The Boarding Crew, Part Two - The Command

Next up, some music and flags:

Mr. Antônio Bandeira, carrying the personal colours of the Quartermaster is a Foundry pirate, with his sword cut off and replaced with a flag pole. I gave him a another blade from the Warlord games ECW infantry. 

Mr. Nicolau O Cérebro, who, after being nearly sacrificed to the jungle gods of La Île Cannibalesque, still hears the ritual drums every night and is now a slave to the rhythm. He is a plastic fellow from aforementioned ECW set with a greenstuff beard and tricorn added.

A detail shot of the flag:

The Boarding crew so far:

The Swivel Gun

Some extra firepower. I'll probably use the WHFB 3rd ed. rules if I ever get around actually gaming with these guys, so I'll nick the rules and points costs for a swivel gun from Chaos Dwarves (graciously un-earthed by Realm of Chaos '80s). Just replacing the dwarven crew with humans.

The gunners, Messrs. Benn and Gunn. 

The Boarding Crew, Part One

Finally, some fighting pirates done! To be a part of the Quartermaster's boarding crew, armed with pistols, cutlasses, hatchets and other hand weapons.

The able seamen, Messrs. Ramirez, Mankey and Tupac.

Il Dottore

Still working on the pirate baggage train.

Shortly after graduating, Dr. Matteo Chi managed to charm his way into a cushy job as the court physician to Duke Vittorio Pomodori. Not feeling challenged with his leisurely existence punctuated by the hysterics and the hypochoriasēs and the occasional attack of gout of the aristocrats, Dr. Chi started to hit the poppy seed extract a bit too regularly. 

When the duchess perished of typhoid fever, the view of the collegium was that while Dr. Chi's diagnosis was correct, as was his choice of treatment, the leeches, the treatment was applied inexcusably late and that the treating physician should also have doubled the number of leeches applied when it became apparent that sufficient response was not achieved. 

Disgraced and unemployed, Dr. Chi set out to the colonies to for a new start. The harsher life provided the doctor with an opportunity to improve his surgical skills and he finally found employment under captain João, who could always use a man handy with a bone saw. 

The doctor now has enough excitement in his life that, instead of pharmaceuticals, he mostly relies on his fancy sunglasses to rose tint his world and keep him safe from his troubling pain.

The captain's obsession, the mythical treasure of Great Bonanza, just might provide the doctor with a miracle cure to help him with his main goal: To discredit the use of leeches as the golden standard of treatment to most ailments and regain his reputation.

The Pack Master

Someone to handle the beasts of burden. This surly old beard prefers the company of his animals and mostly communicates in grunts.

-Whaddya mean "bad ass"? I only breeds the finest donkeys, savvy?

Donkey One

For some reason the next thing I started working on was the baggage train. A cute little pack donkey from Foundry.

I shall count him towards my quota of mules for Talisman as well.

The Quartermaster

As was usual on pirate vessels in the Golden Age of Piracy, the second-in-command is the quartermaster. The blue-and-yellow macaw is a greenstuff addition.

Red João's loyal quartermaster is Mimbah Odide. Her family's trade was capturing colourful birds for their feathers, but also taming them to be sold as exotic pets.


Disaster struck when Mimbah's village was attacked by slavers and as an adolescent she was separated from her family and shipped off in chains to the overseas colonies.


The unimaginable horror of brutality, hunger, disease and death chained in the ship's hold ended fortunately for Mimbah when Red João, following a false lead to kidnap a governor's daughter, attacked and captured the slave vessel.


Captain João left most of the slaves to fend for themselves off the shores of a nearby island. But, being a few hands short, the pirate captain took on a few extra crew members willing to brave the high seas. Among them, Mimbah, to whom João took a fatherly liking and guided her along the plunderous career path to being a notorious pirate.


Mimbah is fierce in combat, and having an eye patch never hurt a pirate's image in that respect. What she doesn't tell people is that she lost her eyesight to trachoma as a young child and having had a life time to adjust, she is a remarkably good shot for an one-eyed corsair.


Using the skills of her family's trade, Mimbah has tamed a carnivorous dire-parrot of La Isla Calavera named simply and fittingly the Beast. This ferocious and loyal avian never leaves her side. 


The second tragedy of Mimbah's life was when the great love of her life, the beautiful pirate Esteban was mauled by jealous Beast and he was forced to flee. Mimbah's and Esteban's paths were separated, the lovers unable to find each other in a raging storm before the arrival of the viceroy's marines hunting them. Not knowing what became of Esteban, Mimbah still secretly hopes to meet him again.


Loosely inspired by:

1. History: Pirate quartermasters
2. Bacteria: Chlamydia trachomatis
3. The Secret of the Monkey Island: Meathook & the Beast
4. Gabriel García Márquez: The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World

O Captain! My Captain!

The leader of my pirate crew shall be named João, o Vermilho, or João the Red. This, because the first pirate captain that popped into my head was Rackham le Rouge from the Hergé's Tintin graphic novel Red Rackham's Treasure. Hergé's Red Rackham was based on John "Calico Jack" Rackham, who sailed with the famous female pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read until his capture and execution at Port Royal in 1720. I just love the way portuguese sounds, even if I don't speak it, so I went with the portuguese version of John, João.

João, o Vermilho, fully named João Ulisses Ventura Texeira e Gago da Silva Neto, was born a pirate. His father, João Álvaro Salgado Texeira e Gago da Silva Filho, was a feared terror of the high seas. From an early age our João Neto was taken along on his father's voyages and witnessed many sea battles and raids.

João Neto grew to detest his father's violent life and had vowed to escape the next time their ship came to port and make himself an honest living as a merchant or a craftsman. But then fate struck. Their ship, Não-Afunda III, attacked a merchant vessel, whose one passenger was one Keith Hiker.

Unknown to anyone else involved, Mr. Hiker's real identity was The Phantasm, "The Spook Who Hikes," sworn to carry on his ancestors' work of protecting the innocent, especially against pirates, who murdered the parents of the first Phantasm.

The Phantasm and his faithful mountain lion companion Old Nick took the pirates completely by surprise, and after a short mêlée, during which João Neto received a skull shaped scar he still carries today, the powder exploded, destroying Não-Afunda III and killing the pirates, including João Filho.

As if by miracle, João Neto survived, floating to shore clinging to the ships wreckage. Despite his resentment towards his fathers profession, this sudden loss caused João Neto's heart to harden. He decided to carve his place in the world by force following in his father's footsteps.

João the Red became a legend in his own right, fighting his way up the command chain to become a captain of his own ship, and for a while an admiral, commanding at most 4 vessels and 200 men. He robbed, raided, hunted treasures. 

But now the years have started to catch up with him. The nightmares of his past have begun to haunt João's nights and all the grog and perhaps some souvenir from the nights of pleasurable company bought with ill-gotten gains more and more often cause his hands to tremble and his moods to swing. 

Suddenly fearful for his life as well as for his immortal soul, João lent his ear to rumours of The Great Bonanza, a fabulous treasure nobody really knew anything about. But it was whispered to be a prize beyond anything of this world. Sometimes said to be just more gold than a dozen kings could spend in a lifetime, sometimes said to hold the secret to eternal life, or to offer redemption even to the blackest soul. Whatever the Great Bonanza was, it was the stuff that dreams are made of. 

Through no small effort, Red João has acquired the means of locating the Great Bonanza and with the most trusted members of his crew is on the treasure hunt of all times..


Thanks to Wargames Foundry and the fine art of plagiarism, I now have a pirate leader with a backstory!