THE WORLD OF THE EBON TIDES
The year is 1692. The Caribbean is a powder keg. Spain controls the eastern islands with an iron fist and a hundred warships. England's privateers — barely distinguishable from the pirates they're meant to suppress — carve their own empires in the gaps. France schemes from the shadows. And somewhere between all of them, the free captains of the Brotherhood of the Coast sail under no flag but their own.
But there is something older here. Something that was in these waters long before European ships arrived. The Loa — the spirit gods of the sea — stir in the depths. Ancient bargains are being broken. And a dead man named Blackwater Jack sails an impossible ship crewed by the damned, hunting something that was taken from him long ago.
Welcome to the Ebon Tides. Bring your cutlass. The dead are restless tonight.
A HISTORY IN BLOOD & SALT
Before Time — The Age of Deep Water
The Compact of the Deep
Long before the first European ship crossed the Atlantic, the peoples of the Caribbean made a pact with the sea itself. The Loa — ancient spirits who wear the faces of storms, sharks, and the drowned — agreed to spare the islands from the worst of the ocean's wrath. In exchange, certain rites were to be observed. Certain things were never to be taken from the sea. The Compact held for a thousand years. Then the Europeans came, and everything changed.
1492 — The Breaking
Columbus and the First Violation
When the first European ships arrived, they brought with them not just men and diseases, but an indifference to the old agreements. The Loa watched. The deep sea god Baron Samedi marked the new arrivals in his ledger. The sea began to take its tithe in other ways — through storms, reefs, and creatures that don't appear on any natural history chart.
1650 — Port Royal Rises
The Wickedest City on Earth
Port Royal grows from a handful of huts into the largest English settlement in the Caribbean, and its most dangerous. The English crown encourages privateers to use it as a base — men like Henry Morgan, who will one day sack Panama City and return with enough gold to make kings envious. Port Royal becomes a city of contradictions: churches and brothels, admirals and pirates, unimaginable wealth and grinding poverty, all crammed onto a narrow spit of land.
1668 — The First Haunting
The Phantom's Revenge Appears
The first reliable accounts of a black-sailed ghost ship appear in merchant logs. Several vessels report being followed by a ship that disappears when approached. Two ships that attempted to board the mysterious vessel were never seen again. The Admiralty dismisses these reports as sailor superstition. The sailors know better.
1671 — The Rise of Blackwater Jack
A Name Spoken in Whispers
A pirate captain who calls himself "Blackwater Jack" terrorizes the eastern Caribbean. What makes him remarkable is not his ferocity — many captains are fierce — but his apparent inability to die. He is shot at Tortuga, hanged at Nassau, and keelhauled by a Spanish frigate. He survives all three. Rumors begin that he struck a deal with the Loa. The truth is both simpler and far more terrible.
1683 — The Night of the Bargain
What Blackwater Jack Sold
According to the sole surviving witness — a Haitian houngnan (voodoo priest) named Mambo Celestine — Blackwater Jack did indeed make a bargain with Baron Samedi, lord of the dead. But he didn't sell his soul for immortality. He sold something the Baron wanted more: a map to a sunken treasure that had no business being in these waters — a chest of relics stolen from a temple predating European arrival by five hundred years.
The Baron gave Jack something in return. Not immortality. Something worse. He could not die until he had undone what the theft of those relics had set in motion. Until then, the sea would not claim him. And so he sails. And waits.
1689 — War in the Caribbean
The War of the Grand Alliance
Europe's conflicts spill into the Caribbean as England, France, and the Dutch Republic square off against France in the Nine Years' War. The Caribbean becomes a secondary theater where the real rules of engagement are gold, betrayal, and survival. Privateers find their letters of marque alternately valued and worthless depending on which way the political winds blow. Many simply become pirates outright. The Brotherhood of the Coast flourishes.
1692 — NOW
The Ebon Tides Are Rising
Port Royal teeters on the edge of catastrophe — though no one in the city knows what form it will take. The Phantom's Revenge has been sighted three times this month, always heading east. Mambo Celestine has sent word to every captain she trusts: something is coming. The relics must be recovered. The old Compact must be renewed, or the sea will take Port Royal — and everything in it — before the year is done.
This is where you enter the story.
THE POWERS THAT BE
Brotherhood of the Coast
The free pirates who answer to no king and no law but their own Articles. They vote on everything, share plunder equally, and kill anyone who violates the Code. More democratic than most nations. More dangerous than all of them.
Base: Tortuga & hidden coves
His Majesty's Royal Navy
England's naval arm in the Caribbean, based out of Port Royal. Underfunded, undermanned, and deeply corrupt — but still powerful. The Admiral would hang every pirate in the Caribbean if he could. Half his officers are taking bribes from them.
Base: Port Royal Naval Fort
The Merchant Guild
Money talks louder than cannons in the end. The Guild controls trade routes, sets prices, and has enough gold to buy politicians and hire armies. They will deal with anyone — pirates, navy, or Spanish — as long as the ledgers stay in the black.
Base: Port Royal Market District
The Voodoo Circle
Hidden in the hills and swamps, the Circle preserves the old ways and maintains what they can of the Compact with the Loa. They are not evil — they are afraid. They know what the breaking of the Compact means. They need allies, even unlikely ones.
Base: The Deep Swamps
The Spanish Armada
Spain's Caribbean fleet is aging but still formidable. They claim half the sea by papal decree and will enforce that claim with cannon and sword. To them, every non-Spanish vessel is a potential pirate. They're not entirely wrong.
Base: The Eastern Islands
The Damned Crew
Blackwater Jack's crew aboard the Phantom's Revenge. They were once living pirates who chose death over surrender. Now they serve until the old wrong is righted — or until someone defeats their captain and breaks his curse. They are not your enemies. Not exactly.
Base: The Phantom's Revenge
GODS, MONSTERS & THE DEEP
THE LOA
The Loa are not gods in the European sense — they don't demand worship or offer salvation. They are more like forces of nature that have learned to negotiate. They can be bargained with, offended, appeased, and deceived. But they remember everything. And they hold grudges for centuries.
Key Loa in the Ebon Tides: Baron Samedi (lord of death and the crossroads), Agwe (master of the sea), Erzulie Dantor (protector of women and the fierce heart), and Kalfu (dark twin of the crossroads, lord of chaos).
CREATURES OF THE DEEP
Not everything in these waters is human. The Caribbean holds things that European natural philosophy has no category for. Sea serpents a hundred feet long that sink ships for sport. Sirens who lure sailors onto rocks. The drowned dead who don't stay drowned. And in the deepest trenches, something vast and patient that the Loa themselves will not name.
A wise sailor knows which waters to avoid and when to sail them.
YOUR STORY BEGINS IN PORT ROYAL
The history is set. But history can change — with the right hands on the wheel.
Enter the Ebon Tides Meet the Characters