Calico Redistribution Company

The Largest Gang of Cutthroats on the North Seas

Table of Contents

History

Administration

Commerce

Races

Culture

Special Locations

Organizations

Settlements

People

Timeline

Situated on a pair of strangely shaped islands with innumerable floating outposts and charging stations, Calico Redistribution is the largest conglomerate of pirate crews in the New World. Having made a business from buccaneering, Calico are often contracted by rival Holdings Companies to interrupt trade and hijack naval convoys. At the head of these uncountable pirate gangs is the immortal Pirate Queen "Mad" Maggie McMillan, infused with such a vast quantity of nanobots that any wounds she suffers knit together immediately, going so far as to reattach limbs.

Calico Redistribution launches most of their naval raids from New Tortuga, a technically non-affiliated neutral ground that is home to the most cutthroat mercenaries, drunken sops, and buxom wenches of the New World. An island of pure lawlessness, held together only by the promise of creds and rum, New Tortuga is often the port of call for fresh-faced adventurers looking to get their heads kicked in.

History of the Calico Redistribution Company

Calico was the last bastion of the old systems of the world, the last nation state to remain even as everything fell apart around it. No one remembers the name of this nation (or perhaps nations), how it ran itself, or anything really about it. The corporations of the world have gone out of their way to obliterate as much knowledge of a non-corporate run world as possible, and the people who currently hold Calico Redistribution don't give a good goddamn where they came from. What is known is that by the time this last holdout nation state collapsed sometime in the 2090s, it was a hollow government in the first place, with criminal gangs running the show. Things were hardly better on the continent, with western europe entirely devolving into warring bandit gangs, and warlords controlling access to food, water, and shelter, raiding anyone attempting to get to the coastlines or to the bunker network entrances.

The island that would become the main holding of Calico Redistribution was so far behind in modern legal tricks and development in terms of bunkers, genecrops, quantum computing infrastructure, or exploitable mutated flora and fauna that none of the megacorporations reforming the world had the least interest in building megacities there or making the effort to exploit it. The crime bosses were allowed to run rampant, and given the lack of local resources, they took to utilizing the massive fleet of ships they built up out of necessity for both trade and, primarily, piracy, establishing way stations in all the places on the coastlines outside of the direct influence of the megacities, and using them both as a point of distribution to the earliest trade caravans, and as based from which to attack other ocean going trade.

Things came to a head, when the last major trading company in the nation began to pull out. The Finsk Shipping Company took its solar-sail powered cargo vessels to move itself, its valuables, and its employees out. The Calico Gang, lead by Jackie Calico, saw this as a chance to hit the bigtime, and struck the trading fleet as it made its way out of the harbor mouth. Sinking one of the massive vessels to block all passage in and out of the port, then proceeding to take each ship in the fleet after killing or capturing every member of the Finsk Shipping executives and shareholders aboard the vessel. She forced them, or their heirs, to sign over all rights to the property and company in return for their lives, and to be dropped on the shores of the landmass that the Bezosphere launch site had been built on. Those who turned her down were given a lead trepanation, and the question posed to their heir. By the end of the day Jackie Calico owned the Finsk Shipping company lock, stock and barrel, and all of its goods, ships, and contracts. She dumped the now useless executives into the icy waters of a Fjord closest to the newly formed New Tortuga, and set about pulling the pirates of the north seas under her banner. Now possessed of the most advanced sailing fleet in the north seas, and possessing the legal right to ply her trade and exclusive rights of distribution to several megacorps, Calico was able to claim an air of legitimacy that she herself found hilarious, and leveraged the position to allow her to dominate the sea lanes of the north atlantic. Her last act of personal involvement with the shareholding class was to fire canisters filled with the papers changing the name of the Finsk Shipping Company to Calico Redistribution into the yacht marinas that would one day become the Walled Street.

This changed sometime in the 2120swhen Jackie Calico was challenged to a duel by the immortal pirate queen, "Mad" Maggie McMillain, who by common legend, walked out of the ocean, swiped a bottle of grog from the biggest bruiser on the beach, nutted him when he protested, drank the whole 2 liter bottle down in one go, then demanded to duel the leader of this pirate band for the right to lead it. 6 shots and one surrender later, Jackie Calico retired from her position as leader of Calico Redistribution and took up an advisory position under Maggie, teaching this strange, super stacked lass all about the changes in the world that had somehow managed to pass the redhead by.

Since Maggie McMillain took over, she has proceeded to unite the pirates of the new world under a single banner, including the prize pick of the pirating world that had eluded even Jackie Calico: New Tortuga. Through a long montage of fucks, drinking contests, one thumb war, a series of wet t-shirt contests, and a no holds barred come-as-you-are arm wrestling tournament (involving 2 oni, 1 titan, and, surprisingly, a trio trash gremlins in a trench coat that no one had spotted until they made it to the final match against Maggie), Maggie McMillain secured the votes necessary to have herself declared pirate queen of New Tortuga, and has continued the tradition of bargaining with her 'constituents' every 5 years since when the captains of the north sea elect the new pirate king or queen; an election she hasn't lost in 200 years. Only the the proverbially fractious and pugnacious brigands of the Ronin Expedition refuse to cooperate with her, acting as eternal rivals and perennial sore losers every time the pirate king or queen election rolls around, and the election night assassination attempt has become a time honored tradition over the last 40 years. Now there isn't an island outside of the Ronin Expedition or the Duty Free Ports that lacks at least one smuggler's port belonging to Calico Redistribution one way or another, and few stretches of coastline lacking one either.

Administration and Structure of the Calico Redistribution Company

On legions of paper around the world, Calico's ranking and hierarchy follow a traditional corporate structure. The CEO at the top, the directors under them, the executives, then the managers. This adherence to structure extends no further than the papers they are written on, often with badly scratched out "Captain" "Queen" "Bosun" or a dozen other now defunct naval titles from cultures around the world written onto said pages before the 'proper' corporate title is put into place. In the words of Maggie, "If the bastards would just let us sell their stuff back to them without the paperwork I'd be more than happy, but it's not like you can trade dildos for grog directly."* Until that happy day when she's not dealing with a system of bureaucracy mandated by bastards in orbit, on paper the Calico Redistribution Company assigns every member some level of corporate rank.

In practice, using someone's corporate rank to refer to them is a way to start a fight. Rank is purely determined by reputation, booty, and the favor of the pirate queen. Mad Maggie holds her position by right of combat, and welcomes all comers, confident in her nanomachine based immortality to see her through. Decisions are made on an adhoc basis, and a free reign is given to members in the company. The only hard and fast rule is that you don't raid anybody who is up to date on their protection fees, unless you think you can convince everyone that they shot first. If you fuck up, then you answer to whatever captain or admiral you kick up a portion of your booty too. If you fuck up badly enough, Maggie takes it out of your hide. Most pirates hold a 3 strikes rule. First strike is a warning, second strike they take one of your ears (or whatever particular body party they think leaves a horrible enough warning), third strike they take the other ear, and all that's attached. A brutal system, but one that keeps order on the high seas in a field that is not known for order and discipline.

Commerce of the Calico Redistribution Company

Calico is one of the most widely distributed holding companies in the world, owning territory on almost every island not controlled directly by the House of 'Bacco or the Ronin Expedition. They leverage this to maximize the flow of trade, or rather, the flow of piracy, ensuring that nowhere on sea is safe from their pirate fleets.

Their major income sources are as follows:

The Calico Redistribution Company has special trade relations with the following Territories:

A final earner for Calico is in people moving, though most often such travel is paid for via services rendered, with people signing onto a calico vessel for the duration of a particular voyage between two points, assisting aboard the ship rather than paying for it directly, making it hard to gauge how much income is made or saved from such a practice.

Prominent Races of the Calico Redistribution Company

Culture of the Calico Redistribution Company

Calico Redistribution lacks anything so coherent as a single culture, at best, it can be said that they share an ethos. Different pirate fleets have different personal cultures, different rules and names and proper manners for how to behave, which in turn rolls down to any crews subordinate to them. What is universal is a love of a good fight, a good fuck, and a firm belief that the wealth of corporations is better off in the hands of little guys, like say, them. This takes many forms, often represented in manners reminiscent of pirate cultures throughout the earth's history, some mimicking the famed 'Ka'Ribean' pirates of yore, or the 'Wako' or 'Core Sayers' of other regions of the old world, each with their own distinct manners of dress, address, and comportment as colorful and unique as the next, and all willing to glass someone over the assertion that any other kind of pirate is more piratey than their particular variant.

Cultural affectations tend to more closely resemble the region that houses a particular crew. Crews from around Czarina will take on the dress and mannerisms of people from Czarina where crews that raid and dock along the J.A.V. and Ur-Um coasts will take on the cultures of those places. Their home isles are a massive melting pot of fashions, tastes, and cultures, always with criminal and piratical flares. They often appear to be fairly anachronistic, favoring old world fashions cut to modern tastes (which is to say, as revealing as possible). Most structures are refurbished ancient ruins, wrecks, or abandoned structures. This piecemeal, utilitarian thread runs thoroughly through all of Calico culture, with a focus on utility and personal flare in equal measures. The last common thread in their culture is the 'pirate's code' set by Mad Maggie herself, apparently based on the ancient code of the Ka'Ribean Pirates. It includes such things as the proper way to share out the booty, the right of crews to elect their own captain, and methods of settling disputes through various duels and contests, among other things. The code is nothing so strong as a set of laws, and is largely considered a set of guidelines, with many crews ignoring the letter of them, or even the spirit of many parts of Maggie's code. That said, every pirate in calico is at least aware of the code, and that Maggie's own crew adheres to it, creating a surprisingly democratic culture in a world of corporate feudalism.

Special Locations of the Calico Redistribution Company

Calico is the oddest of territories, stretching over most of the north seas, and filling into the cracks that other holding companies call wilderness. Their territory changes with each month and year that passes, old settlements being eradicated by corporate backed mercenaries, or simply falling into disuse, and new ones popping up in their place elsewhere.

Organizations of the Calico Redistribution Company

List of Organizations

Settlements of the Calico Redistribution Company

Calico Settlements are often lashed together affairs, built from the ruins of old world settlements kept in haphazard repair through multiple centuries, or scratch built from cobbled together parts and pirated construction tools and materials.

People of the Calico Redistribution Company

The people of

Historic Events of the Calico Redistribution Company

List of Regular Events

Footnotes:

*It should be noted that shortly after making this statement, Mad Maggie did attempt to set up a dildo based economy as the Calico Redistribution version of Script, but it never caught on, and she had to go back to selling the absolute excess of J.A.V. dildos that her people so often captured to insure she could keep up to her tits in grog, whores, and shot.

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