Pirates of Jaragua
Captain Baako “Stormglass” Mensah
Master of the brig Second Dawn
Stormglass did not arrive during the revolution. He was already here. When the Company blockaded the harbor in the third year of open fighting, it was Stormglass who sailed into the hurricane rather than away from it. He used the storm’s fury to slip past Company ships and deliver powder, shot, and three escaped nganga back into Cap-Carrefour’s embattled harbor.
He lost half his rigging and a quarter of his crew, but he continued returned anyway. Stormglass fights like a navigator: precise, patient, terrifyingly calm. His loyalty to Jaragua is not sentimental. It is ideological. He believes the revolt proved that power can be unlearned.
He keeps a house near the Mangrove Reach when ashore. No guards. No ceremony. Children run errands for him because he pays in shell currency and stories. He earned his berth at Cap-Lamò by standing between Fort Corail and a Company bombardment long enough for rebel gunners to reposition the cannons. If Jaragua ever strays toward exploitation again, Stormglass would be the first to say so. Loudly.
Captain Lumumba Dzigbode
Commander of the refitted war-sloop Liberté Sans Chaîne
Lumumba was once forced to crew a Company privateer. When the revolt ignited, she turned the guns inward. Her mutiny at sea is legend, a coordinated uprising during a weapons inspection that left the Company officers overboard and the ship under Mawon command before dusk.
She sailed that captured sloop straight into Cap-Carrefour’s harbor during the final assault, flying no flag at all. Now renamed Liberté Sans Chaîne, the vessel serves as Cap-Lamò’s unofficial outer patrol. Lumumba does not answer to the Brotherhood. She answers to Admiral Casiguaya directly.
She is blunt, disciplined, and notoriously intolerant of slave traffic. Two years ago she intercepted a slaver flying false colors and scuttled it within sight of the harbor mouth. The message was not subtle. Lumumba docks openly, without apology. Her crew is fiercely loyal, many former field workers who found the sea more honest than soil. She would die before letting Cap-Lamò be blockaded again.
Captain Folami “Redwake” Senyo
Helm of the cutter Ash of Vicquemare
Folami was barely more than a teenager during the war, a courier between mangrove cells and mountain villages. He learned tides the way other children learned letters. During the final battle, he piloted stolen longboats beneath the fort’s blind angles, ferrying fighters into the harbor while Company gunners were distracted by fires in the city.
He named his ship Ash of Vicquemare with a grin sharp enough to draw blood. Redwake is younger than the other captains and far more volatile. He romanticizes the revolution in ways the veterans find exhausting. His crew is fast, loud, and loyal to him personally.
He has defended Cap-Lamò twice since independence, once driving off opportunistic raiders who mistook “new nation” for “easy prey,” and once escorting food shipments through waters where Mariana-aligned privateers were testing limits.
Captain Hogan Bale
Keeper of the ketch Mangrove Mercy
Hogan Bale is older than Stormglass and quieter than Lumumba. During the revolution, he specialized in extraction. If someone needed to disappear from a plantation or a compromised cell, Bale’s shallow-draft ketch could reach channels no frigate could follow. He never sought glory. He sought survival.
It was Bale who evacuated dozens of orphaned children from a burning estate in the war’s sixth year, ferrying them through mangrove waterways while Company riders scoured the roads. Many of those children now work the docks, the Exchange, the council halls, but it is now him who talks about it.
Bale rarely leaves Cap-Lamò waters now. His ship escorts fishing fleets and merchant vessels within sight of shore. He has refused multiple offers to join larger Brotherhood ventures. He calls Cap-Lamò “harbor in the storm” without irony, to him, the phrase means shelter earned by sacrifice.
Captain Zebenjo Qwao
Commander of the schooner Drumline
Zebenjo is not technically Brotherhood, he is much more fluid. During the revolt, he coordinated signal systems between ships and shore using drum rhythms and lantern flashes. Company captains never deciphered the pattern before it was too late.
His schooner is fast and elegant, its sails dyed in faint geometric patterns visible only at close range. He moves between Cap-Lamò and sympathetic ports quietly, carrying diplomats disguised as traders and traders disguised as musicians. Zebenjo is charm is legendary. He hosts salons aboard Drumline where pirate, merchant, and ward delegate might sit at the same table without open hostility.