Black Bart

Age: 33
Sex: Male
Species: Jackal
Origin: Venom
Height: 6' 4"
Eye Color: Red
Fur Color: Black and gray
Affiliation: Black Skull Corsairs
Current Position: Commander
Special Traits: Sword fighting and close quarters combat specialty, effective and cunning leadership and raiding skills.
Attire: Blue short sleeve shirt, black pants, gunbelt, sword belt, black boots (combat), various expensive and flashy suits and other 'rich' attire in other instances.
Identifying Characteristics: Taller than average stature, well built and robust in appearance. Known for wearing either very plain or very flashy attire. Has two cybernetic feet and lower legs, as well as a cybernetic right hand and forearm
Weapons: Conventional: 2x M1911A1 pistols, Arc12 plasma blade, MAG-7 shotgun. Cybernetic: Disc blade launcher in right forearm
Vehicles: The Obsidian Corsair and a custom modified Arwing are his personal vehicles. As commander of the Black Skull Corsairs, he can use any vehicle the group has.
Notes of Interest: Bart is named and modeled after the real life pirate Bart Roberts. Like the real pirate he is the most notorious one in history, and has the navies of four separate countries after him. Neither Bart nor his crew add the title "Black" to his name; the title is something that the terrified/mesmerised people of the galaxies have added to his real name.

History: The most infamous pirate in the Galaxies and by far the most successful, Bart Roberts and his crew of well trained and brutally skilled corsairs have roamed the Galaxies for the past 6 years and have claimed well over 700 ships in this time span. Their success is attributed to a number of things, not least of which is the leadership of their commander and the fact that all members of the organisation are ex-military.

Bart was born on the desolate planet known as Venom in the Lylat System roughly 23 years before Andross's rise to power and his attempt to conquer Lylat and then the galaxy. Next to nothing is known about his early life, although its well known that at 17 the young Bart joined Andross's fledgling military where he demonstrated a proficiency for fighting up close and personal with shotguns and pistols as well as an aptitude for leadership. During his early career he was part of a small raiding mission on a Cornerian military outpost on Fortuna during which he found himself caught in a mine field. Pinned down by machinegun fire yet unable to move quickly, he fast found himself in a serious situation. In the chaos caused by the fire fight a wrong step put him directly on a land mine.

Both his legs from his knees down were blown completely off, though luckily there wasn't much shrapnel. Though severely wounded and loosing massive amounts of blood, his comrades managed to reach him and pull him to safety. A medic was able to apply tourniquets to his legs and keep him from bleeding to death and later that night a team of surgeons removed his shattered knees and grafted replacement limbs to his upper legs. On recovering from the nearly fatal injury, he quickly rose through the ranks of the Venomian military, and after a transfer to the Venomian Navy he was eventually promoted to captain and given command of a cruiser.

While in command of the cruiser, Bart showed a very brash, yet remarkably skillful use of blitz-style attacks, often charging headlong into combat on what was apparently a blind rush. In actuality, he was making use of his cruiser's high speed attribute and the element of surprise to take advantage of the situation. Once he got going, he would immediately site his ship near the target vessel's most vulnerable point, usually one covered with the lightest armour or defended by the least number of weapons. Time and again he would employ this tactic, and while employing the same tactic over and over is never a good idea, Bart would change things up with feints, fake outs, and other tricks to make his enemy assume he was attempting one maneuver when in actuality he was executing something completely different.

When Andross's war for conquest began, Bart and his cruiser were part of the vanguard fleet supporting the main fleet attacking Corneria via Sector Y. When Corneria retaliated with support from the Star Fox team, the vanguard fleet moved in, and Bart sent his cruiser after a Cornerian fleet carrier deploying its fighter force. He nearly obliterated the ship when reinforcements arrived to support the carrier and his ship was severely damaged in the crossfire. As Sector Y fell to the Cornerian forces, Bart and the remaining ships of the fleet attempted to fall back and regroup over Katina, but with Star Fox heading there directly and the Cornerian fleet pressing onwards from Sector Y to Aquas, Bart knew he had no where to go.

With his ship damaged and everything critical such as time and options running out, Bart came up with a ruse. He set his ship's course for Katina, though set up his orbit to make it appear as if the ship were crash landing rather than attempting to join the invasion force. The ruse worked, and the Cornerian Navy, already far too busy with other ships still capable of fighting completely ignored Bart's cruiser. Once on the planet's surface, Bart and his surviving crew scattered across the lightly populated planet and disappeared amid its citizens.

On hearing of Venom's defeat and the death of Andross, Bart knew that his military career was over. However, he longed to resume charging into battle at the command of a starship with guns blazing. There was no way the Cornerians would accept him into their military with his service in the Venomian Navy, especially with the war having just ended and animosity still running at a fever pitch. But there was still an option...the life of a freelancer.

Bart contacted a number of his surviving crew members dispersed about Katina, and told them of his intentions. With their extensive military training and live combat experience, they would have a solid foundation on which to build themselves an organisation of freelance soldiers. The only other key component they would need was a ship; the cruiser they originally served aboard was damaged beyond repair, and was left to corrode in the wastelands near Katina's equator.

Realising that the Cornerian Navy would be capturing a large quantity of Venomian Navy ships when they inevitably surrendered at the war's end, Bart set his sights on the heaviest warship available to the Venomian Navy, the Zeram class battleship. Although slower than the cruiser he commanded and not as nimble, Bart had some experience in their deployment and use, and knew that with a little time and training in a star system away from Lylat, he and his crew could adapt their tactics for it.

Unfortunately for Bart, the Cornerian Navy did not keep any captured Zeram class battleships for any real length of time. Many were towed to Sector Z and blasted into scrap metal, while others were taken to the salvage yards on Corneria and were cut apart, melted down, and recast into components used to build Cornerian designed ships. However, the next best thing to the Zeram class was available...and it was sitting in a dry dock not 100 kilometers away on Katina...a Saruzin class battlecruiser.

Venessa Bonny, Bart's second in command on his cruiser and still one of his top comrades had discovered the Saruzin battlecruiser during her travels as she looked for information on any possible Zeram battleships that might still exist. The Saruzin class, although lighter and not as durable as the Zeram class compensated with a higher speed and increased maneuverability. Furthermore, it packed nearly as much punch and did so in a smaller vessel. With such a 'prize' so close by, the Venomians couldn't afford to pass up a rare opportunity like this, and prepared a plan to get the ship out of the dry dock.

Watching the dockyard and its cadre of workers and military security detail, Bart and his crew learned the ins and outs of the entire facility and how it ran, making sure that they knew the idiosyncrasies to the letter, that way they could strike at the moment of greatest vulnerability and maximise their odds for success. They launched their assault at 2 AM, the time when the least amount of personnel were present and when the military security force was lightest.

In the ensuing firefight both sides took heavy casualties, but ultimately Bart and his crew captured the ship and escaped with it. Shooting their way off Katina and with a Cornerian battleship in hot pursuit, the renegade Venomians fled the planet and Lylat all together. With their ship and subsequently their future for the time being secured, the one time Venomian Navy officers and crew headed to the free nation of Khartoum. They spent the next 6 months performing a wide range of mercenary work to pay for the refitting and modification of their battlecruiser to suit their needs.

One of the most notable modifications to the ship, and the one that would eventually spawn myths about the soon to be pirate force was a simple coat of paint. The battlecruiser was painted in a very deep gloss black scheme which under the right lighting conditions gave it something of a luster or sheen not unlike that of a valuable gemstone. Because of this, it reminded Bart of the black gemstone known as obsidian and within moments he had a name with which to christen his new ship; Obsidian Corsair.
He intentionally picked this deep, unmistakable colour due to the fact that it would set him and his cohorts apart from the countless other mercenaries and pirates throughout the galaxies...in time this would inspire many people throughout the galaxies to believe that actual obsidian gemstone and not simple paint was what coated the exterior of the battlecruiser.

With the Obsidian Corsair fully operational and their forces swelling due to more and more ex-Venomian military personnel leaving Lylat to evade the Cornerians, Bart soon found himself leading a force of freelancers larger than the force he commanded in the military. Almost overnight the Corsair was fully crewed and could accommodate no more...already a new ship was needed. Wanting to test his new ship's capabilities, Bart headed back to Corneria to challenge the first naval vessel he could encounter.

In a firefight lasting barely 10 minutes the Obsidian Corsair overwhelmed a destroyer and the spacecraft carrier it was escorting near the outer edges of the Lylat System and both fell into the hands of Bart's forces which by now were officially named Black Skull Corsairs after Venessa Bonny had a flag featuring a dark coloured skull and crossbones like the ancient ocean going pirates of old custom made as a display piece on the bridge of the Corsair. The two new ships were brought back to Black Skull Corsair's outpost base on Phase World where they were repaired and refitted, then joined the Obsidian Corsair in commerce raiding.

Within months two more ships, each one individually this time, would be captured and brought into the service of the pirate to join the first three. Time and again these five vessels would strike, always in a tactical formation, always in a way that maximised their strengths and minimised their weaknesses. Merchant after merchant fell to the overwhelming firepower and tactics of the pirates...even those with an armed escort twice the size of the pirate fleet would collapse in mere minutes; their crews being little more than militiamen and other paramilitary or standard law enforcement personnel with little to no experience with military concepts.

The Cornerian Navy attempted countless operations to track down and destroy the pirates but with the massive demobilisation of their forces at the end of the War of Conquest and the need to secure the star system, combined with the later threats from the Aparoids and later the Anglar thwarted many of their efforts. Even their best attempts could only damage the pirate's ships or at best drive their attack away for the time being. The Black Skull Corsairs were effectively a rogue navy, a military force unto themselves and as of currently an unstoppable one, led by a lone commander.

***
My pirate commander and one of my primary villians, Bart Roberts. He has quite the sizeable bounty on his head for anyone who brings him in dead. Be fore warned however, he's already sent 10 bounty hunters back to their employers. In a multiple of shoe boxes (XD).
And God help you if you're in the slave trade...Bart's favourite prey happens to be slavers.

All due credit to Nintendo where its due.
Drawing by  Naira and character is copyright to me.