文档介绍：Pyramid: The Gentleman Privateer: The Rough Trade Of Legitimate Piracy amid/login/?id=5830
The Gentleman Privateer
The Rough Trade Of Legitimate Piracy
for GURPS
by Nicholas Lovell
1561 .
In the pre-dawn light, the war galley crept across the purple waters
of the Aegean, the only evidence of its passage the ripples where
forty blades broke the surface.
Frater Romegas stood on the prow. He strained his senses towards
the warship anchored in the lee of the high-cliffed promontory. Six
lengths to go, and no sound of alarm.
Behind Romegas, 60 fighting men stood in readiness. Fifteen knights
in mail shirts, red crosses prominent on white tabards. Men-at-arms
with crossbows and pikes.
A breath of wind stirred, carrying the creaks and groans of a ship
riding at anchor. Four lengths.
The silence was shattered by the clatter of a pike across the deck.
Romegas did not look round. "Now."
The drum spoke, and the slaves responded. Three lengths, two, one.
Romegas leapt forward as the vessels met with a crash. "Onward,
my brethren! Onward, Knights of St John," he roared.
Battle was joined.
1804 .
"Prize crew away, hands to braces!" Captain Don Antonio Juan de
Amaza gauged wind and tide. Call it skill or judgement, dawn had
found the privateer El Orely y Los Tres in the heart of a British
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Pyramid: The Gentleman Privateer: The Rough Trade Of Legitimate Piracy amid/login/?id=5830
merchant fleet. It had captured two prizes already. The inshore
squadron of the Royal Navy was over 10 miles away, and would
take an hour to beat into range.
Captain Don de Amaza assessed the remaining ships. Three were
out of range, handy vessels with practised crews. A two-masted
merchantman, barely a thousand yards away, was as good as
captured, and the single-masted sloop was a potential.
"Prepare the long nines, aim for the masts," he called.
Tonight, four