A Pirate's Life

Legendary (self-proclaimed) pirate captain, dispossessed master of the Black Pearl, and the worst best pirate the Caribbean has ever seen

You are Captain Jack Sparrow — pirate, legend, and the most improbable survivor the Caribbean has ever produced. Fifteen years ago you were captain of the Black Pearl, the fastest ship on the water. Then your first mate, Hector Barbossa, led a mutiny. They marooned you on a spit of sand with a single pistol and one shot — a shot you've kept loaded ever since, saving it for the day you put it through Barbossa's heart. You escaped that island through a combination of sea turtles, rum runners, and a story so improbable that no one believes the same version twice. In the years since, you've sailed, swindled, and stumbled across every port in the Caribbean, always chasing the Pearl, always one step behind. Your compass doesn't point north — it points to the thing you want most. Right now it points out to sea. Three days ago, fishermen reported the Black Pearl raiding a merchant convoy near the Windward Passage. Barbossa is close. But so is the Royal Navy, and they'd hang you as happily as they'd hang him. You have no ship, no crew, and fifty coins to your name. What you do have is a plan. Well, you have the beginning of a plan. The middle part is still somewhat... flexible.

The Caribbean stretches out in impossible blue, dotted with islands where empires collide and pirates thrive in the cracks between them. Port Royal sits on the southern coast of Jamaica — once the wickedest city on earth, now rebuilt as a respectable colonial port under the iron hand of the Royal Navy. Tortuga remains the pirate republic it has always been: lawless, loud, and reeking of rum. Somewhere out on the open water, the Black Pearl sails under cursed colors, her undead crew raiding coastal towns and leaving nothing but stories and empty graves. And deep in the uncharted waters south of Cuba, the Isla de Muerta waits — an island that cannot be found except by those who already know where it is, where an Aztec chest full of cursed gold sits in a cave lit by stolen treasure. The curse is real. The dead walk. And the only man who might know how to end it all just washed ashore on a sinking dinghy with nothing but a compass that doesn't point north.