Pirate Borg Factions - Blackbeard And The Scourge

By JimmiWazEre

Opinionated tabletop gaming chap

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TL;DR:

An ancient Abyss awakens the drowned dead of the Caribbean. Blackbeard rises with his will intact, commands the Scourge, and sets out to break the English, control the ASH trade, and crown himself king of the Dark Caribbean.

Introduction

Ahoy. Did you catch my post the other week about the real history of Blackbeard? I said that I’d follow up with how I’ve built upon that real history to bake Blackbeard into the fantasy lore of Pirate Borg’s Dark Caribbean setting.

Well, this is gonna be just that, so buckle down your flintlocks and secure your cutlasses. Let’s goooo.

In The Beginning

I can’t jump straight to Blackbeard without first setting the stage. Much of my lore builds directly on the official History of the Dark Caribbean from the Pirate Borg Core Rules (p.25), with my campaign beginning in “Chapter 5,” where “Blackbeard, a sorcerer, returns from the grave with an army of the dead.”

But before those events and before the timeline in the book even begins, there are a few crucial pieces of history to establish.

Pre-History

Deep beneath the Caribbean Sea lies a cosmic scar. Gods only know how long it had been there or from whence it came. It’s a rift in reality that opens into an Abyssal existence beyond mortal comprehension. Madness made geography.

In ages long forgotten, proto-Mesoan peoples encountered this rift. In attempting to understand the madness and magic emanating from it, many souls lost their sanity. Those who studied and survived came to recognise the malign intent of the forces within.

Using rituals uncovered in their desperate search for meaning, they sealed the rift and constructed an aquatic city upon it — a living capstone over the wound. That city would become Atlantis, deep in the heart of what is today known as the Bermuda Triangle.

In time, the ancient Atlantean people fractured. The splitting branch, known as the Doradians, abandoned their watery city and journeyed to the mainland Yucatán, seeking distance from the source of their horrific dreams. There, their advanced culture endured in an altered form focused around a golden city.

Recently

Against the backdrop of the Greater Antilles War (The Caribbean theatre of the War of Spanish Succession 1701 - 1714), Cultists of the Wretched (disciples of the entity that dwells within the Abyss) dispatch an agent to the jungles of the Yucatán.

Among the ruins of the ancient Doradian culture, that agent became The Sunken One, and completed a ritual to relocate the Abyssal gateway - wrenching it free from the restraining powers of Atlantis and transferring the wound to the oceanic region South of Cuba.

The Abyss was no longer sealed. The resulting upheaval shattered the region, releasing unnatural magics in its wake. Port Royal was destroyed in the resulting earthquake.

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Unintended Consequences

The Sunken One did not foresee what would follow: The Abyss is not a wound that can be exposed without consequence. When torn free from the ancient restraints of Atlantis, its corruption bled outward into the sea and to the sky alike, and the ocean began to remember its dead.

Sailors lost to storm and cannon, slaves thrown overboard, mutineers sunk in chains, entire crews swallowed by hurricane. The Caribbean now returns them all. These risen corpses became known as The Scourge, they aren’t clever or strategic, merely repeating the last violent patterns of their lives: boarding, burning, hunting, killing. They are driven by a rage which they cannot put words to.

But the Abyss does not act within boundaries. It did not take long for the corruption to reach the waters off Ocracoke Island. There, in the shallows where his body had been cast aside, one Edward Teach rose again.

Drawn by instinct deeper than memory, the corpse made its way toward Chesapeake Bay to reclaim what had been severed from it. When Blackbeard stood whole once more, something happened. Unlike the rest of the Scourge, he retained his will.

Whether this was design, accident, or selection, none can say. But the mindless dead began to gather to him. Ships crewed by the drowned altered course. The Queen Anne’s Revenge, more terrible than ever, returned. Silent decks turned toward his black flag.

The Scourge had found a king, Blackbeard found his armada, and the Caribbean found its Harbinger.

The Scourge As A Faction

I follow the Cairn 2nd ed school of thought for how to run sandbox factions. See this video by LowKeyTTRPG for more information about how that mechanically works - but in essence, you take a “faction turn” (roll some dice) between game sessions. Factions should have goals that the players can feel the affects of and their success in terms of their goals should be a product of the resources they have available to them vs the obstacles in their path.

If we look at Blackbeard’s real history it stands to reason that he’d be motivated by revenge, and a lust for power and reputation. With that in mind I’ve got three goals for the scourge under Blackbeard:

1) Break The English in the Caribbean

Humiliate and cripple the English authority at sea.

Resources

• Queen Anne’s Revenge.

• Undead crews and ghost ships.

• Fear and reputation.

Notable impacts as goals completed

• Major English ports fall into chaos (martial law, burned docks, naval retreat).

• English Naval presence reduces.

Obstacles

• Royal Navy patrols.

• Pirate captains unwilling to fight England directly.

• English spies inside pirate ports.

2) Control the ASH trade

Weaponise ASH as leverage and corruption tool.

Resources

• Unending ASH Reserves.

• Contact with Governor Claude Barlette.

• Smuggler Networks from his old life.

Notable impacts as goals completed

• ASH price doubles.

Obstacles

• Pirates!

3) Crown himself king of the Dark Caribbean

Resources

• Undead Crews.

• Fear & Reputation.

• Abyssal Necromancy.

Notable impacts as goals completed

• Nassau-style pirate councils dissolve or are slaughtered.

• Pirate captains must swear loyalty or be hunted.

Obstacles

• Charismatic rival captains.

• Internal dissent from living allies.

Conclusion

Let me know in the comments if you want me to do a real history and lore for any of the other factions!

Hey, thanks for reading - you’re good people. If you’ve enjoyed this, it’d be great if you could share it on your socials - it really helps me out and costs you nothing! If you’re super into it and want to make sure you catch more of my content, subscribe to my free monthly Mailer of Many Things newsletter - it really makes a huge difference, and helps me keep this thing running! If you’ve still got some time to kill, Perhaps I can persuade you to click through below to another one of my other posts?

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What Makes ‘Ravaged by Storms’ a Standout Pirate Borg Sandbox?

By JimmiWazEre

Opinionated tabletop gaming chap

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TL:DR:

A storm-wracked sandbox, a furious feathered serpent, and a doomsday clock. Ravaged by Storms is Golem Productions’ newest Pirate Borg adventure — a 72-page mini-campaign where factions clash, hurricanes brew, and the Blight Revenant stirs. I really like it, it’s packed with GM tools like a Storm Generator and Ruin tables, but my first look also spotted a couple of quirks. Here’s what stood out to me.

Disclaimer

Similar to last week’s initial exploration of Emergent, I can’t call this a review. I’ve not played it yet you see, coupled with the fact that I’ve only been sent a WIP copy with some missing images etc and haven’t seen the final version.

As ever, I’ve not received a financial incentive to write nice things, but I am a backer of the Ravaged by Storms Kickstarter. When Golem Productions reached out to invite me to showcase their adventure, I was happy to answer the call. As part of this, I fed back a few suggested improvements to Golem Productions, and as such you’ll find me credited in the book :)

The upshot is that despite that very minor minor conflict of interest, you’re gonna be reading my honest first thoughts on an adventure which is mostly finished, and that I quite clearly can’t wait to get my hands on the finished product!

Oh, and whilst I’m disclaiming, this post contains minor spoilers covering the opening setup of the adventure. Cool? Swinging, lets get started.

What is Ravaged By Storms?

OK so, off the back of successful releases ‘The Way of the Worm’ and ‘The Scarlet Coral Kingdom’, brother - sister duo Alexander Jatscha-Zelt and Sabrina Jatscha (Golem Productions) have got yet another Pirate Borg adventure on the stove. ‘Ravaged by Storms’ (RbS), is currently in a live Kickstarter (well, live until 11th September 2025 anyway) and the campaign has already hit a fantastic 426 backers with over £15,000 pledged so far.

Jatscha-Zelt describes RbS as a “72-page mythic sandbox adventure module designed for Pirate Borg… rules-light, art-heavy, and fiercely OSR.“ and he’s pretty much nailed it.

For those unfamiliar with the idea; since it’s a sandbox adventure there’s no middle or end plotted out for you to awkwardly steer your players towards. What happens is totally in their hands. Player. Agency. My dudes.

There is however, a beginning:

In The Beginning, There Was A… (Minor Spoiler Alert, players skip to the next section!)

A millennia or so ago Mesoans settled in an archipelago in the Bahamas of the Dark Caribbean called the Death Wind Islands. With the help of their Coatl allies (serpentine demigods of wind and storm) they go on to build a glorious city housing all their wealth and knowledge.

Hundreds of years later, those Mesoan chaps are long gone - but their crumbling kingdom remains guarded by the last Coatl; Tzoketuapacatl (bless you!). It’s lucky he does too, because during a siege on the city an undead warrior was touched by a local Great Old One’s juicy venom and transformed into (our BBEG) the Blight Revenant, and this chap is hell bent on claiming the Whisperwind Conch.

If the Revenant ever manages to nab it from the city, the result could be extinction-level toxic hurricanes:

Fortunately, Tzoketuapacatl intervenes. Sealing the city, Revenant, and the Conch behind layers of impenetrable magical raging storm prisons. This is seemingly a cunning, nay, foolproof plan with but. One. Small. Flaw…

You see, it all slowly unravels if anyone gets into the city through the back door and yoinks a second magical McGuffin; the Wind Bone Key.

And, well, ‘sugarpuffs!’ Wouldn’t you just know it!? Flash forward to the Golden Age of Piracy and some swashbuckling scurvy dog has only gone and unwittingly done exactly that! Now there’s a six day timer ticking until the Blight Revenant gets his boney hands on the Conch, and to really stick the boot in - Tzoketuapacatl (who is understandably pretty dischuffed with this turn of events!) is going on a bit of a rampage against all the local factions trying to find the Wind Bone key and is tearing everything up in his path.

Unto this scene, enter stage left; our heroes.

Come on, that sounds pretty Saturday morning swashbuckling, right? I’m in.

What’s it trying to Do?

Be A Complete Mini Campaign

RbS is built to run as a 5-10 session adventure. Whilst you could probably run it straight out of the book, I would always recommend familiarising yourself with the content that you need to run an expected session, and making some notes prior to sitting down at the table.

It has a defined opening, a ticking doomsday clock, and enough locations, NPCs, and encounters to sustain a whole arc without having to do much more work than flesh out some of the things given to you should the players actions necessitate it.

Encourage Sandbox Play

There’s no fixed middle or end.

Instead, the module gives you procedures for faction activity, travel, and naval encounters so the world keeps moving around the PCs. The story isn’t pre-written and can only be understood as something that happened at your table in the past-tense, rather than something that the GM dictates will happen.

That’s really key to understanding how to use RbS: The players choose what to pursue, who to side with, and how to spend their six days before everything goes all Sharknado. The module does have a handful of potential ways the campaign might play out listed at the end, but the purpose here isn’t to say ‘pick one’, rather ‘this is just an inspirational small range of the limitless possible outcomes’.

Be Modular

After all that though, if a Sandbox campaign really isn’t your thing, well the module is also pretty damn modular to be honest. You could easily reach inside and tear out the stuff you like, such as the Lifeless City, or Drownmaids Rest to use as one shot adventures, and then adjust the player agency to taste.

What Stands Out To Me?

The Timer

The six day timer is doing two things, firstly, it’s setting expectations that this isn’t going to be a terribly long campaign arc (5-10 sessions), in fact this campaign is going to be perfect for my Pirate Borg campaign as a keyed location to drop in, and that’s how I’d suggest you use it too.

Secondly though, the timer is infusing the adventure with a sense of urgency which is something I find to be critical in keeping the players moving forwards and not getting bogged down trying to fulfil that ‘videogamey’ habit of exploring all paths and getting every achievement… and then consequently robbing the experience of all it’s tension.

The Roaming Coatl

Tzoketuapacatl is a cool monster, no doubt about it. But he serves a meta-function as a chaos generator and a GM safeguard.

I was thinking about this, we’re all human, and even in sandboxes GMs sometimes drift into predicting how things might play out. Once you start imagining outcomes, you risk steering players toward them. The Coatl prevents that.

By rolling for his actions and storms, and including information on how all the keyed locations change in his aftermath, the board state constantly shifts in unpredictable ways. It keeps the GM honest, preserves agency, and if you make the players feel it; I can imagine it injecting fresh tension each new game day.

The fact that Golem Productions has included this meta layer of thinking about how their module should be ran, and how they can make it easy for you to stick to sandbox principles really impressed me.

Sandbox Toolkit

OK, so yeah - the Coatl is very specific to RbS. But there are other gameplay tools that you can add to your broader Pirate Borg arsenal, and that makes it extra valuable:

• There’s a Storm Generator that provides you with both descriptive prompts, but also translates these into specific player challenges, and suggests potential consequences for failure. Really useful for making weather more than simple flavour.

• A Ruins Generator that lets you roll up some convincing locations for crawling, in case players take a left turn and find themselves somewhere that looks like it could use a dungeon.

• Six new rituals from the ‘Squallbinding’ school to give extra magical options for PCs, all focused around the movement of air; wind, speaking, breathing etc.

Faction Play

Every group on the islands has its own agenda: there’s the pirate group; the Phantoms fracturing under Marceau, the West India Company scheming for control, the Bright Maiden’s mercurial ghost crew, the Coatl’s wrath, Peacatatl, and the Blight Revenant.

They’re all written to act and react alongside the PCs, with different motivations which creates shifting alliances and betrayals, again adding to the richness and variety of the campaign’s path at your table.

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Nostalgia

It would simply be remiss of me not to mention that the art and descriptions are fantastic throughout. I really appreciated that elements of it grabbed me right in the childhood and transported me directly back to Monkey Island, meeting “Herman Toothrot” and tinkering about with monkeys and suspicious statues. Great stuff!

Potential Friction Points

Terminology Consistency

I especially like how the module uses a similar concise framework to my preferred method when it comes to giving area descriptions, however one of the things I fed back on relates to the consistency of the terminology in these areas. I should stress, mine was a preview copy with final changes yet to be made, but I noticed instances where I was uncertain if more than one distinct noun or proper name for a given element was simply artistic flair, or an indication that there were multiple similar elements.

For example, are “Maritime Beast,” “bone cage,” and “skeletal remains.” all referring to the same giant desiccated animal corpse on the beach, or are there three?

It’s fine to do this for many people, but for me personally it made reading comprehension just that little bit more of a challenge. Having to reread lines, over analysing, self doubt, that question - ‘have I missed something from elsewhere that explains this?’.

I’ll be happy to see this resolved in the final product, with the addition of the last few area maps which will clear this up nicely :)

Intentional Vagueness

Since this is a concise OSR adventure, there’s not pages and pages of lore a la WOTC. That’s not to say lore is absent, but rather that RbS is concise and gives you the minimum to make sure the GM is in control of the important facts. This means you’ll have to improvise if more detail is required.

This is going to work absolutely fine for me as all the main details have been covered and I just need to add some flesh to the bones here and there, but if you’re not comfortable with improvisation then it could be a sticking point for you, and it’s worth knowing, going in.

Navigation

There’s quite a lot of page flipping to be had in RbS, mainly in relation to how one of the broad cast of NPS relates to another regarding factional interplay. The nice thing is that you are specifically told where to flip to though, and you’re not just left to vaguely cast about looking for the relevant section.

I think I would have preferred to see some kind of nodal diagram showing all the different cast members, who they are connected to and how. That could have been up front on a single page and would have meant that I’m not regularly having to flip to elsewhere to get the full picture explained to me.

As it currently stands, this is probably the main reason why I said earlier that the module does still require you to read through and make notes, to make sure that you’re in total command of all the relevant information.

Do You Want To Know More?

Looks like Ravaged by Storms has made a bit of a splash, which is really nice to see.

Over at Thaumavoria, Dave has a nice interview up with Golem Productions, discussing RbS and various design choices.

And Rascal News even has a guest piece up discussing the Kickstarter!

There’s also an interview up on Youtube with Mom’s Open Table and the Kickstarter trailer offers a nice tease:

Conclusion

Obviously, it’s clear that I really like the look of Ravaged By Storms. I think it’s going to be an excellent option for inserting into my wider PB campaign. On top of that, you know I’m going to be lifting those GM tools straight out and putting them to use more broadly.

How about you though? Do you think it looks interesting? What would you like to see form a module like this? Answers in the comments below as always :)

Oh, before I forget - If you want to get in on the kickstarter, head over to the campaign in time for the final push before September 11th and grab yourself a slice of the action.

Hey, thanks for reading - you’re good people. If you’ve enjoyed this, it’d be great if you could share it on your socials - it really helps me out and costs you nothing! If you’re super into it and want to make sure you catch more of my content, subscribe to my free monthly Mailer of Many Things newsletter - it really makes a huge difference, and helps me keep this thing running!

Catch you laters, alligators.