9th Brethren Court



The Brethren Court is a confederation of pirates on The Legend of Pirates Online made up of the Pirate Lords, which serves as the governing body of pirates across the world. They are led by the Pirate King, Richard Cannonwalker.

History
For information on the past Brethren Courts from Pirates of the Caribbean Online, see: The 5th Brethren Court, The 6th Brethren Court, The 7th Brethren Court, and The 8th Brethren Court

After the end of the 8th Brethren Court and PotCO on September 19, 1746 (2013), pirate roleplay as a whole stopped and became dormant. While the British roleplayers remained together and organized, many members of the 8th Court moved on to other things. There was nothing more than a few whispers of creating any kind of pirate organizations for the two and a half years that followed PotCO's closure.

In the January and February of 1749 (2016), news arose of another Brethren Court being made by a man named Lawrence Ironhawk. Richard Cannonwalker, the King of the 8th Court, was initially willing to "pass the torch" along to this new Brethren Court and take a step back from pirate roleplaying. However, after hearing of this new Court's non-aggression pact with the British, he decided that they would be an inadequate successor to the legacy of the Brethren Courts.

Throughout the month of March, Cannonwalker recruited and made plans for the creation of the 9th Brethren Court. By the end of the month, he had six lords total. After he finished recruiting, Cannonwalker held a vote between the lords to decide who would become Pirate King; he won this vote, becoming the first ever two-time Pirate King. Cannonwalker and his newly-appointed Keeper of the Code, Finn Hamm, issued a new Pirate Code for this Court to follow as well.

On April 1, the 9th Brethren Court's existence was officially announced to the world. However, Ned Edgewalker would resign from the Court a few days later, leaving the Binder of the Seven Seas position vacant. On the same day, Harleen Spark would publicly announce her membership in the Court as a Lord. By May 12, after talks with Lawrence Ironhawk, the leader of another group calling themselves the 9th Brethren Court, the two Courts had come to an agreement to merge. Certain lords from each Court were demoted and other agreements were put in place.

By June 9, Sultan Mahmud I gifted the entire Ottoman Empire to Pirate King Cannonwalker, causing controversy within the rest of the roleplay community and talks of a British-supported coup d'etat. These ultimately subsided and, after considering the circumstances, on October 6, Cannonwalker appointed Pirate Lord Finn Hamm to lead the Ottoman Empire as a vassal state of the Brethren Court.

By December 9, after a few months of inactivity within the Court, TLOPO finally releases semi-open beta. The Outlanders is created the same day to serve as the Court's main guild. The guild quickly swelled in numbers and eventually recruited the Empress of Austria, Hannah Bluefeather, and the newly-crowned King of the Netherlands, Leonhard Bosch, who both defected from Britain. On December 16, the Netherlands gifted the Court all of their Caribbean possessions, and Russia gifted the Court a couple of port towns in the Mediterranean Sea.

As time went on, interest in TLOPO within the Brethren Court began to dwindle. Activity peaked in late December leading into the new year due to TLOPO's double xp event, but lords began playing less and less frequently on the game due to its buggy nature. Activity within The Outlanders dropped considerably; Leonhard Bosch resigned and left the Netherlands in Richard Cannonwalker's care.

By early March, TLOPO announced they were closing down for a few weeks to implement coding changes. Whether or not this results in the game's problems being fixed and the Court resuming business as usual is yet to be seen.

The Pirate Code
The code that all members of the Brethren Court must follow, lest they risk being branded a "rogue pirate."

Article I: General Lord Conduct

 * 1) Lords must swear utmost allegiance to the Court and cannot be serving (peacefully or violently) any other country or faction (formally or informally) without express permission from the Pirate King.
 * 2) Lords must remain active; if one goes inactive for a month or longer, they will be replaced.
 * 3) Lords cannot cause unnecessary trouble with other groups or people, inside or outside of the Court.

Article II: The Pirate King

 * 1) The King is the Guildmaster of the main Brethren Court guild; he may admit other guilds to serve the Court, but his will be the central one around which all the others revolve.
 * 2) The King has the power to appoint a Pirate Baron, a Keeper of the Code, and any other position he may come up with; the King may also remove said people from power if he so chooses.
 * 3) The King may appoint any amount of Pirate Lords he chooses; this may be challenged by any current-sitting Lord, but an attempt to keep a new Lord out must be passed with a 2/3rds majority of all Lords, including the King themselves.
 * 4) The King will have sole jurisdiction over the fates of Pirate Lords deemed to be “inactive.”
 * 5) The King will have sole jurisdiction over any territories conquered by, or on behalf of, the Brethren Court.
 * 6) The King will have sole jurisdiction over the foreign affairs of the Brethren Court.
 * 7) The King may be removed from power if 3/4ths of all sitting Lords (not including the King) vote to have a new Pirate King election; the current-sitting King may run in said election, however.
 * 8) In the event a Baron or Keeper steps down or is removed from their position for whatever reason, the King should appoint a new Baron/Keeper they find to be fit for the job within a reasonable amount of time.

Article III: Pirate Baron

 * 1) The Pirate Baron is second-in-command of the Court and will assume the role of Pirate King (either temporarily or permanently) should the current King resign, be impeached, or be otherwise unable to do their job.
 * 2) When the King is on active duty, the Baron shall serve as their main advisor.

Article IV: The Keeper of the Code

 * 1) The Keeper will cooperate with the King in order to target problematic Court members and remove them from the Court.
 * 2) The Keeper may accuse a Pirate Lord of acting against the Code at any time, after which the following will occur:
 * 3) The Keeper shall build a case against the accused.
 * 4) The Pirate King and Baron will consider the case.
 * 5) A three-way vote between the King, Baron, and Keeper shall be held.
 * 6) A simple majority may remove the Lord.

Article V: The Main Brethren Court Guild

 * 1) This Guild will serve as the Brethren Court’s main army, and will be run by the King; other guilds may be admitted at the King’s discretion, but this will be the central guild.
 * 2) The Guild will be named by the King after appropriate input from the current-sitting Lords.
 * 3) Lords must, in most cases, be put through the aforementioned due process before being kicked from the Guild, but non-lord members can be removed at the King’s discretion.
 * 4) Lords may be removed without due process if, at the time, they are performing actions which are deemed to be putting the Court in a "state of emergency."

Article VI: Declarations of War

 * 1) War may be declared on behalf of the Brethren Court in two ways:
 * 2) The Pirate King declares war on behalf of the Court.
 * 3) The Lords vote to declare a war on behalf of the Court
 * 4) If a vote to declare war is called by one of the Lords, it requires a simple majority to be put into motion; the Pirate King may veto it, but only if it is a simple majority (2/3rds majority cannot be vetoed by the King).

Article VII: General Voting

 * 1) Most day-to-day actions of the Court will not be put to a vote; however, the following actions must be put to a general vote among all Pirate Lords:
 * 2) *Impeachment of the current-sitting Pirate King
 * 3) *Removal of a new Pirate Lord (if brought up by a current-sitting Lord)
 * 4) The following actions may be done in another manner, but can be put to a vote provided a Pirate Lord calls for one:
 * 5) *Declarations of war
 * 6) If the threshold needed for any vote to pass isn’t a whole number, it is always rounded up.

Article VIII: Amendments to the Code

 * 1) Amendments to any and all parts Pirate Code may be made at any time via a vote between the Pirate King, Baron of the Seven Seas, and Keeper of the Code.
 * 2) All amendments, inconsequential and major, must be made completely public to all members of the Brethren Court with no exceptions.
 * 3) Lords may petition that either the King, Baron, or Keeper of the Code review a request for an amendment at any time, though they are not obligated to follow through.

Brethren Court Countries
These countries are led by people who are members of the Brethren Court, and are therefore closely linked to the Court:

Pirate King Richard Cannonwalker
Ahoy! I'm Richard Cannonwalker, the founder and King of this incarnation of the Brethren Court. I was also the King of the last Brethren Court before POTCO closed which makes me the first ever two-time Pirate King. I've been adventuring in the Caribbean since I was young, and I have had my share of adventures. I've taken treasures and weapons that were barely conceivable when I began my life of piracy and overcame some of the toughest obstacles imaginable.

I've been a pirate ever since about a month after POTCO was first released. I've lead many guilds, a few of which were maxed at one point or another. By the time POTCO closed, I was leading a guild called "The Outlanders", which served as the main guild for the 8th Brethren court.

My reign as Pirate King in the 8th Brethren Court was lackluster, but I plan on correcting that this time around. For too long pirates have been considered weak and dovish, but I plan on radically changing that image. No obstacle is too hard for us to conquer, and no enemy is too difficult for us to defeat. Together, this Court will strike fear into the hearts of all who dare challenge us.

Pirate Baron Lawrence Ironhawk
Lawrence Chilton was born to Henry and Mary Chilton on the island of Port Royal in the British West Indies. His father was a laborer that would usually perform maintenance on the fort in Port Royal, Fort Charles. His mother would mind the family home, a run-down home in the town area of Port Royal.

One day, Henry Chilton was dismissed by the Navy and was unable to pay his taxes to the Crown. This problem could only be solved by moving to an island where taxes wouldn't have to be paid, an island filled with outlaws, bandits and pirates, Tortuga. The only way to get there was to sneak aboard a merchant ship, steal a dinghy, and row to the island. The Chiltons boarded a freighter at the last moment and waited in the cargo hold until the ship was passing Devil's Anvil. They then stole a dinghy and rowed all the way to Tortuga. They found an abandoned shack on the beach and lived there for four years.

Lawrence finally saw that his parents had had enough. He realized the only way to help them was to ease their burden by leaving them a large sum of money and walking away. He had amassed a large sum of 20,000 gold over the four years he was living in Tortuga. He left this with his parents and went to the scrapyard to find an extremely used War Frigate. It would never be used in this state, so with the help of a few associates and a large amount of time, about two more years, it was barely sea-worthy. Lawrence named it the Iron Hawk and changed his last name accordingly.

Over the next decade, Lawrence would plunder his guts out, making his fortune. He would eventually return to Tortuga to check on his parents, of whom he found had passed away the previous year. Realising there was nothing left for him at his homeland, he got back on his ship and sailed. He would eventually join the 9th Brethren Court of Richard Cannonwalker, becoming the Binder of the Seven Seas (later renamed Pirate Baron) and Pirate Lord of the Gulf of Mexico.

After a while, Lawrence's age began to catch up to him. He was nearing his late 50's when the hair began to whiten. He began to lose weight and lost the spring in his step that his younger counterpart had given him. Lawrence began to walk with a cane, requiring its support in order to move.

Keeper of the Code Finn Hamm


Finn Hamm hails from the quaint Essex, England and serves as Keeper of the Code and Pirate Lord of the Adriatic. An orphan forced to fend for his life on the streets in his early years, he briefly served under the East India Trading Company as a clerk and assassin before abdicating his position and starting a life of piracy.

Hamm, captain of the Shadow Song, pulls many of the strings within the Brethren Court, running several lucrative operations whilst staying anonymous thanks to his shrewd mind and silver tongue. Finn argues that the Brethren Court should be the sole authority for pirates in the world, going so far as to suggest non-Brethren corsairs are untrustworthy rogues. He advocates the spread of Brethren piracy to all corners of the world for the purpose of both material and political gain.

He is a steady hand with a sabre and flintlock, but prefers to settle disputes through guile and deception - or avoid them altogether. Otherwise, his knowledge of the occult makes him a fiendish foe and valuable ally.

Lord Jeremiah Garland
Jeremiah Garland was born the son of a wealthy British merchant in St Albans, England. Following in his father's footsteps, he took up a job in the British East India Company, first as a lowly ship-hand and clerk then as a corporal in the Company's sizeable military. One night whilst on guard duty at Fort Charles, Garland's rebellious tendencies got the better of him; deciding he had enough of life in the company, he began his career as a pirate after he snuck into the commandant's office, pilfered a folio of vital company documents, and escaped on board a stolen company ship. Evading capture from the Royal Navy, the rogue soldier-turned-pirate initially operated as a lone freelance plunderer, but soon found greater success operating in the crew of Captain Richard Cannonwalker. After the latter had proclaimed himself leader of the Republic of Padres Del Fuego, Garland too reestablished himself on the island, which had come to be a safe haven for piracy. After Cannonwalker stepped down, Garland found himself briefly in control of the island, but he too left after a failed attempt to prevent the island from falling into the hands of a massive British invasion in early 1746. Garland and Cannonwalker decided to part ways but kept a steady correspondence. Garland, as well as a few of his loyal followers, sought refuge in Russia, a country with which Garland had several connections. After arriving in St Petersburg later that year, Garland struck a deal with the Russian Court where the former and his crew would continue to prey on unknowing ship routes throughout Northern Europe; in return, the Russian government would turn a blind eye to Garland's piracy and even give him the island of Saaremaa to act as his base of operations. Garland, acting under the alias of a Prussian sea captain named "Klaus von Wroclai", has since wrecked havoc on European ports in the Baltic Sea, particularly those along the Swedish, Danish, and Polish coasts. On April 8, 1749, Garland was summoned back to the Caribbean by his old friend, Captain Cannonwalker, to take part in the 9th Brethren Court, representing the Baltic Sea as a Pirate Lord.

Lord Zoomer
Real name Wolf, his colleagues have dubbed him "Zoomer" half out of respect of his amazing alacrity in combat and half out of not knowing what his real name actually is. Zoomer was born in late 1726 in the slums of Havana, Cuba, to a local lady of the evening and a Navy Cadet. After his father abandoned them when he was only about a week old, his mother attempted to drown him  in the swamps of Cuba. He would survive, however, but only to become a child slave on a plantation.

It was there he met fellow outcasts Ben Badbane and Dog Dockdougal, who, along with Zoomer, would become a sort of family. During the night, the three were taught the ways of Voodoo by Tia Dalma and some basic combat techniques from passerby pirates who would pity them.

One day, the EITC burned down his plantation, and both of his friends would die - Ben beheaded and Dog burned to death - as children. The commander of the operation was Samuel, a known high-ranking EITC officer.

He managed to escape Cuba on stowaway to Padres Del Fuego, Samuel's home island. After tracking him down, Zoomer cornered the unassuming Samuel in Beckett's Quarry, and gutted him with his own knife. He would leave 10 gold pieces amidst Samuel's guts as his "condolences".

He became a petty thief by day, and hired assassin by night. Just about five years later, Richard Cannonwalker and Finn Hamm, leaders of the 9th court, would find him and see the crystal-clear latent potential just waiting to be tapped into in Zoomer. He was recruited into the 9th court as pirate lord at the age of 22.

Zoomer is a master of all weapons - from basic swords to ranged firearms - and the 9th court acknowledges this. He is a callous misanthrope who pledges unwavering allegiance to those he deems the strongest.

Lord Jason Wavecrash
TBA

News

 * General
 * 4/1/1749 - The 9th Brethren Court is officially established.
 * 4/8/1749 - Pirate King Richard Cannonwalker officially announces the joining of the Brethren Court with the military of Russia.
 * 12/9/1749 - The Court's main guild, The Outlanders, is founded
 * Membership Changes
 * 4/6/1749 - The Binder of the Seven Seas, Ned Edgewalker, resigns from the Court. The Binder of the Seven Seas position is made vacant.
 * 4/7/1749 - Jeremiah Garland joins the Court, taking over the duties of Binder of the Seven Seas.
 * 5/13/1749 - After a merger with another Brethren Court, the Court restructures to accommodate for all of its new members. Lawrence Ironhawk becomes Binder of the Seven Seas, among other roster changes.
 * 12/15/1749 - The day after Empress Maria Theresa (Hannah Bluefeather) of Austria joins The Outlanders, the Court and Austria form a defense pact.
 * 12/16/1749 - A couple of days after King Leonhard Bosch II of the Netherlands joins The Outlanders, the Court and the Netherlands formally create a defense pact, Leonhard becomes a Pirate Lord, and the Netherlands gifts the Court its Caribbean islands.
 * 1/21/1750 - Leonhard Bosch resigns from the Court and leaves roleplay.
 * 3/14/1750 - Johnny Sea Slasher resigns.
 * 3/17/1750 - Austria withdraws its defense pact with the Court.
 * Land-related news
 * ​4/8/1749 - France gifts Haiti to the Brethren Court.
 * 6/9/1749 - Sultan Mahmud I of the Ottoman Empire grants his entire empire to the Brethren Court.
 * 10/6/1749 - The Ottoman Empire is made into a vassal state of the Court ruled by Sultan Ormen I, otherwise known as Pirate Lord Finn Hamm.
 * 12/16/1749 - Russia gifts the coastal towns of Paphos and Novorossiysk to the Court
 * 12/16/1749 - The Netherlands gifts Aruba, Bonaire, Curacao, Saba, Sint Eustatius, and Sint Maarten to the Brethren Court.
 * 1/21/1750 - Leonhard Bosch's leaves the Netherlands in Pirate King Cannonwalker's control, making it a vassal state of the Brethren Court.
 * 3/26/1750 - Pirate King Cannonwalker uses all of the land directly controlled by the Court to create the new nation of "Haiti".