemy as a frightener, aiming at expressing the personality or even the unconventional character of its bearer, which part is so diverse we will not be able to detail here.

Design

In terms of design, the Known World can roughly be divided, let's say, in three great traditions of Tattooing, partly mixed, the origins and relative anteriority of which are very difficult to assertain. At any rate, those are the three potential sources of the Pirate Tattooing, namely:

  • the Nip’In Irezumi;
  • the « Curry-Bean » Tattoo;
  • the Tattooing of the Islands of the Last Loyalty.

We will go into describing them a little now, but be aware please anyway, that Tattooing offers a great variety of possibilities and the greatest difficulty will surely be that a Tattoo Master be found… and want (and can properly…) make your Tattoo! So inspired winds to thee and fare well!

Nip'In Irezumi

The Nip'In Irezumi (Irezumi means « inserting ink in » in Nip'In language) is certainly the best documented through history. Designs are like real masterwork paintings in which the lines of the body get lost under the four to five colours and shadowings of the motive. The craft emerged by becoming the (intimate) privilege of the Warriors' caste about nine hundred years ago (that is in the fifth century of the Nip'In Calender). It then spread to the other castes in the twelth century of the Nip'In Calender (about two hundred years ago), especially to the caste of Craftsmen, possibly over through Pirates, a group among which Tattooing actually developped from the origins on, despite the absolute interdiction for non-Warriors to bear such designs, delivered by the Techno in the year 492 of the Nip'In Calender. Around 620, the legendary Pirate Rie Hinokibayashi was also famous for the extraordinary Tattoo design on her body and seeing it was a certain sentence to death for the infortunate witness.

The « Curry-Bean » Tattooing

Is the « Curry-Bean » Tattooing the « Tatooing of the origins » ? Is it simply an adaptation to the available technical and natural means in the Archipelago of the Curry-Bean? Probably nothing of that at all because one should not here be mistaken: stylised, or even frankly abstract, monochromatic, the Curry-Bean Tattoo Design is loaded with significance and is the result of a long process of aesthetic improvement, there again for the Warriors. Underlining the lines of the body to make it look more frightening or impressive, it can create surprise or provoke fear in the ennemy ranks with great efficiency. It is, for that reason, much searched for and abundantly used by Pirates in all the Known World, with the only exception of Nip'On. That is why many Curry-Bean who emigrated opened their own shop in many harbours of the Known World, thereby sustaining a fashion of which the success doesn't show any sign of weakening.

The Tattooing of the Islands of the Last Loyalty

The third type of Tattooing comes out of the Islands of the Last Loyalty. Its origins would also be very ancient but it would have quickly lost its initial symbolism and its heraldic features to become a more personal thing and fall into discredit. It became thus rapidly the tattooing of outlaws, of the lawless and lwaless… and of Pirates of all the Aunt-Sea, then of the Curry-Bean, of the Shellfish Sea and of all the Navel of the World. Despite the strong push of the Curry-Bean Tattooing fashion, especially since the time of the Point-o-Spit Conference, it remains the typical Pirate Tattooing style and the most often used motive pool by Pirates who are in search of original Tattoo designs: skulls, sea monsters, anchors, various texts, etc. are the main monochromatic sources but any folly becomes also thinkable when it starts to be about colour! Influences from the Curry-Bean and Nip'In Tattoos have been becoming more visible for about the last hundred years and merge progressively in the Pirate sea of Tattoo design.

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