Piracy has been common throughout the history of the Continental Powers; Etrusea straddles the mighty Lorna River which has tributaries to most other Western nations, and the shipping routes that lead to the Lorna and through the Strait of Huron have always been full of trade vessels bearing valuable goods to and from the nations South of the Namir Desert and from the Far Western nations like Lyle and Mirrai. In particular, pirates operated in Huron, which, with its dense coastal forests and many small islands, was a perfect place for vessels to disappear to sheltered coves and bays.

The start of the golden age of piracy in Huron was the conclusion of the wars that established the modern state of Aludra and led to their abolition of slavery (largely due to Empress Lenka dio Alud being the daughter of the previous Empress and a tabby slavegirl). Aludra semi-officially granted letters of marque to privateers who restricted their activities to capturing slave ships, turning a blind eye to their holds being emptied of valuables.

This practice largely ended following Etrusea banning slave ships from transiting the Lorna River following a rather bizarre series of events in which a slaveship, trying to escape inspection, had managed to accidentally destroy a coastal fort with a smoke shell, but the pirates remained and soon turned their attentions to other prizes. Trade routes became a dangerous place for vessels without military escorts, and the Continental Powers scrambled to build up their navies.

Most of the more famous pirates operated towards the end of this period when matters in Huron were the subject of a lot of public attention; perhaps the most well-known were Florence Heath and her first mate Doris Teach, not least because the great Aludran poet Emelia was part of their crew in her youth. Heath was an elegant grey Persian cat captain in the Aludran navy, while Teach was a stocky doberman gunner's mate from Basram. The two were dismissed in unclear circumstances most likely involving each other, though there is a school of thought that Heath, being from a common family, was relieved of her command in order for her ship to be transferred to someone with a noble title.

Regardless, finding themselves in a bar on the waterfront, the two came up with a plan to round up Heath's loyal crew and steal her ship, Constellation, before it could be sailed away. Slipping out under cover of moonlight, the Constellation vanished into Huron, soon being implicated in raids on merchant ships carried out with military precision by a skilled and well-motivated crew.

At first Heath restricted her activities to Aludra's enemies, but when she learned her country had issued a warrant for her arrest she begun attacking Aludran ships as well, quickly assembling a fleet of fast warships. She was known as a consummate professional who was disgusted by cruelty, the very image of a noble pirate.

Her nickname "Red Eye" came about after she was captured and scheduled to be executed; a sympathetic local priestess allowed Teach to set up a Garam-made jezail in the tower of her church, and Teach killed the executioner just as she was raising her musket to a kneeling Heath's head. The gun went off next to Heath's face and left her with powder burns and a permanently bloodshot left eye.

Her most famous exploit was orchestrating the raid that seized the Aludran coastal settlement of Fort Falken, which also led to an Aludran navy battle squadron being sent to deal with her once and for all, sailing outside the normal shipping channels to take Heath by surprise. She would have been in a much better position to deal with them had it not been for a treacherous captain, Alice Blaine, making off with one of the ships loaded with plunder from Falken. A furious Heath pursued Blaine in the Constellation, now named Red Eye after her nickname, and sank her ship. The pursuit, however, left her vessels scattered in the face of an attack by the most powerful warships of the Aludran fleet.

(Centuries later the whole story of Blaine was starting to be thought of as just something the poet Emelia made up to make a more interesting story to impress noblewomen, then a Chiran Cruiser Submarine found the wreckage of Blaine's ship while surveying the seabed for minelaying. It's generally referred to as Blaine's Tomb, and Blaine herself is a byword for short-sighted greed.)

With the Red Eye burning and taking on water, Heath steered her straight at the Aludran flagship Polar Star. The remains of her crew stormed the ship, Heath and Teach ultimately fighting their way to the Polar Star's wheel before Heath was cut down. Teach was shot in the back while leaning over Heath holding her hand, and Emelia's anger at this is the source of the granny-not-in-front-of-the-children epithet "that coward sailor," which is a lot more insulting in Aludran than one might reasonably expect it to be.

Heath is sometimes confused with the "Sky Pirate" Shion Omar; in particular, Heath is often shown wearing an eyepatch, which Shion was known for. A cat from the state of Garam, Shion was known for commanding a fleet of captured, traded or stolen aerial ships centred on her pride and joy, an Etrusean aerial galleon she called Empress of the Skies.

Shion met her fate as she would have no doubt wanted; an endlessly proud woman who never backed down from a fight, she engaged Despina, the state-of-the-art flagship of the Etrusean Air Navy and the first vessel to be called an Air Destroyer. She did this despite knowing very well that she could not possibly damage the vessel, the Continent's first ironclad, anywhere but her wooden bow or stern or by hitting her gunports directly. Her last known words, recalled by one of her crew who jumped overboard, were "A fine trophy she'll be!"

Shion Omar's death was the end of the golden age; from then on, the presence of coordinated naval forces rendered it impossible for pirates to amass fleets that could hold their own against national militaries, and later actions were generally restricted to hijackings and ransomings for centuries; trade was largely safe, though mercenaries would tend to accompany valuable cargoes just to be on the safe side.

In Chira, their major issues with piracy did not begin until the West face of the Shield Wall, the circular mountain range that surrounds their entire country, partially collapsed; fairly soon foreign raiders found their way in and began robbing fishing boats. Particularly infamous were a cougar and cheetah pair, Janice Kyne and Rachel Fawkes, largely because the three Chiran species are naturally frightened of big cats and the two tended to play up their image as dangerous creatures by wearing "no more than was required to render themselves armed," as the history books put it. Finally the Western Shirai's government had enough and send out one of their floating rocket batteries to track down and obliterate whatever port they were operating from.

The operation was a disaster; the Chirans had almost no knowledge of the open sea at the time and the Battery Ship capsized in a ferocious storm, with Kyne's fleet setting out to pick up survivors, rather against her better judgement. The two were taken back to Chira in chains but spared any real punishment when the presiding magistrate, who was rather obviously interested in the two, declared she would keep them in her custody to ensure they committed no further crimes. The case is studied by modern Chiran legal scholars as an example of how ridiculous and arbitrary their legal system used to be, given the magistrate was able to dismiss "such minor concerns" as the two defendants being guilty in her summary without anyone batting an eye.

Since Chira rapidly adapted their knowledge of naval design to the challenges of the open ocean, the era of pirates operating in the Western Shirai was short-lived; Chira was about to strike out to the East and start the conflict with Aludra that would last for generations.

Some of Heath's crews who escaped her final battle had founded the pirate settlements of Haven and Enclave in the jungles between Aludra and the edge of the Chiran Shield Wall, which would themselves become bases for raiders alternately funded and equipped by Aludra and Chira to harass the other's shipping during the battles for the Strait. The two settlements were named using common words to avoid showing favouritism to any specific country; their names are the closest equivalent in the speaker's language.

The settlements of Haven and Enclave have recently (ie in Shian's time) been bought back to people's attention; following the end of hostilities between Aludra and Chira, they basically lost all reason to support the two settlements which had grown to depend on foreign aid. A series of hijackings ended with the attack on the Etrusean ocean liner Lyra which unknown to them was carrying the Aludran Minster for the Interior and her Chiran wife to their honeymoon in Chira. An RPG ignited a container of fireworks on the deck which was supposed to be used on their arrival and started a fire which gutted the Lyra, killing over seventy and almost killing the minister's wife. Lyra limped back to Aludra escorted by the Aludran flagship Grimalkin and the Chiran flagship Jian, the "black empress" sailing into Alurna something most Aludrans thought they would never live to see.

Shian's first visit to Chira coincided with a series of massive fleet exercises in Huron aimed at neutralising the fleet of powerful warships Chira and Aludra helped to create, specifically the four Chiran-built fast battleships that had fled Enclave ahead of a ferocious bombardment by the combined fleet aimed at destroying their fuel stores and shipbuilding facilities. Precisely what's going to happen there is a question for the future.