The irony in my life never ended. When my family was fleeing from their oppressors, most of them were killed upon trying to sneak into Kenya, by soldiers who mistook them for pirates. I managed to flee the attack further into Kenya, eventually banding together with other orphans and social outcasts on the fringes of the society. As a youth gang, we gained our first pirating experience fighting the law and military of the Kenyan nation.
Kenya was not in a good position when you entered it. Something was infesting it. The pirates from Somalia weren't just it. They were bad men, yes, but something else was shadowing over it. You got along with your life and tried to ignore the sinking feeling as you fought the law stealing from any ship who wasn't armed in your friend's crappy fishing boat. That was your life for the next few years, and it taught you a lot about how to be a feared man, even if you weren't much of a man. As time went on the profit from pirating grew less and less as ships grew afraid to draw near. You were trying to figure out how to go legit, when someone approached you with an offer. A lot of the pirates around here, he said, were not from Somalia. They were from somewhere else. This place would be a lot more profitable then Kenya. He called it the Atlantis Isles, and said he'd take you there for a reasonable price.
Profit was drying up at a rapid rate. What else could you do? You went on his boat. Lady Luck doesn't like you, it seems, because as soon as the boat approached the islands at night an RPG blew it straight out of the water. You swam to the beach, then passed out as several figures stood above you.
Skill gain: +2 to intimidation.I joined the family business, but when a job went wrong I got captured
The job was simple. The pay good. The cyanide pill they hid in your clothes almost unneeded. Almost. It would be your proving ground, and you fucked it up good. Arrived via boat onto some place you never heard of, the Atlantis Isles. The target was some warlord on the island, you needed to take him out. You used a compound bow while he was interrogating a prisoner on a beach because you thought it'd be a classy way to take a guy out. Guns may not be classy but they work fine. You got chased through the jungle then shot in the back of the leg, then dragged onto a truck and taken elsewhere. Somewhere along the way, you passed out.
Item gain: cyanide pill.His father having been in the SBS before being promoted he spent his teenage and adult years learning how to inspire men to follow him into anything willingly and all skills of a special forces soldier. At 18 he took the entrance exam and passed at the top of his class becoming the youngest ever member of the SBS.
When you heard you were going into the SBS, you were thrilled and worried at the same time. You knew it'd be tough, but you were ready to do it. Of course, you didn't realize just how tough it would be.
Your old man had to pull a lot of strings to get you into the SBS. Even though you passed excellently at the army entrance exam you were hardly a trained soldier. If it weren't for your father's service to the Navy,you wouldn't have even glanced at a ship belonging to the SBS. Everyone in it was much older then you, and more experienced. You didn't think the training would be as intense as it was. To be frank, it almost drove you into a nervous breakdown. You managed to get through it without chickening out, but then you found that no-one really trusted the 20 year old kid and always sent you out to do the shit jobs. The first mission you got? "Guard these merchant boats in a rather safe stretch of water that happens to have reported some pirate sightings a few years back". So there you were, standing on a patrol boat with a rifle, waiting in the middle of the night for a threat that never came. Just as you wished for a piece of real action, someone slammed a rifle butt into the back of your head. You fell to the ground, hearing gunfire far away...
Skill gained: +2 to using rifles.I was a diligent student, working hard and making not a few friends in the process.
My father was making a lot of money as a business tycoon, but I was fascinated by my mother's stories of her work as a photojournalist and war correspondent. From early on I dreamt of one day traveling the world myself, hopefully doing something to make a difference.
I developed an interest in music as a teenager, becoming quite proficient on the guitar, but unfortunately jam sessions with friends more often than not led to drug use. My good grades started to drop as I did more and more weed, forsaking school captaincy and homework assignments to get high, play in a series of terrible bands with my buddies and dream of just how I was going to "make it big" someday.
Mother was a sympathetic ear, but even she wasn't about to defend me from Dad's wrath at my screw-ups.
One day, after enough shouting to cause your ears to ring from your father, it all felt like too much. Your life was a complete wreck. Your band wasn't going anywhere. You weren't going anywhere. All your dreams of travel were going down the bin. You looked outside your window, staring at boring old Sweden, then looked at the postcards on your wall of so many other interesting places. You were going somewhere different one of these days. You were going to make it big. That's when your cellphone rung.
Some girl on the other end said your name in a tone of voice that made you excited. She saw your band last night, and apparently you all rocked hard. Hell, she was interested in signing the band on for a healthy amount of cash in an exotic series of islands you didn't really hear about before. All expenses paid trip. All you had to do was bring your bandmates to a certain location to talk with her. You couldn't have signed up faster... but now you know that was a mistake. When you got there with your band, the building was a burnt out husk. Just when you were all going to leave in disappointment, a white van pulled up beside you and several pairs of strong arms pulled you and your friends inside. You got tased with cattle prods then handcuffed, then someone stuffed a pill down your throat and it all went black.
Item gain: bag of weed, rolling papers.My brother left when I was 14, as he knew I was old enough and smart enough to fend for myself. He kept in touch, though, and I soon moved as well. I moved to another, larger island. I believe it's name was "Ha-wii" Or something like that. I moved soon after. I moved to the place called Canada, and discovered that I loved the cold and the snow.
Canada was a great change. It was cold and snowy, but it was alive despite that. A definite change from your childhood. You got some cash when your dad died, but before that you managed to get by with a few part-time jobs here and there. You lived in a modest home that was cheap enough, and survived pretty happily. That was your life for a good few years. Then one day, your brother rung you up to say that he needed to crash at your place right this second. You hadn't seen him in several years, though you did talk on the phone. He stayed at your apartment for several days, being quiet and looking pale. He didn't say why he had to leave. He just did.
Then one night, you heard your brother cry out. You were out of the bed and opening the bedroom door to see a guy slicing your brother's neck open. "This is what you get for fucking with us!" You heard him whisper to your brother, right before he died. Then the guy looked up at you, with a completely unreadable expression.
"What do we do?" He said.
"No loose ends." someone in the darkness said.
"We can't kill him. Too many bodies."
"We don't need to."
The sound of a wire being released, a dart flying through the air, then the feeling of something sharp hitting you in the stomach. You fell down, down, down... And into the darkness.
Perk Gain: Reputation. Your brother did something to the pirates... and the effects of this may be for the better or the worse.*
And when you woke up, it was on the Atlantis Isles, in a wooden cage in a pirate encampment surrounded by jungle in all directions. As said before, you had been in some scapes, but this was the worst by far. Tied to stakes with rope, the smell of blood and death thick in the air around you. Five other people were in the cage with you. One of them slipped their ropes, untied you while the pirates weren't looking. Another smashed the lock open. So the escape began.
The question is, how did you manage to escape the encampment?
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Topic: The Jungle (Modern Pirate RTD) Out of the Frying Pan... (Read 8603 times)