My luck from earlier in the day (See "A Day of Incredible Luck") was holding up and as I arrived at Cayo from the east, so too was a ‘Lexington’ Brig coming in from the north and I saw him with plenty of time to adjust my heading and get between him and the port.



He was only Level 26 and the ‘Lexington’ Brig is not renowned for its speed, so I assumed it would be pretty straight forward: I’d mosey on up to him, shatter his masts and demand he surrender 100% of his cargo then send him on his way. I was wrong about that…



His response was to fire a broadside into my port armor as I came around. Now, I wasn’t trying to cause him any grief. His society has a respectable enough reputation, I’d’ve been happy to see him off safely even if he had no cargo for me; all he had to do was surrender. Quite bold of him, I say. Unfortunately boldness only upsets pirates like me. The only option left to me was to board him and let my L51 NPC crewmen have their way.



All he had was 10 tons of gravel. I don’t know what the ‘Lexington’ Brig goes for on the market these days, I assume something in the area of 30,000 for the deed. With 3 Durability points, that basically means each loss costs 10k, plus the cost of permanent outfittings, if he were fitted with all basic rigging let’s say 15k this loss cost him. All because he wouldn’t surrender 50 doubloons worth of gravel. Hardly seems worth it.

I took a side trip into the Bahamas to see if anything was going on in the Nassau area – small PvP zone, that, but it’s a zone nonetheless. There was nothing happening, though, so I returned to see if there were anyone else running in or out of Cayo de Marquis that wanted to give me a Mark of Victory or two. The first thing I saw was a French captain sailing an ‘Intrepid’, which is the Privateers’ refit of the ‘Capricieux’ Mastercraft Frigate. The second thing I saw was a French ‘Tigre’ Sleek Frigate just outside the zone but whose course indicated they wished to come in to Cayo. Third thing I saw was fellow pirate Black Sparrow’s in a ‘Conquistador’ Sleek Frigate. As soon as I saw Black, I tagged the ‘Intrepid’ expecting him to jump in to assist, and sure enough he did.

Now, say what you want about Black. He’s developed himself an unsavory reputation among nationals and pirates alike, but he’s never screwed me over and I’ve had more than one occasion where I needed support and he was the only one around. So, until something happens to change that, Black’s okay in my book.

Anyhow, we didn’t catch the ‘Intrepid’. I tagged with favorable wind for myself, but the Privateer’s frigate is extremely fast for its size and since he hadn’t hesitated to run away he was able to maintain a wide enough gap that I couldn’t tag him with Cripple or Deter to slow him down. But when we exited from that battle instance, we saw the ‘Tigre’ Sleek nearby. Apparently, its captain had been on the way to help the ‘Intrepid’, not knowing that the Privateer had easily outrun us. I tagged it and Black was right behind me.

We were all over the ‘Tigre’ for what felt like forever but was in reality only minutes. I put what debuffs I had available on the ship and after we took her sails down, Black went in for an easy board. After he boarded, our friend in the Intrepid joined the battle from a reinforcement point and raced toward them hoping to take advantage of Black’s vulnerability due to the boarding combat. I ran out to intercept with Cripple and Cut Shroud to slow him down as best I could, but after that I was forced to get out of his way. My little Cutter is no match for an ‘Intrepid’, not in a 1v1 fight.

But the Privateer was able to loose one broadside, maybe two, before Black had finished off the Naval Officer and derelicted the Sleek ‘Tigre’. “Get him,” Black said, and I sped after the ‘Intrepid’ as fast as I could. Seeing that his target was no longer vulnerable, though, and that he would not have the support of the ‘Tigre’ captain, he once again turned to run away.



I said before that I wasn’t sure whether I’d present blog posts about my adventures in PotBS in an out-of-character manner or in-character. This post so far has been pretty OOC, as were my previous posts, "Hunting the Open Sea with the Nine Winds" and "A Day of Incredible Luck". The next post I’m going to handle a little differently and hopefully, you readers will comment and let me know which approach you prefer. Maybe I’ll even put up some kind of poll about it.

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