Editing Pirates of the Baltic Sea (section)

====Admiralty====

Captains’ Table votes into position five Admirals, who have the right to act and make decisions on the Table’s behalf. Usually the Admirals are semi-retired Buccaneer captains whose best days at sea are behind them but who possess experience and cunning in spades. Admirals deal with the authorities and the media. They also arbitrate disputes between Buccaneer crews. Anyone with a grievance with another crew can bring the matter before the Admiralty. And it is the Admirals who police the actions of Buccaneers. They have a right to issue commands and pass judgement. And if necessary, other Buccaneers enforce their decisions. Any crew who decides to just ignore an Admiral will soon find three other crews on their doorstep.

Admirals serve until they choose to retire, unless they are voted out by the Captains’ Table. This is rare but has happened. Captains’ Table can also overturn a decision of the Admiralty. This is just as rare as voting out an Admiral, and usually one follows the other.
For all their authority, Admirals do not interfere with the affairs of Buccaneer crews unless they have to. The two most common ways to end up facing the Admiralty’s judgement are arbitration and breaking the Buccaneers’ Code.

Some might think that it would be a simple matter to evade the judgement of the Admiralty simply by fleeing Åland. But the Admiralty has a powerful tool in their arsenal. The Black Mark. A crew can be tried in absentia if they refuse to face judgement, and that nearly always results in being Blackmarked. Black Mark is an effective death sentence. It marks the crew as a target for elimination for all Buccaneer crews. There is a lot of prestige in being the crew to take out a Blackmarked crew, and the crew that does so gets to keep all the Blackmarked crew’s surviving assets. Announcing a Black Mark always results in a race as the Buccaneers rush after the target.

No Blackmarked crew has survived. Some have tried to seek refuge with the traditional enemies of the Buccaneers, such as the Raiders of Thule or the corporations, but those groups are dangerous in their own right and have little reason to feel sympathy for fugitive Buccaneers, so this has never ended well. Fleeing the Baltic for good might be the only way to survive, and even that may not help. There is a tale of a crew who abandoned the Baltic and fled to mainland Europe. Only to get gunned down in Belgrade a year later by another crew who had followed them to the mainland and tracked them down.