A quick bit of writing before I get dragged off to a University Open Day by my daughter this morning. This is the start of the How to Be a Sky Pirate chapter of Sky Pirates of the Floating Realms.
There are many reasons why people become sky pirates, including the following.
1. Out of necessity. Many communities cling to small sky islands and don’t have enough land for even meagre subsistence farming. So, the more able members of these remote communities end up “fishing” in the sky lanes for food and other resources.
2. As a result of being exiled. Large, organised sky island communities tend to be highly organised and laden with rules and laws simply to survive. The threat of being cast out and abandoned on a distant floating sky rock is something that many lawmakers use to keep their people in line. Also, many communities will have an annual casting of the stones. Where two or more candidates for exile, people who have broken local laws or are simply intolerable in the eyes of their community, receive votes in the form of a stone with their name on it. The candidate with the most must leave the island for a set period (say ten to twenty years) or for life.
3. They are misfits. Like being exiled, but a choice rather than something being imposed upon them. Freethinkers, revolutionaries or out-and-out oddballs choose a life aboard a pirate ship, free to explore their ideas and be themselves.
4. Freed prisoner. Some Tyrants have Sky-Island Prisons, where those who break their laws or simply get on their wrong side end up. The prisons range from camps made up of huts or tents, where the inmates labour in the fields, to highly secure fortresses, where there is a daily schedule of lockdowns, exercise in the yard, and sessions in the workshop making crafted goods for the Tyrant’s enrichment. Fortunately, Sky Pirates often attack these institutions, driven either because they are an affront to the pirates’ sense of freedom or because they need to supplement their crew.
5. Promises of a life-changing fortune. Some people see it as a job and that they will either accumulate enough treasure over a career or have one big haul that gives them a post-pirate life of comfort in a villa in a big cosmopolitan sky city.
6. For the sheer high-spirited adventure of it! The life of a sky pirate offers excitement and adventure in a way that many workers in the settlements can only dream of. Many pirates are simply aboard for the lifestyle.
Originally posted on my Patreon for Fantastic Odyseys Zine. Sign up for more posts like this and members-only previews of stuff I’m working on.
