Captain Morgan
He started his swashbuckling career in Sagittarius Dwarf (in beta 2). After one round he changed to Milky Way and became the first captain of the Tortuga Nebula Thugs. This family was his biggest passion. He was almost always in character and was one of the people who kept the Tortuga Nebula Thugs theme going, as well as getting other people to role play.
As a leader he was a great coordinator, and kept watch of the territory very well. Under his leadership the Thugs succesfully fought in many wars, of which the Donut Rumble probably was the biggest. After 4 rounds he was one of the first pirates to take a break from IC. But he coudn´t resist playing a short round in the hardcore Galaxy Orion during his "break".
On his return to Milky Way (in round 4 ), he tried to get as many members as he could back into IC. Together with Likedeeler (who never stopped beeing a pirate) and Mr Meany he taught a new generation of pirates to plunder the galaxy and to follow the Pirate's Code of conduct. Today some of this younger pirates still sail through the universe, keeping the spirit alive.
Brugal, Captain Morgan, Ugly Whisky Smuggler and Mr Meany were real life friends and they soon chummed up with Likedeeler and No. 42. They communicated with each other through the pirato-phone and that gave them a slight advantage in terms of planning. Between them, differences were always hammered out beforehand, so operations were fairly smooth.
(Captain Morgan about his IC-history, from Harkonnen forum Dec 2002, posted in here by Altruist:)
Ok, here is my history, which is aligned to the history of the Tortuga Nebula Thugs.
I started playing in beta 2 as a Partaxian. The family I joined in SD wasn’t really organized and I had to learn the game on my own. After a while, when I was more familiar with the game and its rules, I tried to organize my family and became their leader. But it wasn’t worth the effort, since some of them didn’t really want to play as a team. One week before the round ended even intra family fights happened. So I left them and together with some rl friends which I told about the game, we captured a family and set the sails for a long way of plundering and burning enemy harbours. I had the honour to become their first captain.
Together with Ugly Whisky Smuggler, Buccaneers of Brugal, Six Eyed Trout (who unfortunately stood only about 2 weeks), Likedeeler and Störtebecker we founded the Tortuga Nebula Thugs in beta 3, starting a legendary path of galactic piracy all over Milky Way. My name back then was “Sir Henry of Morgan´s estate”.
During the round, the Thugs became well known due to their excellent level of communication and organization. Many enemies despaired when they started surprise attacks only seeing one pirate on deck of his ship and 5 minutes later the whole crew appears as if they had known it. That was the result of the pirato-phone, which many members could use in case of an emergency. This phone allowed us to communicate very fast and effective.
In the second half of beta 3 we started a new war every few days, because we were so planet hungry. Starting a war on holidays became one of our traditions, for example the “Happy Halloween Carnage” Or “Xmas massacre”. In the later part of that round I negotiated about an alliance with the Harbingers of death. At that time Smaugs reputation wasn’t that bad and we found good allies in them. ATTW (or similar?) was their leader back then.
Two weeks before the round ended, we started a war against Solarus and his fam. They had no idea about our plans and were really surprised about our attacks. We fought until the end of the round, taking many planets from them. They were pretty good and it was much fun to plunder them. Before the war started, I sneaked into a cluster of systems which belonged to Solarus and I was not only able to hold my jump point, but to take his planets system by system. He took it like a man and we changed many messages during the fights.
In beta 4 many cutthroats like Swashbuckler No.42, Mr. Meany, Bluebeard and Blackbeard joined us and the Jolly Roger became more and more famous and feared by our enemies. I still was their captain.
Unfortunately we had a bad start. Only about 1 week after the round has started Heavy metal hamster (HMH), who was leader of the brave chickens, attacked us in a system 3 tick away from our home. This fam was located in our north and only about 7 ticks away. We didn´t want an early war, so I tried to negotiate, but HMH was one of the hotheads who think they are god and stated that he claims that system for his fam. So we attacked him not only in that system, but in every system we shared. They had no chance against us, so they draw their allies in, telling them we were the aggressors. Later I got some copies of messages which showed that he lied not only to his allies, but to his own fam about the whole affair, telling he was asking for peace, but that we refused. Anyways, It became much more difficult when their allies joined. Our policy during that round was not to ally early, but to wait until we know which family is good. This was an enormous disadvantage now, since we had no allies and had to fight a 3 on 1. It was a tough fight, with many sleepless nights and many emergency meetings, but finally we gained upper hand and were about to clean them from almost all systems.
When it started, the chickens were in the higher 20 rankings and now they weren’t even in top 100 any longer. We were in such a bloody mood, that we even killed children and women. We were so angry, that we refused every peace offer and wanted to kill them and their whole ally. Well, we kinda achieved that, since the chickens ended their round as #207 (from 213) in nw rankings. But our massacre was so unbelievable cruel (I even cleaned a system right next to their home), that a few friends of the Chickens from other families decided to help them, finally ending in a 6 on 1. We were able to hold them back for about 2 days, but then it was to much even for us and I signed a peace agreement. But at that time MW was almost full explored and we had only the planets gained during the war. It became a pretty hard way up to the top.
During the middle of the round, one player (I forgot the name) from Sick 'n Twisted (fam of Tsunami and Catastrophe) attacked us in one of our systems. We didn’t saw him sneaking in and he got us on our left leg. He gave us a hard fight and after a about one day this affair became a full scale war. In the beginning they beat us, but we were able to get back on our feet and to achieve status quo. The continued planet ping pong brought 42 the idea of small players, taking planets from bigger mateys to secure them from further attacks. This strategy was called the Black Cow Commando and is still used by many families. Anyway, during that war the communications network became pretty important. I negotiated with many families, and I finally found out, that Sick 'n Twisted had one free ally slot. Lizzy, who was the leader of their ally, helped during the negotiating and we finished our war and allied them. They were a rather young family, but with big potential and we had much fun in boards and became good friends. Unfortunately Ugly Whisky Smuggler, who established good relations to the Harkonnens, asked dire straits for help while the war was still in process. Now, after we allied them, he started his attacks. It was a bit funny to explain our new allies that it was us who brought this new battle over them
In the last third of the round Likedeeler, Ugly Whisky Smuggler and me had some fights with Erehwon (leader of the Spaceborns) in his home sector. He promised an other fam which they were NAPed with, to remove us from that sector. This fam asked him for help, because we took to many planets from them. Erehwon saw his chance to take planets from us while playing the protector of the small fams. But we weren´t willed to give up and spent lots of resources in our resistance. He loved playing the game of diplomacy and during our planet exchange, we wrote many funny messages and made jokes about our fight. But then, about 2 weeks before the end, Ara and his fam attacked us. We had no savings and were still in a battle with Erehwon. Furthermore they destroyed almost all our troops in the first wave and left us with our panties down. When I told Erehwon about this, he offered to stop his attacks on me, even if he could have taken all my planets easily now. That’s what I call true honour! After the first shock, we decided to put our resources into magic. Ugly whisky Smuggler was the one we boosted and he increased his wizard fleet to an enormous amount, becoming strong enough to close every enemy portal. We took our nearby planets back and then continued to move closer and closer to their base. They were surprised by our obstinacy and our way of fighting. Every time they got a new jump point, we closed the portal and run on it no matter how much we were losing. Ara was so impressed about Ugly´s wizards, that he offered us a NAP, telling us that their only NAP condition was to hear how many wizards he got
In round 1 we first started undercover as Thugs who escaped from a high security prison called Alcatraz Wolf 357. Our relations to the Harkonnens and the Spaceborns during beta4 were so good, that we decided to build a Tri that round. We called ourselves “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly” with us being The Ugly, Harks being The Bad and Spaceborns The Good. I became tired of leading and wanted a break, so 42 took the Captains Seat in the first few weeks until I was back 100%. Maybe his most important action as captain was the arrangement of a NAP between our Tri and the new Tri of our old allies: Scared Stiff (Tsu, Cata), BETA (Ara) and Cosmos. This NAP was the first step towards the greatest war I ever fought in. The Donut Rumble!
They cancelled the NAP, after more than a week of saving and being good prepared with jump points. In the beginning, they beat us and mainly the Harkonnens lost many planets, because they were at the front line. But we didn´t give up and got back on our feet. They offered us a NAP, but since the Harks were beaten so hard and wanted to get revenge, we refused it. After a week of fighting me and Meany gave Like almost all our overbuilded planets to allow him using more jump points and paying a bigger fleet. In addition, me and Meany could damage them as low nw attackers. They noticed all his new planets very late and they first thought that Like took them in several grabs. When they then heard what happened it was already to late and his portals were up. During that war, we had many funny chat sessions and exchange of messages. We fought each other like crazy, but then we went into our chat bar and drunk some rum. Was a nice spirit… The war was fought until the end of the round.
After round 1, many of us Thugs decided to return to the nebula and to quit playing. I wanted to do so too, but then I got this message from 42. It was a bit unfair I think to offer a still addicted player a place in an orion fam with 42 and catastrophe, but that’s what he did… with success (I did similar with him this round ). So I decided to play one more round and I shouldn´t regret it. My name was Three stupid Kings and our family was called Holiday Mascots. We didn´t tell anybody who we are and that we are pirates.
In the first week I called the leader of one of our neighbour families into chat. In the beginning he didn´t come, so I explained him what to do. It was his first time in chat, because he just got a new computer and his old one wasn´t able to support irc. During the talk I checked his ip and found out that he was from germany. So I started to talk german and he was really confused. He didn´t know about the whois function. Then I recognized that he came from Berlin and began to wonder. The only player which I knew from Berlin was Altruist. So I called him Altruist and he was absolutely confused. He tried to deny it, but then asked me which pirate I was. Now I was the one to be confused. He knew that at least one pirate was in our fam, because we used some pirate speech in messages. The result of this talk was an ally which we started 1-2 days later.
During that round we played pretty aggressive. We chose the no nap doctrine as policy. Later, we established a List o´Death which was written in the congress. We officially announced which empire or fam will be our next victim. And we announced that whoever asks us for a NAP will be put on that list. Furthermore we build a Tribunal that judged over newbies. Whoever was accused of Newbyism was brought to that tribunal and if we thought he was guilty (which was the case in 99… well, 100% of the cases ), they were put on the List o´Death. The round ended in a big fight between us and TIF and Twisted Metal. TIF overtook me in size on the last day during the overtime (the round lasts 6 hours longer than announced). One of my best rounds
When Orion was over, I took a break and wasn´t seen in IC for about 8 month. In round 5 (or was it 4?), Likedeeler invited me to become a Thug again. He never left IC while most of us pirates went back to the nebula, and then he finally decided to reunion the Thugs. He did that with help from Bluepoo in a fam with many new, but promising players. When I joined them, I paired of with Meany, us becoming the first banker attacker team of the Thugs. We were allied to Tsunami and One night stand. But after 10 days of playing One night stand dropped us, leaving us without a third ally. A few days later Smaug broke a NAP with us and began a war which he soon regrets. At that day Like gave the captains seat to me once again. We were so angry about his NAP breaking and his lying in Unews, that we decided to take them down with us. We attacked like crazy and oped them with all we got. Pretty soon they dropped in rankings and begged us to agree on a NAP. We refused. But after about 2 weeks of fighting, some of us became tired. We then signed a NAP giving us 2,5 systems full of planets plus an official apology from Smaug in Unews. He officially confessed, that he broke our NAP and that he lied about us… Was very funny to see that happen The rest of the round was mainly small wars and grabs, but nothing important…
In round 6… well, some others already wrote about round 6 and 7 and my fingers hurt from typing, so I will stop now. Maybe later… If anybody read my whole post I hope he liked it